‘Ah …’
‘You slept with Finn Hale? Are sleeping with Finn Hale? In the sex way, not the dreaming way?’
‘What does that even mean?’ But Ashley was nodding because hell yes, he’d had sex with Finn, a lot in the last few days, and it was the best thing ever.
‘I gotta tell Freya!’ He exclaimed excitedly and ran off to their room to call.
‘Okay, well, I’m off to work,’ Ashley told the empty living area. ‘My life. Seriously.’
Bell was on shift with him, as were Tully and White. Ashley waved as he came in and made a coffee. It was weird not to be on shift with Ridley, he’d been getting used to the man’s stutter, but McFarrell liked to use up all the hot water from the solar system so Ashley was glad to not be on a night shift with him.
‘How’d we all land the night shift?’
‘No clue.’ Tully didn’t sound happy about it, glaring at White who shrugged and said something about his pregnant wife being unbearable and needing to get out of the house for the night. It said something when you’d rather sleep on a twenty year old lumpy mattress in a drafty fire station than face your wife’s craving for peanut butter and lettuce cups.
Ashley took one sip of his coffee and the alarm went off. Groaning, he put it in the sink and ran for the truck. They hadn’t been there ten minutes and already someone was burning down the house? It was usually quiet, people had finished cooking dinner, the sun was down, the weather was good. There was no reason anything should be one fire.
‘Can you repeat that?’ Bell was asking on the phone as he climbed into the cab beside White, who was driving. Whatever it was looked bad on Bell’s face. He looked around the truck at them all, taking them in as if reminding himself who was with him. Seeing who would have his back.
The GPS came to life with instructions and he turned to look at them, more serious than Ashley’d ever seen him. He took a few deep breaths, went to speak to them and had to stop and take a few more. He was struggling with the words so badly Ashley no longer wanted to hear them.
‘It would seem a group of men walked onto a bus, locked the doors, doused several passengers in an accelerant and set them on fire.’
Nobody moved. Ashley wasn’t sure anyone breathed.
‘What?’ Tully squinted.
‘You heard me.’ Bell stared ahead at the road as White put the siren on and sped up. People burned quickly, they didn’t have a lot of time.
‘What’s the world coming to,’ Tully hissed under his breath, closing his eyes and taking several deep breaths.
Ashley was too busy trying to imagine it. There would be dead people, and people dying. Not an easy death, either; they were burning. And someone had lit them alight, deliberately. He thought it was the worst thing you could do to someone and felt sick at the thought of it.
‘How could they do that?’ But he wasn’t really asking and no-one replied.
They turned onto Parramatta Road and headed west toward Annandale, a plume of smoke visible in the distance. The closer they drove, the more cars were haphazardly parked across the road, police detours already forming to send cars away from the 438 route bus that was stopped where it had tried to turn out of the bus stop and back onto the road, the whole back end on fire, bodies scattered on the bitumen.
Good Samaritans had rushed in and were applying first aid, but more people were standing around with their phones out, filming. It sickened Ashley but he forced himself to ignore it and followed Bell’s orders, getting water on the bus and watching Tully head in with Bell to get anyone still living off.
People were crying, leaning on one another and sobbing but refusing to leave even though they didn’t know anyone involved. They’d walked by and realised something horrible was happening and were now clinging to the drama, making it their own. Not helping, merely absorbing. Ashley knew they would have all kinds of opinions that would be splashed over the news and distort the truth and he loathed it.
He loathed the whole scenario. There was an old man sitting on the curb, his arm black and bloodied, shirt still smouldering. A young woman was sitting with him, her coat wrapped around him, holding his hand while they waited for an ambulance, but he would be one of the last seen to, his injuries not severe enough. That small piece of humanity though, a stranger holding his hand and offering what little comfort she could, reminded him what he was doing there.
‘Jameson, get in here!’ Tully bellowed from the bus doorway where he was carrying out a teenage girl with a burn down her leg and hip. Ashley left White to the hose and rushed in, taking the steps onto the bus two at a time and then freezing at the carnage.
