by Tony Park
‘I’ve got a gun, you fucking bitch,’ Tran hissed in her ear. ‘Keep still or I’ll kill you now.’
‘Let’s get her in the car,’ Nguyen said. He kicked her again for good measure then grabbed the sleeves of the jacket and wrapped them around her face and neck and tied them in a knot. The two men dragged the woman, still kicking and trying to cry out through her makeshift gag, into the back of the car and forced her down on the floor.
*
Richard retrieved his backpack from the left luggage room in the hotel and thought about what he should do next. He knew Katrina would have checked out and left for the airport to catch her flight to Brisbane. He’d timed his meeting with Collette so he wouldn’t see the South African woman again. Richard couldn’t afford to stay in this hotel so he would have to find a backpackers’ or a hostel until he worked out his next step.
He’d been foolish to think Collette would have all the answers. She’d been a scared little girl when her father had died. There was no reason to think she would have been privy to any special knowledge her old man had. It was interesting, though, that the man with his back to the camera was her father, the same man who had died in Richard’s arms.
Richard left the hotel and decided to walk for a bit. He yawned. The jet lag had really screwed his system. He turned left and started walking towards Circular Quay.
As he started down the street, he replayed the meeting with Collette in his mind. She was holding something back. He stopped at a park bench, shrugged off his pack and took out his phone and the business card Collette had given him.
He dialled the mobile number listed on the card but it rang out before going to voicemail. He left a message, asking her to call him back. Collette would more than likely have known who was calling, from the South African number that would have appeared on her phone screen. She’d left the meeting rattled and he wondered if she was deliberately avoiding his call. He dialled her law office’s landline.
‘Livingstone, Ward and Company solicitors, may I help you?’ the receptionist said on the other end.
‘Hi, I’d like to speak to Collette Clemenger, please,’ Richard said.
‘Sorry, Ms Clemenger isn’t available at the moment. Can I ask what it’s regarding and take a message, please?’
‘It’s quite urgent. I’m a client of hers and I was hoping to speak with her now; can you interrupt her please?’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the receptionist said. ‘Can I get your name, please?’
Richard decided to keep bluffing it out. ‘Look, I had a meeting with Collette this morning, and –’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir,’ the receptionist said. ‘You’re involved in the Lloyd matter? I’ve just had a call from one of the other parties and they’re also looking for Ms Clemenger. I’ve tried her phone four times and can’t get through. I can’t imagine what’s keeping her.’
Richard took a breath. A chill rippled through him. The jet lag had fogged his brain and he now remembered her saying she had a meeting to get to. Had she missed it? ‘She’s not at the meeting . . .’
‘Yes, sir. Sorry. As I’ve said, I’ve been trying to call her,’ the receptionist said.
‘She was walking to the meeting,’ Richard said, stating a fact.
‘Umm,’ Richard could hear the receptionist turning pages. ‘Yes, sir, that would make sense. I’m just checking her diary now. She had a ten o’clock in Surry Hills and, as your offices are close by, I’m sure she would have walked. Unless she got held up at her ten o’clock . . .’
‘Does she make a habit of forgetting meetings?’
‘No, sir,’ the receptionist said, sounding defensive. ‘Never. Perhaps you can give me your number and I’ll call you and Mr and Mrs Lloyd as soon as I hear from Collette. I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience, and –’
Richard ended the call. He grabbed his backpack, got up, looked around and ran across the road. He hailed the cab and read from her business card. ‘Mount Street, North Sydney. Quick as you can, driver.’
The driver looked young and was Middle Eastern, with his head shaved on the sides leaving an oval of gelled bristles on the top. ‘Settle, man, you’re not on TV. I’ll go as quick as the speed limit allows.’
‘For Christ’s sake, a woman’s life is at stake here. Get a move on!’
‘Serious?’
Richard reached over and grabbed the man’s shirt front. ‘Do I look serious?’
