Left Luggage

by Andrew Christie

  Away from Glebe Point Road there were fewer people on the footpath. John felt himself relax, stretching out and picking up his pace again. He still felt uncomfortable in crowds. They made him anxious. Too many variables, too little control. It was something he had to work on. One of the many things. Maybe he should have listened to the shrink, settled for a small town. On the coast maybe, instead of trying to take it head on by living in the city, confronting it. But he knew he’d go crazy hiding from his demons in some small town. Not enough stimulation, he’d end up killing himself – or someone else. Anyway, he wanted to be able to look after his mother. He owed her that. And she owed him a few things too.

  He wanted to talk to her about his father, but he didn’t know how to go about it without her shutting down. And without him losing his temper. He was depressed by how little he knew about his father, and ashamed at how little curiosity he had shown about him when he was growing up. All he really knew about Jorge was that he was an academic of some kind in Paris, and that his family came from Portugal. He had been killed by a terrorist. Some random act of pointless savagery – wrong place, wrong time. If he was truthful with himself, his father’s death was one of the reasons he’d wanted to join the regiment. Not that he’d ever admit that to anyone. The man who killed his father was long dead, but John still recognised a deep desire for revenge. If he couldn’t kill that man, he could kill others like him. And he had done that.

  These were not motives that would be accepted in the regiment and he had duly kept them well buried. But they were there still. He had killed some who may have been terrorists, and some who probably weren’t. They would all have thought they were freedom fighters, though. Everyone’s cause was legitimate in their own eyes. He recognised that he too had become a man who brings death to other people’s doorsteps. In the end it just gets down to sides. Like rugby in the school yard. Whose side was he on now, he wondered.

  Friday morning was warm, and the day promised to be another clear, warm day. The weather forecast said it would get to twenty-three in the city. Betty sat outside on the terrace. She was enjoying the autumn weather but she wondered when it would get cold. She had a cup of coffee and a copy of Paris Vogue. The magazine had arrived in her letter box the previous week. She presumed that John had organised a subscription, though he hadn’t said anything about it. And she hadn’t asked. It was kind of him, and this morning she was glad to have the distraction. Anything to keep her mind off Jorge.

  She flipped through the thick magazine absentmindedly. There was a time when she would have known most of the photographers and models in it. They were part of her Paris, a relief from her work, a relief from her wars. But now all the faces were unfamiliar, and the names too. Jorge never liked her friends from the fashion world; he thought they were all too frivolous. And he was right, they were. Totally self-absorbed, devoted to fashion, to the image – that was the point. They ignored the ugliness of the world. They made their own world, and their own rules. Jorge, the intellectual, couldn’t stand that lack of curiosity, the refusal to engage with the “real” world. For him, the only things that mattered were literature and politics. Everything else was a meaningless waste of time. Except food. He took food very seriously. In their first years together he began teaching Betty how to cook, starting with the basics. His first lesson was how to cook the perfect omelette: “It’s like music, first you learn the rules, then you learn how to break them, how to improvise.” He taught her about love too, on that big old bed in the front room. Occasionally they would make excursions to buy food, but in her memory that first summer was washed in the soft northern light from the two windows. They spent a lot of time in bed. Touching each other, exploring, fucking; sometimes gently, carefully, sometimes frantically. As if time was short.

  The breeze was increasing in strength, picking up leaves and grass clippings, and spinning them in an eddy across the terrace. Betty picked up her cup and the magazine and moved back inside.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, so she didn’t notice the two men until she had closed the sliding door and pulled the curtains across. When she turned around they were standing in the middle of the room, grinning at her. Two young men, one tall and skinny, the other big and heavy.

  It was the heavy one who spoke. “Hello, granny,” he said. There was something wrong with one of his eyes, it was droopy.

  “Who the hell are you?” said Betty.

  “Keep your pants on,” said the skinny one. “We’re just going to go for a ride, just want a quick chat with you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you two idiots.”

  “Don’t be a smartarse. granny,” said the big one, pulling a big black pistol from behind his back and pointing it at her. “We’re not in the mood today.”

  As John came over the hill and down towards Forest Court he could see Ken Mallard talking to a school kid on the footpath. He was surprised to realise it was Billy. John hadn’t ever seen the boy in his school uniform before. It looked as if he had a camera around his neck. He was a funny kid, strong and independent despite his bully of a brother and his dysfunctional mother. John liked the way he had taken a shine to Betty, and was getting into photography. He had even asked John if he could take some photos of the house. Before and after shots. It was a nice idea. If there were any good pictures, John might get them printed up, hang them on the wall. This is what it used to look like he’d be able to tell visitors. If he ever had any visitors.

  John side-stepped some dog shit in the middle of the footpath, and when he looked up again Ken and Billy had been joined by two men coming out of the Forest Court gates. There was someone between them – Betty. A white van pulled into the drive, angling in, forcing Ken and Billy to step back out of the way. John picked up his pace, quickly scanning the rest of the street before focusing back on the scene playing out in front of him. Billy and Ken had stopped talking and had turned to see what was going on. The two men hurried across the footpath, almost lifting a struggling Betty off the ground. Their attention was on the van and they didn’t notice John sprinting up the footpath.

