Detained (27 page)

He defended himself as long as he could stand. When they took his knee out, and he heard the bone break, his consciousness became the sound of her voice. He sucked it in like air and filled his body with it, because as long as she was screaming she was alive.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” — Confucius

Peter insisted on hospital, but Darcy wasn’t hurt. Bruised, in shock, heartsick, numb, but her legs stood her up; her hands could hold a cup of tea. There was nothing physically wrong with her. He wouldn’t hear of her going back to her hotel and offered her one of Will’s homes to stay in, but that felt wrong. She wanted to be somewhere her memory of him would be solid and not filled with his absence or tainted by the colours of pain.

They compromised on the Palace Suite at the Peninsula.

Peter insisted a doctor examine her anyway, and she was too tired, too wrecked to resist. The doc gave her sedatives. She said the nightmares might be bad and the sedatives would help her sleep, but Darcy didn’t need to be asleep to be in the nightmare.

The sounds of men’s fists and boots, screaming, laughing. The smell of sulphur, cold sweat, and hot metal. Too many men: running, fighting, roaring. The big man with the scarred face trying to pull her away, shouting, “No look. Come.” The blood, so much red blood. Will’s blood—coating the floor. He slipped in it. He told her to go, but she would not leave him. So much blood, so much laughter, so much red.

Angry men pulled her away. She screamed till she had no voice. Till she couldn’t see him anymore. Till they killed him.

And then nothing.

Peter told her the man with the scarred face brought her to the prison gate and laid her on the roadway where the riot police could get to her and bring her out. They revived her in an ambulance on-site.

There was no word about Will. Even now, hours after the revolt had been quelled. She couldn’t believe he was dead, but she couldn’t understand how he could be alive either. So much red pain.

Peter said Will was alive. He knew how to take a beating, how to protect himself. But Peter didn’t hear the guns, or see the hate on the faces of the men who attacked Will. Men who should have protected him. Too many of them to count their fists and boots.

Peter stayed at Quingpu. Bo and Aileen stayed with her. No one wanted to be alone and they wouldn’t sleep tonight. The butler brought food they picked at, and copious amounts of coffee. Aileen made phone calls. Bo got drunk on Australian wine and stayed out on the balcony in the dark.

Darcy couldn’t settle. Couldn’t shut her eyes without seeing Will’s face, beaten and broken. She wrote the first draft of her story. She wrote about Feng Kee, the landlord and gangster who extorted, threatened and pulled a knife on Will Parker, nine years ago on a cold winter night.

She wrote about Will defending himself, leaving Feng on the street injured, but alive. She described how Feng went back to his village, picked up his life and died six weeks later in restaurant fire. She explained how the Feng family had seen the newspaper coverage of Will, remembered a debt they wanted him to pay, and orchestrated his kidnapping. She listed the family members implicated and the names of the kidnappers, all criminals for hire, now in jail.

She detailed how the police rescued Will only to jail him for murder.

She wrote about Bo, the Shanghai taxi driver who taught Will the local language. How he was kidnapped and bashed alongside his employer, but became his saviour, affecting his initial rescue by going to the police, and his final exoneration by discovering Feng’s real cause of death.

She left Robert out of the story. She didn’t think he’d mind. She left herself out as well. It was easier to write if she thought about it as an experience someone else went through.

She didn’t write about fear, pain, guilt or blood. There was no emotion in the story, no ‘colour’ like feature story writers added, just the facts. As a news reporter that was her job, to tell what happened and why.

The background covered, she went on to write about how before he could be freed, Will Parker was caught up in a prisoner led revolt at Quingpu prison.

And then she couldn’t write any more. Her brain couldn’t form the sentences, her fingers couldn’t find the keys, couldn’t type the words. She sat at her laptop at the beautiful desk in the Palace Suite and her eyes couldn’t see.

She knew her lead paragraph was wrong. The story needed to open up with Will. Needed to describe his current state. It should say, ‘Will Parker was declared innocent of the murder of Feng Kee and freed from Quingpu prison today
’
. That’s what it should say.

