Leopard Dreaming (39 page)

The rotors continued to hammer the air, making it impossible for her to hear anything Kitching said to his caller — until the pitch of the engines changed and she sensed a sudden drop in altitude, like falling out of bed in a nightmare. No breeze in her hair, just the tense stuffiness that came with so many people, including four salty soldiers. A forest of men.

Opening her eyes briefly, she saw none of them. Only purple sky and the ocean rising up to meet her. Ahead she saw the familiar fingers of a marina clawing at the bay, and that alley.

Ambush alley.

Her life kept spiralling around in the same circles like water getting sucked down a drain, and now she was here again, at the Drift Inn.

As the chopper swung around on approach to the penthouse patio, Mira’s heart sank to her stomach. She gripped the stretcher, dreading whatever task would be demanded of her here at the home of the woman who’d pushed the young man and his snake from the railing.

Kitching grabbed her arm as the pilot brought the aircraft in lower and yet failed to set down properly. Instead, it hovered just above the deck, even as the sliding side door slid open to admit a gush of damp wind.

‘This way, Miss Chambers.’ Kitching tried to pull her to her feet, but if there were steps or a ladder to get out, she couldn’t see them. Her body locked up, just as it had when the four Asian crab fishermen had first hauled her aboard from Pobody’s jet ski, leaving Patterson and Pobody behind to take care of their next objective, whatever that had been.

‘I can’t!’ she pleaded. ‘I can’t see my own feet!’

‘Hang on to me.’ Kitching scooped her up against his invisible chest, his bony neck and stiff cotton shirt collar brushing her cheek as he bounded out onto the balcony with her. He ordered the other four men to hustle out promptly with Freddie and Sanchez. The last set of boots barely hit the deck before the pilot accelerated up and away from them.

Mira heard a sun lounge creak behind her, and from the smell she guessed that Freddie Leopard had been dumped on it.

‘You want him cuffed too before he wakes, Colonel?’ asked one of Kitching’s men in stilted English.

‘Cuffed together on the sun lounge will do, thanks Bohai. That pair need to stay together for as long as she can control him.’ Kitching led Mira closer too. ‘Introductions, Matron. You asked me to name a life I’d saved. Here’s four. Ryuu and Fuyu are Japanese fishermen. Their cousins Jinhai and Bohai here both have Chinese ancestry. Within the rest of my crew, I’m also honoured to be supported by several Koreans, Vietnamese, Ukrainians and a whole family from Singapore.’

‘So you’ve got your own little United Nations?’ Sanchez said flatly. ‘I’m so impressed.’

‘Ours works,’ he argued proudly. ‘Our families have lived together in peace on the disputed islands for five centuries.’

‘
Our
families?’ Metal clinked as if Sanchez had reached the end of her short chain. ‘You just punched your whole family unconscious!’

Kitching laughed. ‘You can’t picture me bouncing a few babies on my knee?’

‘Hardly!’ Her tone changed, as if struck by revelation. ‘So I did see and hear children aboard your submarine?’

‘Possibly. My men had orders to keep them away from all the nastiness you had to endure. That’s not the sort of thing that young eyes should see.’

‘Are they yours?’

‘Indirectly. They’re my grand-daughter’s step-nieces. And the boy is my great-grandson. You surprise me, Matron. Have you never put any stock in the idea that we’re all less than six degrees from some relation to everyone else in the world? Small gene pool when you think of it that way.’

‘How?’ Sanchez asked, sounding as stunned at the news as Mira felt. ‘Freddie’s file at Serenity has you listed as the next of kin, a bachelor.’

‘No doubt that part of the file hasn’t been updated. After committing him, I was stationed on a small Japanese isle in the South China seas, before the US treaty from the last world war was due to expire. I took a native wife, who was killed in a civil protest when our twins were still toddlers. I married her sister from the same atoll and had four more children over the next decade. Despite all my international postings, they’re all still living on the isle where I was first stationed. I haven’t had a chance to get back in the past eighteen months, so there’s now also a pair of little great-grandchildren I haven’t met yet myself.’

‘My heart’s breaking,’ Mira cut in. ‘Why should we care about your family, after all you’ve done to us?’

