A Tropical Cure (A Darren Mangan Thriller Book 2)

by John Hollenkamp

  Eddie’s head was rolling on his shoulders. His face was a bloody mess of caked cornflour.

  “Time to wash your face,” Feliciano exulted.

  He put his foot against the chair-back and shoved Eddie, chair-bound and all forward; the whole lot crashed to the floor including Eddie, protesting in muffled roars. Feliciano pulled Eddie to his knees.

  The gorilla of a man was reduced to the posture of a beggar.

  Salvatore dragged the bucket over. He placed it under Eddie’s face.

  Eddie’s reaction was immediate, shaking his head from side to side.

  Feliciano crashed the butt of shotgun between Eddie’s shoulder blades.

  Eddie’s whole body was heaving from fear.

  Salvatore went to the benchtop, on it was a pair of red, long-sleeved chemical gloves. He picked them up and fitted them one by one on each hand while stepping closer to Eddie.

  “Sleeping with the fish, eh?”

  With awkward effort, Salvatore lowered himself to one knee before Eddie, the bucket was in between them. Salvatore moved his gloved hands forward, cupping Eddie’s face, then latching onto his ears.

  The Italian’s fingers squeezed Eddie’s earlobes watching Eddie’s growing eyeballs, pulling him down until chin dipped the water in the bucket.

  Now Eddie started to resist in earnest. Mister Shotgun sent him a short reminder, with a snappy knock.

  Blood and cornflour had started to discolour the water. Feliciano pressed the butt of the shotgun into Eddie’s neck and pushed, forcing the ex-bikie boss’ head under water. Then, the biker’s body convulsed, his head exploded from out of the bucket, and body righted in a violent outburst of spasms. Stuck to his face, a transparent creature with a myriad of tentacles hanging from his chin.

  Chironex Fleckeri.

  Then the back door flew open…

  CHAPTER 73

  NOT WALKABOUT

  When Joel had come to, 15 minutes earlier, his head was throbbing. Someone had knocked him out. Joel sat up rubbing the back of his head. He felt the bulge, a smear of blood was left on his fingertips. Unbelievably, his Glock and holster were untouched. Who would have clonked him on the head and why? Covered in sandy dirt and bits of leaf he brushed himself off. He noticed the green ants crawling on his socks and creeping over his shins. He flicked them off before they could start biting him.

  The white sedan was still there.

  How long had he been passed out for? Shit. Darren, Ruby.

  He checked his watch. Couldn’t have been real long. Time for fucking around has lapsed.

  The urge was strong. Too strong. He had to know.

  Joel sprinted across the road, ducking low as if being shot at, heading straight for the white sedan. Staying low, and out of sight from the street, he opened the back door of the sedan. Fuck!

  Joel was face to face staring at the lifeless eyes of a dead man draped over the backseat. His clothing looked sodden, the vinyl floor mats were wet with puddles. Joel’s pulse was soaring. What was going on?

  He bolted back across the road and disappeared into the scrub. He couldn’t risk being seen. Regardless of what was going on, he needed to stay focussed on today’s mission. Go and help rescue Ruby, have Darren’s back.

  Joel pushed his way through the gnarly undergrowth and dense scrubs ignoring the lashing he was copping. Yellow. The colour of the yellow Moke. He slowed his advance, and crouched to see if he could see anyone. Nothing.

  No one in the Moke.

  The cul-de-sac was deserted.

  He’d have to double-back and figure out where Eddie would have taken Darren.

  Joel backtracked a couple of hundred metres, but he kept his eye closer on the streetscape. He spotted a weatherboard cottage partially hidden behind an overgrown, once-maintained tropical garden, choked with a mess of cane palms. A tinnie parked under a crappy carport, a timber sloop sitting on a rusty trailer. A vacant block of land next to it. Overgrown, and a late model silver car was parked right at the back, that didn’t make sense. It’d have to be Eddie. Joel took a good look around and crossed the road.

  With the discovery of the Statesman, Joel was convinced the timber cottage would be where Darren and Ruby were held. The car was locked. Joel used it as a temporary hiding place. It was too far from the cottage to hear much of anything, until he heard someone bellow expletives. Joel’s pulse raced again.

