Dark Heart

by Tony Park

  Richard stuck his torso back inside the cab as Bilal leaned forward and reached under his seat. He pulled out a wide-bladed hunting knife in a sheath and held it out. ‘Thanks,’ Richard said. As he walked he slid the knife into the back of his jeans and pulled his T-shirt down to conceal it.

  Richard walked down Cadogan Street, which was empty of people at this time of day, between morning tea and lunchtime. Nearby he heard traffic from busy Sydenham Road and the high-pitched squeal of an angle grinder from the mechanic’s shop. He moved quickly, trying to relate the pinpoint on the online map to the real thing. The older buildings were red brick and he came to one with a saw-toothed roof that looked like it might have been a factory or machine shop back when it was built, in the forties or fifties. What had looked like a solid city block on the online map was in reality divided by a narrow lane. Richard slowed as he neared the laneway and peeked his head around the corner. Parked halfway down was a boy-racer sports car that looked very similar to the one he’d seen parked near the hotel this morning. According to the online map, Collette – or her phone, at least – was somewhere in this building. He reached behind him, undid the press-stud fastening on the leather loop around the knife’s handle and slid it from the scabbard.

  Sticking close to the wall, Richard moved towards a metal roller door set into the brickwork. The car was parked close by. Richard dropped to his knee and stabbed the front right-hand tyre. As the air whooshed out he moved to the rear and punctured another. There was a Judas gate in the roller door, but it was closed and Richard figured there was no way he could open it quietly. He carried on past the car until he came to a garbage skip. He re-sheathed the knife and climbed up onto the skip. From there he could reach up to a window ledge. He saw the window was cracked and it appeared from scuff marks in the grime that someone had climbed in this way not long ago. The window was hinged down one side. When Richard slipped his fingers between the glass and the frame and pulled, it squeaked loudly. He froze. He was worried someone might have heard him, but his thoughts were drowned out by a piercing scream.

  *

  ‘It’s Ingabire. My real name is Collette Ingabire.’ She wept as she felt the wetness drip down from under her left ear. The devil bastard was serious – he was going to cut it off. ‘Are you happy now?’

  The man behind her eased off the pressure of the pistol, which he’d dug into her spine while the devil-man set to work on her again. Her chest was covered in blood from the wound to her chin and she could feel the hot blood sliding down her neck. Collette’s tears mixed with the blood. For the first time she realised the chair was actually sitting in the middle of a heavy-duty nylon tarpaulin that had been spread across the floor. There were soft beeps behind her and the other man then started talking in the Asian language again. The devil stood there, his eyes bright through the mask, as if he was smiling in anticipation as his accomplice spoke on the phone.

  Collette could only understand one word of what the man behind her said. Her surname. Her captor waited for the person on the other end of the line and when he spoke again his voice was lower. He asked the devil something in their language. The devil cocked his masked face to one side, and then back to the other, as if he was weighing up how to comply with the order he’d just received.

  ‘My friend wants to know what you told the Englishman you met with this morning,’ the devil said in his mask-muffled voice. He held the knife loose in his right hand.

  Collette thought about the question. This was, as she suspected, to do with Richard’s visit. He had shattered the safe world she’d created in Australia. There had been so many years of fear and guilt at first, but as she had become accepted in school on her merits and excelled at university, she had come to believe that she really had put Rwanda behind her. Despite the nightmares that still came, she had convinced herself she would be all right. But Richard had destroyed that.

  ‘What did you tell him?’ The devil hooked the blade of his knife under one of her bra straps and pulled it towards him. The strap snapped, exposing her breast. The devil placed the point of the knife on the skin of her breast and traced a line down towards her nipple. Collette whimpered.

  She closed her eyes. If she was in danger, then Richard was in danger too. These men could not have known about her until he arrived in Australia. They must have been following him. She wondered if he was still alive. Her mind flashed back to Kibeho, to that terrible place where her father had been taken from her. She heard the screams of the other refugees, heard the explosions of the mortar bombs and the crack and thump of the machine-gun bullets. She saw the bloodshed and the bloated Tutsi corpses in the river and the streets in the months leading up to that fateful day. Amid all that sorrow, all those tears that had shaped her childhood in Rwanda, the only moment of hope was when Richard had picked her up and carried her to the army ambulance.

