Black & Blue: BookShots (Detective Harriet Blue Series) (11 page)

‘She won’t kill her,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’

‘Your actions have caused the hostage injury!’ Chris snapped.

‘Jenny Spelling didn’t move an inch when that gun fired,’ I said. ‘I reckon Hope’s bluffing. Probably put a hole in the deck. She can’t risk the only leverage she’s got.’

Chris switched back to Hope’s channel.

‘Hope Stallwood, this is Detective Christopher Murray. The detective who disabled your engines acted completely without authority.’

Hope’s voice came over the radio: ‘Detective, your people are going to get an innocent woman killed. Is that what you want? Now you’re going to have to provide me with another vessel. If you don’t start listening to me I’m going to kill her. OK? I’m going to murder her right in front of you!’

She was almost screaming. Murray needed to bring her tension levels down before she did anything stupid. I’d raised them to manic level, but it had been worth the risk. The water police and coastguard vessels were slowly manoeuvring around the front of the
New Hope
, trying to box her in while she was distracted.

‘Hope, we’re going to need you to tell us what condition Mrs Spelling is in,’ Murray said. ‘We can’t see what’s going on. Did you wound her just now?’

There was silence for a long time. Hope was focused on her victim. She wandered down the bridge a little, turned and paced back. Her face was taut. Jenny’s legs were moving. I could see her knees jostling through the gap in the bridge wall.

‘There’s something wrong with her,’ Hope’s voice crackled on the radio, frighteningly calm. ‘She’s having some kind of seizure.’

‘
WHAT EXACTLY’S WRONG
with her?’ Tox asked.

‘Murray said she’s got some kind of kidney thing,’ I said. ‘I don’t think she’s had her medication. That’s how the family knew something was up. Why they reported them missing.’

My whole body ached to be on that boat. Though she wasn’t giving us any details, I knew Hope could have wounded Jenny with that gunshot, just to mess with us. The shot could have tipped Jenny over the edge into a seizure.

Hope walked to the end of the upper level of the boat and looked at the vessels ringing her, paced back again and stared at her victim, now still.

‘Hope, are you willing to let us send a medic on board?’ Murray said.

Hope went to the end of the boat again, lifted her gun and started firing. I ducked, but she wasn’t firing at us this time. Murray’s boat had been carried forward a little further than the others as we came to a stop behind the
New Hope
, and she was warning him back. I saw all three officers on board dive for the deck.

‘Girl’s gonna run out of bullets in a minute,’ Tox grunted.

He was right. Hope stopped firing and returned to the bridge. When she reappeared she had a hunting rifle in her hand. She pointed it skyward and fired at the coastguard chopper, which was hovering high above us. She only gave it one shot. This was probably her last gun.

‘
Move back!
’ her voice screeched on the radio. Murray put his boat in reverse and came into line with the rest of us.

Every second of growing darkness was agonising. Jenny wasn’t moving. A couple of times, rogue officers on the water police boats tried to creep forward into the circle we’d established around the
New Hope
. But she spotted them soon enough and forced them back.

I could see the air compressor she’d tied Jenny to. A third of the heavy, squat machine was hanging off the edge of the boat, just beyond the gap in the bridge wall. When she felt threatened, Hope would go to the machine and rattle it, push it further over the edge and then pull it back. I waited for Jenny to move. She didn’t.

I couldn’t take it any longer. All of the vessels around the
New Hope
had their spotlights trained on the water around the hull. I got an idea, and flicked ours off.

‘What’s the plan now, genius?’ Tox asked.

I switched radio channels onto the coastguard channel, so that Hope couldn’t hear me. I radioed the three coastguard boats spread throughout the circle.

‘Coastguard, coastguard, this is Detective Harriet Blue, over.’

‘Coastguard here.’

‘Can you guys wait a few minutes, then switch your lights off? I’m trying to set up a path in, over.’

Hope had noticed I’d switched my spotlights off, and that the ocean in front of my boat was black. I played it casual, leaning on the top of the bridge, talking to Tox. If I was careful, she’d think I was just switching the big light off to conserve my boat’s battery power. I could feel her watching me, but she said nothing to Chris about it as they negotiated over the radio.

