Authors: Caroline Carver
“Mum, you shot . . . the chief?”
“Not me, sweet. That nice policeman over there did it, but let’s not worry about that now. Let’s see to your friend, shall
we?”
The nice policeman was Daniel. He was standing over the chief, head hanging, gun unsteady and wavering in the strobing blue
light. She watched him fumble his pistol into its holster and go to kneel beside the dead sergeant. He put a hand on his chest.
His shoulders were shaking. It looked at though he was weeping.
“Daniel,” she called across to him, “who is it?”
“Riggs.” His voice was choked. “My mate Riggs.”
Despite her dislike for the sergeant, Georgia felt a rush of sadness. His poor handsome wife and bouncing baby boy.
Linette began to pull Lee’s shirt free, and Georgia bent to Lee’s ear. “We got Spider, the man who killed your partner.”
It didn’t take the ambulance long to get there, maybe ten minutes, and during that time the entire police force of Nulgarra
rocked up, all four of them, along with a small crowd of bare-chested men in jeans, their hair in tufts, and women in dressing
gowns, all curious to know what had happened.
While the paramedics worked fast on Lee, Linette and Georgia hovering, trying to see what they were doing without getting
in their way, Daniel hung back. He hadn’t come to her, or asked if she was all right. He appeared to be in some sort of shock,
which wasn’t too surprising since he’d just killed a senior policeman and lost his friend Riggs. He looked shrunken, miserably
pale and defeated.
As Lee was lifted onto a stretcher, Georgia raced across to Daniel.
“Are you okay?”
“Lee was . . .” He cleared his throat, expression dazed. “Undercover.”
“He wanted to know who killed his partner.”
Daniel swayed slightly and she put out a hand, but he waved her away.
“I thought he’d done it.” His voice was very faint.
“You and everyone else.” She tried to comfort him. “The only person who knew he hadn’t betrayed Sergeant Tatts was Lee himself.
And his boss on the PST, from DIMIA.”
“I can’t get my head around it . . .” He looked sick.
One of the rear ambulance doors started to close, and the same pain she’d felt in her heart when she first saw Lee covered
in blood returned. Could she leave Daniel like this? But what about Lee?
“Daniel . . .” The door had shut and the pain was ballooning, almost out of control, her heart being ripped right down the
middle. She didn’t know what to do.
The second door of the ambulance was closing.
“Daniel, will you be okay? I’m sorry, but I . . .”
He turned a blank face on her, flicked a look at the ambulance, its blue light twirling, then back. He gave her a bitter smile.
“He did save your life, Georgia.”
No hesitation. No second thoughts. Georgia belted for the ambulance, leaped for the door, not quite shut, and yanked it open.
“Can I come?” she panted.
The medic glanced over the crowd at Daniel, who gave a nod.
“In you hop, then.”
The instant she held Lee’s hand warm in hers, stroking the scars over his knuckles, the pain in her heart went away. But not
Daniel’s face, lit by blue lights from cop cars and the ambulance, his skin white and dry as chalk and his brilliant eyes
haunted.
The next twenty-four hours were a flurried haze. Georgia and her mother were shuffled from office to office, to and from the
hospital to check on Lee, and wherever she went, Linette went with her, and wherever her mum went, Georgia followed. They
kept touching each other as though making sure they were alive. And smiling, hugging a lot. Linette looked pretty good considering
she’d been a hostage for eleven days. She’d lost weight, but nothing serious. Not unless you raised the thick curly hair on
the right side of her head and saw the mass of fresh pink scar tissue and faint traces of old blood clinging behind her ear.
“I did a lot of meditating,” she told Georgia when she asked how she’d managed. “And praying for you. Sending you little messages.
Did you get any?”
Georgia remembered the sense of her mother calming her near-hysteria on the plane from Brisbane and said, “Yes. They helped
a lot, thanks.”
Her mum looked pleased.
Now they were sitting in the cop shop, having explained everything to Daniel and his boss from the PST, a tall, reedlike man
from Canberra called Patrick. Although Daniel seemed to have recovered his composure and was outwardly calm and businesslike,
the shadows beneath his eyes indicated that he’d had little sleep, if any.