The alternative—that Will Parker died in a prison riot defending the woman who defamed him and brought him to the attention of people who would hurt him—was beyond her ability to set down on the page.

She wasn’t aware she was sobbing until Aileen came for her. She didn’t want the woman’s comfort. She wanted to work.

Obituary writers did it all the time. They took someone’s death and turned it into simple words so other people could know about them. Gave the facts, date, age, cause, contribution, survived by, legacy. Some papers had the first drafts for well-known people already on file. Already set up for a plug and play of the ending when it happened. Later, if the person was famous enough, they wrote larger stories, adding in details, opinion, speculation and reflection.

She should be able to do this. Write that lead paragraph. No more than twenty-five to fifty words. But she didn’t think obit writers wrote about people they’d fallen in love with and watched die to save them from the same fate.

Aileen was talking to Peter. She relayed the news. The police taskforce had interviewed the man with the scars. He confirmed Will was trying to protect Darcy and was shot and beaten by the guards. Peter had seen what the security cameras that weren’t damaged recorded. He was no longer so certain Will was alive. He was staying at Quingpu until there was news.

“Peter would like to talk to you,” said Aileen, holding out her phone.

She took it. Peter’s voice was flat and hollow. “Darcy, are you all right?”

He sounded like a different person. Like his own grandfather might sound, a hundred years old and weary of life. It made Darcy’s eyes burn. “I’m writing the story. It’s what he wanted.”

“Of all the things for him to want. Everything he’d once run a mile from. Write it good, Darcy. His cellmates told me the guards beat him because he was brave and honourable. They’re the ones that helped get you out. I’m not sure I understand it, but Will organised for half the prison to see some old Kung Fu movie.”

“Bruce Lee. The guards were calling him Bruce Lee.”

“They were angry with him because the movie was supposed to be a foreigner’s privilege. Stupid bastard gave it away like steamed buns.”

Now Darcy was confused, steamed buns? But so much about this day, this long night was confusing. “Where is he, Peter?”

“It’s chaotic here. But I’ll find him. There are bodies...” Peter’s voice failed. Darcy waited for him to come back on the line. “Some can’t be identified yet. They’re badly beaten or burned. We have to wait. I’m bringing him home. Tell Aileen and Bo, I’m bringing him home.”

Around 3am, Darcy crawled into the big bed. She lay on the edge near the window where she could watch the city wake. She heard Aileen tell Bo she was going home to change her clothes. She heard Bo talking to the butler.

They must know something soon.

When she closed her eyes the room swam, the bed floating, unanchored. She could feel hands grabbing her, pulling her from Will, dragging her away from the fighting. She could see him struggling to stand, blood dripping from his elbow. If she squeezed her eyes tight she could almost imagine his arms around her, feel him nuzzle the back of her neck, stroke her hair, thread his fingers through hers.

There was no point lying in bed. She was not going to sleep and she didn’t want to take a sedative. She got up, showered and dressed. Bo’s open-mouthed snores from the lounge room were an odd comfort. She took her laptop back to the bedroom. She’d finish the story the only way she could.

She pulled up the document and put her curser in front of the first line. She typed:
Billionaire industrialist, Will Parker is presumed dead after being attacked by guards in Quingpu prison during an inmate led revolt.

If confirmed, his death happened only hours after evidence to prove his innocence on the charge of murder was presented to the Ministry of Justice
.

She read back the whole story, logged on to the hotel Wi-Fi, opened email and filed the story with her wire service contact. It would make the early international news bulletins. When Bo woke she’d ask him to take her back to Quingpu.

Looking at her inbox, she noticed a queue of email messages. The usual junk her filter never managed to catch, her subscriptions, an invitation to Penny’s baby shower. A note from her real estate agent telling her the rent was going up. And a ‘how are you’ from Col Furrows, which demonstrated how numb she was feeling. He deserved an acid reply; she trashed his note instead.

There was an email from Andy and one from Brian. She opened Brian’s. A snipe about not telling him she was going to Shanghai. Another about her choice of wire service and how he’d have selected differently, followed by a strong suggestion she share her sources with Andy, and a reminder to be nice.

She binned that one too.

