Left Luggage

by Andrew Christie

  John pulled out his phone and dialled Walker on the way back to the ute.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  John unlocked the ute and slid into the seat. “Forest Court. No sign of her here.” He started the engine and pulled out into the street.

  “You need to come in. To the station.”

  “I’m just on my way to the hospital again.”

  “We need to talk to you.”

  “No. I need to find my mother. You should be looking for her.”

  “We are. We need to talk to you about something else.”

  “What? What’s going on? What’s more important than finding my mother?”

  “Do you know an Annette Morgan?”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Yes. She works for the gallery in Canberra. She was working with Mum, her photos. Tell me what’s happened.” John drove past the hospital on Missenden Road and turned into Salisbury.

  “What was your relationship to her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why was she at your house? Where were you this morning?”

  “You know where I was. Looking for Mum. Tell me what’s happened to Annette.” John turned into Broughton Street and stopped the ute. The street was full of blue and red flashing light, bouncing off the police vehicles that were parked up and down both sides of the road.

  “She’s dead. Shot. In your front hall. Come to the station. We need to talk to you.”

  John hung up and made a U-turn. He had to find his mother first. Then he was going to find whoever had shot Annette.

  It was quite late when Betty got back to Forest Court, the afternoon sun throwing shadows across the road. She looked for blood stains on the footpath outside the gates but couldn’t see any. From what John had said, she expected there would be some sign of Ken’s blood. And of the other one’s, the one who died. But the footpath was clean. Perhaps someone had washed it off, hosed it into the gutter, down the drain. Their blood would end up in the harbour eventually.

  She let herself inside and threw the bag with the old shoes onto the bed. She was stiff and sore, and really very tired. She probably should have hailed a taxi but it was such a nice afternoon. She got a glass of water and sat down in the living room. The place seemed different somehow. She couldn’t tell what exactly, but it wasn’t quite the same. Through the window she watched the sun shining on the big gum tree above the car park. The white trunk was lit up in yellow, and turning pale orange as the day faded.

  She didn’t realise she’d been asleep until the sound of a bell woke her. It took a while for her to realise what was going on. The bell working its way into her dream, making the car and the country road evaporate so that the bell was all that was left. The countryside had been Australian even though the dream seemed to be set in France.

  She tried to pull herself upright from her slumped position in the old armchair. Her mouth was dry, her lips crusty and cracked. She ran her tongue around them, trying to moisten them. How long had she been asleep, she wondered. There was that bell again. Why didn’t someone answer it?

  She sat up slowly, wondering why she was so stiff. Then she remembered that she’d walked home from the hospital. How far was that? She had no idea. Too far for her legs, it seemed.

  The bell rang again. She pulled herself to her feet slowly and painfully, and would have sat down again but for the bell that kept ringing. Keep your damn hat on, I’m coming, she thought as she lurched across the room, leaning first on the back of the armchair then on the sideboard, before tottering unsupported the last two metres to the front door. God, what a wreck. She pulled the door open.

  There was a big man outside. His face was badly bruised and his nose was bandaged. He was holding a red and white tube in his hands.

  “Hello,” he said. “I think you’ve got something of mine.”

  It was well after 10pm when John decided to check his mother’s apartment again. He had spent the afternoon avoiding the police and searching by himself.

  He desperately wanted to know what had happened to Annette, but he had to assume that his mother was alive. She was the priority. Stick with that. If it was a kidnapping, there had been no contact or demands. The police would have told him. It might not be kidnapping, but someone had been to his house and killed Annette. It was likely that his mother’s disappearance had something to do with that. Something to do with the guns in the suitcase. The terrorist thing with his parents. What else could it be? The evening news on the car radio had mentioned the murder in Camperdown, and at the end of the bulletin a short item about police concern for a missing woman. It mentioned the amnesia but not kidnapping.

  In the afternoon, John had rung Billy, and asked him to help look for Betty. He told him to stay clear of the house and Forest Court, he didn’t want him running into whoever had shot Annette. Billy had taken a couple of mates and they had ridden their bikes through all the parks in Newtown, Camperdown and Chippendale. They even went along the creek through Annandale to Rozelle Bay. John had started back at the hospital again and spiralled out, driving along every street in an ever-widening search area. None of them had seen anything.

  He was going to check Forest Lodge again then start back at the hospital. This time he’d do a foot search of every street and lane. What else could he do? He wasn’t going to the cops, not till he found his mother.

  The apartment door was unlocked and ajar. John took out the HK and backed away. He checked the kitchen window and the sliding doors that opened onto the terrace, but the interior of the apartment was dark and he couldn’t see anything inside. He went back to the door and nudged it open with his foot, following its inward sweep with the muzzle of his weapon.

  The apartment was empty, but furniture had been moved since the morning, and the wardrobe door was open. There was a shopping bag containing a new shoe box on the floor beside the bed, and a handwritten note on the table in the living room.

  It was short: I want the suitcase. There was a mobile phone number on the bottom.

  John used Betty’s landline to make the call. He’d never done any negotiating. He’d read the books but it wasn’t his department. He was one of the guys you called when negotiating didn’t work.

