Voodoo Doll jj-2 Read online

  'Scotty.' She reached up and wrapped her hands around his neck, pulled his face down to hers. She closed her eyes, her lips parted.

  Nothing happened.

  Her eyes snapped open. Scotty's mouth was a whisper from hers, his lips curved in a small smile.

  'What are you doing?' he said.

  'I would've thought that was obvious,' she answered, trying to pull him still closer.

  'You know, Jackson,' his mouth almost touched her own, 'we could've been doing this every night for the past year.'

  'So, we're doing it now. Shh. Too much talking.'

  'Except tonight you've been drinking.'

  She dropped her hands, stepped backwards. Suddenly freezing, she wrapped her arms around her body.

  'You think I'm drunk?' she said.

  'Look, Jill, not drunk, but… wait!'

  She snatched up her sandals and strode through the sand.

  'I don't want it to be an excuse,' he called after her, 'a mistake. I don't want you to regret this tomorrow and freeze me out. Would you frigging wait a second – you're going the wrong way!'

  What was the right way? Humiliated tears rolled down her cheeks. She felt ridiculous and so exposed in this dress. She would never get stuff like this right.

  31

  EXTRA POLITE. SHE hated it when they were especially civil to one another.

  For her part, Isobel had to be courteous in order to censor the screaming shrew who wanted to tear strips from her husband. How could he go to Cabramatta to look for that psychopath? What else, she wondered, have you been doing that I don't know about? Why did you ever hang around that freak in the first place? Why didn't you kill him when we were at Andy's? Instead, she asked, 'Can I get you a drink of something, hon?' She'd just tucked Charlie in for the night.

  'No, that's okay, babe,' he said, mid-lift on a shoulder press using his hand weights. She knew he hated to talk when he was in the middle of a set. Hence her question right now.

  'I'll get something later,' he added, his deltoids distended, a vein bulging in his neck.

  I'm sure you will, she thought. It usually took three reminders to get Joss to take out the recycling. He'd taken the bottles out four nights in a row now. The hundred-litre recycling bin was full of his empties.

  At the mirror in their bathroom, she carefully cleansed her face, pretending not to notice the new creases of worry around her eyes. She toned and moisturised, then brushed her teeth. Please God let them catch him, please God let them catch him. A mental hymn in tune with the rhythm of the electric toothbrush. She gargled the same song.

  Tidying the bathroom a little, Isobel thought about the night ahead. She knew she'd find it difficult to sleep – replaying their interview at the police station, Joss's answers, the warnings of the detectives. She wondered whether she should take Charlie up to north Queensland. Probably. But what about Joss? Despite the fact that he'd managed to open up to the police, could she trust him to behave rationally down here alone? And she knew he wouldn't come with her. The inner tussle already tightening her stomach, she reached for the yellow pills at the back of the medicine drawer. Left over from minor surgery, the opiates would get her at least a few hours of dead sleep. She swallowed two with a handful of water from the tap, grimacing when one stuck on the way down.

  She pulled on shortie pyjamas and climbed into bed. Twenty minutes later, she was snoring through a magazine on her face.

  A hand over her mouth. The blood blasted from her toes to her crown in the split-second before she recognised Joss's face above her own. His eyes hard, unrelenting. Telling her: they are here. No fucking around. It's fight or die.

  All without words.

  Our baby, his eyes said next. I'm going to get her.

  He took his hand from her mouth. Gave her the bat. Remember the lessons.

  With the thought of her baby in that man's hands, the strength that ran through Isobel's body left her wanting to bite, tear flesh with her teeth. She positioned herself behind the door. The bat felt spongy in her hands; she felt she could snap it in two. Already furious with the fuckers for taking so long to get to her, she practised seeing the blood spray from a head, wiping it quickly from her eyes to swing again. When the massacre had first started, Joss had been careful to step around the bodies. Even when the mounds at Kibeho had grown so wide that there was nowhere else to walk than over the dead and dying, he would try to avoid treading on a hand or a leg on his way to pull another breathing person out of the pile. By the end of the third day, however, he marched over dead faces, strode through brains, stepped straight onto balls. There was no other way to get around.

