by Emma Viskic
‘No, a man. He’s hiding behind a stall, keeps glancing at you.’
‘Can you get a photo?’
Henry passed him the shopping basket and reached for his phone, lowered his hand. ‘He took off.’
‘Which way?’
‘Towards the lane.’
Good Decisions didn’t include following strange men down alleyways. People got hurt that way. Hit with iron bars and bundled into unmarked vans. An actual physical effort not to do it, leg muscles cramping.
‘What’d he look like?’ Caleb asked.
Henry beamed. ‘You’re not going to confront him?’
‘No. Can you describe him?’
‘He was wearing a blue cap. A baseball cap.’
‘Big man? Muscly?’
‘I didn’t really get a good look. He was behind the stall.’
‘Age?’
‘Thirty?’ A rising tone that instilled no confidence.
Possibly Frankie’s shooter, possibly not, but almost certainly following Caleb to get to her. But how had the man known he was here?
‘Did you tell anyone you were seeing me?’ he asked Henry.
‘No, Caleb, of course not.’
His phone. The bastard must have been tracking it. Listening to it, too – he’d run when Caleb had mentioned taking his photo. Which meant he’d heard the entire therapy session. For fuck’s sake. Frankie had been right to be paranoid about the damn thing.
Frankie.
He’d used the phone near the motel last night. It wouldn’t take long for the guy to check Caleb’s movements and work out why his phone had been offline last night, see where he’d turned it on again. Start doorknocking.
Caleb shoved the shopping basket at Henry and ran.
13.
He left the car in a side street near the motel and climbed onto a dumpster to scale the back fence. A steep drop into the carpark behind the building. He landed hard on his feet, the shock jarring through him; wasn’t getting over that again. Frankie’s car was still there, along with five others.
Caleb took the stairs to Frankie’s room at a run. No answer to his knock.
Frankie and Tilda lying hurt inside. Dying. Dead.
He hammered on the door, and it opened. Frankie scowled out at him. Back to her usual jeans and black T-shirt, her wet hair spiked. ‘You want to knock a bit harder? I don’t think all the neighbours heard you.’
He tried to catch his breath. ‘You have to get out. A man was following me. Blue baseball cap, no other description. Don’t know if he’s your shooter, but I used my phone near here.’
Colour drained from her face. ‘He here?’
‘Don’t know, but the rear carpark was clear a few seconds ago.’
‘Check out the front. I’ll take Tilda to the car.’ She was already closing the door.
He took the service path along the side of the motel, then edged open the high wooden gate that led onto the street. A narrow, tree-lined road, autumn leaves banked against the parked cars. Nothing moving, but something snagged in his brain. He scanned the street without trying to focus. There – a silver Holden parked a few houses down, no leaves against its tyres. A person just distinguishable in the driver’s seat. Rounded head, maybe a baseball cap. Caleb backed away.
When he reached the motel carpark, Frankie had the engine running, hands on the wheel. She lowered the window as he approached. Tilda stared wide-eyed from the back seat. Dressed in crisp new jeans and a blue jumper two sizes too large. He gave her a smile she didn’t return.
‘One guy,’ he told Frankie. ‘Silver Holden, thirty to the right.’
She sat still, her eyes moving rapidly as she ran through possible escape plans. Hopefully she’d come up with something he hadn’t. ‘I’ll draw him away in the car,’ she finally said. ‘You wait here with Tilda.’
And be responsible for Tilda? ‘No. You stay, I’ll drive.’
‘He’s after me. She’ll be safer with you.’ She held his eyes. ‘Please, Cal.’
Shit, she was right. ‘OK. Go.’
She said something to Tilda that had the girl scrambling from the car and coming to stand by his side. ‘Fifteen minutes,’ Frankie told him. ‘Petrol station on Victoria.’ She accelerated away.
He took Tilda to wait in the service path; sitting with their backs to the wall, the gate to the street firmly bolted. No cherubs or rosy-pink flamingos here, just raw bricks and pine palings, the cold leaching from the concrete into his jeans.
Acid bit his stomach. Frankie was a fast driver but it’d be difficult to shake someone in these tight streets. And even Henry Collins would find it hard to absolve Caleb if Tilda lost another family member because of him.
She shifted next to him, pulling her knees to her chin and hugging her legs, a pink tinge to her eyes as though she was trying not to cry.
‘You OK?’ he asked.
‘I’m a bit worried.’
God; undone by honesty.
‘It’s all right, no one’s going to hurt you. Or Frankie,’ he added quickly as her mouth began to tremble. ‘A man just wants something she’s got. We’ll go and meet her in a few minutes.’
It was a vague reassurance, but some of the strain left her face. ‘Is he friends with the man Mum was cross with?’
He kept still. ‘Not sure. Who was your mum cross with?’
‘I’m not supposed to talk about her work.’
‘So he works with her?’
Her mouth snapped shut, Frankie’s genes showing clearly in her jutting jaw. OK, his usual interrogation techniques weren’t going to work. Beginning with him using the word ‘interrogation’.
But a game might, with the bonus of distracting her. ‘Do you want to play a game while we wait?’
A small nod.
