Requiem for Immortals

by Lee Winter

  “Do you really believe I’d let my niece, who I love very much, sit at a table at Hamburger Heaven with someone I suspected of multiple killings?”

  “I have no idea what you’re capable of,” Natalya retorted acidly. “Ambition warps the mind. This could have been your huge break. You want something badly enough, you’ll do anything to get it. Oh and by the way, ‘fact checker’ and ‘homicide detective’ are not even in the same universe for professions. You have lied.”

  Ryan gave her a pitying stare. “I am a fact checker. All I do is cold cases. That’s it. My entire working life is pushing paperwork around and testing the veracity of reports. It’s how I discovered Requiem exists. But Jesus, Natalya, you don’t get to play the wounded party here! You presented yourself as some humble classical musician. That trumps me hiding the fact I’m a cop from you just because I know my job title makes people act weird.”

  Natalya took a stilling breath as she digested that.

  “I never presented myself as a humble anything,” she finally said, smiling slowly. “That’s a lie and you know it.”

  Ryan paused and suddenly burst into strangled laughter.

  “Okay, I concede that point,” she said, as her laughter petered out, replaced by irritation. “Goddamn you, Natalya. I just…why did you have to be her?”

  Chapter 17

  There was so much anguish in the question that Natalya was taken aback. The level of emotion, the tears pricking blue eyes…

  She firmed her jaw. This was the problem with embracing feelings. This. Emotions made it hard to think, to strategise or manipulate. Instead they disoriented. The sensation was as unsettling as it was infuriating.

  Or so she imagined, because she absolutely wasn’t feeling a thing.

  She stalked away and stopped at her wall-length windows to stare out at her gardens. She spoke grimly into the glass, seeing the reflection of Ryan in front of her. “You really didn’t think I was Requiem? Until yesterday?”

  “Of course not.”

  Ryan’s shoulders slumped in frustration.

  “Mm,” Natalya said. A wasp lazily made its way into the garden bed, its stinger hanging from it like a threat. She admired the efficiency of it—the lack of subtlety. Advertising its lethal intentions.

  Her mind whirred. It seemed a little too convenient to believe Ryan was as upfront as she claimed, even if she hadn’t played her.

  “So if you are so sure I’m this Requiem you’re chasing, why didn’t you arrest me yesterday?” she asked.

  “Police don’t arrest suspects without some evidence.”

  “The Victorian Homicide Squad does,” Natalya countered, watching the bright flash of her own teeth in the glass. “Infamously so.”

  “True. Unfortunately. But I’m not like them.” Ryan rubbed her temple. “And the truth is I really didn’t want to have to explain to Hailey why I was arresting her newest and greatest hero right in front of her. She was already so shaken up. Right then she needed to believe she had this protector who had kept her safe. I figured I could wait a day or so to bring you in for questioning.”

  “Quite a gamble.” Natalya thought of her pile of luggage in the hall. She would have skipped town yesterday ahead of schedule, but every Melbourne flight was booked thanks to that ridiculous race carnival. More frustrating, all the private airlines had been shut for the public holiday. She would have to travel on the ticket she’d already been sent by the Berlin orchestra.

  “Not really a gamble,” Ryan shrugged. “I simply bet that even you wouldn’t have gotten too far on Cup Day.”

  “Well then, now I’m curious as to why you are here,” Natalya said. “Alone, unprotected, invading the home of someone you think kills for a living.”

  “I wouldn’t say I have no protection.” Ryan turned and whistled sharply.

  A red heeler trotted into the room, tail wagging excitedly as it took in the assortment of new smells, looking about avidly. Ryan made a ‘down’ gesture and her dog dutifully sat beside her.

  “This is Charlotte,” Ryan said, patting the dog affectionately. “She might live with my sister’s family but she’s mine. Very loyal.”

  Natalya looked at the canine, amused. The animal appeared to be ancient. She walked over to inspect her.

  “If you make any threatening gesture to me, she will rip your throat out,” Ryan warned. “Just be glad she wasn’t in here a minute ago when you went all TSA airport security on me.”

  Charlotte gazed up at Natalya, tongue lolling, and thumped her tail happily.

