At the forced memory of her kidnapping Cait felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, with the beginnings of a cold sweat appearing on her brow.
“But that’s not all.”
Cait was now all ears.
“Word on the street is that the Warlocks own a tattoo parlor in Tarneit called ‘Inked Inc.’ I haven’t been able to confirm it yet, but it looks like they use it to launder some of their drug money.” Kylie stopped for a millisecond to gauge Cait’s response.
“Cait, you okay?” She had taken on a gray pallor and looked for all intents and purposes as if she was going to faint. Kylie topped up Cait’s glass of water, spilling a few drops on her desk.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, thanks Kylie. It’s just the flashback of being kidnapped. Does it to me every time.” Cait took a sip from the glass, strangely wondering while she grounded herself again if the spilled water would leave a mark on the desk.
“So now we have enough evidence to go to the police. Would you like me to do this for you? I’m only too happy to help.” And besides, Kylie felt that with Cait’s current mental fragility that the last thing she needed was a session with the cops.
“Thanks, Kylie. Let me talk to Dad about it.”
As Cait stood up and stretched, preparing to leave as she had to meet G to get a lift home, a metallic voice chirped over the intercom on Kylie’s desk: “Kylie. There’s a phone call for you. A guy called Steve. Says you’ll want to speak to him.”
“Put him on. Just hang on a tick, Cait.”
Steve and Kylie had never seen eye to eye, and in a normal contact situation the air between them would be as icy as if an arctic blast had just blown through. Kylie was everything in a woman that Steve disliked—assertive, opinionated, aggressive, dogmatic—and there was certainly a feeling of reciprocity going back the other way—Steve was dominating, overly self-confident, shifty, inconsiderate—but they put their differences aside when it came to Cait. She had captured both their hearts, she was in pain, and she needed their help.
“I’ve done some more digging. Boss-man is sergeant at arms of the Warlocks. He’s their chief head kicker. Not the type of guy you’d take home to meet Mum.” Steve’s words were short, sharp, and clipped.
Kylie’s eyes narrowed as her lips pursed together in an almost evil grin: That’s it. There’s now a strong link between Boss-man, the Warlocks, and Cait’s kidnapping. Yes! Like a hit of speed coursing through her veins, Kylie felt that familiar adrenaline rush when she knew she was on a winner.
Kylie’s latest information about Inked Inc. pestered Steve’s subconscious, nagging away at him like a guilty thought incessantly front and center until he finally succumbed.
“Julie, I’m going for a drive out to Tarneit. Hold my calls for the next hour or two, would you. I’ll be back in the office by three, okay.” Julie was Steve’s PA, and was so used to his sudden change of plans and “hold my calls” instructions that it was now simply a given. It just went with the territory.
Steve had made a spur-of-the-moment decision and was now hell-bent on seeing exactly what those bastards were up to: No one screws around on my turf without paying the consequences.
Steve slowly cruised past Inked Inc. and it was everything he expected it to be and more: a dingy shithole on the corner of a row of nine other shops—a greasy-looking fish and chip shop, a run-down convenience store, no doubt operated by some individual who couldn’t earn a dollar any other way, a totally uninteresting Chinese restaurant—Jade House—and “Business For Sale” or “For Lease” signs on the remaining shops—and all located in a small shopping strip off a side street.
A few Harleys were menacingly parked out the front of the tattoo parlor. The usual sun-faded images of suggested tattoos were plastered across the front window, drawings and pictures that you wouldn’t dream of hanging on your wall, even if they were free and framed. As far as Steve was concerned, only God knew why anyone would want to permanently emblazon those substandard cartoons on their body: tats were for life, not just a spur-of-the-moment thing that you got when you were drunk one night and wanted to look tough.
Steve parked his totally out-of-place black Mercedes AMG fifty meters down the street and on the opposite side of the road from Inked Inc., hoping that he just appeared to be another shopper and proceeded to seemingly talk on the phone as he watched the comings and goings from the tattoo parlor, snapping a few shots on his mobile at the same time.
