Capp hands Taufa a small black box that he places carefully into the mix. Tolliver seals the drum with a heavy lid.
They step away from the drum, moving more warily now. Capp takes a sheet of paper from his pocket, checks it, then thrusts it at Amber.
‘Ms Nor-d-lund,’ he says, ‘read this.’
She takes it reluctantly, scans it with a frown, shakes her head.
Capp takes out his phone, presses buttons, then holds it up to her. ‘Read what the paper says—nice and loud.’
‘I will not,’ she says loudly. ‘This is ridiculous.’
Capp gestures and Taufa goes over to the bench and picks up a sledgehammer. Takes it back to Capp, who carries it over to the helpless Luke. He swings it in a great arc and smashes it with a hideous splintering crack into Luke’s knees.
Harry realises then what the fragments are that he’s holding in his fingers behind his back—pieces of human bone.
Amber is screaming.
Capp strolls back to her and slaps her face hard. She stops.
‘Want me to hit him again?’ he demands.
She shakes her bowed head.
‘Then read the paper.’
He holds up his phone again and she begins, in a trembling faint voice. ‘My name is Amber—’
‘No, no. Louder! Start again!’
‘My name is Amber Nordlund. I speak on behalf of the environmental group Burning Rage. We have learned that lawful protest against the ravages of the coal industry is useless, and that only direct action will have any effect. Accordingly we announce a program of armed assault against its infrastructure, and call upon all people who care about the future of our planet to support us.’
Capp nods, puts the phone to his ear, listens, then nods again. ‘Good.’
He’s arranging a suicide, Harry thinks, the accidental suicide of bomb-making terrorists. But we can’t be found trussed up like this—he’ll have to kill us first, and free us.
Capp is looking around. He picks up his sledgehammer again and comes towards Harry.
‘Where’s his phone?’
Tolliver gives it to him.
‘What’s this? Only one number in memory? Who would that be?’ A nasty smile forms on one side of Capp’s face. ‘Jenny, right? Blind Jenny. Shame I won’t be able to show her what I’m goin to do to you, mate. But I’ll tell her. I’ll make sure she gets the picture before I put out her lights.’
At his back, Harry feels the sliver of bone finally slip into the narrow gap in the handcuff and depress the ratchet, opening the cuff. He springs at Capp with a roar, swinging punches, clawing for his throat. All around him the room erupts, the others running forward, throwing themselves into the melee, punching, kicking. Blows hammer down on Harry’s head and ribs and he is finally dragged onto his back, bleeding and barely conscious. He opens his eyes and sees Capp standing over him, gasping for breath, raising the sledgehammer.
‘Boss!’ Someone shouts, pointing. ‘Boss, the woman! She’s gone!’
They all turn to where Kelly was lying. She’s not there and the door is open.
70
She flies across the concrete yard towards the line of bushes, scrambles into them, hits a chain-link fence and stumbles on, faster, faster, comes to a break in the fence and plunges through into the soft earth of a field, trips, falls headlong among cabbages, hauls herself up and races on, heart pounding, lungs bursting. Ahead she sees the glimmer of light, the cottage window. She clambers awkwardly over a steel gate and flops into a yard and runs towards the house and hammers on the back door. A dog inside begins to bark.
Come on, come on! She keeps banging and finally the door swings open—an old man holding a shotgun in her face.
‘Please…please…’ She can hardly get the words out. ‘Must call the police.’
A small woman pushes into view. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘My friends, trapped by bikies in the huts over there. Please, must call police.’
‘You’d better come inside, dear. Close the door, Rick.’
‘I’ll get on the phone,’ he says.
The woman takes Kelly into a sitting room with ancient armchairs and threadbare carpet, the dog following, sniffing suspiciously at Kelly’s legs. She hears the murmur of the old man’s voice from the hall and sinks back into a chair, letting her heart slow down.
It doesn’t take long, a bell ringing at the front door, male voices, and then the door opens. The two thugs from the hut walk in with pistols and torches in their hands.
