by Tina Clough
‘I suppose it depends on what you find out, or what the police find out, at a later date.’ ‘Things change according to the circumstances. If you find Hope, dead or alive, and can prove that Stuart took her, then Tama is a heroic whistleblower who unmasked a criminal and eliminated corruption within a government organisation, whichever one it turns out to be. And if you fail, if Hope is not found and nothing sticks to Stuart, then Tama loses his job and might be prosecuted for leaking confidential information. And Stuart could sue him for defamation.’
A sobering summing up. We sit in silence for a moment. Then Kristen raises her glass in a salute. ‘Here’s to Tama – and to integrity and courage. And by the way, Hunter, this wine is fabulous. Thank you.’
At eleven we wake Scruff and leave. I have never hugged Kristen before, but today I do. ‘Thank you. It’s very generous of you to let us borrow Charlie again.’
She gently liberates herself and says in her understated way, ‘You’re such old mates. Like family, really. I know she wants to help you. And nobody else is doing anything practical about that poor woman.’
Once we’re in the car I get a chance to ask Dao when Kristen read Hope’s diary stories. ‘You didn’t bring the print version – how did you do it?’
‘I was prepared,’ says Dao. ‘I emailed them to myself from my laptop. So after I told her the story, I forwarded them to her from my phone. We printed them out on the printer in their study. Then I tried on clothes while she read them– and there were lots more clothes than those in the bag, you know, heaps more. She takes them home on some kind of loan and if they aren’t right she returns them. I didn’t even know you could do that. Are you angry I told her?’
‘God, no. I’m just amazed. I never suspected you were going to do this.’
‘I thought I might get a chance to talk to her. You know how Charlie said I might have to talk to Kristen, because she didn’t dare to do it herself. I know she was joking, but I thought it might work. It was so lucky she took me to the bedroom to try on clothes – perfect. She totally understands that we might need Charlie.’
She sits quiet and thoughtful for a moment before she continues.
‘And you know what? I don’t think she really cares that Charlie might get arrested for doing something illegal. I think she’s just worried that Charlie will get hurt.’
We say no more about it. I make a mental note to order a case of that red wine to be sent to Kristen.
Chapter twenty
The rain starts as we drive on to the Harbour Bridge; within minutes it is a downpour of tropical proportions. The windscreen is a blur of running water, cleared for only a fraction of a second by each sweep of the wiper blades. The outside security light is on at our house and a man is standing at our front door, looking in the window beside the door. He turns and starts across the street towards a car parked on the other side, head down and shoulders hunched. We are still a couple of houses away and I make a quick decision.
‘Stay in the car!’ I say to Dao, pull in to the side and brake hard. I turn the lights off, jump out and run towards the man, who is nearly at his car. He reaches for the door handle and I knock his hand away. ‘Hang on – I want to talk to you!’
His jacket is sodden, and the hood hangs down to his eyebrows, heavy with water. He has a large moustache. He launches himself at me, his right shoulder hits me in the chest, and his left fist comes up in a fast punch. I turn my head to avoid it, but it connects with my cheekbone, hard. I grab his wrist as he pulls his fist back for another hit and twist his lower arm out sideways and back. He has two choices, relax his arm or have his elbow broken. But it doesn’t work out; his right hand comes up with a knife. I manage to get a grip on that wrist too, but now we are locked. Neither of us has a hand free. The only thing that comes to me, struggling with him in the dark with water running into my eyes, is to throw him to the ground. I have the advantage of height and weight. I hook my foot around his ankle and use my weight. We fall heavily, him underneath and me across his chest. He grunts and tries to twist sideways under me. The knife is still in his right hand, centimetres from my shoulder. If he can free his arm, he will stab me.
A pair of small white trainers appear in a puddle just to the side of the guy’s head and Dao says, ‘I have the Glock. Do you want me to shoot him? I could shoot him in the leg, so he can’t run away.’