Never one to switch off, as Steve sat there killing time in his car watching, monitoring, and pretending to be just another person on the side of the road he took in the real estate with an investor’s eye and made a mental note to himself not to ever, ever, invest here.
“Better leave now. Looking a bit obvious if I stay any longer,” he said to himself.
“Jesus . . . what’s that racket?” Steve looked up, his gaze drawn toward the noise.
As Steve pushed the start button on his dash, the loud snap-crackle of his highly tuned 6.3-litre V8 engine springing to life was drowned out by the deafening roar of four Harleys that pulled up immediately outside Inked Inc. The riders carefully backed their bikes side by side into a space that may as well have been reserved for them, and swaggered into the tattoo parlor with a proprietary air, looking as if they owned the place, which they probably did.
The Warlocks had arrived.
Yes, I knew it! Right place, right time. Just confirmed the link between Inked Inc. and the Warlocks. Those arseholes. First Boss-man, now this. I’ll see you guys go down if it’s the last thing I do.
“Kylie, G, you two on the line?” Steve had joined up the three of them on a conference call so he could kill two birds with one stone and speak to both of them at once as he drove down the Ring Road freeway back to his office.
“Yeah Steve, what’s up?” replied G.
“I can hear you, Steve. Make it quick please. I’ve got to go back to court in half an hour,” said Kylie.
“Okay, okay, understood. Well, the news hot off the press is that Inked Inc. is a Warlocks’ hangout. One hundred percent. Just seen it with my own two eyes.”
“What, you took a trip out there?” said Kylie. “That’s dangerous.”
“Yep, and guess who I saw pull up outside. Four fully patched Warlocks. There were already a few Harleys out the front before these dudes arrived, so I presume that there were some others inside the shop. I was parked just up the street checking out the scenery when these four arrived. Mate, I can tell you they look like real heavies.”
“Steve, please tell me you weren’t seen by them,” said Kylie.
“Kylie, give me some credit here. Of course I wasn’t seen. I was one hundred and fifty meters away, pulled over while I made a phone call. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”
“Hey, well done, Steve,” said G. “That’s great intel. And now with Boss-man identified as being both the sergeant at arms of the Warlocks and presumably the same person who kidnapped Caitie, we’ve got a strong link. That’s a big plus. Strike one for the good guys!”
“We’ve got an even stronger link now. I managed to get photos on my phone of the four bikies who arrived. They’re in the distance, but they’ll do the trick.
“Kylie—your thoughts?” asked Steve.
“Send them through to me. I’ll add them to Cait’s file that I’m about to hand over to Sorenson tomorrow when I catch up with him. It’s looking like a strong case. Strong enough to convince Sorenson at least to follow this up. This is good stuff.”
“Yeah, thought you would be interested.”
“Well done, Steve,” said Kylie grudgingly. He still wasn’t her first, very best friend, but just maybe he wasn’t as bad as she first thought. He is a man with a conscience after all.
“Yeah, thanks Steve. Great work,” said G.
“Hey Steve, give Cait a heads-up on this, would you please? I’m sure she’ll want to add this to her mind map.”
“Yeah, will do mate. Thanks.”
&nb
sp; “Okay guys, over and out. Let me know how it goes with Sorenson.”
Cait added Inked Inc. to her mind map, placing it to the left of the unassociated entry for the Harleys that she had previously relegated to one side. She relaxed and concentrated on the maze of colored interconnections on the page, staring at them, fixated as if in a trance. The world in front of her started to morph, move, change, and a strange clarity of perception invaded her very being.
Oh my God, it’s happening to me again.
Cait became totally aware—frightened—of what was going to confront her this time she met the Otherworld.
No, this can’t be. It’s a figment of my imagination. My mind’s playing tricks on me again. Go away! You’re not real.
