Hindsight (40 page)

Flying low over the Victorian countryside, General Garland saw her first destination ahead in the transit corridor where the state highway was being widened for additional traffic between Melbourne and the international airport. Behind her, she heard Link Lasso swear at his console.

‘Trouble, airman?’ she asked.

He nodded, his face ashen. ‘It’s the care package, ma’am. Her signal just died.’

‘Both of them?’

‘Yes, ma’am. The phone and the glasses.’

Submerged in seawater, Mira felt the sting of Greggie’s scratches on her cheek, neck and chest. She heard the yacht motoring away from her and struggled to get up to the surface, hoping none of the crew would notice her missing any time soon. Aboard, she’d heard the voices of three other men but the ghostly yacht she’d seen at the marina had been large enough to accommodate up to a dozen.

Swimming up, she lost one of her new sandals as she broke through the smooth violet surface, gasping for air but took in water instead. Panicking, she swum higher until she broke through the invisible surface of the higher tide. Air never tasted so sweet, but she coughed and spluttered, ill from the mouthful of water she’d swallowed in reflex. Invisible waves splashed her face, causing her to swallow more — while the ghostly surface still appeared serene and windless below her, roughly waist-high.

Treading water — to her it seemed as if she was treading half above the water — she lost her second sandal while trying to adjust her shades to find a tide that appeared similar to the invisible waves that continued to assault her, but the mechanisms failed to respond. She was stuck with muddy violet of some time yesterday.

A short distance away, the yacht’s engine died and Mira heard the sounds of billowing sails. She tried to float on her back to stay quiet, knowing sounds always travelled better across water — especially at night — but she remembered the shark story Ben had told her about Amity Point and could see from the ghostly horizon that she wasn’t too far away; no more than an hour’s swim for a hungry shark.

Attempting to float and wave her arms in broad slow movements, she tried not to splash like a fish in distress. Slowly, she began to move nearer the marina. It took forever against the outgoing tide, and she felt her heart pounding loud enough to summon sharks from the far side of the bay, but she finally made it back to the pier.

Exhausted and shaking, she dragged herself barefoot up the splintered ladder onto the jetty, where she collapsed with her head hanging over the edge to cough up water. Then, gasping to catch her breath, she studied her surroundings through the muddy-violet haze.

A short boardwalk away, she saw a hotel called The Drift Inn with queues of yachts and other leisure craft tethered to seven fingers of piers. Now she knew where she was: at the hotel with the alley where she’d witnessed Colonel Kitching murder Lockman’s sergeant in an attempt to steal military technology from the two docs, Zhou and Van Danik. Tarin Sei had lost her sister in the same alley.

No such thing as coincidence,
Lockman had said, and yet this was clearly a popular marina for yachtsmen — and a convenient meeting place for any businessmen, regardless of their mode of transport. A signpost at a crossroads in the boardwalk directed visitors not only to the public toilets, showers and phones but also to the helipad, taxi-ranks, bus-stop, train-link and sprawling car park.

Voices on the wind caught her attention, and as Mira dragged herself to her feet, she stumbled in surprise at the ring of a familiar accent. Closing her eyes and shivering with cold, she turned her ear to the stiffening breeze and strained to hear it again.

‘
Oui
, senator. I’ll be happy to return for you in the morning. With this weather, the fishing should certainly be hotting up by then.’

‘Gabby!’ Mira shouted. ‘Gabion Biche!’

Gabby bid a hasty farewell to her drunken VIP then jogged over to Mira, and collided affectionately with a hug. ‘Mira, darling,’ she said, sounding genuinely concerned. ‘You’re soaking wet! And what happened to your face?’ Gripping Mira by the chin, she tilted her as if inspecting her cheek. ‘Oh,
oui
? You’re all scratched! See?’ She tried to lift Mira’s sunshades, but Mira swatted her hand away — reflex mostly, but also fearing that if Gabby caught sight of her own reflections, she’d be likely to start asking far more dangerous questions.

‘Fire!’ Mira blurted as soon as she’d caught her breath. ‘At the shop! You know the one? Where Ben worked!’ She remembered the mobile phone in her shirt pocket, but didn’t have time to work out the menu by trial and error herself. She pushed it at Gabby. ‘Call emergency … Please? You have to!’

‘Calm down. You go too fast. Where is Ben?’

‘At home.’ Shaking her head, Mira tried to shuffle thoughts of him higher as her first priority but couldn’t. ‘He’s safe enough for now, Gabby, but the others … they’re all trapped in the roof! Of the shop, you know? I have to —’ Mira choked and coughed up another belly of seawater. ‘You have to call the fire brigade! Oh, please? I’ve never begged for anything!’

‘
Oui
? Certainly, honey, but which shop is on fire? Off the top of my head, Ben has worked at three, and the nearest is right behind me.’

Mira shivered uncontrollably but heard Lockman’s phone slide open. ‘The shop with the robbery, the murder … Please hurry! There are seven people trapped in the roof!’

‘Sorry, this phone is useless. You might as well toss it back to the fish …’

‘No!’ Mira made a grab for it, just as Gabby handed it back and it fell with a splash over the side into the water.

‘I didn’t mean literally! It’s bad for the ecosystem!’

‘Gabby,
please
?’

‘It’s okay. I’ll use mine.’ She switched to speaker as soon as the line connected, and after a quick explanation by Gabby about her name, number and situation in relation to the address of the emergency, Mira heard an emotionless and unsympathetic-sounding woman advising that two fire units were already in attendance.

