The Darkest Hour (16 page)

I could’ve been here too. Easily. Lying on a steel trolley, waiting to be cut up, having photos taken of my stab wounds, my skin washed with cold water and gloved hands
.

But she wasn’t. She reached up and touched the tracker in her pocket. She was alive and they were going to get the bastard.

She had to believe it or go mad.

Sal Rios tried to make himself walk slower. Tough guys didn’t hurry. He shoved his hands in his pockets and dipped his head as if to rap that only he could hear. But he could feel his breath coming faster, and as he looked from side to side at the bustling Botany industrial estate from behind his dark glasses he felt even more watched than usual.

His back prickling, he crossed the concrete forecourt, passing through the shade cast by the sign saying
Preston’s Plastics
. The doors of the small factory stood open and he was glad to step inside, out of view of the street, and exchange a nod with Colin Preston and one of his sons, Gary or Grant, he hadn’t worked out which was which. He walked through the processing area, the stink of plastic making his nose burn and his eyes water, and knocked on the solid steel door to the storeroom.

After a moment there was one tap in reply.

‘It’s me,’ he said into the crack.

Bolts slid back and the door swung open. Thomas wore a paper mask over his nose and mouth but the annoyance in his eyes was clear. ‘What?’

Sal sniffed. It didn’t smell too strong. The exhaust fan whirred on the wall. ‘We need to talk.’

Thomas muttered something but let him in, locking the door behind him.

‘They’ve put surveillance on her.’

‘That’s no surprise.’ Thomas turned back to the bench.

Sal could see the caked blood in the hair on the back of his head. He and Julio had cleaned it up as best they could last night, Thomas stone-cold silent under their hands. He put his hands back in his pockets and dipped his head again a couple of times, being cool, but couldn’t keep it up. Sweat ran down his ribs and his chest was tight, making it hard enough to breathe without the stink from the ice that bubbled on the burners on the trestle table behind him.

‘So what are we going to do?’ he said.

Thomas said nothing. Sal wanted to sit down and talk it all through, what they could and should do, whether it was still worth their risk to carry on.
No, it isn’t
. He folded his arms and held onto his biceps, tensing them up, trying to feel stronger.

‘Thomas?’

Thomas, bent over some glass contraption, shot him a look that made the skin tighten on his face. Sal turned away and walked the length of the room, looking at the containers of chemicals on the floor, bumping one with the toe of his shoe to see how full it was.

‘Don’t touch that.’

To Sal’s shame he felt tears start to build. The fuck he would cry. He pinched at his biceps and tightened his throat and glared at the peeling grey paint on the walls. This was happening more often lately and it pissed him off. So what if his family was going to shit, brother dying, sister with all her dramas? So what if Blake came to see him when he slept, if he heard that crunch of breaking bone, that groan, those dying gasps over and over again? If those other dead guys appeared there too, just standing there and staring at him? Tough guys went straight through all that and let it roll right off them like none of it mattered.

He tensed his lats, feeling them push against his shirt, and straightened his back. He thought of the money, of how Tracy salivated at jewellers’ windows, how she would once again smile and press up hard against him when he told her to choose whatever she liked. She had this thing about diamonds. He sometimes thought that if she was so desperate for bling she could get herself a better-paying job, but then of course there would go their . . . what was the word?
Conduit
. So he kept his mouth shut.

He thought of the stuff he would get for himself. That big home gym system, first off. The way things were at home there was no room to set it up now, but that would change when Nona found her feet and moved back out. He liked to think of him and Julio working out together. This new herbal crap Julio was on, you never knew with that stuff. It was in the magazines all the time.
I was dying until I started taking this stuff and now I’m running marathons!
You just never knew. Things would get better, he told himself. If we get through
this
.

Thomas straightened, frowning. ‘This shit’s not working.’

‘Doesn’t it take a couple of days?’

‘I know how long it takes, and I know if it’s working, and I know this isn’t,’ Thomas snapped. ‘It’s too cold and damp in here. Go and buy some fan heaters.’

Sal felt for his wallet. ‘With cash? I don’t–’

‘Just fuckin’ buy them.’

