Leopard Dreaming (18 page)

Please? I only need a ramp to drive aboard.

First ferry is at six, lady, so shift your bug before I squash it.

I’m not moving until I speak to him.

So shout.
He frowned and waved to the captain, and the captain waved in reply, but he was already talking — or still — with that odd little earpiece. Through the binoculars, Mira saw his expression change when he looked directly at Maddy, and Mira realised she’d seen this part of history already.

Aye, sir. I’ll take good care of them … No problem.
He waved to the forklift driver, then called out to a large, lumbering, bear-like crewman who was still securing the last rack of cylinders.
Hey, Cooper
…
Apparently that lady just asked for a ride and I’m feeling generous tonight, so tell her I’ll take whatever cash she has on her as a fare for her and her passenger, provided they stay in their car. No wandering around on deck. No getting out for fresh air at all. Make that plain before you fetch their car aboard … Oh, and Cooper? Put on your happy face first.

Cooper nodded and complied with a stony smile, while the conniving captain headed up an external spiral of stairs to the wheelhouse, leaving Mira to wonder if that was the end of his conversation through that slick little earpiece. Kitching had to be out there somewhere in the bay, watching them. Perhaps watching her again now from the same position. However, she had no chance of spotting a periscope in
dark stormy waters, with or without binoculars, day or night. She couldn’t tell a periscope from a channel marker, buoy or crab pot, so if she wanted any chance to know more, she had to get out there, and up to the skipper’s height inside his wheelhouse.

‘I need a boat,’ she said urgently to Lockman. ‘A tall one, please. At least two decks above the water.’

‘Why so big?’ asked Symes. ‘Where are we headed?’

‘I’m not sure yet. Hopefully nowhere.’

‘The local police launch has two decks,’ Lockman suggested. ‘As feds, you could summon it here, right?’

‘If you’re prepared to wait an hour,’ Symes replied. ‘Longer, depending on how far up the coast they’re patrolling. Much easier to commandeer that Oculus class yacht, just there. I’ve always wanted a look inside one of those babies.’

‘Oh, not the
Liquid Limo
?’ Mira said, reading the name from its ghostly hull. The long sleek vessel lazed against the pier like a whale with its mouth open, sunning itself. In contrast to the other majestic vessels at the marina, it was not only the biggest, it also struck her as bizarrely futuristic with a pair of long dark windows that stretched from one end to the other on the middle deck. The large circular window on the top deck still gave the appearance of an eye watching her. Except the bullet-shaped tail seemed to be the nose of the boat, while the gaping ‘mouth’ at the back had three open decks, boasting a fountain on the top deck, like a whale’s spout, with a spa on the middle deck and swimming pool almost level with the water line.

‘Can’t we use one of the other ships, please?’ Mira shuddered at the thought of another run-in with Maybelline.

‘It’s the nearest,’ Symes said. ‘And there must be someone aboard already. I hear music. Just stay back out of sight together, until we’ve arranged it.’

‘I
can’t eat it!’ Ben shouted. ‘My gut’s twisted up, worrying about Mira!’

In a burst of fury, he swept his meal tray off onto the mat, and instantly regretted it. Desperately so. Not for the hot pumpkin soup that splashed up his bare legs, but for sending poor Nurse Willow Springs to her old knees to wipe it up with tissues and napkins. Not just a close friend of his mother’s, often also her workmate at the hospital, but old enough to be his grandmother and more than once, decades ago, his babysitter. Leaning out of his chair, he apologised and tried to help her, failing miserably. His ribs and hands wracked him with spears of pain, reminding him how many muscles he’d torn and bones he’d fractured. So many that his whole body ached, throbbed and burned almost constantly. Painkillers only dulled the physical aspects while increasing his mental anguish.

He screamed at the ceiling, feeling less of a man now than ever. It didn’t help that he was on the mainland living under his mother’s roof again. He couldn’t feed, bathe, or even urinate by himself, and having Willow tend to him, as she had so long ago, only made the situation all the more torturous for him.