She wished she could have been there for him last night, talked him through the whole story one-on-one and without his boss,
but her mother had briskly pointed out that Lee was their first concern. Lee had two bullets in him, whereas Daniel . . .
He may have not taken any bullets, but he was hurting, she could see. It would, she thought, take him some time to adjust
to the fact that the man he’d obviously loathed, been trying to bring down for years, had been one of the good guys all along.
Satisfied with their reports, Patrick and Daniel were winding up, and Georgia and Linette got to their feet, preparing to
leave.
“Is Jon okay?” Georgia asked. “Will the gang still try to get him?”
Patrick gave a dry chuckle. “Not much of a gang now Jason Chen and his father are dead. We had intelligence the rest have
split. The whole mob has dispersed. Some are heading south, others back to Fuzhou.”
“Great,” she said. “That is great news.” She took a breath. “And what about the Piper’s sabotage? Are you sure you can’t do
anything?”
Daniel looked intensely weary, while Patrick gave an audible sigh. She knew they were getting exasperated. She had asked the
same question twice so far.
“The vitamins were vitamins,” Patrick said yet again. “Also, Yumuru’s got a cast-iron alibi. We’ve checked and double-checked.
Bri Hutchison prepped the aircraft just after one and flew out at two. That leaves a fifty-minute window, during which Yumuru
was with Tilly at the healing center. Unless he had wings and flew himself, there’s no way he could have been there.”
“Tilly owes him her life,” Georgia remarked. “She could be covering for him.”
Patrick all but rolled his eyes at her. “But what was Yumuru’s
motive
?”
Daniel spoke up, voice tinged with exhaustion. “Georgia, you didn’t see anything. You admit it yourself. Are you
sure
it was sabotaged?”
“Yes. Yes!”
“Even Becky admitted—albeit under huge pressure—that Bri flew close to the edge fuel-wise a couple of times—”
“But Lee
saw
it.”
“He could have been mistaken, what with everything going on at the time. The plane was up in smoke, wasn’t it?”
Patrick started to fidget. “We’ve interviewed the staff at the aerodrome until they’re sick of the sight of us. Jeez, what
else can we . . .” Patrick trailed off as he turned to Daniel. “You go and see Lee. Get a statement or something. And make
an apology for the department stringing the poor bugger up.”
Daniel looked as if he’d swallowed a handful of razor blades, but managed to say, “Yes, Boss.”
Patrick then turned to Georgia, hands spread wide. “Best we can do.”
Frustrated, Georgia let it drop. They all shook hands, and then she and Linette went outside to Lee’s car and headed for the
hospital. When they arrived, Georgia expected her mother to come too, but she waved her aside, making her bangles tinkle.
“You go on your own this time, darling. You don’t want me cluttering up the place. I’ll wait here for you.”
There was a cop outside Lee’s room when she arrived. He was sitting on a hard plastic chair with his arms crossed, long stick-insect
legs splayed across the linoleum in front of him, and he was staring at the wall opposite. His expression was one of interminable
boredom.
“Hi,” she said.
The cop bolted upright, then leaped to his feet. He was incredibly tall and the width of a bamboo pole. Georgia reckoned if
she stuck a finger in his chest and pushed, he’d fall over.
“I’m here to visit Lee Denham,” she said.
“And you are?”
When she told him, he checked his notebook, then stepped back respectfully and let her go inside.
Lee was asleep. The last time she’d seen him, yesterday evening, he had been lying on his side, drawn and gray. Today, however,
she found herself looking at a man with full color in his cheeks sleeping faceup between crisp white sheets. She paused, amazed.
What does it take, she wondered, to bring this guy down? He’s been shot and looks as though he’s having a snooze. He would,
she thought, probably be up within twenty-four hours and jogging across the Atherton Tableland with a bunch of camping gear
and two months of supplies on his back.
“Georgia?”
She went to his bedside and looked down at him. “Hey, how are you?”
His eyes were clear and bright. “Better after sleep.”
She was grinning insanely.
“You?” he said.
“Busy.”
“I can imagine.”
She said, “They tell me you’re going to be okay.”
“Yup.”
“Oh, I brought your mobile back.” She was about to bring it out of her handbag when he held up a hand.
“I’ve got another. Keep it.”
She was going to ask how she could pay the bill, but the look on his face reminded her of Evie and she hurriedly said, “Okay.