Sal wanted to say that they should chuck the half-made ice, just cut their losses now, before they got caught and locked up. His Uncle Paulo had been in jail and had told him about what happened in there. His mouth dried up at the thought of it. But Thomas would never give in; the money meant too much to him.

‘How much longer till we’re done?’

‘It’d be a lot quicker if I had fan heaters and didn’t get interrupted.’

Sal let himself out of the room and heard the bolts slide home behind him. Grant or Gary was looking at him over some plastic thing he was cutting, and Sal tried to give him the eye but had to drop his gaze. These guys were another problem. Thomas said they were getting money for nothing, so why would they tell anybody about it? But Sal didn’t trust that, nor the years-old friendship between his late Uncle Paulo and Colin Preston that Julio said promised them safety. He wished for the old days, not even a year ago, before Paulo died and Julio got diagnosed and it was them running the show, with Thomas doing his own shit overseas, and Sal as Julio’s sidekick, just along for the ride.

He hesitated by the main door, blinking against the bright sun outside, looking for police slumped low in parked cars and loitering in doorways behind newspapers. Times like this, when he felt really scared, he wished for the years before any of it had started, and his mum was still alive.

E
lla and Murray were almost all the way in the city, heading for Rosie’s, the club where Jules Cartwright had last seen Thomas Werner, when Ella’s phone rang.

‘Got something else for you,’ Kuiper said. ‘A woman’s just called in to say she knows Kennedy and she feels she should talk to someone.’

Ella made a face. ‘What’s that mean?’

‘I don’t know, but her address is right near Steyne Park, and I could hear a dog barking in the background.’

The lift was silent and smooth, and the landing was bright with afternoon sunlight. The door of number eleven was identified by filigreed silver numerals. Ella took hold of the silver knocker in the shape of a bird pecking at the wood, and the noise was answered by furious yapping from inside. There was the sound of a woman’s voice, the tone of the barking changed, then the door opened. A tall red-eyed woman in her fifties held the yap-ping dog in one hand against her chest.

‘Good afternoon.’ Ella showed her badge. ‘Detectives Marconi and Shakespeare. Are you Helen Flinders?’

‘Yes.’ She opened the door wide. ‘Please come in.’

Flinders was about a metre eighty in her bare tanned feet. Her brown hair was cut short and shot through with grey. She wore khaki cut-off shorts and a pink collared shirt, and around her neck hung a tiny silver butterfly on a black silk cord. Ella felt short, stubby and downright inelegant beside her.

The living room was bright and sunny, with green lounges facing the windows that overlooked the sparkling water and a large work desk occupying one wall. Ella saw an array of delicate tools, twists of silver wire, and five silver butterflies in a line, each one slightly different from its neighbours but also similar to them and to the one Ella had seen on the Kennedys’ sideboard. She saw Murray was looking too.

‘My little home business,’ Helen Flinders said. ‘Please, sit down. Can I get you a drink? Tea? Coffee? Water?’

‘We’re fine, thank you.’

Ella sat on the edge of one of the lounges and Helen sat opposite her. She kept the dog on her lap. He sniffed the air and watched Murray, who’d stayed on his feet.

Ella said, ‘You called in to say that you knew James Kennedy and you wanted to talk to somebody, is that correct, Mrs Flinders – it is Mrs?’

She nodded. ‘My husband died three years ago.’ She tapped her chest. ‘Bad heart.’

Ella nodded. ‘What did you want to talk about?’

Helen Flinders smoothed the hair between the dog’s ears. ‘I’ve been away this week and I came home last night. This morning I got my mail from my neighbour, started to read the local paper, and there it was. It said he was attacked on the street – stabbed. Is that right?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Ella said. ‘How did you know him?’

‘We were friends.’ She wiped away her tears with slender fingers. ‘Who would do such a thing?’

‘We’re trying to figure that out,’ Ella said. ‘Which is why you need to tell us everything you know about him.’

Helen Flinders pinched her lips together as a flush crept up her throat.

‘What was the nature of your relationship?’ Murray said.

‘At first we were just friends,’ she said. ‘He delivered some silver and other things to me here once, I guess that was about eight months ago.’

‘In his job as a courier?’ Ella said.

