'Joss!' Isobel looked angry.
'Anyway, I can tell you he's still hanging out with Simon Esterhase.'
'We're going to want to know everything you discovered out there, Joss,' Gabriel spoke to him for the first time. 'But I'd like you to come out to Liverpool today so that we can record your statement. I don't want to miss a thing you've got to say next. It might be exactly what we need to get the lot of them.'
Jill and Gabriel left Joss and Isobel, arranging for the couple to meet them out at Liverpool at two p.m.
Joss lingered at the doorway as they were leaving.
'Just so we're clear,' he said to them, eyeballing each in turn, voice low, 'you guys had better get this fucker fast. I told you I'd do whatever I had to do to protect them,' he angled his head back towards the interior of his house. 'And you need to understand that I will.'
Lawrence Last was not in his office when they got back to Liverpool; an urgent meeting with the police commissioner, his assistant told them. Jill shared a sympathetic expression with the uniformed man behind the desk. The taskforce meeting was delayed until Last's return.
Jill and Gabriel spent the next half-hour working on a report to summarise their movements since the last meeting.
They were just wrapping it up when Jill sensed someone behind her, heading their way. She kept her eyes on the computer screen and tried to detect the identity of the visitor from his movements. Derek Reid, she guessed, just before he spoke.
'Don't you two make a cute couple?'
Jill kept typing. Gabriel grunted.
'Come on! Just shit-stirring,' Reid said. 'Got anything new?'
'Not really,' said Gabriel.
'Not that you'd share leads anyway, hey, Delahunt?' said Reid.
'We're just finishing up a report, but we won't have anything hard until later this arvo,' said Gabriel. 'We'll fill you in on everything in the next meeting. We've got a couple of vics coming in later today.'
Reid seemed annoyed by Gabriel's neutral tone. He took a step closer to Jill, and because she was still seated, his crotch was now in her face. She stood and glared at him. He laughed at her.
'You wanna get some lunch, Jill?' said Gabriel.
She grabbed her bag from under the desk.
'Aw, how sweet,' grinned Reid. 'Can I come too? Since you've broken your rules about dating cops, Jackson, maybe you should give me a go. I'll make you forget all about Super Spy here.'
'I don't really know what you're talking about, Derek,' said Jill, smiling sweetly, 'but you're going to have to get over anything happening between you and me.' She swung her handbag over her shoulder. 'I don't date body builders. It's a little problem I have,' she stared pointedly at his groin, 'with the steroids.'
'Whoa!' Gabriel laughed, and turned to follow Jill as she walked towards the door.
'What's funny, Delahunt?' said Reid, smiling menacingly. 'Why don't you stay here and we can talk about it?'
Gabriel kept walking. 'Forget it, Derek. I don't do cock fights,' he said.
Jill and Gabriel left the room with Reid's parting words: 'Fucking freaks.'
Facing one another across the moulded plastic table, Jill felt an awkward silence between her and Gabriel for the first time since the initial taskforce meeting. The other patrons of the food hall also seemed low on conversation. Overweight kids in school uniform scoffed burgers or pizza for lunch. A young mum seated close to Jill fed her toddler hot chips, the child cawing for them like a hungry seagull. Pairs of people – a mother and daughter, perhaps, on the left, sisters or friends straight ahead – munched listlessly, exchanging grunts now and then.
Jill felt the muteness stealing over her. When that mode kicked in, she sometimes wondered whether she'd ever speak again. Why did she feel this way now? It couldn't have been Reid's comments – God knows she was used to crap like that. She looked down at the table and noticed that she'd used her milkshake as a barrier between them. This was ridiculous. She forced herself to speak.
'So how did you get posted to this case?' she asked. They'd discussed his past briefly before, but never in any detail.
'Lawrence Last asked for my help,' he said. 'I worked with him a year or so ago on an organised crime thing. I've been attached to police units on a few major cases now.'
'So, why this one?'
'My specialty's interrogation. Because they were coming up with so little trace evidence at the crime scenes, they figured they had to get more out of the witnesses and suspects. Anything to get these fuckers.'