  “Help me,” Betty shouted. “They’re—” The closest man put a hand across her mouth.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Ken said, stepping forwards. “Where are you taking her?” The men were both young, one big and dark, the other was skinnier. Blond.

  John’s feet pounded on the footpath. Forty metres. Too far.

  “Betty, are you alright?” Ken said, his voice high-pitched and loud, almost shouting.

  The skinny one let go of Betty and opened the side door of the van. Ken reached out and grabbed the arm of the man still holding Betty.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you.”

  Twenty metres. John watched the man pushing Betty roughly through the door of the van, and turning back to Ken, his hand coming up with a pistol.

  Ken looked down at the gun then up at the man holding it. He didn’t step back.

  “Gun!” It was Billy shouting.

  John was ten metres from the van when the man fired. One shot. Ken went down. Billy screamed. The skinny blond man shouted something. The shooter turned and saw John now, started to bring the pistol around. But John was too close, coming in low beneath the man’s gun arm, launching himself in a diving tackle, driving his shoulder up under the rib cage. The air went out of the man and John felt ribs breaking as he propelled him into the van’s door frame. There was shouting from the van and from behind on the footpath. They fell together onto the road, the shooter’s head smacking the van’s door sill on the way down. John heard the engine roar. He grabbed for the gun with one hand, and held the man’s neck with the other. The rear tyres spun and squealed. John felt someone pulling him backwards by the shirt. The tyres found some grip and the van leaped forwards with an awful wet crunch. Tyres screamed. A taxi braked hard, skidding across the road to avoid the van as it bumped over the kerb and back out onto the street.

  Billy was still holding onto th
e back of John’s T-shirt, but the boy wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were glued to the deformed mess the van’s rear wheel had made of the shooter’s head.

  John tracked the rear of the van with the pistol, but there was no clear target. “Fuck! Fuck!”

  Ken was lying in the concrete driveway, a large red stain blossoming in the middle of his neatly ironed shirt.

  The shot had attracted a crowd, people from the street and residents from the village were starting to gather on the footpath.

  “Someone call triple 0, now! Ambulance and Police,” said John. There was lots of blood. Billy was still staring at the body on the road. John pulled him away, spun him around, got in his face. “Billy. Get over here. I need you.” He pulled off his T-shirt and crouched down beside Ken, pressing the wadded-up shirt over the seeping wound. “Here, Billy, hold this. Keep pressure on it. Okay? To stop the bleeding. Listen, okay?”

  Billy looked dazed but nodded.

  “Keep the pressure on it. Till the ambos get here. Right?” He gave the boy’s shoulder a shake. “Right?”

  Billy nodded again, looking at Ken then at John. “Yeah. Okay.”

  Then John was up and gone. The taxi was still in the middle of the road, the driver standing beside the open door talking on a mobile phone. John pulled the driver out of the way, got in and slammed the transmission into drive. They had about a minute start on him. More than enough time to get lost in Glebe or Annandale. Which way would he have gone, Parramatta Road or right on Ross towards the Crescent and Victoria Road? He kept his foot down hard on the accelerator, and the taxi nearly left the ground coming over the hill at Forest Lodge shops, the engine roaring.

  He didn’t have to decide which way to turn. The van was on the wrong side of the road at Ross Street, wrapped around a light pole. It had tried to turn right against the lights when a 470 bus was coming the other way. The driver of the van and the blond one were out on the road shouting at each other. Both were armed with pistols. The bus driver climbed out of the bus and shouted something at them. The skinny man raised his gun and shot the driver. There was no hesitation.

  John braked hard, fighting to keep the taxi under control. The two men turned to the sliding taxi, raising their guns and firing. John threw himself across the seats. The windscreen shattered as the car came to a halt. John crawled over to the passenger side and popped the door, getting out the side of the taxi away from the van. The two men ran behind the bus, across Ross Street and down towards the old creek line. John ignored them, moving around the side of the van with the gun up in two hands. The cabin was empty, the front doors wide open. The side door was mangled where the van had hit the light pole. John went back around the van and popped the rear door, crouching and sweeping the interior with his weapon as the door creaked up.

  Betty was on the floor, moaning, blood coming from a cut on her forehead.

  “Mum. It’s me. Are you alright?”

  Her eyes flickered but didn’t open. He took her hand and squeezed it, held it.

  He could hear sirens now, getting closer. “You’re gonna be okay, Mum. The ambulance is on its way.” A crowd had gathered on the footpath but they were staying well back, having seen the guns. John left his mother to check the bus driver. He was bleeding from a stomach wound but still breathing. His staring, shocked eyes said how much pain he was in.

  Red and blue flashing lights were coming down St Johns Road now. John didn’t want to get shot by a twitchy first-responder so he dropped the clip out of the pistol, ejected the breach round and placed them and the gun on the driver’s seat.