  When the light had passed from her father’s eyes she had fallen beside him, distraught and wailing the last tears left in her slight body. He had come for her and her mother, and he had been angry when Collette had told him that her mother had gone in search of Aunt Cecile and her children. They were all that was left of the family and her mother’s line. And then it was just her. She was sure, at that moment in 1995 at Kibeho, that someone would finish her off. She was a smart girl and she had seen how the Australian and Zambian peacekeepers had fended off the refugees. They were not there to take care of able-bodied Hutus. If she had been shot, or struck with a machete, they might have taken her into their care, but she knew they would pass her back over the razor wire to meet her fate at the hands of the RPA or the other men in the camp who had also tried to kill her father. What she hadn’t told Richard was that her father had been shot not by an RPA man, but by a member of the Interahamwe militia who had been sheltering in the refugee camp along with many of his comrades and co-conspirators in the genocide. They had seen her father running towards the UN compound and a man had raised his hidden revolver and shot him. She should have told Richard that.

  Collette looked at the mask and sought out the eyes peering through it. She felt the blade under her nipple and the point pressing into her flesh. She knew the plastic sheet on the ground was there for a reason. Death had robbed her of her childhood, and she had often felt, in the dark recesses of her consciousness, that it would find her in the same bloody manner to which it had taken her whole family. They had died for nothing. She, however, had a chance to protect the one person who had given her the many years of peace and happiness she had known with her adoptive parents in a new country.

  ‘Go to hell,’ she said to the devil, and forced a smile at her joke.

  Collette could no longer feel the other captor’s gun in her back, so as the devil pressed home the knife Collette threw herself backwards. As she fell she kicked out as hard as she could, catching the masked man in the crotch. He doubled over and yelped as Collette crashed onto the plastic sheet and the unyielding concrete beneath it. She felt the wind knocked from her lungs and a stabbing pain in her back as the wooden chair cracked and a splinter of wood dug into her flesh. She looked up, expecting to see the other man pointing a gun at her head. She was well aware that many Rwandans killed in the genocide would have thanked God for the mercy of a bullet.

  She kicked with her feet and one of her high-heeled shoes fell off. Scrambling for purchase on the slippery sheet she barely made it a metre from the devil, who was still on his knees, his head down as he fought for breath. There were footsteps behind her.

  ‘Stupid girl.’

  Collette craned her head back and saw a young Asian man standing over her, his arm outstretched and a pistol pointing at her face. He had no mask, this one, and she realised that seeing his face had signed her death warrant, whatever she said.

  ‘Last chance. What did you tell the Englishman?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘OK, fine. If that is your answer then my orders are to kill you.’

  ‘We fuck her first!’ the devil gaspe
d through his pain.

  Collette was glad she’d hurt him. She closed her eyes and prayed to God that Richard had escaped and that a bullet would end it for her, rather than the knife.

  *

  Richard weaved his way through the maze of stacked pallets as quickly and as quietly as he could. He heard a crash and a desperate scream of pain. As he poked his head around a pile of cardboard boxes, he saw Collette sprawled on the ground, one man on his knees and doubled over in front of her, and a man standing behind her pointing a gun at her. He heard what the men said to her.

  Richard ran from cover, his arm extended, and came up behind the gunman just as the shooter turned his head, searching for the source of the noise behind him. Richard, who was left-handed, drove the blade into the man’s back, up and under the rib cage and into his heart, just as he’d heard an instructor describe it to a disinterested class of officers half a lifetime ago. He knew the Latin names for the organs he was destroying; he could visualise the path the knife was following. He knew exactly what he was doing and how he should do it.

  The man stared, his eyes wide, as his blood gushed down over Richard’s hand. Richard felt a primal hatred for him and twisted the knife, pushing it deeper still. The pistol clattered from the man’s hand.

