Black & Blue: BookShots (Detective Harriet Blue Series) (10 page)

The man bucked violently at the impact, then doubled over. He didn’t make a sound. Nor did the gun, thanks to the silencer. Hope shifted her aim to Yim, and the old man whimpered.

HOPE WALKED STIFFLY
towards the entrance, the gun tucked beneath her flowing silk shirt. The glass doors of the bank were only yards away, still opening and closing as people walked in and out. The silent alarm had not been tripped, or the doors would have slammed shut immediately, the bulletproof screens at the crowded counters flying up to the ceiling.

It was too late now to hope of getting the Spellings’ savings. She’d have to settle for the yacht. If she could get into international waters before the police figured out where she was, she’d be fine. There would always be other couples to scam. Right now she was in flight mode. All that mattered was getting away.

She walked across the bank foyer to the doors. Hope didn’t count on Ken’s blood having run so quickly from his wounds in Yim’s office. As Hope walked towards freedom, her stolen high heels left a series of red triangles in her wake on the huge white marble tiles. Hope looked up just as the teller at the end of the row noticed them, her frown deepening as she tried to work out how the customer could have walked in red paint inside the bank.

The two women’s eyes met just as Hope reached the door.

‘Excuse me, miss,’ the teller called. ‘Miss!’

Hope turned and ran.

She fitted through the glass doors as they snapped shut just at the last second, the edges catching her shirt, tearing the soft fabric. The crowd parted as she waved the gun in the air.

‘Get out of the way! Move!’

There was a taxi on the corner. Perfect timing. Hope was going to make it through this. She was going to see that sunrise on the ocean. No one was going to stop her.

ON THE WAY
back to the station, stopped at the traffic lights at Elizabeth Street, three patrol cars zipped through the red signal in front of us, sirens blaring. An ambulance was hot on their tail. They were heading towards Martin Place at an incredible speed. I’d been trying to get Chris Murray on the phone, but he wouldn’t answer. Finally I took Tox’s phone and dialled, hoping Murray wouldn’t recognise the number.

‘Chris Murray.’

‘Murray you asshole,’ I said, ‘you’ve been ignoring my calls!’

‘I don’t have time for your calls,’ he snapped back.

We yelled into the phone at the same time: ‘
I’ve found the yachties!
’

We were both panting with excitement, struggling through the confusion.

‘What?’ Chris said.

‘I’ve found the missing couple,’ I stammered. ‘Well, I know who knows where they are. I’m tailing a suspect, a prostitute named Hope Stallwood, in my drowning case. I think Hope and my victim Claudia Burrows were working together to steal your couple’s boat. Claudia ended up as excess baggage, maybe got dumped when the scam was over. Probably your yachties, too.’

‘Well, I’m hoping you’re wrong about that,’ Murray said. ‘Because a young Caucasian female has just tried to access the couple’s bank account in Martin Place. And they tell me that whoever she is, she wasn’t alone.’

‘Jesus Christ! That must be her!’

‘I’m on my way right now,’ Murray said.

‘I’ll see you there.’ I grabbed Tox just as we set off across the lights. ‘Turn the car around,’ I told him. ‘Head back towards Martin Place.’

WE RAN ACROSS
the crowded square and pushed through the ring of people at the police tape around the bank. The alarms inside were still squealing, but the big glass doors were open and cops were running in and out. One passed me with his hands covered in blood, rubbing them on the front of his shirt, looking dazed.

I knew Hope was on the edge. Anyone who had lived for long enough in the kind of environment she had was probably pretty close to manic-depressive.

I spend so much of my job hoping I’m wrong. I hoped, as I pushed through the crowd, that somehow I’d made a mistake while joining the dots. Connecting the yachting magazine to the missing couple who had disappeared at sea. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions – leaping down a rabbit hole that would take me nowhere. I hoped I’d walk into the bank manager’s office and find the missing couple there, safe.

I wasn’t so lucky.

There was a man in his fifties on his back on the marble floor, bleeding to death in a huddle of paramedics. He’d been shot or stabbed, it looked like. The situation was so desperate that the paramedics had forgone getting him to the hospital and were trying to stem the bleeding right there, in front of everyone. There were female bank tellers in snappy red suits crying in each other’s arms. I grabbed one and yanked her away from the tearful huddle.

