“After which, we’ll be leaving Africa forever,” Toppley said.
“For now,” Tess said. “But yes, that’s what I’ll recommend to Anna, but I think she knew it was the most likely outcome before we set out. We have to pull back to Oz, and rebuild before we can rescue.”
“Save our people rather than theirs,” Toppley said bitterly. “That, at least, hasn’t changed since the end of the world.”
“We’ve no choice,” Tess said. “We’re on the brink of extinction.”
“Oh, I know,” Toppley said. “But that doesn’t make it an easier pill to swallow. Some people will be staying here to look for survivors?”
“To collect any that get to the beach,” Tess said.
“I’d like to stay with them,” she said. “It’s not that I wish to make amends, nor do I seek forgiveness. The past cannot be altered, or forgotten, though so much of it fills me with regret. I would like the future to be different. I’m just ballast aboard that ship. I can be of use here, and I do want to be useful.”
“You think this is where you need to be?” Tess asked.
“I’m supposed to be in a cell,” she said. “Yet instead, I find myself on this most infamous of prison islands. If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.”
Part 4
The Point of No Return
The Continuing Diaries of Tess Qwong
24th March
Chapter 25 - Other Rooftops
It’s two hours since we left Robben Island. As the ship slides into its at-sea rhythm, I’m keeping out of the way. With Teegan still in Cape Town, I’m alone in my cabin. I’ve got the second book in Leo’s trilogy to read, and I salvaged a copy of the Dan Blaze DVD from the toy-store. I don’t feel like either. I don’t want to sleep, not just because I’ll miss mealtimes and end up wandering the ship’s gangways and bilges during the middle of the night.
People want there to be patterns. We want there to be connections, and see them in every small coincidence. We ignore the differences and claim the hand of fate, and declare there must be some meaning behind it all. Destiny. A curse. A plot. A plan. Something so far beyond our control we can take comfort that the blame doesn’t lie with us.
So where does blame lie? Nowhere and everywhere. With Sullivan. With me. With all of us, and with none of us, because blame is different from responsibility. Responsibility is easy to place. A cop, a soldier, we do our duty, and our duty puts us in harm’s way. Death is a risk. The responsibility for it can be blamed on our foe. Blame’s that little demon which sits on our shoulders, second-guessing our actions, offering a sapping chorus of what-ifs and why-didn’t-Is. Blame’s the devil targeting our rage outwards and our regrets inward. Blame can help us get through the days after a tragedy, but not the weeks and months and years which follow.
Another city. Another rooftop. Another gut-shot colleague. There isn’t really a comparison between Cape Town and Sydney, but ever since the bullet smashed through the toyshop window, my brain’s been drawing parallels.
Back then, I was at a crossroads in my life. Is that similar to now? Isn’t life always at a crossroads? Things were going well for me, and going better for our investigation. The gang had formed when two dropouts began selling weed and LSD at their old university. Their classmates graduated, and began earning cash, and so did these two as they expanded their client base. They got a taste for money, and wanted more. They wanted real money, so they branched into cocaine. They recruited a couple of blokes who worked at the docks. They skipped out the mid-level distribution, and bought direct from the supplier. In five years, they went from small-time dealers to running the import and distribution for half the city.
There was nothing unusual about them. Nothing special. Nothing to warrant more than a footnote in a true-crime podcast. They rose to the top because we’d locked up the people running import before them. After we took them down, someone else moved in. Crims always fill a vacuum: it’s a fundamental law.
Like their predecessors, this gang thought they were smarter than the people tracking them. Like their predecessors, we caught them thanks to our hard work and their arrogance. Back then, internet cafes were everywhere. They’d use a different cafe, and a different computer, to arrange drops and shipments. Each time, they shared a password for a single email account, saving the message as a draft rather than sending it. Smart. The messages were going nowhere, so they couldn’t be intercepted. We couldn’t get a warrant to install key-logging software, or screen-facing cameras, because we didn’t know which machine in which cafe they’d use next. But drugs are bought with cash, and you can’t email a pill.