‘Thanks, Hilda,’ one of them says, and takes hold of Kelly’s arm and pulls her to her feet.
‘You boys would lose yer own noses if they wasn’t stuck on,’ she says. ‘Is this the only one?’
‘Yeah, just her.’
In her despair, as they march her out of the front door towards the white van, Kelly sees the headlights of another vehicle approaching down the track.
71
Harry lies on the hard concrete barely able to move. They’ve cracked his ribs, he thinks, maybe his legs too. He just wants to lie there, go to sleep, but he forces his eyes open, sees Capp over at the door, peering out into the darkness. Tolliver remains, standing over Harry, a pistol in his fist, gazing at Capp. ‘Can you see anything, Frank?’ he calls.
Harry eases his right arm out from under him, stretches out his hand, makes a lunge for Tolliver’s ankle and jerks. The big man jumps, steps quickly back, and his heel skates on a patch of oil. He staggers for a moment, recovering his balance, cursing, and his back foot steps into space, the inspection pit. He gives a cry, dropping the gun as he topples backwards.
Harry begins to crawl towards the gun, expecting Capp to jump on him at any moment. It doesn’t happen. His fingers reach the gun, clutch at it and he swivels round, aiming it at the man in the doorway silhouetted against a blaze of light from outside.
‘Drop the gun, Harry! Drop the gun!’
It’s not Capp’s voice.
‘Ross? Is that you?’ I’m hallucinating, he thinks. He lets the gun slide from his hand and lies back with a groan.
‘Jeez, Harry, what’s happened to you?’
He opens his eyes. It is Ross. Harry mumbles, ‘Bomb…gotta get outta here.’
‘What? What did you say?’
‘There’s a bomb…in that oil drum. Gotta get everyone out, Ross.’
‘Okay, okay, sure.’ Ross shouts something to people coming in through the door, then slides his arm under Harry and tries to lift him. He grunts, swears, then calls for help and Harry stifles a cry as he’s lifted up and carried out into the fresh night air. All around him people are shouting, lights blazing, vehicles revving. They make it to the road; red, blue lights flashing; an ambulance. Amber is there, a blanket around her shoulders, looking shaken.
‘Harry! You’re alive! Where’s Luke?’
Ross says, ‘Who’s Luke?’
‘Inside,’ Harry says, ‘strung up on a hook.’
‘Jesus…’ Ross shouts suddenly, ‘No, stop!’
Harry sees Amber’s blanket on the ground, her figure fleeing across the concrete apron as the hut explodes in a dazzling white flash. He blinks, and when he looks again she is gone.
72
He refuses to leave. The ambos do what they can for him, then drive off with Amber. He feels light-headed, barely taking it in. From the scene of the explosion someone reports a body in the inspection pit. Tolliver. What’s left of Luke will be harder to find.
‘How did you show up?’ he asks.
‘We’ve been tracking Kelly’s phone to try to get a lead on you,’ Ross says. ‘We intercepted a call asking you to meet her on Ash Island.’
‘Kelly’s okay?’
Ross nods, tells him about rescuing her from Scully and Taufa at the farm. ‘And we got Sammy Lee too, stuffing bags of speed under his floorboards. I’ll have to give you back your hundred bucks.’
‘And you got Capp.’
‘Who?’
‘Frank
Capp.’
Ross looks blank. ‘No. Was he here?’
The fog inside Harry’s head clears. ‘Of course he was here! He was behind all this. You didn’t catch him?’
Ross hurries over to a car, gets on the radio. Harry follows, wincing with every step. Ross says, ‘We found four vehicles—Kelly Pool’s car down the road there, and a white van, a black Mercedes and a WRX over there by the hut.’
‘The WRX must have been his.’
‘Well it’s still there, and the bridge across to the island is blocked, so he must be here somewhere.’
Another car draws up, Fogarty gets out and Ross hurries over to him. Harry follows, Fogarty staring at him as he listens to Ross. A helicopter appears overhead, a searchlight beam probing the ground beneath.