My plan was working. After a time, one coastguard boat switched off its light. Then another. Hope hardly noticed. She was ranting and pacing.

‘You don’t fucking understand. You’re a man. How could you? You probably grew up in some mansion in bloody Mosman or something. You probably went to private school, didn’t you? You were a poor choice of negotiator, my friend. There’s no way you could possibly understand me. All right? So don’t say that you do.’

‘We had another negotiator for you,’ Chris sighed. I could hear his dismay over the radio. ‘He’s been held up.’

Half the ocean around the
New Hope
was in darkness. The police boats cut beams of light through the black waves. It was time to go.

‘You coming?’ I asked Tox. He looked bewildered, until I started taking off my shoes.

‘Oh shit,’ he sighed, peeling off his jacket.

AS WE SWAM
along the side of the
New Hope
to the diving ladder, the sounds of Hope’s yelling from the upper decks reached us. We’d dived deep from the back of our vessel, popping up just once in the dark between the boats to breathe. The threat of Hope seeing us and firing into the water made my jaw lock with terror. I pulled my gun out of the back of my pants and put it on the deck in front of me as I got to the top of the ladder. I hoped that if I needed it, it would still work. I didn’t know how it would react to the saltwater.

The cold seized everything, made every muscle hard as stone. I stood shivering on the deck as Tox climbed out. We were near a dark, cluttered galley. Our socks squelched on the polished wood. We listened to the voice above us, her footsteps on the floor. Tox was sniffing the air. He went to the pantry and pulled open the door. Leaning against it was a heavy man in a white business shirt. Tox checked his pulse, but he was long gone, his whole body a sickening purple.

‘Water safety guy,’ Tox said. He pushed the limp body back into the pantry and shut the door. ‘Probably caught on to her.’

We crept around the back of the galley and up the stairs, stopping when we were high enough to look across the floor to the bridge wing. Jenny was on her belly now, unconscious. She seemed to be breathing. There were no open wounds on her that I could see, adding hope to my theory that the gunshot earlier had been a bluff. The compressor she was tied to was hanging halfway out over the side of the boat, its small wheels spinning. I could see Hope’s leg by the entrance to the bridge. She paced, wandering over to Jenny and then back to the helm, never leaving her alone for more than a few seconds.

‘We’ll come up the other side,’ Tox breathed. ‘Get her from behind.’

‘We should split up in case she lunges for the compressor. I’ll go up this side.’

My partner’s eyes glittered in the dark. He nodded and checked the magazine in his gun. We were set to go until Hope’s voice rose in pitch and volume, stopping us in our tracks.

‘Where are the occupants of that boat?’ she screamed.

I LOOKED, AND
saw her pointing off the port side. It was our boat that had caught her attention. The water police on the vessel beside ours had seen us go into the water and lashed our boat to theirs, but hadn’t sent another officer over to cover our absence. Hope had been watching our boat and noticed no one was on board.

‘Shit,’ I whispered.

‘The officers who were on that boat moved over to the next one.’ Chris tried to cover us. He didn’t sound confident enough. ‘They’re there, Hope. No one’s—’

‘Someone’s boarded me,’ Hope snapped. ‘One of your officers has boarded me, haven’t they? You people have no regard for life, do you? I’m going to kill this innocent woman if you don’t get your officers off my fucking yacht.’

She went to Jenny and actioned the rifle, pointed it at the woman’s head. The wind whipped the young woman’s hair as she stared out defiantly at the boats around her. I got up on my haunches and got ready to run.

‘Hold your fire!’ someone yelled on the wind. ‘Hold your—’

A couple of shots clanged off the edge of the vessel, just above Hope’s head. She slid down to her backside and growled with rage.

‘Fuckers!’ she yelled.

I watched the fury tremble through her, down her chest and through her stomach like electricity in her muscles. It was anger that moved her, taking over and crushing her logic. She kicked out and toppled the compressor over the edge of the boat.

‘No, Hope!’ I yelled. ‘No!’

It was too late. I saw the heavy machine go over the side.

