When he felt the flames climbing the stairs, Joss reclaimed his knife and wiped it on his leg. Charlie's body now shook with coughing. Joss's eyes streamed in the smoke.
He walked into his bedroom, heard the mortars falling, and listened to the howls of the orgiastic Tutsis drunk on the blood of the Hutus in the camp. He stepped over another body, and looked around for his wife. His saw the open window and crossed the room quickly. In the light from the half-moon, he saw that Isobel waited.
Joss handed their daughter through the window, and climbed out to join her on the roof.
32
JILL SHUT THE bedroom door, but she imagined she could still hear the woman rocking out there, back and forth, by the bay window. It reminded her of a circus tiger pacing its cage – the obsessive movements of a beast driven mad by captivity. She'd spoken to many sufferers of schizophrenia, and some told her that the medications made them feel just like that, imprisoned in a chemical cage in their mind. She focused on the room in front of her to distract herself from Joss's mother. Perhaps Mrs Preston-Jones was fortunate to be oblivious to the trouble her son faced.
Gabriel sat on a tapestry-covered chair at one side of the queen-sized bed. Joss and Isobel sat on the bed on either side of their little girl, Charlie, who was asleep, lightly sedated, under the covers. They all still reeked of burned wood. Images of the charcoaled bodies from the morgue this morning wafted through Jill's mind with the scent. Superintendent Last had called Jill just before dawn from the crime scene, the family's terrace in Balmain.
'This thing's gone to hell,' he told her over the speakerphone while she walked through her bedroom, still in darkness, gathering clothing. 'Your victims, Preston-Jones and Rymill . . .'
'Are they okay?' Jill could hear the fire brigade sirens in the background.
'. . . are on their way to the Prince Alfred Hospital.' He obviously hadn't heard her. 'Smoke inhalation, nothing too bad. Their house burned down.'
'Okay,' said Jill. So what was Last doing there?
'There's a couple of bodies in there, Jill. Preston-Jones admitted to killing two men who broke into their home tonight. He says it's our boys – the same men that committed the home invasion at the Wu property.'
Jill sat on the edge of her bed, raised a hand to her mouth. 'And is it?' she said.
'Looks like it, Jill. The description fits. The local boys called me when they got Preston-Jones's story.'
'So what happened?' she asked.
'I haven't yet personally spoken to Preston-Jones. I've been told that he and his wife escaped with their child by climbing onto the roof. Neighbours called the fire brigade, but their house burned out. The Inspector here tells me there was almost certainly some sort of accelerant used. The fireys couldn't get anywhere near it until it was all over.'
'Have you seen the bodies?' Jill wanted to know.
'They're on their way out now. The Inspector tells me that formal identification won't be possible tonight. It smells like a barbecue out here, Jill.'
She winced. That smell. She knew that many in the emergency services could not eat pork because of the scent memory. A burned human body smells just like roast pig. She'd once worked with a cop in Wollongong who vowed never again to attend a barbecue after a triple-fatal house fire in Corrimal.
'I've already spoken with Gabriel,' said Last. 'Sorry to do this to you, Jill, but I'll need both of you out at Glebe as soon as possible. I'd like you to meet the truck when it arrives with the bodies.'
That had been hours ago, Jill thought, and it was still only just past mid-morning. She and Gabriel had travelled straight from the morgue to the hospital, but had been told that Joss was back at Balmain police station and that Isobel and Charlie had come to this house in Mosman.
Springing Joss from Balmain station had not been easy. The Inspector had come in early for the show. The Balmain crew wanted in on the glory. They all knew the story would go global: Victim kills machete slayer, saves family from burning home!
She and Gabriel had waited until Joss had given his first recorded interview of the events and then booked him out, the political powers of the taskforce outweighing the pissed-off Balmain command. Last wanted Gabriel to do the full interrogation. They'd yet to decide whether charges would be laid.
