Bronwen peeked through the doorway, but there was no one there. She stayed low as she stepped into the kitchen. Keeping her firearm level caused her pain in her hurt shoulder, but she ignored it, creeping silently through the outbuilding. Joe behind her. She didn’t have to see him to know he was there and would cover her if it came to it.
“Just eat it!” she heard Sophie screaming. There was the sound of pottery clattering on the floor. A girl let out a cry of pain.
Bronwen hurried through the kitchen and out into the communal area. What she saw almost knocked her back with shock. There were bodies on the ground. Perhaps a dozen or more. The place smelled like spices and the sour acidic lining of the stomach. She saw upturned bowls all over the floor, as well as vomit on the clothes of the people lying still beneath her feet. She wanted to turn back to her partner, to gauge his reaction, but she had to be careful here. Someone in this room was still armed.
She forced herself to focus on the few people who were conscious. Finally, she came face to face with Sophie. The woman’s eyes were wide and panicked, her lithe arm shaking as she pointed a handgun towards a young girl. Hayley. And next to Hayley was Gemma. She’d found them at last, and what a way to find them. But there was no Llewellyn.
The girls were sitting on the floor with their hands in the air. In front of them were two bowls of soup. The poisoned food.
When Sophie turned to Bronwen, there were tears rolling down her cheeks. “They won’t eat it,” she said desperately.
“Are you all right, Sophie?” Bronwen asked, manoeuvring herself further into the hall so she could get closer to the girls. Joe did the same, but on the opposite side.
She wiped away the tears with her sleeve. “I’m supposed to make them eat it. But they won’t eat it.”
Bronwen didn’t like this. Sophie was clearly broken, and that made her completely unpredictable. She could turn that gun on anyone in the hall.
“She’s working for Tate,” Gemma said. “Be careful. She’s dangerous.”
“You don’t have to make them eat anything, Sophie,” Bronwen said quietly. “It’s over now. Come on. Hand the gun over to me. Let’s stop this before anyone else gets hurt.”
The receptionist stared at her with bright, glassy eyes, and Bronwen saw how much she truly did want it all to end. But then she turned back to the girls and lifted the gun until it pointed directly at their faces.
“You don’t want to do that,” Bronwen said calmly. “You don’t want to hurt them.”
“That’s what he told me to do. He told me to make sure they ate the food. And then everyone would think they did it, and the farm would survive.”
“Hey, look at me a moment, Sophie,” Bronwen said, hoping to gently reason with her.
She pulled her gaze away from the girls and did as she was told.
“Now look at the rest of the hall here,” Bronwen instructed. “Does it look like the farm is going to survive?”
Sophie’s shoulders sagged as though she was completely defeated. Her arm holding the gun dropped to her waist. But as Bronwen was about to approach to take the weapon from her, Sophie lifted the gun and aimed.
44
Gemma
She jammed her eyes shut as Sophie raised her weapon. Gunfire exploded through the hall.
Someone fell heavily to the ground.
Did Sophie shoot the detective?
Did the detective shoot Sophie?
One of those things was true. Gemma didn’t want to know which. The detective could be lying there dead, in a pool of her own blood. Sophie could be about to shoot them or pour the poisoned lunch down their throats. If she kept her eyes closed, she could believe what she wanted to believe.
All she could hear now was the tinkling music.
Someone clutched her arm.
“Gemma!” It was Hayley.
She forced her eyelids open.
Hayley turned from her, staring in terror at the scene before them.
No one else was standing.
Sophie was struggling and failing to get to her feet. She’d been shot somewhere in her middle, crimson blood staining her white shirt. Her gun was lying a short distance away—it must have flown from her hand.
Detective McKay was slumped on her side on the floor. Blood had seeped through her shirt and onto the floorboards. Was she dead?
Someone was crawling towards Sophie.
Dharma.
