“Caitie, I don’t want to rain on your parade,” G interjected, as he sensed that Jools would prefer if the topic of conversation moved on, “but I spoke with Kylie the other day. Remember that ex-cop Irish she spoke about—well, she’s filled him in on everything and he’s thinking about it. Apparently, he’s a cantankerous old bugger who only gets involved in cases when he believes in them.”
Cait’s mood changed from upbeat to serious in an instant.
“And?”
“Well, I’m meeting with him tomorrow. I know you want to be involved, but just chill and enjoy yourself over there for the next week. I’ll fill him in on what’s gone down and suss him out. See if we need him batting for our team.”
G had taken on board Cait’s previous bawling out when she went troppo a while back over G taking over, so now he involved her in everything that was going down.
“You okay with that, Caitie?”
G’s mention of affairs back in Melbourne triggered a waterfall of memories and reflections about her mind map, and Cait found herself slipping into a more somber mood. Like an incoming tide, memories of her kidnapping and the events that followed flooded back into her consciousness, momentarily pushing aside Asia while she concentrated on what would no doubt confront her when she arrived back home.
“Yeah, that’s all good, Dad. Thanks, much appreciated. Deal with it please until I get back.”
Cait was actually grateful that someone—her father, to be precise—was temporarily easing her burden of dealing with the insanity that was still lingering in the ether back in Melbourne. The difference now was that she felt she had a renewed sense of focus. The shackles that had been holding her back previously somehow weren’t there anymore. She instinctively knew that when she faced her mind map again in a week or so, this time she would be a force to be reckoned with. Instead of her mind map mastering her, she would be the master.
Cait was fired up. And in control.
“You sleep okay on the bus, or do you need to crash for a while?” Dec had just booked them into a double room in the Champasak Grand Hotel, which according to their website offered a “Quality Pakse 4-star accommodation with a view of the Mekong River and close proximity to the local markets.” At $50 USD per night for the two of them he wasn’t expecting the Ritz, but the TripAdvisor reviews were good and what made it über attractive was that it had a swimming pool. In this heat that had cinched it.
“Nah, actually grabbed a few zeds on the bus. I slept well, considering,” said Cait. “And so did you, judging by the sound of your snoring. You sounded like a foghorn.”
“Ah, gimme a break, sis—”
“Hey Dec, let’s dump our stuff and go explore,” said Cait excitedly, cutting Dec off midsentence.
“Sounds good. But we have to eat first. I’m starving. I don’t know about you, but I could really go for a noodle soup. After that I’ve heard that there’s a really cool waterfall not too far out of town that’s worth visiting. Called Tad Yuang, or something like that. It has a good swimming hole too, so bring your bathing suit, sis.”
Dec really was like his father. Mr. Organization.
“Just tell me where I have to be and when. I’m on holiday and all I want to do is cruise. But it’ll be your fault if it’s boring.”
Dec chuckled.
“Already done, sis. A trip through the countryside on a minibus, check out some of the local villages, see a few paddy fields and maybe a water buffalo or two, get a bit of local culture, see the mandatory wat, grab lunch and a few beers, and then go for a swim at the base of a waterfall. Sound good?”
“Yeah, take me to your leader, Dec. Whatever.”
Cait woke violently and sat bolt upright, alert eyes open, staring at the wall in front of her but not seeing it, totally oblivious to her surroundings. The cold sweat on her brow defied the heat and humidity of the room as it invaded her body. She rewound the videotape in her head and replayed what she had just seen in her latest vision:
OMG, the same red bus! The one that had appeared like an evil apparition in my previous vision three nights ago. The one with the large lightning bolt emblazoned down both sides, sitting on the shoulder of the road at an odd angle, a small car buried up to its doors in the front of the bus, steam rising toward the heavens like its soul escaping the mayhem, both bus and car crashed and mangled, luggage strewn all over the road as if the bus had disgorged its contents in an effort to free itself, the driver of the car pinned against the steering wheel moaning in agony, someone lying dead on the road, injured passengers walking around dazed, covered in blood and contusions, the smell of death and fear in the air. Ambulances and police were swarming around, lights flashing, paramedics attending to the those in need, stunned travelers on stretchers being whisked away, sirens, chaos and confusion. A growing audience of locals drawn to the accident like moths to a flame were gathering around as if there had been a massacre and they had bought front row seats, but instead of cheering they were silent witnesses to the carnage, standing motionless, dumbfounded.