‘I need to find Mira,’ he pleaded. ‘Won’t you please make a call to the police station over there?’ He knew Willow was on far better speaking terms with the local Sergeant on Straddie than he had ever been. ‘You’re Cassie’s neighbour. If you asked, she’d go and check at my house and get back to you.’

‘I did that already, Benny, and the news is your crazy girl has gone back to Serenity.’

‘But she’d never do that. Not if her life depended on it.’

‘Then clearly she was thinking of you, silly boy. Didn’t you hear my phone ring in the kitchen?’

He had. Not five minutes before she’d walked in, and it was the realisation that she had a phone in the house that sent him stir crazy … er.

‘That was the Moreton Bay grapevine at work. A friend has a friend with a relative’s neighbour who works on the security gate, and saw her there roughly an hour ago. Now hold still Bennet. You’re squirming worse than you ever did as a baby.’

‘I need to speak to her!’

‘Not happening. You’re not well enough.’

‘I
need
to speak to her. Have a heart, Willow. Please?’

‘Fine. There’s your phone … Oh, wait. You broke it.’ She stretched under his chair to soak up a splash that she’d missed.

Desperate to convince her otherwise, he reached for her cheek with his cotton wool club, and very gently and tenderly attracted her attention back to him.

‘Willow,’ he pleaded with his eyes as well as his heart. ‘I need to know she’s okay. For myself. For my health. Before it drives me totally batshit.’

‘That would be a short trip.’ Willow grinned, her old eyes shining with genuine kindness and well-meant humour, and when she struggled back to her feet, she kissed his forehead. ‘Rest assured, if the good Lord thinks you need her, he’ll send her straight to you. A
corporal by the name of Tarin Sei called, by the way. She wanted to know how you’re doing, and if she can stop by as soon as you’re up to it.’

Ben nodded, but clamped his eyes shut, holding back his distracting thoughts of Tarin until after the nurse left his room. He had to focus.

What would Mira do?
he asked himself, since she had so much more experience than him at escaping captivity successfully. At the hospital, he’d never made it more than three revolutions of the wheels on his chair before a nurse spotted him and escorted him back to rest and recuperate. A damned conspiracy, with General Garland coughing up for all his medical expenses before he’d had any chance to notify his own insurance company.

No different here either, since Garland had already paid Springs and two other nurses to ensure round-the-clock care for the next six weeks at least. A package deal for both him and his mother. In the interests of providing a safe house for them, General Garland had even rented his mother’s own rental investment house from her — and for her. It was meant to be the last place that Kitching would think to look for them. Or perhaps Garland didn’t realise that this was also one of the homes Ben had grown up in.

That gave him a small handful of modest advantages; the ferries within view of his window, the familiar floor plan of the rental. And the assumption he wouldn’t try to return to a place that had made him so physically ill the first time he’d returned after his release from hospital.

The one ingredient missing so far was opportunity. He only needed a moment when Nurse Springs wasn’t watching his door so vigilantly from the living room or kitchen. For the most part, she sat in the lounge watching all his mother’s classic John Wayne and Terence Hill westerns.

The bathroom between the only two bedrooms in the house had a sliding door each side, which also gave him an exit out through his mother’s room, down a short hall and out through the laundry. An old-fashioned trolley ramp led down to the clothesline. So the tactic Mira would have used would involve waiting until his mother fell asleep in her room, and Nurse Springs settled down for her own meal break in front of the television.

Once he made it down the ramp and down to the ferries, he could virtually roll all the way across the bay to Straddie, and a taxi horn or driver could summon Mira out from the house without him needing to go inside to find her.

If she’d gone out, he’d simply wait all night with the meter running.

Mira shuffled her feet impatiently, waiting with Lockman beside the water taxi sign, which enabled her a close view of the neighbouring pier, while the detectives attempted to commandeer the
Liquid Limo
for her to follow the Colonel’s trail.

‘Where’s your warrant?’ asked the invisible
Limo
skipper. ‘I’m also the owner.’

