Black Ice

by Leah Giarratano

  Genovese and Lanvin locked eyes, then looked at their shoes.

  'To do what?' said Jill.

  'Monitor their mobile calls,' said Gabriel.

  'We planned to talk to you first and get on it,' said Lanvin.

  'Well, let's move then.' Gabriel walked as he talked, then stood at the door waiting. 'Coming?' he said.

  Jill grabbed her leather jacket from the car, and hurried back to Gabriel, who was waiting for her at the front of the building. As she jogged into Hay Street, she spotted him, surrounded by pigeons. He was breaking small pieces of bread off a roll and scattering them to the cooing birds, oblivious to the irritated stares of the office workers having to negotiate around them.

  'Where'd you get the bread?' she asked him.

  He held the roll out to her.

  'No, I don't want to eat it,' she said. She shook her head, and took the roll from his hands, shredded it quickly and threw the pieces to the birds. 'I just wondered . . . oh, don't worry. Come on, let's go.' She began the walk down towards Chinatown.

  'I always bring bread over here,' he said, catching up. 'The pigeons here are always hungry.'

  Aren't pigeons hungry everywhere? she wondered. Whatever. 'So, what was all that in there?' she asked. She had stayed quiet for the past hour, feeling out of place as Gabriel, Genovese and Lanvin had hit the computers and given orders to a series of personnel.

  'We put keyword telecommunications intercepts on the whole Sydney grid. We're blanketing the metro to find him.'

  At the next intersection, she let another pedestrian hit the button at the lights to get the walk signal. Those things were filthy. She didn't touch them unless she had to. 'So how does that work?' she asked. She had a pretty good idea about telecommunication surveillance, but she wanted to understand exactly what they were doing to try to find Damien. And Nader.

  'Easy,' Gabriel said. 'We assign key words to a watch list and then red flag them when they come up.'

  'So you listen to everyone's conversations to try to catch them saying Nader's name, or a word associated with him?'

  'Sort of. And not just his name. Nicknames and aliases of known associates, street names, discussion about the explosion in Merrylands, slang terms for drug deals, especially amphetamines.'

  Jill noticed the woman next to them staring openly at Gabriel. She felt relieved when the traffic stopped and they could cross the road. Nothing he'd said was really confidential, but she hated the thought of anyone listening in on this conversation. She considered her discomfort and smiled at the irony.

  'So a name comes up, and then what happens?' she said. They'd outstripped the office workers and had a clear run down to Dixon Street.

  'Well, a program prioritises the mentions and someone brings it to our attention when it reaches our set level of importance,' he said.

  'Computers monitor the calls?'

  'Yeah, it's a word recognition program. It recognises the word, records the whole conversation, our techies review it to see if it's got a connection to what's going on, and if it does, they pass it to us. We'll be the first to know.'

  'What are we meant to do while we're waiting?' she said.

  'Eat.'

  'After that.' Sheesh.

  'If we're lucky, we'll go pick 'em up. They'll come to us. We just need to wait.'

  She stared at Gabriel's back as they descended a couple of stairs into a Dixon Street food hall. It was single file from there – the place was packed.

  'You sure you wanna eat here?' she yelled, close behind him, eyes on her shuffling feet. The sight of so many people around her jump-started palpitations in her chest.

  'Yeah. I'll order. You get us a seat,' he called over his shoulder, and peeled away into the crowd.

  Ah, shit, she thought, all appetite evaporating.

  Rows of long, rectangle tables stretched through the centre of the hall. Dozens of steaming food stalls lined the walls in a riot of colour and noise. Throngs of people pushed along the narrow corridors between them. Jill stood still.

  'Get out of the way, would you?' A sweating man pushed past her, balancing a tray. Having spotted a seat at a table ahead, the man was missile-focused on the spare chair. She watched him, forcing herself to concentrate on one thing at a time. He plonked down and unloaded an impossible amount of food. It appeared all of the bowls were for him: none of the surrounding diners acknowledged him, or even glanced up.

  Pushed and jostled at every turn, Jill stepped in between two rows of tables, and stood awkwardly as all around people ate and talked. Then, miraculously, two diners right in front of her finished their meals and she dropped gratefully into a seat. A dreadlocked youth carrying shopping bags aimed for the chair next to her, saw her face, and turned around again.

  'Taken,' she said, unneccessarily.

  The spicy smells seemed to have a soporific effect, and by the time Gabriel found her, she was surprised to find herself feeling much calmer and even hungry. He carried a plastic bag in each hand and balanced a tray tottering with bowls and two soft drink cans.

  'I got a mixture of things,' he said.

  'Yes,' she said. 'You did.'