  He unclipped the Glock from the holster. Holding the barrel against his forehead, he shut his eyes for a moment. He thought about Auntie Jilli, Billy. Poor Billy.

  It wasn’t Eddie that murdered Billy, but the bastard was somehow connected to all the misery linked with the events leading up to this moment. Joel was sure about that. Okay. Time for some Abo pay-back!

  Joel crouched low, then he fell into a tiger-crawl, slowly sliding his way to the back of the cottage. Voices were becoming clearer. He heard the accented voice from a man, “Sleeping with the fish, eh?”

  Joel crawled another ten metres dragging his belly over the rough ground.

  There was an almighty commotion inside. It was now or never.

  Joel kicked the back door, while holding his Glock at chest-height.

  Eddie was upright, his body shaking, his head and eyes in some weird trance, looking like he was performing some tribal dance ritual. A wooden chair tied to his legs was tap-dancing against the timber floor. A thin, wiry man with grey-hair stood behind Eddie, lifting a double-barrel shotgun as his eyes connected with Joel’s. The grin on his weathered face told a thousand lies, but his eyes didn’t. Joel moved his Glock across, squeezing the trigger several times. The kitchen exploded into a succession of rapid, loud gunfire.

  Ruby had thrown herself flat to the floor.

  Eddie had twirled like a ballerina when the first volley from the shotgun clipped him, tearing his shirt to shreds, and ripping part of his side apart, sending bits of flesh and blood into Salvatore’s dumbfounded face. The second blast went past Eddie…with a hundred pellets slamming into Joel’s chest. He staggered some, then fell back, hard against the wall.

  Darren had launched himself towards Joel to intercept the Glock which had dropped from his mate’s grip.

  Feliciano stood upright for several seconds. Both barrels of the shotgun had been emptied. Stunned, his head unsteady and bowed down he looked at his chest, blood rapidly staining and soaking his white cotton shirt. He sensed wet blood streaming down his cheeks, he could taste it from his lips. Feliciano fell face first to the floor.

  Darren slid across the floor past the Italian mobster. He had caught Joel’s heavy Glock before it hit the floor. There wasn’t a lot you could do with cable-tied wrists. But catching and holding and firing a Glock was absolutely possible. Darren rolled onto his back, and levelled the weapon at the balding Italian who was still on his knees. His face was red with blood spatter and rage, exuding a defiance that screamed ‘how dare you!’, and he lunged for the .32 PPK. Darren squeezed the trigger three times. The .45 calibre bullets tore into the Italian’s side and back. The room was filled with the smell of gun-powder and smoke. Suddenly, everything was deathly quiet.

  Ruby coughed.

  She stammered Darren’s name.

  Joel was sitting up resting against the wall near the door.

  His light-blue shirt with a tropical flower motif was torn and drenched in blood. His eyes were glassy, blood-shot and staring into nothingness. Darren inched himself over.

  Joel’s lips moved, “Fucken … hell …what did he?” And he coughed up blood, blowing and spitting to clear his mouth.

  “Don’t talk, mate. Save your energy. I’m gonna ring for an ambo right now.” Darren was groping for his phone.

  Joel moved his arm, his hand was searching for Darren.

  Ruby had moved closer, her hands and feet still restrained.

  “Get these off me, Darren. I can help him. Quick.” She held her wrists out.

  “Fucken stop. Listen … please listen.” Joel’s eye lids were fluttering, “
I’ll be seeing ya. That sky, up there, it’s big enough for white fellas too.” He smiled thinly, his head fell forward.

  CHAPTER 74

  RED IN THE MORNING…

  Despite earlier cloud cover, Ruby was pleased to see a bit of blue sky. She’d been up for a few hours now. Shuffling around the kitchen in her nighty with her third cup of coffee, she resolved that today should be the start of a renewed faith in humanity. Ruby drained the last of the black coffee and rinsed the mug under the tap, leaving it upside down on the dish drainer. She’d have a shower first.

