Hush Hush Read online

  ‘I’ve got the lawyer for the Woods killing,’ Tox said. ‘He’s made me and he’s heading west towards Old South Head Road. I need a chopper and every available patrol car.’

  ‘Forget it,’ Nigel said. ‘Whittacker has pulled a fucking miracle and tracked down Jax Gotten in an apartment in Erskineville. Let the lawyer go. It’s the bikies we want.’

  ‘Let the lawyer –’ Tox shook his head, trying to clear his ears. ‘I – You – Just trust me, Spader, it’s the lawyer who’s behind all this. I have proof.’

  ‘And it’s the bikie who’s got the violent background and the nationwide manhunt on his back. We’ve got shots fired and Whitt’s trapped inside the building. We’re about to move on the ground floor entry. I’ll call you back.’

  ‘But Mallally’s family is –’ Tox heard the line disconnect and roared the words anyway ‘– in the back of the car!’

  Chapter 104

  WHITT WAS DEAD. Two .38 shots entered his chest, a perfect military-style double tap, bullets that smashed through his sternum, his diaphragm, tearing holes in his heart and lungs, crumbling his spine on their way through him to the wall behind. The bullets collected his soul on their way out of his body, tugging it from his being far too soon. By the time he crumpled to the floor he was just the warm shell of the man he had been only seconds earlier, crouched behind a couch, trying to talk down a pair of killers.

  That’s what would have happened, anyway.

  He considered the scenario of his almost-demise as he lay gasping for breath on the carpet. As the men talked above him, on the other side of the couch, Whitt reached up gratefully and slid his hand under his shirt, pulled the still-hot bullets from the surface of his bulletproof vest. He silently gave past Whitt all the thanks and praise he could muster for purchasing the vest when Harry suggested he should.

  ‘We shouldn’t have stayed,’ Jax was growling. ‘This was so stupid. So stupid! You said we could hide in plain sight. You said this apartment was off the books! Look, the building’s surrounded. We’re fucked, Ed.’

  ‘It’s gonna be OK, brother,’ Romtus said. ‘We’ll explain. We’ll explain everything.’

  Whitt rolled over and clutched his way up the couch in time to see Romtus and Gotten embrace hard in the middle of the living room, both men gripping the other’s shirt, their faces twisted in turmoil and their weapons sitting on a side table by the hall. He watched the hug in amazement and confusion for a few seconds. Then he raised his gun, his whole arm shaking and numb from the impact of the bullets to the vest.

  When he spoke, both men turned to him.

  ‘You can explain later,’ Whitt said. ‘Right now, put your hands up.’

  Chapter 105

  IT SEEMED MALLALLY had decided to head for the city, but when a busy intersection confronted him at Old South Head Road he turned left and headed south. Tox kept on his tail as much as possible, bursting through intersections and rolling up onto the footpath to get around parked and queueing cars. The Monaro crashed and bumped off guardrails, smacked over a stop sign without slowing, sent pedestrians diving into bushes.

  Through the back window of the Chrysler, he could see Mallally’s two little girls turned in their seats and watching him, their mouths open in silent, howling sobs. Shania Mallally was in the front seat beside her husband, which was a good thing, because now and then she tugged at the wheel when the car slowed, trying to get the panicked lawyer to pull over. But her position in the car was also a bad thing, because she was so far away from the kids in the rear seat. If she managed to get the car stopped, giving herself an opportunity to flee, Tox knew she wouldn’t do it without her girls.

  As the Chrysler roared down Arden Street, Tox wondered if he would find himself pursuing Mallally along the crowded promenade at Coogee Beach. The traffic was always terrible at the bottom of the huge hill before the sprawling ocean. His spirits lifted. And they lifted again when Mallally swung the wheel wildly and careered the car down Burnie Street.

  ‘Yes,’ Tox smiled. ‘Good choice.’