‘How about Spy? You ask three questions about a real person, and the other player has to answer truthfully. Whoever discovers the most interesting thing, wins.’
‘I haven’t played that before.’
‘I’ll go first, so you can see how it’s done. Have you ever heard of someone with a name like Turner or Kirner?’
Deep sympathy crossed her face. ‘That’s not a very good question.’
‘I guess not. You’ve got a good chance of winning this. So, have you?’
‘No.’ She held up a forefinger to mark off his question.
‘What’s the most interesting thing you know about the man your mum was cross with? Just about him,’ he said as she frowned, ‘not about her work.’
A second finger joined her first one. ‘He died.’
Right. That was interesting. Could she be talking about Martin Amon?
‘When –’ He stopped as she began to uncurl a third finger. ‘This is just to clarify. It’s still the second question.’
She mouthed ‘clarify’ and tucked her finger back in her fist.
‘When did he die?’
She thought, then said, ‘Friday.’
Not Amon then, but only a few days before the federal cop’s death. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘last question – what’s his name?’
‘I don’t know. My turn.’ Her eyes widened in anticipation. ‘Can I see your hearing aids?’
He hesitated before smoothing back his hair. She leaned in, her face inches from his head. A feeling she was about to pull out a screwdriver and have a good poke around.
She finally sat back. ‘Can you hear anything without them?’
‘Not unless it’s really loud.’
‘How many –?’ She paused. ‘This is just to clarify.’
He held back a smile. ‘Sure.’
‘How many decibels?’
‘About a hundred and ten.’
‘Like a jackhammer?’
A remarkably accurate estimate. ‘Yes. How do you know about decibels?�
��
‘I read a lot.’
He bet she did; all those hours in the library after school. ‘You’ve got one more question, but I think you’ve won anyway.’
‘Does it take a really long time to make a sign name for someone?’
Nicely done: reminding him of his promise but not hassling him about it.
‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘But I’m pretty sure I’ll come up with one for you soon.’ He stood. ‘I’ll check the street. If it’s clear, we’ll go to Frankie.’
There was no sign of the silver Holden, no men, with or without baseball caps. He watched for a full minute then beckoned to Tilda. ‘Let’s go.’
The plane trees were russet against a deep blue sky, sunlight pushing back the morning chill. An unexpected touch as Tilda slipped her hand into his: warm and a little sticky. He looked down, but she was concentrating on the footpath, making sure she stepped on every leaf in her way. A flicker of something surprisingly like hope: if a career criminal like Maggie could raise a child like Tilda, he had to be able to make a halfway decent job of it.
Movement to his left. Someone lunging from behind a garden fence.
Caleb pushed Tilda out of the way as a stream of liquid fire hit his face. Eyes and mouth burning, lungs welded shut. Down on his knees, clawing at his skin. Small hands gripped his arm. Tilda. Slipping, wrenched away. He threw himself forward and grabbed a thin limb. Holding on tight, eyelids fused. More spray. Air and face igniting. On all fours, coughing and retching. A high sound ripped the edges of his hearing. He cracked open his eyes: fractured colour and light, someone moving towards the road, a car.
Get to them. Go. Crawling across concrete and grass, breath scouring his throat. At the car. Hands out, touching a hub cap, door, handle. Fumbling for it, lifting. A lurch and it tore from his hand. Falling forward. Onto the road.
Gone.
14.
He found his way to the petrol station, stumbling, eyes streaming, through the streets. Frankie ran to him as soon as he rounded the corner, looking past him, her face a white blur. She grabbed his arm, speaking quickly, shaking him.
‘She’s gone,’ he said through thick lips. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
***
He washed his face in the servo’s bathroom. Hearing aids out, tears and muck oozing from his eyes. Frankie came in and out of the room, checking her messages on the shop’s payphone, then reappearing to ask more questions. She finally paused next to him, shifting restlessly while she waited for him to look at her.
He wiped his eyes on his T-shirt and blinked rapidly. ‘What?’
‘Still no message. Why haven’t they called?’
‘It’s too soon.’
The kidnappers would want her to sit with her fears first, live through each and every imagined horror. From what he’d been able to glean, she’d managed to throw the tail at the first set of lights. The guy must have doubled back almost immediately and lain in wait for him and Tilda. Or, even more likely, there’d been more than one person, the car just a decoy. Caleb had been oblivious. Just wandered past, congratulating himself for having managed to keep a child safe and relatively happy for ten minutes.
‘You going to call the cops?’ he asked Frankie.
‘No, they’ll … and …’
He wiped his eyes again. They were beginning to clear, but tears still fogged his vision. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘No cops,’ she signed. ‘People give paper.’
He tried to work it out. ‘When the kidnappers call you’ll give them the documents?’
She nodded. ‘You definitely wouldn’t recognise the guy?’
They’d been through this several times. Neither of them had got close enough for an ID, but Frankie seemed unwilling to accept it.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I just caught the movement. Maybe a hoodie or balaclava.’
She was shifting from foot to foot, her eyes locked on him: desperate to know something, but too afraid to ask.