Thanks.” Small pause, then she said, “How come there’s a policeman outside your room?”
“Precaution.”
“But haven’t the Chens gone?”
“My boss wanted a safeguard.”
“Oh. Right.” She glanced at a pile of well-thumbed magazines on his bedside table, then back. “So what are you going to do
when you get out of here?”
“Retire.”
She blinked. “Did you win the lottery or something?”
“Got paid pretty well for risking my life for so long. Plus, my boss is grateful. Luckily for me, the Aussie government is
showing its appreciation in cash terms.”
“Won’t you miss working for the police?”
He shuffled his torso up the pillow. His chest was encased in heavy white bandages and he had a deep gash on his forehead
running into his thick hair. Aside from two bullets, most of his injuries were bruises, which were turning a spectacular black-purple.
“Nope.”
“What will you do?”
“I was thinking of sailing around the world. Starting in the Caribbean. I’ve never been there before and quite fancy a break
in the sun.”
“You sail?” She was surprised.
“Only had the motor yacht for the image. Chinese gangsters don’t respect a sailboat.” He shuffled farther upright. “Any news
on the sabotage?”
She told him of the police’s remorseless skepticism, and that Daniel would be coming to get a statement from him.
“Tell him not to bother. He won’t feel comfortable seeing me, and I sure won’t either. You still want to get the lowlife that
tampered with our plane?”
Through the window she could see a single ambulance and a man in white overalls smoking a cigarette. “Yes, I want them. Daniel
said he’d talk to the AAI, but then the boat blew up. I doubt if he’ll follow it through now. He’s as dubious as the rest
of them. Besides, there might be a problem with the insurance, I want to check with Becky—”
“Becky wants them too,” he interrupted. “She came in earlier. Nice lady, all up.” he gave a frown that made the scar through
his eyebrow pucker. “You’ve a pen? Piece of paper?”
Digging in her bag, she handed him a pen and Mick’s cash register receipt from breakfast, watched him scribble down a number.
“Ring this number. Chris Cheung. He’ll get the AAI investigating on your say-so, no problem. Tell him I reckon the wire-lock
was taken off. He’s like a pit bull, Chris. He’s never let me down yet. If he can’t find anything, then I’m an Eskimo.”
The man seemed to have fingers in every pie imaginable. Curious, she asked, “How do you know him?”
“Guangxi,”
he said. “It’s a form of debt, of favors loaned.”
A prickle of recognition ran over her skin.
Guangxi.
Chief Superintendent Harris had used the word when telling her how
Songtao
had been named. Riggs speaking to a boat captain in Fuling who knew about the sound of wind in a pine forest, then telling
the chief, Spider, everything he knew, that Daniel knew.
“Chris Cheung owes you?”
“Big-time. China runs on
guangxi,
you know. Can’t move without it. The favor can also be conveyed to a friend or colleague, even inherited.”
He went on to explain that some families kept ledgers of
guangxi
so that a grandchild years hence could one day look at that ledger and recall their grandfather’s
guangxi
of fifty years ago. Favors. That’s all it was, Georgia realized, but it could go on for
generations.
“So if I have kids,” she said, “they’ll owe you
guangxi
for saving my life.”
“Yup.”
She glanced at the receipt before she put it into her bag. Like him, his writing was bold and precise. “What
guangxi
do you have with Chris Cheung?”
“That’s between me and him.”
Fair enough. Nobody said
guangxi
had to be made public.
“You going back to Sydney?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll send you a postcard from Barbados, then.”
“Lee . . .” She didn’t know how to broach the subject that had been bothering her.
“Spill it.”
“Those guys you, er . . . talked to when you were trying to find my mother. I heard something about . . . a man being . .
. slashed. His stomach . . .” She fixed her gaze on the pile of magazines.
She heard him sigh. “Look, it’s a myth. A nasty one, I admit. It started when I was in China. I stumbled on a Dragon Syndicate
member who, despite the fact his stomach was in ribbons, had just managed to shoot the RBG man who’d done it. I was trying
to help him when the Chens arrived. They thought I’d been torturing him for information, and, in my undercover role as an
RBG member, I didn’t deny it. I even exaggerated the story, and from then on, all I had to do was show my knife and I got
all the answers I wanted.