  Mallally didn’t attempt the hairpin turn back onto Clovelly Road towards the city. He picked up speed past the back of the Clovelly Hotel. A pair of women in bikinis fell on their surfboards on the narrow shoulder of the road as the cars soared down the street towards the big car park that perched on the cliff edge before the sea below. There were plenty of cars there. Tox knew Mallally was trapped. He followed the car to the edge of the parking lot, south from the entrance, and parked behind it, trapping it into a wide space.

  He pulled his gun and shooed away an old couple taking photos of the royal-blue sea beyond Mallally’s car. Nearby, surfers making their way towards the stairs leading down from the cliffs stopped in their tracks. Tox pointed the gun at the driver’s door and walked until he could see Mallally’s profile, his hands gripping the wheel, staring at the rocky cliffs of Gordon’s Bay. Mallally’s window was half open. Tox was three metres away, but he could hear the lawyer’s breathing.

  ‘Turn the engine off!’ Tox yelled. He couldn’t get a clear shot at Mallally, not with his wife in the front seat and his kids in the back. He hazarded a couple of steps closer. ‘Turn the engine off now!’

  ‘She was extorting me,’ Mallally said. ‘She wanted hush money. I … I was defending myself. My business … my livelihood was threatened, and with it my family.’

  ‘You killed Tonya,’ Tox said.

  ‘I tried to get someone else to do it.’ Mallally shook his head. He slammed the steering wheel with his palm. ‘I asked a hitman. I asked the bikies. They were all so squeamish. I tried to tell them I didn’t care if the kid was killed or not. But I fell into the same trap they were trying to avoid.’ He drew a ragged breath, gave a sad, hard laugh. ‘The baby was just sitting there staring up at me after I’d finished with Tonya. I couldn’t just leave her there.’

  ‘Did you kill Rebel?’ Tox took another step closer. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Now I have nothing.’ Mallally wrung the steering wheel. ‘I have nothing left!’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Tox said. ‘Use your right hand to shut the car off.’

  ‘Louis!’ Shania grabbed at her husband’s arm. ‘Do it, for God’s sake! The girls are in the back!’

  Tox glanced around the parking lot. Some beachgoers were hiding behind their cars, others filming on their phones, or using them to call the emergency services. He thought about shooting the car’s tyres out. About firing into the front of the driver’s door and trying to get Mallally in the legs, to show him he was serious. All he really wanted to do was yank the man out of the driver’s seat and stomp his head into the asphalt. The girls in the back seat were beating their sweaty palms on the windows. Tox took another step closer to the vehicle.

  It was a mistake. A shard of broken beer-bottle glass popped under his boot, startling Mallally at the wheel. The lawyer turned and looked at him, and Tox saw what was going to happen before it played out in front of him.

  He raised the gun, shot out the front driver’s tyre with a blast that made people scream around him. But it was no use. Mallally stomped on the accelerator, and the big car bumped and smashed over the concrete gutter running the length of the car park, careering over the clifftop.

  Chapter 106

  THE TUNNEL WAS empty up ahead. My mind was racing, trying to discern Anna’s plan. The smell of smoke from the crash behind me still permeated the air through the rain of the sprinkler system soaking my clothes and hair. Above me, a message was blaring through the tunnel’s safety announcement system in a calm, soothing loop.

  Switch off your engine. Do not exit your vehicle. Safety personnel will arrive shortly to escort you to the emergency exits. Switch off your engine.

  One thing was clear. Anna had to have had assistance in her escape plan. I knew this because she had been assisted before. She had been given a kitchen knife by a person with the ability to take the knife back to the kitchen and return it to its place before the search for Doctor Goldman’s
murder weapon took place. Anna must have had the knowledge – been given the knowledge – that the mace canisters in the prison riot gear were the exact size and shape of the prison-issue deodorant cans. She must have been snuck a can of paint from the workshops, because Anna Regent was too violent an inmate to ever be cleared to work in a room full of tools and sharp objects. Anna must have been allowed to leave her confines in solitary and walk to the third floor of C Block, unescorted and taking a route fast enough to get her there and back while the entire prison was distracted with the level-one alert. Someone would have searched Anna’s personal items as she left for Long Bay and overlooked the black canister of mace in place of a canister of deodorant. It had to be someone who was willing to assist Anna enough to allow her to maim and kill on her way to freedom, but not someone strong enough to be the killer themselves, not someone who had ever killed before.

