Leopard Dreaming (40 page)

She responded with a slight stiff hug of her own, which warned him that something might be wrong.

‘Hey, sorry I didn’t get to visit,’ he said, referring to her time in hospital. ‘Please don’t hold it against me. Just tell me where you got the jet skis.’

He saw her open her mouth to reply, but spotted Bennet Chiron in a wheelchair behind her, unwinding the last bandage from his fingers using his teeth. ‘Hey, what are you doing here, mate?’ he asked, sidestepping her for a straight answer.

‘I should ask you the same thing.’ Ben sneered at him and rolled forward using his forearms to drive the wheels. ‘And don’t call me
mate
, mate. Where is she?’

A red-haired woman with plaited pigtails stood beside Ben, watching Lockman intently. He assumed her to be Chiron’s nurse, and yet with two strong, capable women on either side of him now, it looked more like Chiron had hired himself a team of attractive bodyguards. ‘You want to take care of him?’
he challenged the girl with pigtails. ‘Before he hurts himself?’ He drew Sei aside urgently and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘We have a problem.’

‘Yeah, no kidding.’ She turned him around and the detectives stepped aside, revealing their two captives kneeling on the rug with their hands tied behind their backs.

No sign of Mira anywhere.

‘Looking for these?’ Symes lifted Lockman’s Glock from a small pile of confiscated weapons on the sofa, mostly bigger Desert Eagles, MP5s, two Steyr assault rifles, an assortment of knives and stun grenades, and the backpack he’d taken from the Hilux containing his emergency gear. ‘That guy, Pobody, had it when they tried to sneak aboard.’

‘Thanks.’ Lockman spotted his own knife in the pile and retrieved that too. Taking Pobody’s switchblade from his pocket, he intended on tossing it onto the pile — until he noticed Pobody grinning smugly to himself.

Lockman snapped. Rage flooded up through his body with a burst of adrenaline that drove him forward. He wrenched Pobody to his feet and slammed the bigger man backwards against the bar with a volley of punches that knocked the grin from the traitor’s face and busted his cheek, brow and lip.

‘Where is she?’ Lockman demanded between slugs, but the sergeant kept trying to grin. Patterson chuckled at the spectacle too, driving Lockman wilder to belt an answer out of him. All around him, voices screamed for him to stop and back off. The dog yapped, bouncing around like a feral pom-pom and latching onto Pobody’s boot, snarling, and tugging to pull them apart. Many hands also grappled Lockman’s shoulders as Sei and Symes tried in vain to haul him away.

‘Stand back,’ shouted the redhead, and she made for him with a taser — until Detective Moser snatched it away from her.

‘I’ve got him,’ Moser said calmly. He shouldered the others aside and hefted Lockman into a bear hug, flinging him around to the nearest wall where he pinned him with a thick arm and the sharp point of another Glock to his temple. ‘Okay, you need to calm down, lad. They’re not talking, and wherever she is, you’re no good to her in a jail cell — which is precisely where you’re headed if you kill either one of them. I want first go at interrogation anyhow.’

Lockman howled his frustration at the ceiling, still shaking with rage, but nodded finally, trying to remind himself that a dead man couldn’t speak.

‘I think I upset him.’ Pobody’s grin fell away, but only long enough for him to spit up more blood and two teeth. ‘Somebody circle the date.’

Sei drove the butt of her sidearm into Pobody’s belly, knocking the wind from him and doubling him over as she grabbed him by the collar and swung him back onto the rug beside his senior staff sergeant.

‘Not on the shag!’ Darkin grabbed both captives by their collars and dragged them backwards on their knees to a small section of cold polished timber. ‘Bleed on anything and I’m adding it to the bill.’

Pobody’s toothless grin widened. ‘Enjoy it now, Mr Music. And fear when we’re free.’

‘You’ll need this if you want to make threats,’ Lockman said, and while Moser kept him pinned by the neck, a quick flick of his wrist sent the knife hilt-deep into Pobody’s thigh, making him scream. The dog barked again as if cheering. Darkin laughed and Sei grinned, but the redhead and older detective whipped out their sidearms.

‘Stop!’ ordered the redhead. ‘Quit beating on the shitheads, drop to your knees and hands behind your back … please.’