I can barely hear her voice through the noise of rain and wind. ‘Don’t shoot him! Just keep the gun on him – and back off a bit.’
I don’t want him to grab her ankle. I feel him slacken under my chest. He turns his head and looks in Dao’s direction and then up at me. The moustache is splayed out like a small wet animal across his face.
‘You are going to let go of the knife,’ I say and increase the pressure of my elbow on his upper arm. ‘Just drop it. And then we are going to get up and go inside and talk.’
He lets the knife fall to the ground and I let go of one of his wrists and get up on one knee beside him. The rain is bouncing off the asphalt, we are all wet to the skin.
‘Keep the gun on him,’ I say to Dao. ‘Did you rack the slide?’
She has watched dozens of gun videos on YouTube since the armed guy invaded the house a couple of years ago, but I haven’t yet taught her to use the Glock. She might not know what ‘rack the slide’ means, but hopefully she won’t say so. The gun is always under the front seat of the car, with the magazine in, but not with a round in the chamber.
‘Of course.’ She sounds slightly impatient. ‘I did that as soon as I picked it up. Shall I shoot him now?’
‘No, thanks. Just come around to the other side and hand me the gun.’
Once I have it in my hand I get to my feet. ‘You can get up now. Don’t make any sudden moves or I might shoot you.’
He gets to his feet and I step back. ‘Now turn around.’ I shift the Glock to my left hand and pull his right arm right up behind his back, fast and as far as it will go. He grunts and leans slightly forward to lessen the pressure and I increase it to make sure he knows he is helpless.
‘Dao, please go back to the car and lock it. And bring the garage remote.’
We walk across the street and Dao deactivates the alarm system and opens the garage door.
I push the man ahead of me into the passage and up the stairs to the first floor. Dao is right behind me. I can feel her apprehension like a current around us.
‘Can you find those cable ties again?’
It’s a repeat performance of the invasion long ago, when Dao managed to find the bag of cable ties in the kitchen drawer while I had our clumsy invader at the point of a Remington shotgun.
I march our guest to a dining chair, tell him to sit down and hand the gun to Dao while I fasten one of his legs to the table leg and one to the chair. As I rise, I reach over and pull the hood from his head and look at Dao. She nods; yes, this is John. Water is pooling on the floor as it runs off our clothes. Dao is pale and shivering.
‘Go upstairs and get into something dry.’ I smile at her tight little face. ‘And bring a towel or two. I think we’re going to be here for a while.’
She might be heat-immune, as she calls it, but she gets cold very easily. We wait in silence until Dao returns in dry clothes. She puts the towels and one of my sweatshirts on the table, and I toss a towel across to John.
‘Come and sit over here, Dao.’
I know she does not want to; she would rather be somewhere he cannot look at her. She loathes and fears this man. Not only did he pose a threat to her when she was a little girl, but she is also the only eyewitness who saw him deliver drug shipments to the island. She still believes he wants her eliminated, just as Bramville and the Boss did.
John wipes the towel roughly across his face and sneers at her. ‘Haven’t you turned into a pretty little thing, Slave. And you’ve got a real name, too. Aren’t you lucky?’
She says nothing. I rise slightly, lean across the table and
punch him hard just where he hit me. His head bounces back and his chair nearly tips over. A bright red patch outlined in white blossoms on his cheekbone; it will be a deep bruise. My knuckles ache, but I’m not going to rub them in front of him.
‘If you prefer, I can shoot you. Somewhere painful.’
He is hard to shake. He looks straight at me; his eyes water in pain, but he manages to smile. ‘Let’s make a deal – a business deal. I know you took the barrel and you haven’t a clue how to sell the stuff. I have the contacts and I can get good money for it. I sell it and we split the money.’
‘If you want to make a deal, why did you attack me outside?’
‘When you came at me like that I thought you were someone else. There’s a lot of competition in my business.’
This is a chance to find out more. I need to make a fast decision about my approach. To gain some time and to annoy him, I turn to Dao instead of replying. ‘He’s pretty open with his comments. Wish I had it on record.’
