The Inheritance

by Gabriel Bergmoser

  ‘What now?’ Rook said.

  Maggie stood. A series of flinches, of hands twitching towards guns.

  ‘Now,’ she said. ‘I’m going to leave. And you’re all going to stay put for . . . let’s say twenty minutes.’

  ‘You can’t stop us coming for you,’ Byrne said.

  ‘No.’ Maggie nodded to Rook. ‘But he can. And he should. If he’s smart.’

  Maggie went to turn.

  ‘Wait,’ Rook said.

  She hadn’t come in here just to hear confirmation of a name or of things she already knew.

  ‘We can make a deal,’ he said.

  ‘I already made one.’ Maggie took the phone from her pocket. ‘Cooper’s phone. Not only does it have this recorded conversation, but proof of Aaron’s fake kidnapping. Proof that everything Cooper did was for his son. His legacy will be what it is, not what you make it.’

  ‘We can give you money,’ Rook said, ‘help you disappear.’

  ‘I’ve disappeared before.’

  ‘Dean will still hunt you.’

  Maggie smiled and walked towards the door. Bikies shrank back from the flickering lighter.

  Rook stood. ‘We’ll come for you. You won’t be able to hide. We have chapters everywhere. There won’t be a single Scorpion who doesn’t know your name. Maggie. Think. You don’t want us as your enemies.’

  Maggie paused. She looked back. ‘Honestly, Rook, I’d say you’ve earned it.’

  She pulled open the door and was gone.

  Maggie’s heart was racing, but not with fear. The girls and the staff were moving off in clumps, confused, wondering if they should stay or go. She closed the door then immediately turned and knelt. The trailing string lay where she’d left it, the end tied in a loop. She hooked it tightly over the door handle then stepped back.

  Nobody had noticed what she was doing. Too caught up in the drinking and commiserating. But she had given Rook a chance. More than he deserved, really, but then she knew he wouldn’t take it. Which made what happened next entirely on him.

  Even from out here she could smell the petrol. She backed away from the bar, into the dark. Her whole body pulsed with her heart.

  She was ready.

  Silence over the bar. Rook stared after her. His mind was moving fast, trying to work it out, trying to piece together what he should do next, what he could do next.

  The girl was alone. Even if she had a gun, even if she managed to take one or two of the Scorpions down, there were too many of them. They could have her back in their clutches tonight, have the phone off her before it got to Dean.

  All eyes were on him.

  He nodded.

  Byrne led the charge, rushing for the door, splashing through the petrol as the others ran after him. Rook went to follow.

  He can. And he should. If he’s smart. Rook stopped. Looked at the can of petrol. Then above it, to the high-set window, open slightly. To the small kerosene lamp placed there. To the string tied loosely around the base and trailing out the window.

  To Byrne, grabbing the door handle.

  ‘Wait!’ Rook screamed.

  Byrne pulled the door open.

  The string tugged. The lamp tipped.

  For a moment, one desperate moment, Rook hoped it would go out.

  But that moment was all he had before it hit the petrol and shattered.

  The room erupted. Screams as bikies were consumed by flames. The heat rushed up and then there were flames in his eyes and on his clothes. He saw the fire before he felt it, and then he felt it, and then pain, just pain, crashed into him like tidal waves, drowning out the screaming and the heat and everything.

  He couldn’t see his boys. He couldn’t see anything but he ran. Shapes in the fire around him and still the pain, everything in his body protesting against the terrible evil being done to it, but even that shrank away in the face of having to be out, having to be away from the pain and the fire, having to be—

  He smashed through the door and out into the night. He hit the ground and rolled, over and over. The fire was still on him and then it wasn’t but the pain remained. Gasping, smelling his own burnt skin, he looked up across the concrete. Others were out here, bikies crying and writhing and, still, some burning. From inside the screams continued. On the air, sirens.

