Unfinished Business...
I’M NOT the quickest bloke in the world but I’ve been known to get the lead out at critical moments. This was one such - a wheel off the road and the vehicle still sliding towards the chasm. Another wheel off and there’d be no stopping the thing.
I stamped on the brakes.
And…our forward motion stopped.
Thank Christ!
I held them on while I whacked the selector into reverse. Then I pushed the accelerator down. The vehicle backed up until the front right wheel slammed into the edge of the road. Then it stopped. I gave it full revs but it refused to lift its front end on to horizontal terra firma. All I got was shrieking wheelspin.
“Four wheel drive!” Sandra yelled.
She was right. Muggins me whipped it into 4WD and tried again. The Land Cruiser groaned, hesitated, and then lurched up and back. We shot rearwards, just in time to hook into the rear wheel arch of McDowell’s Ford and take out a goodly part of his bodywork as he hurtled past. He slewed to a stop broadside across the road. I don’t know if it was deliberate but there went my escape route. Moreover, if I didn’t get a shuffle on, Owens would back up and close off the route back to the house.
I whipped past his rear. Thanks to the idiot chopper pilot, I had plenty of light to manoeuvre by, and to see the plume of steam erupting from Owens’s radiator. Mind you, Owens had a go. The quick-witted bastard saw what I was up to and threw his car into reverse, but he was a metre too late. He was a metre too early for McDowell, who was resuming the chase. He rammed him between the doors, bringing him to a metal grinding halt against the cliff face.
That left only the chopper. The crew had two choices: provide the illumination for their colleagues to untangle themselves or follow me. Common sense dictated the latter. The pilot chose to stay. I was relieved but not surprised.
I put the foot down; I wanted a good head start before the hide and seek started again. I also wanted a plan.
Seconds later, a weird feeling enveloped me, like the cold shiver of déjà vu, except that this was no ephemeral caress of the spine; it hung around. It was something like the relief you feel when a bad moment has passed you harmlessly by. It was how you are supposed to feel, I guess, when you come within the proverbial hair’s breadth of sudden death. After my confrontations with Glover and Neilsen, I should’ve been used to it. Not so. Boyhood habit took hold of me again, and I crossed myself.
“Struth!” I said. “You reckon he’d have sent us back at a safer moment.”
“He?” Sandra gave me an odd stare. “Safer time? What are you talking about?”
That threw me. I’d come back with my memory intact, but Sandra…it was if it had never happened.
I put the brain into replay. Had it happened? Had it all been a dream? A weird hallucination, maybe? If so, it’d been a bloody rapid one.
I resolved to shut up. I didn’t want her thinking I was crazy. Also, I had more immediate things to worry about.
The first part of my plan was simple; get the hell back into the bush and lie low. The second part, finding a way out of this predicament, was awaiting a solution. Right then, I didn’t have one, and I was pessimistic enough to believe there probably wasn’t one.
I reckoned McDowell would sool the chopper back on to us within minutes, but at least we now had a couple of things going for us. The Land Cruiser was green and would be tough to spot from the air. Added to that, cloud scudding in from the south-west was masking the moon more often than not. Plus, helicopter pilots are circumspect when flying low in unknown country – you never know when a power or phone line might trip you up. They are even more circumspect at night.
So it turned out. We watched the chopper zig-zagging over the forest in its frantic search while we motored sedately beneath it, undetected. He was using his searchlight, confirming my suspicion he wasn’t game enough to fly low enough to use the heat detector. Within half an hour, we were back where we started, buried deep in the forest and wondering what to do next.
Sandra and I eased out of the car for a confab while the Moppet, overtaken by exhaustion, lay asleep in her harness. We clung to each other, each feeling the other’s desperation.
Sandra felt the mobile in my breast pocket, and her eyes showed hope. “Can’t we call Channel Nine again? Get the chopper to land somewhere else?”
I thought about it, but not for long. “Nah. The police will have sealed the area.”
I explained how police aircraft had absolute authority over airspace and how they would throw the book at anyone who didn’t absent himself when so ordered. What we wanted, I reckoned, was a chopper pilot with a criminal disregard for the rules.
That was when her eyes lit up. A moment of reflection later, in a soft, controlled voice, she said, “Pietro Romano has a helicopter.”
I was on her wavelength straight away. There were several people who wanted Jodie Aston’s videotape for their own exploitative ends; equally, there were a few who would prefer it never to see the light of day. The Romanos were in the latter category They would go far to avoid having their necks on the judicial chopping block.