‘OK, OK.’ The driver brushed Richard’s hand away and stamped on the accelerator.
Richard tried ringing Collette again. There could have been any number of reasons why Collette had missed her meeting. She could have been run over by a car, or tripped over, or had a seizure, or stopped to help someone in trouble. Normally any such matter would have been bad enough, but given what had happened to anyone else with a connection to that bloody picture, Richard could only assume it was worse than all those calamities put together. He swore. It was as if that bloody picture had been cursed.
It seemed to take ages to turn into Bridge Street, but after missing two green lights the cab driver was able to accelerate again as he entered the approaches to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Richard paid no interest to the iconic structure, or the surrounding harbour. The North Sydney exit was just over the other side of the harbour. The driver turned left and then took a right up Walker Street. ‘What number?’
Richard checked the card. ‘Ninety.’
‘Mount Street’s a mall and ninety will be up there,’ he said, pointing to the left as he pulled over.
Richard gave the driver a twenty-dollar note and when the man began counting out change, he said: ‘Can you wait for me?’
‘For how long?’
‘I don’t know.’
The driver looked at him. ‘There’s really some chick’s life at risk?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, mate, I’ll wait around the back, in the laneway.’
Richard got out and slammed the door shut, leaving his pack in the backseat as a deterrent to the driver getting bored and leaving without him. He ran up the pedestrian mall, dodging office workers out for an early lunch. He took a flight of steps to the building where Collette worked and found a name plate with Livingstone, Ward & Company on it. Richard got into a lift and pressed the button for the sixth floor.
‘Good morning,’ said the receptionist when he stepped into the foyer.
‘I called before. I’m looking for Collette Clemenger.’
‘Oh, I assumed you’d be at the meeting, Mr . . .?’
‘My name’s Dunlop, Doctor Richard Dunlop. I’m worried something very serious has happened to Collette.’
‘Well, Doctor Dunlop, I’m afraid I can’t help you. As I said on the phone, we’ve been unable to reach Collette. It’s quite a mystery. After you got off the phone Collette’s PA, Isabelle, came back from a break and she has no idea what might have happened to her either. We’re just hoping that if she’s had a little mishap or something on the way to the meeting that it’s nothing too serious. I’ve left a message there for her to call us once she gets there.’
‘She’s not going to get to the meeting!’
‘How do you know?’ asked the receptionist.
A young woman with blonde curly hair walked into the foyer and addressed the receptionist. ‘Emily, did I hear you asking about Collette?’
‘Yes, it’s very urgent,’ Richard interrupted. He could see by their body language that these two women were about to close ranks on him. ‘I’m a doctor. I was seeing Collette at ten o’clock. It wasn’t a social meeting, it was an appointment.’
‘Really? I’m Isabelle Robertson, Collette’s PA. Forgive me for saying, but I haven’t seen too many doctors who wear Clash T-shirts and jeans when they treat their patients.’
‘Shit,’ Richard said, running a hand through his greasy hair. He reached into his pocket and took out Collette’s business card and threw it on the reception desk. He took out his phone, called his message bank, pu
t the phone on speaker and dialled. There was only one message and it was from Collette. ‘Hi Richard, I can meet you at ten am at a coffee shop in Surry Hills.’ She gave the name and address of the place and directions to nearby Central Railway Station.
Isabelle put her hands on her hips. ‘You had an appointment in a coffee shop?’
‘I’m a friend of the family. Look, listen to me. I’m very worried that something very bad may have happened to Collette in between when she left me and when her meeting was supposed to start.’
‘What time did she leave your meeting?’ Isabelle asked.
Richard thought about it, and remembered her checking her watch. ‘Ten-fifty.’
Isabelle nodded. ‘Plenty of time to walk to the Lloyd conference.’
‘Call the police,’ Richard said.
‘Really?’ asked the receptionist.