Two men were very dead on the back seat. They would need dental records to identify. The smell was horrendous and Ashley barely kept from vomiting, mostly because his stomach was empty. The bile still rose in his mouth, choking him with the acidic burn in the back of his throat.
‘I need you to help lift her out,’ Bell called out, snapping him out of his stupor. Rushing forward, Ashley realised Bell was crouched over a woman and administering first aid. She was horribly burned, one arm wouldn’t make it and her chest was moving strangely, but he pushed the sight aside and focussed on stepping over the seats to get to her feet, helping Bell lift her and manoeuvre her out of the bus. It was hard going; they only had a blanket to use as a stretcher in the confined space and she was screaming in pain, jerking and throwing them off balance but as soon as they were down the steps an ambulance crew were there with a proper stretcher and took her away.
More ambulances were arriving, helping to take the wounded and check those they thought they were in shock, in case they’d missed something. Tully and White manned the hose while Ashley followed Bell, checking the injured and helping the paramedics to get victims into ambulances.
Police were starting to swarm the scene, taking witnesses aside and beginning to ask questions, but Ashley was only aware of them in his periphery as a wash of blue that wove through the crowd, slowly pushing it back like a tidal wave being sucked out to sea.
‘Jameson,’ Stankovic gripped his shoulder and Ashley finished tying a cold pack to a little girl’s ankle before standing and giving the man his attention.
‘Mind coming on the bus with me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Uh … okay, but will you please come anyway?’ Ashley only agreed because the man looked as sickened as he felt. He followed him back on board and leaned against the pole at the front while Stankovic did a slow assessment, moving seat by seat and taking notes on a notepad he was carrying.
‘Can you tell me where you found people?’
‘Bell was first in here, with Tully, but when I got here Bell was there, and a woman was in the aisle. And the two bodies at the back.’ He waved at the dead still sitting there as if waiting to get off at the next stop. Ashley needed off the bus.
‘What injuries have you noted?’
‘Injuries not compatible with life,’ he indicated the dead and gave the line they were trained to say and Stankovic nodded and noted it down. ‘The woman will lose her arm, and has severe burns. She was alive when we removed her from the bus.’ What happened from there was out of his control, and for that at least he was grateful.
Stankovic made his notes as quickly as possible and they fled the bus together, neither man wanting to be there. The smoke was finally clearing and tape had been put up as a barrier for several hundred metres all around them, but gawkers still lined the tape and filmed on their phones and screamed at them, nonsense words that meant nothing but still somehow hurt. Like they weren’t trying or doing a good job.
As if it wasn’t the hardest thing he’d ever done.
‘Hey,’ Clay was suddenly there and Ashley had never been more grateful for the hand that grabbed the back of his neck and squeezed in understanding. He felt his eyes prickle but refused to cry.
‘You guys got called in, huh,’ he sniffled.
‘This is the third attack in eight hours,’ Clay whispered, pulling him aside becau
se he wasn’t supposed to be saying anything. He had all of Ashley’s attention.
‘The third?’
‘It’s been a bad afternoon,’ Clay admitted. ‘Tay noticed a guy back there who was at the first incident and sent Finn after him. We’re just waiting to see if he catches him.’
‘Fuck …’ Ashley turned to survey the road. There were less bodies now, less emergency staff and less bystanders, but there were a lot of police, and White and Tully were packing up the hose, the fire long extinguished.
‘How could someone do this? It’s …’
‘We’ll catch them,’ Clay promised. ‘You guys did a really good job here. Handled it better than the last crew. They couldn’t cope. Pretty sure the whole team will quit tomorrow, they were so shaken.’
‘Fire’s a horrible way to go,’ Ashley mumbled. He didn’t think most people understood. It was something you realised when you walked into a fire instead of away from it, and you felt the heat wash over you and singe you until you could barely breathe and you kept going anyway. When you were surrounded by flames you felt how horrible an end it was in a way you couldn’t fully comprehend if you’d never been in.
