Double Bind

by Karen Bell

  Please believe that I never meant to hurt you or deceive you. I am sharing this with you now because I can’t keep it to myself any longer. I realise now that I have to trust someone and I can’t bear to think that you will end our relationship believing that I didn’t value it.

  More than you will ever know – I did.

  My choices were guided by one thing only, the need to keep Holly out of danger. However you decide to act on this, please remember that she is all I have.

  I can never find the words to tell you how sorry I am.

  Mila.

  Ryan picked up his mobile to call and then thought better of it. She’d said they’d had her phones tapped. In less than a minute he was back on his bike, leaving Jack to wonder what had just gone on.

  He took the corners without slowing, conscious only of the need to get there and make things right. He cut the headlight and slowed down as he entered her street, in case the house was being watched. No sign of anyone out front and no lights on. Not surprising, it was by now three in the morning. Ryan ducked around the back to find Mila’s car in the driveway. He hammered out a message Mila, are you awake? He got no reply and after a few minutes dialled the number. ‘The number you have dialled is currently switched off or not in a mobile area. Please try again later.’ The landline went to message bank too. He didn’t leave a message. Who knew if they were listening. ‘Fuck!’ Ryan swore, not knowing what to think. Was she in there or wasn’t she?

  He was not prone to panic but he had an ominous feeling settling over him like wet concrete. He ducked back to the front of the house and took the stairs to the front door in a single stride ringing the doorbell twice. There was no answer.

  ‘Fuck!’ He swore again. She’d said she was a light sleeper and it would do no good to break down the door and set off the alarm.

  He considered finding the home of Robert Taylor’s parents. Could she be taking refuge there? He knew they lived behind the Anglican church close by, but didn’t want to alarm them in the dead of the night.

  Holly Taylor was somewhere in Melbourne and no doubt connected by mobile, if he only could track the number and find out if she’d spoken with her mother, but he doubted she would know anything about the break-ins or what had transpired since. Finally he tried calling the club where Mila had worked but it was closed.

  Fifteen minutes later he was back home calling the techies at the makeshift office in the shipping yard to find out if Mila’s phone might have a GPS that they could somehow track.

  ‘Is the phone switched on?’

  ‘No. The message says it’s off.’

  ‘Then that’s a negative; the tracker only works when the phone’s on.’

  Ryan knew his mounting concern was well founded. The photo taken at the casino of Robert in the company of those murderers was more connection than he needed. It all seemed so obvious now in hindsight, now that he knew they’d broken in a second time and intimidated her. He knew exactly what they were capable of and the thought of what had happened to Mike and the possibility of not being able to save Mila brought all his old feelings of inadequacy rushing to the surface.

  It took a few calls but Ryan soon had the private phone number for James Arnett, the owner of the nightclub. He needed to find out when they’d last seen or heard from Mila and despite his watch showing three-fifteen a.m., he only hesitated for a second before making the call.

  ‘Hello, sorry to wake you, this is Agent Ryan Blake, from the Australian Federal Police, I’m calling about an employee of yours, Mila Taylor.’

  ‘Is she alright?’ Arnett asked groggy with sleep.

  ‘I don’t know. I was going to ask you the same question.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her since Sunday night,’ he answered, ‘but if you think it’s urgent I’ll call our booker Vivienne. Are you sure this can’t wait until morning? Viv was under strict instructions only to book Mila for work with our regulars.’

  Ryan bristled when he heard the word work but felt his stress metre drop a notch to think that the booker might know the client. ‘I’d really appreciate if you would call her now. I haven’t heard from her since then either and I’ve reason to believe she’s in danger.’

  ‘Mila assured me that she was going to call you, after she told me that she had been threatened. Did you not hear from her on Monday at least?’

  So this James Arnett knew about their relationship and clearly had been confided in about the home invasion too. ‘I think she might have delivered a letter to my home that day but I’ve only found it now.’

  ‘Okay. Give me your number and I’ll call you back in five minutes.’