‘Just raise your hands,’ Symes countermanded. ‘We can understand you’re upset, son, but this isn’t the way
to handle them. Back off him, Clyde. Give him some space to cool down so we can all take a deep breath and play catch-up.’ Symes holstered his sidearm and signalled for the others to follow suit.

‘A little help here?’ Pobody pleaded. ‘It’s not like I can remove it myself.’

‘It’s
your
knife.’ Lockman raised his hands to reduce the risk of becoming more of a captive himself. ‘Be grateful I didn’t jam it down your throat sideways.’

Sei retrieved the blade, roughly tugging it from Pobody’s muscle, wiping it clean on his shoulder and tossing it aside to the sofa with the rest of their weaponry. ‘Matching wounds now, I notice?’

Lockman held his tongue, thinking that was the whole point, while Ben glared at him, making it clear he’d be getting no sympathy from him.

‘You should have twisted it on the way out, Tarin. It’s the only language they understand.’ Ben said it, but Lockman couldn’t agree more.

‘Somebody care to fill me in?’ demanded the redhead. She looked out of place in jeans and plaited pigtails, but now that Lockman had a better chance to look at her, he noticed a civilian police badge clipped to the hip of her white singlet. Underneath she wore a police patterned bikini, and over it an open checked shirt that hid the badge from anyone unless they looked closely.

Symes waved his hand in a friendly gesture, and introduced her as Sergeant Cassie Delaney. ‘My favourite niece.’

‘So who’s he?’ Delaney asked, ‘and who’s this
she
who’s apparently missing?’

‘Classified,’ Moser replied. ‘On both counts, sorry.’

‘He’s supposed to be a bodyguard,’ Ben said. ‘And obviously not a good one, or he’d be with her.’

Lockman hung his head, heavy with guilt and feeling lousy enough already.

‘Well, what happened?’ Ben demanded. ‘Or do you suck at field reports too?’

‘Surprise attack.’ He preferred not to blame Mira for taking advantage of his trust to throw him off-balance. Chiron would never believe it happened that way anyhow.

‘Outnumbered six to one, no doubt?’

He nodded, knowing how lame it sounded. Ambushed twice in as many months didn’t look good for anyone, no matter what the circumstances.

Ben glared at him with smouldering, raw hatred. ‘So what’s your excuse?’

‘I’m not making any. They took her, and I’m getting her back.’

‘Oh, no, you’re not. You’re fired. Get your gear and get out.’

‘That’s not for you to say.’

‘So says the soldier who betrayed her!’

Lockman snapped and launched at him, catching himself too late — at the same time caught by Moser, who held him back and patted his shoulder so hard it helped to knock the rest of his senses back into him.

‘He’s in a wheelchair, son. Wait until he’s standing before you knock his block off. I might even hold him down for you. He’s been a right royal pain, showing up here and getting in the way.’

Lockman nodded, mainly to himself, and shuddered at the thought that by failing to stop himself, he’d just taken another step down the same path as his father. Tick, tick, tick … Outcast. Out of control. Out of his mind and … not much difference between a school bus and a civilian in a wheelchair. Stage two symptoms; hyper-vigilance, mistrust of others and explosive temperament. The thought of killing someone who didn’t really deserve it had crossed his mind more than once now.

‘She’s my responsibility!’ Ben shouted.

‘Hey, she’s my responsibility too, pal. You know what she’s like. How much luck did you have getting her to play safe in your first week alone with her?’

‘Back up,’ Delaney said, turning to Symes. ‘Are they arguing over some kind of protected witness?’

‘Military equivalent,’ Symes said. ‘If anyone asks, Cassie, you really did guess that much yourself.’

‘I’m her legal guardian,’ Ben persisted. ‘We were doing just fine until the army stuck in its fat nose!’

‘You
were
her guardian,’ Moser reminded him. ‘Technically, she has a new identity, and she’s about as independent as a woman can get, so far as I’ve seen.’

‘Oh, I get it.’ Delaney grinned, and relaxed against the wall. ‘You’re talking about Mira Chambers. That blind chick he brought home from the nut house?’

‘Patient,’ Ben argued.

‘Client,’ Lockman said. ‘I can track her.’ He looked away, unwilling to mention any details in front of the two traitors. ‘Just not from here.’