THE COMPRESSOR HIT
the water with a massive splash. The rope around Jenny’s legs whizzed over the side. I sprinted along the deck and reached it, just as the rope ran out and yanked the wounded woman off the side of the boat.

I dived in after her, the fifteen feet of free air between the deck and the water feeling like ten minutes of sheer terror before the blackness of the ocean swirled around me.

The water was so cold that for a moment I didn’t know if I’d been successful in grabbing at Jenny’s hands. I held tight, and as we sailed downward I realised that I had a death grip on one of her wrists. We were sinking fast. There was no sound. The woman in my hands had come to and twisted and bucked as we plunged towards the depths.

We sailed downward. The pressure on my chest and head was too heavy to bear after only seconds. A voice in my head began screaming.

It’s over. Let go. Let go. Get to the surface!

But I refused to let go.

HOPE WATCHED THE
bubbles rise from where her hostage and the cop had disappeared into the black depths. A couple of officers from boats nearby leaped into the water, diving low to try to help, but Hope knew there’d be no saving them. The deaths were easier now. She hadn’t meant to make the compressor go over the edge. The anger had zinged through her, taking possession of her limbs. She was surprised at how little impact the killing made on her psyche. There was a heat, a ringing in her ears, a pounding in her skull, but no regret, no paralysing sorrow. That was good. If she needed to kill more now to get free, she knew it would be achievable.

‘Is she coming up?’

The voice came from behind her. Hope turned and saw a man standing there, the rifle she’d been holding trained on her face. He was soaked through to the skin, blond hair plastered to his forehead, two black eyes and a bruised nose. His face seemed passive, but when Hope didn’t answer, he snapped.

‘
Is she coming up
?’

‘No.’

The man with the gun sneered. ‘I actually didn’t mind that woman.’

He turned the gun swiftly and slammed the butt into Hope’s jaw. She staggered, and her legs went from beneath her. She felt teeth wobble in her mouth, swimming in blood. The man must have been a cop. In the spinning world, she saw him go to the edge of the bridge wing and wave at the boats below.

‘Suspect down!’

I’ll never go down
, Hope thought. She reached up while he was distracted by something below, her hand shaking. She slid her index finger into the trigger guard and pulled.

The gun roared, kicked out of his hand. The cop fell.

I’D CLIMBED ALONG
Jenny’s body, pulling at handfuls of her clothes, and got to her ankle. It seemed years passed as I yanked at the rope. When the weight came free, we hung in the blackness. My eyes were bulging in my skull. She did nothing. The fight had gone out of her. I grabbed, clawed at her neck and head, yanked upward at her arms.

There was water in my lungs. My limbs were starting to shudder. I was drowning. I couldn’t tell if we were rising or not. Jenny’s hopeless eyes stared up at me. I needed her to kick. Do anything. Keep me down here with her, when every cell in my body was telling me to let go.

Suddenly, she started kicking. We grabbed at each other, pulled upward. The surface came unexpectedly. There were hands under my arms, wrapping around me, dragging me onto my back. I vomited water. Jenny was wide-eyed, being dragged towards the boats by cops.

‘Let me go,’ I said. ‘I need to get to the boat.’

‘You’re all right now.’ The officer who had me was trying to pull my head back, relax me, get me to safety. ‘Take it easy. Breathe.’

This was no time to take it easy. I wriggled out of his grip and swam as hard as I could for the
New Hope
, kicking faster as I saw smoke rising from the back deck.

SHE’D GOT HIM
in the face, it seemed. The cop rolled away, scrambled until his back was to the helm. He got up, grabbed at the bridge to try to steady himself and knocked the throttle forward. The engine roared and squealed, tugging at the tangled ropes and sheets. Hope went for the gun but he kicked it away and lunged at her, grabbing at her hands, the blood making his fingers slick.

They rolled, twisted, tumbled down the stairs into the galley. His face was a mask of blood, hideous and wet, two cool blue eyes bulging wild as he came for her. Hope grabbed a knife from the kitchen block and threw it, backed it up with a second one. He caught the blade in the air and kept coming. She fell beneath him, the blade inches from her face, and pushed upward with all her might. His blood dripped on her. Her hands slipped, and the knife shunted into the wood right by her ear.