Mira scratched her ear, wondering if she’d heard that correctly. He sounded too young to own such an enormously luxurious vessel. He looked it too, if the male yester-ghost that she could see aboard the middle deck was also him.

The captain’s hat seemed a dead giveaway. Aside from that, he’d worn only a few tribal tattoos and a pair of dark leather trousers that night. He’d been partying on the central deck around a steaming spa with the pigtailed woman and three punkish, bald bikini girls with cruel facial tattoos, who’d been begging him to hand-feed them with grapes. Instead, he shook a bottle of champagne and sprayed them with frothy rain.

Using Lockman’s Night Owls set on day mode, Mira could lip-read nearly everything they’d said.

As each of the three in the spa stood up and splashed water at their “skipper”, Mira startled to see they’d actually been naked — clad almost totally in dark tattoos of gothic monsters, while their painted bikinis had begun to smear and drip down their bodies.

‘We don’t need a warrant,’ Moser said, from that end of the pier. ‘We’re in pursuit of a felon, and failure to assist us upon request or command can result in a hefty fine or jail term, in that order.’

The young skipper laughed. ‘You’d better not be referring to the First Statute of Westminster, which obligated all citizens of the commonwealth to join in the hue and cry since the year 1275. Because that “posse comitatus” was repealed in 1967. You might have been born then, but I wasn’t. You might as well demand to see the hauberke, breast-plate of iron, sword, knife and horse I’m required to keep for support of the law as a wealthy citizen.’

‘What’s a hauberke?’ Moser asked quietly, as if to Symes.

‘It’s a tunic made of chain mail,’ answered the skipper. ‘You’d need two of mine to fit you, big guy, but I don’t think Flicka will mind the extra weight. Shall I fetch her up from her stable now?’

‘Smart mouth! Open the gangway,’ Moser demanded.

‘That’s Mr Darkin to you, sir.’

From somewhere atop the
Limo
, Mira heard the familiar ring of Maybelline giggling, which triggered childish laughter in bursts from three other invisible women.

‘Go Declan!’ they cheered, and swore at the detectives with such a crude string of obscenities, they seemed to spew their invisible filth all over the pristine decks. They also caused Mira to wonder why
an educated man would ever invite such girls aboard in the first place. Surrounding himself with them seemed to lessen him.

‘Are you a lawyer?’ Symes asked calmly.

‘A musician, actually, but these days the two can’t be mutually exclusive. I do have a lawyer, though, if you’d rather speak to her. She consults for the Prime Minister.’

‘No need for that. Just let us aboard, Mr Darkin. The law still provides that any private property may be seized or appropriated for public use, or may even be destroyed without the consent of the owner, if —’

‘Oh, give me a break,’ Darkin chuckled. ‘That only applies if danger to the public is immediate, imminent or impending, and the nature of the emergency must be extreme and imperative. You look more like you’re trying to con your way on to a free cruise.’

Symes offered him a closer look at their ID wallets, but Darkin declined, opting to spend the next few minutes arguing over the legalities of commandeering his “baby” with or without his cooperation. It seemed like sport to him, and Mira couldn’t help but smile, despite the annoying chorus of giggling and foul outbursts from Maybelline and those three other invisible women.

As the legal argument degraded to a babble of complex jargon and case studies, Mira watched the male yester-host stride barefoot around the spa on the middle deck, topping up champagne glasses in exchange for kisses from his three grotesque sirens.

No sign of the pigtailed woman any more.

Through the long tinted window, Mira caught a glimpse of her creeping inside to a drinks bar, where she paused to shift aside the tallest Scotch bottle and reveal a small, secret wall safe.

‘To argue this much,’ Moser said, raising his voice, ‘you must have something to hide.’

‘Only the fuel bill, Detective. I’ll confess it’s embarrassing. At top speed, this baby sucks over five hundred bucks an hour, so that’s more bad news for you. Your pockets in those old Armanis aren’t deep enough to afford her.’