‘Need help, count me in,’ Tarin said with an equally wary glance at their two captives. ‘I have to say, Adam, something still smells rancid about all this. They tried to storm us in broad daylight. Why bother, if they’d already taken her?’

‘I can think of at least two reasons.’ Lockman glanced from Ben to Sei and paced the rug in frustration. ‘You’re a lookalike for Mira. In that wig and dress you’re a dead ringer, so put you two together and …’ He swallowed hard, knowing Chiron wasn’t in any fit state to handle that line of thinking. He could barely manage it himself, even though the arrangement had been the whole point of the exercise, but for Mira’s benefit and for Maddy Sanchez, not the colonel.

Facts were facts, Lockman decided, and it had to be said. ‘Kitching is all about smoke and mirrors. If he wants someone dead, he’s going to need bodies.’

‘Smoke and Miras,’ Symes repeated thoughtfully. ‘You think he’s aiming to use this young lady as a distraction while he makes off with the original?’

‘Turn our own plan against us,’ Sei said, referring to the strategy Lockman had planned out so thoroughly with General Garland. Now thrown out the window. ‘Why not? If it helps the other half of their team increase the distance between us.’

‘I’d never cooperate with that,’ Ben said, raising both hands to remind them he’d already proven his loyalty beyond all doubt.

‘Nor me,’ Sei said, raising her stump as if she still had her hand. ‘But they wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in us, Ben. Corpses don’t argue or resist.’

Lockman noticed Chiron’s rage soften the moment Tarin looked at him. And same for her.

‘Sad but true,’ Symes agreed. ‘I’ve seen worse ways to distract cops in a scam. Dump a body here, while making off with something else over there.’

‘They’ve been playing satellite surveillance games on a level above Garland,’ Lockman said, still careful to guard his intentions. ‘Kitching and his people have been out-thinking us at every turn so far, except —’

‘For them.’ Sei kicked Pobody’s injured thigh with her white sandal, making him cry out. ‘Kitching can’t foresee everything, obviously, or else we wouldn’t have bagged them.’

‘Unless that was their plan,’ Ben argued. ‘A way to get them aboard.’

‘Maybe,’ Lockman conceded. ‘They crippled me when they could have killed me, which suggests they expected to be long gone by the time I got here.’ Or else he’d been wondering if Freddie had been hearing everything, and letting some things slip through deliberately — which depended on how badly he really wanted his favourite matron to be rescued. ‘Look, we can argue in circles all day, or I can send one of you
to talk to General Garland directly. Get some major action moving out here as backup.’

‘I already did that,’ Delaney said.

‘From here?’ Lockman’s heart pounded harder, hoping they couldn’t have been that stupid.

‘Sure, from their headset. So far, we’ve got them in custody as civilian pirates, but there’s a team of MPs on their way to check them out.’

‘Yeah, I’ll bet there is.’ Lockman clenched his fists, wishing he could punch something again. ‘If you caught two military police attempting to hijack a yacht and then used
their
comm unit to call for help, whose side do you think was listening at the other end?’

‘Don’t get paranoid,’ Symes said. ‘She spoke to the general herself.’

‘And she knows her well enough to be sure it was her voice? I’m not sure I could do that myself unless we were face to face.’

Delaney’s cheeks turned pale. ‘Now that you mention it, the guy who responded at first did sound a lot like the big hat from dispatch who instructed me to collect Ben from the ferry and bring him here in the first place.’

‘Hang on,’ Ben said. ‘If he’s the mole for Kitching, that would mean they
wanted
me here.’

‘More leverage over Mira?’ Sei suggested. ‘Why else would they need that if they already have Matron Sanchez? Unless she’s …?’

‘Don’t say
dead,
’ Moser said. ‘Don’t even think it.

Lockman glanced at Darkin at the helm. ‘We need to get moving
now,
and by sea is the fastest route to Point Lookout.’

The dog sprang to attention, barked twice and pointed like a hunting dog towards the pier.

‘Too late.’ Delaney clicked her fingers at Moser to retrieve her taser. ‘They’re here.’

Symes tossed Lockman a second sidearm from the pile, Darkin grabbed two bigger ones for himself, and like a well-rehearsed team, a flock of Glocks and Eagles spun about and spread out behind cover to greet the newcomers.