The street-dealers were easy to find. Surveillance took us to their supplier. Following her, we found the re-up distributor and his far-too-flash car. A hard brake at some lights when I was trailing the bloke from in front had him ram the rear of my car. That gave me cause to shine a light in his eyes and confirm, like we suspected, he was partaking of his own supply.
The comedown in an interrogation room broke him, and gave us the password to the email account. Forty-eight hours later, we had warrants to arrest twenty-eight people. It was the night of a shipment. We were going to seize the boat, arrest the crew, three customs officers, the harbour-master, two drivers, and the team who’d cut up and repackage the coke. We weren’t going to get the boss, but we figured someone would take a deal and turn on him.
My part in the op was to grab the accountant. Lincoln Eisenhower Washington was his name, but he was as Australian as a koala-shaped sunshade. He wasn’t one of the original four, but had been recruited soon after they began to expand. He was another university classmate, but he’d actually graduated. He’d worked for a hedge fund, then switched to arranging finance for charities. Except, really, he ran the gang’s money-laundering op. It was his name on the launderettes, pizzerias, arcades, and other can’t-be-profitable cash businesses.
Every night, he drove his limp-legged squinty-eyed poodle to an old factory for a walk. That was when we were going to pick him up. Me and Sergeant Fredericko Alberto Fermi. To his family, he was Albo. To our team, he was Faffy. To me, he was Fredo, but I was debating renaming him fiancé.
We were in the car, waiting for the go. Washington’s car drove up. Stopped. Parked outside the old factory gates. Washington got out, tugging at the dog’s lead until it, reluctantly, followed. We called it in. Waited. Got the go.
We got out. Approached. Washington ran.
Even now, I’m not sure why he bolted, leaving his poor poodle limping after him, but he ran so I ran. He drew a gun. Fired two shots. A .38 revolver. Compact. Custom made with a chrome finish and a teak handle, though I didn’t get those details until much later. That he carried a gun suggested he was expecting night-time visitors of a very different kind.
“Get the car! Cut him off!” I yelled, and didn’t slow, though I did, belatedly, remember to yell, “Police!”
A century ago, the factory had been built to make ceramics. Every few years, it’s changed owners and production. Most recently focusing on mid-range clothing, until economies of scale, and the falling cost of shipping, had made local production unprofitable. An application had gone through for conversion to apartments, so we knew it was empty. So did Washington.
He fired another random shot before diving through the metre-high gap in the solid wooden gate. I drew my sidearm, affixing the light, though I left it switched off. I listened until I was certain I heard footsteps running away from the gate, and followed.
It was an ill-lit street at the edge of an expanding residential district. Little illumination made it beyond the wall, leaving the litter of brick, wood, and broken glass a shadowy obstacle course over which I trekked, half-certain I’d lost my suspect. Until I heard metal clang ahead.
Again, I ran.
At the side of the building was a wrought-iron fire escape, complete with a pull-down stair-ladder up which Washington clambered. He used both hands. I could see that much.
“Stop
! Washington! Police!” I yelled, but I couldn’t shoot. Not when he was clearly unarmed and running away. Or running up. What could I do but follow?
I was twenty seconds behind him when I stepped onto those steep metal stairs. Ten seconds when I clanked my way to the top flight. I thought he’d try for a door. Instead, he jumped, up onto the roof. I yelled for him to stop even as I ran, jumped, and hauled myself after him.
The roof was angled by five degrees, covered in wire-mesh, over which Washington scrabbled until he reached a narrow walkway, close to the ridge. He was a perfect target, brilliantly silhouetted by moonlight. But his hands were empty. I kept on running, gaining ground when I reached the ridge. Slowing when we both neared the end. But he didn’t slow. He accelerated. Jumped, off the roof, disappearing from view.
I thought it was suicide, until I got nearer. Between that building and the next was a drop of nearly three metres, and I felt every centimetre when my feet hit the leaf-coated tiles. Another run to the end of the roof. Another jump. Another roof, another jump, and I guessed his plan: to get to the other side of the factory complex, and the building site beyond, where he stood a chance of losing his pursuit among the construction machines.