  Natalya squatted so she could look into the heeler’s eyes. “Hello, Charlotte,” she said reverently. “Aren’t you beautiful?”

  Charlotte nudged her nose under Natalya’s hand. She patted her and gave her ears a thorough, affectionate scratch. The dog licked her hand and Natalya immediately rose and walked to the adjacent kitchen area.

  “Oh yes,” Natalya said as she washed and then dried her hands on a small hand towel. “I can see Charlotte is a real killer.”

  Ryan sighed and grumbled into her dog’s ear. “Do you have to love everyone?”

  Natalya walked back to them. “How old is she anyway?”

  Ryan muttered under her breath and Natalya laughed, relaxing.

  “Fifteen,” she repeated, lips curling in mirth. “So this is your cavalry? Please. Where is your real cavalry? What is your plan of attack?”

  “I didn’t come here to attack.”

  “So you keep saying. Now why do I find all this so very hard to believe?” Natalya asked suspiciously. Her gaze fell to Charlotte and she paused, suddenly pursing her lips. “Perhaps because it is?”

  She held out her hand to the dog who immediately padded over. “Aren’t you a clever girl,” Natalya said, and her gaze flicked to Ryan pointedly. She patted Charlotte then slid her fingers under the dog’s neck, finding the buckle on its black leather collar.

  She undid it and examined an odd-shaped bulge she found there. “A recording device,” she noted, tapping the bulge. “I admire your creativity. No one ever would check the dog for a bug. Not that anything said would be legally admissible, but I don’t like leaving a trail.” She rose and began to walk away.

  Ryan jumped to her feet. “Wait!” she cried out. “Don’t! It’s not what you think!”

  Natalya came to a stop in front of her cone snail tank. She took her forceps and held the collar above the water. “Tropical salt water,” she told Ryan. “Excellent for fritzing electronics.”

  She began to lower the collar carefully in and slapped away Ryan’s darting hand as it attempted to intercept the device’s watery descent.

  “No,” Natalya warned her sharply. “One drop of toxin from a cone snail could kill ten men. And probably twenty of you. If its harpoon injects you, you’d be convulsing on my floor in seconds.”

  Ryan’s gaze darted to the forceps and then the side of the tank where Natalya kept her test tubes as part of the toxin-extraction process.

  “Uli Busch,” Ryan gasped, eyes widening. “I left that night just before he died. I found out later they never could work out why he suddenly had this weird seizure. His guards were screaming blue bloody murder but everyone thought they were just being paranoid. The cops who handled the case said none of it made sense. He had no medical history of seizures at all.”

  “They are imbeciles.” Natalya tossed the now drowned collar into Ryan’s hands in distaste. “You, there’s hope for.” She placed the forceps beside the tank, aligning them perfectly parallel. “You have imagination at least. Although I don’t appreciate you using it to try and get me.”

  “Well, I’m glad you think I’m imaginative but you just killed my pet tracker.”

  “Your what?”

  “It’s called a Pod,” Ryan sighed. “I bought it so I could keep track of Charlotte. Sometimes she wanders off. Shit. That was expensive, too.” Her shoulders slumped.

  Natalya, who had been staring at the drenched blob of plastic and collar, looked up in
surprise. “So let me understand this: you really did come here with nothing but your fifteen-year-old dog that is more prone to lick someone to death than maul them?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “No gun, no bug, nothing?”

  Ryan shrugged. “Nope.”

  Natalya retraced her steps, then washed her hands meticulously in the kitchen again, followed by drying them. She gave a disbelieving snort. “You really are from another planet.”

  She opened her fridge and returned, holding a T-bone in a pincer grip between a piece of folded paper towel. “Wagyu gourmet organic steak,” she noted with a sigh of disappointment. “It was to have been dinner tonight, but it turns out I’ve had to make other plans.”

  Natalya waved it in front of Charlotte’s nose and the excited dog bounded to her feet, following her to the sliding exterior door.

  “Please don’t,” Ryan sighed.

  Natalya snorted. “And if I said, ‘Please don’t tell anyone who you think I really am,’ would you do that?”

