Sometimes even couples or whole families took turns like that. It was a curious ghetto, however, given the money the displaced had brought with them. Poor refugees could not afford to stay in the city. Most lived in the outer suburbs, where jobs could be found at the industrial parks, or on the work farms beyond the mountains. Closer to the harbour, life was still pressured, but more pleasant, as it had always been.
Small knots of drinkers stood about on the footpath in front of micro-bars like the Idler. Others weaved along the pavement, singing and laughing as they moved between venues. She could hear the distant, sibilant roar of the crowd down at nearby Circular Quay, but instead of heading towards them, Julianne set her course for the shadowed, less populated streets on the far side of the rocky headland. There were many paths down to the wharf district, but Ferry Lane, a paper cut through the massive sandstone ridge overlooking Walsh Bay, was the one she needed.
On her first night in Sydney, an old sea-dog propping up the bar at the Hero of Waterloo had told her that Ferry Lane was the site of a bubonic plague outbreak back in 1901. Said the first victim had been a drinker at the Hero, and was one of the few who contracted the disease and survived. ‘Thanks to his medicine,’ the old coot had added with a grin, hoisting up a pint of dark bitter. Not really caring whether the story was true or just a tale to entertain a pretty girl, Jules had wandered down there the following day and noted that the cottages lining the ancient passage were all empty, undergoing renovation by the Department of Housing. It was one of the few streets in the centre of Sydney that wasn’t seething with life. That made it perfect for her purposes now.
The revelry faded quickly as she hurried on. From the unseen docks up ahead, the sound of shipping containers impacting on steel decks boomed up through the winding, narrow streetscape. She was pretty sure she had a follower.
At the next turn Jules increased her pace, giving her some distance but, as she’d intended, not enough to shake the tail. Another turn, a burst of speed, a few more metres between them, and then she was into Ferry Lane - thankful she had worn her Doc Martens instead of the Fendi FMBs she’d earlier considered. The heels would’ve been murder on the cobblestone surface. Instead, sure of her footing, she raced now, counting her steps, before taking cover behind a huge metal skip full of trash from the building site. From her shoulder bag she retrieved an M26 mil-grade taser and crouched down out of sight, gathering a handful of pebbles while she waited.
He was not long in coming. She heard his footsteps crunching towards her as he hurried to catch up, undoubtedly surprised that she’d slipped ahead of him. He faltered momentarily at the laneway entrance, before continuing.
Julianne counted his footsteps, compensating for the longer strides she had taken when running. When she judged him at range, she tossed the pebbles off to her left, where they plinked against a broken window. Not waiting to see if the distraction had worked, she committed herself to action. Standing. Levelling the weapon, and triggering it as soon as she recognised the squat outline of the man in the leather jacket.
For a half second she panicked, worried that his poxy pretend-leather coat might shed the prongs. But she needn’t have. The charge from the M26 could arc through two inches of clothing. And anyway, he was reaching for the pistol in his shoulder holster, exposing most of his centre mass. The darts struck him in the chest and channelled a solid hit of high-voltage arse kicking directly into his body.
The effect was … well, electric.
The Romanian grunted and dropped to the road surface, falling heavily onto broken bricks and rusted steel pickets. Jules had paid nearly five hundred bucks to have the M26 modified, removing the five-second limit on the charge. She let him have a good, long taste of the juice until she was certain she’d crippled him, at least temporarily. His gun had clattered to the ground and lay somewhere underneath him; a small problem she solved by hitting him again with brief bursts from the taser, interspersed with solid kicks into the back of his head. It was enough, after a few seconds, to move his body clear of the weapon. Jules stunned him once more as she darted in to retrieve it.
Holding the gun on her would-be assailant, the Englishwoman suffered just a second’s doubt. What if she had just zapped a completely innocent man?
‘Bullshit,’ she muttered, hefting the pistol for reassurance. ‘Who sent you?’
Another taste of the taser, a quick one.
‘Was it Cesky? Did Henry Cesky send you?’
Zap.
The only answer she received was more grunting and panting as the voltage slammed into him. She took a length of heavy steel rebar from the skip, checked up and down the empty laneway, and broke his kneecap with one vicious swing. He would’ve screamed had she not cut him off with another burst of crippling taser-fire.
‘Did someone send you after me?’
She backed away a few feet, still holding both weapons. The man had soiled himself. The stench was foul. His whole body was shuddering involuntarily. As he recovered, slowly and marginally, he began to moan.
‘I’m really not interested in your sob stories,’ said Julianne. ‘Unless you want me to break your other knee and hit you in the back of the neck, you need to cough up the information now. Were you being paid to get me?’
‘Yes.’ His voice was so weak and broken she almost missed the answer.
‘What’s that? Yes? Did you say “Yes”? So who sent you?’
She let him have another two seconds of voltage.
‘My boss, my boss,’ he replied, sounding as though he was pleading. ‘My boss take contract. I do job.’
A surge of anger boiled up inside Julianne and she smashed the bar down on the middle of his thigh. He screamed until she cut him off with the 26.
‘And who do you work for, hey? Who sent you out to ruin a perfectly good evening? I could’ve had fun tonight. I could’ve got
Jules could no longer control herself. She was so sick of running and hiding and running again. It was all she had done since escaping New York with the Rhino. A red mist of rage clouded her vision as she let loose with both the taser and the rebar. She could feel the jolt of the power surge every time she hit him, but she couldn’t stop. Her fury, her fear, her sick satisfaction at finally being able to lash out when previously she had felt only impotence and frustration - they all combined to doom this Romanian who had been sent after her.
When she was done, when she finally regained some control over herself, he was long dead. A ship’s horn wailed nearby as she collapsed against the edge of the skip, dropping the iron bar to the road. It was filthy with matted hair, bone fragments and clumps of grey matter. Julianne vomited.
She heard voices close-by and almost fled, but her father’s memory, speaking calmly to her across the years, stayed her reaction. ‘Better to be found at the scene than fleeing it,’ the late Lord Balwyn always said. ‘One always looks so bloody guilty when fleeing.’
She gulped in a couple of long, halting breaths. Gathered her disordered wits. And checked her surroundings again. Nobody. Not even voices or footfalls this time.
The body was heavy, a dead weight, but Julianne was strong from years of shipboard life and months on the run with Rhino across the American frontier. She detached the taser darts from the corpse and dragged it over to a builder’s skip that was only half full.
‘Bugger me,’ she grunted, heaving him over the side of the industrial bin. ‘Weighed down by your sins, I’ll bet.’
Her would-be killer thumped down on top of a mound of plastic wrapping and cardboard. She took a few moments to cover him with rubbish she gathered from another skip, and thought about washing away the blood. But what was the point? In her experience the streets around here were caked with blood and vomit every morning. She did take the iron bar and the taser with her, however. She would have to dispose of them properly.
It would have been foolish to walk back up the hill towards the pub. Had she run into Donna and Jeff, there would be no way of explaining what had happened. And even if she hadn’t, she looked a frightful mess, covered in hot blood and brain flecks. Best if she headed down to the docklands, where the bottom-feeding whores plied their trade. There at least she could toss the rebar into the harbour.
She was going to have to get out of Sydney, though. The cops were hardly likely to break a sweat over a dead Romanian hitman, but they weren’t the problem. Cesky was. He had found her again.
Julianne started walking. She didn’t spend much time wondering where she might go next, because there was only one choice, really. The only place in this country where she had any real friends.