I was wrong. One last jump, onto one last roof, this one further away than the last, and when I pulled myself to my feet, he’d vanished. I was atop a two-storey building. A decade old, made of concrete and cement with a scaffolding barrier around the exterior, a boxy glass skylight nearly opaque with dirt, and a hatch built into the floor. An open hatch.
He had to have gone through, so I followed. Down a set of steep wooden steps. At the bottom, I stopped. I knew he was close. I can’t say how, but I think it was that I’d stopped hearing him run. I had my gun drawn, but had the light off, and virtually none was making its way through the skylight. Just enough to see that this was one long room, nearly the length of the building, dotted with a few old tables, and some rotting cardboard boxes.
I let my gut take over, and swung my gun, guessing at his position, switching on the light. He had his own weapon raised, but the light threw his aim. His shot missed. Mine didn’t.
The knife bit deep into my side. Cold and hot at the same time. Shocking more than anything. Shocking because a second suspect had been lurking in the shadows. The person Washington met when he took his dog for a walk. The whole reason he drove out to the factory. I spun, falling, firing. Three shots, into the dark, collapsing onto a table, wildly aiming light and gun into the shadows, until the beam glistened off blood. I’d hit her. Through the heart.
Who was she? Washington’s girlfriend, Kimberly Holne. A nearly honest petty crook, who’d been trying to persuade him they should run away together. He’d acquired false passports. Good ones. He had them both in his pocket. My theory is that they had decided to quit the business and start a new life far away.
What had made him decide to run? Along with the drugs aboard the boat, we seized a crate of machine pistols. The gang had been about to start a drug war. But we stopped them. That’s the job.
Had I not chased, Washington and his girl might have run, using those passports. Odds are, because we were closing in, we’d have picked them up at the airport. I’m certain they wouldn’t have got far. But he ran, so I chased, because that’s the job.
I nearly died there. But I didn’t. Lost a lot of blood, and what little I had left had been poisoned by what can only be described as a toxic blade.
Fredo, my partner in every sense of the word, was dead. One of those random shots by Washington had hit him in the neck. He bled out, alone, while I ran after our suspect.
The doctors were adamant there was nothing I could have done to save him. They were trying to be kind, but it made it worse. I could have tried to save him. I definitely could have been with him.
No one knew about our relationship, of course. He and I’d talked about it, and decided, once this case was done, we had a big decision to make. Break it off, or make it official. I knew which I wanted, and I’m positive he wanted the same. One of us would transfer. After the big bust we were sure was coming, we were both positive promotions were in our future. But he died, and I was pregnant. I didn’t know. Five weeks. Some detective, right? The stress of the case, the twenty-hour days, living on coffee, sugar, and adrenaline, and I didn’t realise. I miscarried.
Did I have to run?
We knew all of Washington’s addresses. We’d have caught him before dawn. If he’d used that fake passport, we’d probably have picked him up at the airport. But even if he escaped, so what? He was in over his head and looking for an out. He’d have gone straight, near enough. His girlfriend would have given him a reason to stay honest.
A hundred and three arrests resulted from that night’s work, though none from my part in it. But I chased because he ran, because that’s the job.
How do you go on from that? I nearly didn’t. I got a commendation. I got a promotion. Of course I did. They had to call me a hero in order to call the operation a success. I guess it had been successful, just like we’d been successful shutting down the predecessor gang, and how someone else succeeded in shuttering the dealers who took over the territory a few months later. And maybe we had succeeded in stopping a gang war. But me? What had I succeeded in?
He ran, so I chased. If it happened again, I’d do it again. That’s the job. My job. Fredo’s job. Sullivan’s job. Blame will keep you company, but it doesn’t help you move on.
But I can’t say that to Zach. Not yet. He’s still working out whom he’s grieving for.