  It had to be someone who controlled what Anna did and where she went. Someone with the power to allow her to visit me on the night of Doctor Goldman’s murder in my solitary cell with a Cherry Ripe in her pocket. A little perk given to her by someone who loved her, someone who wanted to see the vicious child-killer set free.

  Only a Johnsonborough guard could have helped Anna do all the things she had done. And only one guard had been hanging around the night Anna was let into my cell. Only one guard had warned me that I shouldn’t try to help Dolly Quaddich get free of the accusation of killing Doctor Goldman, because that guard was in control. That guard was pulling the strings.

  You’re out there, and we’re in here. There’s nothing you can do to us.

  I cursed myself for not seeing the guard named Steeler for what she was the moment she smashed my knuckles with her baton in solitary. She was a coward. Someone drawn to cruelty and pain. She was one of those terrible people lured towards a role in the police, military or corrections because it meant she could enjoy power over other human beings and get paid for it.

  The tall, white-haired woman with the tattoo of barbed wire around her wrist would be just like the other terrible men and women who went into those jobs for the wrong reasons – without her gun and her baton and her uniform, she was just a loathsome coward. She would be cunning enough to sneak Anna a can of paint to disguise her deodorant can with, but not daring enough to swap the canisters out herself and risk being caught in the armoury, losing her job. She would be daring enough to give Anna the knife, but not daring enough to accompany her on the mission, to actually kill Doctor Goldman when she arrived unexpectedly around the corner of the C Block hallway. Steeler was the snivelling accomplice, not brave enough to hunt the wolf but bold enough to wear its fur. I was guessing, as I ran, that Anna would be heading towards Steeler and the getaway car. Steeler had facilitated Anna’s escape with as few risks as possible. She was reckless enough to give Anna the truck’s chosen route on that morning, to have spent her weekend calculating the seconds Anna needed to count from entering the Harbour Tunnel to an approximate crash point so that she would be able to meet Anna not too far away.

  But she would not be there for the fire, the smoke, the screams. Just like she wasn’t there when Goldman drew her last breath.

  It was just my gut telling me these things. But I trusted my gut. I felt that I was heading towards one mastermind prisoner escapee and her hopelessly devoted, underhanded sidekick. Anna was smarter than she appeared. The hopeless, idiot sadist act had sucked me in, and Doctor Goldman, too. It had made Steeler give up everything that she was.

  I knew that Steeler would wait for Anna to run ahead from the truck crash and get in her car, their getaway completely clear until emergency vehicles started responding to the disturbance in the tunnel from the city side. I knew there was little chance Anna hadn’t made it to the getaway car yet, my feeling almost confirmed as a pair of fire engines and a police car roared past me in the dark, heading in the opposite direction. But just as I began to lose all hope, a car appeared in my vision, blinking yellow hazard lights, its nose turned in to a small emergency space cut into the side of the tunnel.

  Chapter 107

  I DID A lap of the car, my gun drawn, and saw no one. Behind me, the tunnel disappeared into the heavy rain falling from the sprinkler system. There was a concrete barrier on either side of the tunnel and a walkway leading to two bright-green emergency doors. I chose the door closest to the car, shoved my way in and checked both ways.

  Empty. But beyond where I stood, fifty metres ahead in the direction of the city, the lights above had been smashed out, leaving a stretch of tunnel shrouded in pure blackness before a curve in the structure. I crept forward, my gun aimed into the dark, watching for the slightest movement.

  ‘Anna,’ I called. ‘I know you’re there. You were given a chance to do this the right way. You were on your way to Long Bay to get help, to get free one day without hurting anyone. I’m giving you one more chance now to stop the violence.’

  There was no movement in the darkness. Another pair of emergency vehicles rushed past on the other side of the wall. Beneath their noise, I thought I heard the shuffling of feet. I flicked the safety off on my gun.

