“Dammit, Viv . . . can’t you shut the mongrel bloody dog up?” Charlie shouted at one point. Only once. Bluey, clearly delighted at having someone else to pester, took the complaint as an invitation to try and clamber onto Charlie’s shoulders and kiss him on the ear. That nearly caused Charlie to drive fair into a mammoth peppermint tree beside what he thought was probably the track – it was the only space wide enough to drive through, anyway.
After that, though, he shut up and drove, letting the old man and the prisoner make the decisions and praying silently that somehow, magically, they would make it through to the real road that would take them to where they could turn back north again and reach Ian Boyd’s shack.
If it exists. If we survive this nonsense. If I don’t stop and get out and shoot the lot of them . . . especially that damned dog.
On and on and on it went, Charlie fighting the wheel as the vehicle slithered and slid and bounced and splashed and careened its way through the scrub, over logs and under gigantic, spreading stringy barks and blue gums, plowing through bogs and spewing mud and gravel and bark and leaves behind it. If there was any given moment when all four wheels were actually on the ground at the same time, Charlie couldn’t identify it, any more than he could ever be sure of where they were or what direction was which, there in the jolting and the cacophony of shouted instructions and yodels from that damned dog.
Until, suddenly, he was faced with a seemingly impenetrable wall of eucalypt saplings, with bigger trees on both sides and nowhere to go and hardly time even to stop.
“Give it to ’er!” screamed Viv.
“Don’t stop!” yelled Ian Boyd from the back.
And that damned dog yelped in his ear and tried to kiss him as Charlie floored the police vehicle, which flattened saplings for what seemed like half a mile before bouncing up and over a berm of dirt and through a shallow ditch to land in a shuddering, skidding stop right in the middle of a real, genuine road.
“You beauty!” an impressed Viv told Charlie. In the rear, Ian only groaned and hunched over his wounded testicles, his contribution to the expedition essentially finished, now.
Charlie sat for a moment, gasping for breath and trying to get his balance back. And his composure. Even so, he had to struggle to get out the words, “Which way now?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Kendall couldn’t help being embarrassed by it all. He felt like he was sixteen again and caught in his grandfather’s old Chevy on one of the back roads along the Qualicum River on Vancouver Island. With a girl. Necking, it was called then, and he had indelible memories of a uniformed RCMP constable telling him: “Put your neck back in your pants and take her home. Now.”
Kirsten merely thought it was funny, at least after they’d realized the vehicle bathing them in its headlights was a police car and the approaching figure with the flashlight was a policeman and not Ian Boyd . . . or worse.
Although she was quick as Kendall to scramble into her jeans and tug down her bush shirt, he distinctly heard her chuckle as she apparently realized there’d be no time to struggle into her bra, so she casually tossed it into the rear of the vehicle and flashed him a cheeky grin as she did so.
“Takes you back, doesn’t it?” Kirsten quipped with an even wider smile. Then they were out in the road, attempting to explain to Charlie’s youngest, newest constable the convoluted tale of their abduction, their escape, and the threat still posed by Ian Boyd.
“And Stafford,” Kirsten said. “I won’t be convinced he’s not a threat until I see him hang. We have to get back there and make sure about him.”
“They don’t hang anyone in Australia,” said the constable. “And I have orders not to proceed further until Sergeant Banes arrives – especially now that we know you two are safe. If you say this Stafford person is safely tied up in this cabin, wherever it is, I expect he’ll keep for awhile.”
“The RCMP thought he’d been eaten by a cougar, and look what’s happened,” Kirsten replied. Sharply. Insistently. “He’s already killed at least one other person that we know of and lord knows how many we don’t.”
“Yes, but according to you there’s nobody else there for him to kill,” replied the constable, already well trained by Charlie to maintain an appearance of calm no matter what the crisis. “So even if he gets loose, he can’t get very far without a vehicle, for which you have the keys, and you say you didn’t see this rifle he’s supposed to have.”
