Blood Junction Read online

  “What was his name?” asked Trevor.

  “He didn’t give one,” she said. “And I didn’t ask.”

  “Was he wearing our uniform?” Trevor pointed to the rear of his black swimmers and white shirt, which had NORTHSLEYNE emblazoned in gold.

  India frowned. “No. His shorts were plain black.”

  Not one of us, Lance and Trevor agreed, nodding together.

  “Why say you’re a lifesaver if you’re not?” she asked, puzzled.

  “Probably didn’t want to panic you. Everyone loves a lifeguard but not everyone likes being rescued by a stranger.”

  From the beach, India walked down The Corso, amazed at how quickly Sydney returned to normal after an all-night party. The pedestrian street was immaculate. Not a bottle or paper cup could be seen. When she neared the Esplanade, there seemed to be more people cleaning up than there was rubbish. She estimated that within two hours nobody would believe the city had even held a party, let alone such a momentous one, the previous night.

  She turned right and crossed over Whistler and into Belgrave Street, heading for the Manly police station. Part of the council buildings, it was two-storey and built from purple-hued brick. She paused on the bottom step and looked at the blue and white plastic sign on the door: WELCOME. Two female police officers brushed past her and clattered up the steps. Both gave her a smile.

  She followed them through the glass and wood door, and felt the sweat break out on her body. She might be determined to fight Knox, and to win, but it didn’t lessen her terror.

  The atmosphere inside was busy. Behind the counter she could see two desks, both manned by policemen who were on the phone. A woman in a pink dress walked briskly past. India could hear music playing and the sound of people speaking into radios.

  There was a uniformed policeman at reception, typing on a computer keyboard to the left of a wood counter. He gave her a friendly smile. Her knees were weak, but she managed to smile back.

  “Can I help?”

  “Yes,” India said. “I want to report two possible murders.”

  The policeman looked startled.

  “Yesterday I was kidnapped with a friend of mine by a man called Roland Knox. He shot my friend in the knee and was going to shoot me when another friend, an ex-policeman called Mike Johnson, rescued me.”

  “Yesterday?” He was frowning.

  “It took me a while to get my courage up to come here.”

  “Can you hang on for just a second?” He cleared his screen and tapped some keys. “Could you give me your name?”

  “India Kane.”

  He tapped some more. The computer beeped. He stared at the screen. Then back at her.

  Her heart began to pound.

  “Is something wrong?”

  He looked at the screen. “No,” he said, “nothing’s wrong.” He swallowed.

  She tried to control her breathing, but adrenaline was coursing through her veins.

  He cleared the screen, looked up at her. “I’ll get someone more senior to take your statement.”

  Someone more senior was about fifty with iron-gray hair and a wary look in his eyes. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Senior Sergeant Llewellyn. You say you are India Kane.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’d like to make a statement.”

  “That’s right.”

  He was inching closer.

  “How about I get Lee here to get us some coffee, and we go to my office and talk?”

  Lee was edging towards the door. If he looks like blocking my exit, she thought, I will run.

  “That sounds fine,” said India, but she didn’t move.

  Llewellyn was really close now, and Lee halfway to the door.

  The iron-gray cop reached for her elbow and she slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

  Lee was nearly at the door. He was definitely going to block her exit.

  Llewellyn moved quickly, gripped her arm hard. Instead of jerking away, she plunged straight for him. Broke his grip. Broke into a run, crashing past Lee and into the bright light outside.

  They were shouting as they chased her. She raced down the street, trying to dodge the council cleaners and their black plastic bin liners, crashing against people and sending bags flying. India’s legs pounded, her mind fixed on nothing but putting distance between herself and her pursuers.

  She swung left past the council chambers and raced over the road. A horn blared. She dived right down a narrow alley flanked by tall buildings. It looked like a dead end.

  Please, God, don’t do this to me.

  She pelted along the alley. The right wall gave way to a small cafe. She burst inside, knocking over a chair. A man stood there with a broom, his mouth open. India raced past him and into a car park. She could hear a row behind her, men shouting, something crashing.