Jill looked at Joss, now lying curled around Charlie, and figured further questioning would have to wait. His eyes were heavy-lidded and blinked more slowly by the moment. Isobel, pale-faced, stared at a wall. Shock, thought Jill. It's best to let these people sleep a while. She caught Gabriel's eye, gestured with her head to the door. He stood.
'We're going to let you guys rest for a bit,' said Gabriel. Joss looked up blankly. Isobel didn't move. 'We're going to stay out here if that's okay with you, Joss?'
Not that you have any choice, Jill thought.
'Of course,' croaked the man from the bed, and coughed. 'And thank you.'
Gabriel followed her from the room and closed the door. Jill bypassed the sitting room, and found a homecare nurse drinking coffee in the breakfast area off the kitchen. The woman stood when they entered.
'Please,' said Jill. 'Don't let us bother you.'
The woman picked up her cup and left the room anyway, glancing back nervously from the doorway.
'Probably all over the news by now,' said Gabriel, walking into the kitchen.
'Ah, you think?' said Jill.
'Yeah, it would be,' he said, missing her sarcasm. 'She's probably been watching it all morning.' He nodded at the doorway the nurse had just exited.
Jill smiled tiredly. 'You making coffee?'
'Yup. Want one?'
'Definitely.' She opened the fridge. 'You think they'd mind if we fixed ourselves something to eat? I'm starving.'
'Well, we'd be feeding him if we were back at Balmain doing the interview. What's in there?'
Jill found a Tupperware container filled with shaved ham and another with finely sliced Swiss cheese. She grabbed a loaf of bread and a jar of hot English mustard and closed the refrigerator door. There was a tomato and an avocado in a bowl on a benchtop.
'Toasted or plain?' she asked him, spotting a sandwich press near the kettle.
'Might as well go the whole hog.' Gabriel clicked the switch to turn on the appliance.
They took their food out to a sun-saturated, wrought-iron outdoor setting in the backyard. Jill moved an overflowing ashtray from the table, her nose screwed up in distaste.
'So, you reckon we'll have to charge him?' she said, after several bites of the sandwich.
'Yep,' said Gabriel, chewing.
Jill leaned back in her chair. The sprawling gardens, although now overgrown, had obviously been professionally maintained at some stage in the past. The drone of a leaf blower on a neighbouring property couldn't drown out the manic activity of bees in the blossoms around her. She licked at a burgeoning cold sore on her lip. It thrummed under the skin – all that was left of her cold.
At one o'clock, they decided they could not let Joss and Isobel sleep any longer. Last had already called twice, wanting to know if they'd recorded the interview yet. Gabriel set his equipment up in one of the formal lounges on the lower floor. It was unorthodox to do the interview outside a police station, but Jill had not wanted Charlie to be moved around unnecessarily.
By six p.m., Jill was making her way home, exhausted. Joss and Isobel had given them the same story. They'd woken to a sound outside their bedroom, and then the fire alarm had sounded. Joss had gone out with a baseball bat to investigate, and had encountered a man with a knife. The alarm must have allowed Joss to approach the offender undetected, and he'd managed to wrestle the man to the ground, turning his knife against him. He'd rushed back to the bedroom and found the second offender, caved his head in with the bat. Isobel had rescued Charlie. Before they went out to the roof, the couple had removed the mask of the man in the bedroom, and had identified an Asian male, mid-thirties, with spider tattoos on his neck.
As they'd stood out the fr
ont of the quiet home in Mosman before leaving, Jill had noted the stress signals she'd detected while the couple were speaking. Gabriel had been non-committal. They were both in shock, and the cues could be confusing at such times, he pointed out.
Jill wound her windows down while driving towards the ocean. She let the early evening breeze play through the car, tangling her hair.
Thank God, she thought, driving past the surf club at Maroubra Beach. Cutter's dead.
Now he understood what it felt like.
Constable Andrew Montgomery sat dripping from his shower in the small gym beneath Liverpool police station. He towelled off the top half of his body and reached for his mobile, tried Chloe's number again. If he got this many missed call messages from a girl this early in a relationship, it set off a wacko alarm, and he began putting as much space between him and her as possible. Problem was, he'd never felt this way about a girl before Chloe, and now he kind of understood the compulsion to ring again and again.