How far? It was time to find out.
I pulled out Connie’s mobile, held my breath and switched it on.
Four bars out of four.
I awoke five and a half hours later. Or rather, was awakened. With a start.
For a moment, nothing registered as amiss. It was just becoming light. We were in the rear of the Land Cruiser, Sandra in my arms and her hands holding my own over her breasts.
We’d nodded off quickly, helped by the pleasant burble of the idling V6 and the soporific warmth of the car’s heater – autumn in the high country is cold. But not before I’d had another think about our return to the temporal world. How come I could recall every moment of the interlude while Sandra could not? What possible reason was there for keeping my ultimate fate dangling, like a corpse from a scaffold, in my immediate mind while keeping Sandra in blissful ignorance?
The obvious one leapt at me again; the whole episode was just a crazy aberration, a synergism of a tired mind and fevered imagination. But, if it wasn’t that, why was I still being punished with the memory of Purgatory and Sandra not? That had an explanation I didn’t care to examine.
Beside me, Sandra came awake.
“What is it?”
“I dunno.” I turned the engine off. “Listen.”
We both heard it. The distant whine of the police chopper. From experience, we had a good idea of what it was up to. I checked the time.
Shit!
“What?” Sandra asked.
Our rendezvous with Pietro Romano was the communications tower at eight o’clock, the earliest he could get there. My plan had been to stay holed up as long as possible, giving myself fifteen minutes to get to the tower, preferably at the same moment as our rescuer so there’d be no hanging around on the track. Now we’d have to leave earlier.
“No time for camouflage,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
We buckled up and I eased the vehicle back to the track and headed for the intersection with the road. We got there without incident. I backed up a little, then punched up the latest number in the mobile’s memory. Pietro Romano’s response was quick.
“Romano.”
“This is Mason. Where are you?”
Over his slight hesitation, I could hear the howl of his machine. “I’m south-west of you, about twenty minutes away. Why?”
I explained how the sweeping police helicopter had forced us out of hiding and how it was only a matter of minutes before they spotted us. And how it was essential that he be on the ground and waiting. “So move your arse,” I told him.
“OK,” he replied. He sounded unworried, but his machine’s howl rose into the urgent range. “I’ll have the doors open.”
Well he might. I’d had trouble getting through to him initially. Like most people at the top of the crime tree, the Romanos kept layers of intermediaries between themselves and the blokes who do the dirty work. I spoke to three separate lackeys before I got on to someone with authority, who turned out to be the resident lawyer. The pompous prick refused to let me speak to a Romano until I’d satisfied him that I had sufficient reason. So I gave him the password – money changing hands in Benalla. For emphasis, I added the magic word ‘videotape’. Next thing, I was giving a résumé of my plight to Romano Junior, who readily agreed that he and poppa would be in deep shit if he didn’t do as I suggested.
I turned left at the intersection and began the uphill creep. I reckoned if I was canny, getting a move-on through the denser country and tiptoeing across the open stuff, I could delay the moment when, inevitably, they spotted me. By then, Romano should have landed and the police vehicles wouldn’t have time to round me up. Valid theory. Equally valid was the down side. If I was spotted early, we were back in the bag.
My strategy paid off, for a while. After ten minutes, Sandra reckoned we were half way there, give or take a click. Things were looking up. Then I was looking up, at the fuselage of the Dauphine as it banked across my bows. I could see one of the crew on the radio, no doubt giving our location to the hunters on the ground. The time for pussyfooting was over.
“Hang on!”
I put the Land Cruiser into third and gave it as much accelerator as I dared. The noise was horrendous as I thrashed the machine over the crude track, savaging the suspension well over its design limits. The chopper didn’t make it easy, either. He flew directly over me, as low as he could get, his downdraft catching me in a maelstrom of stones, dust and vegetation. Paradoxically, I didn’t mind all that much. While the pilot was having his fun covering me with crap, he wouldn’t be looking up ahead to where Romano was about to make the rendezvous. I hoped.
