`Anthea!’ wailed Molly Grant.
`Shut up, you stupid bitch.’ Anthea snapped.
`Drop the gun, Anthea,’ repeated David, a bit louder this time.
Anthea's face twisted into a malevolent mask. `Make me, you bastard. I bet you care more for this one than I do for her.’ She cocked the gun. `Go ahead, shoot her.’
Molly Grant screamed, `I'm your sister, for God's sake!’
She flung herself away from David and took her sibling's bullet high in the chest. A red stain spread across her shirt as she toppled, her eyes wide with reproach in the seconds before death glazed them for good.
I stood with my feet riveted to the ground watching David dive sideways as Anthea fired again. He was too late. He rolled once and lay still. Anthea swung towards Suzy, but she didn’t reckon with Suzy's extraordinary athleticism. In a split-second Suzy had dived away, rolling as she went, bound arms and all. Anthea tried to track her but Suzy spun on the floor and rolled towards Anthea's legs.
She kicked Suzy away and levelled her gun at Win. Police sirens sounded in the distance. Anthea peered through the window into the darkness outside. The siren’s grew closer. David groaned. I dived towards Anthea slapping at her hand. The gun flew into the air and crashed to the floor. Something seared my thigh. I rolled sideways and hit the wall. The next few minutes were like watching a slow-motion movie.
Anthea leaned down to the gun now far beyond my reach. A triumphant smile dimpled her cheeks as her hand closed around it. This is it, I thought, I'm dead. I think I hoped she couldn’t actually kill me in cold blood. I was wrong. She raised the gun until it totally filled my vision. I was completely relaxed as I waited for death.
In the corner of my vision Win’s long leg kicked out and the gun flew out of Anthea’s hand. Win caught it and steadying herself, gripped it in both hands and pointing it straight at Anthea, fired. It clicked. She threw the empty gun at Anthea who ducked and ran towards the darkness beyond the door yelling, `Craddock! Craddock, where the hell are you?’
A faint whisper came from David. `Craddock’s gone. You’re on your own, Anthea.’ In slow motion he pulled his own weapon from under him and aimed straight at
her. She ran into the corridor as an explosion rang out. The glass panel in the door exploded.
Anthea's eyes disappeared into the folds of her face as she hissed at us from the doorway. `Don’t think you're getting away with this. I’ll track you to the ends of the earth, you bastards.’
Another bullet splintered the door frame, but she was gone.
Seconds later an engine revved and tyres squealed as her Mercedes raced away. The sirens were closing fast. They’d get her, I hoped. I was too tired to do anything more. Let the police fix it now. I only wanted to sleep. For a long time.
Win ran past me towards David, who had slumped back to the floor. Through the deep mist of pain and exhaustion in my mind I thought he might be dead. I looked around. Suzy lay against the wall, her teeth gritted in pain as blood seeped out from under her leg. She hadn’t escaped either. David lay still. Win threw me a towel she had grabbed from the rail near the sink.
`Here,’ she snapped, `stop Suzy’s bleeding with this.’ The medico was in residence. She bent over David. Suzy pushed me away and limped across to them. Her face was so pale it was transparent. She bent over David nuzzling his face and murmuring. She didn’t look up even when the sirens closed right in, blocking all other sounds. The noise stopped suddenly but blue light continued to flash into the room.
Clattering footsteps announced the arrival of the police. I’d hoped that Max would obey my instructions and call Theo. He had. Theo headed the charge. A red light joined the blue ones as his bulk loomed over us. Win’s head came up as Theo bent over her. She nodded, smiling at no one in particular.
David’s eyes were open. Suzy had buried her head in his neck and was shaking with sobs as Win untied the rope binding her arms. Cut and bruised as they were she flung them around David’s neck as his hand crept shakily into her hair.
He looked across at us and whispered, `You don't think that after being shot at by ten thousand warring Africans from both sides, I’d succumb to a vicious bitch like Anthea?’
A wave of pain swept across his face, but he managed a smile. I couldn’t control the tears that streamed down my face, and I didn’t care.
Win pulled my head onto her shoulder. `He’ll be fine, Rob. We'll be fine.’
I nodded, and together we rocked like little children after the storm.
Theo left several police carloads to mop up at Greenacres and came with me in the ambulance.
`Three’s a crowd,’ he said, jerking a finger towards Suzy and David who hadn’t let go of each other. `They’ll have to use surgery to get them apart.’ He spent most of the ride back to the hospital bawling me out for trying to be a hero. When he finished saying I told you so, a huge grin split his face.
`We’ve got them,’ he said.
`Who? Anthea?’
`Anthea?’
So Anthea had got away. Who had he got? The guards? Ingham? Who seemed to be in shock? Theo had the lackeys. The pilot fish. Not the shark?