  His vision pulsated. He managed to stand. The pain was slipping away but that wasn’t good – he needed the pain, needed to feel it, needed to be alive to help his boys and get Maggie and . . .

  There she was. Standing in the light of the flames, watching him.

  He moved for her but his vision swam and his muscles went loose. He hit the ground. The figure of the girl shimmered. He reached for her, tried to crawl.

  Boots, then, stepping into his wavering vision. One of his boys, it had to be . . .

  ‘She’s right there,’ he rasped. ‘Get her, she’s . . .’

  The reply was ice through the heat. ‘Nah. Nah, I don’t think I will.’

  He tried to look up. His body wasn’t responding. He could see only rough shadows.

  ‘Carlin.’

  And then that face in his, thin and aged but alive with malice. The shadows arranged into a shape he held in Rook Gately’s failing vision.

  ‘Got myself a pretty little bundle of goodies here, Rooky. Problem is I dunno if you can be alive to see just how pretty they are.’

  Rook swiped for the phone. A barrel in his face, gleaming silver.

  Didn’t matter. Carlin didn’t matter, the phone didn’t matter. It was the girl. He had to reach the girl, had to make her pay. He tried to move but the end of the barrel pressed hard into his forehead and he got one last glimpse of the burning bar but there was no-one there.

  The girl was gone.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Some stories are easy to write. Others are The Inheritance.

  I knew before I finished The Hunted that I wanted to continue Maggie’s story. It was clear to me that there was so much still to discover about who she was and where she came from, what had shaped her into the force of nature we’d met in the previous book and what her path forward could possibly look like. Unfortunately, as exciting as those ideas were, the process of making a cogent story out of them proved the exact opposite of straightforward. The early pages of this book flowed with deceptive ease, but I quickly got lost in the reeds.

  Luckily, I had the support of the brilliant Catherine Milne, who was kind enough to not only be honest about the book but also to help me find a path that worked, that naturally expanded on what I wanted to say and helped me learn far more about Maggie than I ever had before. I can’t stress enough that writing a book is a deeply collaborative process: this book would never have worked without the help of a wonderful team who cared about Maggie as much as I did and wanted to make sure that the next story told about her was the right one. Once again, it was a pleasure to work with Scott Forbes and Samantha Sainsbury on the edit – the amount of times your notes made me slap myself on the head and wonder how I could possibly have missed what you were pointing out really does indicate how little authors know about anything. Julian Welch’s careful proofreading ensured the discovery of many discrepancies that would have been highly embarrassing had they been left in the book. Tom Saras and Jordan Weaver-Keeney had big shoes to fill handling the campaign and publicity for this book, but said shoes proved a more than comfortable fit. The entire HarperCollins Australia team killed it; thank you all for having my back. Likewise to Angus Cargill and the team at Faber in the UK: thank you for giving Maggie and myself another home and for getting behind a couple of books that must have looked like the biggest risks imaginable when they came across your desks.

  To my agent Tara Wynne at Curtis Brown, thank you for being the best advocate I could ever ask for through this strange and wonderful journey we’re on. Thanks to Caitlan Cooper-Trent for being one of the first people to see the potential in Maggie, and to Jerry Kalajian for making me look good to the major players of Los Angeles whi
le always being able to quietly tell me when an idea I’ve brought to the table is outright dumb.

  Throughout the development of this book a lot of people read it and gave feedback, at all different stages. And while in the interests of brevity I can’t list every name, I hope you all know how immensely grateful I am for providing me with the perspectives needed to guide me towards a version of the story that worked. That said, there are a few key people that I have to include here. Jesse Farrell, whose hilarious notes pointed out some bad habits that I’d fallen into. Kate Murfett, with whom I have spent countless hours at our local bar agonising over Maggie and Jack’s choices and directions. Tony Cavanaugh, who as usual identified some major shortcomings while providing me with the quote I wish we could have used on the cover: ‘This book roars like a motherfucker.’ Thank you all.