‘Who is he?’

‘I don’t know.’ She wiped her running mascara. ‘He came in with her, the shooter. They were a couple. Mr Yim saw them in the office. We didn’t hear the gunshots. They walked in together, and then she walked out. Someone saw blood and went in and found them.’

I turned the corner and glanced into Yim’s office. He was slumped against the back wall, his face grey, a bullet hole in his neck. Two men were holding a dark jacket against his wounds. But it was clearly over.

I heard the man on the ground struggling against the paramedics assisting him.

‘She’s still on board!’ he cried, taking gasps of breath. ‘She’s got her! She’s got my wife!’

HOPE LEANED AGAINST
the bridge wall and kept the gun on Jenny, watched out the windows as the other yachties lounged and talked on their own vessels. Soon the cops would swarm the piers looking for her, a black and poisonous cloud rolling out over the water, stifling the afternoon sun. She’d be long gone before they arrived. Jenny was not in good shape. She clung to the helm shakily, her head nodding gently as waves of exhaustion rolled through her. Hope told Jenny to fire the engines and guided her on the throttle. The older woman’s hands were so slick with sweat she could hardly grip the wheel.

‘I’m sorry it has to be this way,’ Hope said. ‘This is probably going to be awful for your family.’

‘Where is Ken?’ Jenny whimpered.

‘Put on port five.’ Hope waved at the helm. ‘Bring the throttle back a bit.’

‘I have two grown sons,’ Jenny said. ‘They have children.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Just tell me if Ken is still alive,’ Jenny pleaded. ‘Tell me what happened. I have to know.’

Hope hardly heard the sick woman at the helm. For many years, Hope had been thinking about people in terms of how they related to her ‘Circle of Care’. A wide ring around her shut people out, or welcomed them in. It encompassed the people who were her responsibility, those she could trust, those it was safe to love. The circle had shrunk a little when she was a child every time her father had beaten her, so that the man had slipped out of it completely in time. When he’d grown old and mild, always moaning about forgiveness and mistakes, Hope hadn’t been able to bring herself to pull the man back inside the circle. For a while, in her teenage years, there had been friends and boyfriends inside the circle, but they’d walked out steadily as she’d taken to drinking and partying. When she’d started working in the Cross, she’d looped that small but loving circle around the other girls in her brothel. Together they’d got through the long nights and sleepy days, pulled each other up from the depths when it all became too much, watched out for the telltale track marks that meant someone was losing control.

But when Hope had been kicked out of the brothel for hiding profits from her madam, she’d found herself and Claudia the only two people left in the circle. And Hope was so used to people walking out, or being squeezed out, that she had really just been waiting all the time for Claudia’s turn to leave. And that turn had come when she’d fulfilled her role in taking down the Spellings. Hope had had no use for her after that. She wasn’t part of the glorious plan.

The circle was closed. Strangers like Jenny didn’t have a chance. Hope directed the older woman to rev the engines when the bow was pointing to clear, empty horizon. Behind them Hope could see cops arriving on the pier. They’d stopped the taxi driver before he could get out of the marina. It was a close call, but Hope was getting ahead of them. Maybe she’d make it. There were plenty of heavy things on board to tie Jenny to if she got in trouble.

I PICKED A
vessel close to the end of the pier and shuffled the old couple who were having tea on the back deck off it. The water police in Sydney Harbour were gearing up, and the coastguard was sending a chopper. The radio I’d taken from a patrol cop at the bank was roaring with dozens of voices coordinating things here and there. A hostage negotiator teaching young criminologists at the University of Sydney was being pulled out of a lecture and driven at top speed towards the coast.

I stopped Tox on the back deck.

‘Maybe you should stay,’ I said.

‘What?’ he scoffed. ‘Fuck off.’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘this is our case. We don’t want it fucked up by idiot water police guys who insist on ignoring us because you’re on board. If you’re not around, I’ve got a chance of having some pull out there. I want control of the situation.’

‘I’m not leaving this case.’ Tox pushed me away. ‘Get on the helm and shut up.’

‘They’re going to fuck with us out there, and lose us our suspect,’ I said. ‘Tox, you’re a murderer!’