He told me he’d had a call from his Sydney colleague. It seemed some anonymous caller had contacted the police and told them to bring a squad to the Bluehaven Clinic in the Blue Mountains. At first Theo’s mate thought it was a hoax call, but the ambulance service rang saying they’d also been told to go to Bluehaven Clinic.
`Remember, I told you about this guy? The one who started me wondering?’
I nodded. Intrigued by the call, the Sydney policeman tried to ring Bluehaven and found it cut off, as the mystery caller had said it would be. Alerting his superiors to this fact and that the ambulance service would be attending Bluehaven, he felt the police should take a look too.
It was dark when they got there and when they drove into the grounds a man in jungle fatigues and a balaclava mask halted them. He told them that everything was under control, pointed them towards the main office building, then disappeared.
`You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Rob?’ he asked. I didn't.
`Can you believe we found a whole lot of people all locked into one room? No lights, no explanations? They were nurses, doctors and security guards. There was an arsenal of illegal weapons locked into a computer room too. And an even bigger surprise was that the computers were printing a whole lot of stuff that he didn’t describe but will make some people who work at Bluehaven, very uncomfortable. How much do you know about all that, Rob?’
I hoped Les would soon find out that his Sydney operation went well.
The ambulances arrived together at Emergency, so I saw that both Suzy and David were still alive, though neither looked too good. I wasn’t too good either but it's amazing how well one can feel with a skinful of opiates. Theo left me with the medical staff, saying he’d be back later with a tape recorder.
I was dozing when a head poked through the curtains, looked around quickly and disappeared again. Gingerly, I sat up. There was little pain so the drugs were working. I felt a bit giddy but no worse than I’d felt all week. My arm and leg were only grazed. I swung my feet over the side of the bed. Still okay. I stood. Pain speared through me despite the painkillers but my leg held and it faded quickly. I heard somebody murmuring something in the next cubicle, then David's voice rose.
`Why can’t you find her? She’s wounded for God's sake.’
I dragged the curtain back to reveal David clinging to a nurse. He let her go when he saw me.
`Rob, please find Suzy. She’s gone, disappeared...I...can’t...’ His voice trailed away as he sank back onto the bed. `Oh God, please, Oh God...’ he muttered. I limped across to him, pushing the nurse aside, and took his hands.
It was my turn. All my life I’d relied on having my big brother take over when things got tough. Even when he wasn’t there I had an internalised David I could call on. And when he came back, he was still my magical, all-powerful brother. With his genius flowering, my childhood adoration was fulfilled and strengthened. Marianna fought against it and failed. Everybody did. When he got sick, it was me I was sorry for, not David, the man. How dare he be weak, sick and vulnerable. How dare he be only a man like any other.
As I stood looking down at him, seeing his eyes full of tears and pain, pleading with me to help him, a thought punched me in my gut. It left me breathless. As sudden as that. David was a man like any other. Like me. I felt an enormous empty sorrow. My core had disappeared. I was alone. The loneliness that had swamped me when David left, returned but the deep freeze I’d been in since childhood, was melting. I was terrified.
I sensed someone’s presence. Was it Win? I couldn’t turn to her because to do that I would have to turn away from David’s pleading eyes, into the black hole in me.
`Please,’ whispered David.
`You can do it.’ A voice filled my mind. Win’s voice. Inside me, filling the black hole.
I gripped his hand. `I’ll find her.’
`Yes,’ whispered David. He relaxed and lay back. His eyes closed. A small smile tweaked the corners of his mouth. The general noise intruded once again. The whole episode had taken maybe, two minutes. It seemed like a lifetime. Perhaps it was.
I limped out of David’s cubicle and dug out my clothes. Luckily my stained trousers and sweater were dark. The blood showed less. I knew where Suzy had gone. MacAllister’s factory. She still believed he was at the centre of the whole business. She’d think that Anthea would go to Anderson Forbes for instructions from Cameron MacAllister.
She was wrong. Anthea would go there all right, to retrieve what was left of her Melbourne operation and flit. I hailed a cab outside the hospital and headed for Suzy’s house in South Melbourne. She might have gone home to change her clothes. I needed new ones too.
There was no home. The entire facade was missing. All that was left was a tangle of debris. My stomach made its now customary climb up my throat as we were stopped by a policeman.
The cabbie rolled down his window. `What’s up, mate?’
`Bomb, I reckon,’ answered the policeman.
I leaned out the window managing by some miracle to get my tongue to form a few words. `Anyone hurt?’
`No,’ the policeman said.
It was Friday night. The night was young. Only nine-thirty. I leaned back in the cab and closed my eyes. The drugs were wearing off and pain and loss of blood were taking their toll.
The cabbie jerked me back. `Where to, mate?’ I shook myself.
I couldn’t remember the address of the Anderson Forbes factory. I thought it was somewhere out to the east of the city in an industrial park. I was fumbling around in my pain-addled brain when the solution appeared out of nowhere. Norm. Norm Chadwick. Of course.
`Eaglemont,’ I mumbled. `Keam Street.’