14th March
Chapter 30 - A Dinosaur of a Caravan
The Australian National Museum
Tess forced herself to finish checking the rooms on that hallway. She returned to the landing-balcony. “No one else comes up here, Clyde. No one else comes in. Especially not Zach.”
“Roger,” he said. “Ma’am, what did you find?”
“A crime scene,” she said, and forced herself to check the other two upstairs corridors, and the rooms beyond. Both were shorter, but led to his-and-her master rooms, both identical in design, both barely lived in. Both, thankfully, were empty. Though the rooms had been searched, looted, the beds hadn’t been recently used.
Even more slowly than before, she returned to the landing, and then downstairs. Bianca had joined Elaina in the door, and both women held their weapons uncertainly.
“They’re all dead or gone,” Tess said. “Bianca, take Zach and drive Teegan to the airport. Zach stays with Teegan. Find Mick Dodson. I want twenty people. Armed. People he trusts. Aircrew who’ve seen action. And I want the coroner. And I want them here in ten minutes.”
“I can use the radio,” Bianca said.
“No, I want this message delivered in person,” Tess said. And she wanted Zach away from here. “Clyde, Elaina. Hold this position. I’ll finish the sweep.”
More slowly, putting off the moment she’d have to return upstairs, she went through the downstairs rooms, turning on lights as she went.
Aside from the recent battle, the house was barely changed from when Aaron and his wife had lived there. The floor was scuffed, but the ornaments remained untouched and on display. The mercenaries had even added a few out-of-place rugs to the silk-threaded sofas, and sheets to cover the coffee tables. They hadn’t looted. They hadn’t wantonly destroyed. They’d known they might have to leave hurriedly, and the discovery of the bodies would lead to an investigation, and so had minimised the evidence they’d left behind.
Dirty plates had gone into the dishwasher. The boxes of disposable gloves next to it suggested they’d even made the effort not to leave fingerprints when they’d unloaded the machine, replacing plates and glasses in their proper cupboards. The fridge remained stocked with the food bought before the outbreak, but the mercenaries had been here since then, give or take. And they had been eating rations packed in one of the four black, reinforced, coffin-shaped boxes stacked in the room in which she’d killed Kelly.
The topmost box contained weapons and ammo. Each gun had its own slot in the custom made box, but the long sniper rifle caught her eye. She’d seen Kelly with it on the city’s walls, but clearly it was intended for something other than shooting the undead. What was their original plan, before the outbreak, if it involved assassinating people at long range? Did it matter now?
Another coffin-shaped crate was empty except for a single compressed bag containing the mercenaries’ waste, and most of that was empty vacuum-packed rations. It couldn’t have been their only waste, not for the at least three weeks they’d been here. The rest must have been taken somewhere, dumped or buried. The other two coffin-sized containers held food, some medical kit, a sat-phone, radios, and empty space.
“Interesting,” she murmured. The radios were interesting in that they were inside the crates. The sat-phone confirmed the boxes were packed before the satellites went down, but did it mean they weren’t expecting the failure of global communications? There were no spare sets of body armour, nor of night-vision goggles. They had enough weapons to equip a small army, but that was never their intent. No, their original plot involved a handful of killers, a sniper rifle, sat-phones, suppressed submachine guns, and encrypted short-range radios.
Tess turned around, to look at the corpse of Major Kelly. “Were you really ever a soldier?”
She walked over to the body of the dead assassin, and undid the button at the corpse’s collar. Around the woman’s neck hung a silver chain with a pair of identification discs on which was the name B Kelly, but those could be easily forged. Or stolen, because there was another chain, made of gold, and around that, with holes drilled in each, were three gold coins. It was what she’d been expecting after the corpse in the Bunker, after the victims upstairs.
Behind the kitchen, and through a utility room larger than her bedroom in Broken Hill, a door led into the garage. Inside was only one vehicle, a New South Wales park ranger utility truck. Stacked neatly by the rear wheels were four petrol cans. Each full. Inside, on the back seat, were five sets of park ranger uniforms.
