The beacon, p.26
The Beacon, page 26
Zoe gave a shorter hug to Jack. When they separated, Zoe said, ‘One of my clients owns the servo at Suffolk Park. Jack, was it a black van seen in the carpark on the night Patrick went missing?’
Jack nodded.
‘She said they have a few black vans fill up every day and so she copied me the camera footage. It could be nothing, but worth a look.’ Zoe held up a memory stick.
Caitlin let out an involuntary groan. ‘I hope that’s not password protected.’
They copied across the surveillance footage to each of their laptops. It was a slow process.
‘These are huge files,” said Caitlin.
‘It’s open twenty-four hours,’ said Zoe.
‘Of course it is,’ said Caitlin. It was going to be a long afternoon.
The footage stretched over three days, and they took a day each, agreeing to quickly scan through and record the time any black vans appeared, after which they would review each sighting together.
Caitlin opened her file, and her screen filled with the video from four cameras – one positioned inside behind the counter, another facing outwards across the forecourt to the road beyond, the others positioned on each side facing towards the petrol pumps. Impressive. And the resolution was good.
The video app allowed her to speed up the footage and soon cars were zooming in and out. It was easy to spot vans, but they were mostly white. The work was strangely mesmerising. After half an hour, she’d scrubbed through eight hours. No black vans.
Caitlin pulled herself out of her trance and stood and stretched. She put on the kettle and soon they were all back at the mind-numbing work, each with a steaming cup of tea untouched and growing cold beside them. An hour later she was done, her bum sore from sitting. She rubbed her weary eyes. ‘I saw five,’ she said.
In total, they had twelve.
They gathered around Caitlin’s laptop and started working through Jack’s list. The first hit was a large black van with no side windows. It pulled up to the petrol pump and a male driver in his thirties wearing nothing but board shorts climbed out and filled the tank. The inside camera provided a clear view of his face. He approached the counter, smiled at the attendant as he paid, walked back to his van and drove away.
‘Shit,’ said Caitlin. ‘How do we identify a murdering bastard?’
Jack shrugged. ‘Dark sunnies, black clothes, looking shifty. Just like in the movies.’
Zoe said, ‘So we’re looking for Chopper Read?’
‘Yes,’ said Jack, ‘although our man probably won’t have his ears cut off.’
They moved methodically through each sighting. They quickly crossed off the first six – their drivers were wearing thongs, had a dog or were hobbling on crutches. The first female driver had caused an argument. Jack wanted to cross her off, Caitlin accused him of being sexist, and the argument was only settled when the driver collected her baby before going inside to pay. That left one possible suspect on the basis of nothing particularly scientific. Caitlin was losing hope; the van they were looking for could have stopped at any of the petrol stations in town, or none at all.
She loaded her footage and skipped to her first van. The driver was a big unit in black jeans, black T-shirt and dark sunglasses.
Zoe whacked Caitlin on the arm. ‘Here comes Chopper now.’
As the man walked inside to pay, Caitlin felt an ice-cold constriction around her chest. Her breath seemed to be trapped inside her. She said, ‘I recognise that man.’
‘Who is he?’ asked Zoe.
‘I do too,’ said Jack. He grabbed the laptop and rewound the footage for another look.
Zoe asked again. ‘Who, Caitlin? Who is it?’
Caitlin said, ‘Jack, Jack.’ She shook his arm and he looked at her. ‘He’s the man that was hanging around outside my apartment in Sydney before the police raid.’
Jack’s face blanched. ‘Jesus. Fuck.’
Zoe was more insistent this time. ‘Who is he?’ she said loudly.
Jack just stared straight at Caitlin. He didn’t answer.
‘Jack?’ Caitlin prodded.
‘His name is Fidel.’
‘And?’
He couldn’t hold her gaze, and looked at his hands. ‘He used to be my father’s head of security.’
‘What?’
‘He’s bad news. Very bad.’
