Читать книгу The Dragon's Skin - Ross Gray - Страница 9

‘If you’re going to look out that window put a bloody face shield on, Gareth.’

The window was in the gabled wall of the house that thrust forward into the small garden. Phil Severs thought they were far enough from ground zero of any explosion that the likes of Benny could concoct, but flying glass was a distinct possibility. It was difficult enough seeing clearly through layers of wet glass and drizzle without imposing another. He noticed movement on the roof of the house to the right of the day-care centre. The angle looked wrong. He doubted it would provide a vantage for surveillance or sharpshooting. The residents of the street and its neighbourhood had been evacuated for the duration. The police roamed over their homes at will.

‘Okay, Don,’ Gareth Nile said and turned from the window. The room was less crowded now. Various personnel had dispersed on their tasks. Everyone left seemed to be in thrall to the sounds emitted by the receiver on the dining table.

‘Why don’t they turn off the bloody television?’ someone complained.

‘Keeping the kid busy,’ said Don Collison. He stood at the end of the table, his head bowed, chin on his chest, concentrating.

‘There! There it was again. Dragon. I said someone said “dragon”.’

‘TV. It’s a kid’s show.’

‘It sounded like our phantom negotiator.’

‘We’re taping this. The audio-heads’ll unscramble it.’

‘Whassat? Laughing. Someone’s laughing.’

Don looked at Gareth, up from under his brows, a forehead of quizzical furrows like rills pushed in wet sand by wind and tide.

‘Laughter is good,’ said Gareth. ‘Whose is it?’

No one seemed to know. Everyone moved closer, craning to pick out meaningful sounds from what, to Gareth’s ear, was mostly white noise. But some of these people were experts in electronic eavesdropping; they could pick a raspberry from a fart at a boarding-school band practice. When a clear loud voice suddenly bleated from the plastic box Gareth had to stifle a snort of mirth. There wasn’t one around the table who didn’t pull back abruptly trying to disguise a red-handed expression caught on his or her face.

‘Don? You there?’

Don jerked forward and leaned his weight on the table. ‘Here! What’s happening?’

‘We’re coming out.’

The celebration around the table was driven by the release of tension. Collison opened his mouth to give instructions but the disembodied voice overrode him; it flatly stated what was going to happen next. At different points he interjected to protest the plans that unrolled from the speaker, but to no avail. He was clearly annoyed that he wasn’t calling the shots but ultimately he acquiesced.

‘Who the fuck does he think he is?’ growled constable Hoarse Whisperer.

‘He thinks he’s the man on the spot,’ Collison snapped. ‘Okay, you heard, ten minutes,’ he bellowed at the room. ‘Constable …?’ he said to the woman monitoring communications.

‘Baxter, sir.’

‘… Baxter. Gimme a mike.’ He was scooping his fingers back toward his body in an urgent gesture. The constable passed him a headset. ‘I want this broadcast to every unit.’ Baxter pressed buttons on her console and nodded to him. His mouth began to shape the words as the voice squawked from the speakerphone again.

‘Don?’

‘Yeah? What?’

‘Brie just triggered the bomb. Get a bang out of it?’

Don stared at the phone, his face a study in granite. Then he said with crisp, measured articulation, ‘Tell Benny that one of my techs is going to fix that bomb. And when it is in perfect working order, I am going to kick it so far up his arse he’ll be able to sell his turds to Al Qaeda.’

Any fear left in the room was dissipating quickly, transmuting to anger, amusement or disappointment. Collison cut a swath with his glare and everyone felt vaguely guilty for succumbing to Benny’s deception.

‘The mother’s here,’ said Baxter.

Collison’s authority returned with the decisiveness of his response and everyone seemed to snap back behind him in professional rearguard formation. ‘Where?’

‘Down at the Wattle Street cordon,’ said Baxter. ‘Carrying on a treat.’

‘Right. It’s safe now, but we don’t want any soap opera in the middle of the street. Have them bring her here around through the back lane.’ Collison turned to Nile. ‘Get your gear on, Gareth. You and I are going over there to drag Benny out by his ears. A little something for the media. Might still extract some dignity from this bloody pantomime.’

