Never Never

  Officer Beckett was slumped on her side next to Shae’s feet. I ran over. Her death hadn’t been so quick. A wire garrotte, it looked like, had been pulled tight around her neck, and she’d fought for her life silently while the wire gouged right through the skin to her windpipe. I followed the angry red welt up behind her ears to the rear of her skull. She’d been kneeling, maybe, and the killer had pulled upward, hung her against himself. Or she’d been standing, and had been hung from above.

  I looked at the tops of the trucks on either side of us. There were dents and scratches above Beckett, where she’d kicked frantically. The lividity in both women, the purple clouds of colour where their bodies touched the sand, told me they’d been dead three, maybe four hours. Not long after Whitt and I had been locked away.

  It had taken that long for someone to find them, or for someone who had found them to report it. There were plenty of footprints in the sand around the kill zone. The miners had probably come and seen the women here and decided they didn’t want to be the one to raise the alarm. They didn’t want to be suspected.

  Whitt stood nearby, unsure of where to look. Eventually he grabbed the crying officer and dragged her away. At the ends of the alley created by the trucks, miners came into view, staring, open-mouthed or grave-faced. They came, saw and rushed away, making room for others. I sat on the sand between the two dead officers and watched them.

  ‘Get a good look,’ I snapped. ‘Yep! Make room! Come and have a gawk, you fucking sickos!’

  I pulled the collar of Beckett’s shirt up to hide her face from the crowd. Her final seconds had frozen the pain and terror of her murder on her features.

  Whitt returned and crouched by me. ‘Will we just arrest him now?’ he wondered aloud.

  ‘No.’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘The lividity.’

  ‘Right.’ Whitt bent down to look. ‘Four hours? Five?’

  ‘Plenty of time to have a shower. Ditch the garrotte. Ice his palms so they don’t bruise. I don’t want to bring this guy in only to have them set him free six hours later.’ I stood and looked down at my fallen colleagues. ‘I think I’ve got a plan.’

  Chapter 97

  AARON LINBACHER STARED out the slatted window of his donga, watching the journalists at the fence line. The huge lamps they carried looked like the torches of a monster-hunting mob, throwing their shadows on the sand inside the property. He sipped a coffee he’d made at his personal machine and squinted as two EarthSoldiers approached the media pack, striking up a conversation with a couple of cameramen.

  ‘Terrorists,’ he sneered. He felt the muscles in his shoulders tighten around old wounds, familiar rivers of pain zinging through his frayed nerves. All the old trauma was there, always within grasp. The twitching in his fingers had already started. ‘Insurgents. Rats.’

  The media swarmed around the little pair of terrorists, gold lights falling on their youthful features.

  Linbacher had been in Afghanistan on special assignment when the planes hit the towers. He remembered people yelling in the night, running towards mosques, the patter of their hurried footsteps in the dirt the first soft sounds of what would become a hellish orchestra of war. A siren that rang even in his quietest moments now, even in his dreams.

  Before the attacks, he remembered the gentle creep of danger in the streets, the rise of traitors and men with dark hearts, the seemingly disconnected instances of rebellion. After that, there were press cameras. Horrified faces of women and girls, running, shooting, and gold-lit faces on street corners watching planes quietly traverse the sky. Linbacher had learned to recognise the signs. He’d even tried to convince people, the blind ones, but no one ever listened to him. He was too old, and the worst thing was, his personal experience of the war excluded him from having any kind of opinion on it. Imagine that! People had decided somewhere along the line that those who were least trustworthy in conversations about war were the ones who had been there. They’d been on the ground, shaken by the explosions, pierced by the shrapnel, face to face with the terrorists – both the black-bearded kind and the baby-faced kind. And all of that horror had marked them. There was no way they could get their heads out of the dust cloud and see what was really going on. The subtle movements of chess pieces on a vast, crowded chessboard. No, soldiers were only pawns. They didn’t know how things worked.

  ‘Bullshit,’ Linbacher snarled. He clenched his shaking fist. ‘Bull. Shit.’

