‘I am sleepy.’
‘Call for help. I’ll keep Harris above water, can’t get him up if he’s still unconscious. We’ll need police rescue, ambos. Tell them there’s a deceased.’
Being obvious about it, but Sharon looked like she needed that. As Bec removed her jacket, Sharon said, ‘Let’s talk when you get back. A real talk. I don’t usually smoke.’
‘Okay.’
‘You’re on a promise. Remember.’
Bec climbed back into the hole, not wanting to at all, thinking on what Harris had said about Sharon’s state of mind. Halfway down she paused and shone the torch below. The water seemed higher and there was no sign of Harris.
At the bottom she stepped into water that was midway between her knees and hips. It tugged at her, and the feeling was seductive. In the torch’s light she saw the chamber clearly for the first time, a concrete box just high enough to stand up in, its walls covered in graffiti and spray-painted pictures, although not the big one Slip had been working on.
Harris had moved, still unconscious but his body had drifted and lay half floating against the wall near the exit tunnel, his face just out of the water. Bec splashed across to him, aware the Maglite’s casing was slippery even though the metal was scored. She realised the water was slightly greasy: when it rained for the first time in a while, the oil on the roads washed off.
She got her hands under Harris’s arms and lifted him, struggling to hold his dead weight against the powerful surge of the current. Considered putting the torch in her pocket and trying for a fireman’s lift, but she’d never be able to raise him. She turned around and decided to drag him, clumsy but it was only a few metres and she’d need to put him down anyway when they reached the ladder. Try to get him up a few rungs, well out of the water, maybe tie him on with his own belt. There were no other options, no ledges or any other way to keep him safe. With the growing press of the water, it was important to keep him away from the big exit hole, so he wouldn’t be sucked into the tunnel.
They reached the foot of the ladder, against one of the walls, and she grabbed it and held on, looked up and saw no one there, felt the current strengthen and knew there was no way she could get Harris up, even just a few rungs. She shone the torch around the chamber and the timing was just right. One second the water coming out of the two big entrance pipes was about halfway up each hole; the next it completely filled both and a wall of water exploded into the chamber. The wave grabbed Harris and wrenched him from her grip. In the wildly swinging torchlight, she saw him washed down the exit tunnel. Without thinking she let go of the ladder.
She was swept into the tunnel feet first, half lying down and with the torch still in her hand and working. It was a position she was able to maintain as she was impelled down the channel for the next minute or so, except for once when she was spun around and banged the hand holding the torch against the side of the tunnel. But when she righted herself she still had the light.
Suddenly she was falling, feared she’d reached an ocean outlet high in a cliff and was being ejected onto rocks below. But of course it was too soon: they must still be at least a kilometre from the coast. She landed in water shallow enough for her feet to hit the bottom, and found she was just able to stand, although the water threatened to pull her along on its rush to the sea.
She lifted the torch, saw she was in another chamber, this one much bigger. Maybe four storeys high, the reason for its size not apparent. On one wall was Slip’s painting, about six square metres, the confident shapes seemingly etched in bright gloss. As the water tugged at her she paused to look, because it was eerily compelling. It showed a young man on some sort of journey, surrounded by a forest of trees and cars and trains and a church and McDonald’s. Also vampires and demons, portrayed with skill and knowledge. In one corner a baby girl with a woman’s head was screaming, her body ripped open.
She had to move the torch away, find Harris. As she did so, sliding the beam over the concrete walls, something grabbed her from behind. For a moment she believed one of the monsters in the painting had come to life. But it was Harris, grunting and swearing as he wrenched her gun from the holster on her hip and fired a shot.
Bec dropped the torch, saw its light swirl into the darkness towards the square exit tunnel, and staggered as Harris released her. Which was as well, for two more shots were fired at the place where she’d just been standing, their flashes lighting up the water. Bec crouched and jumped forward, made contact with Harris’s knees and knocked him over. They tussled in the water, Harris bigger than her and more powerful, but slow. They hit a concrete corner as the surge carried them into the big tunnel, towards the ocean. Now Harris was clinging to her with an iron grip, the gun must have gone because he was using both hands.
This time there was no control, no light, and their bodies tumbled around, sometimes banging against the walls, the water pulling them towards the cliffs, Bec still held firmly by Harris. In his grip she sensed fury, and desperation too.
As she went under and held her breath, Bec felt the fitful rhythm of the water as though it was a living thing, or maybe she was inside one, racing through the city’s bowels. The need for air became desperate and she swallowed water, wondered if she was being chastised by the living God in whom she did not believe. The situation was conducive to involuntary imaginings.
Then Harris went limp and there was air again, in the blackness, and a change in the quality of the water and of their motion, an acceleration, and it felt like they were going down a water slide. That was the worst part so far, and she prepared to be expelled from the end of the tunnel, wondered if they would land on rocks. But then the ride returned to how it had been before, and she got Harris and herself upright again in the flow, their feet towards the direction of the sea. They must have just come down some sort of chute. Her head above water again, she blinked, saw a patch of half-light coming towards them at speed.