25th March
Chapter 26 - The Courageous
Just before breakfast, we sailed into a storm. On balance, the timing was perfect. I was able to fall back into my bunk, barely bumping my head. Each surge threw me in a completely unexpected direction. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t read. Which only left thinking.
I didn’t realise how much I relied on my friends until they weren’t surrounding me. Back home, almost every day I’d pop in to see Liu for breakfast or dinner. I’d speak to Mick most days, and see him nearly as often, even if it was in conjunction with some remote accident or incident. The co-workers, the people I helped, and many of the crims I cuffed, were neighbours I’d known most of my life. It was a social life, if not always a sociable one.
Now, I miss Teegan. Not her snoring, or the way the first twenty minutes after waking were filled with grumbling, but she was easy to talk with. Bruce Hawker is rigidly professional. He’s a good bloke, but he’s standoffish. A product of high-risk assignments where he knows at least one of his colleagues will die. Nicko Oakes is fifteen years and more than a generation younger than me. It’s not just age, but experience, too; he’s not been through the wringer. Clyde still has a wall up around him. Sometimes I can jump high enough to see over, but that’s not the same as being invited in. He’s focusing on getting through this mission, and getting home to his family.
Captain Adams has her ship and crew to run, among whom I’m very definitely pigeonholed as a passenger. As far as the rest of her crew are concerned, I’m the civilian authority, and a cop to boot. Talking with Avalon requires an aspirin. Leo is busy keeping Zach busy with lessons on… on… actually, I’ve no idea. Yesterday, it involved a trip down to the engine room. Zach’s taken to it like a shark to a swim-class. When we get back to Australia, I’ll make it official, assign him to the scientists full-time. I think it’d be safer for him than patrolling a refugee camp. I’m starting to sense that’ll be every cop’s primary duty for the next couple of years.
I’m not saying I’m lonely; I’m usually quite happy in my own company. And I won’t say I’m bored. It’s not that I’m a fish out of water, or a camel at sea; I’m a teapot in a pub, or a corkscrew at a christening: I’m waiting to be useful. Which is why I was more than glad when there was a knock at the door.
“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am, but the captain requests your presence,” Lieutenant Renton said.
“On the bridge?” I asked.
/> “No, ma’am. In her cabin. For breakfast.”
“During a storm?”
“This is just a swell,” he said, far too easily.
“Welcome,” the captain said, as Renton closed her cabin door.
“This is a storm, yes?” I said, gratefully taking the security of a chair.
“The end of one,” the captain said. “We skimmed the edge. Breakfast? It’s tea and pancakes.”
“Really? Wonderful. Ah, they look like fritters. Made with dried fruit, powdered eggs, and powdered milk. Easy to eat on a rolling deck, and don’t taste the worse for being eaten cold, right?”
“Ever the detective. Yes, you’re correct, but I like pancakes.” She opened a drawer and withdrew a small glass jug. “Syrup? Don’t tell the Canadians, and don’t tell them it actually comes from Vermont. I traded a crate of Marmite with a U.S. captain a month before the outbreak.”
The tea, this time, was hot, and served in a lidded cup. “Where are we?” I asked.
“Twenty-eight hours out of Cape Town, three days from Ascension. It’s difficult to be more accurate until we know how far the storm has drawn us from our path.”
I took a sip of my tea. “I’m guessing there’s a reason we’re having a chat in here, rather than on the bridge.”
“We picked up a radio signal. It’s peculiar and troubling, and I don’t wish it known widely.” She picked up a tablet, and pressed play.
“Come in, Golden Shores. Come in, Golden Shores. This is Counter-Admiral Popolov aboard the HMS Courageous. We have received your mayday and are responding.”
Adams pressed stop. “Well, detective?”
“A Russian accent, and a Russian-sounding name,” I said.
“The rank is used by a number of navies,” Adams said. “Britain isn’t one of them, but Russia is.”
“He spoke in English, and was claiming to be aboard a British ship. It’s a warship, yes?” I asked.
Life Goes On | Book 4 | If Not Us [Surviving The Evacuation] Page 24