As Fogarty turns back to the radio in his car, Harry grabs Ross’s elbow. ‘I need a phone.’
73
Jenny is deeply asleep when the phone sounds, buzzing near her ear. She sits up, groggy, fumbles. ‘Harry?’
‘Is that Jenny?’ She doesn’t recognise the voice, male, rough, slightly slurred.
She says, ‘Yes…’ cautiously. ‘Who…?’
‘Jenny, my name’s Detective Inspector Tom Carpenter. I’m a mate of Harry’s.’
Jenny is wide awake now, sitting up, tense. ‘What’s happened? Where’s Harry?’
‘Been badly hurt, Jenny. He gave me his phone and told me to call you. You’re in danger—great danger. You got someone there can drive?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘How far is it to the nearest main road?’
‘The freeway? Fifteen minutes.’
‘Right. What would your nearest junction be?’
‘Look, I don’t know who you are. Let me speak to Harry.’
‘Sorry, Jenny. He’s gone in the ambulance. I got to come and take you to him. You gotta leave where you are right now—drive to the freeway. I’ll meet you there. So what junction is that?’
‘Tuggerah.’
‘Okay, good. Park on the southbound slip road and wait for me there. What’s your vehicle?’
‘A blue Peugeot.’
‘Right. I’ll be in an unmarked police car. Now this is important, Jenny. They’re tracking your phone, so you gotta turn it off and leave it where you are. Understand?’
‘Yes. But…’
The phone goes dead.
74
Harry paces backward and forward beside the circle of cops gathered around the radio. He can move more easily now—can’t stop moving. Jenny’s phone is switched off, went straight to voicemail. No one is answering Meri’s house phone either. A patrol car has been sent, but it’s still five minutes away along that valley road.
The helicopter roars past overhead again, heading for the river. Then Ross calls out to Fogarty, ‘Boss! They’ve found a boat on the river bank. The far bank.’
As Fogarty takes the radio, Harry grabs Ross. ‘He’ll have crossed the highway to the filling station, tried to get a lift there. C’mon, let’s get over there. Where’s your car?’
‘Hang on, mate. There’s cops all over the place over there. They’ll get him.’
But then the report comes in of a triple-0 call from an hysterical motorist out on the freeway who claims to have seen a man being shot.
They replay the call. ‘Two men standing together, then I saw a flash and one of them dropped to the ground, and the other got into the car as I was going by. I slowed down and he came flying past me and I pulled over, reversed back to take a look. I’m with the bloke now. Dear God, covered in blood…a big hole in his face.’
‘Where is this?’ Fogarty says, and they get the answer, twenty minutes away down the highway.
Harry says, ‘I’m betting he hijacked a car over at the filling station and made the driver take him, then decided to get rid of him. Is there a description of the car?’
There isn’t.
Harry says, ‘Capp’s got a phone. I don’t know the number, but Tolliver called him.’
Fogarty nods, tells a couple of men to go down into the inspection pit to retrieve Tolliver’s phone. They find it beneath him, protected from the blast by his body, and call back with the last number it rang. Fogarty passes it on to the telephone intercept room at the Newcastle police station, and they wait.
The answer comes back within a few minutes. Capp’s phone has been tracked to a point on the freeway near the Tuggerah interchange.
75
‘Are you quite sure about this, dear?’
Jenny hears the suppressed panic in Meri’s voice. They’re sitting in the car on the slip road, little traffic at this time of the night except the periodic roar of long-distance trucks down below on the freeway. She imagines Meri staring out into the blackness, wondering how long it will be until dawn breaks. And she isn’t sure about this, not at all. There was something about Carpenter’s voice, an aggressive edge, that jarred. She feels the baby stir in her belly, and spreads a protective hand across it.
‘Lights!’ Meri cries suddenly. ‘Coming up behind us. They’re stopping.’
Jenny hears the slam of a car door, the crunch of feet.
‘Jenny? Jenny Belltree?’ The voice from the telephone.
‘Yes.’
She hears the door at her side click open.
‘Out you get. Come with me—not you, lady.’