Nile squirmed into his police-issue waterproof. ‘You handled it the only way you could, Don. There was no way of knowing if the bomb was the real thing. It might be. Phil still has to check it out.’

Collison tossed off curt instructions to the team. Then he pulled his jacket on. He paused at the door. ‘You all did well,’ he said gruffly. ‘Good experience if nothing else. Constable Baxter put out the word for all personnel to stand down. At ease, but alert until we secure the bastard.’ He joined Nile on the front verandah. The two men hunched and squinted at the house opposite. The sky sagged over the street like a sheet of soggy cardboard. The rain was a cold wet film that hung in the road like a dirty shower curtain. Gareth could barely make out the barricades at each end of the block.

‘Don’t think there’s too many photo opportunities out there, Don.’

Collison grunted. ‘C’mon.’ His foot touched the first step down from the verandah deck, when he stopped and breathed, ‘Shit, they’re coming.’

Nile looked up. Three figures were emerging from the gateway opposite, huddled under the borrowed umbrella. Nile paused on the verandah, but Collison hooked the hood of his jacket over his head and continued down the garden path to the gate. Let him have his moment, thought Nile, no need for us all to get wet.

Then the afternoon fell apart.

The road was just wide enough to have a narrow median strip. It was newly planted with native grasses and wide-spaced, drought-ravaged saplings that looked like moulting feather dusters. Gareth wasn’t that far from the action but the actors looked like smoke in a fog.

As the small cluster of figures crossing the street stepped from the curb, one broke away at an angle and ran to the median, then stopped and turned. The tall figure left behind flung the umbrella away and scooped the small figure into his arms. The man who ran shouted two words back at him, but Gareth didn’t catch them. They were drowned out by Collison’s cry.

‘Benny, you bloody moron, stand still or you’ll get yourself fucking shot!’

The front gardens of the neighbouring houses were suddenly bristling with armed and armoured coppers, like malevolent black garden gnomes. Blunt commands punched through the mist. Benny Bovell was blind to their existence. He turned toward the sound of Collison’s voice, eyes shadowed under his hood trying to locate its source through the drizzle. Then, spying Collison, he shoved his hand in the pocket of his parka, and moving purposefully towards him, he withdrew it again.

Gareth Nile had a degree in psychology. He was a senior constable in the Behavioural Analysis Unit. He knew all the theories, he had read all the literature, and would still say years from then that no matter what the fact later proved to be, he saw Ben Bovell pull a gun from the pocket of his snot-coloured parka. He knew by the end of that day what he saw was an illusion. But he saw it. He saw its lethal black snout. They all saw it.

All except one man. He was closer. He had special knowledge. He raised his hand and pivoted, clutching the child to him, his torso contorted to shield her from sight and sound and stray projectiles. He called out as he turned, repeating a single phrase that might have been ‘It’s a toy.’ But Gareth never heard the words. Their sense was lost in the rattle of gunfire.

When Benny pointed his ersatz weapon Gareth rammed his back against the wall of the house, the blind end of the verandah. He could see Don Collison at the bottom of the short path squatting behind the solid wooden front gate, cursing and scrabbling in his clothing, trying to pull his weapon free. Gareth wasn’t armed. He could see the child drawn swiftly into the hunched form of the man as if pulled into a tent from the storm. He couldn’t see Ben Bovell. The burst of gunfire was short. And it didn’t really rattle. Dampened by the dead, waterlogged air, it popped dully like corn in a microwave oven.

Then it stopped.

All this: a blur of seconds.

Gareth eased his back along the wall to peer around its corner. But before he reached it he saw the huddled figure on the far side of the road rise with the child in his arms. He saw Collison stand, his gun hanging by his thigh. Without looking left or right, cardigan man strode out towards them. He heard the door open behind him and someone come through talking softly but urgently into his radio. He stepped away from the wall and scanned the road.