‘He didn’t hurt her,’ Caleb said. ‘He won’t. He obviously had orders not to kill me – used pepper spray to get me down, didn’t knife me when I held on to her.’ He didn’t say the rest, that the kidnappers probably didn’t want the attention a dead body would bring. That he was pretty sure Tilda had been screaming.
Frankie went to say more, then left the bathroom without speaking.
He retrieved his aids from the top of the hand dryer and wiped them carefully with toilet paper: if the spray had ruined their circuitry, he’d be in trouble. They were new ones, top-dollar bluetooth models that were slightly better at eliminating background noise than his previous pair but even more delicate. He put them in and clapped; heard the distant pop. Tilda would have followed his actions with interest, asked about the relative benefits of bluetooth sensitivity over old-school robustness.
He should have held on to her.
He should have moved faster.
He should have accepted his fate and not involved Frankie.
When he finally left the bathroom, the servo was empty. Small and over-lit, with shelves of brightly coloured junk food. A cashier appeared from behind a closed door and stood watching. Caleb nodded to him, but the man didn't move. Understandable – he must have looked pretty dubious when he’d staggered inside. Was still looking pretty dubious according to the bathroom’s fly-specked mirror.
Frankie was at the back of the room, sitting at the lone plastic table by the self-serve coffee machine, a notepad, pens and coins laid out in neat rows. Trying to wrest some form of control from her panic.
She started speaking as soon as he sat. ‘… calls…to my…’
He squinted. ‘Sorry what?’
Her mouth tightened with annoyance at having to repeat herself. An expression he’d seen almost daily since he was five. Never before on Frankie’s face.
‘Just a bit slower,’ he said. ‘It’s still blurry.’
‘I’ve got Maggie’s calls and emails forwarded to me. What haven’t I thought of?’
‘Nothing. We just have to wait.’
She clenched her hands in her lap to stop them shaking, but her leg was still jiggling. He went to touch her, then stopped; Frankie wasn’t a tactile person, made even less so by stress.
‘Any update on Maggie?’ he asked.
‘Unchanged.’
Was it better or worse that Maggie didn’t know?
‘It’s money laundering,’ Frankie said.
‘What?’
‘This. Maggie’s laundering money. The docs are her financial records. Or part of them – she keeps everything separate, lots of checks and balances.’
Not surprising Frankie had kept that information from him. Or that she’d tried to sell the documents. Information like that would fetch a nice bit of cash from the right buyers: those who wanted it kept secret, and those who wanted to expose it. Blackmail, kickbacks, the possibility of following the trail to steal the money.
‘She keeps hardcopies?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Went offline a while back because the feds were sniffing around. But then she had a break-in, things moved, like the house had been searched. She freaked out, got everything into a deposit box that day.’ Frankie’s expression fractured. ‘She gave me the key because she didn’t want it around Tilda.’
She stood and returned to the payphone. A quick call, no words spoken, the lack of information obvious in her rigid stance. Her answering service again: no message from the kidnappers. She stayed standing when she’d hung up, looking around the servo as though searching for inspiration. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I need a good place for the exchange. What d’you reckon – a park? Is there one near here?’
‘It’s OK,’ he said slowly. ‘They’ll ring and we’ll do what they say. We’ll have her back soon.’
Her face was skull-like. ‘OK? I worked these cases, I saw the
fucking fallout. Do you know how often kidnap victims are killed during a handover? Before a handover? Most are dead within hours.’
Oh God, what had he done?
He stood. ‘Then we go to the cops. They can do door-to-doors, check traffic cameras.’
‘We can’t. Maggie works with some seriously dodgy people, some of them in law enforcement. We go to the cops, the kidnappers’ll hear about it. Jesus, for all we know your mate Imogen is behind it.’
Imogen. He had to tell Frankie.
He took a slow breath. ‘I told Imogen I knew where you were. That I could get the key. I know it’s in one of your boots.’
She jerked back. ‘What?’
‘Imogen wouldn’t have taken Tilda,’ he said quickly. ‘She knew I was going to help her – we’re meant to be meeting at eleven.’
Her cheeks flushed. ‘And what about her mates? What about the leaking fucking sieve that’s the police force? What about every crim in Melbourne who wants a piece of Maggie’s business? All Imogen had to do was mention it to the wrong person and they would’ve come sprinting to my door. And you.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘You fucking opened it and let them in.’
15.
He waited across the road from the servo. Standing outside a fried-chicken shop, face stinging, eyeballs rolled in ash, watching the petrol station’s digital clock. Fourteen minutes. One more and he’d go back in. A growing fear they shouldn't be waiting for a phone call, that they needed to take control of the situation and hunt for Tilda. Hard to see Frankie letting him help, every spitting word of her anger deserved, but he had to find a way. Couldn’t live with a child’s death on his hands. Anything would be better than that: going to prison, leaving his own child fatherless. And Kat would agree.
‘Most are dead within hours.’
The clock numbers flicked over: 10.30.
She’d been gone fifty-one minutes.
He waited for a break in the traffic and jogged quickly across the road.
The small servo was crowded. People queuing to pay for petrol, teenage boys browsing the snacks, jostling and calling out to each other. Frankie was barging through them towards the door. She pulled up short when she saw him.