Nothing. No answer.
He stood from the bench and finished drying himself, made his way to his locker and reached for his uniform. He'd finished half of his double shift, and had another hour's break before signing back on for the nightshift. Most of his mates were pissed off with the extended hours. Ordinarily, Andrew would have been more than happy – the overtime pay got him closer to his US–Canada skiing holiday. Two years' planning and saving, the trip had been the first thing on his mind every morning until he'd met Chloe Farrell. He smiled at himself in the mirror, straightening his collar, thinking of her.
The smile faltered. He wondered again why she hadn't called. He knew he wanted to see her every day, and he thought she'd felt the same. He'd let Sunday pass, certain each call he received would be from her. He'd never waited for a call from a girl before and he somehow liked the anxious anticipation of having to wait for something he really wanted. By Monday morning, though, he was over the game and ready to concede defeat. He called her. He'd been trying every couple of hours since, and now here he was, Tuesday night. No word.
All of the possible explanations sucked. He couldn't figure out whether it would hurt more that she just didn't care enough to have returned the call, or whether she'd got what she wanted from him for now and didn't need him at the moment. Actually, that would be worse, he thought – that Chloe had deliberately targeted him only to glean some information on the home invasion case.
He took his shoes over to the bench again and sat, leaned his face into his hands and rubbed at his temples. He felt stupid for giving her the little information he had; he'd never done anything like that before. He mentally chewed through their conversations again. All he'd really told her was that there'd been an apparently important anonymous phone call and that the caller had identified someone called Henry. It had just been a tease. Nothing she could actually use – just some-thing to attract her interest, make those eyes light up. She couldn't actually do anything with those details, could she? He'd scanned the news the last couple of days and there was no sign that she'd reported the scraps of information.
Another possibility for Chloe's silence nagged at him and again he pushed it away as ridiculous. Chloe couldn't actually have used that information to try to find Henry herself, could she? I mean, we couldn't even find Nguyen, he reasoned with himself. How would she have had a hope when she didn't know his address or even his surname?
Andrew Montgomery decided he'd sign on early. He grabbed his holster and notebook from his locker and made his way towards the stairs. At the doorway, he suddenly paused and reached into his top pocket.
He chewed at the skin around his thumb and pressed the phone against his ear.
33
JILL TOOK THE call while dressing for work. 'Tonight?' she said into the phone. 'Why tonight?'
'Your sister's going away on another shoot,' her mother replied. 'As usual, she waited until the last minute to tell us. She's going to Italy this time and thinks it may be one of the last big overseas shoots she does. She thinks they're about to send her out to pasture.' Jill knew Cassie was paranoid about her age: thought she was lucky to still be modelling at thirty.
'Okay, I guess I can come,' said Jill, holding the handset under her chin and trying to towel off at the same time. 'Where are we going?'
'East Ocean in Chinatown.'
'Yum. That's a bit a hike for you guys, isn't it?'
'Actually, it's quite exciting. You'll never believe what your father's done now.'
'What?' asked Jill. Her father wasn't big on spontaneity or surprises.
'He's booked us a suite at the casino. We're going there after dinner.'
'Wow. What's the occasion?' Jill nervously ran through a checklist of anniversary dates and birthdays – nothing she could think of.
'No reason. Can you believe it? Last night I told him about the dinner plans and he said he'd arrange for us to stay in the city.' Frances sounded thrilled.
Jill smiled widely. It was great to see her parents relaxing a little. Even though she'd been only twelve, and traumatised, when she had returned home after the abduction, she had recognised the changes in her parents. There had been times early on when it seemed they went weeks without even speaking to one another. Sitting on her bed now, holding the phone, Jill felt another subtle adjustment in her tension levels, as if another piece of ice had sloughed away from the glacier that had been her heart for so many years. Her family seemed to be healing, finally.
'That's great, Ma. So, who's coming?'