At first all he could see were four or five men edging forward, their weapons pointed at something on the other side of the median strip. Then he saw the shapeless mass: the collapsed tent, the fragile membrane that failed to withstand the storm. Gareth turned back to the door. He was about to shout when Collison stole his words. ‘Get the fucking ambulance down here fast!’

‘It’s coming!’ the man at the door called as he ran past. It was the boss of the State Emergency Services team. Gareth followed him down the steps. At the curb, cardigan man, holding the girl with her head pressed into the hollow of his neck, was brushing past Collison. He didn’t alter his pace or glance at Don as he spoke.

‘It was a doll, Don. A black plastic doll. I told you he didn’t have a gun.’

Collison, whose intent must have been to intercept him, swivelled like a toreador to avoid a collision and barked at his back. ‘Who the hell can believe what you say anymore?’ Then he spun on his heel and joined the SES man as he hurried to the scene. The street was filling up with coppers who, bereft of purpose, had abruptly become bystanders. The lights of the approaching ambulance haloed in the mist.

Gareth met the man and child at the gate. ‘Is she okay?’

‘Let’s get her out of the rain.’ They sidestepped to let Phil Severs and his bomb crew through.

‘Where’s Daddy?’ said the girl, her voice muffled. She raised her head. Her eyes were large and bright and moist, her bottom lip was quivering. ‘Where’s my doll?’

‘Mummy’s on her way,’ Gareth said quickly.

‘Where’s Mummy?’ the girl immediately responded, jerking her head around.

The man in the cardigan gave Gareth a glance that he felt like a stab of ice-cream pain, through to the back of his brain. ‘She’s coming,’ Gareth assured her, nodding. ‘She should b—’ He was cut short by a commotion back in the house.

‘Get your bloody hands off me! What was that noise? Where’s my daughter? Y’gonna hang there useless as a nun’s twat, what the fuck’s goin’ on?’

They were climbing the steps to the verandah, the child twisted in her protector’s arms. ‘Mummy?’ She turned back and pushed herself to arm’s length to look in his eyes. ‘Mummy, Uncle Dave!’ Her face was trapped between conflicting emotions.

As they walked through the front door the girl called out and a small bottle-blonde woman burst from the living room. ‘Jeezus, Briette, you’re alright. Y’frightened the shit outta me!’ She snatched the child from Uncle Dave’s arms. ‘Sorry, sorry, luvvy. Soap and water. Mum’s usin’ bad words again. Jist a bit worried.’ She crushed the child to her and planted loud, vigorous kisses over her head and brow. Then she seemed to notice the two men for the first time. Her eyes slid over Gareth and discounted him, but when they fell on Uncle Dave, held fast. She had beautiful eyes, wide and green and slightly tilted, like a cat’s. Their lids were large but not heavy, and they were green too. She had the kind of face for which a little makeup is too much, but it looked like someone from Revlon had been practising on it. It was what was in the eyes that interested Gareth.

There was definitely surprise, perhaps fear; suspicion and anger made an appearance; none of these were odd under the circumstances, but he hadn’t expected guilt. Finally her eyes were filled with defiance. She held Uncle Dave’s gaze and demanded. ‘What the fuck – sorry, Brie baby, Mummy’s bad – what are you doing here?’

‘Ben asked for me.’

‘It’s none of your fuckin’ business!’ she snapped defensively. There it was, the fear and guilt were back. She forgot to apologise to her daughter for her vulgarity. ‘Where is Ben? Where is the silly bugger? What’ve you done with ’im?’

‘He’s been shot, Sharon,’ he said softly. Her body and face froze. ‘Wait here. I’ll go and see what the damage is.’ He turned toward the doorway. As he did Collison came through it. He looked at the tableau in the hallway and summed up the situation.

‘He’s alive,’ he said. ‘But not in top shape.’

Sharon had a new culprit to release upon. ‘You fuckin’ bastards, you fuckin’, fuckin’, fuckin’ weak cunts … pigs … you …’ Her voice became shrill.

The child’s eyes grew wide with fear. She began to whimper. ‘Mummy, Mummy …’

‘Sharon,’ said Uncle Dave quietly, nodding toward the child. ‘Briette.’