  Ryan’s mouth clamped shut.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Ryan followed them outside, as Natalya tossed the meat far into the rear of the garden. Ryan stared moodily as her first and last line of defence trembled in doggy delight then bounded off with a joyful bark.

  “Nice dog,” Natalya said, wiping her fingertips on the paper towel. “And I do like her or I would have tossed it into the part of the garden where my poisonous trees are.”

  Ryan frowned. “You wouldn’t.”

  “I definitely would have. So, now I have stripped you of all your defences and shown you how vulnerable you are, can you explain to me what on earth you hope to accomplish here? Or is this some weird surrender?”

  “It’s not a surrender. I wanted to talk while we still can.”

  “Hmm,” Natalya said, stalking back inside to the sink to wash her hands for a third time. Ryan’s curious gaze watched her as she made her way to the couch.

  Natalya finished up and sank into the armchair opposite. She studied her. “Well, you have my attention. I’m all ears about how you plan to make use of anything I say, given that it’s inadmissible in court.”

  “I don’t plan to,” Ryan said. “Like I said, this is an off-the-books visit. I’m not really here, remember? I’m at home sleeping in.”

  Natalya’s eyebrow rose.

  “Yup, under my blanket, dreaming of fudge-centre chocolates.”

  “Well,” Natalya said, at a loss. “How nice for you.”

  “Look, there’s three things I came for: One, you saved Hailey’s life, Natalya.”

  “So?”

  “I had to thank you, and I had to do it now, before all of this…” she waved her hand between them, “becomes an ‘us vs you’ thing. Which it will, because after I leave here I will become a detective again, tracking down Australia’s most feared gangland assassin. And you will be a suspect on the run wanted for questioning. But that’s not right now. Right now I’m just an aunt—a very, very grateful aunt, telling her brave and incredible friend thank you. Thank you.”

  Natalya was startled. Friend?

  “Hailey’s special,” Ryan continued. “She’s talented and funny and so smart, and she has her whole life ahead of her. And, in the blink of an eye, she almost died yesterday.

  “Do you get what that was like for me? How my heart stopped when I couldn’t do a thing to save her? How I felt helpless even though I’m a trained cop? I tried every technique I knew on that gorilla and nothing was enough. He was just too big. Too strong.

  “And then, there you were, flinging open the door, storming in like something from the pits of Hell. You waded in like it was nothing, like he was nothing, and gave me Hailey back.

  “You didn’t have to do that. I know it would have been a lot easier for you not to put yourself in the frame, yet you did it anyway. What you did made things very personal for me. I won’t forget what you did. Never ever will I forget that.”

  Ryan’s expression was pure gratitude, her eyes shining with sincerity. Natalya shifted uncomfortably.

  “Well, I find your niece amusing in her own annoying way,” she said. “She’s got spirit. I like that.”

  “Oh, yeah. She really does.” Ryan nodded vehemently, grinning.

  “Is that all? You could have texted me your undying thanks.”

  “It’s not the same thing. I had to look you in the eye and thank you. I have no words for what you did. Besides, you’ve been ignoring my texts lately.”

  Natalya fidgeted, wishing they were discussing anything else. “And your second reason?” she asked. “You said you had three.”

  “Oh!” Ryan said. “Yeah. Deal’s a deal.”

  She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out an MP3 player and powered it up. “Track three. The experimental musical piece—celebrating the impurities, breaking all the rules. And you’ll love it.”

  “Alison…”

  “You haven’t heard it yet. Do you need an earpiece?”

  Natalya reached into a drawer under the coffee table and pulled out a set. She inserted them into the device and jumped to track three, hitting play. “It’s unlikely I will enjoy anything experimental,” she warned.

  “You will,” Ryan said.

  Finally, after fiddling with the volume settings, she inserted the earbuds into her ears. A strange look crossed Ryan’s face as she watched Natalya’s ordered little ritual.

  “What?” she asked Ryan.

  “Nothing. Just listen.”

  Natalya listened to the beats, the clanging of Aboriginal music sticks, discordant sounding at first, and yet they still had a pattern of sorts. She closed her eyes.