  Ryan paced the room while he waited, praying that Mila was safe. He didn’t like the idea that she was with any other man at this time of night but anyone would be preferable to those cold killers.

  His phone rang. ‘Yes?’

  Arnett sounded agitated. ‘The good news is that Vivienne spoke with her yesterday afternoon. The bad news is she gave her a job with a non-regular last night. Apparently the offer was too good to refuse.’

  ‘Fuck! Damn-it! What do we know?’

  ‘The job was for seven-thirty p.m. at the Cambridge in Surry Hills.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Arnett hesitated. ‘I’ve just called the client’s mobile number and it appears to be a fake.’

  ‘Fuck! Give me the name and the number anyway. Thanks for your help.’ He struggled to make the gratitude sound genuine before hanging up.

  Ryan immediately called the hotel to find out if the guest name correlated with a room number. ‘No. I don’t want to be put through I just want to know if anyone saw a dark haired woman, early thirties going to that room and if the guest has checked out yet.’

  ‘No-one’s checked out of the room but I can see that the guest has paid by cash in advance so we won’t know until the maid goes in tomorrow. My shift started at 10 p.m., just let me ask the bell-boy if he’s seen anyone, he’s been here all night.’ Ryan was forced to tune in to his own racing heartbeat and shallow breath while waiting for the manager to come back to the phone.

  ‘No sorry, he didn’t see anyone fitting that description go up to that room. There was an attractive blonde that he took up there, but no brunette.’

  Ryan had hung up, cursing with frustration when it came to him. He hit redial.

  ‘Ask the bell-boy if she looked like Marilyn Monroe.’

  ‘Seriously? Hold on.’ His response was quick. ‘Yes, that was her.’

  ‘I’m on my way over.’ Ryan hung up and immediately called for back-up.

  The police operator repeated the instruction ‘Did you say the Cambridge Hotel?’

  ‘Yes, The Cambridge in Surry Hills. No marked cars and no sirens!’

  ‘You’ve already got surveillance, Steve Richardson is down there. He’s been staking out your drug dealer’s car since yesterday late afternoon. He’s in the underground car park, bottom level.’

  ‘Steve’s there? Patch me through.’ Ryan was again out the door and running for the bike.’

  ‘Steve, Steve, can you hear me? It’s Ry- FUCK!’ He hadn’t even had the chance to identify himself to Steve, let alone alert him, when the line dropped out.

  ###

  They had to ascertain if Mila was inside, without tipping off the suspected abductors.

  Ryan made the call to his boss from the foyer of the hotel.

  As the coordinator of the operation, and the one with his neck on the line, Tony was sympathetic but cautious.

  ‘We don’t have any hard evidence Ryan that she’s in there or that she’s even in trouble. And if it is them and you go in with guns blazing, it could undermine the whole sting.’

  ‘We know she went in there and no-one has seen her come out,’ Ryan argued. ‘The dealer’s car has been parked in the hotel garage since before she arrived and Steve’s still got it in view. There’s a light on in the main room but the curtains are closed. We know that the name and phone number given to the
club and the hotel were both fake. How much more convincing do you need?

  ‘I need you to slow down and take a breath. I need to know you’re thinking clearly.’

  ‘Listen, what if we get the hotel to set off a fire alarm? That should shake things up, and if they don’t come out at least it gives us an excuse to go in and check the room. I’m sure I can borrow a hotel uniform.’

  His boss thought about it, not yet prepared to give the go ahead. He’d known Ryan for long enough to trust that his instincts for a situation were usually spot on. But he also knew that his best man had more than a professional involvement with this woman and that his judgement would be affected.

  He wanted to give him free rein but as the National Director of Drug Operations, it was his job to make sure nothing jeopardised the bigger picture.

  ‘Lets say you’re right and she’s in there. How does that impact the rest of the case?’