  He spread the food out in front of them and handed her some chopsticks. She pulled a bowl of short soup towards her. She tasted it; it was delicious.

  'You don't need to eat that,' said Gabriel. 'It comes free with the real food. Here, try this.' He scissored a glistening piece of meat from a still-sizzling dish in front of him and held it to her mouth.

  'What is it?' she said. He sighed and put the meat in his own mouth, answering while chewing. 'Garlic beef. Extra garlicky. You gotta eat it while it's hot.'

  'Are you crazy?' she said. 'We have to work. You're going to stink.'

  He raised another piece to her lips. 'Yep,' he said. 'So you have to eat some too, so you don't complain all afternoon.'

  The morsel smelled so appetising that she accepted it. She pulled the dish closer and they ate for a while without speaking.

  'What if he doesn't use a phone for some time?' she said finally, taking a sip of Pepsi Max. She liked that he remembered what she usually drank.

  'He'll make a call, or send a text,' said Gabriel. He gestured to her to try some of the steamed vegies, but she was stuffed, and shook her head. 'That's what these dickheads do,' he said. 'It's how they live. They can't help themselves. Some of them think that if they buy a clean phone they'll be sweet. I've heard that some dealers buy a new pre-paid mobile every week, and dump the old one. They don't understand that if we wanna trace them it's not just the phone they use, but what they actually say. Then, when we think we have a hit we isolate the area and find out exactly where they are. And as long as their phone is switched on, we have a mobile tracking system. It's a beacon.'

  Jill nodded. She'd heard before that these things could be done, of course, but she hadn't realised it could be put into place so swiftly. And she'd never caught a crook that way.

  'What if he leaves Sydney?' she said.

  'Well, we'll widen the catchment if we don't get a hit soon,' he said. 'But if Nader's who we think he is, he'll have another place close by. These guys usually have multiple properties fairly close to each other. They like to keep their operations separate. That way, if one of the labs blows up, or there's a bust at one property, they can get operations up and running again relatively quickly.'

  Gabriel leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head.

  Jill started stacking plates. The table looked like a crime scene.

  Gabriel rubbed his belly. 'You want dessert?'

  She gave him a look.

  'Then let's go,' he said. 'I bought extras and I want to drop them back at my house before this thing takes off again.'

  Jill stood and joined the thinning stream of people next to her. She felt a finger hook into the waistband of her jeans and spun on the spot.

  'Just keeping up,' said Gabriel. 'Chill.'

  She wondered what the hell to say to that when she heard his
mobile sound.

  'Yep,' said Gabriel. 'Five.'

  She felt him nudge her a little, hurrying her along.

  'I told you I shouldn't have bought extra stuff,' he said. 'They think they've got him. All this food's gonna be wasted.'

  61

  Monday 15 April, 3.30 pm

  'So how're you feeling about being out from undercover?' asked Gabriel, as he steered the car through the traffic effortlessly. Jill had noticed before when driving with Gabriel that he seemed to sense a gap or a slow-down up ahead before it materialised, and they seemed always to end up in the fastest lane.

  Although they believed they had a confirmed location in Riverstone for Nader, Gabriel wasn't using the siren. She thought about his question for a moment before answering him.

  'Pretty good, I guess,' she said.

  'You're supposed to feel weird,' he said.

  'Weird,' she said.

  'Well, technically, you shouldn't be here. You're supposed to have a mandatory debrief with the psych, and then you're meant to have a couple of weeks off.'

  'Mmm. Well the New South Wales police service is real good about ensuring that we all get access to counselling. Last count, I think they've got one psych on staff, and she's been on sick report for about six months.'

  'They could call someone in, like last time.'

  'Yeah, and as if I would go,' she said. 'Bloody useless, that woman.'

  'Okay, so I'll debrief you.'

  'Shut up.'

  'How do you feel about not getting to say goodbye to Ingrid, and what did you call him – Lolly?'

  She laughed. 'Lolly! You're an idiot. It's Jelly.'

  'So? How do you feel?'

  She wrinkled her brow. She'd thought of them constantly since Last had pulled her out. They would worry about her. They'd worry a lot. And she couldn't believe she cared. She tried to remember her last real girlfriends: both of them she had left behind at age twelve, with the school carnival and her childhood, when she'd been dragged into the car by paedophiles. And Ingrid had been her first choice since for a new girlfriend? Ingrid: alcohol dependent, the confidante of junkies, foster mum to adults who could never survive out there alone. Jill knew that in her role as a cop she would have had some time for Ingrid, but she would mainly have seen her as another victim, someone to be pitied. She would never have imagined that she could have found her so funny, so warm. She smiled a little, thinking of all the laughs she'd had with Ingrid. Jill could count the number of times she'd laughed like that over the past twenty years.