  ‘Cuz!’ The man in the devil mask jolted up straight and sprang to his feet, lunging towards Richard and the dying body he was clutching in an obscene dance. Richard tried to pull the knife free, but it was stuck, held in place by the suction of the man’s innards. He pushed the dying man away from him, towards his attacker, and at the same time Collette kicked out and tangled the devil-faced man’s legs, sending him sprawling. Richard saw that Collette’s fall had cracked the frame of the chair she was bound to, and as she rolled away from the fallen Vietnamese she shrugged at her bonds. Richard wanted to help her, but the man in the mask was still a threat. He saw his chance and kicked the fallen man in the face as he started to get up. He looked around for the discarded pistol but couldn’t see it.

  The mask slipped down, revealing the young, spiky-haired man Richard had seen on his run. Richard put his foot on the back of the dead man, grasped the handle of Bilal’s knife and heaved it out.

  The other man recovered from the kick and sprang to his feet, spreading his arms in the stance of an experienced knife-fighter. Richard moved so he was between Collette, still struggling on the ground, and the armed man.

  ‘First I’m going to kill you, then I’m going to gut that bitch. Slowly,’ the man taunted. He lunged at Richard, who jumped back, out of reach. The man laughed.

  Richard glanced at Collette. She was struggling frantically with her tape bindings and the wreckage of the chair. Richard didn’t know how long he could hold off the younger man, let alone if he could defeat him in a fight. The man feinted to the left and Richard darted to the right, but before he could move out of range the Vietnamese had followed him. His right hand shot out and across and Richard felt the burning sting of a line drawn across his chest before he could move out of range and slash with his own blade.

  Richard touched the fingers of his right hand to his T-shirt and saw the blood well into the weave of the fabric. He was sure it wasn’t a deep cut, but the man had got under his guard before Richard had realised his mistake. The man grinned at him. ‘You got any last words, now’s the time to say them.’

  ‘Your cousin’s the second man I’ve killed this week. I think I’ll try for a hat-trick.’

  The man danced to the left on the toes of his black canvas slip-on shoes and delivered a short, sharp kick to Collette’s side. She yelled and curled in pain. ‘Stop moving, bitch.’

  Richard charged at the man, enraged at the sight of him tormenting Collette. The man nimbly twisted to avoid Richard’s lunge, then shot his foot out again. Richard’s shin connected with the man’s leg, and Richard lost his balance and fell into a stacked pile of boxes. Cartons dislodged from the top of the pallet tumbled down around him and probably saved him from immediate execution. His attacker stayed just out of range as Richard fended off two more falling boxes of Asian noodles. The man laughed with glee.

  Richard kicked up with his right leg as the man moved towards him. The gangster sidestepped then slashed Richard’s outstretched leg and jumped back out of range again.

  Richard struggled to his feet, his leg nearly buckling as the pain of the last slash registered with his brain.

  ‘I’m sick of this game. Time to finish you off.’ The man spun and kicked and Richard felt his forearm and knife hand go numb as the man’s foot sent the blade spinning from his hand. Richard dropped back down and tried to roll, but the man’s second kick caught him in the chest and drove the air from his lungs. Before Richard could move, the younger man was on top of him, knees astride his torso and the point of the knife at his throat as he struggled to drag a breath into his pain-racked body. ‘Time to die, hero. This is for my cousin.’

  Richard could sense movement on the other side of the man but did not want to alert him. Instead, he closed his eyes as he felt the pressure of the knife increase against the skin of his neck. ‘Do –’ He coughed. ‘Do it!’

  The gunshot exploded in the confines of the warehouse and Richard felt wet matter spatter his face. He opened his eyes and pushed away the falling gangster. Collette was standing, the pistol extended in her hands. Her mouth was open wide and her eyes were wild. Richard rolled the man off him and got to his feet. The single shot had left a small entry hole in the back of the man’s skull and blown away a good chunk of his face. He’d died before he hit the ground. Richard winced as he put his weight on his lacerated leg and saw the blood oozing down over his soaked sock and shoe and onto the floor. Collette let the gun fall to the ground and Richard hobbled to her and took her in his arms. She started to sob.

