Directive RIP

by Stuart Parker

  24

  It was another hour and a hundred and fifty kilometres closer to Melbourne before Wragg spoke again, out in the open spaces of Goulborn’s dairy country, where the first headlights of the evening were emerging upon the highway to replace the slow fading day.

  ‘Did you know homosexuality is the root of the vampire legend? The victims are the perpetrators, cast out into immortal shame, feeding on the blood of others, shunned and repulsive, so unnatural that their reflections are not even present in the mirror. And then a man came to feed on Gustav. A Jewish Asian male communist by the name of Kevin. Clearly, my brother choosing him as lover was a cry for help. And it was time for his protector to sharpen the stake.’

  ‘With Dr Pei’s help?’

  ‘She explained that curbing lust in the unreceptive mind would take time, even with the latest artificial reality mind shaping techniques. But creating fear is the surest thing in all hypo-therapy. She made me believe that I had the capability to do it.’

  ‘That is how you became a Sapien? What alternative punishment did you dish out to the unfortunate lover?’

  Wragg laughed callously. ‘Gangsters pull out the teeth of the murdered to prevent identification. But being a dental assistant I prefer my patients still alive when I work on them - at least, he was alive to begin with.’

  ‘It was you that made the killing,’ snapped Riley. He eased the Mitsubishi into the slow lane for the first time since leaving Sydney. ‘Furn, how’s your head? Are you up to a stint at the wheel?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Furn readily.

  ‘Don’t answer so quickly. We’re getting near the hot zone. It probably won’t be safe to swap again before Fairfield Hospital.’

  ‘All the more reason to make the swap now. You’ve gone over halfway. I’m fresh and I’ve had enough of playing eye-spy in the backseat.’

  ‘Very well, then.’ He rested the vehicle into the next emergency breaking lane that came along. A sharp clap of pain remonstrated through Furn’s head as he ventured to his feet. He kept it to himself. Riley meanwhile stretched out his spine and swung into the passenger seat.

  ‘I need a piss,’ was Wragg’s hostile greeting.

  Riley got him out the car, handcuffed one arm to the roof pack-rack and waited while the front of the car including the windscreen received a petulant soaking.

  ‘With compliments,’ murmured Wragg rezipping.

  Riley cuffed his hands back behind his back and paid special attention to securing him in his seatbelt. The road ahead was going to be all acceleration and suspension. Once the backseat was set, Furn wasted no time in getting underway. The powerful engine and state of the art steering system turned the highway into an endless playground slide.

  ‘Kevin Chuong was the name of your brother’s partner,’ said Riley knowingly and without delay, as though this was why he had wanted the backseat and why he had done up the seatbelt so tight. ‘He disappeared around the same time you did. Only he is yet to turn up again. Your brother is convinced you gave him an acid bath. He says he has evidence.’

  ‘Possibly. I may have left the odd hint lying around,’ said Wragg. ‘How else would he have known to mend the error in his ways. Our father’s suicide was not even a wakeup call, so I knew I couldn’t risk being too subtle. Not that he went to the cops, now did he? I don’t hear anyone arresting me for murder.’

  ‘No, you don’t. Gustav has taken a leaf out of your book. Severe alternative punishment. You’ve made it easier for me to tell you what shape your family tree is going to take, if you care to hear it.’

  You couldn’t tell a killer just by looking at him, but the way a killer looked at you was a whole different experience.

  ‘I’ve been out of the family loop a while. Why don’t you fill me in?’

  ‘Gustav was attending a convention in Geneva when he complained of feeling unwell. He was misdiagnosed as having a kidney stone. His condition continued to deteriorate and on return to Australia he went for a second opinion. It turned out be a severe urinary infection. Pseudomonesy Aeruginose bacterium. It led to septicemia in his limbs. Both hands were amputated.’

  ‘That’s what you’ve been told?’ Dokomad chuckled. ‘My brother works for Military Intelligence. Which means there is nothing you should believe, nothing that is likely to be true.’

  ‘Ever heard what a PONI is?’