‘Don’t go anywhere, okay? We’ll take you with us …’
‘I’m on shift,’ he argued, but Clay shook his head and pointed over at Bell who was ushering them back to the truck. Ashley hurried over.
‘You’re staying with the cops for witness statements and fire presence,’ Bell told him. ‘I’ll take the truck back with White and Tully and wait for a volunteer crew to arrive and then I’ll come back and make sure everything’s okay here. If anything changes, call the station and let me know. Alright?’
Ashley wanted to leave too, so badly, but he wanted to know Finn was okay more and the easiest way to do that was wait and see for himself.
He went and sat on a bench at the bus stop and watched the truck pull away, leaving the road empty save for the deserted bus. Stankovic sat down heavily beside him and studied his notes but Ashley noticed his hands were shaking.
‘Not your average arson case, huh.’
‘No,’ Stankovic agreed weakly. ‘Nothing average about it at all.’
They were quiet for a time.
‘You guys did a real good job here,’ Stankovic admitted. ‘Better than I would’ve expected.’
‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’ They always did a good job, and this was not the time for anyone to be questioning that.
‘It means I couldn’t have done it,’ Stankovic replied calmly, oblivious to his anger, or too tired to pay it any mind. ‘It means I’m really happy you were here because I couldn’t have done what you did.’
He nodded and got up, shoving his notepad deliberately under his arm, and strode away to speak to an officer on the other side of the road. Ashley watched him go, but didn’t feel like he saw him at all.
14
Where childish dreams end
The Riot Squad were on the move, gathering at the entrance to an alley behind the bus stop. Ashley gripped the slats under his knees tightly to keep from jumping up and rushing over to see what was going on. It was hard, especially when he saw Taylor and Finn emerge, a man handcuffed between them with a dark scowl contorting his features.
Taylor looked furious. Finn looked tired. His overalls were torn down one sleeve and there was blood on the exposed skin. Harris clapped Finn on the shoulder and they talked for a bit but they were too far away for Ashley to hear. Eventually Clay pointed in his direction and Finn looked over, startled and panicked. He rushed over then, barely stopping in front of the seat, leaning down to cup Ashley’s face, stroking his cheeks and tilting his head from side to side, checking for injuries.
‘I’m fine,’ Ashley promised, reaching for what he now saw was a graze on Finn’s arm.
‘So am I. I just took a corner too fast and hit some bricks, nothing’s broken.’
‘The skin’s broken,’ Ashley argued and he knew it was only because he was angry about the fire. He didn’t want to take it out on Finn but he couldn’t stop himself.
‘Shh,’ Finn soothed, wrapping his arms around him briefly and kissing his cheek, shielded from the media and onlookers by the tinted bus shelter Perspex. ‘I’m sorry, I know this was horrible.’
‘Not your fault,’ Ashley protested.
‘Sort of. If we’d caught them at the first one, this wouldn’t have happened.’
That was actually a good point, but Ashley knew all too well it was no one’s fault but the people who did it. The police certainly weren’t to blame for not being able to magically identify and arrest the perpetrators.
‘You got him?’ He nodded at the man in cuffs.
‘One of them, yeah, I think so. He reeks of fuel and was seen at two scenes. He’s also known to us.’
‘For arson?’
‘No,’ Finn frowned, looking back over at his team and then sitting beside Ashley, taking his hand and stroking Ash’s fingers. The way he watched their fingers tangled together so intently was the only sign of how stressed he was and how badly his day had affected him. For all Ash wanted to curl up under a doona and cry, he knew Finn had seen this three times today and was feeling even worse.
‘What for?’ He prodded, knowing Finn would tell him even if he shouldn’t.
‘Illegal immigration,’ he admitted softly, still focussed on their fingers.
‘The same case as before?’
‘The same case as always,’ Finn tried to explain. ‘The fire at the warehouse, the apartment, these, there have been a few houses in the western suburbs, all with the same MO. Someone gets doused and lit up and the whole place burns to cover it up. All the victims are illegals, here on fake visas, doing unpaid work to pay back the men who brought them into the country.’