  She turned her face to the window and stared into her recent past. Since her kidnappers had died, she'd felt herself changing, and at first she'd grasped desperately at her old self, clinging to it frantically, as though to a towel being yanked from her naked body. She'd always believed that without all of her rituals and rigidity she'd splinter into pieces, irreparably fractured. But the opposite had been the case. She felt more whole; more real. She actually felt things.

  She felt sad. Why did it take so long to get here? I'm thirty-two, she thought. She shifted her whole body around in the seat, angling herself as far from Gabriel as possible, her face wet with silent tears. The last time she'd spoken to her mum, she'd sounded old. She'd never thought of her parents ageing, of her siblings becoming adults. Everything had changed all around her while she'd been frozen, the largest part of her still a shivering girl in the basement.

  And Cassie. The tears were streaming now and she brought her hand up to her mouth. Her little sister had grown up without her, shut out completely. Cassie had been ten when the real Jill had left and never come home. Tim, her brother, had been an older adolescent, at the point anyway of beginning to separate from family into adult connections. Cassie had been on her own, their mother obsessed at first with keeping Jill alive, and then with keeping her at school. She and Cassie had been so close once. Their whole lives they'd shared the same room, all their secrets, their clothes, their toys and their friends. Until that day.

  Jill pulled her feet up onto the seat, and huddled into the door, crying quietly. She finally got it. She hadn't been the only one snap-frozen twenty years before. Ten-year-old Cassie Jackson still waited alone somewhere, her adult self blocking out the sound of her cries with drugs and alcohol.

  Jill barely felt Gabriel's hand on her shoulder.

  62

  Monday 15 April, 3.30 pm

  Seren tried to slap the thoughts away as they flew forward from her consciousness. She just focused her eyes on the road and willed the next bus to come. Unable to stand still, she paced the pavement – up to the post box, back to the bus stop sign. Turn around, begin again.

  She'd arrived early at the bus stop this afternoon, so she'd crossed the road to buy Marco a chocolate milk. When he didn't get off his regular school bus, a toaster-sized block of ice had dropped into her stomach. When the second bus had sailed past without even stopping, the ice had spread into her lungs and limbs. Her hands now freezing, she dumped the milk carton into the bin on the way up to the post box. One more bus and I'll go home. If he's not on this bus, he'll be there. If he's not on the next bus, he'll be at home. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .

  Seren spotted danger crossing the road. The bloke from the convenience store who'd tried to convince her with his eyes that he could take her to heaven. She'd told him with hers that she'd see him in hell first. It didn't help that he was pissed. She'd smelled him as soon as he'd walked into the shop. Cheap bourbon and cigarettes. The scent had exploded the mental photo-album of her stepfather, raining images of him through her mind. Used to it, she'd shut them out with a shake of her head.

  But now, stuck on the island in the centre of the four-lane road, the pisspot wasn't going to let it go. Did they ever?

  'Hey you stuck-up fucken giant!' he yelled, spit flying from his mouth. 'Why do you think you're so fucken good. Stuck-up fucken giant.' He laughed at himself, mumbled something incoherent and tottered. 'You're gonna have a drink with me.'

  Seren kept doing laps, looking for the bus. She glanced over her shoulder when a car braked hard and beeped, the drunk giving the finger and attitude to the driver who'd almost collected him. He made it to the gutter near the bus stop sign just before she did, and straightened himself up, preparing to use his best pick-up line.

  'FUCK OFF!' she screamed directly into his face. And he did.

  The bus! She spotted it at the top of the hill two hundred metres away, before it had even breached the crest. He'll be on the bus, she told herself.

  The next two sets of traffic lights and six minutes, forty-eight seconds took forever. Seren felt she'd aged ten years.

  Marco was not on the bus.

  She started to run.

  Before she even opened the door Seren could feel that Marco wasn't in the unit. She screamed his name anyway as she yanked it open. She bolted through their couple of rooms and straight back out again, still running, down to Angel's. No one was there either. Moaning and panting, she ran back to her unit and collapsed into a chair. She dropped her face into her hands.

  I've got to call the police, she told herself, knowing, even as she reached for her phone, that Maria Thomasetti would hear of this almost immediately and would find a way to lock her up for breaching parole. One of her conditions for release was that she care adequately for her son. Trying to steady her breath so that she could at least speak when the police answered, she punched in the first zero to dial emergency services, and heard a key in the door. She flew from the chair and ripped the door open, to find Marco, school backpack in hand, staring at her blankly. She dragged him to her and slammed the door, holding him close. He shivered.