  Now, Joss moved silently through the darkness of his home, ignoring the hands grappling at his ankles, moving through the body parts. His own hand was finally whole again, holding his knife. He heard it laughing and he smiled back at it, his teeth flashing in the dark.

  I'm coming, Cutter.

  Leaning against a counter in Joss's kitchen, Cutter stared at his diluted reflection in the glass of a cabinet. While he listened to the quiet movements above him, he allowed himself some time to think about what he was going to do to Mouse. He couldn't believe the fucker wouldn't come tonight, that he didn't know his fate for turning Cutter down.

  He selected a toothpick from a tiny bowl on the counter next to him, and worked at some food caught in his teeth. As usual, when using a toothpick, he couldn't resist the urge to press the sharp thing deep into the softest crevice of the gum, the agony mushrooming a feeling he equated to what love must feel like. He sucked happily at the metallic tang of his blood.

  Studying the now slimy wooden splinter in his hand, it occurred to him that he should use the needles on Mouse. Perfect. He sucked the toothpick dry before placing it on the bench. Lately, he couldn't get enough of that taste.

  He needed to hurry now. He walked into the loungeroom carrying the twelve-litre container in one hand and the machete in the other. He slashed a few times at the couch in the centre of the room and began sloshing the accelerant over the furniture.

  Esterhase could see no way out of it. He felt sick, his limbs rubbery. He'd been pissing his shit out for over a week. Everything he ate turned to water. And his gut ached. He rubbed it unconsciously as he stood silently in the upstairs hallway of the house in Balmain.

  Cutter had explained about Joss. Esterhase still felt disbelief. He hadn't even recognised him when they'd done over that house in Green Valley. But Joss was only part of the problem. Man, the whole thing was so fucked up. If he killed Cutter, this prick Joss still knew too much. And if he didn't do this job with Cutter, the cunt would completely schiz and he'd be next. Mouse had better be packing for Vietnam right now, he thought. Cutter had just smiled when he told him Huynh wouldn't be coming. Esterhase had nearly shit his pants just looking at him.

  He breathed in the dark, his heart hammering. Too many things could go wrong. Who knew when Mouse would break, or when Cutter would get them all caught. He had to do this job tonight, and then he was getting the fuck out of the state. Shit, maybe he'd even go to New Zealand.

  Esterhase stood in the dark thinking about what he had to do tonight. He bent forward slightly as the fist in his gut squeezed at his innards.

  Isobel had thought it impossible for her heart rate to increase further until she heard the furtive footsteps stop outside the room. She'd spent a few moments agonising over the possibility that Joss could return quietly to the bedroom and she might hit him by mistake, but she knew now as certainly as if there were no door between them that the person standing out there was not her husband.

  The corridor outside the double doors was black; the light in the bedroom with her, slightly brighter. She stared so hard at the rind of darkness that she thought she was imagining it when the door finally began to move. Terror wrestled with rage; her senses focused, and she squeezed the bat harder. Ready.

  The scream of a siren split the air and Isobel recognised their fire alarm a heartbeat before the door flew
open and her nightmare barged in. While the siren shrieked, the dance between her and the masked man seemed silent, slow.

  I'm sorry Joss, she said internally. I let him get closer than a metre.

  Somehow, the man had got hold of the end of the bat. He raised the knife above his head. Isobel could almost feel the pain in her shoulder where she imagined it would slice into her. Her daughter's blue eyes danced in her vision and she sobbed goodbye. Then, with the strength of a grief beyond anything she had ever experienced, she drove the bat forward into the chest of the man in front of her, propelling him three feet across the room. She felt the movement of his weapon as it fell past her ear. She considered picking it up, but, bent double, he was already preparing to move forward again.

  Instead, she went to meet him.

  Isobel lifted the bat above her shoulder and kept her eye on the ball, just as her brothers had taught her. She swung, the bat slamming into his temple, the thud shuddering up her arms and into her neck, causing her to bite her tongue.

  With the fire alarm sobbing in her ears and blood from her tongue on her lips, Isobel spoke quietly to the man unconscious in her bedroom. She ignored the smoke swirling around her feet and his body.