  ‘Anna,’ I said. ‘I’m warning you. I’m going to shoot if you don’t come out with your hands up.’

  Another siren and rush of cars, and now I was sure that someone was making their way towards me under the cover of the emergency vehicles. I lowered my weapon and fired low into the dark, hoping to wound whoever might be standing there, Anna or her accomplice, Steeler. But the flash of my gunfire lit the dark space, and all at once I saw the broken glass on the concrete floor, the emptiness there. I didn’t have more than a second to feel shockingly, achingly alone. Another emergency door, one I’d paid no attention to in the dark, burst open at my side. I was shoved hard into the wall of the narrow tunnel, Anna’s big arms wrapping me up while Steeler knocked the gun from my hands.

  Chapter 108

  THE BODY PANICS when the airway is cut off. It’s impossible to think clearly. There are options available to the victim in a headlock, but for precious seconds all they want to do is grip wildly at the arm around their throat and pull. This is useless, because the attacker’s strength locking their arm across their chest is far more mechanically efficient than the victim’s strength pulling down and out with the forearms. For a second or two I fell into the trap, trying to work my fingers under Anna’s arm, realising with horror my situation as Steeler retrieved my gun from the ground.

  But Steeler’s mistake came soon after mine. She straightened and pointed the gun at me, standing far too close. She wasn’t going to shoot me. She was a weakling. Someone who had allowed herself to come under Anna’s spell, who could hand over a knife but not do the stabbing. I used her proximity, pushing both of my legs swiftly off the ground and planting them in her chest, shoving downwards while I arched my back. I kicked Steeler away and sent Anna falling backwards, her impact on the concrete ground loosening her arm. I righted quickly, stomped on Anna’s face as I turned to go for Steeler. What was important was the gun. Steeler had dropped it. We scrambled for it at the same time, nails scratching and fingers fumbling, and in the fray I butted her sideways with my shoulder, snatched the gun and wheeled sideways just as Anna was getting to her feet and rushing at us.

  I put two bullets in the big woman, then backed up and blasted two more because the first shots seemed to have no impact at all. I watched in horror as she kept coming at me. She seemed like something inhuman, the monster that everyone had always told her she was. And I knew the fear of the little boy she had killed, a deep and primal and hopeless fear. She went down on her knees and Steeler pushed past me to catch her before she fell. I watched the two of them holding each other as Anna died.

  Chapter 109

  IN TIME STEELER stood up slowly. I held the gun on her, but she seemed almost to forget it was there. She was standing looking at me, and her face was red and tear-stained, her hands hanging by her sides. The rushing of a vehicle with a siren through the tunnel b
eside us seemed to bring her to her senses.

  ‘She wasn’t an evil person,’ Steeler said.

  ‘I’m sure that’s what Doctor Goldman thought seconds before Anna plunged that knife into her neck,’ I said. ‘She was wrong, and you’re wrong. I just saved you from whatever the hell she’d have done to you once the two of you were out of the woods.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Steeler sneered. ‘How could you possibly understand?’

  ‘Because I’ve run across my fair share of cowards in this job,’ I said. ‘You weren’t willing to do Anna’s dirty work, but you would give her the tools she needed to do it herself. You’re pathetic.’

  Steeler shook her head at me. She looked exhausted, sad.

  ‘I fell for Anna’s bullshit the first time I met her, too,’ I said. ‘She was a master manipulator, there’s no doubt about it. I do the same job you do, you know,’ I said. ‘I deal with criminals. Some of them are good people who do bad things, like Dolly Quaddich. Some of them are bad people who can be redeemed. And some of them are monsters.’

  Steeler put her palms to the sides of her head like she was trying to block out what I was saying.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how hard you dreamed about being her saviour,’ I said. ‘Anna Regent was unsaveable.’

  ‘Then so am I,’ Steeler said.

  I heard the wail of another siren coming up the tunnel, and so did Steeler. She turned, and though I’m sure my scream reached her, my fingers only brushed against her jacket as she fled through the door to the tunnel. I was just a metre behind her as she sprinted into the path of the speeding fire engine.