Relax, Cait. We’re here to help you. Guide you. We’ll take you to where you need to go. You just need to trust us. And to do that you must first trust in yourself, she seemed to hear someone reply in her head.
Cait tensed, on edge. Then, as if a release valve had suddenly popped in her psyche, she succumbed and gave herself over to the force that was taking over her consciousness. In her mind’s eye her mind map gradually emerged as a three-dimensional web of multicolored spaghetti that was suddenly alive. As she progressively accepted the force invading her very psyche, the mind map took on a life of its own and the lines on the page started moving around as if she was looking into a can of live worms. Without reaching for it, a green highlighter seemed to jump into her hand, and séancelike, moved of its own accord, making a connection through the Harleys and over to the centrally placed, highlighted entry for Boss-man.
With lightning speed Cait snapped out of her trance, and on opening her eyes, was amazed at what she saw in front of her: There’s the link! Boss-man, the Warlocks, the tattoo parlor. It all fits. But why did they kill Rishi? Wrong place at the wrong time? And why did I get kidnapped?
I have to go to Tarneit and see this for myself. I MUST go there . . . The answer’s there. I can feel it.
“Caitie, it’s way too dangerous to go anywhere near the tattoo parlor. I know you feel a calling to go there—I’m sure Jools would say it’s The Gift directing you—but you really need to let this all settle for a bit; just take a step back and reassess everything first. A heap of new information has come in over the past twenty-four hours and I really think you need to let the dust settle before we make the next move.” G was conscious of not taking over, so he tried to put the facts forward as he saw them.
“Too much haste and not enough speed will get us nowhere. In fact, we could end up not only jumping to premature conclusions, but more importantly we might overlook or miss something.”
“Yeah, like, you’re right, Dad. But I know the connection is there.” G was always right. He’s so smart.
“Cait, Kylie rang me just before. Steve apparently contacted her again about his visit to Tarneit and we had a chat and she agrees with me. We both think it’s time to go to Sorenson tomorrow. The cops now need to be given a heads-up on what we’ve found out. Are you okay with that?”
Kylie also emphatically mentioned to G that Cait must go nowhere near the tattoo parlor: “G, the Warlocks are really bad news. If they saw you and Cait there you might never be seen again. No kidding. These guys operate outside the law.” But he kept this piece of advice to himself.
“In fact, Kylie suggested that maybe she be the one to contact Sorenson on your behalf and brief him. She’s of the opinion that Sorenson will take it all the more seriously if she’s the conduit.”
G let the suggestion hang in the air before he continued.
“How would you feel about that? I need to get back to her and let her know, or you can ring her yourself of course if you want to talk it through.”
Cait lowered her gaze from G and concentrated on her hands as she made steeples with her fingers, thinking, going over her answer. If it had been anyone other than Kylie, Cait would have already given an emphatic no.
“Yeah, okay. You’re right again. But I want to know exactly what Sorenson says as soon as Kylie speaks to him.”
“Cait, that’s a given. So done deal then?”
“Yep.”
“Kylie also asked me to speak to you about an ex-cop that she sometimes uses when some sniffing around in the background is needed. Some guy called ‘Irish.’ Would you be okay with her speaking to him about all this? You know, your kidnapping, and the link to the Warlocks? I personally don’t think it would hurt.”
“Sure. But same as with Kylie and Sorenson. I want to know if he finds out anything.”
“Absolutely.”
Like a bad itch, nagging visions of the tattoo parlor and Boss-man were incessantly running around Cait’s head 24-7, reminiscent of a never-ending echo in a cave. With each new insight—each flashback—her visions seemed to crystallize further and become clearer, the difference being this time that now there was a foreboding evil hole the cobra kept slithering out from, and that hole had a name, like a directional pointer emblazoned across it—Inked Inc.
No, that’s impossible, Cait kept telling herself. Think rationally. I studied psychology and these premonitions are just a part of the healing process.