The truck was a diesel, so the petrol was for the house. They’d have torched it as they left, but they’d planned for that not being possible, so had maintained a light-touch protocol, leaving few clues behind. But, due to the bodies, if they suddenly fled, the hunt wouldn’t be for mercenaries, but for a serial killer.
Reluctantly, Tess returned upstairs. From the landing, the left-and-right corridor led to the two wings, and the two master bedrooms. The other corridor led to the guest rooms, one of which was larger than the two master rooms. Possibly used by Sir Malcolm when he visited his daughter and tormented his son-in-law. In that room lay the body of a tortured man. Not Sir Malcolm. Not anyone Tess had ever seen before. But she thought she could put a name to him.
He had bruises on his chest, a broken arm strapped and held in a sling. They’d caused pain, yes, but nothing which would leave a permanent mark except the bullet hole in his skull. Rigor mortis had yet to set in, so he had been killed recently. Probably within the last few hours.
In the room opposite, perhaps originally intended as a nursery though it only contained a pair of dusty chairs, was the body of a woman. Around fifty, she hadn’t been tortured, but shot once in the head, then wrapped in a thin sheet, probably to make it easier to carry her up there. A trio of industrious early-morning ants had found their way to the body. More would come soon, but taken with the beginning of decomposition, it suggested the woman had died recently.
Next door were the children. Two of them. Twins. Fourteen years old. A boy and a girl who’d had their throats cut. It didn’t appear as if they’d been tortured, but the autopsy would determine that. In the room at the back, overlooking the swimming pool, was the last corpse. A woman. Early forties. The mother of the twins. Her arms and legs were a map of scars. None deep. Each around ten centimetres long, collectively forming an overlapping diamond pattern that ran up her arms, up her legs, across her chest, but stopped at her neck. Tess stepped back, making sure she’d remember the woman’s face, and returned to the stairs, then to the front door.
“What did you find, ma’am?” Clyde asked.
“I wish I didn’t have to tell you,” Tess said. “There are five bodies upstairs. A woman in her late fifties, a man in his late forties, a woman who’s a few years younger, and two twin boys, fourteen years old.”
“You know their ages?” Elaina asked. “You know who they are?”
“Not the older woman,” Tess said. “She’s probably a neighbour, a witness. Maybe hired help. But the others, yes, I know them from information Anna gave me earlier. The man is Erin Vaughn’s husband. The woman was married to Ian Lignatiev. The boys are his sons. They were murdered. The older woman and the Lignatievs were killed yesterday. Mr Vaughn was shot a few hours ago. I think they were hostages. In that room at the end of the hall, there are four black storage containers. Gather the weapons and ammo from the bodies. Make sure the guns are unloaded. Put them in the container with the plastic waste, then bring all four outside, load them on our ute. We’ll log them in as evidence. Don’t go upstairs.”
Tess went outside, enjoying the cool night air. Above, clouds had blanketed the sky, hinting at rain to come. Serial killers, nuclear war, zombies. What would come next? But at least the lights were still on, here in Canberra.
The sound of engines had her walking back down the drive, through the broken-open gates, and to the road. Flashing amber lights marked the arrival of reinforcements from the airport, five service-truck
s. Mick was behind the wheel of the lead vehicle, Blaze in the passenger seat. Bianca following in a truck so close she’d clearly been trying to take the lead.
“This is a crime scene,” Tess called out, even as the trucks stopped. “Blaze, take ten people around the back. I want these vehicles parked on the roadside not blocking the entrance. Bianca, on the gate. No one comes in until the coroner arrives. Mick, these are your people, get them deployed.”
“Kasey,” Mick said, turning to the stocky woman who’d been driving the third truck. “You heard the commissioner. Clear the road, then form a perimeter. Tess?”
She led Mick up towards the house, though not indoors. “It’s torture and murder, Mick, like in Broken Hill. Major Kelly was here. It was a real fight we only survived thanks to luck and Clyde.”
“Who was murdered?” Mick asked.
