Jill Jackson - 04 - Watch the World Burn (7 page)

‘It can’t be easy now, just with her and her father. He’s a little odd.’

‘Yeah, and losing her grandma after losing her mother like that.’

‘Has her mother ever been in touch?’ asked Troy.

‘Where from – the afterlife?’

Troy frowned. ‘I didn’t know she died. I just thought that after she walked out on them, she might have tried to get in touch.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Lucy.

‘What are
you
talking about?’ asked Troy.

‘Mona’s mother never walked out on them. She was electrocuted in the bath. Mona saw her body.’

Jill’s emotions had battered her before. Rolling storms of anxiety that would start before she’d even opened her eyes in the morning. Tornados of fear that would begin somewhere near the base of her spine, churn through her stomach, then gather momentum and hurtle up through her chest. Somehow, when she was about fifteen, after years of waking everyone in the house, she’d learned how to silence the terror as it screamed through her throat and broke free from her mouth.

But Jill had never imagined that emotions could make her feel the way she did now. Although always horrendous, her fear had become familiar. But this was nothing like fear and she knew she would never get used to it.

Right now, she believed this pain could kill her.

This time she’d been in the laundry, her eyes and nose streaming. Walking from room to room seemed to keep her a few steps ahead of the agony. But when she stopped, sometimes unaware she’d even been moving, or that now she was still, she felt it coming. It stalked her. She’d hurry to the next room, wanting to run but lacking the energy for anything more than a flat pace.

Periodically, it caught up. Maybe five or six times so far in this space between sunset and dawn. This time it found her in the laundry. Jill dropped to the ground and scuttled to the nook between the washer and the sink. Curled in tight on herself. Kneeling, crushing her chest into her legs, her forehead on the tiles, her arms holding everything in. She couldn’t see how she would not be ripped apart by this pain if she didn’t physically contain it.

Jill screamed into the triangle between her knees and the tiles. Her tears smelled like blood. Surely she was bleeding somewhere? You couldn’t feel this bad and not bleed, could you?

Scotty.

She’d never see him again.

Scotty on fire in the car, his big, beautiful body melting. She screamed with him, called to him as he called to her. He begged her to help him and she begged him right back.

‘Let me die!’
Jill screamed into the floor.

In the captain’s office, Emma Gibson couldn’t even glance in Jill Jackson’s direction. It had nothing to do with guilt.

Emma didn’t feel bad about trying to take Scotty from Jill. She’d seen for years that he watched Jill in just the way she wanted him to stare at her. She’d seen Jill oblivious, in denial, or just not interested. Whatever the reason, Jill did not take what was there on offer. And Emma had wanted what was on offer. Whenever Jill was around, Emma found it impossible to get Scotty to herself, but when Jackson had gone undercover, Emma had known she had a shot. She’d coaxed him to apply with her for a training posting at the academy in Goulburn. And when he’d accepted, she’d felt that the planets were aligned again. Since sixth grade, Emma had always been able to have any boy she liked.

And for a while at the academy, she was winning. There’d even been that one night.

But it was during that night that she knew. Scotty hadn’t gone to Goulburn to be with her. He’d come to the academy to distract himself from Jill. From worrying about Jill undercover. From worrying about Jill working with that Fed, Delahunt. Emma had never met Gabriel Delahunt, but she’d never forget his name. In Goulburn, Scotty spoke about both of them at least five times a day.

But Emma Gibson wasn’t having difficulty looking at Jill right now because she felt bad about all that.

She couldn’t look at Jill because it hurt to see someone suffering that much.

There were no tears. Jackson sat very still. But even though she angled herself to face another direction, Emma could feel Jill’s despair. It was the way she held herself, tight and closed in. And her eyes, all but swollen shut.

Emma had cried last night for Scotty. All night. Her chest felt bruised, her throat as though she’d been punched in the neck. Emma knew she’d cry again – right now she felt the sobs trying to push their way through her swollen throat. But she also knew that, some day, she’d hurt less than she did right now.

Emma lifted her grey eyes and flicked them across Jill’s bowed head. She couldn’t imagine Jackson ever would.

‘I want to know everything,’ said Jill, her voice reasonable, flat, dead.

‘It’s pretty bad, Jill,’ said Captain Andreessen.

She met his eyes. Said nothing.

‘Right. Well, if you’re sure,’ said Andreessen. ‘How would you feel about making this a full case briefing?’

‘Of course,’ said Jill. ‘We’ve got to get the case moving as fast as we can.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Look, Gibson’s here because she was the last to speak to Scotty. I thought perhaps you would want to hear things from just me and her. That’s why we’re in my office.’

Jill waited.

‘But for a full briefing we’ve gotta move this over to the squad room,’ he said.