‘Politics, Miss Chambers. We are closer than you may realise. I don’t expect you to understand, given that you’ve spent the last decade locked up with your own problems, but world peace is bigger than both of us. Wars have visited those islands and sovereignty has changed hands many times over the centuries, with tensions increasing every day. This time, change must be permanent. Without stability, World War Three will start there. Oil has been discovered in the disputed waters. More than the Middle East, so a formal alliance must be established from the start to ensure the proper sharing of resources — much like Antarctica — or millions of lives, including yours, will be lost.’

‘Peace through superior weaponry,’ Matron muttered. ‘I disagree, but at least now I can understand where you’re coming from. You must be getting support from the major allies in brown paper bags, I imagine.’

‘Not yet, but that’s where we’re headed. With your help, Miss Chambers?’

‘Don’t
Miss Chambers
me! You’re a complete lunatic. And a cruel bastard. Why did you drag us to this woman’s apartment when she’s not even here yet? Just tell us, so we can all go our separate ways the sooner.’

‘Your fault, actually. I need a new money cleaner to process the funds from our little side business in weapons trafficking so we can finish developing our own superior arsenal from all the advanced tech. You deprived me of my cleaner, Miss Chambers, so it’s only fair you should assist in recruiting a replacement.’

‘I’m surprised you don’t print whatever money you need like any other terrorist,’ Sanchez said. ‘There are still a few nations around who don’t use the counterfeit-proof polymer notes yet, I’m sure.’

‘Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Indonesia, to name a few. I’m aware of those options, Matron. They’re
home to most of my customers. However, they’re all being pressured into conversion by the US, UN and the International Monetary Fund as part of the worldwide “police action” against terrorism, so they’re all being monitored too closely now. It’s not like I can walk into a foreign casino any more with a billion Thai baht and walk out with the equivalent “winnings” in euros. To print our own, we’ll need someone with access to blank polymer notes. Hence the reason we’re here.’

‘Lina Creed,’ Mira said, recalling that this particular penthouse belonged to the widow of the merchant banker Sir Cyrus Creed. ‘What good could she be to you? Isn’t she just a reclusive widow? A retired socialite, or something similar?’

‘She’s still a director of her husband’s bank, and a woman with a thing for young boys. So there’s certainly no harm in harnessing her evil for noble purposes. If you help me nail her for murder, I’ll let you put her behind bars as soon as I’m done with her. And in the meantime we can also ensure that young Kevin Stoush remains her last victim.’

‘Kevin Stoush?’ Sanchez echoed. ‘Who’s he?’

‘One of three boys caught with Lina’s husband right there in that spa.’ Kitching paced the floor, sounding impatient. ‘She wasn’t the only pervert in the family, apparently. Like attracts like. He was jailed as a paedophile six years ago and died recently, just before he was due to be released. No doubt Mrs Creed has a lot of angst about it. Their bank did a hell of a lot better with her husband at the helm.’

‘A crime of greed and passion?’ Sanchez said. ‘Or you think she’s killing them out of some kind of warped vengeance?’

‘It’s the details we need. Clearly, young Kevin wasn’t so young any more when he smacked the pavement yesterday. He was, however, the second of her husband’s male lovers to die by misadventure, and
with Freddie’s help I made it into the alley in time to see for myself that she pushed him.’

‘Now you need Mira’s help to prevent the third?’ Sanchez said. ‘Why didn’t you just ask?’

‘Wouldn’t matter,’ Mira argued. ‘Seeing the past doesn’t mean I can save anyone. What’s done is done.’ She didn’t dare tell him she could glimpse the future at times, when she cried.

‘Ah, but would you cooperate willingly if I could show you a way?’

She doubted he was offering her a choice, but when she nodded, she did so more willingly than she ever had with General Garland. ‘When I’m done, you’ll let us all go?’

‘Except Lina and Freddie. Lina goes to jail and Freddie’s my family. Now we’re reunited, he’s staying with me.’

‘Over my dead body,’ Sanchez swore. ‘You abandoned him decades ago, Colonel. If you cared so much, where were you then?’

‘Busy, as I’ve already explained.’

‘Selfish, more likely. Too self absorbed to notice him mention he could hear the future?’

Metal clinked again, only this time Mira heard a groan as if Freddie stirred.