Sophie’s eyes flew wide open as Dharma reached her. Dharma’s fist closed tight on Sophie’s shirt—her other hand grabbing a nearby plate. Gasping, Dharma threw the plate of soup over Sophie’s face.
Sophie screamed hoarsely. Wrestling herself out of Dharma’s grip, she scrambled across the floor and grabbed her gun.
Dharma drew back.
A large man came running towards them. Detective Kouros. Gemma hadn’t even noticed that he was in here before.
“I’ll kill her,” Sophie croaked, pointing her gun at Dharma’s temple. With her left hand, Sophie clawed at her own face, trying to scrape the liquid away.
“Don’t be stupid,” the detective told her. “You’re badly hurt. It’s over, Sophie. Just—”
“Put your gun down, or I’ll put a bullet in her,” Sophie said. “I’ll do it. Gladly. Bitch just threw poison on me.”
Detective Kouros’s gaze skated from her to McKay and back again. He lowered his gun.
“Get up,” Sophie hissed at Dharma. “If you try anything, you’re dead.”
Dazed and swaying, Dharma got herself to her feet.
Keeping her gun pointed at Dharma, Sophie half loped, half limped towards the kitchen, one arm around her stomach. Dharma looked back at them with a stricken expression as she was forced to walk alongside Sophie.
Sophie made crazed sounds as she made it to the kitchen. Gemma knew she was terrified that the poison on her face was working its way inside her eyes, mouth, and nose. Good. She deserved to know what it felt like.
The sound of water running in the kitchen sink echoed through the hall. Sophie must be desperately trying to wash the poison off.
Groggily, Detective McKay roused. She wasn’t dead.
Kouros ran to her. “Bron!”
“I’m okay,” she murmured. “Got off balance when I tried to shoot Sophie. Hit my head on the damned floor.”
He helped her sit. “I know. And you did shoot Sophie. I was in the wrong position. I could have shot the girls.”
“What do we do?” Hayley’s eyes were huge and filled with fear. “We’ve got to get Dharma away from that woman.”
Kouros exhaled heavily, an anxious look in his eyes. “Bron, you okay to cover me? I’ll try going out and around the outside to the kitchen door. She won’t get away. I promise you that.”
“Yeah. Let’s do this.” McKay grimaced in pain as Kouros helped her to her feet. “I’m fine.”
Kouros unlocked the double doors. Harsh daylight flooded in.
He ran out.
“You girls stay well back,” McKay cautioned.
Gemma turned to Hayley. Hayley shook her head firmly.
“No,” Gemma said in a low voice to McKay. “We’re with you.”
The detective didn’t argue. She headed off towards the kitchen.
Gemma and Hayley followed her.
Thin cries of terror were audible in the kitchen as they drew closer.
Detective McKay held out her injured arm, holding Gemma and Hayley back as they peered inside the doorway.
Sophie had filled a jug with water and was about to splash it on her face—her face and hair already wet. She was panting hard, her eyes glazed and skin chalky, looking as if she could barely stand.
Dharma was on her knees, vomiting.
Kouros stepped in through the external kitchen door, gun raised.
Sophie looked from Kouros to McKay. The jug slipped from her hands, crashing to the floor and splintering into dozens of pieces.
She fell, writhing in pain.
Until she became
silent.
45
Bronwen
“This is it,” Hayley said. “This is where Tate is.”
Bronwen found that her throat was thick with emotion when she opened her mouth to reply. “Okay, Hayley. We’ll take it from here. You can go back to the ambulance.”
“I don’t know what you’ll find though,” Hayley said. “He destroyed it all. He crushed it. There’s nothing left.”
Bronwen’s stomach sank. “What do you mean?”
“I think we got to him too late,” she said. “All of his drugs and all of his files will be gone.”
That sinking sensation of dread made Bronwen feel exhausted, and as though a heavy weight was pressing down on her shoulders. She rubbed her eye, now sore from her tiredness. If there was no evidence left… Tate with his money, connections and slippery character… She didn’t even want to think about it.