Jill stood. Her captain stayed seated. Shifted a little, cleared his throat.

‘It’s just ... Before we go over there, I wanted you to know that I’ve invited some others to the meeting.’

At that moment Jill thought it fortunate that she could feel absolutely nothing. When she’d woken at six this morning, still on the laundry floor, she’d known that something had broken inside her. The numbness was back, but now she couldn’t imagine ever feeling anything again. Somehow she knew that had to be wrong, though, because impatience was tightening the small of her back, clenching the already aching muscles of her gut. Why doesn’t Andreessen just get the fuck up and get on with this? She stared hard at him.

‘Others,’ she said. Who cares. Jill was vaguely aware that Emma Gibson was now also standing.

‘Actually, they should be over there now,’ said Andreessen, pushing hard on the arms of his chair to raise himself. He was out of breath just getting up. He stood there, an awkward expression around his grey, grizzled mouth. To leave the room and lead the way, he’d have to push past Jill, something he’d never had trouble doing before. If people didn’t get out of his way fast enough he usually ploughed right through them. Hell, she’d once seen him use that barrel of a belly to literally bounce a techie out of his office when he’d stuffed up an operation.

Jill turned and walked from the room. She wasn’t going to do some kind of politeness dance with her captain and Gibson. She had to learn everything she could about who had taken Scotty from her.

And then she had to find the motherfucker and kill him.

Just great. Three people Jill did not want to see.

Elvis, a Maroubra detective who hated her. And she hated him right back.

Her former commander, Superintendent Lawrence Last. She didn’t need his grave, sympathetic nod right now.

And Gabriel.

Jill paused at the door to the briefing room. Eight or so men and one woman stared back at her. Gabriel jumped up off the desk he’d been perched upon and moved towards her. She took a step back, right into Captain Andreessen immediately behind her. Everyone froze.

‘Ah, let’s get in there, hey, Jackson?’ said Andreessen, loudly. Closer to her ear he said, ‘I’ll fill you in straight away on why the Feds are here.’

Jill sensed the tension in the room but it meant nothing to her. She avoided eye contact and took a seat, second row from the back, closest to the wall. She squinted towards the whiteboard, then mapped the room, her eyelids so swollen that she could almost see them, a red frame around everything she looked at.

Superintendent Last stood next to Gabriel on the opposite side of the room. She refused to meet Gabe’s eyes, continued her survey. Even with his stooped shoulders and hung head, Last was too tall. As in basket-baller tall.

Andreessen had stopped on his way to the front and was speaking closely to a cluster of her former colleagues, Maroubra detectives. Moses, Elvis and Ray. Finally the conversation appeared to be over, and Andreessen moved to the front of the room. Moses and Ray turned in their seats to catch Jill’s eye, all smiling sympathetically. Elvis kept his face forward. His real name was Eddie Calabrese but he loved the nickname – he also referred to himself as King. Gag. Jill liked the nickname too – the fat fuck looked just like Elvis in his final days. He’d given her hell when she’d first started here. Spread rumours that still outran her when she visited copshops around the state. He could never get over the fact she’d put his baby brother, Luca, in prison. Well, that’s what you get for being an outlaw bikie, she thought.

Jill sensed Gabriel approaching from behind her. Without looking, she knew who it was – no one else in this room could move so quietly. He slipped into the seat on her right.

Andreessen cleared his throat. ‘First of all, I’m going to say that losing Scotty like this is fucked,’ he said. ‘Every one of us here in this station loved him. Big bastard was like a son to me. But Scotty has a father. He has a mother and a stepfather and a sister, Rhiannon.’

Silence.

‘Now, I know all of you want to get out there and find the cunt that did this,’ Andreessen went on. ‘I know most of you know what happened now, but we’re going to go through it again, adding in some new findings. This shit is hard to say, and it’s hard to hear. We’ve got the shrink coming in this arvo to talk to all of us. She’ll be here, in this room, at three.’

Groans.

‘That’s bullshit, Captain,’ sang out Moses. ‘How we gonna work if we’ve gotta be back here at three?’

‘Make yourselves available,’ Andreessen said. ‘Superintendent Last is going to conduct the briefing, but before I hand over to him, I just want to welcome one of our federal cop brothers ... ah, colleagues.’ Andreessen cleared his throat again and nodded in Gabriel’s direction. ‘This is Special Agent Gabriel Delahunt.’ Heads swivelled. Jill studied the desk. ‘The Feds will be working with us on this one because of the similarities of this murder with the Caine murder at Incendie last Thursday.’