  ‘It’s OK. You saved my life.’

  She looked up at him. ‘And you, mine. But what now? This is Australia, not Africa, Richard. What have we done?’

  Blood oozed from under the body, spreading across the concrete floor. Richard wiped the blade of the knife on the shot gangster’s jeans and then picked the pistol up from the floor. He realised he was shaking. Collette looked as stunned as he felt as she pulled her ripped blouse together and knotted it at the front. Both he and Collette turned when they heard a metallic clanking. He saw the handle on the steel door at the end of the warehouse start to jiggle. It sounded like someone was working a key in a stubborn lock. Richard sheathed the blade, tucked it into the back of his jeans and grabbed Collette’s wrist. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  He limped to the Judas gate and unlocked it. In the distance he could hear a police siren. There was a squeal of tyres and Richard looked up the laneway to see Bilal’s taxi whizzing towards them. The vehicle pulled up with a skid. ‘Get in!’

  Richard put his arm around Collette and bundled her into the back of the cab, then jumped in the front passenger seat and slammed the door. ‘Go!’

  Bilal checked his rear-view mirror as he planted his foot on the accelerator. The car fishtailed until its rear tyres found purchase. The cab bounced over a speed bump, jolting them all in their seats, and Bilal swung left onto the main road. ‘Get down!’

  Richard and Collette lowered their heads as a police car sped past them. Bilal turned right onto Sydenham Road and slid into the parade of traffic. Richard and Collette sat up.

  ‘Shit, man, I heard a gunshot. You got blood all over your face. What happened?’

  Richard looked at him. ‘Do you really want to know?’ He folded down the sun visor and checked his face in the mirror. It wasn’t just blood; there was also brain and some small bone fragments.

  ‘No way. To tell you the truth, I’m on parole.’ He looked back over his shoulder. ‘You the one who got kidnapped?’

  Collette blinked away her tears. ‘Yes. Richard did nothing wrong.’

  Bilal held up a hand. ‘That’s OK. It’s all good. You got my knife?’

  Richard pulled the knife and sheath fro
m his jeans and held it up. Bilal looked at it, saw the blood that stained it and Richard’s right hand. He noticed the gun in Richard’s other hand. ‘Shit, man.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘So where do you want to go?’

  Richard looked into the backseat. Collette wiped her eyes and shrugged. ‘They know I’m here, Richard. I can’t hide anywhere now. They’ll find me, wherever I go. What am I going to do? My parents . . .’

  Richard closed his eyes and laid his head against the headrest of the car seat. He wanted to run, but Collette was right. They’d killed two men, and there was the man who had tried to kill him in South Africa, and the other assailant who’d tried to murder Carmel. The bodies were piling up all around the world. Whoever was behind this had money, reach, connections and intelligence. He and Collette would never get ahead of the game this way.

  They could turn themselves in to the local police, but that was risky. With his record of drug abuse he could see the police thinking this was some gangland deal gone wrong, and if he and Collette stayed put, how long would it be before there was another attempt on their lives? He needed to get out of this country, now.

  ‘I’m coming with you, wherever you go, Richard,’ Collette said from behind him, breaking into his thoughts.

  He reached down and felt his leg. The blood was still flowing. ‘We need a pharmacist.’

  Bilal nodded, his eyes alternating from the traffic ahead to his mirror.

  Richard turned around in his seat again. ‘All right, Collette. You can come with me if you want, but when we get to the airport you tell me everything. And I mean everything. Got it?’

  She nodded. Then she started to cry again.

  He needed her to hold it together a little longer. ‘You’ll need your passport.’

  She sniffed back her tears. ‘I live on the other side of the harbour, but it’s no problem as my passport’s at my parents’ house with all my other important documentation. They live at Bexley, it’s close to the airport.’