  'You leave my family alone,' she told him. 'You leave us alone.'

  He didn't move, but she kept the bat close, and bent down to him. The fire alarms bawled for attention: it seemed as though there had never been silence. She was aware of a heat somewhere behind the doors, but she had to know. Carefully at first, and then scratching, clawing, she ripped at the balaclava covering the face in front of her.

  The skin at his temple was already beginning to bulge. Somehow, she knew that his brains were leaking out of a fracture in his skull. The long dark hair curled into the hollows of his neck, like snakes nesting comfortably with the spider tattoos.

  He had carried the other children through the carnage, crying, just like this, crooked in his right arm. Joss couldn't hear his daughter's sobs over the sirens, but he felt them, wet, against his shoulder. The alarms deafened him, just as the mortars had, but he was well practised at relying on his other senses. He stayed close to the wall, moving slowly, ignoring the bodies at his feet – back from Charlie's room to the bedroom, to Isobel.

  The balaclava walked out of the smoke.

  And they faced each other.

  He manoeuvred Charlie a little higher. Her legs clung to him, terrified. Inconsolable at being woken from her sleep by this noise, she buried her face deeper into his neck. She didn't see the shock in the masked man's eyes when he saw that his opponent carried a little girl.

  Joss smiled at him. The sight seemed to confound the man further. The enemy shifted his machete in his hand.

  Joss knew somehow, with certainty, that this was not Cutter. This fact heightened his impatience. He willed the man to act.

  The enemy signalled to Joss to raise his hands. Joss walked forward, quickly, still grinning, watching the other's eyes widen with anger, disbelief, watching him raise the machete, wave it, a warning.

  Joss kept his left hand pressed tight against his leg until they stood eye to eye. He watched the other's internal dialogue – this guy's crazy! Should I do something? He's holding a kid! The fucking house is on fire!

  Joss studied the eyes even more closely when he plunged his knife into the masked man's diaphragm. As awareness dilated the enemy's pupils, Joss angled his body sideways a little, turning Charlie's body towards the wall. The blade of his knife buried in the other man's gut, Joss felt his opponent's heart beat in his hand. He stared intimately into the other man's eyes and pulled the knife upwards.

  When he felt the flames climbing the stairs, Joss reclaimed his knife and wiped it on his leg. Charlie's body now shook with coughing. Joss's eyes streamed in the smoke.

  He walked into his bedroom, heard the mortars falling, and listened to the howls of the orgiastic Tutsis drunk on the blood of the Hutus in the camp. He stepped over another body, and looked around for his wife. His saw the open window and crossed the room quickly. In the light from the half-moon, he saw that Isobel waited.

  Joss handed their daughter through the window, and climbed out to join her on the roof.

  32

  JILL SHUT THE bedroom door, but she imagined she could still hear the woman rocking out there, back and forth, by the bay window. It reminded her of a circus tiger pacing its cage – the obsessive movements of a beast driven mad by captivity. She'd spoken to many sufferers of schizophrenia, and some told her that the medications made them feel just like that, imprisoned in a chemical cage in their mind. She focused on the room in front of her to distract herself from Joss's mother. Perhaps Mrs Preston-Jones was fortunate to be oblivious to the trouble her son faced.

  Gabriel sat on a tapestry-covered chair at one side of the queen-sized bed. Joss and Isobel sat on the bed on either side of their little girl, Charlie, who was asleep, lightly sedated, under the covers. They all still reeked of burned wood. Images of the charcoaled bodies from the morgue this morning wafted through Jill's mind with the scent. Superintendent Last had called Jill just before dawn from the crime scene, the family's terrace in Balmain.

  'This thing's gone to hell,' he told her over the speakerphone while she walked through her bedroom, still in darkness, gathering clothing. 'Your victims, Preston-Jones and Rymill…'

  'Are they okay?' Jill could hear the fire brigade sirens in the background.

  '… are on their way to the Prince Alfred Hospital.' He obviously hadn't heard her. 'Smoke inhalation, nothing too bad. Their house burned down.'