‘Yes. He was such a nice man, he admired the numbers I’d made for the door and we started talking. I offered him a coffee but he didn’t have time. I said perhaps another day? And he came back a few days later.’ She ran her tongue over her lower lip. ‘I never intended it to be anything. Mostly we would just talk. I walk Pepper in the evenings and we would often meet in the park there and chat.’

‘But things developed?’

‘It can be so hard, losing your partner. It’s not having somebody to talk to about all the minuscule details of your day, but also just being able to touch a person, and be touched . . . I remember when James first took me in his arms.’ She stared out the window at the harbour. ‘I hadn’t been held like that since Bob died. It wasn’t a sexual thing, not then, but there was something about being hugged by a man who was not my son-in-law.’ She looked at Ella. ‘Am I making any sense?’

Ella nodded. ‘When did it become sexual?’

‘A month or so later.’

‘Did he tell you he was married?’

‘No,’ Helen said. ‘I thought he probably was. He bought one of my butterflies and that’s usually a thing a man buys as a gift for a woman. But we never talked about it, or about the future or what we would do, or anything like that. We just lived in the moment.’

Ella could hear the scratching of Murray’s pen. ‘Did you always meet here?’

‘Here and in the park. Never anywhere else. It suited us both that way, I suppose.’

‘How often did he come by?’

‘Usually once or twice a week, less often once a fortnight,’ she said. ‘He would either drop by on his route during the day, or come to the park in the evening on his bike.’

‘And when did you last see him?’

‘On Tuesday evening, in the park. I guess it was the day he died,’ she said. ‘We hadn’t arranged to meet. I was flying to Brisbane later that night for business, and took Pepper for a last-minute stroll. I was surprised to see James there. He was talking to a man, and he glanced up and saw me but gave no sign of recognising me, so I thought, obviously he doesn’t want me to acknowledge him, and I walked right on by.’

Ella felt her blood surge. ‘What time was this?’

‘A little after seven. Five past, something like that.’

‘Can you describe the man?’

‘He was a little shorter than James, balding, with dark hair going grey,’ she said. ‘They both looked very serious.’

‘James didn’t seem bothered, upset? Frightened of this man?’

She shook her head. ‘I got the feeling they knew each other. They were standing at the sandstone wall there, their backs against it. They were standing fairly close, talking in low voices.’

‘Had you ever seen the man before?’

‘No.’

‘Can you recall what he was wearing?’

‘I didn’t take much notice,’ she said. ‘I think he was in dark trousers, and a light-coloured short-sleeved shirt. That’s about all I can say.’

‘Did James ever give you the impression that he knew other people who lived around here?’

‘Never.’ Helen Flinders blinked back tears and bent to kiss the dog.

‘Just a few more questions,’ Ella said. ‘Did James ever mention being in any kind of trouble?’

‘No.’

‘Did you ever hear him say the name Thomas Werner?’

She shook her head. ‘Is that who you think did it?’

‘His name’s come up as part of the investigation, that’s all,’ Ella said. ‘Did James ever seem worried or bothered by anything?’

‘He was a very even-tempered man who didn’t let things bother him, as far as I saw,’ she said. ‘Although there was one time, the second-last time we met, I think, when he took a call on his mobile and didn’t seem too happy about it.’

Ella sat forward. ‘What was it about?’

‘He didn’t say. We were in the park, and he turned away from me a little when he answered. I initially thought it may have been his wife.’

‘Could you hear any of the conversation?’

‘I could tell they were arguing. James was saying, “No, no. I told you I don’t want to do that any more. None of us want to.” ’ She shrugged. ‘I walked away to give him privacy.’

‘What did he say about it afterwards?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I thought, he’ll tell me if he wants to, and if he doesn’t want to then it’s none of my business.’

‘But you thought it was his wife?’

‘I didn’t know who it was, but that was my first thought, yes.’

‘What day was that, can you recall?’

She thought for a moment. ‘The last time I met him, to speak to, I mean, was Thursday the eleventh, and the phone call was the week before that, on the Wednesday.’

‘The fourth,’ Murray said, looking at a calendar on the wall over the desk.

‘That would be it.’

‘What time, roughly?’

‘In the evening,’ she said. ‘Perhaps six thirty, quarter to seven.’