  Because he had been there, because he had smelled the gunpowder and seen the shadows creeping in the night, he could see that it was happening again. You had to notice the little things. The baby-faced terrorists were on the television. In the newspapers. They were on the trains and in the shops. Hundreds of them. Suddenly the insurgents weren’t black-bearded men but white-haired grandmothers. Their hunting grounds were universities, cafes, forests in Tasmania.

  They disguised themselves, and they disguised their cause.

  Today, it was feminism. Capitalism. The environment.

  Tomorrow, people would scream and towers would fall.

  Aaron was ready. If no one else wanted to join him, that was fine. He’d lived alone long enough, surrounded by people. He’d still be alone when all the people were gone.

  ‘Terrorists,’ he found himself muttering, taking his coffee cup to the tiny kitchenette by the back window of his donga. ‘Creeping, creeping, creeping.’

  Almost as though they’d been conjured from his words, Linbacher looked up and saw two black-clad figures slipping between the trucks behind his donga, pausing at the bull bar of a white van parked on the corner. They waited for something, probably a signal, and then darted away again into the night.

  The EarthSoldiers.

  Linbacher dumped his cup in the sink and ran to the door.

  Chapter 98

  WHITT AND I got to the bottom of the huge tower crane, running so fast through the camp grounds we almost slammed into each other as we came to a stop. Above us, fourteen storeys of dark red scaffolding stretched into the black sky, the whole thing creaking and yawning, the monstrous song of an impossibly large beast. The balaclava I had borrowed from the EarthSoldiers was already itching on my brow and cheeks. This was no place for heavy wool. I gripped the first ladder with my padded gloves and looked back at the masked figure of my partner.

  ‘You think he took the bait?’ I huffed. ‘Should we wait for him?’

  ‘Go.’ Whitt pushed at my back. ‘He’ll come.’

  I climbed the first ladder shakily, trying to reason with the terror in my chest. If I kept trembling, if I kept panting, I was going to fall. And if I fell I would likely take my partner with me. I glanced down at the camp as we came above the level of the demountable buildings. Already, the height was terrifying.

  We rushed across the first platform and leapt onto the second ladder, Whitt reaching the bars first this time.

  Using the crane had been his idea. Get him away from the miners, from his victims, not into the desert – which we knew was his hunting ground – but up into the air, into our birdcage. We paused on the third ladder and listened to the creaking and ticking of the massive structure. A muffled padding. Footsteps on the first platform. A lightning-bolt of fear crackled through my chest, racing over my scalp. I reached up and pushed at Whitt’s feet.

  ‘Go, go,’ I whispered. ‘He’s coming.’

  Chapter 99

  LINBACHER POPPED HIS head up over the top of the third ladder and surveyed the platform, the waist-high rails that lined the five-metre square space. No one there. The intruders must have been continuing upward. Yes – he could hear their footfall. He heaved his rifle onto the platform and pushed himself up, reaching for the butt of the weapon as he steadied himself.

  ‘Hands off,’ someone said.

  He paused, fingers inches from the black steel, and looked up.

  There they were. Two lean, strong ghouls in black, pointing pistols at him. He didn’t move. Didn’t continue towards the gun, or straighten. It took precious
seconds to assess the situation, and in those white-hot seconds, his fingers started their furious trembling again.

  The one nearest him ripped off her balaclava and threw it on the ground.

  ‘I’m not one of those fucking hippies,’ she said. ‘I will shoot you dead.’

  Linbacher straightened. The woman was dressed like a cat-burglar. He had known she was a traitor the moment he laid eyes on her. Her partner, the nancy boy, pulled his balaclava up and tightened his grip on the pistol.

  ‘You were so close to slipping away from us,’ Detective Blue said. ‘Fuck, man. I thought we were never going to catch you.’

  ‘What are you talking about, you stupid bitch?’ Linbacher was surprised by the hate in his own voice. Keep it together, Lieutenant.

  ‘Your civilian criminal record was empty,’ Harriet said. ‘You’ve never had so much as a speeding ticket. Even your Army service record was clean. We had to bust into the medical records to find out what you’d done in Afghanistan. The medical reports stated that because of the trauma you’d experienced in one particular village outside Yemen, you were no longer capable of serving. But what happened there? We only found out when we went into your psych records. I guess the command team cleared all that up for you, didn’t they? The things you did over there.’