'Makes sense,' she said. 'We're an odd group, this taskforce, don't you think? I mean David Tran – what's going on between him and Reid? And I wonder how he got injured – has he said anything to you?'
'Yeah. I'm surprised you haven't been told by someone yet. Everyone out here seems to have an opinion.'
Jill leaned back in her chair while Gabriel continued.
'He's the community liaison officer in the area,' he said. 'First contact for the Vietnamese community. Some of them trust him. Most of them don't. Culturally, it's taboo to speak outside the family about problems. He's seen as a traitor by many of his people because he's operating outside of their rules of silence.'
'Wow. That would be hard.'
'Yep, but it's a double dilemma for David, because he's never been fully accepted by some of the cops either. What did I hear Reid say the other day?' Gabriel took a sip of his drink while he thought. 'Oh yeah, that's it – Tran was called to the desk to speak to someone about some information that could've helped with the case. Reid went with him, so I took a walk over there too. David spoke Vietnamese to this bloke. Reid was like – You wouldn't think we were in Australia, would you mate? – some shit like that. Then he had a laugh with the girl behind the desk, um, what was it – Why don't they save their bloody Chinese for China or wherever they're from?'
'MENSA candidate, Reid. He's wasted in the cops,' said Jill. 'So what happened to David's leg?'
'Oh yeah, that. Heroin dealers from Cabra. Smashed his thighbone with a hammer.'
'Oh my God!' Jill raised a hand to her mouth.
'Yep. He was off duty. They got him in the toilets in Westfield. He'd sent up a few of their best re-sellers.'
'Wow. But David said he was off work HOD.'
'Yeah, Last made sure it was written up as Hurt on Duty. And Last got the fuckers too. Tran I.D.'d the cousin of one of the perps he locked up. So, now they want to kill him.'
'Shit.'
'Yup. For real. That's another reason Last wanted me over here. The organised gang shit is his next big target, once they get on top of the home invasions.'
'So what about you then, Gabe? Are there any deep dark secrets I should know?' Where the hell did that come from? Jill felt her cheeks grow hot. She never asked questions like that.
Gabriel sat there, head on an angle, watching her from under the brim of his cap.
'Sorry,' she said. 'I was just stuffing around. You don't have to answer that.'
'No, it's okay,' he said. 'It's just that I'm not usually great at speaking about my past. Specially at this time of year.'
'This is a rough time?'
Gabriel looked at her again, closed his eyes briefly. Finally, he sighed and pushed his food away.
'I joined the Feds with my wife,' he said.
Jill hoped the shock didn't show on her face.
'We met in a psych lecture at uni. We got married and joined the AFP together four years later. Started work on the Monday after the wedding, actually.' He smiled. 'I started the job in organised crime and Abi was assigned to major fraud. Between jobs, we worked our way together through the MOSC program.'
Phew. Jill had heard of the Management of Serious Crime program: it was the most intense major-crime training program in Australian law enforcement.
'Then after September 11, we both got routed to counterterrorism,' Gabriel continued. 'Three-quarters of us did, to tell you the truth.'
Jill listened. He'd cleared up some of the question
s she'd had about him. But where was Gabriel's wife? He seemed to have read her mind as he continued.
'Abi and I were together for ten years. She was my world.' A small smile did not reach his eyes; they watched a scene from another time. 'We were still based in Canberra, running surveillance. Just a routine tip-off – a member of the public worried about their neighbour's allegiances. The target was a mufti from Queanbeyan; he'd just visited the subject of another intelligence report. Abi was the eye, following him a few cars back. I was with the rest of the team shadowing her.'
'The eye?' said Jill, and then regretted her utterance. She didn't want Gabriel to stop speaking, and she was afraid of breaking his train of thought.
'Yeah. The eye follows the rabbit – the target. The rest of the team follows the eye and ignores the rabbit. You don't want a fleet of cars trailing some poor prick. We just tail the one vehicle – the eye – and the eye can be rotated; that way we can maintain contact and chop and change positions when we need to.' He paused.
'Go on, Gabe. Sorry I interrupted.' She held her breath.