‘I was only the kid brother, Matron. Twenty years between us. He never confided anything. He’s just lucky I cared enough when I joined the army to send him somewhere safe. He heard
voices
, for heaven’s sake. What else was I supposed to do? An asylum seemed like the only choice back then, short of drowning him or putting a bullet in his head. So don’t think I didn’t consider every option. Our mother fell terminally ill trying to care for him. And I’d have made general years ago if I didn’t have a nut in my family.’

Mira rolled her eyes, not buying it. ‘If all that’s true, then I’ve never been your enemy, Colonel. Did you ever
consider just asking for my help? I know what it’s like to lose my home, so I can relate to the situation with all those island communities.’

‘Hindsight is your gift, not mine. I can’t apologise. The stakes are too high. Now time is short. Lina Creed will be home in twenty minutes, and before that we have much to do. You must use your hindsight, Miss Chambers. We’re going to rearrange this apartment inside and out so everything is precisely as it was on the day that Mrs Creed murdered her first victim.’

‘Why?’ Mira asked. ‘What could that possibly achieve?’

‘Shock, I hope. Enough to make her pay attention while you reacquaint her with the smallest details of her crimes. I need to leave her in no doubt that we’ve had her under strict surveillance the whole time.’

‘We? Oh, no. Back up.’ Mira frowned. ‘I may agree with your goal but not your methods. You can’t make out that I’ve been with you the whole time. It’s a blatant lie.’

‘And if we fail to comply?’ Sanchez cut in.

‘Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask,’ Freddie sobbed, surfacing this time as Icky Ricky. ‘He’s got Benny in the
Limo
!’

‘What limo?’ Sanchez asked.

Oh, no.
Mira pictured Ben captured again, and if Freddie meant the
Liquid Limo,
then Ben wouldn’t be the only one aboard. ‘Okay, I’ll play along, you bastard. Just leave my friends alone.’

Lockman tore up the board from the other seat to use as an oar. The engine spluttered and died for the third time, and his weight on the rear seat caused another stress fracture to open up in the battered seams, but he’d finally made it to the mouth of the cove where the
Liquid Limo
waited like an ivory whale sunning itself in a turquoise pond.

He’d have preferred to swim the rest of the way, shark-infested waters or not, except he still had a wounded leg that he needed to baby long enough to find Mira and Matron Sanchez.

Rowing faster, as best he could with an old plank, he noticed the musician on the top deck waving to him.

‘Ahoy, mate!’ Lockman shouted. ‘Can you do me a favour and come get me?’

‘Two secs!’ Darkin disappeared briefly, then emerged from the stern riding a jet ski. And not just any jet ski.

Lockman kept the oar handy and palmed the knife, ready to defend himself.

‘Never a dull moment today,’ Darkin quipped as he tossed Lockman a towline. ‘I’m inspired enough to write a whole album.’

‘Glad it’s working out for you.’

‘Only since I met you. Where’s the blind girl?’

‘Classified. What kind of communications gear do you have aboard?’

‘You didn’t notice? You name it, I’ve got it, along with a few surprises. Hey, what happened to your leg?’

‘Mugged by a tree. Can we get moving, please?’

‘Sure thing. These babies are fun. I might have to get me one. Not sure of a name, though. What do you think of
Aquaholic
or
Suckmywake
?’

‘How about
Lunacy
? There’s a lot going on around here. In fact I’ve been chasing a pair of fast idiots on skis like this. You didn’t happen to see them?’

‘
Luna Sea
and
Fastidiots …
That’s priceless. I might just keep the pair.’

Lockman saw the second jet ski tethered to the pier, just as Darkin used a pocket remote to lower a sunbathing platform which also served as a convenient water-level wharf.

A fluffy white pom-pom ran out to greet him, barked twice, bouncing each time, pointed at him for all of two seconds, then ran up to lick his face.

‘Guests?’ he asked warily, while tickling the animal’s ears.

Darkin grinned and hitched Lockman’s boat to both skis with a long line that he also attached to the
Limo
. ‘Told you I had a few surprises. Come inside and see.’

Using the remote again, the musician raised the rear section of the hull, which retracted seamlessly into place, taking them with it and setting them down on the deck.

‘Nice trick,’ Lockman conceded. He turned around and saw beyond the spa and fountain to the bar inside the main salon where a crowd of familiar faces stood in a tight cluster on the large plush rug. He nodded to the detectives as he entered and hugged Tarin Sei, being careful not to bump the stump of her arm, which she cradled in a lace shawl that matched her white sundress.