“Lignatiev’s wife and children, Vaughn’s husband, and a woman who was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“How old were the kids?”
“Fourteen. Twins. Boys,” Tess said. “I don’t think they were tortured, but their mother was.”
“Like in Broken Hill with that pilot who was skinned alive?”
“Similar, but different. Lots of shallow cuts forming a diamond pattern. Would have taken time, though, so that’s the same as Broken Hill.”
“So it’s a different serial killer?” Mick asked. “Or is the killer’s M.O. evolving?”
“Neither,” Tess said. “The killer, or killers, enjoy causing pain, or at least have no qualms about it, but it’s a means to an end. In the garage, there’s an NSW park ranger truck with four ranger uniforms. That was how they intended to escape. In uniform, aboard an official truck. It’s not far to the state border, and what conscript would stop them if they said they’d been ordered to eliminate a cluster of zombies nearby? But it’s a diesel truck, and next to it are four petrol cans.”
“To burn the house down?”
“Defo,” Tess said. “Douse the bodies, and the cuts wouldn’t be found in an autopsy. But if we found the bodies before they had a chance to torch the place, we’d be looking for a torturer, a serial killer, not a cartel gangster.”
“Cartel? That’s who they were?”
“Kelly had three gold coins hanging around her neck like they were a necklace,” Tess said. “And I think she was the torturer here. I could be wrong, but I think we got them all. Kelly and her people were hired to kidnap Vaughn’s and Lignatiev’s family. She used them to make sure those two politicians did what they were supposed to.”
“Like kill those students, and try to kill Anna,” Mick said.
“I think Kelly or one of her people did the actual deed,” Tess said. “But Lignatiev and Vaughn provided access. Who would notice Kelly when she was playing bodyguard, tagging along when Vaughn went to speak to Bronwyn Wilson, or when bringing a message to the last prime minister, or to the students, or whomever else?”
“And how many others did she kill?” Mick asked. “Kelly was on the wall with us.”
“Yep. With a sniper rifle,” Tess said. “But me and my team got lost on our way to the suburb we were meant to be clearing, otherwise I’d be dead and listed as a casualty of friendly fire.”
“You found Aaron’s body, though,” Mick said. “I’d call that a coincidence.”
“I’d call it guilt,” Tess said. “He had to have known some of what was going on. But I’m sure he committed suicide.”
“If he did, how voluntary was it?” Mick said. “But that’s not the question I really want answered. Did any of them get away?”
Tess stepped aside as Elaina and Clyde carried one of the black boxes out through the front door. “I don’t think these are the same gangsters who were in Broken Hill,” Tess said. “The timing’s wrong. I want to know how many more of them were here before the outbreak. Was it two teams? Did they arrive together? Lignatiev managed to recruit his own private army of sorts to protect him at the Telstra Tower, and who he left to be murdered in the Bunker.”
“I thought they were reservists,” Mick said. “Isn’t that how he met them?”
“So far only one has been confirmed as a reserve soldier. I’m still waiting on the identification of the others, but there was one bloke at the tower who had a corporate I.D. on him. Belonged to the newspaper Malcolm Baker bought last year.”
“And this is Aaron Bryce’s house, right?” Mick asked.
“Paid for by Baker,” Tess said. “Is he the source of the money which paid for these mercenaries? Or did he pay for Lignatiev’s amateur bodyguard? When were they recruited?”
“You want to find Sir Malcolm?” Mick asked.
“He had a place in Brisbane, I think,” Tess said.
“Ah, so he might have drowned.”
“We should be so lucky. I’ll have to speak to O.O., inform him of what’s happened. But when you get back to the airport, leave word for Captain Hawker. If I’m going to Brisbane, I want professional backup.”
Elaina approached, pausing a polite distance away. “That’s the last of the boxes,” she said. “Do you want us to gather anything else?”
“No, you and Clyde are done for the night,” Tess said. “We’ll drop these off at the evidence lock-up and you can get some sleep. Mick, can you keep a lid on this place?”
“What do I tell the neighbours?” he asked, pointing across the road to a house where a few lights had come on.