  The low, guttural sounds of a didgeridoo sounded and then, remarkably, cutting through the thrumming, earthy bass, came the clear tones of a violin, aching and sobbing as the rumble of ancient music played underneath as a counterpoint.

  It broke every rule. Didgeridoos and violins? Aboriginal music sticks! It was a mess of shattered rules, but somehow it worked.

  Natalya opened her eyes when it ended and stared directly at Ryan in bewilderment at what she’d just heard. “Who composed this?”

  Ryan fidgeted. “I did. I went to one of the remote communities in the Outback during my holidays when I was still studying music and recorded some didgeridoo and basic beats with the Koori elders. I played the violin myself later and looped it in.

  “It was a troubled place,” she added with a frown. “So many social issues, like poverty and alcohol abuse. I think you can hear the sadness in the way the elders played. It’s like, I don’t know, their instruments cried. But they also have hope that things will get better one day. That’s in there, too.

  “So I know my piece is flawed and imperfect because it’s about us: Humans. And, also, I was playing and I’m no professional violinist. But equally I happen to think it’s perfect for its impurities. It reminds me of our place in the world.”

  “Which is?”

  Ryan looked at her earnestly. “We’re ants. Tiny. Insignificant. Our vast land lives on, timeless and untouchable, and will remain that way when we are long forgotten. So, this music? Well, it’s a way to remember us. Our dreams.”

  “So this is a requiem? Honouring our deaths?”

  “In a way. But it’s also about hope. About life after we’re dead.”

  “So it’s a requiem for our immortality.”

  Ryan nodded and gave a widening smile. “I guess it is.”

  “How is it you can create something extraordinary like this and yet work in an office all day?”

  “You liked it?” Ryan asked casually but Natalya could hear the prick of hope.

  “It’s exquisite,” she said, unplugging her earpiece and handing the MP3 player back. “I have no idea why you gave up something you’re brilliant at for something as mundane as police work.”

  “You forget, though,” Ryan said, “I’m also brilliant at my current job.”

  “
Is that so?”

  “I found you, didn’t I?”

  “Technically, I found you. If you’re so brilliant at being a detective, why were you even on cold cases to begin with? Why didn’t they let you loose in the field?”

  Ryan’s face fell. “That’s a long story. But the bottom line is my boss hates me. When we were teenagers, I told Barry he was a neckless loser who wasn’t good enough to marry my sister. It might not have been the best idea to do it in front of his mates because they teased him relentlessly after that. He’s been punishing me ever since.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you even wanted to become a cop in the first place. In fact, you’re the most un-coplike cop I have ever met, and I’ve seen a few. You have no edge, no attitude. How did the Academy even pass you?”

  “Well, it would have been a bit hard to fail me since I aced all their damned tests except one.” Alison glared at her. “And don’t you dare call me soft! Or weak. Or ‘too nice,’” she said putting air quotes around the words. “I’m sick of hearing it.

  “I jumped through every damned hoop, listened to all the crap the other recruits threw at me. I’m tougher than I look and you don’t need to swagger about like a jock to solve a crime. I got into Homicide to prove that. I knew I could do so much more than in Traffic. I was bored to tears there.”

  “Which test?”

  “What?” Alison blinked at her in confusion.

  “Which one didn’t you ace?”

  Alison looked mutinous. “Grip test. You have to be able to squeeze thirty kilograms. I did it eventually, but they gave me so much shit for it.”

  “Ah,” Natalya said. “I thought it would be ‘command presence.’”

  “That’s not a measurable test,” Alison said shooting her a dark look.

  “Lucky for you,” Natalya said, only half joking.

  “I take it back, you’re not charming at all. But you’ll notice that none of the ‘cop-like cops’ with all that presence and attitude you seem to admire so much actually tracked down Requiem,” Alison said silkily. “I did.”

  “Why policing at all?” Natalya asked, not biting. “You’re a musician.”

  “The call for applicants came when I desperately needed a job to help look after Mum. Besides, police are all about justice. That’s something I believe in. And as much as you pretend to be too cool for anything, I know there’s a part of you who believes in it, too, in your own weird way. Actually, you should get why I do this more than most people.”