Caitlin’s mind raced. She thought of the tumultuous last couple of months, the drug raid on her house, of her arrest and dismissal from her job. But mostly she thought about her father. Were all of these things linked? This man was at her apartment and then here when her father died – and he used to work for Malcolm Harris.
He killed her father. He must have.
All her suppressed rage erupted. She let out a howl and jumped to her feet, grabbed her teacup from the table and hurled it at Jack. He ducked, but it struck him on the shoulder, cold tea spraying everywhere. She threw Zoe’s cup and it collected him on the elbow. She charged at him. Jack backed away, tripped over a chair and fell heavily.
Zoe yelled, ‘Caitlin!’
Caitlin leaped onto Jack and screamed, ‘You bastard!’ She punched him in the cheek and he put his hands up to cover his face. ‘Your father killed my father.’ She pummelled her fists into his chest and abdomen until Zoe dragged her onto the floor where she curled up into a ball, sobbing.
She felt Jack’s hand on her shoulder. He spoke quietly to her. ‘Fidel doesn’t work for my father anymore.’
Caitlin called out through her hands, ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’
She felt Zoe lie on the floor behind her and wrap an arm around her shoulders. They lay together until her tears eventually dried up and her breathing settled. When at last Zoe helped her up from the floor, Jack was nowhere to be seen. She couldn’t blame him.
Zoe helped Caitlin onto the lounge and fetched her a blanket, then sat and held her hand.
Jack returned from the bathroom, a large red mark on his cheek.
‘I’m so sorry, Jack,’ said Caitlin. She could feel burning in her hands where she’d struck him.
‘I would have lost it too,’ said Jack. ‘Although I’m not sure I could have punched as hard as you.’ He tried to smile, winced and put his hand to his face.
Zoe asked, ‘Should we call Begley?’
‘Fidel could just say he was holidaying in the area,’ said Jack. ‘We need some evidence he was involved.’
‘And holidaying out the front of my house in Sydney?’
Jack returned to the table and the laptop. He centred the image of Fidel and the black van on the laptop screen, then took photos with his phone. He then reloaded a different video and started searching again.
Caitlin said, ‘So the drugs in my freezer were a warning to Dad, from whoever hired Fidel to kill him? Who does Fidel work for now?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jack. ‘It could be anyone – he sells himself to the highest bidder.’ He returned his attention to the computer screen. After a few more minutes he said, ‘There it is.’ He turned the laptop to Caitlin and replayed a video for her. ‘This was around dawn on the morning of the murder.’
A black van could be seen driving along the road past the service station.
‘But it could be any van,’ she said.
‘Maybe. But as we’ve seen, they’re uncommon. And it’s heading south.’
‘And?’ asked Caitlin.
‘I think they were using our old house as a base. I normally stay there, but I was told some guests were using it. And Fidel sometimes stayed there when he worked for Dad. Maybe he still has a key.’ Jack stood up from the table. His clothes were covered in tea stains, his cheek growing redder all the time. ‘I’m going to take a look. And find Don – he knows everything that comes and goes at the house. I want to know if Fidel really was staying there.’ He headed to the door.
Caitlin called after him, ‘Jack, be careful.’
He nodded at her, and was gone.
Caitlin felt remorse creeping in. Why had she hit out at Jack? A few hours earlier she was admiring his abs, then she was hitting them. Maybe the stress was getting to her, making her irrational.
‘Tea?’ asked Zoe.
Chapter Sixty-one
Back at Jack’s father’s house, Don was nowhere to be seen. Jack went to his own room to change out of his tea-stained clothes, after which he intended searching the old house for any hint of his father’s fixer having been there, or for any link to Patrick’s murder. Then he’d call Begley.
His reflection in the bathroom mirror shocked him – bloodshot eyes, a swollen cheek, and hair looking like it was a prop from The Muppet Show.
After changing into fresh clothes, he hurried out of the bedroom door and collided with a wall that hadn’t been there a few minutes before. A wall of a man. Jack bounced off him like a table-tennis ball.