‘Men like Dao?’ Ashley wanted to clarify.
‘Sort of. He’s a puppet too, really. Working for someone else, and that person is working for someone even higher up but in the end … Yeah, men like him,’ Finn agreed.
‘This is what you’ve been working on the last few weeks, right?’
‘Mmhmm.’
No wonder they’d all been so on edge. And tired and cranky and unable to talk about anything from work. It was a big case, and if Finn was talking now it was because he thought they were close to closing, which had to be a good thing. It was escalating too quickly; when people were being lit on fire on the public transport system you had to act fast.
‘It’s why you warned me to be careful at work,’ he mused, remembering the warning Finn had given at the church, which seemed like forever ago.
‘Yes,’ Finn agreed, a small smile on his lips with the memory.
‘What’s with the burning them? Why not just shoot them or something? This is horrific.’
‘It’s an effective deterrent to others,’ Finn whispered and the way he said it Ashley knew he was talking from experience, but not as a police officer. He let his fingers tighten around Finn’s and kissed his knuckles, wishing he could take him home and hold him and soothe whatever demons were chasing him.
‘Do you have to go back to the station?’
‘Yeah. We have to process this guy, and then they’ll send us out to find his friend. We’re pretty sure we know where he is, but not certain so we’ll see what we can get out of his partner first.’
‘Okay. Can I meet you at your place when you get off shift?’
‘Yes!’ Finn seemed startled that he’d asked, but pleased and he rummaged in his pocket and held out a key. ‘I got this made for you.’
A key to his place?
‘That was quick.’
‘I’ll see you there,’ Finn grinned, kissing him one last time before jogging over to where the twins were jamming their prisoner into the back of the Riot van. It seemed like the man ‘accidentally’ hit his head a few times trying to get in the back.
Clay waved to him and Ashley watched them leave without bothering to get up from his seat. He was somehow not at all surpr
ised when it was Zhao who returned with Stankovic.
‘Seriously?’ Of all the people they could have sent, why him?
‘I can’t believe you put in a complaint against me!’ Zhao bemoaned, sitting down heavily beside him and staring at the empty road.
‘I didn’t. My boss did.’ Which really said it all.
‘No, two people did!’
‘Yeah, both my bosses,’ Ashley agreed, growing angry. ‘This is completely inappropriate; I didn’t make the complaints, you’re still being an arse and people died here today! Stop whining and go do your damned job!’ He didn’t really want to get up but he wasn’t staying near the man if he didn’t have to, so Ashley got up and marched over to Stankovic, waving at the bus.
‘Am I done here? I want to leave.’
‘Just a few more …’
‘There are marks on the road where dead people were, Stankovic. You should know, you put them there. You’ve got a photo of everything with the same marks on it right there on your little notebook. You’ve got my statement. What the hell else could you possibly need?’
‘Well, it’s just in case …’
‘Fuck your just in case, I’m leaving! I watched people die here, and I don’t wanna be here anymore.’
The officer next to Stankovic looked between them and then shrugged.
‘You want a ride back to your station?’
‘Yes.’ Because his stupid truck had left him there.
‘Okay, then,’ the officer started walking toward his car and Stankovic was smart enough to let them go. It wasn’t like he didn’t know where to find him if he needed anything else.
Ashley was dropped at the station, but Bell had already gone so he sent him a text to say he was going home. The new crew were already on shift, nervously checking the alarm, having heard what had been happening all day and worrying they would be called to a similar scene. He didn’t talk to them, and they understood when he left without a word.
He took his ute and drove straight to Finn’s, finding Anubis sleeping by the front gate.
‘Hey buddy, how are you?’
The dog was crying. Literally, crocodile tears as he wept at the gate until Ashley opened it and then he had thirty-five kilos of Doberman trying to barrel him over.
Rhino Ash (Saturday Barbies Book 2) Page 23