She returns my look, deadpan and unblinking. ‘He doesn’t care.’
‘Could you bring two cups of coffee, Dao? I think we need something warm. And those chocolate biscuits we bought the other day.
I hope she understands the unspoken message, but I can’t make it any clearer. Making coffee gives her an opportunity to turn her phone to record. I want John to talk freely, to give the police as much detail as possible. We sit in silence until Dao comes back. She puts a tray with two mugs of coffee and a packet of biscuits beside me, walks down the length of the room and returns with her laptop. She puts her phone on the table, pulls out the chair beside me and sits down without looking at me or John.
I put one of the mugs beside her and take the other one myself, put the biscuit packet between us. She smiles briefly at me and her fingers move quietly over the keyboard. I have no idea what she is setting up, but she might need time. I pull my wet shirt over my head, rub my hair with the towel and put on the dry sweatshirt.
Dao raises her mug. ‘What are you going to do with him?’
John smirks at her. ‘You’ve moved up from slave to servant, eh? Not bad for a little slant-eye girl.’
I lean over the table again and backhand him hard across the other side of the face before he gets a hand up to block me. ‘Enough!’
‘Please let me shoot him!’ Dao sounds serious and the way she looks at me is hard to interpret. ‘If anyone is going to shoot him it should be me. Please!’
His eyes swivel from Dao’s face to mine and back again; there is a hint of fear. He is unsure of the situation now. Will I let Dao shoot him? He knows she has been afraid of him since she was a little girl; she would cringe when he touched her when Bramville wasn’t looking. Having him a bit on edge now feels good.
‘You can’t shoot him here, Dao. Too many complications. I’ll deal with him.’
John looks uncertain; are we serious? He knows Dao hates him and he can tell I want to punish him.
I slip my right hand under the table and grasp Dao’s knee. ‘Remember the mess it made when you killed the Boss in that factory. At least we didn’t have to clean up the blood afterwards.’
A little reminder for him that she killed someone once. He has no way of knowing if she really intended the Boss to die; neither do I. I hope she will forgive me for reminding her of it. She doesn’t like it being mentioned, but the look on John’s face should make up for it.
‘There’s no need to be so fucking aggressive,’ he says, trying to sound as if it is just a normal everyday discussion. ‘I only defended myself when I thought you were going to attack me.’
‘You’ve used up your chances,’ I say coldly. ‘Any more nastiness towards Dao and it’s over. Now let’s talk business.’
‘For fuck’s sake, don’t be so touchy.’ His right eyelid has developed a little tic. ‘I’ve looked into your background a bit and I bet you don’t know shit about how to sell those drugs.’
His smirk is meant to show how confident he is. ‘You need to have connections to deal with stuff like this – and I do.’
He doesn’t know that the police have video of the barrel on the back of Bramville’s truck after he left the island, that I am no longer a suspect. This is a golden opportunity. Calling the cops was my first thought when Dao confirmed who he is, but I want more. Maybe they can get him not only on his past, but also on what he’s willing to do now. Find out who he is planning to sell to – even better.
‘I’m not doing some blind deal. I’m not a fool. You’d screw me if you could. I’ve got to know who it is you are selling to and I want half the money up front. That barrel stays in storage until I have my share.’
‘No way!’ His voice is full of scorn. ‘It doesn’t work like that. They’ve got to see the merchandise and check it out before they’ll even discuss the price. All the gangs are the same – you can’t change the rules.’
I pretend to think about this for a moment. It is what I thought he would say, but I want to make sure he comes back to me. If he sets up a deal with one of the gangs and they send some heavy type to force me to hand over the barrel, we could face mayhem. Saying I was lying about having the barrel would never work in that situation. I must create a reason for John to come back and get the police involved.
Suddenly Dao jumps to her feet. ‘Oh no, we left Scruff in the car! Just wait a minute, I’ll run down and get him.’