The man looked Polynesian, and could well have made the Samoan rugby team, the whole rugby team. He was about the same height as Jack, but twice as wide, twice as thick and more than twice as heavy. The man stood there, completely impassive.
‘Who are you?’ Jack asked.
A rumbling voice came forth, so low it might have come from the basement. ‘I’m Bruce.’ He stepped aside to reveal an even larger man mountain that could have been his younger brother. ‘And this is also Bruce.’ Bruce Two looked as though he lived on a diet consisting exclusively of anabolic steroids.
Bruce One said, ‘We’re your personal security detail, bro.’ As though choreographed, both Bruces widened their stance and crossed their arms over their chests.
‘I don’t need security.’
‘They’re worried about you, bro. They think you might be in danger.’
‘Who’s they?’
No answer from either Bruce.
‘I’m not in danger.’
Both Bruces remained silent.
Jack yelled out for Don but there was no response. There was no way he could get around the two men. He took out his phone but Bruce One extended a hand the size of a pizza.
‘Phones are dangerous. People can track you.’
Jack reluctantly relinquished the phone. Without taking his eyes off Jack, Bruce One passed the phone to Bruce Two and instructed him to turn it off. Jack heard glass smash and saw Bruce Two grinding the phone into the polished concrete with what looked like a size seventeen boot.
‘You’ll be safer in your room, bro. We’ll make sure nobody gets in.’
Jack considered the options, decided there were none, and returned to his room. The door was closed firmly behind him.
He lay on his bed fuming for ten minutes then returned to the bedroom door and opened it. Bruce Two’s enormous bulk sat in a chair seriously under-engineered for the task. The chair faced Jack’s door.
The guard glanced up from his phone. ‘Relax, man, we’ve got this.’
His clothes were all black, with the exception of ‘SECURITY’ emblazoned in white letters across his shirt. A chest harness held a body cam pointed directly at Jack, and an assortment of kit hung from a webbing belt around his massive waist, including a walkie talkie and a truncheon.
Jack retreated inside and closed the door. The landline phone had disappeared from his bedside table. He retrieved his laptop from the desk and powered it up. There was no internet signal.
He lay back on his bed, angry and confused, and attempted to tie all the threads together. Trying to understand why he was a prisoner in his father’s house.
Chapter Sixty-two
Jack was woken by a bladder the size of a small planet. He dragged himself to the bathroom. How long had he been asleep? He checked his watch – four in the afternoon. Then he remembered he was a prisoner in his own house. He stormed to the bedroom door and threw it open, ready to have it out with the security guard, but the chair was empty. Not a Bruce in sight. Bathroom break? Shift change? Jack didn’t care.
He flew quickly and quietly along the hall and down the stairs, avoiding the kitchen in case Bruce had gone for food or a glass of water to swallow his roids, then threaded his way through the house to the back door. He was, as far as he could tell, unseen. He sprinted across the expansive lawn, then cut through the forest until he intersected with the narrow track leading down to the old house. He stopped and listened. Apart from the frenzied buzzing of the cicadas, all was quiet. Then he heard the rustling of dried leaves. He spun around, ready for combat. A bush turkey stared back quizzically, then resumed scraping leaves onto its nest mound.
Jack pushed through the forest, then stayed under the cover of the trees when he reached the old house. Nothing appeared amiss.
He needed a plan. First, he should make sure there was nobody in the old house so that he wasn’t caught by surprise. Then he’d search the house for signs that the crew who murdered Patrick had been staying in the house. If that drew a blank, he’d check the grounds.
The lock box near the front door surrendered the key to the same old code. Jack silently opened the door. The house felt empty. He moved cautiously from room to room. Nobody. He started over, this time with a meticulous search. There was no evidence of the previous occupants – not a toothbrush, not an errant hair in a drain. The house had never been so clean.