“The truth, more or less,” Tess said. “We were mopping up from the coup. We got the last of them. Now we’re waiting on the coroner. I’ll speak to Mr Owen, and to Anna.”
Mick nodded.
Tess took one last look at the house. She hoped it marked the end of something, not the beginning. Elaina at her side, she walked over to their ute, where Clyde had finished securing the crates.
“You’re bleeding, mate,” Tess said, pointing at the gash on the man’s forehead, and the growing bruise, an angry yellow under the streetlights’ amber glare.
“Could have been worse,” he said. “Are we still hunting Vaughn?”
“Nope,” Tess said. “She’s hiding from a murderer as well as us. She’ll turn up in time, but we could waste weeks looking for her. Assuming she’s even still alive. We’ll log this, then I’ll brief the prime minister.”
“We’re taking this to the airport?” Elaina asked, climbing into the driver’s seat.
“The museum,” Tess said, pushing the bag of food taken from the looters at Wilson’s house across the backseat, and climbing in. “It’s supposed to be a food store and evidence lock-up.”
“There’s food at the museum?” Elaina asked.
“Not just food,” Tess said, as she drove the quiet streets. “Not much food, really. Any artefacts, paintings, and antiques we want to keep for future generations are being stored there. But originally, when the shops, businesses, and factories were requisitioned, the assumption was all the excess food could be collected and stored, and then redistributed. But, predictably, people took what they found, leaving very little to go to the central reserve.”
The museum occupied a waterside promontory bulging into Lake Burley Griffin, south of the university and across the tranquil lake to the northwest of parliament. Their journey was slow, finding barricades increasingly occupied, especially around the university. At the museum, they found a guard.
The lights in the car park shone down on rows of juggernaut rigs, though none had a trailer. Around the entrance to the museum, a space had been left empty. There, behind a desk-and-partition barricade, stood a trio of teenagers who, like Zach, should have been in school, and an older woman in an odd uniform.
They parked their truck, climbed out, and Tess saw the woman was wearing a police uniform, not from Australia, but Indonesia.
“Apa kabar,” Tess said, with a smile and a nod, nearly exhausting her Indonesian vocabulary. “G’day. I’m Tess Qwong. Deputy Commissioner with the AFP and senior officer here in Canberra.”
> “Brigadir Polisi Sri Susanti,” the officer said, snapping to attention and giving a crisp salute the three teenagers attempted to copy.
Tess smiled. “Welcome to Australia.”
“Thank you,” Susanti said. “But when is my return flight to Jakarta? I was told I could return.”
“Jakarta? I’ve got to drop this evidence off. I’ll come and speak with you afterwards.”
The police officer’s eyes narrowed. “Attacked? Bombed?”
Tess nodded. “I’m sorry.”
Susanti handed Tess a large set of keys. “One city, a different city. One life, a different life. Does it matter where and which?”
“A question I ask myself every day,” Tess said, as she took the keys. “Leave those for now,” she said as Clyde went to untie the crates. “Bring those bags of food we took from the looters, but we’ll grab a trolley from inside for the evidence.”
Inside the museum, half the lights were on, while, except for a half-metre-wide aisle, the corridors were completely full. High-sided trolleys and shopping carts loaded with paintings lined both walls. Between, against, and even on top, ceiling-high stacks of wooden crates, plastic storage boxes, and cardboard containers teetered and bulged.
“It’s much fuller than last time I was here,” Tess said, as she picked her way over a fallen suitcase, leading the other two down the artificial alley and into the marginally emptier space of the atrium. “And with less order. They’ve been dumping it wherever there’s a gap.”
The last time she’d been to the museum, a dragon of a woman had been yelling at everyone for the damage they were causing. But she’d been maintaining some semblance of order among the chaos. Either she’d given up, or she’d gone, because this place was less like a treasure hoard guarded by a dragon, and was now just a dump watched over by the skeleton of a dinosaur.
Life Goes On | Book 3 | While The Lights Are On [Surviving The Evacuation] Page 31