‘I’m a killer, not a murderer!’ he shouted. ‘There’s a difference, Detective Blue.’

I stared at him. He was ignoring me. He worked the helm like an expert, bringing the boat out of its mooring and turning it towards the sea in a seamless glide while its owners railed at us from the pier. I didn’t know what to say. He glanced at me.

‘I don’t care that people don’t like me,’ he said. ‘I deserve some punishment. But I don’t drop cases, and I don’t lose suspects.’

I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He gestured to the throttle.

‘Get moving.’ He looked to the horizon. ‘We’ve got to catch up and talk her down before she does something stupid and kills the hostage.’

The police radio channels separated. I got onto a channel with the water police and Chris Murray. The coastguard hung back and let us take charge, three boats behind a row of five police cruisers and Tox’s and my commandeered leisure yacht. We lost sight of land quickly. The freshly painted
New Hope
grew larger as we inched closer.

It was an hour of slow, restless following before Hope finally answered repeated pleas to talk over the radio. She came through loud and clear on the channel reserved for the police.

‘I’ve got Jenny Spelling tied to a compressor,’ she said. ‘She’s going overboard if you get any closer.’

THE COMMAND TEAM
, led by Chris Murray, said nothing about Hope’s progress out to sea. As long as she was talking, Murray seemed happy to let her trundle on ahead of us. But I wanted Hope to stop. While she was underway, she thought she was shifting closer and closer to being free, and I knew negotiations would last longer while she felt she had the upper hand. Jenny Spelling was sick. She wouldn’t last a twelve-hour siege. I shifted in beside Tox at the helm and pointed to the
New Hope
.

‘Come up alongside her,’ I said. ‘Keep your distance, like she said. Don’t get any closer.’

I went out of the bridge and down the steps to the back of our vessel. There was a tarp to protect the deck from the rain, hanging over the rear of the galley. I tore that down. I dragged a net out of a box on the deck and then went inside, grabbed sheets and blankets from the bed and lugged them out onto the deck.

Hope’s vessel slowly loomed up beside me. All the lights were on. I could see the young woman standing at the helm, looking out. I couldn’t make out her expression. Jenny was on the other side of her, just her feet visible near a gap in the wall outside the bridge.

‘I don’t know what this boat is doing out to my starboard side.’ Hope’s voice was high with tension on the radio. ‘But I want them to fuck off.’

‘What are you doing?’ Tox shouted at me.

‘Go round the front!’

The engines roared beneath me. I copped a hit of sea spray in the face as the boat lurched over the waves. As we came across Hope’s bow, I waited until the right moment and then began hurling the sheets, blankets, tarp and net into the sea.

‘What the fuck?’ Hope screamed on the radio.

I hung on as we took a huge wave to the starboard side, crossing over to Hope’s port side.

I didn’t know if my plan had worked immediately. There was no discernible crunch of the propellers as they became tangled in the debris I’d put right in Hope’s path. After a while, I noticed her boat was slowing. There was smoke on the wind.

I looked up in time to see Hope on the port side, standing over Jenny as she lay helpless on the deck. As I watched, Hope looked back towards the boats behind her and raised the radio to her mouth.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ Hope said. ‘Now I’ll have to punish her.’

HOPE UNSCREWED THE
silencer and threw it over the side. The gunshot cracked over the ocean, rolling and echoing on the waves. Jenny didn’t move. Hope’s voice was impossibly high on the radio, the screech of a deranged woman.

‘You do not want to fuck with me right now!’ Hope said. ‘This woman is really sick. It won’t take more than a couple of shots to finish her off!’

‘Fucking psychopath,’ I seethed. Hope turned and popped off five shots at us. One clanged off the roof of the boat, mere inches from Tox’s head. I threw myself to the deck and listened. Tox veered the boat away.

‘Good move with the tarps,’ Tox said as I crawled back into the bridge.

‘Detective Blue, that was a bloody senseless move,’ Chris Murray blasted on the radio. He wanted the water police to hear that he didn’t agree with the risk I’d just taken, in case it caused Hope to kill her hostage. He also wanted Hope to know she had a good cop to trust, now that it was clear who the bad one was. I switched over to the coastguard channel to talk back to him privately.