‘Yes, really,’ Richard said. ‘Is there any other way we can contact her? Like, I don’t know, do people still use pagers? Can you email her?’
Emily, the receptionist, called 000 and asked to be put through to the police. ‘Umm . . . twenty-five minutes,’ she said into the phone. ‘Yes, but her doctor’s here and he says something serious might have happened to her.’
Richard could tell the police thought Emily was crazy for reporting someone missing because they’d failed to show up for a work appointment and were only twenty-five minutes late.
‘Lost phone!’ Isabelle said.
The receptionist put a hand over her ear to drown out the other conversation while she persisted with the police.
‘What do you mean?’ Richard asked Isabelle.
‘Collette’s super-organised, but she does have a problem with phones. She’s lost two – one in a cab and one in a restaurant – so I downloaded this app to her iPhone that allows us to find her phone, wherever it is.’
‘What if it’s switched off?’ Richard asked.
‘It still works, we’ve tried it.’
The receptionist got off the phone. ‘The police say it’s too soon to report someone missing. They suggest we call the nearest hospitals to see if she’s been admitted.’
‘Move over, Emily.’ Isabelle sat in a vacant office chair and rolled in front of Emily’s computer monitor as the receptionist took another call using her wireless headset. ‘All I have to do is log into Collette’s Apple account – I know the password for emergencies like this – and log into Find My iPhone.’
Richard watched, slightly amazed, as Isabelle’s ruby nails fluttered over the keyboard. ‘Searching now,’ she said, then turned the flat screen monitor side-on so that by looking over the reception desk counter he could see it. ‘There it is.’
Richard looked at the streets on the map on the screen. As Isabelle magnified the image street names appeared. He grabbed a pen off the desk and scrawled them down. ‘Cadogan Street, just off Sydenham Road, Marrickville.’
‘That’s miles away from where her meeting was supposed to be. And I don’t know if there’s a hospital in that part of Sydney. What on earth would she be doing there?’ Isabelle said.
‘What sort of place is it?’ Richard asked.
‘Marrickville?’ Isabelle shrugged. ‘Used to be a working-class suburb, now getting trendier. There were a lot of Greeks there, but the Vietnamese have taken the place over in the last few years. Good restaurants.’ She opened another window and called up a satellite view of the same street on Google. ‘This looks like the industrial area – old factories, warehouses, that sort of stuff.’
Richard suddenly remembered the young Asian man with the spiky hair standing on the wet, near-deserted street corner early that morning, smoking a cigarette, when he’d gone for his run. ‘Thanks, Isabelle. I can’t tell you how important this is. Here’s my number,’ Richard wrote it down and passed it to her. ‘Can you keep an eye on this thing and call me if Collette starts to move again, or if she calls.’
‘I’m worried,’ she said.
Richard thought she had good reason to be, but he didn’t say so. He left before she could ask him any more questions.
21
Collette saw the devil when the pullover was lifted from her head. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the minimal light around her, but the red devil’s face loomed in front of her, causing her to recoil. It was a mask. The men had been speaking in an Asian language as they’d dragged her from the car, the gun pressed painfully into her back. Her first thought had been that they were going to rape her, but they’d placed her on a hard wooden chair and taped her hands to the frame. She’d smelled spices and now that her face was uncovered the odour was stronger. All around her were pallets piled high with cardboard boxes with Asian writing on them. She could hear a faint buzz of traffic beyond the walls of the warehouse they’d brought her to.
‘What’s your name?’ the man in the devil mask asked.
‘What do you want with me?’
The hand of the man snaked out and slapped her face, hard enough to make her rock on the chair.
‘Answer him!’ Behind her, another man, with an Asian accent like the first man’s, slapped the back of her head, knocking her forward.
‘You’ve got my handbag. You must have looked in there.’
The man in the mask chuckled. ‘Clemenger. Don’t sound black. What’s your real name, bitch?’ Another slap followed before she even had a chance to answer.