  ‘Why? Was my brother buggering with them too?’

  ‘People Of National Interest. Your brother is Australia’s top toxicologist. It puts him at the front of the queue for organ transplants. And he even gets to hand pick his donor, if you don’t mind the pun. The tricky part was finding the surgeon with the necessary expertise and easy morality. We’ve got one on ice for another four days.’

  Wragg’s face drained of colour as he realised the gravity of what was being laid out before him. ‘Not a chance. This is a civilised country.’

  Riley shook his head and pointed out the window. ‘Out there it might be. But for the Rogue Intercept Police it’s just a view.’

  He was well aware that in this instance full disclosure without a sedative was nothing short of mental torture. In a flash he stabbed Wragg’s bicep with a syringe he had been carrying. Wragg’s eyes sighed closed almost immediately and his head lolled awkwardly against the headrest.

  ‘Gustav has vowed to redeem his brother by using his hands to make the world a better place,’ said Riley to Furn. ‘And probably to take another lover as well.’

  Furn gave him an incredulous look ‘Maybe Wragg’s got a point about people trying to mess with our heads. Do you really think a world leading toxicologist goes to Geneva and catches septicemia? It seems to me just as unlikely as a world renowned psychologist having personal relations with a patient.’ He glanced at the scrunched up, gaping mouthed Dokomad in the rearview mirror. ‘Well, a patient like that, anyway. He’s definitely had his head messed around with. There’s no other way to explain a criminal confessing to murder in the backseat of a police car. Perhaps, we should put on the police radio and find out if it’s true the Sapiens are on a rampage.’

  ‘Leave it,’ replied Riley, pointedly. ‘We’ve got our man. So, let’s just concentrate on the delivery.’ He paused a moment. ‘Hell, we’ve paid a high enough price for it.’

  ‘We missed Breeze at the Rocks today,’ conceded Furn. ‘Has he left for France yet?’

  Riley pushed Dokomad further away from him and glanced at his watch. ‘He’ll be in the air at the moment. We did miss him today. It got messy. Though Condrey was a fair substitute. You might want to explain that when this is over. I’d like to hear how a convicted armed robber came to be your backup.’

  They roared into Albury Wodonga, the largest of the Victoria and New South Wales border crossings and a halfway point on their journey. The Hume Highway cut right through the town in a clear, direct path such that the street signage was almost entirely dedicated to luring motorists off it: to the awaiting fast food restaurants, hotels and bars – or, at least, those were the signs catching Furn’s attention. His eyes, however, were still firmly trained upon the road and he did not fail to notice the old woman step in front of the Mitsubishi clutching a large chunk of concrete to her chest. Despite the blazing headlights upon her, she bore all the serenity of a gardener rearranging rock features on a Sunday afternoon.

  ‘Watch it!’ Riley was suddenly screaming into Furn’s ear.

  Furn remained calm, though he knew the concrete block, with the woman coming along for the ride, was destined for the front windshield in what would likely be a lethal impact. One of Pei’s Sapiens sent out on a search and destroy mission? Probably. In the split second before impact, Furn realised he could veer to the right and risk oncoming traffic or veer to the left where pedestrians, power poles and parked cars might be lurking. He chose the inside turn on nothing more than instinct, mounting the footpath and bracing for impact. The high performance tires and shock absorbers absorbed the curb with such a soft touch Furn was vague on
where it was under the vehicle; but the passenger door scraped along the corrugated iron of a panel beater’s shop front, including a well weathered sign listing the company name and trading hours. The head lights caught a patch of silver reflector tape. Furn focused on the large wheelie bin directly ahead. His foot strengthened on the brake and his eyes closed against the looming encounter with an airbag. The impact was heavy and there was all the commotion of having hit a Jack-in-the-box. At least Furn was spared that mouthful of airbag. Much of the impact seemed higher than the bonnet. Overhead, a primitive sunroof was being torn out.

  There was a hideous scream and Furn yanked open his eyes a leg in a bunched up stocking disappearing over the windscreen. The concrete block tumbled along the roof and down the other side, smashing heavily onto the footpath with the broken body of the old woman not far behind.