“That’s not true.” Gemma’s expression was grave as she unfolded her palm to reveal a memory stick. “I saved this. Tate was about to crush it in the compactor. He used to record some of his meetings or… tests.”
Bronwen picked up the small item and tucked it away in her pocket. Her head was still fuzzy with blood loss and stress.
“And this,” Gemma said, producing a small vial of clear liquid with a blue label.
Bronwen reached out to take the second item, noticing a shift in atmosphere as Hayley sucked in a sharp breath.
“You didn’t administer it?” Hayley said, her gaze directed at Gemma.
“I couldn’t. I’d be just like him if I did.”
Hayley squeezed Gemma’s arm. “It’s okay, I get it.”
Bronwen regarded both girls and then lifted the vial. “What is this?”
“It’s poison,” Gemma said. “I made Tate believe that I’d injected him with it, but I gave him a sedative instead. I think you’ll find that helpful. He used it on all the people in the cold room.”
Bronwen nodded.
“Thank you.” Bronwen held the girl’s eye contact and nodded. She knew what they’d both been through, and her heart ached for them. Her eyes trailed down to the bruises on Gemma’s neck, and a shiver wormed its way down her spine.
She watched briefly as they girls turned and walked away. It had been a long journey since she’d first seen the two of them, small and thin, propped up with cushions on hospital beds; their stories so wildly different that she’d wanted to tear her hair out. Now she understood what had been going on. Tate had messed with their heads until they didn’t understand their own thoughts. She’d gone through some of it herself and understood a little of what they were feeling, and now she was about to face the man who had done that to her.
“Are you ready?” Joe asked. There was concern on his face, which meant that Bronwen wasn’t hiding her fear particularly well.
As she heard the sound of a helicopter outside, she took a scrap of paper with a code from her trouser pocket and tapped in the number. No doubt the helicopter was checking the area for any more backpackers who might have been outside the food hall. It was a mess down there. Bronwen didn’t know if the people collapsed in the food hall were alive or dead. She also didn’t know what she was about to find in this bunker.
A door opened after she typed in the code, and the two of them descended into Tate’s secret bunker. This is the reason why they couldn’t find the girls during their search. The arrogance of the man was quite extraordinary. Not only did he use his money to research a memory drug and then sell it to high-profile people, but he thought he’d get away with this in Australia, a rich, developed country. He thought his money was a buffer to allow him to do whatever he wanted.
But he was wrong.
There was a lingering odour of chemicals down in the hole. She checked to make sure Joe was propping open the doors. She also checked to see there were officers following down with them. Bronwen was not at her best, and she knew she couldn’t deal with Tate alone. There are times when an officer needs a team, and this is one of them. She was still dizzy with pain from her injured shoulder, and the knock on her head after shooting Sophie. So, as they approached the inner door, she gestured for two armed officers to go first.
“I don’t know what the super is going to make of all this,” Bronwen said quietly to her partner.
Joe shook his head. “I can’t stop thinking about the loss of life. All down to this one guy. How is that possible?”
The inner door opened, and Bronwen braced herself for what was about to come. She’d heard about charismatic cult leaders influencing mass suicide or mass murder. Charles Manson. Jim Jones. She just never thought it would happen here. Not like this.
“Detective McKay, how nice to see you.”
Llewellyn’s dark brown eyes followed her movements as she stepped into the main area of the bunker. She saw that he was tied up just like Gemma and Hayley informed her, and that he was groggy. His eyelids appeared to be drooping, but he was clearly fighting against unconsciousness.
“Oh, but you’re injured. What happened?”
“One of your employees shot me.”
“We don’t condone violence here at Llewellyn Farm,” he said. “I do hope the culprit has been arrested. Who was it? Out of interest.”
“Freddy,” Bronwen said. “He’s dead now.”
“Ah,” Llewellyn replied. “I think Freddy might have concocted a terrible plan to kill everyone. If you could just untie me, and perhaps get me some urgent medical attention, I’ll tell you everything.”