Andy’s message was less parentally judgemental but more annoying. What was she doing in Shanghai? Why didn’t she tell him she was coming? Where was she staying? They should meet up. His expense account could buy her dinner. What he didn’t say was ‘I’ll trade you one Peking Duck for your contacts inside Parker’. But that’s what he meant. Wait till he read the latest.

At 6am, a crash in the lounge room alerted her to the fact Bo was awake. He’d knocked a vase of flowers over. He looked at her with bleary eyes. “I’ll go home, wash. Then we go to Quingpu.”

“I’ll be ready.”

She had breakfast and waited. Her existence was this, waiting. When her phone rang, she was scared to answer it. Presumed dead was one step removed from dead for real, but it was Andy, not Peter.

“Darce, sister, little buddy. Who’s your source? Ministry of Justice is denying both the riot and Parker’s death. Where are you getting this from? Whoever it is don’t trust them. Why don’t you let me help you out? I’ve got contacts inside Parker, maybe I can—”

“Shut up, Andy. I don’t need your help.”

“You do. You don’t have a job, you’re freelancing for a wire service, and you’re off playing amateur detective in some dusty village. This isn’t a game you know. This is a man’s life, you can’t go crusading—”

“Shut up, Andy.”

“And you can’t annoy the Ministry of Justice if you want information out of them. They’ll never talk to you now.”

She pushed the balcony door open and stepped outside, the day’s heat already building. “I don’t need them.”

“I guess I can share my source there.” Andy had the temerity to sound conflicted about that, about tossing her a bone. It was like childhood all over again. Andy saying, “I guess you can borrow my skateboard”, then making sure it was never out of his sight so she could claim a turn.

“You’re not listening. I don’t need your help. I don’t need your source.”

“Darce, I know you think this is the way to get a good job offer—trust me, it’s not.”

She sighed and looked out at the outrageously pink globe of the Pearl Tower. “Yesterday I watched Will Parker get beaten by six armed prison guards.”

“What do you mean watched, you’ve seen tape? Geez girl, how did you get it? That’s explosive stuff, I can get it to air.”

“I didn’t see a recording. I was there.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I was in Quingpu with Peter Parker.”

Andy’s voice was raised and tight. “No fucking way.”

“We met with Will to tell him what we found out in Tengtou. To tell him he was innocent.”

“What? You…what?”

“I was in that riot, Andy. I got sprayed with Will’s blood when they shot him.

“They shot him?”

“And they beat him. And I fainted and another prisoner carried me outside.”

“Fuck me.”

“So I don’t need your help, Andy.”

“But you’ll share your sources. Get me in with Peter Parker.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no? I’ll get you a story consultant’s fee, a producer’s fee if you like. A bloody job interview. Does Dad know this? Hell, why don’t I interview you, a firsthand source? Why didn’t you call me in on this?”

Darcy leaned on the balcony railing and looked down at the street below. If she dropped the phone Andy would shut up. He hadn’t asked if she was okay. Her post- traumatic stress suffering brother, the only one in her life who knew what being in a war zone was like, hadn’t thought to ask if she was hurt, if she needed help.

And she was the one who was supposed to play nice.

If they’d ever been close she might’ve told him how she couldn’t shut her eyes without seeing flashbacks, how any sudden noise, like a silly vase getting knocked over, made her freeze with terror. She could’ve told him how Will used his body to protect her and died trying, and how she didn’t understand how she could walk and talk with her heart stopped dead in her chest.

She held her hand out over the railing.

“Darce, Darce, are you there?”

She could get a new phone, but not a new brother. He wasn’t well. She was better than that. “I’m here.”

“I’m coming to you.”

“Good luck.”

“Jesus, where are you staying?”

“I mean good luck with the story.”

There was a silence at Andy’s end now while he worked out she wasn’t mucking around. Then he growled. “You’re going to be a silly little twit and keep me out?”

“I’m going to do my job as a freelancer and get the story before you do.”

“I never thought you’d be so cutthroat.”

“No. You just never thought I was any good at this.”

“So, if I see you in the press pack, we what, pretend we don’t know each other?”