But why bring the Feds in? wondered Jill. Two possibly related murders didn’t automatically mean they had to be involved. These weren’t crimes against the Commonwealth. Was there some organised crime component here? She watched Last shuffle his way to the centre of the room. Organised crime? What would they get out of a hit on an old woman? Was she the wrong person’s mother? She’d met David Caine. No way he was mobbed-up. And Scotty said he had no sheet.

She snuck a peek at Gabe. He was watching her. Lawrence Last began to speak and she faced the front.

‘I’d like to offer you detectives my heartfelt condolences on losing one of your own,’ began Superintendent Last. ‘I am really terribly, terribly sorry. I promise you we will deploy any and every available resource to deliver justice to Detective Hutchinson’s family, friends and colleagues.’

Jill remembered feeling surprised when she’d first heard Last speak. She’d expected a lot of noise from someone so tall. But Last’s quiet, mannerly voice carried, even in the large briefing room. She’d never heard anyone try to interrupt him. He cleared his throat and took a sip of water.

‘This is very difficult for me to say, and it will be hard for you to hear,’ said Last. He paused, the room completely silent. ‘Yesterday, at eleven hundred hours, Detective Hutchinson was stopped at the lights on the corner of Anzac Parade and Maroubra Road, on his way back to Maroubra Area Command. While he was stationary, an improvised incendiary weapon, most likely a Molotov cocktail, was thrown by an unknown suspect through the open passenger-side window of his vehicle. Burns evidence suggests that the device landed in Detective Hutchinson’s lap and exploded, igniting his clothing.

‘It appears Detective Hutchinson may have reacted in shock or passed out, or his foot has slipped onto the accelerator. In any event, witnesses report that his vehicle ran the red light, and a city-bound bus collided with it, the impact point being the midsection of the car, passenger’s side. This impact rotated the vehicle one-hundred and eighty degrees, propelling it into oncoming traffic on Anzac Parade, resulting in a head-on collision with a sedan. Detective Hutchinson and the civilian were both trapped, but it’s believed that Scotty most likely lost his life when his vehicle was hit by the bus.

‘A passerby has used the fire-extinguisher from the bus to put out the fire in Hutchinson’s vehicle within five minutes of the cars coming to rest. The civilian in the passenger car, a young woman, is in a satisfactory condition in the Prince of Wales Hospital with leg injuries. The bus driver and two passengers were admitted briefly and released, following counselling. The citizen who tried to assist Detective Hutchinson will be recommended for a bravery award.’

Jill shook her head a little. Why didn’t someone say something about the noise? If they could get someone to stop those drums playing so loudly she’d have a better chance of hearing the superintendent. For fuck’s sake, it’s only getting louder and faster; you can’t have a meeting like this. She pushed her fingers into her ears. The noise dulled a little, thank God. But, funny thing, Jill could suddenly hear Last’s voice more clearly, like it was being miked right into her head. She pushed her fingertips deeper. His voice sounded different this way, though, kind of tinny.

‘You’re a weak piece of shit, Jackson,’ Last said, straight into her ears.

What?

‘And you’re a dirty little whore.’

What? Don’t say that. Jill shook her head again.

‘You’re a weak piece of shit and a dirty little whore, and you’ve never been anything but a failure.’ Last spoke calmly, reasonably, deep inside her head. He told the truth.

‘I know,’ she said. She nodded.

‘Jill.’ She felt Gabriel grab at her hands, trying to pull her fingers from her ears. ‘Jill,’ he said. ‘Open your eyes.’

‘What a waste of space you are, Jackson,’ said Superintendent Last. ‘You’re so fucking weak you couldn’t even protect your partner.’

‘It’s true,’ she said.

‘And you were fucking him. Whore.’

A deep sob escaped her. Jill couldn’t help it. She hung her head.

‘Jill! Stand up.’ Gabriel was tugging at her now. She could feel him struggling, trying to manoeuvre his arm under her elbow to lift her from the chair. She pushed her elbows even more tightly into her sides. ‘Shut up!’ she hissed at him. ‘I’ve got to listen to this.’

‘You should have killed yourself a long time ago, Jackson,’ said Last. ‘Dirty little whores like you shouldn’t take up any more space.’

He’s right. Jill nodded again. ‘You’re right,’ she said.

‘I can’t hear you, Jackson,’ said Last. ‘Speak up, whore.’

‘You’re right,’ she said more loudly, shrugging out of her jacket as Delahunt tried to drag her to her feet.

‘I’ve got her,’ she heard Gabriel say. ‘Just back off. I’ve got her. Jill, it’s Gabriel ... Open your eyes!’

‘Let me go!’
Jill opened her eyes. She saw everyone in the squad room, too close now, and getting closer. She dropped to the floor, scuttled under the desk. Curled in tight. She could hear it coming, running now, flat-footed. Laughing.

She began to scream.