The search outside was equally unproductive. No sign of a boat or van. No tyre tracks on the gravel. The garden shed held only Tony’s tools, along with Jack’s tiny childhood footprints pressed into the concrete slab of the floor, preserved for eternity. The garage, too, was cleaner than he could ever remember – not even a grease mark on the floor. They’d been good. Or they hadn’t been here at all.
Jack couldn’t suppress his feeling of frustration. He was sure he was right – somebody would only be this meticulous tidying up if they had tracks to cover. But it was hardly something that could be used in court for a conviction. Your honour, the house was much cleaner than usual. This had been a complete waste of time.
He stood in the middle of the lawn and took a last look around, willing something to appear. And then he saw a strip of freshly turned earth where the grass met the rear wall of the garage. Jack scooped away soft, moist soil until his fingers felt something firm. He dug more urgently, and a small square of plastic came into view. Black plastic. When his excavations were complete, he kneeled and stared at a two-metre-wide roll of thick plastic, knowing this would be a match for the black plastic shroud that had wrapped Patrick’s amputated leg. Got you, thought Jack. Their first mistake. They should have taken it with them. Although perhaps they didn’t want to risk being caught with something that would clearly tie them to the murder.
Jack used his keys to hack off a sample of the plastic, then re-buried the roll so that if Fidel reappeared, he wouldn’t know it had been discovered.
He reached for his phone to call Begley before remembering the Bruces had smashed it. Tony would have one. He set off towards Tony’s lodgings next to the big house.
As Jack crept through the bush beside Tony’s cottage, a whipbird let rip one of its pistol-shot calls, causing Jack to jump. He tried to calm himself with deep breaths. He emerged from cover and ran quickly down the side of Tony’s. He rounded the corner towards the front door and was brought to an abrupt halt by a collision into the very beefy Bruce Two.
‘Jesus,’ said Jack, in both fright and pain, his ribs sore from the bruising impact.
Bruce Two stared at him impassively.
Jack turned to flee, but Bruce One had materialised close behind him.
Bruce Two said, ‘Put your arms up slowly, and keep still.’
Bruce One patted him down. Jack felt a huge hand slide into his pocket and pull out the black plastic. Jack put down his arms.
Bruce Two said, ‘Mr Harris, is there anything at all I can get for you? A cup of tea?’
‘What the hell?’ said Jack, totally confused.
Bruce Two smiled. ‘Have I told you what I’m going to do with that tiny girlfriend of yours when I get hold of her? First, I’m going to pin her down and then I’m going to—’
Before he could even think, Jack lashed out at Bruce Two with a left–right to the stomach, then put his head down and charged into the guard’s midriff. Bruce Two wasn’t quick enough to brace and tumbled backwards with Jack on top of him. Jack rolled away as Bruce One’s hands clutched at his shirt.
There were angry shouts behind Jack as he ran away, but he was confident he could outrun such big men, their bodies built for strength not speed. Yet when he reached the driveway, the sound of pursuing footsteps remained alarmingly close. Jack gave a burst of maximum speed and, by the time he reached the front gate, his stitches were tearing painfully at his thigh and he was gasping for breath. He risked a glance over his shoulder, the Bruces were ten metres away and closing.
He launched himself out onto the road. Jack hadn’t heard the car, and looked up as it hurtled towards him. The driver hit the brakes and the car skidded to a halt, almost touching Jack’s knees. He stood transfixed with shock as a cloud of dust enveloped him. One of the Bruces yelled at him, breaking the spell, and Jack sprinted around the car to the passenger door. He scrabbled at the door handle. It was locked. He knocked hard on the window and, when the driver released the door, threw himself into the passenger seat and slammed the door closed.
‘Jacko, what’s happening?’
Jack knew that voice.
Ricky Martinelli smiled at him, then floored the accelerator as the Bruces started pounding on the door. With stones scattering everywhere, the car lurched forward and away.
Jack was breathless and incredulous at the same time. He grinned wildly and slapped Ricky on the shoulder. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I was overdue for a holiday.’