  ‘They’re obviously not planning to bring a container load of ephedrine to a hotel so I’d say that us taking Mila out of the equation isn’t going to stop them trying to complete the deal. They might be trying to swing the odds in their favour but they’re not going to just blow off a multi-million dollar deal, even if they believe we have a lead.’

  ‘From what you’ve told me, it’s more complicated than that. Assuming they have taken her, we don’t know for sure if its because of her connection through you to the case or because her husband owed the same guys a wad of money.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ argued Ryan in frustration ‘either way, she’s in danger!’

  ‘All right, but we do it my way. I want tactical response guys on the roof and in the corridor as back up. Vests on all of you and for Christ sake use someone else in the role of hotel employee. You look as much like a bell-boy as the Incredible Hulk. Get Steve out of his surveillance hole to help. I’ll fill in the local firies so they know the alarm’s not for real and I’ll send someone from the Fire station with a uniform for you. Don’t rush it.’

  ‘Forget TRG, we’ve got officers at the station next door, can’t we just use them?’

  ‘Jesus Ryan, you make it sound easy but you know it’s a different jurisdiction. Give me a few minutes and I’ll call you back.’

  Ryan broke the news to the hotel manager, who was none too impressed with the idea.

  ‘It’s not even sparrow’s fart and you want me to drag every guest out of bed on a hunch. Do I have a choice in this?’

  ‘No.’ Ryan lied.

  He had no written warrant and the manager could have officially refused but then the manager wasn’t about to call a lawyer for advice at this time either.

  Back-up was soon in place and Ryan and Steve alighted on the fourteenth floor just as the shrill of the hotel alarm filled the air. Guests began pouring from their rooms in varying degrees of undress, looking around them in confusion.

  When no one emerged from 1401, Ryan, in firefighter uniform knocked loudly on the door. Nothing. Steve inserted the swipe card as Ryan felt for his gun. They counted to three imperceptibly and opened the door. The living room was empty and they moved on to the bedroom and finally the bathroom.

  ‘Damn! We’re too late!’ Ryan phoned down for the alarm to be switched off. ‘Treat it like a crime scene. There’s got to be evidence here.’

  He looked once around the suite before putting his hand on the television screen. ‘Fuck! They must have just left, it’s still hot for Christ’s sake.’ He ran to the window on the off chance that he might see them, but the street below was deserted.

  ###

  Twenty minutes earlier, Mila’s captors had untied her and dragged her to her feet.

  ‘Time to go. We’ll be watching you. If you struggle or try anything foolish, you’ll pay for it later. If anyone else gets in the lift you smile and say nothing.’

  They had flanked her as they’d stood waiting for the lift to arrive. It was empty, and they were alone all the way down to the B1 basement carpark. Mila noted a security camera in the lift and hoped it was recording. The carpark too was empty and they were unseen as Mila, with hands retied was forced into the boot of a black Mercedes sedan.

  On level B2 below, Steve had looked at his watch, wondering who at operations had tried to call him ten minutes earlier. He’d tried to call back, but in his concrete underground tomb, he couldn’t even get a line. Worst place for a stake-out. No internet, no radio, not even decent phone reception. He’d been there for ten hours now with a clear view to the dealer’s car, an old BMW some twenty metres away. Still, the owner hadn’t returned and probably wouldn’t now until morning. He’d heard the squeal of rubber on the slick concrete of the floor above. Bloody hoons, he’d thought at the time.

  He too had run his hand over the television in the recently vacated suite and had put two and two together even before Ryan, but he hadn’t gone so far as to share the connection. His colleague was pretty frustrated already and Steve couldn’t see how it would help anyway.

  Ryan walked around, looking for clues, signs of a struggle. He was in the bedroom when he spotted some small stains that looked like tiny sprays of blood on the flecked carpet. He bent down and ran a gloved finger over one of them.

  His voice was as controlled as he could keep it, as he rang for forensics. He checked under the bed, the desk, the bathroom and walked back to the living room before he spotted more haphazardly cleaned bloodspots and something else in the carpet. Tiny glass rhinestones, the same as those he’d seen on Mila’s shoes on their first date. The same shoes he’d slipped off her feet when she’d been trampled at the concert.

