Dead Heat (46 page)

In the distance she thought she could hear an outboard motor, but put it down to the sudden silence buzzing in her ears. Her
limbs felt shaky and fragile and she forced herself to walk to the water’s edge.

She took in the yellow-flowered cottonwood tree and the mangrove lilies on the opposite bank. The color of the water was a
dirty brown, but her mind was as blank as the water was calm, its ripples the ebbing tide heading for the Coral Sea.

Slowly, Georgia folded onto the riverbank and gazed numbly at the huge muddy slide where Nail-tooth had charged into the water.
She could see a perfect cast of one of the reptile’s feet, the size of a cauldron. The claw marks were the length of meat
cleavers.

She thought of the ant drowning in her urine.

Tough luck,
she thought dimly.
It’s survival of the fittest out here.

The buzzing in her ears became louder, and as she glanced downriver a little aluminum boat surged around the corner, bow high,
huge wake creaming behind.

Dutch was on his feet, scanning the river, and the instant he saw her he swung the boat around. Seconds later, he came to
a churning stop in front of her. He sprang onto the riverbank, bow rope in hand, sweat pouring from his face.

“I heard shots,” he said. He was breathing hard and fast but paused when he took in the freshly churned mud of Nail-tooth’s
slide. “What the fuck—”

“Nail-tooth got Daniel.”

His eyes widened. “You’re kidding me.”

She shook her head.

“Jesus.”

Georgia gave him a garbled account of what had happened.

“I can’t . . .” She glanced over her shoulder at the broken Alexander palm. “How come Nail-tooth . . . He charged straight
for me.”

“You face him head-on?”

“Yes.”

“There you are then. Crocs strike to the left or right, see.”

“But what about Daniel?”

“From what you said, Nail-tooth wasn’t striking as much as running hell-for-leather for the river. I reckon he knocked Daniel
into the water with him, and when they were there . . . well, that really is his territory.”

She looked over the slow-moving river and the blinding glare of early-morning sun on its surface. A great-billed heron flapped
slowly into view, heading downstream. The sounds of the bush had returned, and she could hear the deep bubbly call of a wompoo
fruit-dove and the screech of a sulphur-crested cockatoo.

“Is there”—she cleared her throat—“any chance he’ll survive?”

Dutch gazed at the slide a second before gesturing at the broad, slow-moving river full of crocodiles, then the mangroves
full of crocodiles, and the dense rainforest all around. “You believe in miracles?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Georgia, love, he’s got no chance. A croc’s jaws can exert a pressure of up to five tons. Think about it. And even if he
did survive, how is he going to get out of here alive?”

“We should wait. Just in case.”

Small pause while he studied her face. “Okay,” he said. “Hop aboard. We’ll go have a look around.”

Settled on the central strut in the boat, she saw that her shorts zipper was still undone, leaned back a little, did it up.
While Dutch cruised the area she searched the river and its banks for any sign of Daniel or Nail-tooth. Flying foxes continued
flapping back to their roosts. Tiny birds the size of matchboxes fluttered through the trees. The rainforest was starting
its day as usual, unchanged.

“How’d the bastard escape, anyway?” Dutch asked her. “I tied him up real good.”

“Penknife. He always carried one.”

“Shit. Thought he just had the gun. Didn’t think to search the bugger for a knife. Sorry.”

They fell quiet and kept cruising. An hour later, they hadn’t seen anything; there was no sign of the giant crocodile, or
its prey. The air was heating up as the sun rose, and she had started to sweat. She was incredibly dehydrated and longing
for a drink, but her thirst was easily bearable when she thought of her sojourn in the life raft.

“I’d say Nail-tooth’s wedged him underwater,” said Dutch, “and gone to hide up till we’ve left.”

They eased past Nail-tooth’s slide, and when she saw the flattened grasses of his highway, the Alexander palm splintered practically
in half from the crocodile’s charge, she knew it was over.

“Let’s go,” she said.

He turned his sun-creased face to her. “What say you and I leave him here? Say nothing of it? Becky’d be glad of the insurance
money.”

Georgia thought it over, and shook her head. “No. Too complicated. They’ll think we planned it or something.”

“Okay, we’ll go to the cop shop together, then.” Checking the fuel mix, he added, “Bet Suzie’s grinning from ear to ear. Talk
about justice done, getting munched by Nail-tooth. Bastard deserved everything he got.”

