Blood Junction Page 27

  He saw Polly racing up the path for the police station’s door, chest out, matchstick legs pumping; two brick-shaped women staring at the Royal, shocked, and three men having a fight … no, two men struggling with someone at the back of a transit van.

  Mikey’s eyes clicked to Polly, but she vanished inside the police station.

  He sprinted for the van.

  India was bucking and kicking against two men. Mikey saw her knee come up. She jabbed it hard into the first man’s groin. She brought it back and spun and tried to jab the second man but he swung away.

  The first man was bent double, his hands between his legs, groaning. India was thrashing at the air with her hands and feet.

  Mikey gave a bellow of rage and charged. He seized the second man by the arm and spun him around, smashed a fist into his nose. The man staggered and fell to his knees and Mikey kicked him in the face. The man flew backwards, clearing the ground and smacking onto the road, blood spurting from his shattered nose. Mikey lunged for the other man, and distantly heard India scream his name.

  He was bringing back his bunched fist to smash the man’s face when he felt a thud in his right shoulder blade. He jerked sideways, stumbling and losing his balance. For a second he thought someone had punched him from behind, and he tried to turn to fight his attacker, but his knees began to tremble.

  Dear God, no, he thought.

  The driver of the van came into view, nodded once as though satisfied. He holstered his long-barrelled pistol and helped the second man to his feet. Blood was clotting around the man’s nose and mouth and when he said something, his front teeth moved like loose planks in a fence.

  India was suddenly in front of Mikey, holding his face in her hands. She was shouting something but he couldn’t hear her. He seemed to have gone completely deaf.

  Slowly, he felt himself topple sideways. There was a numb area in his lungs, his whole chest. He tried to raise his head from the road, but it wouldn’t budge. He attempted to lift himself with his arms, but they lay uselessly at his sides.

  “India,” he whispered.

  “Mikey,” she said.

  “Run.”

  “Never.”

  Mikey regained consciousness as they flew over Broken Hill. Rivulets of sweat ran down his face and neck. A nauseous pain filled his veins, his whole body.

  He was lying sprawled across the rear seat, his legs jammed behind the pilot’s seat. He couldn’t feel his legs. He wondered if they were numb from the position they were in, or whether his injury was worse than he thought. Irrationally he decided: I don’t care, because my head is in India’s lap. He could feel one of her hands cupping the side of his face, the other brushing the hair rhythmically above his right ear and down to his nape. It felt good. It felt so good …

  A little later when he opened his eyes again it was to see India’s chalk-white face close to his, set with anxiety. He saw his name on her lips. He turned his head to indicate he couldn’t hear above the clattering of the engine. She put her face close to his. “God, Mikey.” Tears spilled. Angrily she wiped them away.

  It took an immense effort to speak. “Sorry.”

  “You idiot.” Her voice faltered. “You bloody idiot.”

  “Missed the third.”

  She was crying.

  “Sorry,” he said again.

  “Don’t,” she choked. “Don’t apologize, for God’s sake.”

  “Wanted to help.”

  She tried to smile. “And got yourself into a whole lot of trouble. As usual.”

  “As usual.” A dark shadow nudged the corner of his mind and he closed his eyes again. Succumbed to blackness. When he awoke, fresh cool air was on his face and he could smell dew on grass. It was night. He heard the pilot shutting down the engines. He was lying in a field, India by his side.

  “Where … discs?” he asked her.

  “I’m afraid they’ve got them. I mailed four pieces to newspapers though. One’s with Jerome …”

  As she talked he found it hard to concentrate. He closed his eyes. Drifted again. When he came around, he was rocking on the floor of a covered ute. In the gloom he saw two benches fitted lengthways, two wheel wells and a spider’s web beneath the nearest bench. Long legs were stretched on either side of him. Long and clean and brown. Once again, his head was in India’s lap. He listened to the engine’s constant drone. Took in the steady juddering motion, the regular clicking of small stones and rocks against the bodywork. They were on a well-maintained dirt road.