Cait thought to herself that the area of the accident resembled a war zone, except the guns were replaced by a crumpled car and a smashed-up bus. And there were bodies—plenty of them.
Her nightmare was so vivid and lifelike it was as if she just actually experienced the horror in real time. When she opened her eyes, Cait fully expected to see body parts and luggage strewn all over the floor of their room.
But no, it wasn’t a nightmare, it was another vision. A terrible, realistic hallucination of something that had happened, or was about to happen. And she had been there, seen it all.
“Dec, Dec, I need to talk to you. Like now.”
“Eh, what, sis? What time is it?” Dec said drowsily.
“Dec, I just had another dream. Like the one I had the other night, but this one was real. I’m telling you, there was—or, ah, is about to be maybe—a bus crash. It was terrible. Dec, I was there. I saw it.” Cait’s voice rose in pitch as the words spilled rapid fire out of her mouth.
“Whoa there, Cait. Slow down. What bus crash? What are you talking about?”
Cait turned her head away from the carnage that was seemingly playing like a movie on the white wall in front of her and faced her younger brother.
“The one in my dreams, Dec. In my vision. Trust me, I saw it.”
“So, what do you want to do about it?”
“Dec, first up tomorrow morning we go to the bus depot and check out the bus that’s going to take us to Siem Reap. Dec. I need to see it, okay? No ifs, buts, or maybes. We have to go there before we do anything else.”
“Yeah, sure . . .”
“Dec, I insist. Just listen to me, for once.”
Cait stopped dead in her tracks, frozen to the spot, transfixed at the sight that was in front of her as soon as they rounded the corner and saw the bus station.
“Oh my God, Dec, that’s it! That’s the one. That’s the bus I saw in my vision. Exactly the same,” exclaimed Cait, the beginnings of panic in her voice. This time the butterflies in her stomach didn’t just flutter, they went into full migration, the sinking feeling so intense that she had to physically tighten her pelvic muscles to prevent herself from voiding.
In front of them was a large red double-decker bus with a sizable and very distinctive white, blue, yellow, red, and violet lightning flash painted at a thirty-degree angle down half the side of the bus. Laughing, happy passengers were beginning to line up beside the bus to step aboard and begin their journey to Siem Reap.
Cait wanted to yell out: No, no, please . . . don’t get on the bus. It’s going to crash. You might be killed. It’s a death bus, but she held her tongue, the sounds of her yelling ricocheting off the insides of her brain like a bouncing Super Ball in a box.
“Top of the morning to you, Irish.”
Kylie was on her mobile speaking to a contact—“Irish” Seamus O’Shannessey—whom she used from time to time when she needed some discreet, behind-the-scenes sniffing a
round undertaken by a person who was prepared to bend the rules to get a result, if that’s what it took. Irish was a flawed ex-detective who had been pushed out of the force after being found drunk on duty when in charge of a bungled drug bust that led to the death of one of his fellow officers.
Irish was now an ex-alcoholic, a man with a couldn’t-give-a-shit attitude who had a chip the size of a two-ton boulder sitting on his shoulders and a person whose wife never forgave him for the abduction and murder of their fourteen-year-old daughter thirty-two years ago—in fact, when they were together she never let an opportunity slip by when she could lay the blame on him for their daughter’s death. And then she packed up shop and left him at his lowest point, a time when the bottle was an attractive option to living sober and having to face his demons.
