He was watching her closely.
'What we don't know,' said Jill, 'is why you haven't told us that. We don't want to believe that you're trying to protect this guy. Did you know that your wife called the hotline?'
'Of course I knew,' Joss said.
'Then why didn't you tell us everything the other day, Joss? We get it that you're worried for your safety. But why wouldn't you tell us everything you know to help us lock him up faster?'
Joss sighed deeply and raised his eyes to the ceiling. He then lowered his forehead to his hands. Isobel stood and walked to her husband; she touched his neck, tears running now. Jill wondered whether to speak, but Gabriel shook his head silently at her.
When he raised his face, Joss's eyes stared directly into Jill's.
'Look around you, Jill,' he said. 'Everything in this house is my world. I don't want this world to change.' He rubbed at his chin. 'I know that not coming forward was not very honourable, but I fooled myself into thinking that if I just tried to ignore the past, it would stay there. Stupid, really. I've always known that was never going to happen.'
Isobel, still standing at his side, rubbed his shoulder. He placed his own hand over hers and stood. He talked as he paced.
'It seems you know a bit about my life as a kid,' said Joss. 'What you probably don't know is that for the past twenty years I've considered that kid dead. It's like he was never a part of me. I can't relate to anything I did or believed back then. When I got the chance to change my life, I took it and fucking ran.'
Isobel flinched a little and watched her husband closely.
'You're right,' he continued. 'I did know Cutter. I suppose I would have called the group I hung out with at that time my best friends. My mother was out of it and my dad wasn't around. My friends were my family. There was nothing else worth caring about. I just didn't know any different. I know what a real friend is now, and the only one I have in this world is my wife.' He looked at her, his face serious. She smiled encouragingly at him.
'Back then, until I was twelve or thirteen, I didn't really care about my life or whether I was alive or dead. There's not much I can admit to being proud of. Everything was opportunistic. We'd steal anything we could get our hands on. Sometimes so we could eat, sometimes just for the fuck of it. Back then – when you've got nothing else to live for – it was fun. Stealing cars, smash and grabs, police chases . . .'
Joss stood now by the sliding doors, staring into the yard. Jill noticed Gabriel also rising from the table quietly, moving closer to him, wanting to catch every word, but unwilling to break the flow.
'Then something really bad happened,' said Joss, 'just before I went to live with my grandparents.' He looked up and seemed surprised to see Gabriel standing closer to him. 'Me, Cutter, Simon Esterhase and Carl Waterman decided we'd do over Carl's dad's bike shop. We used to call Carl "Fuzzy". He said his dad would get everything back on insurance, and we were dying to get our hands on these new trick bikes in the shop. Mr Waterman wouldn't even let us touch them. I don't know how it happened . . .' Joss paused and started to cough. The cough caught and his face turned red as he struggled to catch his breath. He stared wildly around the kitchen. Isobel was by his side in a moment with a glass of water. He downed it in two swallows, and handed the glass back. Jill felt slightly envious of the silent synchronicity between the pair.
Joss took a couple of deep breaths. 'Sorry,' he said, his voice devoid of emotion. 'Anyway, Fuzzy let us into the shop while his dad was asleep and we took the bikes. We came back after hiding them and knew we had to smash the window so it would look like someone broke in.' He cleared his throat again. 'One of the panels must've speared inwards. Somehow it stabbed Fuzzy in the neck.' Joss was unconsciously holding his own throat, his voice threadlike.
'You didn't actually see the wound being inflicted, then?' Gabriel asked.
Joss shook his head. 'I tried to hold his throat together.' Isobel was at his side, almost touching. 'But, he just, kind of like, drowned.' Tears stood in his eyes. 'He was looking at me, his eyes just . . .' He trailed off.
After a pause, he continued. Emotionless. 'Anyway, he died there while I watched, and then I pissed off. I got taken to my grandmother's after that because my mum got hit by a car. I heard a few months later that Cutter got arrested, but he didn't report me and Esterhase. I thought it was a miracle that I got away with it, a sign that I had to change my life.' He looked up at them, defensive, as though challenging them to doubt him, or to laugh.