'Nothing great left to tell you, Jill. Some drunk motherfucker ran a light and killed my wife. Head on. He made it out alive. Serial offender. Lived to drink and drive another day, I'm afraid.' He reached unconsciously for his napkin and began to shred it, working around the edges in an organised pattern. 'I was first on the scene, thank God.'
Jill leaned forward, as Gabriel's voice had dropped with his eyes to the table.
'We had a few moments,' he said. 'We had a bit of time… And then the ambos got there.' He cleared his throat. 'Nothing they could do, though. I'd already tried. Abi and I, we tried, but, the injuries…' He looked up. Tears stood in his eyes, and he smiled sadly. 'Five years ago,' he said, 'last Saturday.'
Jill reached a hand towards his, but stopped just before their fingers touched. She could feel the warmth of his skin.
'Saturday,' she said. They'd eaten pasta in his unit. She'd fallen asleep with his cat.
'Yep. First anniversary I didn't spend alone. Thanks.'
Jill knew all about anniversaries. She swallowed at the lump in her throat. They were silent a moment, each thinking about that time of the year when the ghosts crowded closer, clamouring for more attention. This time she let her fingers find his. She covered his hand with her own. What would it feel like, she thought, to find and then lose your soul mate – to feel her dying, leaving you, wanting desperately to stay, but knowing there was nothing you could do? The helplessness, the loss of control; is love worth risking such desolation?
Gabriel gazed at the table. Jill stared at a wet smear on the soft skin next to his eye. She longed to wipe it away. She had her finger poised, ready, but left her hand where it was.
'I bet she was amazing.' Jill wasn't sure whether she spoke aloud. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. 'Hey,' she said. 'Your cat. You named her "Ten".'
He looked up and smiled. 'Best years of my life.'
An itchy impatience prevented Jill enjoying twilight on her balcony. She sat rocking on a chair, bare feet up on the small table.
It was just over a week since she'd become involved in the case. They'd come a long way – identified the main offender – but he was still out there, and they couldn't go in hard until they sighted him. Interviewing his friends and associates would drive him to ground.
But this guy was unhinged. He could attack again at any time, with or without his crew. She felt guilty being home so early, but there'd been nothing immediate for the taskforce to do, and Last had sent them home. She'd considered driving around trying to locate him herself, but they had crews from Penrith to Redfern out looking; there was nothing she could do tonight.
The sound of gulls calling blew back on the salty seaweed breeze; the sound left her feeling inexplicably sad. She pictured them, endlessly wheeling over the ocean, crying. She'd never understood people's aversion to seagulls. Beady-eyed greedy devils, scavengers, some called them, pelting them with rocks, tossing cigarette butts at them, pretending to offer chips or bread. Jill could feed them by the hour, ignoring the baleful stares of others who didn't want to share the beach with the birds. She'd grown skilled at aiming the bread so that the crippled gulls got there first – those hopping on one leg, the fishing line that had strangled their other limb still trailing; those with one eye, or a hook gleaming through their cheek or their beak. The fatter birds stared at her, indignant: these rejects were the walking dead. Feeding them is pointless; life is for living. But she saw gratitude in the shiny black eyes of the wounded birds, or she imagined she did.
She scratched compulsively at her ankles with her toes, then stood, walked back into her apartment. Her thoughts turned to the story Gabriel had told her at lunchtime, but she deflected them. They'd spent every day together for the past week. She could spend a night without thinking about him. As usually happened when she thought about Gabriel, Scotty popped into her mind; she imagined him now, laughing eyes smiling down at her. She picked up the phone.
Maybe he feels like a run or something, she thought, dialling.
Idiot. Idiot. The word was now a mantra. Jill mentally repeated it over and over as she smiled self-consciously from her corner of the backyard.
You've gotta come, Scotty had told her. You're not doing anything else. You know my parents. It's just them and my sister. It's nothing, just a barbecue in the backyard.
She clutched a wine glass to her chest, trying to use it as a shield to cover herself in her flimsy new dress. Idiot. What the hell had she put this on for? At least she'd removed the butterfly pendant at the last minute before getting out of the car.