  She tore along another alley and onto the street, swung right and hared towards the harbour and Manly Wharf and its ferries and buses and taxis.

  She ran across East Esplanade. She saw a bus by the bus stop. Its doors were closing.

  “Wait!” she screamed.

  She didn’t think she’d ever run so hard. She heard the doors hiss, spring open. India sprang inside. The bus driver was shaking his head and smiling.

  “Jesus, when’s the baby due?” he said. The doors hissed shut.

  “Soon,” she panted, digging in her jeans for some change. She paid her fare. The bus moved off. She stumbled to the rear of the bus. Gulping convulsively, she peered outside. Nothing but a smattering of people. The bus turned the corner. Her lungs continued to bellow in and out. India collapsed onto the nearest seat, buried her face in her hands.

  She was on her own.

  Scotto Kennedy’s guard was awake and alert when Mikey padded down the corridor. Ahead of him, a doctor marched out of a room on the right and spoke to a nurse. The air smelled acrid and pungent, of things Mikey couldn’t identity, didn’t want to identify.

  As he neared Scotto’s room the guard looked at him. He frowned. Mikey kept walking. He turned the corner and saw the guard was still watching him. He was speaking into a radio.

  Mikey left the hospital. No point in hanging around and getting banged up, he told himself. Yesterday he’d gone to North Sydney PD and seen his cop friend, who had warned him to get the hell out. India was wanted by the police. And anyone who had anything to do with India Kane was up for grabs as well. Keep your head down, his cop friend said, so low you can see your ass, okay?

  Mikey ran a hand over his face and exhaled noisily. At least they hadn’t found her yet. He thanked God for that, if nothing else.

  May as well face the next hurdle. Break into the Karamyde Cosmetic Research Institute again, but this time with a gun for the dog and a handful of Semtex for the lift door. Mikey knew the answers lay in floor B2 of the Institute.

  Two hours after being chased by the Manly police, India was in the public toilets of the Queen Victoria Building. She rummaged in a carrier bag on the floor and pulled out the items she’d bought from the only shop open, a chemist near Town Hall station. The scissors were sharp and it didn’t take long to hack her hair reasonably short. She swept it up and flushed it down the loo then picked up a packet of hair colorant and read the instructions. They seemed relatively simple, but she wished it wasn’t New Year’s Day, and that she could go to a hairdresser.

  “Maroon tint,” the packet read.

  Just do it, she told herself, and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. She stuck her head beneath the tap then drenched her scalp with treatment cream.

  She didn’t think Knox’s men could possibly track her to the public toilet, but when the door opened she spun around, adrenaline surging.

  An Asian girl came inside. “Looks like you lost the bet,” she remarked, and went and locked herself in a cubicle.

  India looked in the mirror. Her hair had definitely changed color. She waited until the Asian girl had left then quickly rinsed and blow-dried it beneath the hand-d
ryer in the corner.

  She blinked several times when she checked her appearance. She looked as though she was wearing a shaggy woollen cap. It made her face longer, more haunted.

  Her hair was purple.

  So much for trying not to draw attention to herself.

  India spent the night in a small, dirty hotel near Central Station. The train didn’t run until the next day and although she wanted to leave Sydney immediately, it would take her less time to take a direct route a day later than leave today.

  At midday she left her room and walked to Central and bought her ticket, coach class, for a hundred and eight dollars.

  She had some time to kill until the train left, so she went to the Grand Central bar and bistro. India sat on a stool beside a man in a cheap suit at the bar and ordered a coffee. She craned her neck to cheap suit’s newspaper who obligingly turned it so they could both read.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “No worries.”

  The headline read: “Flu epidemic hits Darwin—23 dead.”

  “Lousy news,” said her neighbor after a while.

  Not good, India agreed. The only people suffering from this new virulent strain of flu—that scientific and health experts seemed to think came from Indonesia—were Aborigines; whites appeared to be completely unaffected.