  “How you doing, soldier?”

  He felt her hands supporting his head while she brought her legs up beneath her, then it was resting on something solid and soft. She knelt beside him, swaying with the motion of the ute, and quickly stripped off her T-shirt. Her breasts swelled against her brassiere. His kind of brassiere. Cotton with lacy edges. A soft apricot color. Very feminine.

  Distantly, he realized his head must be resting on her balled up shorts, because he could see she wore matching knickers. High-cut, with a lace band, they barely covered her sex. Almost a G-string, he thought, but not quite. Her skin was the color of caramel, the texture of silk.

  “Nice,” he managed, but she didn’t seem to hear him.

  She dabbed his face and neck with her T-shirt. His lids started to droop. He felt her press a kiss to his forehead. Then her palm resting gently against his cheek. A shaft of perfume pierced his pain; cinnamon and allspice. He was going to say something banal, about the scent of an Aborigine, but a shudder went through him as the sickening pain spread, and he began panting hard. His clothes were now soaked.

  “You hang in there, okay?” India demanded.

  He found he couldn’t even manage a nod. He simply lay there, staring at her.

  “Jerome will be on our case. We’ll have you in hospital before you know it.”

  Mikey gazed at India, the way she knelt in her underwear, glaring fiercely at him through her tears, willing him to live. He’d never wanted anyone or anything so much before. He loved her for her spirit. He guessed he always had, and always would.

  As if she’d heard his thoughts she bent her head and very gently, very tenderly, kissed his lips. Then she moved back a little. Her expression was solemn and intense.

  The ute started to slow, taking a long smooth curve upwards and to the right, as though breasting the crest of a hill.

  “Want…” he said, with great difficulty.

  Her hand came to stroke the scar on his eyebrow, then the hair above his ear, smoothing it between her fingers as she caressed his cheek with her thumb.

  “You,” he managed.

  Tears sprang in her eyes.

  “Me too.”

  The ute hit a pothole and he heard himself moan.

  “Take it easy, my love,” she whispered, leaning close. “I’m here, okay? I swear no one’s going to fuck with you while I’m around, you get it?”

  “Got … it.”

  They went quiet. The engine note started to slacken as the ute dipped downhill. The driver took up the brakes, and as it lurched around the first corner, India slid to his head, his shoulders, to steady him.

  In second gear now, the ute howled downwards.

  There was a bump when they reached the bottom, and the tires slipped on loose gravel as the ute veered to the right.

  “India.”

  She bent over him, expression taut and anxious.

  “Kiss …”

  Her gaze became unsteady.

  “Me,” he added weakly.

  As he lay there, her soft lips on his, it suddenly struck him she had felt the same way all this time.

  The dirt road seemed to last forever. India was working to free a two-inch nail from the bench. She knew it wasn’t much of a weapon, but if David could topple Goliath … With her thumb and forefinger, she rocked the nail back and forth, loosening it little by little. Her head was pounding and she felt faintly sick, but she was so absorbed in working the nail, in arming herself with something, that she di
dn’t think about the flu.

  The ute lurched off the dirt road, slowed to a snail’s pace and bumped over some large potholes. It picked up speed again, but not as fast. The tires started scrunching as though they were driving up a finely gravelled drive. Their destination, she assumed. India hastily pulled on her T-shirt and shorts, apologizing to Mikey’s unconscious form, and went back to urgently tugging and twisting at the nail. She felt the ute ease to a halt. The engine note rose for a second, then died. Silence.

  She heard doors opening, the men talking as they came down either side of the ute, but India didn’t stop; the nail had started to move.

  She took a deep breath, tightening her hold on the nail’s head, squeezing her left hand over her right thumb and forefinger. She yanked with all her strength, felt the flesh of her forefinger tear. With the edge of her palm she knocked the nail hard one way, then the other.

  One last yank, and the nail tore free.

  “On your feet, bitch,” said the driver.

  She slipped the nail into her shorts pocket and bent to squeeze Mikey’s shoulder. To her surprise his eyes were open, their expression urgent. “Run,” he whispered.