  ‘She stepped back into us,’ cried Riley in horror. As the car came to a stop, he added, ‘It was pure luck the concrete block went over the roof. It could have taken your head off.’

  Before Furn could catch his breath, there came a hit to the side window, sounding like a misdirected bird. But he felt tiny the glass shards down the back of his shirt and he realised someone was taking potshots.

  ‘Ambush!’ he cried, ducking low and pulling out his pistol.

  Another shot whipped by overhead, taking more glass with it.

  ‘I see him,’ said Riley, having pulled Dokomad down onto his lap. ‘Crossing the road at 3 o’clock.’

  The shadowy, overweight man was approaching calmly, his pistol aimed from the hip.

  ‘Take him!’ Riley declared, hampered in reaching for his own pistol by Dokomad’s dead weight.

  Furn swung low at the shooter, superimposing onto him the image of a firing range target, the way he had been taught by Toothless Jock when he wasn’t glueing guns to his hand. Jock always had his charges blindfolded throughout his sessions, varying the transparency of the blindfolds as he saw fit. ‘There is good and bad visibility in a fight,’ he would say, ‘but it is never clear’.

  The shooter dropped with Furn’s first round, ominously limp. No scream. No clutch. That was another Jockism: ‘The good gun does not make peace, only quiet.’

  Riley sensed it, and his movements slowed. ‘Well done. But get him off the road. Him and the woman both. We don’t want to get caught up in a crime scene. And keep your head down in case there are more of them.’

  Gun first, Furn hurried out the car. There was no need to check for a pulse. Minus the top of the head, it didn’t much matter what the heart was doing. A set of headlights was approaching from the distance. Furn crudely dragged the corpse by its ankles, leaving a red line just as thick as the road’s white ones. He did not feel much like a cop doing it. By the time of the panel van’s passing the body was dumped on the footpath a few metres away from the old woman’s.

  Riley’s first action outside the car was to pick up the wheelie bin, which had flown a couple of metres along the road, its spilt contents revealing a lot about the panel beaters’ takeaway food preferences.

  ‘What a mess,’ said Furn. ‘Shall we call it in?’

  ‘They came at us from the dark and that’s the way we’re going to leave them,’ said Riley grimly. ‘Dokomad is our sole objective.’

  A small convoy of headlights was approaching now. Riley surveyed the bodies and was confident the lack of street lighting and a slight decline in the roadside would combine to conceal the bodies from all but the most observant of passersby. One of the old woman’s arms, however, was sticking up. Riley flattened it down with his shoe heel just as the convoy, headed up by a removalist van, streaked by.

  Furn joined him by the corpses, his hand, lost inside his jacket at gun level. ‘This Paz Yolando, the retired rally car champion,’ he murmured, standing over the male corpse.

  ‘You recognise him?’ murmured Riley.

  ‘His name’s on the Corvette number plate across the road.’

  Riley gave the body a closer look. It was dressed in a black leather jacket, grey t-shirt, blue jeans and a dig shiny belt buckle. ‘No wonder they could make such quick time up from Melbourne. If I remember correctly, he got booted off his team several years ago for speeding through a school zone well intoxicated.’

  ‘With a worse for wear police captain’s eighteen year old daughter along for the ride, which, unfortunately for him, the media found all very salacious.’

  ‘I heard about it.’ Furn shook his head pityingly. ‘As far as I can recall the court ordered him to attend counselling.’

  ‘My freelance crime writer friend tells me Gerr Doolan has come out of retirement with the single purpose of destroying the RIP.’

  ‘Whose Doolan?’

  ‘The Sydney Times muckraker. Made his name by getting Task Force Chief Odom reassigned as a night watchman for haggling over the price of a bong at his local primary school’s annual flea market. He wouldn’t bother pulling out his keyboard again unless he was confident he could top that.’

  ‘So, that’s what happened to Odom?’

  ‘Don’t you ever read the newspaper?’