'Tim and Robyn, Avery and Lily.' Jill hadn't seen her brother and his family for a month or so, and she was pleased to hear their names. 'Cassie, of course,' her mum continued, 'and she's bringing her new friend. They've been seeing each other for quite a while, apparently, so that should be interesting.'
After the call, Jill hurriedly finished getting dressed for work. She figured that the pressure on the case would lessen with the news that two of the offenders were dead. Police and community relief would be massive when they announced that one of the deceased was the ringleader – Cutter. Still, she didn't want to be late to the taskforce meeting today. There could be word back from the coroner, more details from the crime scene, or word on whether Joss would have to face formal charges. And there were still two offenders in the wind.
Despite the remaining heavy workload, she wondered whether the taskforce would be dismantled now that Henry Nguyen had been killed. As soon as the 'sexiness' of a murderer was taken out of the equation, media interest and political pressure, in that order, would diminish, and competing workloads from other cases would begin to pull the taskforce apart. She wondered how she felt about that. She had expected to be delighted and relieved; she'd been thinking she would put in for a transfer closer to home, even try to get back to Maroubra, not that that would be easy. On the other hand, she had been enjoying working with Lawrence Last. She wondered whether he would request her help on another case.
And then there was Gabriel. So different to Scotty. Jill wasn't sure exactly how she felt about their partnership coming to an end, but suddenly the morning didn't seem quite so bright.
She gathered up her handbag and briefcase, and left for work.
At just after seven p.m. Jill left the departmental car undercover in a parking station on George Street and walked down to Chinatown. She pulled a ruffled black cardigan over her white shirt as she walked. The evenings were still a little cool, especially in the city. She waited at the lights on Hay Street while other pedestrians walked straight in front of cars, ignoring the horns and expletives of motorists still trying to get home. She shook her head as two giggling girls, both on mobiles, caused a dark Mercedes to slam on the brakes. She hated driving through this intersection.
As she climbed the stairs to the restaurant, the noise from the street gave way to Japanese harp music. She spotted her family sitting at a circular table near the window overlooking the streetlights below. Spicy scents followed her as she walked past a trickling fountain and candl
elit tables to reach them.
'Hi everyone,' she said, smiling.
Jill's mum rose to give her a hug and four-year-old Lily leapt from her seat before her mum, Robyn, could stop her.
'You're sitting here, Aunty Jill! Mum, you said she would sit here.'
'Yes, Lily, it's okay, settle down now.'
Jill made her way around the table; her sister, Cassie, stood when she reached her.
'Hey, big sis,' she said, kissing Jill on both cheeks. Cassie's lips were berry-red with wine, her cheeks flushed.
'Hey, Cass,' Jill replied, wishing she'd had time to change out of her work clothes. Cassie wore black, a sheath of slinky fabric falling to the floor, leaving her arms and shoulders bare. A heavy silver band circled her throat. She looked beautiful, but very thin.
'Jill, this is Aidan,' said Cassie, and the man next to her stood and offered his hand. He wore a casually crumpled suit, his shirt open at the throat. He brushed a long dark fringe from his eyes and smiled at her.
'Pop ordered lobster,' called Avery, her nephew, from across the table, waving a menu. Avery sat next to her father, who was wearing his good suit. 'It says on here "market prices", but the waiter told us they're a hundred bucks each and Pop ordered two!'
Jill's father told Avery to keep his voice down, but everyone smiled.
A waiter came past with wine, water and juice for the table and asked Jill whether she'd like to order a drink.
'I'll be fine with what's here for the moment, thanks,' she told him, watching Cassie helping herself to the wine before the waiter could pour it for her.
The plates seemed to multiply on the table, bowl after bowl of sticky, steaming food. Jill tried dishes she'd never tasted before – abalone, sea-urchin roe – and others, some of which she wasn't certain she wanted to know the main ingredients.
'Dad, what's got into you?' laughed Jill, selecting a piece of marinated tofu with her chopsticks. 'You've never ordered like this before.'
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