He took a seat and began to tear a piece of toast into a pile of crumbs.
Finally, Joss continued. 'You see, where I am today, I don't want people like that anywhere near me. I don't even want to know they exist. When the shit happened at Andy's, I just wanted all of us to get out of there alive. I would've done something to stop them if I could, but there was just no way.'
Isobel nodded.
'And then, just before they left, he looked at me, and I knew it was Cutter. I don't know how, but I knew it was him. I know now that he recognised me too. He followed us a couple of days ago to the movies,' he glanced at his wife. Isobel's hand was at her throat. 'He said some smartarse things. I knew then that we weren't safe and that it was definitely him that night. I told Is I wanted her to move away with Charlie for a while, but she wouldn't go. I knew we had to tell the cops, so she rang you guys.'
'Joss thought that if we did it anonymously,' said Isobel in a quiet, pleading voice, 'that the stuff about Fuzzy would never have to come up. I mainly agreed to do it though because I thought that Joss was mistaken and you guys would look into Nguyen and figure out he wasn't involved.' She looked at her husband apologetically. He laid a hand on her arm and sighed.
'Anyway, I might as well tell you everything now,' he said. His wife looked at him, surprised. 'I've been back to where we used to hang out,' he continued, as Isobel drew in a sharp breath, 'and tried to find out more about him, like where he lives now, so I could pass that on to you.'
'Joss!' Isobel looked angry.
'Anyway, I can tell you he's still hanging out with Simon Esterhase.'
'We're going to want to know everything you discovered out there, Joss,' Gabriel spoke to him for the first time. 'But I'd like you to come out to Liverpool today so that we can record your statement. I don't want to miss a thing you've got to say next. It might be exactly what we need to get the lot of them.'
Jill and Gabriel left Joss and Isobel, arranging for the couple to meet them out at Liverpool at two p.m.
Joss lingered at the doorway as they were leaving.
'Just so we're clear,' he said to them, eyeballing each in turn, voice low, 'you guys had better get this fucker fast. I told you I'd do whatever I had to do to protect them,' he angled his head back towards the interior of his house. 'And you need to understand that I will.'
Lawrence Last was not in his office when they got back to Liverpool; an urgent meeting with the police commissioner, his assistant told them. Jill shared a sympathetic expression with the uniformed man behind the desk. The taskforce meeting was delayed until Last's return.
Jill and Gabriel spent the next half-hour working on a report to summarise their movements since the last meeting.
They were just wrapping it up when Jill sensed someone behind her, heading their way. She kept her eyes on the computer screen and tried to detect the identity of the visitor from his movements. Derek Reid, she guessed, just before he spoke.
'Don't you two make a cute couple?'
Jill kept typing. Gabriel grunted.
'Come on! Just shit-stirring,' Reid said. 'Got anything new?'
'Not really,' said Gabriel.
'Not that you'd share leads anyway, hey, Delahunt?' said Reid.
'We're just finishing up a report, but we won't have anything hard until later this arvo,' said Gabriel. 'We'll fill you in on everything in the next meeting. We've got a couple of vics coming in later today.'
Reid seemed annoyed by Gabriel's neutral tone. He took
a step closer to Jill, and because she was still seated, his crotch was now in her face. She stood and glared at him. He laughed at her.
'You wanna get some lunch, Jill?' said Gabriel.
She grabbed her bag from under the desk.
'Aw, how sweet,' grinned Reid. 'Can I come too? Since you've broken your rules about dating cops, Jackson, maybe you should give me a go. I'll make you forget all about Super Spy here.'
'I don't really know what you're talking about, Derek,' said Jill, smiling sweetly, 'but you're going to have to get over anything happening between you and me.' She swung her handbag over her shoulder. 'I don't date body builders. It's a little problem I have,' she stared pointedly at his groin, 'with the steroids.'
'Whoa!' Gabriel laughed, and turned to follow Jill as she walked towards the door.