John makes as if to speak, but I hold my hand up. ‘We’ll wait till Dao gets back.’
We sit there in silence, facing each other across the table, a slightly bizarre scene. I drink my coffee and eat a biscuit. John combs through his wet moustache with his fingers. It still looks like a flattened rat.
A few minutes later Dao returns with Scruff. She gives me a look I can’t interpret: amused or secretive? It is sometimes hard to read her face. Something has changed her mood from fearful to assertive.
I pick up where we left off. ‘I don’t care what your buyers always do or what the hell their rules are. You need the money more than I do, so you’d better make it work.’
I want him to think I am prepared to drop the whole thing, that it’s not important to me. ‘And there’s no way I’m taking you or anyone else to where the barrel is now.’
He shakes his head and starts to say something, but I interrupt him.
‘Now listen to what I say. I’ve kept the barrel for nearly two years. As I said, call me in a couple of days. I’ll have a sample for you to take to your buyers and video of the barrel and the packages. If you can’t work with that, we’ll forget the whole thing. I’ll just leave the damn thing where it is.’
It is nearly one o’clock in the morning when I release him. He has my phone number and he’s going to ‘consider my suggestion’ and be in touch. I walk him down the stairs to the front door and as he steps over the doorstep, I say casually, ‘And just so you know, I would never use my own car to go to the place where the barrel is. You can forget about trying to put another of those tracking devices on it.’
He makes no response, just walks towards his car. It is still raining, but gently now.
Dao is in the kitchen with a tub of ice cream on the counter. ‘I’m hungry. It’s hours since we had dinner.’
‘OK, give me some too. Now tell me what you’ve been up to. That look when you came back upstairs meant something. And we must call the cops.’
‘Let’s call Benson,’ she says, and smiles happily at the thought of waking the poor guy in the middle of the night. ‘He’s so going to like this – I can’t wait to hear what he says. He’ll know who should be told. Saves us explaining the background to someone we never met.’
I eat ice cream and listen while she talks to him; it is becoming a habit.
‘Hi Benson, it’s me. Dao. Sorry to wake you up. We’ve just had a visit from John.’
I hear his voice raised in surprise at the other end. Dao grins at me. ‘I know! Isn’t it great? But we have to talk to
you really soon, because we’ve made a deal with him – or he thinks we’ve made a deal. And we have an idea.’
A pause while she listens; an impatient frown developing.
‘Of course, he’s undamaged! Benson, why do you always think Hunter beats everyone up? All he did was hit him a couple of times, but John hit him first – and he had a knife.’
She listens for quite a while, absent-mindedly spooning ice cream into her mouth. ‘OK, we will. See you soon.’
She glances at her empty bowl, as if she wonders who ate the ice cream. ‘I need some more.’
‘Later,’ I say. ‘First tell me what you were doing. Did you record him?’
‘Yes, both on my phone and on the laptop. And when I pretended to fiddle with my phone right at the end, I got a little bit of video of him too, when he was arguing with you – he didn’t even notice.’
‘And Benson?’
‘He’s on his way. He’s going to park down the street and walk, in case someone’s watching. He’s really excited. Well, as excited as he ever gets.’
While we wait for Benson I go upstairs and change into dry jeans and socks. By the time he arrives we are eating again; it’s turning into a long night. We offer him a sandwich, but he says he can’t face food in the middle of the night and opts for a cup of coffee.
We sit at the end of the room with the curtains drawn across the glass wall to the balcony. I am not taking any chances.
‘I checked the parked cars when I came, but they’re all empty. That’s going to be one hell of a bruise, Hunter. Did he punch you or did he hit you with something?’
‘John punched him, but Hunter still got him,’ says Dao.
Benson gets out his phone and takes a photo of my face. ‘Just another thing we can get him on. An assault charge is always good to add to the mix.’
‘And we’ve got the knife he had,’ Dao says. ‘I must give it to you when you go. My fingerprints are on the blade, but nowhere else.’