  'Okay,' said Jill. So what was Last doing there?

  'There's a couple of bodies in there, Jill. Preston-Jones admitted to killing two men who broke into their home tonight. He says it's our boys – the same men that committed the home invasion at the Wu property.'

  Jill sat on the edge of her bed, raised a hand to her mouth. 'And is it?' she said.

  'Looks like it, Jill. The description fits. The local boys called me when they got Preston-Jones's story.'

  'So what happened?' she asked.

  'I haven't yet personally spoken to Preston-Jones. I've been told that he and his wife escaped with their child by climbing onto the roof. Neighbours called the fire brigade, but their house burned out. The Inspector here tells me there was almost certainly some sort of accelerant used. The fireys couldn't get anywhere near it until it was all over.'

  'Have you seen the bodies?' Jill wanted to know.

  'They're on their way out now. The Inspector tells me that formal identification won't be possible tonight. It smells like a barbecue out here, Jill.'

  She winced. That smell. She knew that many in the emergency services could not eat pork because of the scent memory. A burned human body smells just like roast pig. She'd once worked with a cop in Wollongong who vowed never again to attend a barbecue after a triple-fatal house fire in Corrimal.

  'I've already spoken with Gabriel,' said Last. 'Sorry to do this to you, Jill, but I'll need both of you out at Glebe as soon as possible. I'd like you to meet the truck when it arrives with the bodies.'

  That had been hours ago, Jill thought, and it was still only just past mid-morning. She and Gabriel had travelled straight from the morgue to the hospital, but had been told that Joss was back at Balmain police station and that Isobel and Charlie had come to this house in Mosman.

  Springing Joss from Balmain station had not been easy. The Inspector had come in early for the show. The Balmain crew wanted in on the glory. They all knew the story would go global: Victim kills machete slayer, saves family from burning home!

  She and Gabriel had waited until Joss had given his first recorded interview of the events and then booked him out, the political powers of the taskforce outweighing the pissed-off Balmain command. Last wanted Gabriel to do the full interrogation. They'd yet to decide whether charges would be laid.

  Jill looked at Joss, now lying curled around Charlie, and figured further questioning would have to w
ait. His eyes were heavy-lidded and blinked more slowly by the moment. Isobel, pale-faced, stared at a wall. Shock, thought Jill. It's best to let these people sleep a while. She caught Gabriel's eye, gestured with her head to the door. He stood.

  'We're going to let you guys rest for a bit,' said Gabriel. Joss looked up blankly. Isobel didn't move. 'We're going to stay out here if that's okay with you, Joss?'

  Not that you have any choice, Jill thought.

  'Of course,' croaked the man from the bed, and coughed. 'And thank you.'

  Gabriel followed her from the room and closed the door. Jill bypassed the sitting room, and found a homecare nurse drinking coffee in the breakfast area off the kitchen. The woman stood when they entered.

  'Please,' said Jill. 'Don't let us bother you.'

  The woman picked up her cup and left the room anyway, glancing back nervously from the doorway.

  'Probably all over the news by now,' said Gabriel, walking into the kitchen.

  'Ah, you think?' said Jill.

  'Yeah, it would be,' he said, missing her sarcasm. 'She's probably been watching it all morning.' He nodded at the doorway the nurse had just exited.

  Jill smiled tiredly. 'You making coffee?'

  'Yup. Want one?'

  'Definitely.' She opened the fridge. 'You think they'd mind if we fixed ourselves something to eat? I'm starving.'

  'Well, we'd be feeding him if we were back at Balmain doing the interview. What's in there?'

  Jill found a Tupperware container filled with shaved ham and another with finely sliced Swiss cheese. She grabbed a loaf of bread and a jar of hot English mustard and closed the refrigerator door. There was a tomato and an avocado in a bowl on a benchtop.

  'Toasted or plain?' she asked him, spotting a sandwich press near the kettle.

  'Might as well go the whole hog.' Gabriel clicked the switch to turn on the appliance.

  They took their food out to a sun-saturated, wrought-iron outdoor setting in the backyard. Jill moved an overflowing ashtray from the table, her nose screwed up in distaste.