  Her heart was jumping, adrenaline pumping through every vein at what she imagined was coming, but she managed a smile.

  “No.”

  He tried to rise, but she pushed him back gently.

  “Come out!” the man yelled.

  She brushed her lips against Mikey’s, then crabbed around his inert form and out of the ute.

  They were outside a large beach house. India could smell the salty tang of the sea, the more pungent odor of seaweed. A boatshed stood to the right, and a jetty stretched over green-blue water dead ahead. The sky had turned purple and black to the east and rain clouds were building out to sea. A big Bertram motorboat, maybe thirty-four feet long, was surging against its ropes at the end of the jetty, causing the wood planks to shudder and creak.

  She watched the man whose face Mikey had shattered stumble up a set of curved wooden steps and into the house. The driver stood behind her, his pistol aimed at her back, while the other man stood by the open doors of the van, smoking. Then she heard a faint thumping sound. The sound of a helicopter. Sweat ran through her hair, down her neck as she gazed around, looking for weapons, escape routes. Jetty. Boat. Van. Car. Sea. Bush all around.

  Her eyes snapped back to the car parked beside a broad flat patch of mown grass. A black BMW with tinted windows. OED 128. She blinked.

  She stood there, breathing in the smell of sea-spray, pretending her fingers weren’t throbbing from the nail, trying to work out the significance of the black BMW.

  Gradually the rhythmic pounding of rotor blades grew louder. The helicopter swooped low from behind and thundered past them, banking sharply over the water before settling like a giant metallic fly on the flat patch of grass. India squinted against the fine stinging sand raised by the machine, to see the pilot shutting down the engines and unclipping his belt. The passenger’s door was opening. She knew who it was before the stubby legs came into view.

  Roland Knox.

  The pilot climbed out and stood there, stretching, arms to the sky. He dropped them and turned around. He was still flexing his hands when he looked directly at her. She couldn’t make out his features, he was too far away, but she felt the intensity of his gaze and, without knowing why, she shuddered.

  Knox was coming down the drive, expression hard.

  The pilot turned and loped away, along the jetty. She swallowed. An odd, hollow feeling settled in her chest as she watched him vault effortlessly onto the Bertram. There was something familiar about the way he carried himself and she felt more frightened, even more vulnerable than she had before she’d seen him.

  “Miss Kane,” said Knox. “You really have excelled yourself.”

  India made no reply.

  He held up four sturdy brown envelopes. Each had been slit open. “You failed,” he said abruptly.

  Irrationally, she felt an intense urge to burst into tears. Not because he was going to kill her, but because he was right: she had failed to get the biggest story of her life into the world’s media.

  “Sir,” said the driver hesitantly, and Knox moved past her, peered inside the ute.

  “What the hell’s he doing here?”

  “He attacked us. Smashed Forbes’s face to pieces, then went for Curran. I had to shoot him.”

  So, Brown-hair was called Curran, and Buzz-cut Forbes. Buzz-cut suited Forbes much better, she thought dimly.

  Knox made a strangled, angry sound.

  “He was going to kill us,” the driver protested.

  “I wish he had,” snapped Knox.

  “We used silencers.” The driver’s tone betrayed a slight desperation. “No one heard a thing.”

  “Carl told me you were the best,” said Knox, “but he knows nothing. You’re shit.”

  The driver remained silent.

  Ten seconds ticked past. Knox gave a grunt. “I want you on the boat. Her too. And him.”

  Tension ebbed as Knox continued giving orders.

  “Shepard, when you’re done, drive the ute behind the house beneath the trees, where it will be hidden from the air. Lock it. Stay with Forbes in the house until we get back. Curran, bring the woman. I want to leave in ten minutes.”

  He turned around sharply, made for the boat.

  The driver, Shepard, swapped positions with Curran, who jabbed his pistol into the small of India’s back.

  “Move.”