'This is new.' Scotty now stood at her side, barefoot in boardshorts and a white windcheater that highlighted his almost permanent suntan. Her bare arms left her feeling naked.
'Don't start,' she warned.
'Oh. I didn't mean the dress,' he said, 'although now you mention it…' He grinned and lightly fingered one of the flimsy straps. She shrugged away, half-smiling, tempted to spin and snap-kick as she usually did when he teased in this manner. That probably would not go down so well at this backyard barbie, nor in this dress.
'I mean the wine,' he said.
'Yeah, well,' she said. 'So?' She took another sip.
'Nothing. I'm glad you're here. So you've almost caught this crazy fucker, huh?'
'Well, we know who a couple of them are. The one we want is Henry Nguyen.'
'Yeah, I heard. Maroubra got updated this morning. The whole city's looking for him.'
Scotty's stepfather, Rob, stood at the barbecue turning the steaks over and over, beer in hand. Scotty's sister's fiance stood with him, talking and laughing. She could see Scotty's mother and sister, Rhiannon, illuminated behind a flyscreen, spotlit by the kitchen lights. Earlier, standing with them there, trying to help with the salads, she'd felt compelled to pull the blinds, knowing she could be seen but could not see out. Rhiannon, perhaps sensing her discomfort, had pressed a white wine into her hands and shooed her out the door. The wine was ice-cold, and she'd not noticed the first glass going down. She tried to sip more slowly at this second one.
'So, do you like it out there?' Scotty wanted to know.
'I don't know.' Suddenly tired of standing so stiffly, she dropped into the suspended swing seat next to her. Scotty sat down beside her. 'It's not so bad,' she continued. 'Better than I thought it would be.'
'I heard your new partner's a Fed.'
'Been checking up on me, Hutchinson?'
'What was his name again – Gloria? Gabrielle? I heard he's a bit, ah, eccentric.'
'Funny. That's the New South Wales Police Force for you, isn't it? Someone doesn't act exactly the same as everyone else and they've got to be a weirdo.' She pushed her feet against the pavers, stopping the movement of the chair. The slight swing of the seat was making her dizzy.
'You're pretty protective of him already,' he said.
'Yeah, well you're being pretty predictable.'
'Wha
t does that mean?'
'The whole testosterone thing – mine's bigger than his.' She drained her glass and put it down on the cushion next to her. Scotty picked it up again.
She stood, needing firm ground beneath her. 'I don't want to argue tonight, Scotty. Do you want to go down to the beach before dinner?'
'I'll just get my thongs.'
Scotty unlocked the gate at the rear of the garden and led Jill down the steep, sandy stairway behind the property. Jutting roots from wind-blasted shrubs twisted up through the sand, and she hooked a hand into the waistband of his boardies for balance as they negotiated the shadowy steps.
When they reached the bottom, the bushes gave way onto a sheltered cove. Jill hadn't been down here at night before. The glow from a pale, fat moon washed with every wavelet onto the quiet beach. A couple of anglers, highlighted by moonlight, sat on the rocks to their right. A fragment of their discussion reached Jill as she stepped into the cool sand, carrying her sandals; the distance between them scattered their words in the wind.
The sea air was deliciously cool on her hot cheeks and Jill breathed deeply, padding down to the shoreline. Whipped around by the breeze, she had to keep pushing tendrils of hair from her eyes and mouth. She walked, head down, watching her footprints melt back into the liquid sand at the edge of the ocean. She didn't realise she was smiling.
A shout from the fishermen caused Jill to look up, and she saw Scotty standing there, staring at her. He held her shoes. Huh. She must've dropped them.
'What're you looking at?' She smiled up at him.
With one long stride, he stood immediately before her.
'You're beautiful.'
So quietly. Did he really say that?
He dropped her sandals by his feet. Jill stood immobile in the sand, acutely aware of every sound and movement. Scotty reached out and caught a wayward strand of hair from her face, wrapped it around a finger.
Jill stopped breathing. Suddenly she knew exactly what she wanted. Scott Hutchinson. Now.
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