Georgia said nothing as Dutch opened the throttle. She didn’t feel any elation or triumph, not even a sense of achievement
in finding the saboteur. Just a lowering sensation of ineffable sadness for the person who would suffer most from all this.

Little Tabby.

S
eriously, deliciously amazing.” Georgia licked her fingers and contemplated the stripped carcass in front of her. Could she
squeeze in another mouthful?

“Yes, you can,” said her mother, mind reader, and pushed across a pair of tongs for her to help herself. “You’re still too
thin, sweet. Eat every morsel at every meal until you feel like you’re going to pop, and you’ll fill out in no time.”

Two little girls hurtled past, shrieking. A little boy pursued them, struggling to hold a giant fish head in both hands. They
tumbled down the wooden steps, then raced through the tall grasses, bare feet flying.

“Little buggers, boys,” Tilly said from the end of the table. “Always out to scare the girls.”

They were sitting around a long trestle table on one of the Lotus Healing Center’s rear terraces, and the table looked as
though a bomb had hit it. Toys were jumbled between streamers and salad bowls, bottles of wine and a month-old copy of the
Sydney Morning Herald
carrying Georgia and Dutch’s first story, by India Kane.

Photographs of Georgia and Dutch grinning, and another of a huge crocodile, jaws agape.

It had taken Yumuru days of phone calls to arrange for everyone to meet here for a weekend. Finally he’d managed it, and here
they all were. Groaning with food and wine at their first celebratory lunch beneath the veranda’s straw roof, overhead fans
stirring the humid air, the hum and chirrup of the rainforest all around.

Becky poured them some more wine, repeating the toast she’d made earlier.

“To Chris Cheung.”

Chris and the Air Accident Investigators had found the fuel pipe and the electric pump and sent them to forensics, but even
after scouring the area for days, they never found the wire-lock. The court seriously doubted that Daniel, an upstanding police
officer with no record of previous violence or vindictiveness, had sabotaged the Piper, but when forensics produced evidence
that the pipe had been loosened deliberately, and then Rog testified that he saw Daniel working beneath the Piper’s PA28’s
cowling half an hour before it flew, they changed their minds.

Georgia chinked her glass with Becky’s. No wonder Becky was looking so much better. The insurance company might not be paying
out, but Bri’s exoneration had eased her grief immeasurably.

“We’ve a clean record,” said Becky, “and the whole world knows it. They’re saying Bri’s a hero, getting you down where he
did. And talk about great publicity for SunAir! We’re swamped with next season’s bookings already. Never known it so busy.
The bank reckons it won’t be long before we’re square, maybe three years or so, then we can get another plane.”

Georgia was reaching across her mother for a plump slab of barramundi when she felt a pair of arms wrap themselves around
her neck and a child’s shout. “Auntie Georgie! Auntie!”

She turned to look into Vicki’s beaming face and found herself beaming back. “Hi, spratlet,” she said.

“Spatett!” Vicki yelled, delighted.

“Georgia, so sorry!” Julie Zhong approached at a gallop and swept Vicki into her arms, where her daughter continued to shout
“Spatett” at the top of her voice. Julie shushed Vicki and pointed at Tilly’s kids, told her to go and play with them. Vicki
shot off, screeching with delight.

“How’s it going?” Georgia asked Julie, who smiled.

“I love it here. I wish Paul . . .” Her smile crumpled.

“I’m sorry,” said Georgia, and reached out a hand and gripped Julie’s forearm. “I didn’t mean to remind you.”

“No. It’s all right.” The smile returned, slightly wobbly, but it was still a smile. “He was such a brave man. He will be
with us always. And I do love it here. Being able to practice my therapies again . . . I have three regular clients already!”

“Two,” said a voice from behind them. “You’ve just lost one. There’s no way that green runny stuff stops you smoking. Thank
Christ for Nicorette or God knows what else you’d have me drinking.”

It was India, looking disgruntled.

“For it to work,” said Julie, drawing her small figure tall, “you must drink it three times a day.”

“It’s disgusting.”

“But Jon is taking it, he says it is helping,” Julie said, and Jon hurriedly hid his cigarette beneath the table, face turning
pink.