Further discussion lapsed, then, as a new set of headlights appeared along the road, and moments later they were treated to the sight of Charlie’s vehicle, slathered with mud to the roof line, still festooned with bits of leaf and twig, as it slewed to a halt.
~~~
Charlie took his young constable aside, listened to his brief report, and merely raised an eyebrow at being told the situation the constable said Kirsten and Kendall were in when he’d arrived. Charlie dearly wanted to laugh out loud, but managed to hide the urge. He did throw them a glance that Kendall, looking as guilty and embarrassed as he felt, obviously interpreted quite correctly. Charlie could see the blush even in the questionable light.
She has got to be one tough woman, but then you already knew that, I suppose. I can see why me old mate Kendall is smitten, but I wonder if he’s up to dealing with her, long term.
And Kirsten, too, had caught that aspect of the constable’s report, Charlie noticed. When Kendall formally introduced Kirsten to Charlie, she as much as told him so just by the look in her eye. And silently dared him to say a single word about it, too.
Not on your Nellie, darling girl. Not to you, any road. But I’ll stir me old mate Kendall about it before he leaves Tassie . . . you mark my words. Lucky bugger.
“All right – here’s how it’s got to work,” Charlie said once the bare bones of the situation had again been discussed. “You” (to the constable) “will take our little mate Ian here back to town, get him medical treatment, and then lock him up. And take these two” (Kirsten and Kendall) “along with you and drop them at Mrs. McKay’s B&B. I can get their statement—”
“No!” The two of them spoke in unison, almost as if the response had been staged, rehearsed.
“What do you mean?” Charlie asked. “Don’t tell me you actually want to go back there?”
“I don’t want to, but I have to,” was the reply from Kirsten. Uttered in a voice flat with determination, cold as a winter wind. “He got away in Canada and I won’t sleep, now, until I see you take him away in handcuffs and lock the bastard up forever.”
“Fine.” Charlie could only sigh. No sense arguing with this woman, he thought. Easier to give in; they didn’t have time to argue. So again, he turned to the constable, who was helping Ian Boyd make the transfer from vehicle to vehicle.
“Take old Viv along with you, then,” Charlie said, “and see that he gets a ride home afterwards.”
Viv didn’t even bother to argue. He simply glared at Charlie, spat contemptuously on the ground sufficiently far from Charlie’s boots that it couldn’t really be interpreted as anything but a deliberate miss, then marched over, dog at his heels, and plunked himself down in the front passenger seat of the police vehicle.
Charlie’s police vehicle.
Viv never so much as glanced at Charlie, but Bluey cast an evil yellow eye over the old man’s shoulder as he hopped in after his master.
The young constable prudently looked the other way and busied himself on his radio, assembling the rest of Charlie’s people now that it was certain where they were needed.
Kirsten and Kendall looked at Charlie, then at each other, and took refuge in their need to embrace, ignoring the fact they’d already done sufficient of that before Charlie’s arrival.
All of which left Charlie between a rock and a hard place. Nothing he could say or do at this point was going to change anything. He couldn’t physically throw old Viv out of the vehicle and leave him here in the middle of nowhere, and he couldn’t arrest the old bugger either,
although the thought did occur to him. Briefly.
That damned dog would eat me alive and the old man would let him. I’m surprised he hasn’t already sent him over to piss on my bloody boots.
And he couldn’t help looking down to check, more than a little certain it must have happened and he’d somehow missed the insult.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
They lingered at that final turn-in, sitting in an uncomfortable silence as they waited for Charlie’s troops to arrive.
Charlie stared out through the mud-smeared windscreen, pondering a plan of action and wondering if there was anything he’d forgotten in his planning. It had come to him suddenly, as they made the last bit of the journey, just how important this situation was – to his career, to his friends, to his future.
And I can’t even control the situation here in my own bloody vehicle. Good one, Charlie.