  “Reminiscent of when us whites first came here with our new diseases,” he remarked. “The Abos got wiped out by the common cold, measles, chicken pox. You name it, they died of it. I remember an Abo called Billy Muran dying of flu back in the eighties. My dad said he remembered a whole bunch of them getting wiped out in the fifties. Looks like it’s happening all over again, poor buggers.”

  Absentmindedly, India finished her coffee, less concerned at the flu epidemic five thousand kilometers away than whether Knox’s men would be waiting for her in Cooinda. Over the loudspeaker, a man with a nasal voice made a crackling announcement about the departure of an Indian Pacific train to Broken Hill. She set off through the echoing hanger-shaped terminal, stopping at the newsstand to buy a copy of The Fatal Shore. It might help her understand Australia, she thought. And it would certainly last the seventeen-and-a-half-hour train ride.

  She didn’t want to hire a car, leave a trail for Knox, so she hitched out of Broken Hill from the Silver City Highway. Her lift was a Toyota Amazon, a huge four-wheel-drive with leather interior and icy air-conditioning and tinted windows. Her driver, a bulky man called Larry Thomas, owned two sheep stations outside Tibooburra. He sang along lustily to his collection of Neil Diamond CDs as they flew northwards. In the blinding sun it wasn’t possible to tell where the desert or the sky began; the heat haze made it seem as though there was a shimmering lake between the two. They overtook trucks, several pickups, passed a couple of road trains packed with cattle travelling in the opposite direction, and gradually the sandy terrain turned to a vast rock-strewn plain.

  Soon there were some homesteads, a clutch of wooden houses, and in fifteen minutes they reached the center of Tibooburra. Larry parked outside the Caltex garage and trotted inside, gesturing for her to remain in the air-conditioned car. He had insisted on finding her another lift from his hometown to Cooinda.

  “Jerry’s always going up there,” he said, “to see his women friends. He’ll be glad of the excuse.”

  Jerry was, indeed, glad of the excuse, and after filling his pickup’s tank and two big jerricans with four-star, he checked the tires and the oil then cheerfully popped India in the passenger seat and drove out of town singing Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love.” The sun continued to beat down. Occasional red sand dunes rose through the rocky plains and there was no habitation, no sign of life other than the odd crow hopping across the road.

  Two hours later they came to the low rise of hills overlooking Cooinda. It felt like a year had passed since Tiger had driven her here, India thought.

  Jerry asked her where she’d liked to be dropped, and she said down the Biloella road would be nice. No problem, said Jerry, and deposited her outside Whitelaw’s with a grin. The road was deserted. No black BMWs, no silver Lexus or white transit van with a crumpled right fender.

  She pushed open the fly-screen door and stepped inside.

  “India?” Mikey said, his voice astonished.

  She stopped dead. Their eyes met. He was scanning her while she was trying to decide whether he loathed her for abandoning him outside the warehouse. They stood in tense silence.

  “Nice haircut,” he said eventually.

  She continued to stare at him. Something about him was different. His jaw seemed bigger, his nose larger, his green eyes more vivid.

  “You too,” she said finally.

  He gave a faint smile and ran a hand over his short-cropped hair. He said, “What are you doing here?”

  “I want to nail Knox.”

  He gave his head a little shake. “Last time I saw you, you were legging it at a hundred miles an hour.”

  She looked away. “I’m sorry.”

  He came to her. Put his arms around her. Gave her a strong hug. Thigh to thigh, belly to belly. She felt her feet leave the floor as he tightened his grip and lifted her into his embrace. “I’m bloody glad you did. That you’re all right.” He pulled back, looked down into her face. “I’ve been worried sick.”

  She felt her muscles relax. Thank God. Thank God he didn’t hate her. He pulled her close to him again. Kissed her hair. She hugged him back with surprising strength. They stood in the corridor like that for some time before Mikey told her about Scotto.