L
ina Creed’s ghost struggled in through the door of her penthouse, juggling two bottles of wine and an arm bursting with long-stemmed roses. High heels and a short-skirted business suit lent her the appearance of a ragged secretary with her long dark hair tied up in a loose, straggly bun.

Through the sepia shades of yester-month, Mira watched the silent ritual yet again from her position beside the mirrored hallstand, just as footsteps approached outside the front door and a cluster of keys rattled on the far side of the lock.

‘She’s here,’ Kitching warned in a hoarse whisper. ‘Game’s on. Let’s do this right, people, so we can all go home happy.’ He stayed near the sofa where Freddie Leopard huddled against Matron Sanchez, still mumbling of the upcoming conversation like a sobbing four-year-old, while the matron tried in vain to comfort him.

‘Faith and love, love and faith,’ he muttered repeatedly, but he said them so fast it seemed unlikely they meant anything to him. ‘New beginnings, rebirth,’ he repeated, his tongue stumbling over the longer syllables.

A soft slap of skin against skin put an end to it, and Mira presumed Kitching had backhanded him.

‘Get him into the throne room, Matron. No flushing. Keep him silent until I send for you.’

‘If you let any harm come to Mira —’

‘I’d be hurting myself. She’s too valuable for the moment. Now get going.’

Shuffling sounds suggested compliance as they headed off for the smallest room in the apartment, but Mira stayed focused on the front door. She saw Lina’s spectre struggling to come in without dropping anything as she bumped the door closed with her hip. She headed past Mira towards the main living area. Then the invisible lock clunked loudly and the door creaked open. Heels clicked across the timber, and Mira heard plastics shuffling, as if Lina had come in juggling the same cargo, but out of sync with her ghost. This time Mira waited inside, invisible to herself if no one else, but feeling more exposed and vulnerable than ever. Behind her, two of Kitching’s men stayed close enough to grab her if she made any moves to escape down the hallway.

Idiot,
she thought.
As if she’d abandon Maddy to his mercy.

‘Nice bunch,’ Kitching said, triggering the backward step of a startled woman. ‘Sick but nice, Mrs Creed. Shows a handy shortfall in moral conscience I can use.’

‘Who are you? What are you doing here? Get out!’ she ordered, following Freddie’s Braille manuscript precisely.

Kitching clicked his fingers; the signal for two of his men to swoop at Lina from doors either side of the hallway. Heels scuffled, bodies collided and glass shattered. ‘If seducing young boys isn’t bad enough … celebrating their murders, Mrs Creed? That’s blatantly crazy.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘That’ll get life in worse places than jail, I can assure you.’

‘Who
are
you people?’ Creed struggled noisily, but she was no match for her two captors, who muffled her screams as well as most of her movements.

‘We’re the future, Mrs Creed. Every permutation. Take a seat, please, and we’ll lay out your options.’

Mira heard the struggling escalate, followed by several slaps and the ominous click and cycling of two automatic weapons loading to fire.

‘No, please!’ Mira shouted. ‘Don’t be so rough on her, Colonel.’

‘Are you in charge here?’ Lina demanded.

‘What? No!’

‘She can guarantee you one thing,’ Kitching interrupted. ‘The longer you fight me, the worse it gets for you, and for anyone else you may care about.’ His men dragged Lina past Mira and dumped her into the leather sofa, where her yester-month ghost already sat with a bottle of wine, a knife, and a thick blanket to cuddle up and console herself.

‘Option one,’ Kitching said. ‘You play nice and you’ll not only get to go free when we’re done, you’ll be wealthy beyond all dreams of avarice. Option two, ask me to leave again and I’ll be forced to contact all relevant authorities about you.’

‘I’ve got nothing to hide, old man. And nearly nothing left to lose.’

‘Cue Miss X, who has volunteered to explain your situation in more detail.’ He clicked his fingers again and Mira stepped forward, chewing her lip and worrying how far back to begin.

‘You buy wine and roses,’ she explained, ‘… every day for a week after each murder.’

‘Each?’ Lina choked. ‘Are you seriously trying to pin more than one murder on me?’

Mira shrugged. She couldn’t deny it more than that, no matter how much she wanted to. Through the hazy fog of yester-month the Rieslings and roses all seemed
to be similar shades of sepia, yet she could describe every other detail about each delivery.