“You’re lying,” Bronwen said. “Unless Freddy built this bunker. Unless Freddy maintained a state-of-the-art laboratory. Unless Freddy sold memory drugs to rich people all around the world. He doesn’t quite strike me as the type.”
“It’s such a shame when you offer an opportunity to a young man and he takes advantage of your facilities.” Llewellyn shook his head sadly.
Bronwen pointed towards a second room where she could see broken glass and plastic all over the floor. “What’s in there?”
“You know, I gave Freddy the code to this place in confidence,” Llewellyn said. “And then he used it to store all kinds of terrible things. I don’t know what’s in there. I think he destroyed it all.”
Bronwen stepped into the small room and kicked a few of the discarded items with the toe of her boot. “I think you’re in luck, Mr Llewellyn. There’s an essential piece of evidence left. This will no doubt show us Freddy up to all kinds of bad things.” She took the memory stick out of her pocket and opened her palm, mimicking Gemma.
Llewellyn frowned at the memory stick in her hand, and quick as a flash, his expression changed. His face morphed into an expression that could only be described as completely blank; devoid of humanity; eyes empty, and mouth slack. “Hurry up and arrest me so I can call my lawyer.”
Bronwen sat in the back of an ambulance. She didn’t want to leave the farm, not yet, despite Joe and some of the medical staff telling her to go to the hospital. Most of the air ambulances had left now, transporting the people from the food hall to get the medical attention they needed. She was pleased to find out that they were unconscious, not dead.
That meant Sophie was alive too. Perhaps Bronwen and Joe could get some truth out of her if they couldn’t get it from Llewellyn himself, who was now also on the way to hospital. They had the memory stick and the lethal drug, both of which Joe was taking back to the station, and now the rest of the officers were combing through the mess in the bunker.
But Megan had paid the ultimate price and that seemed incredibly unfair to Bronwen. As a police officer you accepted the dangers involved, and though you would never think something like this could happen in their corner of the world, she also accepted the chance that she could be killed in the line of duty. Megan did no such thing. She had been pulled into this through unfortunate circumstances, and all Bronwen could think about was that first day in the hospital when Megan had come in half-asleep after spending the night helping her sister give birth to a
baby. Megan had a family who would miss her, and the world didn’t feel right without her in it.
She sighed, letting out a long, exhausted breath. Now that the initial chaos was over, a new stillness had descended on the farm, one a lot less foreboding than when she and Joe arrived a few hours ago. After receiving treatment, Bronwen sat with her legs over the side of the ambulance floor, taking in the sight of this place one last time. Now, maybe, just maybe, Bronwen could go to sleep without waking with a nightmare.
Nothing, though, could change the fact that Llewellyn had stolen and twisted her memories, and that was one thing she was going to have to live with. It was a small price to pay, she decided, as she sipped water and stared at the glass building in front of her.
46
Gemma
She studied the space around her.
Square room. Painting of a meadow on the wall. Yellow flowers on the windowsill. Bars on the window.
A week had passed since the day of the poisonings. Gemma had been transported to a psychiatric hospital soon after that day. Her government-appointed barrister had gone hard with presenting her as being mentally ill to the court, to avoid her being sent to prison before the criminal pre-trials began. Tate, Sophie, Eoin, and herself were the only ones who were expected to stand trial. Freddy and Rodney were dead. The other people that Tate had been connected with overseas had scattered like cockroaches.
The barrister had told her that the prosecutor was preparing to have her charged with being an accessory to Tate’s multiple murders. If she were to be convicted, it would mean several life sentences. She’d spend her whole life in jail.
Shivers passed down the length of her body—cold and painful as they reached her feet and hands. She had no clue what was going to happen to her. Was she guilty or not guilty? She couldn’t even figure that out in her own mind.
Poison Orchids: A darkly compelling psychological thriller Page 34