  “He’s doing okay. I rang the hospital this morning and although they wouldn’t let me talk to him, I gather he’ll be up and hobbling about soon.”

  “Were you hit during the gunfight?” she asked. “I mean, you fell …”

  “Tripped over my big feet as usual.”

  “Thank heavens you turned up when you did. You saved my life.”

  “No, I didn’t. I came in after the shooting had started.”

  She frowned. “So who yelled ‘police’?”

  “Not me.”

  India was shaking her head. “I don’t get it.”

  “Me neither.” He grinned. “Perhaps you’ve a guardian angel.”

  “Who screams ‘drop your weapons or I’ll shoot’? Somehow I don’t think so.”

  “Well, if it hadn’t been for whoever it was, I’d be dead. They covered me until I’d gotten the heck out of there, and I saw Knox and his blokes leave, then the black Beemer. When I, went to get Scotto I couldn’t see anybody.” He scratched the side of his jaw with a finger. “Maybe there’s another party involved here. Secret Services or something.”

  India remembered Arthur Knight, the man who’d paid her bail. Whitelaw had said he was a fed. Was it Arthur who had covered them? If so, why? She wished she’d written that letter now. The one she’d meant to before Stan rocked up and wanted to arrest her, but she’d been too busy surviving to think about it since.

  They went into the sitting room. India pulled out a tattered map of Australia from the bookshelf and studied it. Biloella was northwest of Cooinda, a pindot in a spot surrounded with symbols for desert. It didn’t look far, about fifty kilometers, but she knew distances were deceptive and driving time depended on how good the roads were.

  “How long will it take me to get to Biloella?” she asked Mikey.

  “An hour. In Whitelaw’s rust-bucket, four.”

  She glanced at the VW outside, tried to ignore the continual heated inner voice demanding she forget it, that she leave town, climb on to a plane and flee to England.

  “I don’t suppose I could borrow yours for the day, could I?”

  India found herself sweating, unsure whether she’d be relieved or disappointed if he said no.

  “All yours.” He dug in his front jeans pocket and tossed her his keys. “What are you going to do up there?”

  “Try and track down the Mulletts. See what they got paid, if anything. Get more information.”

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sp; “A family reunion!” Mikey grinned again and India rolled her eyes at him. “Okay. While you do that, I’m going to get supplies. I want to find out what’s in the basement of the Institute.”

  “What, break in again?”

  “Absolutely. But this time I’ll be better prepared.”

  “You’ll need a lookout.”

  “You betcha.”

  She glanced at her watch. “When were you planning your assault?”

  “We can prep this evening, go in tonight.” His eyes lit up. “It’ll be dark. Does this mean you’ll strip?”

  She took a swipe at his head, which he ducked.

  He was still chuckling when she climbed into his ute.

  India cruised into the baking wilderness, anxiously checking the rearview mirror, her knuckles pale as white chocolate buttons around the steering wheel.

  She drove on the speed limit all the way to Biloella. Later, she couldn’t remember anything about the journey; it was one of those times when she didn’t care to think about what she was doing.

  The main street of Biloella was deserted, dusty, and about four hundred yards long. India parked nose-in next to an ancient gray Land Rover with blistered paintwork and crazed windows. She climbed out of Mikey’s ute and walked along the street of aluminum and weatherboard dwellings. They were not well kept and many of the houses had crudely built lean-tos attached for additional living space. An aura of dirt and poverty hung over the settlement and the air was thin and hot, and pulsed with the sound of insects.

  She passed a hotel and an all-purpose general store, then a milk bar. India entered the milk bar. An angular woman in cut-off dungarees was serving banana splits to an old couple at a table in the corner. She walked behind the counter, asked what India would like. India ordered a glass of water and a banana milkshake.

  The glass of water was from the tap, the milkshake freshly blended with ice cream and soft fruit.

  “Hot enough for you?” the woman said.

  “Sure is.”

  “You’re from the city, am I right?”

  India hesitated. “I suppose so.”

  “Sydney, right?”