In the rearview mirror he could see Kirsten, snuggled into the protective curve of Kendall’s arm around her shoulder. Her eyes were closed . . . she might have been asleep but for the hand that reflexively stroked the rough fur of that damned dog, who had hopped over the seat and was now snuggled against her thigh with all the aplomb of a real dog. Well, a lap dog, anyway.
Occasionally, he heard her murmuring to the evil beast, telling him what a splendid creature he was, how clever he was, how utterly beautiful and noble and dignified. She’d insisted, immediately, on seeing the blood-soaked fur, on being given something to wipe away the blood and cleanse his wound – and only then, Charlie had noted with some amusement, deigned to do the same thing for the dog’s master.
At least you’ve got your priorities straight. Sort of. I think the dog’s injury was the worst of the two. Have to remember to stop by the vet’s when this is all over with. Maybe he’ll give me a cut-rate price to stitch up the both of them.
Beside Charlie, old Viv also stared, although out of the side window. And smoked. And – Charlie was certain – deliberately exhaled out of the corner of his mouth so as to send as much of the noxious smoke as he could in Charlie’s direction. Viv had pointedly ignored him all through the journey thus far. Never looked at him, never spoke. He’d spent the time building a wall between them, laying his indignation and insult down brick by silent, reproving brick.
And Charlie didn’t know how to deal with that, either.
Silly old bastard. I should have realized he’d want to be in at the end of it all. He was there at the start, as he’s never let anyone forget. Okay, old man . . . I’m sorry.
But he couldn’t say it. Not here and now, anyway, in front of witnesses. And not least because he knew any apology would be thrown back in his face.
And rightly so. Don’t even bother to try and deny that.
He was highly relieved when the first of his people arrived and he could get out of the vehicle, return to real, proper police attitudes and circumstances, giving orders, taking reports about what had been done and by whom, and who was still to be expected in this lonely place tonight.
But all too soon, or maybe it wasn’t soon enough, a move had to be made. Charlie’s vehicle led the parade of those sufficiently bushworthy to follow him. He’d been forced to leave one officer out there at the road because his standard police cruiser wouldn’t have made it through the final bit of track in a fit.
~~~
Rose’s partially dismembered corpse hung like some grotesque pale fruit in the top edges of the headlight glow as they reached that spot, and Charlie noticed in his mirror that Kirsten and Kendall both bowed their heads, unwilling to look again at a horror they’d already seen, would probably never forget.
The old man merely grunted something incomprehensible. He’d seen worse, as Charlie had, when Stafford’s human discards were being removed from the old mine shaft up on Blue Tier.
When they reached Stafford’s vehicle with its grotesque tailgate cargo, Charlie merely glanced at it in passing. It was too close to the shack for him to be worrying about it at this stage. What lay ahead was more important.
He parked with his headlights on high beam and illuminating the decrepit structure, huddled in the ferns with the door halfway open and a feeble glow of lantern-light visible within. From this angle, Charlie could see the Vaime sniper rifle propped against the side of the shack, a sight that prompted a silent sigh of relief.
At least now I can assume Stafford hasn’t done a runner. He’d have taken the rifle, surely, if he’d got free.
“Right,” he said, opening the door and stepping out, his eyes on the doorway of the shack. “I want you all to stay here. Got that?”
Kirsten and Kendall both nodded, the look on their faces suggesting they might now be regretting their insistence on coming along for the final scene. Viv glared at Charlie, but granted him a tiny nod.
And as Charlie stepped back to issue instructions to those in vehicles behind them, that damned dog erupted through Charlie’s still-open door and charged toward the cabin, screaming out his battle challenge in a series of high-pitched yodels and yelps almost loud enough to wake the dead.
“God damn it!” Charlie cried, then – like everyone else who watched – was struck dumb in astonishment as seven Tassie devils scurried out of the open doorway, fading like shadows into the night as Bluey appeared in the doorway behind them, hopping up and down on his stubby legs and yodeling his triumph.
“Damn it, Viv. Control your dog!”