Despite the fact that the AMA hadn’t yet approved the antibiotic—there were countless more tests and trials to be run—Jon
was filled with a boundless optimism, especially since he’d been given a work permit and an invitation to apply for Australian
residency.

Georgia saw a drift of cigarette smoke rise from Jon’s lap, as though his napkin was on fire, and laughed.

“Stop looking so happy,” India grumbled, taking a seat and filling up her wineglass. “Don’t know what’s got into you lately.”

Georgia glanced at her handbag by her left foot, the tip of a photograph protruding of a sleek yacht in blazing tropical sunshine.
Although it looked new, the yacht was obviously well lived in, with washing hanging neatly in a row along the boom, a towel
and pair of swimsuits draped across the stern railings, a cup of coffee and a pile of newspapers on deck.

The picture had arrived in a blank envelope with a first-class air ticket to Barbados, and on the back he’d written in his
neat, precise script, “What have you got to lose?”

No signature, not even a postage stamp. Hand-delivered by a man in a suit, knocking on her front door. How he’d arranged it
all was a mystery. A mystery she could ask him herself, if she chose. And though she knew he was a killer, she was a killer
too. She’d shot Jason Chen dead and she hadn’t lost a single minute’s sleep over it. She doubted he had either.

“So when do you start the grind of nine-to-five?” India asked Georgia.

“Zed said whenever I liked. He suggested I take a break first before getting stuck in. He’s hopping up and down with excitement.”

“Yeah, I know,” India said drily. “He rang wanting me to do a piece on the plight of illegals here. He’s going to milk your
celebrity status for everything it’s worth.”

Georgia didn’t mind. At last she had a job she cared about, had something to fight for, and Zed had even suggested she take
a trip to China, so she could see the place firsthand, meet his friends, to give her an understanding of their culture as
well as their problems.

She picked up a plump piece of white flesh from the barramundi and popped it into her mouth. Food of the gods, she thought.
Raising her glass, she said, “To Dutch. Hunter-gatherer.”

He raised his bottle of beer with a grin. “Big bugger, eh?”

Big bugger the fish certainly was, weighing in at sixty pounds. They had enough food for weeks.

“So help me, God, that woman is driving me to drink.”

Yumuru was suddenly there, his glasses all steamed up. His hands were wiping the tea towel tucked into his trousers and he
was looking harassed.

“She’s a brilliant cook,” Georgia said.

“Brilliant she may be, but it’s like being ordered about by a drill sergeant. When I wasn’t quick enough chopping up the garlic,
she rapped my fingers with her aluminum spoon!”

“Poor Yumuru,” she commiserated, grinning.

“Sometimes, like right now, I wish I was in a nice cozy police cell where she couldn’t get me.”

He poured himself a glass of wine and downed it like a man dying of thirst in the desert. She was so glad he’d forgiven her,
for her suspicions, for pinching his syringe. They had sat down the day after Daniel’s death and talked everything through.
How Yumuru had kept his birth name under wraps, terrified for Jon and Suzie, in case the Chens connected his name to them,
and Quantum Research. How he’d used the antibiotic only three times, and only in desperation and when his patients would have
died without it.

“The patients signed a consent form,” Yumuru said. “They were fully aware the antibiotic wasn’t approved, but they were willing
to try anything.”

Tilly and the other two patients had sworn secrecy, to protect Yumuru and Suzie for using an unapproved drug. It was a small
price to pay for their lives.

Yumuru had asked Tilly to be his alibi for the day of the crash, as soon as he realized Georgia was on the trail of Suzie’s
antibiotic.

“I could see how it looked,” he’d said. “How the finger would point to me. I know I shouldn’t have put Tilly in that position,
but I couldn’t think of what else to do. The police believed Tilly, but I hadn’t bargained on you.”

Nor had Daniel.
You are so stubborn.

Now Yumuru’s hand paused in midair. “Oh God. Here she comes.”

Dressed in black from head to toe, Julie’s mother, Fang Dongmei, marched down the veranda and pushed a gaudily wrapped box
at Georgia along with a stream of Cantonese.

Julie said, “She’s saying thank you. She wants you to unwrap it.”

Georgia freed the small box from the gold-and-red paper and opened it. Fang Dongmei was chatting at high speed to Julie and
pinching the blonde hair on her forearm, and for the first time since she had known her, Georgia saw Julie collapse with laughter.