Meri’s voice. ‘I’m coming too. She’s not going anywhere without me.’
‘Just do as you’re told.’
Jenny hears Meri gasp at the brutal force of the demand. She says, ‘Where are we going?’
She feels hands release her seatbelt, tighten around her arms and pull her bodily out of the car, swing her upright, then half-march, half-carry her up the slope. Then she’s sprawling across a car seat. The car door slams behind her. A foul smell of sour sweat. Meri crying out, beating at the car window and then a loud bang.
A car door slams, the engine starts and Jenny hauls herself upright, reaching for him. Her fingers wrap around his face, a strange uneven shape, and she claws at him. A harsh shout and then a shattering blow splits her skull.
76
Harry sits, tense and impatient beside Ross, driving fast in a column of police cars, lights pulsing. On the radio they listen to the target’s progress down the freeway towards Sydney—Somersby, Kariong, Calga. A report comes in of a woman’s body found on the Tuggerah slip road, identified as sixty-two-year-old Meredith Spooner, shot through the heart. A dog is sitting by her side. The car nearby is deserted.
Fogarty’s plan is to stop Capp before he reaches the Peats Ferry Bridge across the Hawkesbury. The freeway has been closed to north- and south-bound traffic and spikes laid south of the Mount White interchange. As they race on, a pale light begins to transform the hills around them, revealing their forested slopes. In this deceptive half-light they pass through the Tuggerah interchange, scattered now with flashing police lights.
Then a hiatus—the target has left the freeway at Mount White. Spooked by the empty road, maybe; the absence of oncoming traffic. He’s moving west along Morgans Road, which winds among the fields of the Mount White enclave within the national park forests. He turns off onto a side track and the signal comes to a halt. They trace the address. It has a history, the scene of a drug raid last year. Its owner is another resident of Long Bay Correctional Facility, still inside.
When the cavalcade arrives they find an improvised command post already set up beside the road out of sight of the house. A surveillance helicopter is in place high overhead, ready to transmit pictures to the gathering team.
Harry and Ross crawl up to the fence line with a view of the place, a small timber cabin with a rusting tin roof, set back against the forest edge at the top of a slope. A Ford Mondeo is parked outside, no sign of life. A sick feeling overwhelms Harry, thinking of Jenny inside that place with Frank Capp. It’s all he can do to hold back from jumping over the fence and running up there.
The TOU arrive, snipers sent up into
the forest to cover the rear of the property. There are closed louvred blinds in the windows, they report, hard to get a view inside.
Then a hostage negotiation team. Their leader, a middle-aged man you might take for an old-school librarian, talks to Harry, turning over the possibilities.
‘So he doesn’t know you’re alive, Harry?’ He has a warm, steady voice, neutral accent.
‘Possibly.’
‘And what’ll he do if he finds out?’
‘He’ll want me to go up there.’
‘Hmm. How rational will he be?’
‘He won’t give himself up. He’s killed four people in the past few hours, two of them in cold blood. He knows he’s not going to escape.’
‘He may not know we’ve been able to track him. Why would he go to so much trouble to take your wife, if he thought you were dead?’
‘Because he’s evil.’
The negotiator thinks this over. ‘Best to keep you right out of it, Harry. Your presence can only complicate things.’
77
First there’s the pain, the searing pain inside her head. Jenny wakes slowly, trying to remember, trying to understand. The slightest movement causes excruciating stabs of pain behind her eyes. From habit they open, and she sees a dim light.
Light. For the first time in over three years.
At first she thinks it must be some strange discharge inside her brain. But when she moves her eyes, bars of brighter light jump out of the gloom. It looks just like a louvred window. It is a window.
There is a sound, a door banging shut. She lets her eyelids droop, leaving just enough gap to see the man. He is carrying a bundle of things which he drops with a crash on a table, then picks them up in turn—a hammer, an axe, a large kitchen knife, a long screwdriver—swinging them, feeling their weight. There is a pistol stuck in his belt.
Ash Island Page 23