Directive RIP

  *

  Their flight down the Hume Highway was marked by only minor traffic violations and misdemeanors: running red lights, driving off without paying at service stations and dropping down to the speed limit at only the sharpest of corners.

  All the while they were waiting for an all units call to me sent out on them over the police band. What they got was a blow by blow account of a crime spree sweeping across Melbourne. Bank robberies, house break-ins, crash and grabs at jewelry stores. No doubt the Sapien checks were being cashed. With all the proceeds to collect it was highly unlikely Dr Pei would have the time or inclination to launch another rescue attempt on Wragg even if she did suspect he was still in police hands.

  It wasn’t until they were the thirty kilometres from Melbourne that Furn and Riley got to hear their own handiwork over the radio.

  ‘All units to intercept a red sports utility EF683, wanted in connection to a double homicide in Albury. Believed travelling on the Hume Highway, Melbourne bound. Last known location was Drouin. Special Operations Group is on standby. Approach with extreme caution.’

  ‘Do you know the way to the Craigieburn safehouse?’ murmured Riley.

  ‘I didn’t think there would ever be a reason to know the way to Craigieburn,’ Furn replied.

  ‘Take the next left. There isn’t much of it so keep your eyes open.’

  Furn made the turn two hundred metres later. It was 11pm and the Craigieburn backwoods were all but deserted. Disturbing sleeping roads, the Mitsubishi’s headlights cut through the stillness. Riley’s directions kept coming, every bit as steady and coherent as a GPS navigation system. They drew from the darkness a dusty track, then a driveway with a dilapidated letter box that birds had been dropping abstract feces on. At the end of the driveway was a brown brick house and attached garage.

  ‘There’s a fuelled up Honda NSX in the garage,’ said Riley. ‘The keys are in the ignition. Can you take Wragg the rest of the way on your own? I’ve got to get this thing particular vehicle cleaned up and ready to return to the Feds. And it’s going to take more than a cake of soap.’

  Furn glanced around his headrest at Wragg’s slumped over form in the backseat. ‘He’s got more juice in him than what we put in the tank.’

  ‘He’ll be out for another couple of hours. Tomorrow I want you out looking for Zulma Pei. She’s about to become the biggest prize in law enforcement and finding her would be the answer to a lot of awkward questions we’re no doubt going to be asked.’

  ‘It will be a pleasure. Anything in the Red Line Files to give me an edge over all the police departments in the country that will be looking for her too?’

  ‘She’ll be smart enough not to worry her known addresses or friends. But if she is to take possession of all the bounty her Sapiens have been steeling for her, she will need to come out into the open at some point. And it is likely to be sooner rather than later.’

  Furn parked on the lawn, the patchy yellow green grass was in need of a trim. He almost didn’t see the toddler bicycle that had most likely been dumped there for effect.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll look for her,’ he muttered. ‘I would appreciate some time to sweat out of Wragg Dokomad what he knows. Perhaps, gathering up the loot was the very thing he was in charge of. That would be a more plausible reason why Pei might send people in to affect a rescue than any romantic inclinations.’

  ‘Put that out of mind. Wragg goes straight to Fairfield. The people who want him we do not want to keep waiting.’

  ‘Very well. But Pei is the one who put that old woman in my way, and given half a chance, I will be more than happy to replace that image with something else.’ Furn went to the ignition and the engine died as peacefully as a fading centurion – even one that had lived a less than respectable life. A disturbed dog was barking a few doors down.