Sharon stopped immediately, choking on her words. She held the child closer and buried her face in her thick hair. Then her head snapped up, her eyes awash with anger and tears, her cheeks muddied by mascara. ‘Where is ’e? I wanna see ’im.’

‘Not possible,’ said Collison. His voice was bluff but softened by sympathy. ‘They’ve got to move him fast.’ The sound of a siren working itself up to melodramatic pitch drew all their eyes to the grey world across the threshold. ‘There he goes now,’ Collison added redundantly. ‘We’ll get you to the hospital.’

‘Mummy. Where’s Daddy? Where’s my doll?’ the frightened child sobbed. The questions were a way to grapple with her confusion but they offered her mother another vent for her boiling emotion. A reflex grab to retain the dignity of righteous rage.

‘Where’s her doll?’ she demanded of Collison. ‘Where’s m’daughter’s bloody doll?’ It was clear to Gareth that she was desperately clutching to a raft of anger for fear of drowning in grief. She wasn’t coming apart in front of these bastards, she wasn’t going to lose any more than she had today. The female officer who had escorted her hovered uncertainly in the background.

‘It’s evidence now, Sharon,’ said Collison looking at his shoes. ‘Sorry.’

‘Evidence?’ She stared at the three male faces looking down at her. She was a short woman. She appeared stocky in her thick winter clothes. Her face wasn’t beautiful but it was striking. Her mouth was small, her bottom lip full, like a small pink pillow. She had high cheekbones and the bridge of her small nose was curved. There was something of a fragile, predatory bird about her. Where it was visible her complexion was pale olive, and Gareth guessed she was really a brunette. ‘Evidence!’ she repeated with gathering vehemence. ‘What the fuck kind of doll is this?’

‘It’s the kind that makes little girls happy and grown men cry,’ said Uncle Dave. ‘Come on, Shaz. I’ll explain everything.’ And he put his arm gently around her shoulder and shepherded her and the quietly sobbing child into the bedroom and closed the door.

‘Well, he’s useful for something,’ said Collison as they walked into the living room.

‘What’s the damage?’ asked the police media spokesperson.

‘Only three shots fired – there’s a plus,’ said Collison. ‘All accounted for, another plus. On the debit side: they’re in Benny’s back.’

‘Shit!’ said the media man.

‘Maybe you can highlight the quality of police marksmanship.’

‘They had no choice, Don, he was pointing a gun at you,’ said Gareth.

‘He was pointing a doll at me, Gareth,’ said Collison dropping into one of the Mrs Aldaker’s over-stuffed chairs and squeezing his forehead between thumb and fingers so that it puckered like a quilt. The rain had plastered his hair to his skull and exposed its sparseness. ‘A black plastic fucking doll.’

‘Shit, shit, shit!’ said the media man.

‘When our friend is finished in there,’ a roll of the head to the bedroom, ‘help him vanish. The press has a long memory. Get a look at his face, and you’ll need more spin than Cyclone Tracy. Don’t worry, he won’t be interested in publicity.’

‘We were helped in our negotiations by a friend of the family who wishes his privacy to be respected?’ said the media man, drawn, in the way of his tribe, to the silver lining.

Collison shrugged. ‘The bullshit is your department.’ He stared at his feet and the media man stared at him staring at his feet. ‘I’ll talk to you when the shooters have been debriefed.’ When it was clear no other advice was forthcoming, the media man made a clucking sound with tongue and teeth and left the room.

After a minute or two of retreat into their own thoughts Gareth said, ‘Did you see what he did when the bullets started flying?’

‘He fell over, Gareth.’ There were equal measures of fatigue, exasperation and sarcasm in his tone. ‘A fairly normal reaction in those circumstances.’ Their minds hadn’t been dwelling on the same thing.

‘Not Benny,’ said Gareth. ‘The Fair Unknown.’ He gestured with his chin toward the bedroom door.

Collison slowly raised his head. His sardonic gaze slid up Gareth’s length from his shoelaces to his face. ‘Took Arts at uni did you, Gareth?’ he said.