Charlie was only half aware of the old man’s whistle as he rushed to the doorway, afraid of what he’d find, knowing what he’d find. He paused at the entry, head bowed, unwilling for a moment to look inside.
And when he did, it was to see essentially what Kirsten and Kendall had described to him . . . the camp cots, the folding table, the discarded lengths of chain, the lantern. And Dr. Ralph Stafford – what was left of him.
Oh dear God!
A devil can consume half its body weight in thirty minutes. How the hell do I know that? No matter. It’s right. So . . . seven of the buggers . . . or was it eight? Ten – fifteen pounds apiece? And Stafford would have been about thirteen stone – a hundred and eighty pounds, say . . .
Charlie closed his eyes again to the horror of it, unable to do the math. Didn’t need to do the math. Nobody could do the math, not accurately, except maybe some forensic specialist on a mission.
The professional policeman in Charlie took solace in the fact that the devils hadn’t chewed away Stafford’s fingers. Or at least not all of them. Enough of the man’s hands, still bound by the cable ties, remained for a positive identification when that time came. The face was mostly undamaged, but that mattered less because it was obvious even in death that the doctor had undergone extensive reconstructive surgery to change his appearance.
But the human being in Charlie wasn’t able to take in the horror with such cold professionalism. Not all at once, not even knowing, intellectually, that Stafford had likely gotten only what he deserved, given his record of murders and mutilations. Stafford, whose death mask screamed as loudly as the man himself must have screamed, whose body was still in that backward bow, wrists linked to ankles by the cable ties, just as Kendall had described it. Gone to his destiny without any chance to defend himself, without any more mercy than he’d shown the pretty young women he’d slaughtered and eaten.
Charlie had to turn away from the carnage before his humanity and his stomach betrayed him. He gulped and gasped to hold back the bile as he lurched outside, slamming the door of the shack behind him and gesturing a firm, definite, STAY AWAY to everyone waiting in the vehicles. As he fumbled his way around to the side of the building and confirmed that yes, he actually had seen the Vaime sniper rifle propped there. Charlie stood and stared at it until his stomach settled and his mind began to clear, until his mind actually began to work.
It needed to work. There was much to be done.
They’d been too late to save Stafford. Never had any show of getting there on time. The brief delay while he waited for backup w
asn’t relevant to anything – Stafford was devil-tucker already, at that point.
Just don’t think about how it must have been for him.
Too late to save Rose, not that there’d ever been a chance of doing that. Poor Rose, driven by envy and her own shallow principles and lord only knew what else. She hadn’t deserved to die like this, but there was nothing to be done about that except to treat her remains with due respect.
At least we’ve got all of her, Charlie thought. Then remembered the lower half of that amputated leg. The thigh was on the tailgate of Stafford’s vehicle – where was the rest?
Charlie had a vivid, noir flash of forensics technicians having to prowl the area for a mile around, collecting devil droppings to be sifted through in the lab for splinters of bone. Then dismissed the mental picture, hoping as he did so that it would stay dismissed but knowing it would come back to haunt him, probably at a singularly inappropriate time.
This wasn’t the time, anyway. Now he must concentrate on doing his job. Consider his options, do what he could for the dead and what he could do to consider the living. What had to be done.
“It’s over,” he told everyone as they gathered around his police vehicle. Charlie looked from face to face, keeping his own expression neutral, firm, but willing them to accept that he was in charge and things would be done as he said they would be done.
And they were. Kendall and Kirsten were sent back to St. Helens with one of Charlie’s people. Another was designated to stay and man the turn-in from the main road, to guide the forensics people when they eventually arrived.
“I’m going to have to stay here until they do,” Charlie said. “I’d really appreciate it, Viv, if you could stay with me . . . but I can have somebody take you home if that’s what you’d prefer.”
He kept his voice flat, direct, professional. But the pleading was there – in his eyes, in his very soul, as he met the old man’s stern, still-indignant gaze.
DINING WITH DEVILS -- A Tasmanian Thriller Page 21