'What's funny, Delahunt?' said Reid, smiling menacingly. 'Why don't you stay here and we can talk about it?'
Gabriel kept walking. 'Forget it, Derek. I don't do cock fights,' he said.
Jill and Gabriel left the room with Reid's parting words: 'Fucking freaks.'
Facing one another across the moulded plastic table, Jill felt an awkward silence between her and Gabriel for the first time since the initial taskforce meeting. The other patrons of the food hall also seemed low on conversation. Overweight kids in school uniform scoffed burgers or pizza for lunch. A young mum seated close to Jill fed her toddler hot chips, the child cawing for them like a hungry seagull. Pairs of people – a mother and daughter, perhaps, on the left, sisters or friends straight ahead – munched listlessly, exchanging grunts now and then.
Jill felt the muteness stealing over her. When that mode kicked in, she sometimes wondered whether she'd ever speak again. Why did she feel this way now? It couldn't have been Reid's comments – God knows she was used to crap like that. She looked down at the table and noticed that she'd used her milkshake as a barrier between them. This was ridiculous. She forced herself to speak.
'So how did you get posted to this case?' she asked. They'd discussed his past briefly before, but never in any detail.
'Lawrence Last asked for my help,' he said. 'I worked with him a year or so ago on an organised crime thing. I've been attached to police units on a few major cases now.'
'So, why this one?'
'My specialty's interrogation. Because they were coming up with so little trace evidence at the crime scenes, they figured they had to get more out of the witnesses and suspects. Anything to get these fuckers.'
'Makes sense,' she said. 'We're an odd group, this taskforce, don't you think? I mean David Tran – what's going on between him and Reid? And I wonder how he got injured – has he said anything to you?'
'Yeah. I'm surprised you haven't been told by someone yet. Everyone out here seems to have an opinion.'
Jill leaned back in her chair while Gabriel continued.
'He's the community liaison officer in the area,' he said. 'First contact for the Vietnamese community. Some of them trust him. Most of them don't. Culturally, it's taboo to speak outside the family about problems. He's seen as a traitor by many of his people because he's operating outside of their rules of silence.'
'Wow. That would be hard.'
'Yep, but it's a double dilemma for David, because he's never been fully accepted by some of the cops either. What did I hear Reid say the other day?' Gabriel took a sip of his drink while he thought. 'Oh yeah, that's it – Tran was called to the desk to speak to someone about some information that could've helped with the case. Reid went with him, so I took a walk over there too. David spoke Vietnamese to this bloke. Reid was like – You wouldn't think we were in Australia, would you mate? – some shit like that. Then he had a laugh with the girl behind the desk, um, what was it – Why don't they save their bloody Chinese for China or wherever they're from?'
'MENSA candidate, Reid. He's wasted in the cops,' said Jill. 'So what happened to David's leg?'
'Oh yeah, that. Heroin dealers from Cabra. Smashed his thighbone with a hammer.'
'Oh my God!' Jill raised a hand to her mouth.
'Yep. He was off duty. They got him in the toilets in Westfield. He'd sent up a few of their best re-sellers.'
'Wow. But David said he was off work HOD.'
'Yeah, Last made sure it was written up as Hurt on Duty. And Last got the fuckers too. Tran I.D.'d the cousin of one of the perps he locked up. So, now they want to kill him.'
'Shit.'
'Yup. For real. That's another reason Last wanted me over here. The organised gang shit is his next big target, once they get on top of the home invasions.'
'So what about you then, Gabe? Are there any deep dark secrets I should know?' Where the hell did that come from? Jill felt her cheeks grow hot. She never asked questions like that.
Gabriel sat there, head on an angle, watching her from under the brim of his cap.
'Sorry,' she said. 'I was just stuffing around. You don't have to answer that.'
'No, it's okay,' he said. 'It's just that I'm not usually great at speaking about my past. Specially at this time of year.'
'This is a rough time?'
Gabriel looked at her again, closed his eyes briefly. Finally, he sighed and pushed his food away.