  Thanks to my parents, Kim and Christian Bergmoser, and my brothers, Tristan and Mischa, for their willingness to bring me back down to earth while never being less than totally supportive. To the teams at Bitten By Productions and Melbourne Young Writers’ Studios, my two creative homes, for your unyielding support and love. To Molly McPhie for all of the above and more – predominantly, patience.

  I don’t think there’s any such thing as a smooth creative journey, and The Inheritance has been one of the rockiest ever. But in the end it has resulted in a book that I am so proud of. Thank you to all who helped make it possible. I owe you everything.

  AN EXCERPT FROM THE HUNTED

  Have you read The Hunted – the ferociously fast-paced, filmic and utterly electric national bestseller from Gabriel Bergmoser?

  ‘A perfectly paced, thrilling read with an unrelenting sense of dread and menace . . . building suspense at every turn of the page. Crime and thriller readers will love this savage Rottweiler of a novel that will clamp its jaws around their throat and shake them to the end.’ Books+Publishing

  ‘Tough, violent, suspenseful and peopled with great characters, The Hunted could well be the Australian thriller of the year. This is Jack Reacher for adults.’ Canberra Weekly

  Turn the page for a preview.

  PROLOGUE

  The sun beat down on the highway as the lone car drove.

  Behind the wheel, the girl kept her eyes forwards. The clear blue sky, the burning glare, the distant horizon. She didn’t look over her shoulder, or in the rear-view mirror.

  She drove fast, coming right up to the edge of the limit. The landscape, dry, arid and expansive, raced past on either side. She saw it out of the corner of her eye, but she ignored it, just as she did the pain in her leg and the pounding of her heart. She drove as the sun set and sank, until the pale blue of the sky became splashed with blood again and the land around her appeared like it was on fire.

  It was only then that she looked in the rear-view mirror.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Now

  Frank was woken by gunshots and was halfway to the door before he realised it had been a dream. He closed his eyes, swallowed, and in the darkness moved back to his bed. He sat down and kept his breathing steady until the shaking stopped.

  The same dream. The one that was so vivid and real because it wasn’t a dream, not really. A memory of trees and dead eyes in the dark, laughter and gunshots ringing in his ears, the taste of copper blood.

  He ran a hand through his thinning hair, stood and walked out into the hall. He put his ear to Allie’s door for a moment, but there was no sound. He hadn’t yelled out, then. Feeling slightly better, he stepped into the bathroom and switched on the light.

  He wasn’t sure whether it was comforting that he looked nothing like the man who had lived that dream. Standing in front of the cracked mirror in his boxer shorts, he didn’t cut much of an impressive figure anymore. The gentle swell of his post-fifty gut was threatening to stop being gentle pretty soon and his haggard face, sunken eyes and grey hair made him look a full ten years older than he was.

  He brushed his teeth quickly, then returned to his room and dressed in the dark. He didn’t need electricity to find things that were always in the same place. He tucked a flannelette shirt into his jeans and did up his boots. Wishing the flashes of that dream weren’t still circling in his head, he walked back down the hall.

  In the kitchen he opened the cupboard and took out the cereal he’d brought over from the roadhouse for Allie. He placed it on the bench, then retrieved a bowl and a spoon. He arranged them in front of the seat he thought she used, then, suspecting it looked too regimented, shifted them slightly. He glanced at the fridge. He was never sure whether he should put milk out or not. He didn’t know how late Allie slept in and the days were hot at this time of year. It would be different had he felt he could just ask her, but the way Allie kept to herself suggested she wouldn’t appreciate the intrusion. Just as, he thought with a wry smile, he knew he wouldn’t have. No wonder Nick was having trouble with her; his son had always disliked the things that weren’t said.

  The call had come just over a week ago. Frank was sitting in front of the TV, debating whether he should get up and fix the bent antenna to try to steady the image, when the phone rang. It took him a second to be sure of what he was hearing. Even telemarketers didn’t know how to reach him.