  Linbacher snorted. Words failed him. He was so enraged that it was almost tipping over into a kind of sadness. It was all so ridiculous. So juvenile.

  ‘The village was so small it didn’t even have a name,’ Detective Blue said. ‘Forty-eight people. You had orders to cleanse the town of terrorists. But they were all terrorists to you after a while, weren’t they? You ordered them all into the pit. You made them turn away from you, so you couldn’t see their faces.’

  He took a step towards his rifle.

  ‘Don’t,’ Whittacker warned, his gun following Linbacher’s movements. ‘Just don’t.’

  ‘You told the psychiatrist that you see them in your dreams. The backs of their heads. You’re terrified of their faces. In the dreams, they start to turn around. You wake up screaming.’

  ‘You pathetic little shits,’ Linbacher said. ‘You think I haven’t killed you yet because I can’t? I want to hear more of your stupid story about me. Go on. I dare you.’

  ‘You never leave this place,’ Detective Blue said. ‘Even when they make you go home. You’re always in the desert. Your mind is always here. Because this is what you’re familiar with. The sand hills. The enemies they hide. You use your imagination, and they’re all here. Your victims.’

  Linbacher was trembling all over now.

  ‘One of the EarthSoldiers described someone in the camp spitting on her, just like you spat at me this afternoon. She thought you said “Harshee”. But it was “Hajji”, from the word Muslims use for those who have travelled to Mecca. The coalition forces had plenty of slurs for the locals over there. But Hajji was the most common, wasn’t it?’

  Linbacher shook his head in disgust.

  ‘This place was perfect for you.’ Detective Blue nodded at the camp, the lights below. ‘It was so easy for you to envision the mine as your base. You, after all, are the head of security. Keep the miners safe, and keep the Hajji out. Take down those within the camp who betray the security of the people. Hon, who let the EarthSoldiers raid the food stores. Danny, who fraternised with them, and Tori, who traded with them. Amy, who sided with us against you.’

  ‘You’re so blind,’ Linbacher sneered. ‘So fucking blind.’

  ‘Lenny and Mick were just target practice, weren’t they?’ Harriet said. ‘Sharpen your skills. Complete your drills. Protecting this place is your mission, isn’t it, Aaron? It’s all you have left.’

  ‘You’re right.’ The old man’s face cracked, and a soft smile crept over his lips. ‘This is all I have left. And I’m not gonna let you take it away from me.’

  Chapter 100

  HE WAS FAST. That was the only reason he’d made it to Lieutenant. He decided things quickly, he acted quickly, and he was never wrong. Linbacher reached for the gun with one hand, drawing their eyes away, and with his other hand grabbed a fistful of the sand he’d poured into his pocket before he climbed up the crane. The wind was perfect. He needed only the lightest underarm swing. It exploded out of his fingers and sailed across the platform into their eyes. The officers gripped at their faces. He snatched up his weapon and cocked it.

  It was his last action on Earth. The bullet that took him snapped off the lights in his cold, war-torn world.

  Chapter 101

  I THOUGHT FOR a second that it was my bullet that had taken out Linbacher. I’d squeezed the trigger, but not far enough, and the gun hadn’t kicked in my fingers. There’d been no blast sound, no muzzle flash from Whitt’s gun. There’d been a whoosh, a thump, and Linbacher’s head had exploded.

  The old man slumped to the iron mesh on the bottom of the platform, most of his skull missing. I felt his blood spray onto my face, a warm mist on my fingers and the front of my shirt.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ Whitt said softly. The wind picked up and howled around us. ‘Oh shit, it’s not him.’

  ‘What?’ I staggered, barely comprehending what was happening.

  A bang, a spray of yellow sparks above us. I thought for a second something electrical was going wrong with the crane. Another bang as a second gunshot hit the lamp hanging above the third platform. We flattened, both of us, onto the bloody floor.