'I joined the Feds with my wife,' he said.
Jill hoped the shock didn't show on her face.
'We met in a psych lecture at uni. We got married and joined the AFP together four years later. Started work on the Monday after the wedding, actually.' He smiled. 'I started the job in organised crime and Abi was assigned to major fraud. Between jobs, we worked our way together through the MOSC program.'
Phew. Jill had heard of the Management of Serious Crime program: it was the most intense major-crime training program in Australian law enforcement.
'Then after September 11, we both got routed to counterterrorism,' Gabriel continued. 'Three-quarters of us did, to tell you the truth.'
Jill listened. He'd cleared up some of the questions she'd had about him. But where was Gabriel's wife? He seemed to have read her mind as he continued.
'Abi and I were together for ten years. She was my world.' A small smile did not reach his eyes; they watched a scene from another time. 'We were still based in Canberra, running surveillance. Just a routine tip-off – a member of the public worried about their neighbour's allegiances. The target was a mufti from Queanbeyan; he'd just visited the subject of another intelligence report. Abi was the eye, following him a few cars back. I was with the rest of the team shadowing her.'
'The eye?' said Jill, and then regretted her utterance. She didn't want Gabriel to stop speaking, and she was afraid of breaking his train of thought.
'Yeah. The eye follows the rabbit – the target. The rest of the team follows the eye and ignores the rabbit. You don't want a fleet of cars trailing some poor prick. We just tail the one vehicle – the eye – and the eye can be rotated; that way we can maintain contact and chop and change positions when we need to.' He paused.
'Go on, Gabe. Sorry I interrupted.' She held her breath.
'Nothing great left to tell you, Jill. Some drunk motherfucker ran a light and killed my wife. Head on. He made it out alive. Serial offender. Lived to drink and drive another day, I'm afraid.' He reached unconsciously for his napkin and began to shred it, working around the edges in an organised pattern. 'I was first on the scene, thank God.'
Jill leaned forward, as Gabriel's voice had dropped with his eyes to the table.
'We had a few moments,' he said. 'We had a bit of time . . . And then the ambos got there.' He cleared his throat. 'Nothing they could do, though. I'd already tried. Abi and I, we tried, but, the injuries . . .' He looked up. Tears stood in his eyes, and he smiled sadly. 'Five years ago,' he said, 'last Saturday.'
Jill reached a hand towards his, but stopped just before their fingers touched. She could feel the warmth of his skin.
'Saturday,' she said. They'd eaten pasta in his unit. She'd fallen asleep with his cat.
'Y
ep. First anniversary I didn't spend alone. Thanks.'
Jill knew all about anniversaries. She swallowed at the lump in her throat. They were silent a moment, each thinking about that time of the year when the ghosts crowded closer, clamouring for more attention. This time she let her fingers find his. She covered his hand with her own. What would it feel like, she thought, to find and then lose your soul mate – to feel her dying, leaving you, wanting desperately to stay, but knowing there was nothing you could do? The helplessness, the loss of control; is love worth risking such desolation?
Gabriel gazed at the table. Jill stared at a wet smear on the soft skin next to his eye. She longed to wipe it away. She had her finger poised, ready, but left her hand where it was.
'I bet she was amazing.' Jill wasn't sure whether she spoke aloud. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. 'Hey,' she said. 'Your cat. You named her "Ten".'
He looked up and smiled. 'Best years of my life.'
An itchy impatience prevented Jill enjoying twilight on her balcony. She sat rocking on a chair, bare feet up on the small table.
It was just over a week since she'd become involved in the case. They'd come a long way – identified the main offender – but he was still out there, and they couldn't go in hard until they sighted him. Interviewing his friends and associates would drive him to ground.
But this guy was unhinged. He could attack again at any time, with or without his crew. She felt guilty being home so early, but there'd been nothing immediate for the taskforce to do, and Last had sent them home. She'd considered driving around trying to locate him herself, but they had crews from Penrith to Redfern out looking; there was nothing she could do tonight.
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