‘You’ll be reimbursed,’ Symes assured him. ‘This is your last chance to play nice if you want us to turn a blind eye to any illicit powders or “medications” you may have lying around.’

‘Oh, comedians now? Hilarious, but you’re missing the biggest glitch in your plan. Tell me which of you has a licence to sail anything this big. I’m betting it’s only me and maybe one of my ladies. If you really need a boat so bad, take my jet-about.’

Mira could see the ghost of that too; a sleek racing boat, called the
Ski Ya Later
, hoisted up into an alcove at the stern like a lifeboat.

‘We need three decks!’ Mira called out to remind them.

‘Who’s she?’ asked Darkin.

‘Nothing to you,’ Moser said.

‘Stay aboard as skipper,’ Symes ordered, ‘and send the ladies ashore.’

‘Oh, and you want chips with that too?’

‘We’re not joking, son.’

‘That’s a shame. You’re quite an act. Just tell me, what do I get out of it, aside from the pleasure of your company and the right to sue for any damages?’

‘This is taking too long,’ Mira whispered to Lockman. ‘Can you please tell me if that skipper is a fit and stocky young guy with dark hair and tribal tattoos? The night Maddy went missing, he wore only dark leather trousers and a captain’s hat.’

‘Must be his uniform,’ Lockman replied. ‘That’s him all right. He’s the rock star, Declan Dark. Real name Declanis Darkin or Leonard Héron, depending on which rag you’re reading. My kid sister used to be
a fan. If you can see four women aboard too, that’s his band, Dark Music. The girl with hair that’s usually in pigtails is Maybelline; the one you tried to help earlier, while the other three are much nastier, bald bitches who keep him busy getting busy, if you know what I mean. Airheads, really. All show and no substance. He hasn’t written a hit song in a few years, and my sister blames them. Apparently they keep him floating about, doing the same old concerts, and eating nice girls like you for breakfast.’

Mira almost laughed, since
nice
was the very last word she’d ever use to describe herself. He must have meant his sister. Hard to recognise the other three as musical artists, though, even through Lockman’s binoculars. More like creatures of the dark. They made her hesitate to stir them up, but she had no choice if she was ever going to get high enough in the air over the water to get into that ghostly cargo ship and discover the plans the captain had made for Maddy.

‘Tell him he’s been robbed,’ she called to Symes.

‘Robbed?’ asked Moser and Darkin together.

‘Last Thursday night, while you were spraying champagne over the bald three, Maybelline crept off and helped herself to your secret bar safe. She took a long string of pearls, two gold chains and three thick wads of cash. Oh, and she’s also the one who took your lucky jade guitar pick.’

‘She did
what
? … Excuse me one second.’

Mira heard angry bare feet thudding away across the upper deck. A heated argument broke out and she heard Maybelline confess — then blame him for paying too much attention to the other three. Not for the first time, apparently, and consequently not the first time she’d been caught compensating herself from his safe or wallet.

He called her a fowl-eating felon, amongst other things, and she called him a pescetarian phallus.

‘Fish-eating dick,’ Symes translated for Moser.

While they bickered, Mira tugged Lockman halfway along the pier to the spot where she’d seen Maybelline trip and skin her knee. A thick rope coiled around a spool, as if waiting to tether a neighbour, and protruding from the loose end of the rope she saw the glint of a dragon’s eye.

‘What’s that?’ Lockman asked.

‘Lucky, I hope.’

As she plucked up the triangular chip of jade, she heard struggling aboard the
Liquid Limo
, accompanied by a long scream and Moser chuckling, followed by a splash on the far side of the
Limo
.

‘Welcome aboard,’ Darkin said as he sprang down to greet them. ‘Make yourselves at my place.’ He sent the other women ashore, reminding them to don their skirts and blouses first. ‘Take the Gallardo.’ He tossed one of them the keys, and triggered a whirring sound which ended with a thud onto the pier as if he’d lowered a gangway. ‘Go do what you do best, ladies. Suck me dry … again.’