And now Irish was on the other end of the phone line, talking to Kylie, and she was giving him a heads-up on Cait and her abduction, hoping that it would touch a raw nerve with him.
“I . . . ah, no sorry, we need you to find out some details concerning Cait’s abductors. We’ve got some important leads that the police don’t seem to be following up and they concern some, let’s say, low-life characters who are dangerous. Really dangerous, so it won’t be an easy assignment. But Cait’s whole future life is potentially at stake here and we have to help her.”
Kylie was doing her best to get Irish onside as he was the best private investigator that she had ever worked with. After forty-three years on the force, Irish’s knowledge of police bureaucracy and his underworld contacts were still second to none. He was tough as nails, one-eyed and focused when he was on point, albeit totally, unbearably dogmatic and blunt. He was also cantankerous, opinionated and just as likely to tell her to get stuffed, so she had to tread lightly, since he could equally say “piss off, not interested.”
“So Irish, you on board? Cait could really do with your help.”
“Kylie, come back when you’ve got something real to tell me. So far what you’ve told me is weak bullshit. No wonder the cops aren’t rushing to pursue this. No real evidence.” Irish wasn’t convinced.
“And that crap about this girl Cait being psychic, or whatever it is you’re telling me she is. Get a life, will you? That’s all garbage too.”
Irish hung up, put his phone on the table next to his chair, and poured himself another Jameson.
“Damn it!” he said out loud to the ghosts of his dark memories in the room, downing his drink in a single swig, then immediately pouring himself another.
Kylie had in one foul, uncomfortable moment tugged away at Irish’s hidden memories, the ones of his daughter that he kept pushing to the back of his thoughts, and their talk released memories of her abduction that he never hoped to visit again.
“Damn, damn, damn. God, Siobhan, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you. When we meet in the next life, please forgive me. Your mother never did.”
With each Jameson, Irish became more and more maudlin. He was drifting into his nightly spiral, sinking deeper and deeper into hopelessness and self-pity; drinking himself into oblivion one more time. It eased the pain . . . until the next morning.
“G’day, Seamus. I’m Jamie, Cait’s father. But everyone calls me G. Kylie’s told me good things about you.”
“Likewise. But call me Irish.”
G looked down at the table and noticed Irish’s glass was empty.
“Drink? Kylie tells me you’re into Jameson.”
“Yeah, but with a beer chaser.”
On that note, G and Irish proceeded to drink and talk about Cait . . . and drink some more.
G looked at his third whiskey and thought, No more! This guy’s a total alkie. How can he function with so much booze running through his veins? It’s an Uber home for me.
Irish excused himself to have a pee, leaving G wondering what Kylie was talking about. But still, there was something about Irish that clicked with him. Maybe it was the way he changed on a dime when he talked about his own daughter? Whatever it was, G warmed to Irish. He was certainly a tortured soul with a history, but he also appeared to be a genuine person with a conscience. And for some reason he seemed to empathize with Cait’s dilemma, which was a bonus.
Yes, he’s on the team. Cait will like him, I just know, thought G. Irish was just the type of warts-and-all reprobate that would possibly be able to crack the silence of the Warlocks.
“And now for the breaking news. Reports have just come in about a tourist bus crash in Laos.” G decided to give the Uber a pass and take the backstreets to St Kilda after his boozy afternoon drinks with Irish. He was currently driving home, listening to the car radio.
“Unconfirmed reports have just been received by the news desk that a tourist bus in Laos has been involved in a serious accident, and yet to be verified casualties have occurred, many of them expected to be young international travelers. We are led to believe at this stage that some of the casualties may be Australian backpackers, but this has yet to be ratified by the local authorities.”
G heard the news report and immediately thought the worst. Their children—Cait and Dec—were traveling on that same route, on that bus. Oh my God, my kids . . . our kids.
Oh Jesus, I hope they’re all right. They have to be . . . No, this can’t be!
