The Guilty

‘He’s ru

‘Jesus Christ, Jacob, what the hell was that – gunfire?’

‘Just get containment going. Start up a dog. Call in the chopper.’

He hung up and plunged ahead, keeping his body low with the bramble, making himself as small a target as possible. After one hundred metres, he emerged between two blackberry bushes and stepped down onto river silt.

He looked east, then west. But both ways were empty.

Barren.

‘What the hell?’

The sight made him frown. He’d made it to the shoreline in less than two minutes. No matter which way the two figures had gone, they should still have been visible.

Striker turned his eyes to the river. A summer fog hung overtop the waterway, one thin enough to see through. Visibility was good for a hundred metres at least. If the suspects had fled that way, even in a vessel, he should have been able to spot them.

But the waters were empty.

It made no sense.

He shone his flashlight all around the riverbanks. In one patch of silt, right at the end of the trail, were a set of footprints. They faced east and disappeared after only three steps, where the ground became firmer.

A few metres beyond was a small dock.

Striker approached it. Keeping his gun at the low-ready, he stepped onto the pier and the old planks groaned beneath his one hundred kilos of weight. The entire platform felt unstable. At the end of the dock, on one of the posts, hung a thin rope. Striker moved up to it, then aimed his gun and flashlight into the river below.

Nothing but black water.

The two figures had just . . . vanished.

Frustrated, he was about to head back towards the barn when the beam of his flashlight caught something near his feet.

A gleam.

He knelt down on the dock. Gloved up with latex. And plucked the object from a wooden plank. Turning it over in his hand, he saw that it was a long thin bracelet, made of silver and gold designs. Celtic. Or Gaelic. He wasn’t sure. On the links was a red-brown splatter. He took out his flashlight, and shone it on the links.

Not blood. River muck.

The sight should have filled him with relief, but it did not. No blood meant less evidence for the lab. Less of a trail. Hopefully the barn would provide some decent DNA samples. The forensic techs would have to start processing ASAP.

Striker bagged the jewellery and his cell went off.

He answered. ‘Striker.’

Felicia’s tone was one of relief and anger: ‘Where the hell are you now, Jacob?’

‘Down by the river. They’ve escaped.’

‘Well just watch your back. A dog’s coming down from the south. Chopper’s almost here, too.’

Striker could already hear its distant approach. The rotating blades were like soft thunder cutting the air. One minute, the bird was nowhere to be seen; the next, it rose up over Mitchell Island to the south, and the entire shoreline was flooded in the blinding white glare of a 30-million-candlepower spotlight.

Striker felt his jaw tighten at the sight. The chopper had arrived. So had the dog. With any luck, one of them would find something to go on, because so far the immediate crime scene was offering him zero.

The thought of this hit Striker like a physical force. Left him winded. He had been too slow in reaching the woman. He had failed her. And that failure might have cost the woman her life. It was a fact he had to face.

Sometimes reality could be cold.

Six

A quarter-mile downriver, at the westernmost precipice of Mitchell Island, the bomber pulled himself and the woman in between the logs and flotsam that were jammed up against the shoreline. The woman was waterlogged – an anchor pulling him down. Had it not been for the scuba gear, they would never have made it.

Two hundred metres across the river, to the north, the entire area from Granville to Main was spotted with red and blue police lights. Completely knackered, it was all he could do to focus on them.

He tore the breathing apparatus from his lips and pulled himself and the woman up the steep bank of mud, deep into the island bush, until they were under the thick overhang of a pair of weeping willows.

There, he dropped to the ground and rolled the lifeless woman over so that she was facing upwards. He cupped a hand under the back of her neck. Angled her chin. Parted her lips. Blew air into her lungs.

Nothing.

He interlocked his fingers over her chest and began compressions. Finished. Breathed again. And repeated the process several times.

‘Breathe, for fuck’s sake. Breathe.’

Finally, when hope was almost gone, the woman made a gagging sound. She jerked and hacked and spewed, then rolled away from him. She formed a protective ball and lay shaking in the sand.

A numb relief spilled through the man.

He lay flat on his back and tried to control his breathing. He was thirty-six now, and though he did not feel old, he definitely felt worn. Damaged from the years of abuse and trauma.

He killed the thought and focused on the immediacies.

The nylon sheath of the prosthetic was soaked and it was losing suction against the stumpy end of his disfigured leg. He reached down, pulled the sheath tight, and felt the surgical screws inflaming his bones.

He tried to gather his breath.

Found it difficult.

High above, the eastern sky was lightening, turning from blood-pudding purple to a lesser bruised blue. All along the shoreline, the blinding glare of the police chopper spotlight was turning the riverbank white. The bird was far away right now, way down by the Arthur Lange Bridge. But that meant nothing. It could reach Mitchell Island in seconds. Even now, as it floated westward, the steady whump-whump-whump of the helicopter blades shook the air with a physical force, and they shifted his mind back to harsher times. More violent times.

The bomb going off, blowing him to pieces.

And the tragedy that had followed.

The recollection was vicious, malignant. And yet oddly enough, it slowed his frantic heart. Helped him breathe. Allowed him to regain his sanity again. It actually relaxed him.

And still the woman coughed and spluttered beside him.

After a short moment, the police helicopter floated all the way to Heather Street – too close; dangerously close. So he got moving. He dumped the flippers, oxygen tank and breathing apparatus in the river, then grabbed hold of the retching woman’s underarms and began dragging her through the grove. They headed for Twig Place Road.

Where the backup vehicle was parked.

Once under cover of thicker tree tops, a place where the chopper could no longer illuminate them with its omnipotent eye, the bomber took a moment to reassess the situation. The woman was awake now, fully conscious of what had happened – of what was still happening – and she gaped at him with large wide eyes. A disbelieving stare.

‘You . . . you saved me,’ she finally whispered.

He merely nodded.

‘Of course I did. You’re not supposed to die this way.’

Seven

Striker bypassed the steel barn with the orange lamp.

He hiked up the river embankment and cut through the loading zone of the cement plant. It was barely quarter to six now, and despite the police emergency lights, the early skyline was still cloaked by a charcoal fog.