  ‘It’s not him!’ Whitt was wailing. ‘It’s not him!’

  A sickness swelled in my stomach, not at the mess of Linbacher’s head that I was lying in but at the sudden realisation that we were hundreds of metres up in the sky and the killer was not here with us, was not the dead man lying before me. A volley of gunshots whooshed and banged at the rail, the steel struts above us, the top of the ladder. The killer wasn’t playing now.

  Through the iron grille beneath my hands, I saw people running, taking cover. A scream. The sound of an engine firing and a car screeching away.

  ‘We’re trapped,’ I shouted. The bullets kept raining around us. ‘We’re trapped!’

  ‘Don’t panic.’ Whitt reached out and grabbed my hand. The mesh had made a bloody tattoo of diamonds on his cheek. ‘He can’t get us, or he would have. He’ll move to get a better shot. And when he does, we go.’

  ‘It wasn’t him,’ I stammered, the panic rising hot and painful into my throat. ‘We were wrong. We were wrong!’

  ‘We can do a full post-mortem of our fuck-ups later.’ Whitt flattened against the floor as a bullet slammed into the rail behind us. ‘Right now, let’s try to get down from here alive.’

  Chapter 102

  I WATCHED THROUGH the platform floor as our officers took up their positions, one trying to calm the nearest donga of screaming female miners and positioning himself in the window, his pistol at the ready. Two others were sticking together, disappearing into the bowels of the crane’s bottom floor. Whitt and I lay twitching at every shot that blasted near us, some nicking harmlessly off the structure of the crane, others showering us in sparks. Whitt’s poker face was better than mine – I could feel shock coming on quickly, and those familiar in-action symptoms were starting. My teeth were chattering. The shivers had started in my legs. But even in his straight-faced denial of all that was happening around us, his hand squeezed mine way too hard.

  ‘Any second now,’ he muttered. And as he did, the firing stopped.

  We waited, half a second or more. Then he sprang to his feet, half-sunk in a crouch.

  ‘Let’s go, Harriet,’ he said.

  I should have anticipated that, caught up in all his old-world chivalry, he’d be the one to dive first into the danger. But I was still surprised when he passed me on the path to the ladder. We couldn’t be sure the gunman was shifting position, or had run out of ammo, the way we’d hoped. If one of us was going to sacrifice themselves to test the theory, Whitt was going to make sure it was him.

  He slid over the edge of the pla
tform like a snake, pivoting on his belly, and grabbed the rungs of the ladder.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said, glancing at me. ‘Come on.’

  The gunshot took him high in the back. He slammed forward into the ladder, and then slumped downward out of sight.

  I screamed, the sound coming out as a hard, high yelp, cut off by my own determination to launch forward and grab him. But by the time I’d reached the ladder he was out of sight. I heard him hit the first platform with a sickening thud. A second thud coming as he hit the sand.

  Chapter 103

  I CRAWLED MORE than climbed down the ladder to platform two. My whole world was shaking. My limbs didn’t work. Before I could account for what I was doing, the danger I was putting myself in, I was sliding across platform one to the final ladder. I couldn’t hear whether the gunshots were still coming. There was a ringing in my ears, a low hum that drowned out everything.

  Whitt lay motionless on the sand, his knees up and his arms sprawled outwards from his sides. I gripped the ladder, stumbled and grabbed at an upright pylon, just trying to keep myself from falling face-first on the sand. I felt drunk.

  No one was coming into the vast, bare space beneath the crane where my partner lay. The gunshots had driven them back, so that they could only watch, wondering if he was dead, wondering if I was going to follow him.

  I didn’t care. I was going for my partner.

  Chapter 104

  I LET GO of the pylon and stumbled across the sand, trying to make my lips say his name. I didn’t see Gabe coming until his body slammed into mine, at once knocking me down, gathering me up and carrying me out of the danger like a child.

  ‘No, no, no!’ I cried. ‘Whitt! Whitt!’

  Was it my partner lying there on the sand, or my brother? A young man was down, sprawled, bleeding. A man I cared for, a man it was my duty to protect, needed me. I crawled at the air, twisted, tried to get free.