‘When you call the florist and liquor marts to arrange delivery, you’re fussy about getting the right colour for your post-murder rituals. So the wines must be white and the roses black.’

‘White wine to symbolise faith and love,’ Kitching said to summarise, ‘and black roses for rebirth and new beginnings. That’s the makings of quite a show, but much better suited to pagan weddings or Wiccan rituals, wouldn’t you say, Mrs Creed?’

‘Hardly. I worship gold; the only reliable thing in the world.’

‘Then stop fighting me,’ Kitching ordered. ‘Spare no details for her Miss X.’

Mira gulped. Adjusting the hue of her shades slightly until time backed up over the day of the first murder, she saw Lina approaching her front door wearing a see-through sarong over her jewellery. ‘You greeted the first one with a chilled beer and a wad of cash. The usual ten thousand.’

‘I’m sorry, who?’ Lina’s voice wavered.

‘Liam Rennick, a tough and brutal street kid with a foul mouth and fouler attitude. When you opened the door, he was leaning against the wall with a smug look on his face.’

Mira closed her eyes, only pretending to look again for Kitching’s sake and deciding there were some things she’d refuse to watch again, no matter what he threatened to do to her.

‘I don’t know any Liam —’

Skin slapped skin, silencing her more abruptly than it ever had Freddie. Lina sniffled only once, as if recovering what little she strength she had left for her dignity.

‘I warned you,’ Kitching said, and Mira heard him take a seat on Lina’s long leather sofa beside her. ‘I’ve had my operative watching you for some time,
Mrs Creed, and my lads will be forced to get rougher with you the more you argue with her. So please continue, Miss X. Uninterrupted.’

Sounded more like Miss Sex, making Mira feel even more uncomfortable under the circumstances.

‘Well, go on,’ Kitching insisted. ‘Leave no doubt in her mind that her arse is mine now.’

Mira cleared her throat, feeling ill at what she’d seen already. Kitching had made her watch both murders and now, on top of everything else, her headache was going nuclear. Adjusting her shades yet again to scroll back time, she braced herself against the wall, and saw the first teenager shove his way in through the door for his weekly visit. He nailed Lina against the wall with one meaty hand, and slid his long wet disgusting tongue up her cheek. Half her age at nineteen, but so much bigger and stronger. He leaned closer to her ear, making her tremble.

Miss me, bitch?
He grinned wickedly, running a heavy thumb over her left eye, which he’d blackened the week before, and when she winced and tried to shrink away, his grin widened. He pressed harder. His body heavy for a man, let alone a teenager.

Mira shuddered, reliving it herself. She’d seen everything he’d forced Lina to submit to in that room for almost a year — right up to this first fateful night.

Slurping his way down her throat, biting her neck and squeezing her breast so hard she cried out. His ritual. He smothered her cries with his mouth as he twisted harder, then used both hands to wrench open her sarong and expose her body to him.

Oh, mummy!
He licked his lips. Gold chains around her waist. Just the way he’d asked for them. So pretty, and yet also the cause of the fine scars where he’d tied her down and heated them using tongs and his cigarette lighter. She was never allowed to make a sound, or he’d make it last all the longer.

Might have to move in for good.
He went at her again, expecting her to hold his beer and money with open arms while he ravished her.

A splash fell from the bottle and he slapped her for it. Downed it in one long noisy swallow. Shoved the money in his oversized baggy pants and dragged her by the hair to the couch, where he slapped her again for failing to wear the black sarong he’d shredded during their last session. And when she struggled again, he beat her. Injected her neck with something that took the fight right out of her, then bent her over that beautiful sofa, and took her in the most vicious way possible, with spit for lubricant.

Across the room, Kitching rapped invisible fingernails on the leather. ‘We’re waiting.’

‘Mrs Creed was the victim,’ she argued, deciding that she’d spare most of the details — her little rebellion — and he’d never notice them missing. Perhaps the only avenue she had left to fight him. ‘We had it all wrong about her. I won’t do it!’

‘Are you seriously challenging me?’

‘For your own good — most emphatically. You’ll break her, and she’ll be no good to you as a basket case.’ Mira also knew that the less he knew, the less he could use against either of them.

‘Murder trumps blackmail,’ he argued. ‘Get on with it.’