G wasn’t religious in the traditional sense, but he had always thought of himself as a spiritual person, and he was so in touch with his kids that he felt that if anything serious ever happened to them he would instinctively know about it. His sixth sense had kept Jools and him safe and alive many times when they were backpacking years ago to places that were on the “Travel to with Extreme Caution” list according to the Department of Foreign Affairs, and ever since then had protected him when maybe something untoward was lurking around the corner. His gut feeling had always been his guardian angel . . . but not this time.
Instead he was blindsided.
Panic took over the moment and G started thinking the worst. His adrenaline kicked in as surely as if he had been there with Cait and Dec when the accident occurred, his mind rushing at breakneck speed as it processed what he had just heard on the radio.
G immediately rang Jools but his call went to voice mail.
“Damn!” he yelled in frustration, slamming both his fists so hard onto his steering wheel that they bounced off, Jools’s voice mail recording seemingly taunting him.
G didn’t even bother pushing the remote to open his driveway gates—that would have taken too long. Instead he skidded to a halt outside the front of his house and jumped out his BMW, pushing the door lock on his key ring as he bolted up the front steps. He rushed straight inside, slamming the door in one fluid movement and beelined straight down the hallway to his living room. Bypassing all pleasantries, G immediately switched on the TV.
“Come on, come on,” he said, yelling at the TV, searching for Sky 24-hour news.
“Yes, hello darling, I’m home. And did you have a nice day?” Jools commented with a sarcastic inflection. She was sitting at their kitchen bench, reading this morning’s paper and having a 5:30 p.m. I’ve-had-a-hard-day-at-work glass of white wine when G rushed in, totally ignoring her.
“Jools, I just heard on the radio that there’s been a tourist bus crash in Laos.”
Jools immediately became alert. “What?”
“A bus crash, Jools. Maybe the same bus the kids are on. In Laos. The bus from Pakse to Siem Reap.”
“Oh my God.” The color drained from Jools’s face as she processed what G had just said. “Are you sure? It can’t be. We just spoke to them the other day and all was good.” As if the passing of forty-eight hours had any bearing on the events unfolding in front of them right now. Jools was speaking without thinking, saying out loud whatever came into her head.
While G flipped urgently through the TV news channels, searching for something, anything, about the bus crash, Jools flipped open the cover of her iPad and opened up the online “Breaking News” tab of the Australian Tribune:
Tourist bus crash in Laos
News has just been received of a tourist bus crash on the well-travelled route between Pakse in Laos to Siem Reap in Cambodia. Still yet to be confirmed reports have indicated that several young Australian backpackers are believed to be amongst the injured aboard the bus. At least one person has apparently been killed, and several passengers taken to hospital.
3 hours ago
Jools read the headlines out loud, half to herself and half for G’s benefit.
“Oh no, it can’t be! G, what do we do?” Jools’s normal composed and confident self disappeared out the window as she reread the headlines again, the news reducing her to tears.
“Footage just to hand has shown graphic pictures of a shocking tourist bus crash that occurred in Laos late this morning.” The 24-hour news station that G had just flipped to was running a breaking news exclusive story that had only been received by their newsroom in the last hour. A roaming on-location news reporter and his cameraman were at the scene of the bus crash giving live coverage.
“There is a distressing scene here, with a car wedged up to its doors in the front of the bus. The roof of the car was apparently cut off by the rescuers in an attempt to retrieve the trapped body of the driver inside the car.”
G and Jools listened intently to the news report, dumbfounded, and in shock. The reporter’s words were like knives, attacking and cutting deeply, leaving a look of horror and total disbelief on their faces.
“Several of the passengers on the bus were injured and have been taken away by ambulance to the hospital. The police attending the accident have confirmed that one passenger on the upper deck was thrown from the bus by the force of the impact and is believed to have died, but this has yet to be confirmed.”
The Cait Lennox Box Set Page 39