Cait had finally moved out from the confines of her room and was currently sitting in their backyard, soaking up the healing rays of the soft early spring sun, having a coffee. She was listening to music on her iPhone, unknowingly nodding her head slightly in tune to The Living End’s Wunderbar. Drifting off into a nothingness state, she let her mind drift, The Living End wandering off to the periphery of her consciousness as she started listening to a different tune: the music of her thoughts and emotions playing inside her head. They were dragging her along as if searching for a maestro to make some sense of the cacophony of conflicting emotions.
The rational versus the irrational; fact versus fantasy.
In the void inside Cait’s head, as she let herself drift and be taken along by her thoughts, she became aware of an emerging elephant in the room: her visions. They were intensifying exponentially and simply wouldn’t leave her alone, making it harder and harder for her to push them to one side and accept the new vision of reality that they appeared to be forcing on her.
And to add to her confusion, her mother’s words kept repeating relentlessly, over and over, like a stuck needle in the groove of a vinyl record: It’s The Gift, Cait. Learn to harness it.
Cait thought to herself, Rishi’s murderers—my kidnappers—are still out there, on the loose. They’re so close I can feel them.
The premonition resembled a bad smell that followed Cait everywhere, cropping up unexpectedly, often at the most inconvenient moments, nagging away at her subconscious, screaming look at me, look at me.
The vestige of Cait’s psychology degree kept telling her that logically this was just a normal reaction—delayed shock and part of having PTSD—but the growing sense of the mystical from her long maternal line of grandmothers incessantly nagging at her, playing the part of the maestro, kept telling her otherwise.
Surely it can’t be The Gift . . . yeah, that’s all crap . . . my mind just needs time to rationalize and heal . . . I think.
“We need to get Cait out of the hole she’s burying herself in. She needs some distraction and a bit of interaction with other people, especially her own age. It’s not healthy for her to just live inside the four walls of our place.” G was chatting idly to Jools as they took Mia for her evening walk through the Catani Gardens.
“Where’s the possums, Mia? Go skitch them,” said G in an excited voice, playfully winding up his border collie. She stopped dead in her tracks, turned her head to look at G and Jools, eyes alert, cocking her ears as if to say, yeah Dad, sure and bolted, barking, running around, sniffing at the base of the trees where the possums had recently scampered up, then started jumping up a particular tree as if she was trying to climb it.
“Yeah, so you’ve obviously got something in mind.” Jools instinctively knew that G wouldn’t come out with a comment like t
hat without having a follow-up plan. He was a person who always thought things through: Like, sometimes, sooo boring.
“So what do you suggest?” Jools actually had been thinking parallel thoughts but was too concerned with the immediacy of easing Cait through her transition back to normality to have pursued this option further. And besides, Cait was still trying to rationalize and accept the invasion of The Gift into her psyche.
“Well, it’s a bit out of left field, but remember when we had a WhatsApp chat with Dec in Laos last week?”
“Yeah, and . . .”
“And you know how he said he’s going to take a side trip to see Angkor Wat on his way home?”
Jools stopped walking and turned toward G, lowering her head slightly as she raised her eyebrows and looked over the top of her sunglasses at him with a querying look that seemed to say, I think I see where you’re heading here.
“I’d like to suggest to Caitie that she jump on a plane next week to Laos, and then go on a road trip with Dec to Angkor Wat. I think Cait needs more than just a change of scenery. At the moment it’s same shit, different day. Meeting up with Dec would force her to totally get out from the security of her cocoon that she’s weaving for herself here and help her to start to live again.
“You and I both know that Caitie is made of strong stuff. She’s our child, after all; she’s got our DNA running through her veins. And at that age we were traveling so far off the grid that it’s frightening to think about it now. Where were we—Afghanistan I think, or somewhere around there? Or maybe sitting on a houseboat on Dal Lake in Kashmir? The mind boggles.”
G paused to let what he had just said sink in. He whistled for Mia and she came running, stick in her mouth, all smiles.
The Cait Lennox Box Set Page 36