There were bars across the end of the tunnel, and they hit with enormous force. Bec found herself breathless and spluttering, pressed against the bars by the pressure of the water. Her head, its top hard against the tunnel’s roof, was well above water, staring out. She saw that far from being high up the cliff face, the tunnel’s exit was almost at sea level. Outside, waves were crashing in angry disputation against the great surge of water pouring out. For a second she saw the moon.
Harris and she were trapped by the bars, in danger of being drowned if the water rose much further. Not that Harris would know: he was unconscious again, his face against the bars.
Bec licked her lips, tasting salt, and in an awkward half-crouch began to slide along the bars away from Harris, feeling the gaps between the metal rods; in every case it was about the width of a head, designed to keep people out. Her only hope was to find a bigger gap.
They had struck the left side of the opening, which was about three metres wide and one and a half high. As she worked her way across the middle of the mouth, she felt desperately for any variation in the size of the gaps, but there was none. Meanwhile, the pressure of the water on her back was increasing. At first she thought this was just because she had reached the centre of the flow, where the current was strongest, but the water was at her shoulders now: the surge was still rising. Even though the sky was clear and there was no rain outside, the run-off from the storm was still to peak.
She found salvation at the far right of the opening. One bar had been bent aside, just one, enough for her to slip through, half underwater and with her body positioned almost sideways so that when she emerged she was not holding on to anything. The flood took her, dumped her briefly onto the rock platform, and then slid her off into the waves, through them into the surprisingly calm waters of the bay.
One of her shoes had disappeared. She got the other off and the effort reminded her that her left shoulder was very sore. For a minute she lay on her back in the placid sea, floating and looking at the big moon that hung just above the horizon. It was warm and the storm cloud
s had disappeared completely; only after a while did the memory of Ian return. She wondered if he had ever come through the bars and done this, thought not: he’d been timid in physical matters, reserving his courage for his painting.
She thought of Karen, and Harris, and Knight. The significance of what Harris had done was unclear, but of course everything would be different now. She flipped over and examined the shore, saw that the end of the tunnel from which she’d emerged was an open-mouthed concrete box on a rock platform at the base of a cliff. She swam close, the movement seemingly helping the pain in her shoulder, seeing the waves were not so big as they’d appeared from inside the tunnel. The bay was rimmed with big square houses, full of lights. There were people in some of them, going about their business. Oblivious to the drama below.
But not all. Bec identified a spot behind a big rock where the water was calm and swam into it, hoping to be able to climb out. There were two men on the rocks, both well-tanned and in their fifties, T-shirts and shorts. They came into the water to help her, seemed familiar with the place.
‘Nice night for a swim?’ said the older one, helping her onto the rocks. Bec’s legs wobbled but did not let her down. ‘Tim Alston, this is Jack Fellows.’
Bec wanted to hug the men, who were watching her carefully as she stood panting, assessing her condition.
Fellows said, ‘We were having a quiet drink on Tim’s balcony, saw you in the bay.’
Bec explained, and when the men saw she wasn’t in shock their manner changed. They told her they were volunteer lifesavers, and she sent Alston up to the phone. Followed Fellows round to the tunnel’s mouth, but the opening was not visible from the rock platform and she couldn’t see Harris. There was still a massive spout of water pouring out, crashing into the waves. Bec worked her way to the side, reached out and grabbed a bar, swung around to the front. Harris’s face was suddenly before her own, the eyes closed and the forehead still pressed against the bars. Impossible to tell if he was still alive, but the water coming from behind had not yet reached his mouth.
She got herself back onto the rocks and clambered up, and continued over the top of the tunnel. Fellows came after her, took her arm.
‘Wait for the experts,’ he said.
Bec knelt down, leaned over and grabbed a bar on the far side of the opening, and swung around. She could see it from his point of view and knew it must look dangerous. But she’d been inside only a few minutes ago, and she’d survived.
Sliding back through the gap made by the bent bar was a lot harder than coming out but she made it, getting her head and upper body in and slithering to the right. The pressure of the water was definitely greater now, and it took a few minutes to reach Harris. When she got there she yelled at him, had no response, and saw the water was high up his neck, and she would have to try to pull him out now. She dragged him around, somehow, so his back was against the bars. Held his head away from them with one hand and with the other tried to pull him towards the opening, but his body refused to budge. For a moment everything stopped, and Bec didn’t know what to do—she was exhausted, the water pressure just too great. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder.
It was Fellows, he had followed her in, yelled, ‘Tim’s here.’ He pointed and Bec saw the other lifesaver outside and leaning down from the top of the opening, behind Harris. ‘He’s going to keep his head off the bars. You push, I pull, okay?’
They began to move Harris, the men worked well together as though they’d done it before. Eventually they got him to the bent bar and slipped his legs out, the rest of his body following awkwardly. Alston and Harris disappeared in the rush of water outside and Fellows yelled to Bec, ‘Your turn.’
This time the water must have been higher, because she hardly felt the rocks as she was taken out through the waves and into the bay. Again she floated, knowing now she could rest. The men were working on Harris a few metres away, treading water and engaged in what seemed to be a tricky resuscitation technique.