  ‘Not since they stropped wrapping my fish and chips in them.’

  ‘Well, we’d better be careful. Doolan’s idea of fine print is his name under the headline.’ Riley shook his head admonishingly at the two bodies. ‘If we stay we’ll get buried along with them. But if we drive off there’s no way it won’t get out. Our vehicle has no a intercept directive on it through NSW and Victoria, which means a lot of cops in a lot of patrol cars have a nice little tip to sell to Doolan when he inevitably comes calling. An autograph on a nice, healthy check – the kind that clears through the bank easier than it does the conscience.’

  The mobile phone in Paz Yolando’s jacket began to ring to Beethoven’s Number Nine Symphony. Riley got blood and cerebral muck on his fingers as he retrieved it. It was listed as an unknown caller. Riley gave the phone a quick shake and answered it.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Did you get Wragg?’ It was a female voice, the vocal chords as tight as straggle-wire.

  Riley supposed it was Zulma Pei though doubted he would have gotten very far if he asked. He lowered and hardened his voice and tried to talk like he imagined a rally car driver would. ‘He’s hurt but we got him. We’re bringing him to Melbourne.’

  The call abruptly went dead.

  ‘Maybe she got another call,’ snarled Riley and put the phone into his pocket.

  Another gaggle of headlights streaked by.

  ‘So we’re not calling this in?’ murmured Furn, still not finished with gaping at the crime scene.

  ‘No,’ said Riley dryly.

  ‘That’ll makes it a hit and run of a sweet old lady and the murder and dumping of a well-known rally car driver.’

  ‘Sounds ugly, I know, but with Dokomad passed out in the backseat, we don’t want to be stuck here answering questions.’

  ‘Better here than in a court of law.’

  ‘It won’t come to that. We’ve got a set of spare number plates in the boot. Ones that can’t be traced back to the RIP. And there are other ways to disguise a car, such that Doolan and the like could never connect it back to the police.’

  ‘You’re not talking about a coat of paint, are you?’

  Riley shook his heads. ‘There is an infamous protected witness lurking amongst the police ranks. Known only as 206B. A hardened lieutenant of the Bay City Killers street gang, who helped put away Stir Delaine for murder on the condition he would have a free pass into the cops on his twentieth birthday.’

  Furn’s face was impassive. ‘So what?’

  ‘Lander of the Protective Witness Program was the only one who knew his identity and it was one of the few things he neglected to mention in his suicide note.’

  Furn folded his arms impatiently. ‘These bodies are starting to smell.’

  ‘The point is, when I drafted you into the RIP, I wasn’t entirely assuming you were 206B, but now I think I’
m counting on it.’ Riley raked over Furn’s reaction the way archaeologists might brush away at sand. There was an unmistakable cheek twitch, its meaning as real as the hieroglyphics on the walls of an obscure ancient tomb. It gave Riley confidence. ‘If we’re going to see this case through, we can’t afford to get bogged down on the highway.’

  ‘Well, if we’re stretching our legs with a few yarns,’ said Furn, ‘let me tell you a story, about a father taking his son to buy an ice cream on his fourth birthday and deciding to drop into the races on the way. The youngest mare in Race Two was a sure thing to the knowledgeable punter. The race was run, the patrons screamed and the father’s meagre stake money was promptly turned into a healthy winnings. Now he had enough for a double scoop of birthday treat. But why not throw in a trip to the zoo as well? There was a filly in Race Four he fancied. The zoo trip was scuttled by a stutter at the opening gate. Conservative betting in Race Five and Six and he was at least back to an ice cream. The only problem was two hours had flown by at the track and he had left his son in the back seat of the car.’

  ‘Your birthday is in the middle of summer, isn’t it?’ mused Riley. ‘Is that why you’re called Furnace?’

  ‘Pronounced dead on my fourth birthday in the backseat of my father’s car.’ Furn shook it off. ‘Since then I’ve learned to drive.’

  Riley took from his pocket the one phone that did not belong to the recently dead and placed a call. ‘We’ll be late,’ was all that he said.