  An image of her, gagged and bound flashed before him and he put his hand to his forehead as a stabbing pain caught him unprepared. It was because of him that she’d been lured here and his fault that she was now in a perilous situation. What if he couldn’t find her in time? What if they got their drugs and had no further use for her?

  He called Tony for the second time. ‘They’ve left the dealer’s car and gone in another. I’m sure of it. I’m going to see what’s been caught on the security cameras here, then Jack and I are coming back to find this fucking shipment. It’s the only thing that’s going to lead us to these pricks. Steve needs a break, but we have to get a man to keep watch on the car still here at the hotel and also at the dealer’s house in case they’re on their way back there.’

  ‘We’re onto it Ryan,’ his boss answered patiently. ‘You haven’t slept in twenty-four hours either. I’m ordering you to go home and don’t come back until 0900 tomorrow – well today as the case may be.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Thursday

  The warehouse, Mila had concluded was inescapable. The only windows ran in rows along both sides, high up, just under the roofline. The building was old, but it was a solid brick construction with a giant roller door at one end and a series of offices at the other, to which Mila had no access. Racks of steel shelving lined one wall and were partially filled with commercial cleaning products and heavy-duty equipment that Mila assumed were a business front that concealed the real nature of their dealings. She wondered if this was where Robert had worked for the passed three years, cooking their accounts, wondered if one of those keys fitted a safe that might be concealed somewhere here.

  A few metres from where she was now tied, was an open plan kitchenette with a table and chairs, where her kidnappers, who’s number had grown to four, were seated, smoking and talking. They had laid their pistols casually on the table as one might deposit a set of keys or a mobile phone. Beyond them, was a basic internal bathroom. Mila’s first trip there had been a double disappointment, as she had been accompanied, as promised, by the sleazy smart-aleck from the hotel and she had quickly noted that the toilet cubicle had no windows and no chance for escape.

  She’d been at the warehouse since before dawn and judging by the sun finally sinking below the high windows, she estimated it to be early evening. Soon it would be dark and she was as anxious as her captors to fin
d out if the container had been released yet from the terminal. The voice in her head that was unfailingly, childishly optimistic, had lately been taking a back row seat. That voice, continued to hope that the container had been identified by the police and that Ryan would soon be on his way, but the voice of reality, the one that was toughened and unforgiving had climbed into the driver’s seat and taken the wheel. That voice quoted back to her what she’d overheard earlier, that the container had been crossed off the search list. No one would find it and no one would find her either. The Brigada had been one step ahead all the way.

  The previous night at the hotel, despite limited information and resources, Mila had had plenty of time to plan. She had formulated various contingencies, not knowing if her captors would choose to transport her to the warehouse in the back seat or the boot of the car. She was right in expecting that they wouldn’t allow her to see where they were going and right in believing that she would be in some way secured.

  She had gleaned from an earlier conversation she’d overheard, that it wasn’t far from the hotel and she’d been reasonably confident that she could remember a series of directions and try to estimate the distances by counting the seconds between. She had already worked out a code of sorts to abbreviate them, adapting tricks she had learned as a child from her father, when they’d played and memorised every move of entire chess games together. With that plan in place, her concern shifted about how to steal back her phone and the logistics of getting to somewhere private enough and for long enough to punch out a text message.

  Even as she was being forced into the boot, Mila had looked for an emergency release catch but there was none to be found. Once inside, she had planned to try and kick out the tail-lights while the car was in transit. She had heard of it being done, and even before the car had left the underground parking lot, Mila, with wrists bound had flipped herself over and wiggled into one corner, but it was pitch black in the boot and she was foiled by an interior panel that simply couldn’t be removed. There wasn’t a lot more she could do while trying to take note of every twist and turn of the journey, but she nudged off her sandals, figuring that bare feet would be preferable to high heels in the event of having a chance to run.