‘That is my real name.’ She tasted blood in her mouth. God, now she was really worried. Why was this creep asking about her real name on the same day Richard had come back into her life and started asking questions about her childhood? What hadn’t Richard told her?
‘Bullshit!’ Devil-man placed both of his hands on the collar of her blouse and ripped outwards, exposing her bra. The buttons popped easily and she felt even more afraid. ‘Hey! Shit! Look what the bitch is hiding in her tits.’
Collette cringed as the man groped in her bra and pulled out her phone. He slid his finger across the screen to activate it and scrolled down the list of numbers. ‘Lot of same incoming missed calls,’ devil-man said to his accomplice, still out of sight. ‘All in the last half-hour. Somebody’s missing her already.’
‘Better be quick,’ said the man behind her.
Devil-man’s hands were empty – she presumed the man behind her was covering her with the gun. The masked man reached into the back pocket of his jeans and moved his hand to her face. The blade of the flick knife sprang open, the point arriving just millimetres from her left eye.
‘No!’ She’d seen what blades could do to human flesh. ‘Please.’
The devil laughed again. Collette winced and tried to slide the chair back as he moved the point between her eyes.
‘Stay still,’ the man behind her said, and checked her movement with the hard point of the gun at the back of her neck.
Devil-man touched the point of the blade to her face, between her eyes at the bridge of her nose. He slowly traced it down, his soft words following its path. ‘Shame to mess up such a pretty face.’ Collette shivered in her seat as the blade scratched down her nose, between her nostrils and paused on her top lip. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears forced their way out.
‘Please. I told you my name. It’s Collette Clemenger. I was adopted, as a baby. I don’t know my real name.’
The devil moved close enough for her to smell the stale cigarette smoke on his clothes. The knife moved over her quivering lips. He took a handful of her hair and whispered into her right ear: ‘Liar.’ He pushed the tip of the blade up into the soft skin under her chin.
Collette screamed as the blood spurted down over her bared chest.
*
‘Faster,’ Richard said, checking their progress on the screen of his phone and on the cab driver’s GPS.
‘I’m going as fast as I can, all right,’ said the driver, who had told him his name was Bilal, and that he was Lebanese–Australian. He indicated to pass a truck as they drove down King Street through Newtown, avoidin
g a car in front that had suddenly stopped to turn right.
‘Hey, is this some kind of dangerous shit you’re getting into?’ Bilal asked as he planted the accelerator again.
‘Yes, and when we get to where we’re going I want you to drop me about a block away and then drive off.’
Bilal glanced at him, then back at the road as a bus loomed in the windscreen. Bilal accelerated and darted around it. ‘No way. I mean, if something’s going down you’re going to need a getaway, right?’
Richard hadn’t had time to think through his plan. He didn’t want to involve any more innocents, but maybe Bilal was right. ‘How easy will it be for me to get another cab?’
‘In that part of Marrickville? Take you hours, mate. Better if I wait.’
‘OK,’ Richard said.
‘Someone’s in trouble, right? I heard you talking on the phone. You call the cops?’
‘Someone else did.’ Isabelle had phoned to tell him she’d called the police and reported a suspected abduction. She’d given the police dispatcher the address and the police had agreed to send a car to check it out, but not before speculating that perhaps Collette simply had an appointment she didn’t want her workmates to know about – the inference being she was cheating on a boyfriend or involved in something criminal. ‘And, yes, a friend of mine is in big trouble.’
‘GPS says we’ll be there in three minutes. If we had more time I could have got you a gun, mate.’ Bilal turned down a street that took them into what looked like a light industrial area. They passed a self-storage place, a mechanic’s garage and a couple of warehouses. ‘Should be just up in the next block,’ Richard said, checking Bilal’s GPS. ‘Drop me off here.’
‘OK. I’ll wait for you.’ Bilal pulled over and Richard opened the door to get out. ‘Hang on, mate. I got something for you.’