  The phone was answered almost immediately. “Lawrence?”

  John didn’t recognise the voice. It was a man: deep voice, low and gravelly; Australian accent. When he replied he tried to keep his own voice level and neutral. He couldn’t afford to indulge his anger and fear until his mother was safe.

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause. John resisted the impulse to fill it. Let the other guy do the talking.

  “We have your mother. We want the suitcase.”

  “I understand that. Is she safe?”

  “For the moment. But if I don’t get the suitcase very soon I am going to start hurting her. Do I make myself clear?”

  “If she is hurt, you will die,” said John.

  “Yeah, sure. In the long run, we’re all dead.”

  “There are different ways to die.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Get the suitcase to me and she’s yours, safe and sound. We all get on with our lives. Don’t, and hers comes to an abrupt and painful end.”

  “Where?”

  The address was in Moorebank. It was the same smash repair workshop that John had been checking out on Wednesday.

  “You’ve got an hour,” the man said.

  “I need longer. The suitcase is in Artarmon. In a lock-up.”

  “An hour. Don’t fuck around, don’t be a hero. Any hint of trouble, she dies.” The line went dead.

  John looked at his watch: 11.03. He went back out to the ute and got the suitcase from behind the seat, and his gloves and knife from the dashboard compartment. The Škorpions seemed to be in good enough condition, a bit of superficial rust on a couple of the magazines but they looked okay. He thought briefly about using one of them, but the ammunition was too
old. There was no telling what condition it would be in after all this time, and he was going to need a weapon he could rely on.

  He pulled out the HK, and checked it and the spare clip, wishing he had asked Smokey for a suppressor as well. Or even better, an MP5. And some flash-bangs. He was pretty sure Smokey would have been able to deliver.

  He put his knife in one sock and the spare clip in the other. The pistol went back in the waistband of his jeans. He needed to get to Moorebank – there was no time to rig a suppressor, or a pipe bomb. He put the suitcase back behind the seat of the ute. It was 11.12 when he hit the road.

  * * *

  Chapter 18

  Tough Man

  The M5 was clear and John made good time to Moorebank. He parked the ute in a quiet residential street at eleven thirty. The back of the workshop was about two hundred metres away, across the parkland and the creek. He checked his weapon, put his gloves on and locked the ute with the suitcase still behind the seat. He kept off the path, instead picking a line across the park that would bring him up directly behind the workshop. The creek was shallow but the water was cold as he waded across. He kept in the shadows of the trees as he climbed up towards the workshop. The rear door he had seen on his previous visit was locked. John skirted the rear of the neighbouring removalist warehouse as he made his way to the little laneway that connected the parkland to the street. He went forwards until he could see the street in front of the smash repair workshop. Three cars were parked there. The yellow glare of the street lights robbed the scene of colour but one of the cars was the same silver Commodore that had come after him on Wednesday night. And there was at least one person in the car.

  John crawled up behind the sedan, taking a position just behind the driver’s door. He had the door open and his knife blade pressing up beneath the jaw of the lookout before the man could react. “I can open your throat or I can let you live. Your choice,” he said. The man’s eyes were wide with fear and shock. He tried to turn his head but felt the point of the knife dig further into his neck.

  On the passenger seat there was a gun, along with a mobile phone, a dirt-bike magazine and an empty drink can. The gun was another Glock 19. These guys must get a discount for buying in bulk, John thought as he took a handful of the man’s hair and pulled him out onto the road, making him lie face down beside the car. A quick search found no other weapons. John reached inside and grabbed the keys from the ignition, and the gun and phone from the passenger seat.

  The last number called from the phone was the same as the number John had found on the note. He switched the phone to silent and pocketed it along with the Glock. He pulled the man up off the road and around to the back of the car. When John popped the boot lid, the man made a move, swinging a wild kick at John’s knee. John side-stepped the kick, letting it brush his calf. He pivoted on his left foot, whipping out a punch that began in his knees and ended under the lookout’s ribs. The man’s eyes bulged and he doubled over. John tipped him into the boot while he was still gasping for breath.

  There was a cardboard box already in the boot. Inside it was a black pillowcase, rags, two rolls of gaffer tape and some large cable ties. Just what you would need if you were planning to kidnap someone.

  John got to work trussing the man up with the gaffer tape so his arms and legs were pulled up behind his back and a thick strip of gaffer tape ran across his mouth. The man didn’t look comfortable when John was finished, but he looked even worse when John got the knife out again, and twisted the big blade in front of his eyes so that it reflected the glare from the street lights. John ran the point of the knife across the man’s sweating forehead, above his left eye. The blood welled up and flowed in a red veil into the eye, puddling in the corner, before overflowing down his cheek. The man tried to shake his head but John held him fast by his hair.

  “You will answer my questions or I will keep cutting. The cuts will get longer and deeper. You have to understand that I am serious about this. Your friends have my mother, so I am prepared to take all the skin off your face. And you will talk. It’s just a matter of how much skin you lose first.”

  The man nodded desperately. John tore the tape off his mouth.

  “She’s inside the workshop,” the man said. “She’s okay. She’s good, not hurt.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Three. Me and two inside. Large and Jimmy.”