We played this cat-and-mouse game for about five minutes before we broke out of the treeline. Sandra gasped and my guts dissolved in terror as the ground on both sides abruptly disappeared. The view was magnificent, but we were hurtling along the spine of a razorback ridge where the only thing between us and a very fatal plunge was a few feet of insubstantial bracken. I braked gently, hoping to Christ the chopper would have the sense to leave me alone – his downdraft could blow me off this track. He did, but not out of any concern for our safety. As I glanced in the rear-view mirror to see how Sandra and Angela were doing, I saw a police Pajero emerge from the trees. It was about a hundred metres behind and not slowing. In accordance with the Police Manual, it had lights and siren going.
I looked ahead. About half a kilometre away, the tower stood in solitary isolation. It was perched, together with a building about the size of a thunderbox, at the point of the ridge. If Romano had arrived, I couldn’t see him.
What the hell - I kept going. For all I knew, Romano was on the far side of the tower. The trick now was to get there ahead of the posse. Mouth dry and heart pumping, I drove as fast as I dared, restrained only by my limited skill and a fickle crosswind that had me correcting furiously. The police driver seemed to have no such handicap. He was gaining. It was going to be a close-run thing.
As I neared the tower, I saw that the track circled around it. This was literally the end of the line. With the police only fifty metres behind me, Romano had to be there.
And was. His Bell four-seater, gleaming in Ferrari red livery, crouched in a flat saucer carved into the ridge, probably for the benefit of the technicians who flew in to service the electronics. The rotor blades were idling. Romano, still wearing his headphones, was nonchalantly dangling his legs out of the cockpit.
“Out!” I yelled to Sandra.
Romano saw me as I skidded to a halt. He chucked his fag and leapt into the pilot’s seat, waving me to get a move on.
The police vehicle was braking, its rear doors opening.
I ripped open Sandra’s door, hauled her and Angela out, took Angela from her and yelled, “Run!”
We did, desperately, ducking under the Bell’s blades as Romano wound them up. I heaved Sandra into the back, handed Angela up to her and slammed the door. I dived for the passenger seat but was only half way into it when Romano lifted off. Which was when Heckle grabbed my left ankle.
I’d seen him out of the corner of my eye when I dived for the seat. I thought I’d been too quick for him. My mistake. His mistake was not letting go before we rose beyond his height. Instinctively, I grabbed the door sill. We were twenty feet up before the stupid bastard realised what he’d done. In panic, he heaved himself up and got his other hand over my instep. A bolt of white fire went through my ankle as my foot was pulled down. I swung around to Romano.
“Down!” I screamed over the roar of the engine. I made stabbing motions with the one hand I was game to take from the door. “Put it back down!”
Give him credit, Romano was quick on the uptake. He looked through his transparent floor, saw Heckle being flung about like a straw doll in a high wind and immediately set sail for the ground. And just as well. I reckon Heckle’s fingers were just about to lose what little purchase they had. Not that I gave a stuff. The agony lancing through my leg from instep to thigh was reaching the unbearable. If the bastard let go and broke his neck, then I was all for it.
Beneath us, McDowell also thought Heckle was about to drop. With no little courage, he positioned himself directly under his white-faced colleague and set himself to catch him. He didn’t have to. Romano delivered Heckle into his lap.
The moment Heckle let go of me, Romano opened the throttle and the little Bell shot upwards.
So did Heckle’s temper. His terror disappeared, replaced with fury. His right hand went under his coat and came out with a Smith & Wesson. My heart leapt – again he was well within can’t miss range. And again McDowell reached out and grabbed the weapon. A few seconds later, we were safe, with me ruminating on the fact that at least one of Commissioner Evans’s personal staff seemed to have no compunction over killing.
Not that we were completely out of the woods. The Dauphine was flying alongside, the pilot duplicating my ‘Down!” motions of a few seconds ago and yelling into his mike. Romano had a smile on his handsome Latin face. He handed me a second headset. The police pilot was informing Romano that he was breaching air navigation regulations, obstructing the police in the execution of their duty, failing to obey a lawful direction and several other infractions. And please land immediately.
I looked at our rescuer.
“Do you hear anything?” he asked innocently.
I caught his drift. “Nope.”
“Neither do I.” His smile widened as he gave his craft full throttle.
I would have bet good money that the Bell couldn’t outrun the Dauphine, and I would have lost. After just five minutes, the police machine gave up the chase.
I buckled myself in and began to massage my abused foot.
“That was bloody good flying,” I told Romano.
He gazed at me. The smile was still there, but as I’d seen on Jodie Aston’s tape, it didn’t reach the eyes. It was like looking at the points of twin stilettos. The menace in his voice made my skin creep.
“It’d better be worth it.”