  The first police car pulled up in the middle of the road and two policemen emerged, their weapons out.

  John stood still with his hands clearly visible. “The bus driver’s been shot. The woman in the van is my mother. She’s hurt too, bleeding. Unconscious. Her name is Betty, Betty Lawrence. She’s my mother.”

  “Who’re you?”

  “I’m John Lawrence. They tried to abduct her.”

  “He’s got a gun too, I saw it,” someone in the crowd shouted.

  The younger cop put his weapon on John.

  “It’s on the seat of the van. I took it off one of them.”

  The older cop, a sergeant, said “Get on the ground. Now.”

  John knew the drill. He lowered himself onto the road, face on the bitumen, wrists crossed at the base of his back. The young cop cuffed him while the sergeant covered them. Then they recovered the gun and checked on the driver and Betty. An ambulance arrived.

  “The men who tried to kidnap my mother are getting away,” John said. “They went down the road towards the creek.”

  The sergeant crouched down beside John’s head. “Tell me what happened.”

  “The two men tried to kidnap my mother— no, there were three of them. A driver and two to grab her.”

  “Three?”

  “One’s down. Dead, I think. They shot an old guy, Ken, not sure what his surname is.”

  “Where?”

  “Forest Court, the retirement village. Outside on the street. That’s where it started.”

  “Okay.” The cop stood up and started talking into his radio.

  Soon more cops arrived, including a four-wheel drive full of black-clad tactical response police with the full kit: automatic weapons, helmets, vests. They stopped briefly and spoke to the sergeant then drove down the hill the way the two men had gone.

  The cops got John up off the road and locked him in the back of one of the vans. “Till we sort out what the fuck’s going on,” the sergeant said.

  “How’s my mother?” John asked before he could shut the door.

  “The ambos are with her now. She’s breathing okay, but still unconscious.”

  “Where will they take her?”

  “Don’t know, but I’ll try and find out.” The cop nodded and closed the door on him.

  The back of the van was hot and stank of disinfectant and desperation. John tried to relax, to get comfortable and keep control of his breathing. There was no point getting angry, they were doing their job. He was the only one they had in custody – they weren’t going to let him go until they figured out what was going on. Until they were sure they didn’t want to charge him with something. Assault, murder, theft of a vehicle, possession of an illegal firearm. They’d have lots of choices if they decided to go after him.

  An hour later the door cracked open and the same older cop stuck his head in. “We’re taking you to Leichhardt. They want to talk to you back at the station.” John squinted in the bright sunshine. Behind the cop he could see more police than before, joined now by the media. Blue and white tape was stretched across the road and uniformed police in fluoro vests were directing traffic and pedestrians around the area. Plain clothes cops were taking details from witnesses including all the bus passengers.

  “Your mum’s gone to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.”

  “Thanks. What about Ken? And the bus driver?”

  “Bus driver’s gone to RPA too. Dunno about the other bloke,” the sergeant said, as he closed the door.

  They took John back to the police station, and left him in an interview room.

  “You want something to drink?” the sergeant asked on his way out.

  “Yeah, water. Please.” Politeness counts. “Any chance of a shirt? Getting a bit cold in here now.” The room was old, with high ceilings and bare walls. The only furniture was a metal table and four chairs. The cops had probably wound the air-con up to make it colder.

  “I’ll see what I can do. What happened to yours?”

  “Used it as a dressing. On Ken.”

  The sergeant nodded and left.

  The shirt won’t happen, thought John. If I was them I’d let me chill off a bit before starting the questions. He settled in to wait.

  Half an hour later a man in a suit came in with a bottle of water. He was a solid-looking man, not tall but broad, with the heavy shoulders of someone who spends time in the weight room at the gy
m. He wore a blue-striped shirt under a dark grey suit jacket. No tie. “DS Moreton. I need to take your statement, Mr Lawrence.” He put the bottle of water in front of John.

  “Sure.” John unscrewed the bottle and took a swig. The water was cold. He told the story again while Moreton took short-hand notes. Occasionally he would interrupt the flow and ask a question.

  “Where did the van come from?”

  “Dunno. Didn’t see it until it pulled into the driveway.”

  “Into?”

  “Across, but angled in.”

  He gave a description of the second man with Betty. Tall, twenty-something, dirty blond hair, shoulder length. Skinny, wearing a black hoodie. No, the hood was down. Jeans. Didn’t notice the shoes.

  “He say anything?”

  John thought. “Don’t think so.”

  “The one who shot Mr Mallard? He say anything?”

  “No.”

  “Any idea why he fired?”

  “No.” Thinking back, replaying it, the guy seemed keen, almost grinning, when he used the gun. “He could have just pushed him out of the way. Ken’s an old guy.”

  “What about the driver?”

  “Didn’t see him clearly, not till I caught up with the van at Ross Street. Twenties maybe, average build. Jeans, green T-shirt. Average height. No tatts that I noticed.”