  ***

  It had been four weeks since that terror-filled day on the island.

  Eddie didn’t survive the shotgun blast and had bled to death, while writhing from excruciating pain delivered by the stings on his face from a Box Jellyfish. Darren had stood over Eddie in silence, watching the killer, ignoring his pleas for mercy and a quick death. Eddie had begged Darren to end his suffering with a single shot.

  It had taken forty-five minutes before Eddie finally expired. Darren had sat silent, remembering Cate and Johnno. Ruby cried while holding Joel’s hand, until the Ambo turned up.

  ***

  A frenzied few days followed the carnage. Both Darren and Ruby were questioned at length by the detective-in-charge, Inspector Richard Wilder, a man who they found to be sympathetic to their professed innocent involvement while ‘holidaying’ on the island. The identities of the Italian victims took some days to establish. The body of the man discovered in a car parked nearby was identified by one of the Island policemen as a local man known for his poor driving habits, and drug use. Neither Ruby or Darren were able to shed light on who any of those men were. The older gentlemen, the ones with the shotgun, were after Eddie. Darren did elucidate that he and Eddie had known each other in Sydney and that Eddie must have followed them, Ruby and him, to the island.

  Wilder surmised the event, “…As a weird convergence of people in even weirder circumstances.” The other comment Wilder made was, “I’ve rarely witnessed so many people running around with shovels to pile shit, move shit and bury shit.”

  A phone call originating from a Federal Crime Investigation Unit, by a person called Adam, had confirmed the identities of the deceased as having links to organised crime. Adam had commented to Wilder, he wasn’t at all surprised to hear that the crime syndicate had finally caught up with Eddie.

  Wilder’s last warning to Darren: that he should keep his nose clean from here on out. Next time, his friends in Sydney might not be able help him.

  ***

  “Patch. Come.” Ruby stood at the open screen door, a towel wrapped around her wet hair. She had a fresh shin bone clenched between thumb and fingers. Patch’s head cocked a few degrees, ears pert and straight to his feet. Yeah, like I have to ask twice. Cheeky bugger. He sat in front of her, tail sweeping the pavement. “Here you go.” She lowered the beef bone and let go of it. Patch sniffed at it, pushed it with his nose, picked it up on one end and carried it to the garden. Her eyes followed his trail, and sure enough the dog dropped the bone on some garden mulch, then he flicked the leaves and wood chips with his nose clearing a spot to roll the bone into. Patch covered it roughly by scraping leaves over with his paw.

  That’s what we must do. Bury it. Let it go. Ruby shut the screen door.

  ***

  Darren had started early this morning. The Northern Taxi Co. was winding up in two weeks. Pete couldn’t afford to keep the business running. Competition from the larger operations was swallowing up his business. Darren figured he’d hang around until the end. Most of the other drivers had already left to work elsewhere.

  At daybreak, the city sky had a red glow. He’d just picked up a fare from one of the backpacker hostels. From the language, the two young men were speaking, Darren guessed that they could be French. Both men in their early twenties had the usual traveller’s gear, although their backpacks were not so large that they had to go in the boot. Each of them carried a small back-pack for a day-trip, in this case, to Magnetic Island. A popular ‘go to’ destination for young European travellers of which many came from Scandinavia, Germany and Britain. Although not all were blond, blue-eyed and sun-tanned, the passengers in the back seat didn’t quite fit the mould – olive skin, dark eyes and bad haircuts, with a strange intensity in their faces, like they were about to take a test.

  It was busy at the approach to the ferry terminal. Waiting for traffic to clear Darren looked at the vivid, red sky like it was painted over the island, 8 kilometres across the water. He looked at his passengers in the back seat from the rear-view mirror and he thought, speak French eh, but you both look like a couple of camel jockeys to me.

  Stopped at the drop-off zone, one of them handed a twenty dollar note to Darren. “Thank you,” the passenger said.

  They exited the taxi from the same driver’s side door.

  “Allahu Akbar.” They both said quietly to each other and went their separate ways.

  Funny. That didn’t sound French.

  Darren signalled to a group of blonde girls that his cab was free.

  THE END