  He’d answered with a twinge of long-forgotten fear. That hadn’t changed when he’d heard the voice on the other end: serious and mature. It sounded like somebody official. It was only when the voice faltered saying Frank’s name that realisation hit.

  ‘Nick,’ Frank said.

  His son cleared his throat. ‘Yeah. How, um, how have you been?’

  Frank glanced around the kitchen. His son couldn’t see it, but that didn’t stop him wondering why he hadn’t tidied the place, or at least hung a picture. ‘Fine.’

  Silence.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Busy, with end-of-year reports and everything. Emily’s the same, but she’s doing well.’

  Frank hadn’t asked after his daughter-in-law, but to be fair it wasn’t as though she’d be asking after him.

  The silence returned. It struck Frank how much he yearned to know what to say. A side effect of lengthy solitude was a tendency to forget how small talk worked.

  ‘Listen.’ Nick’s voice dropped a little lower, the way it always did when he wanted to sound confident. ‘I actually called to ask you a favour. Things are a little flat out at the moment, and Allie – well, I mean, she’s fourteen, you know? The terrible teens or whatever you call them.’

  Frank didn’t know what you called them.

  ‘I think she . . . well, I mean it’s probably just growing pains or whatever, but she’s been acting up at school. She got into a fight and . . . and it’s just that there’s only so much Emily and I can do with things being the way they are. Even if we had all the time in the world, I kind of feel like it wouldn’t help. You know what it’s like when you’re that age – your parents are public enemy number one.’ Nick’s voice was getting higher, faster. Whatever he wanted to ask, he was scared to do it. ‘So look, we’ve been spitballing ideas and we wondered if, well, if the best thing for it wouldn’t be a change of scenery. For Allie to . . . to get away from everything and, you know, maybe get some perspective.’

  Frank’s grip tightened around the phone. A new, crawling fear was moving through his gut, something he was altogether unequipped to deal with.

  ‘And I mean, Emily’s parents live overseas and . . . and you’re out there by yourself, so, like, well, maybe it’ll be good for you?’

  ‘What will be?’

  ‘If you . . . if she came and stayed with you for a while.’

  Frank leaned against the bench. His mind moved fast into overdrive, racing through excuses. What the fuck was he supposed to do with a surly teen skulking around the place? He could barely look after himself; he wouldn’t have the first clue of how to talk to her and the house . . . The kitchen suddenly looked a lot worse than basic. The mould creeping behind the sink, the cobwebs in the corner, the way the fridge sat at
a slightly uneven angle; it all seemed obvious and insurmountable, a handful of the million wrong things in his life that he really did not want reported back to his son.

  ‘Nick, look—’

  ‘You’d be doing us a favour, Dad. A really big one.’

  He could hear it in Nick’s voice: the plea he was trying so hard to bury beneath nonchalance. The last time his son had spoken to him that way, they’d still lived in the same house and Frank had been too drunk to do anything more than crawl into bed and pretend it wasn’t happening.

  ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Alright, when were you thinking?’

  After that, it had all happened fast, faster than Frank was used to or ready for. And now, here they were.

  He stopped briefly on the porch, as he did every morning. His weatherboard house was small and on the wrong side of modest. But he wasn’t trying to impress anyone. Stretching out in front of him, past the outline of a curving dirt driveway that the gloom hid too well, all he could see was the gently swaying long brown grass, spanning the distance between where he stood and the dark, barely visible shape of the rear of the roadhouse, the invisible highway just past it, and the vast sky beyond, alive with the first glow of dawn. He took a deep breath. The air was already hot. All he could smell was earth. Sometimes, after rain or if there had been a bushfire nearby, it was different. Sometimes the air smelt alive and fresh or full of warning. Most of the time, it was just earth. On the horizon the fingers of creeping red sunrise were starting to grow. He didn’t bother to jump on the quad bike or get in the car. He liked his morning walk and besides, the day would be considered busy if anyone stopped in before noon.