Ella nodded. Oh, this was good. They had the records for Kennedy’s mobile, so this caller he’d argued with shouldn’t be too hard to track down. She wondered if the wheelchair-bound watcher had seen this other man too, maybe getting into or out of a car. Oh, it was all coming together nicely.

‘Where did you stay in Brisbane?’ Murray said.

‘With my daughter,’ she said. ‘I can give you her contact information so you can confirm I was really up there, if you want, and Stan O’Connor from next door can tell you he looked after Pepper and collected my mail for the couple of days. Although I would appreciate the nature of my relationship with James being kept quiet.’

‘We understand, Mrs Flinders,’ Ella said pulling out her mobile to call Kuiper. ‘Thanks for getting in touch.’

‘You don’t smell of morgue, I promise,’ Joe said as Lauren backed the ambulance into the station.

‘You wouldn’t know.’ Lauren turned the engine off. ‘It’s on you too.’

She went inside to her locker and sprayed deodorant all over herself.

Back in the muster room, Joe screwed up his face. ‘
Now
you smell.’

Her mobile rang. Ella said, ‘Things good?’

‘No problems here,’ Lauren said.

‘You’re carrying the tracker?’

‘Absolutely.’ Lauren touched her pocket. ‘Have there been any phone calls to the house?’

‘Nothing so far. Hopefully he’s crawled back into his hole,’ Ella said. ‘I’ll check in again later.’

Lauren clipped her phone back on her belt. Joe was sitting on the bench, swinging his legs. ‘How’s your back?’ he said. ‘Lifting the stretcher was no bother?’

‘It’s pretty good,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘Follow me.’

He went into the lounge room and pushed the recliners and the TV cabinet back against the walls.

‘You’re going to vacuum?’ Lauren said. ‘You want me to watch?’

‘Ahem,’ he said. ‘When I was a wee lad in the Navy I learned a bit about self-defence techniques. One thing they told us is that a person can be lucky once, but is rarely lucky twice.’

‘That’s a heartening thought.’

‘Forewarned is forearmed, et cetera,’ he said. ‘The main thing is, do you feel up to it?’

She shrugged, trying to keep her breathing slow. ‘Teach away.’

‘The most common type of attack is from behind, because people like to try to get the advantage of surprise. The most common reaction is panic.’

‘I can understand that.’

‘There are things you can do, however, if you can keep your head. As you obviously managed to do yesterday.’

‘Hm.’

‘Stand here,’ he said. ‘Turn around. You’re sure you’re okay with this?’

She nodded.

‘Let me know if you want to stop.’ He slid his arm across her neck and chest. ‘Still fine?’

‘I’m getting annoyed by the questions.’ She was starting to sweat.
Stay calm, it’s Joe. Focus on that. Joe is holding you. You are completely safe
.

‘Okay,’ he said, his breath warm against her ear. ‘Think for a moment of the position of your body and of mine.’

She closed her eyes. His chest was pressed so close against her back she could feel his heartbeat. His arm was hard up against her neck, his hand grasping her shoulder.

‘If you panic in this situation, he wins,’ Joe said softly. ‘He pulls up against your carotids and next thing you’re out to it. But you don’t have the upper body strength to fight him off directly, especially if he’s much bigger than you.’

‘Okay,’ she whispered.

‘Instead, think about the position of your feet. You know his are there somewhere too. You can stomp your heel onto the top of his foot and, unless he’s in steel-caps, he’s going to be feeling somethin’ nasty.’

She raised her right foot and brought it down gently, searching with her heel for his foot, pressing into it briefly, imagining slamming it down.

‘Then you use your body weight against him,’ Joe said. ‘Try this. Shift your weight a little lower and move your hips to the left, and at the same time swing your right elbow back into his stomach as hard as you can.’

She tried it, finding a certain rhythm in moving sideways and bringing her elbow down and back.

‘That’s it,’ Joe said. ‘You get that momentum going and it puts your whole body behind your elbow, so it’s not just a weak little poke.’

She did it again, fitting her elbow into his side. ‘I kinda like this.’

‘Then, when he’s folded that way a little in response, you twist around and rake his face, especially his eyes, with your nails, as hard as you can.’

He leaned over sideways a little, and she turned and put her hands to his face. He smiled at her through her fingers. ‘Nicely done.’