  She started to walk slowly for the jetty, listening to the ute start up, the sound of a gear being engaged and the whine as the vehicle reversed. Then the engine faded. She was trembling inside, but she held her back straight and her head high. Waves slopped against the jetty, making it rock slightly. Anvil-shaped thunderheads slid across the sun and a solitary raindrop splashed on her cheek.

  The helicopter pilot was on the bridge of the Bertram, his head turned towards the horizon as though studying the coming storm. Knox clambered up the narrow chrome ladder and gestured sharply at the helm. The pilot responded by pointing first at the sky then directly at India, saying something to Knox that he didn’t like because he started stabbing the air violently with his hands.

  Then she heard another helicopter. The faint but distinct sound cut through the increasing noise of the wind. She felt the gun ease fractionally from the small of her back as Curran looked around.

  Sensing that everyone was distracted, India pretended to stumble and went down on one knee.

  “Get up,” said Curran.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’ve hurt my ankle.”

  The sound grew louder. It was a small helicopter, with coast guard markings, not police. Moving fast, it was following the coast in a westerly direction. India had no idea where it was headed, and didn’t care, because it had given her the moment she needed.

  She waited until she felt the brush of Curran’s hand on her shoulder, and the air was filled with the beat of the rotors. She whirled around and lashed her foot upwards, hard between his legs, and then threw herself onto his body sideways to spill him into the ocean.

  He shouted and rolled towards the edge. She swarmed over him, pushing him for the water with all her strength, hitting him in the face, trying to hook her fingers into his eyes, anything to disable him, give her a chance. He raised his arms around his head and she bit a wrist, her rage out of control, something she’d never expected to feel. He scrabbled backwards on the jetty, trying to get away from her.

  The first crash on her head made everything go dim. A boot thudded into her ribs, another her kidneys. India found herself groaning involuntarily, lying on her side, felt a thin trail of saliva dribbling down her chin. Shepard stepped back and kicked her again, and then again.

  She heard Curran say, “Hey, go easy.”

  India ignored the pain thumping and howling through her, and concentrated on keeping her anger white-hot. She thought, If you think I’m go
ing to give up easily you’ve made a big mistake, and with a monumental effort she lunged for Shepard, gripping his left leg, pulling herself onto her knees and hanging on tight.

  She dived a hand into her pocket, drew out the nail and slammed it into his thigh.

  For a second there was silence.

  Then he screamed.

  The second crash landed on her head, laid her flat on her front, jerking for a moment and finally lying motionless on the hard wooden jetty. I did my best, she thought dimly. Shame it wasn’t good enough.

  TWENTY-SIX

  INDIA CAME AROUND WITH HER FACE ON WHITE DECKING, to hear Knox bark an order.

  “Start the engines. Head for Sinker Reef. Now!”

  “I advise against it,” shouted a man’s voice.

  India blinked slowly several times.

  “I don’t care what you advise, Bishop,” called Knox. “Just do it.”

  “Sir, the southerly is coming in extremely fast. It’s going to make things very difficult. Not just because it’ll be uncomfortable in the swell, but visibility will be down to a few yards within the next half hour. I don’t know if I’ll find the jetty again.”

  “We have sat-nav,” insisted Knox. “Radar, radio. A whole array of dials on the dashboard. We’re going. We can’t risk not going. Not since that chopper flew over. Start the engines.”

  India took in the way the boat writhed against the jetty, the sporadic spatter of raindrops the size of dollar coins, the sound of wind moaning around the hull. She empathized with the cool-headed Bishop. She knew the pilot was right: the southerly was whipping into a ferocious storm.

  “Perhaps I could remain ashore, sir.”

  “No,” said Knox. There was a distinctive wet metal click that India recognized as the hammer of a pistol being drawn back. “Start the engines or I’ll blow your head off.”

  “If you insist, sir.” To her confusion, India thought she heard a thread of humor in Bishop’s voice, as though he found Knox amusing.

  She moved her head fractionally but she couldn’t see where Bishop was. She could, however, see a sprawled leg about eighteen inches from her nose. Blue jeans. Battered leather boots.