Mira chewed on her lip and wrung her hands, still hesitant. She could only imagine Lina’s face right now, since the woman had been trained all too well to suffer in silence. Mira knew that revealing even the slightest of those sordid details in front of Kitching and his men would be akin to assaulting the woman all over again. In her own home, which made it worse.

‘I won’t do it.’ Mira stamped her foot determinedly.

‘You understand the consequences,’ Kitching reminded her. It wasn’t a question.

She nodded, trying not to think of Maddy cramped in that small room with Kitching’s older brother. Two guards at her door, ready to hurt her at a moment’s notice. And far worse than poor Lina.

‘He was the ringleader,’ she conceded, finally. ‘Pig Dog. At least that’s what his mates called him. Leader of the pack who blackmailed you. Spawn of Evil; that was the tattoo across his back.’ She’d seen him bare it every time he’d dragged Lina to the spa or shower. ‘He threatened to hurt your husband in jail, since his father and uncles were already in for murder, and child molesters don’t do well behind bars. Or so he kept reminding you. The price to keep your husband safe until his release was ten grand a week, amongst other things.’

‘What other things?’ asked Kitching. ‘She needs reminding.’

‘No she doesn’t.’

‘And I say she
does
.’

Mira swallowed hard. ‘May I get a glass of water first, please?’

‘When you’re done here.’

She swallowed again. Her mouth so dry, but nobody could make her look back through time and watch it all again. Once was enough for anyone, so she decided to fake the rest and recite it from memory.

‘He required you to play hostess to his own private parties. Every Tuesday. All day and night from midmorning to dawn. He made you supply the beer. The spa. The entertainment. He told you how to dress. Behave. And all he brought were the tablets and needles. This was the complete opposite to how he behaved in the spa with your husband, where he played the part of an innocent pretty boy.’

‘You’re deviating,’ Kitching warned her.

‘But she needs to know this!’

‘Nothing to do with her husband’s crime is relevant.
I’m not interested in child molesters. They can all rot in hell.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He wasn’t the molester. Not willingly. It was all Pig Dog and his father and uncles. A setup. All part of their plan to cuckold their own banker, get video that made him look like the aggressor, and then, if he didn’t start sending money their way every week, they’d vent their vengeance on Lina. Only they went to jail for all the other things they were into, leaving Pig Dog Liam Rennick to start his own gang with his cousins and other initiates.’

‘Cyrus was protecting me?’ Lina sobbed. ‘Why didn’t he ever tell me?’

‘It was part of the deal. Their Plan B. To do the same to you, and worse, if he went to jail.’ And Mira knew they hadn’t intended him to get put away, because she’d also witnessed the ghostly air–sea rescue chopper fly past while Pig Dog and two puppy cousins had been filming outside in Lina’s spa, with Liam’s father and uncles staying back in the shadows.

‘Last warning!’ Kitching shouted. ‘Stay focused!’

‘I
am
staying focused! This could help you too. That little mongrel may have been a minor at the start, but he was hardly innocent, and there’s a new gang out there who need to be brought to justice. Or recruit them into your crew. Get them off the streets, since you need fresh blood anyway after your last encounter with Lockman.’ And at least that way, she knew they’d attract attention under all kinds of surveillance and be that much closer to getting caught and punished.

‘Who’s Lockman?’ Lina asked, timidly.

‘Dead if he shows his face around me again,’ Kitching growled convincingly. I do my own recruiting. Just remind her how she killed him and move on.’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ Lina argued. ‘He killed himself!’

Another slap, harder this time, shattered her into sobbing. Mira shuddered as if she’d been struck too. As
a past client at Serenity, she understood the trauma that could be inflicted through prolonged questioning, only now Mira played the role of aggressor. Unwillingly, she had to reveal the worst part, which came next near the sofa.

‘On the night of the first murder, you had another five wads of cash on the sideboard waiting for him. You offered it as a bribe to permit you the rest of that night off to recover from your injuries: a fractured eye socket, two broken fingers and deep bruises in other parts of your body. But he had plans for a party.’

She saw his yester-month ghost spin her round and push her to her knees to finish him off, while he gulped down his beer and thumbed through the money on the pretence of considering her offer. Twice in one night was only the beginning, but it was what he did in between that made the first stage pale almost to insignificance.