  “Large?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s his name?”

  “It’s what we call him. His nickname. His real name is Phil.”

  “Who’s in charge? Who’s the boss?”

  “Large is.”

  “Weapons?”

  “They’ve got guns.”

  “What sort? How many?” John laid the blade along the man’s nose.

  His eyes widened. “Just pistols, nine mils.”

  John looked across the road to the front of the workshop. The roller shutters were both closed but the small door to the side was open wide. Bright light spilled out of the doorway onto the footpath. It almost looked inviting. He held up the bunch of keys he had taken out of the car. “Which are the keys for the workshop?”

  “The two silver ones. The brass one is my house key.”

  John wrapped a new length of tape around his head, making sure the man could still breathe before he closed the boot on him.

  John went in from the creek side of the workshop. He cracked the rear door slowly and waited, listening. He couldn’t hear anything but there was a smell: resin; the sweet sickly smell of resins and paints. After five minutes with no sounds he moved quickly and quietly through the door with his weapon up and the safety off. The room he was in was dark, except for a slash of light spilling across the floor from the open door to the main workshop space. It was a kitchen and lunchroom. There was a stove and a sink at the far end, and the centre of the room was occupied by a large table surrounded by plastic chairs. The walls were covered with posters, a mixture of workplace safety notices and nude women. A fire extinguisher and fire blanket were mounted on the wall near the stove.

  John made his way around the room, to where he could see through the door into the workshop. It was full of cars in various stages of repair, jammed in with very narrow spaces between them. Immediately outside the lunch room was the crumpled and twisted side of a dark grey Tarago. It looked as if it had been side-swiped. John stayed still and kept listening. Still nothing. He checked his watch: 11.52, the deadline was nearly up.

  He moved in a crouch to the side of the Tarago and peered through the windows. The vehicles were so close together that it was difficult to see much unless he broke cover. He moved right, to the rear of the Tarago, where he could get a sight line along the back wall of the workshop. At the far end was a bench with shelves and tools. A man was sitting on a stool beside the bench. A thin, young man, with lanky blond hair and acne. The one who shot the bus driver, the one he had seen on Delic’s Facebook page. Jimmy. He was looking at his phone, the blue glare from the screen lighting his narrow features from below. John backed quietly away and moved to the other end of the vehicle. From there he could see between the vehicles to the far side of the workshop. There was a machine there, a big steel frame with posts and chains. Some kind of rig for pulling bends out of car bodies. Beyond it on the far wall was the office and a store room. The office lights were on. Along the side wall to his left was a spray booth. He began to move past it, staying low, beneath the level of the car and spray-painting booth windows. He risked a quick glance into the booth, but it was empty. He kept moving.

  The other man was near the roller doors at the front of the workshop. A big man with sandy hair and a bandaged nose, sitting on a plastic stackable chair next to a freshly undercoated Commodore. Presumably this was the one they called Large. The two men were too far apart. He couldn’t get an angle on them that would allow him to take them out quickly. One of them would take cover, and he’d have to hunt him down. It was too big a risk until he knew wher
e his mother was. He couldn’t see anyone else, but there could be others. The lookout might have been lying. He moved back along the side of the spray cabinet and then started moving out into the workshop, staying low, crouching in the shadows between the cars. He was edging his way between a Honda SRV and the Tarago when the lookout’s phone in his hip pocket began to vibrate. It seemed very loud in the quiet workshop but there was nothing John could do about it now. He waited.

  “Shit,” said the big man near the front of the workshop.

  “What?” called the one at the back.

  “He’s here. I just called Matt, he didn’t answer.”

  “Want me to go and check on him?” the skinny one said.

  “No,” said Large. “Stay where you are. I reckon our man is here. I reckon he’s got to Matt.”

  “He might have just gone for a piss.”

  “He’d still answer his phone. No, something is wrong. How’s Grandma doing?”

  “She’s alright. Breathing.”

  “Good. Keep your eyes open. This cunt is dangerous.”

  John began to move again, trying to get a line of sight to Jimmy’s position, to where his mother must be.

  “Lawrence,” the big one shouted. “I know you’re here somewhere. But there’s nothing you can do. Jimmy has got your mother trussed up on the pulling rig over the back there. That big bloody machine with all the hydraulic rams.”

  Through the windscreen of a Falcon, John could see Jimmy standing now beside the rig. He had his arm out towards a control panel hanging on one of the posts.

  “You there, Lawrence?” Large shouted. “You know anything about repairing smashed cars? It’s impressive what these new machines can do with all their hydraulics. Pull an S-bend out of a frame as quick as you like. Seven cylinders this one’s got, pulls up to ten tonnes. Gets the job done, I can tell you. But it’s not automated, it’s still very much an art form. Each wreck is different – the operator has to know just how to rig the clamps and chains to apply the pressure in just the right place, in just the right order, to unfold the steel. It’s a fascinating thing to watch a twisted mass of steel slowly turning back into someone’s pride and joy. Turns out Jimmy’s a bit of a whizz at it. Natural talent. It’s hard to imagine him having talent, I know, given your track record with him.”