‘Tell them about the roof!’ Mira pleaded, and after another brief exchange with Gabby, the operator responded with the worst possible news.

‘Burned to the ground … no survivors,’ Gabby said, repeating it.

Mira collapsed to her knees, crying with her eyes clenched, trying not to imagine Lockman burning to death, his clothes catching fire, his skin melting. Even dying, she couldn’t imagine him screaming — not Lockman. He would have been working until the very end, trying to get out of there and the thought of him suffering like that because of her was too much for her.

‘My fault,’ she sobbed, wiping her eyes. ‘I chose him to die!’

‘I can’t believe that.’ Gabby pocketed her phone and crouched beside Mira, hugging her and stroking her hair. ‘You’re in shock, honey. Come along.’ Small but strong, she pulled Mira to her feet. ‘We have to get you out of this wind.’

‘I have to get to Ben!’ Mira wrenched free, tried to run, and stumbled barefoot and miserable with grief just as Gabby caught her again.

‘Great idea.’ Gabby hugged her and steered her around. ‘He’s this way …’ She took Mira by the hand and led her past a long line of ghostly yachts to a space reserved for authorised craft, which from Mira’s perspective looked empty.

‘Does the ferry stop here?’ she asked, disoriented. She couldn’t remember if she was closer to Straddie now or Likiba.

‘I’ve got an Edu-cat–; a catamaran for educational purposes — a double-hulled beauty called the
Edukitty
. Pretty slick for a floating classroom. She seats up to forty, or this week, a half-dozen half-blitzed senators.’ She guided Mira to the ladder, climbed down a few rungs herself first, and then helped Mira find where to put her hands and turn around to find the top rung. ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ Gabby hurried down ahead of her. ‘Watch your step. There are three more and then you’re down with me.’

Mira closed her eyes, finding it easier to step down into an invisible boat if she couldn’t see anything at all, but the shifting deck threw her off balance and against Gabby, causing the shorter girl to stumble back a step.

‘I have to ask something in case you pass out,’ Gabby said as she set Mira back on her feet and guided her to the nearest rail, out of the wind. ‘Why did you go to that place when it could only dredge up bad memories for Benny — and how did you get there, if not with him?’

Mira straightened, determined not to pass out, to drive strength back into her legs, at least enough to cope with the moving deck. ‘I was working with the men in the roof. Trust me, it was for Ben’s benefit.’

‘How? What kind of work can you do?’

‘Nothing, really. They were the investigators. I was the witness.’

‘As in
eye
witness?
Ear
witness or what … You’re telling me you were there for the robbery?’

Mira nodded. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘Well, that explains Benny’s interest in you, at least. He must be hoping you can clear his name?’

With a sigh, Mira supposed she should agree. Ben had confessed as much to her himself, but she couldn’t help but hope that his interest in her as a friend still went much deeper than that.

‘Come on,’ Gabby said, leading her into a warmer pocket of air.

Mira sensed that she’d entered the cabin. Gabby led her to a seat that felt like an endless padded bench, and she could smell vinyl, polished recently with lemon antiseptic.

‘There are dry t-shirts and overalls in this locker.’ Metal clanked a short distance away as Gabby opened it. ‘They’re mostly one-size-fits-all. We do a lot of eco-classes in mangroves and there’s always someone who forgets to bring a change of clothes for working in mud. Oh,
oui
, here we are. Sorry that I only have safety orange, but that hardly matters for the moment. There are spare shoes here too if you wish. I notice yours are missing?’

Mira didn’t reply, her thoughts still reeling back and forth from Lockman to Ben. She felt a soft bundle nudge against her stomach.

‘Here,’ Gabby said, drawing Mira’s hand down to clutch the pile of clothes. ‘Let’s just start with your glasses …’

‘No!’ Mira slapped her hand up to hold them on. ‘I’m … kinda sensitive!’

‘No need to be shy around me, honey.’ She opened Mira’s blouse before she could complain — an easy task with the top three buttons missing. Gabby peeled the damp cloth away from a web of scratches on Mira’s neck, making her wince as the fresh wounds met the air.

‘
Merde!
’ Gabby swore in French. ‘Who did this to you?’

Mira shook her head, preferring not to remember. Compared to Ben’s situation, her own needs seemed almost trivial. ‘I have to go.’ She struggled to stand.

‘You can’t! You’ll catch your death!’ Gabby tugged a dry t-shirt roughly over Mira’s head.

‘I can do it!’ Mira shrugged off her assistance. ‘Can you please just sail this thing?’ Pulling her arms through and then reaching up under the dry shirt, Mira removed her wet bikini top, but her fingers trembled at the memory of untying it for Greggie and the shudder triggered a shiver that ran all the way down her body.

‘What medication are you on?’ Gabby asked.

‘Nothing!’ Mira cursed the overalls, turning them about in her hands, trying to judge the front from the back. Without a collar, she couldn’t imagine where else to find it.

‘You’re sweating and shaking,’ Gabby said, sounding increasingly worried, ‘and whiter than a bone! More than just shock. You’re either on something, or your blood is pure adrenaline.’

‘I’m not on anything! I’m flushing out … I don’t know. A concoction.’

‘Does that mean you’re overdue —?’

‘
Never
due! Aren’t you listening?’ Mira gave up on the overalls and pushed them back to Gabby. ‘It’s hopeless.’

‘
Never
hopeless.’ Gabby took them from her, and flapped them out. ‘I know you’re from Serenity. Heard it on the grapevine, so I’m guessing you’re not just blind, honey. You were an inmate?’