‘You’re not going to sleep, are you?’ yelled Fellows.
Reluctantly Bec came off her back and began to move her legs, looking around. There was a lot of activity now on the platform next to the tunnel, bright lights and coloured uniforms. Above them, the windows of the houses were crammed with the silhouettes of people looking down. Bec heard a splutter nearby, and one of the men called across the water, ‘Looks like he’s going to make it.’
Suddenly she felt more tired than she’d ever been in her life. She remembered going into the kitchen and seeing Ian lying on the floor. It was a weariness that went through every part of her body, deep into her mind and her heart. So deep that she wondered if it would ever recede.
part 4
wars end
Bec woke up sore; there was a long gauze dressing down her left arm, applied last night at Lurline Bay. Cuts and bruises elsewhere, and her shoulder still hurt. Vella had arrived while she was on the rock platform, insisted she go to hospital, but she’d refused. Once everyone had talked with her, she just wanted to go home and sleep. Later Vella had told her again. This was after she’d seen him talking respectfully with an older man, a big guy in a suit standing five metres away. A man who had not been introduced. ‘That’s an order.’
Then he went back to the man and Bec was alone. Usually when something like this happened, colleagues would turn up. No one was here for her. She would have rung friends in the job but her phone was gone. Harris had disappeared, presumably at hospital by now, but there was no one here for him either, no one from the Drug Squad wanting to talk to her. This added to the strangeness of the evening, but the pain had kept thinking at bay.
Somehow, she’d kept herself moving. She’d learned from taekwondo that how you handle yourself after a tough fight is as important as what you do in it; by taking control, you gain control. Once the local detectives had finished talking to her about what had happened in the tunnel, she limped away, up the steep and narrow path to a street above. She’d been hoping her friends might be waiting here, but there was just a uniform to take her to Kensington for another interview, about Ian.
Now there was dreadful sadness everywhere, in the feel of the sheets as she lay in bed and in the view out the window: trees and another block of flats. She’d forgotten to draw the curtains when she’d got home. She stood up and the sadness was in the air through which she struggled to move. For a fleeting second she realised she was in shock and needed deep rest, and was in no state to make any decision at all. But unfortunately she was too hurt to hang on to that realisation, and it slipped by like something important dropped overboard from a swift-moving boat.
She did some stretches and forced herself into the shower, more stretches and then a short walk outside, her body protesting, giving in, feeling a little better. The diminishing physical pain made room for thoughts about Ian, and Sharon. At the shops she bought a new phone then went into a cafe, got coffee and looked through the papers. The Herald had nothing on last night. There was an article about a talk by the last commissioner of the Federal Police, saying the war on drugs had been lost and a new approach was needed. Apparently he’d come to this realisation only after retiring from his distinguished career fighting drug importation.
Bec wanted to ring friends, but Vella had ordered her not to discuss last night with anyone. She had no idea if he could actually do that, but she would follow orders. After yesterday this seemed absolutely necessary. She got the phone working and called Chevon, had a quick chat about other subjects. Her mother was at work and had to go.
There was a paragraph on page four of the Telegraph about a couple rescued from a stormwater drain at Lurline Bay, no names. No news of Ian’s murder. First they would need to charge Harris. She knew people far senior to herself would have been working on that overnight. The man was a commended inspector, one of their own.
She did some of the cryptic crossword. A large woman at the next table peered across and said, ‘You doing the hard one, are you? That’s impress
ive.’
Bec tried to smile, not sure if her muscles were up to the effort, and retreated to the puzzle, and the long words that had called to her when young like proof of a distant and better place she had still not found. Today the exertion was too much and after a while she gave up.
Vella had told her to have a week off. Knight was returning from Adelaide and would take over the trial, which presumably would be postponed anyway, until after Ian’s funeral. Bec thought about Karen Mabey, how Ian’s last years must have been like a long dying. Wondered if it was anything like the way she felt about Tiny. She cried a little but managed to stop, knowing if she got going it would go on for a while.
‘Love?’ said the large woman.
‘It’s all right.’
The woman touched her arm. Bec gulped and stood up, paid and walked home, taking refuge in movement as she had done so often in her life. It was hard going in the strong sunshine, and by the time she got to the flat she needed another shower. Under the water, her shoulder not so bad now, she decided to go visit Sharon in hospital. She was on a promise.
One of the ambos last night had said they’d taken her to Prince of Wales. Bec drove up the M5 and turned off after the airport, at Randwick. When she reached the hospital, the woman at the desk refused to admit that Sharon was a patient, until Bec produced her badge. Then she drew her a little map.
Bec went up a few floors, around several corners, and came to a dead-end corridor with no signs and four tall people along its length, suits. Two down the end outside a closed door, the others just in front of her. Badges were shown, names exchanged: Marie Brown and Brad Prentice. Bec expected them to ask how she was after last night’s ordeal; a small amount of concern would have been perfectly appropriate. But they just stared.
She explained about Sharon and took a step forward, Brown put out her hand.
Drive By Page 31
