hand.
Joss knew somehow, with certainty, that this was not Cutter. This fact heightened his impatience. He willed the man to act.
The enemy signalled to Joss to raise his hands. Joss walked forward, quickly, still grinning, watching the other's eyes widen with anger, disbelief, watching him raise the machete, wave it, a warning.
Joss kept his left hand pressed tight against his leg until they stood eye to eye. He watched the other's internal dialogue – this guy's crazy! Should I do something? He's holding a kid! The fucking house is on fire!
Joss studied the eyes even more closely when he plunged his knife into the masked man's diaphragm. As awareness dilated the enemy's pupils, Joss angled his body sideways a little, turning Charlie's body towards the wall. The blade of his knife buried in the other man's gut, Joss felt his opponent's heart beat in his hand. He stared intimately into the other man's eyes and pulled the knife upwards.
When he felt the flames climbing the stairs, Joss reclaimed his knife and wiped it on his leg. Charlie's body now shook with coughing. Joss's eyes streamed in the smoke.
He walked into his bedroom, heard the mortars falling, and listened to the howls of the orgiastic Tutsis drunk on the blood of the Hutus in the camp. He stepped over another body, and looked around for his wife. His saw the open window and crossed the room quickly. In the light from the half-moon, he saw that Isobel waited.
Joss handed their daughter through the window, and climbed out to join her on the roof.
32
JILL SHUT THE bedroom door, but she imagined she could still hear the woman rocking out there, back and forth, by the bay window. It reminded her of a circus tiger pacing its cage – the obsessive movements of a beast driven mad by captivity. She'd spoken to many sufferers of schizophrenia, and some told her that the medications made them feel just like that, imprisoned in a chemical cage in their mind. She focused on the room in front of her to distract herself from Joss's mother. Perhaps Mrs Preston-Jones was fortunate to be oblivious to the trouble her son faced.
Gabriel sat on a tapestry-covered chair at one side of the queen-sized bed. Joss and Isobel sat on the bed on either side of their little girl, Charlie, who was asleep, lightly sedated, under the covers. They all still reeked of burned wood. Images of the charcoaled bodies from the morgue this morning wafted through Jill's mind with the scent. Superintendent Last had called Jill just before dawn from the crime scene, the family's terrace in Balmain.
'This thing's gone to hell,' he told her over the speakerphone while she walked through her bedroom, still in darkness, gathering clothing. 'Your victims, Preston-Jones and Rymill…'
'Are they okay?' Jill could hear the fire brigade sirens in the background.
'… are on their way to the Prince Alfred Hospital.' He obviously hadn't heard her. 'Smoke inhalation, nothing too bad. Their house burned down.'
'Okay,' said Jill. So what was Last doing there?
'There's a couple of bodies in there, Jill. Preston-Jones admitted to killing two men who broke into their home tonight. He says it's our boys – the same men that committed the home invasion at the Wu property.'
Jill sat on the edge of her bed, raised a hand to her mouth. 'And is it?' she said.
'Looks like it, Jill. The description fits. The local boys called me when they got Preston-Jones's story.'
'So what happened?' she asked.
'I haven't yet personally spoken to Preston-Jones. I've been told that he and his wife escaped with their child by climbing onto the roof. Neighbours called the fire brigade, but their house burned out. The Inspector here tells me there was almost certainly some sort of accelerant used. The fireys couldn't get anywhere near it until it was all over.'
'Have you seen the bodies?' Jill wanted to know.
'They're on their way out now. The Inspector tells me that formal identification won't be possible tonight. It smells like a barbecue out here, Jill.'
She winced. That smell. She knew that many in the emergency services could not eat pork because of the scent memory. A burned human body smells just like roast pig. She'd once worked with a cop in Wollongong who vowed never again to attend a barbecue after a triple-fatal house fire in Corrimal.
'I've already spoken with Gabriel,' said Last. 'Sorry to do this to you, Jill, but I'll need both of you out at Glebe as soon as possible. I'd like you to meet the truck when it arrives with the bodies.'
That had been hours ago, Jill thought, and it was still only just past mid-morning. She and Gabriel had travelled straight from the morgue to the hospital, but had been told that Joss was back at Balmain police station and that Isobel and Charlie had come to this house in Mosman.
Springing Joss from Balmain station had not been easy. The Inspector had come in early for the show. The Balmain crew wanted in on the glory. They all knew the story would go global: Victim kills machete slayer, saves family from burning home!
She and Gabriel had waited until Joss had given his first recorded interview of the events and then booked him out, the political powers of the taskforce outweighing the pissed-off Balmain command. Last wanted Gabriel to do the full interrogation. They'd yet to decide whether charges would be laid.
Jill looked at Joss, now lying curled around Charlie, and figured further questioning would have to wait. His eyes were heavy-lidded and blinked more slowly by the moment. Isobel, pale-faced, stared at a wall. Shock, thought Jill. It's best to let these people sleep a while. She caught Gabriel's eye, gestured with her head to the door. He stood.
'We're going to let you guys rest for a bit,' said Gabriel. Joss looked up blankly. Isobel didn't move. 'We're going to stay out here if that's okay with you, Joss?'
Not that you have any choice, Jill thought.
'Of course,' croaked the man from the bed, and coughed. 'And thank you.'
Gabriel followed her from the room and closed the door. Jill bypassed the sitting room, and found a homecare nurse drinking coffee in the breakfast area off the kitchen. The woman stood when they entered.
'Please,' said Jill. 'Don't let us bother you.'
The woman picked up her cup and left the room anyway, glancing back nervously from the doorway.
'Probably all over the news by now,' said Gabriel, walking into the kitchen.
'Ah, you think?' said Jill.
'Yeah, it would be,' he said, missing her sarcasm. 'She's probably been watching it all morning.' He nodded at the doorway the nurse had just exited.
Jill smiled tiredly. 'You making coffee?'
'Yup. Want one?'
'Definitely.' She opened the fridge. 'You think they'd mind if we fixed ourselves something to eat? I'm starving.'
'Well, we'd be feeding him if we were back at Balmain doing the interview. What's in there?'
Jill found a Tupperware container filled with shaved ham and another with finely sliced Swiss cheese. She grabbed a loaf of bread and a jar of hot English mustard and closed the refrigerator door. There was a tomato and an avocado in a bowl on a benchtop.
'Toasted or plain?' she asked him, spotting a sandwich press near the kettle.
'Might as well go the whole hog.' Gabriel clicked the switch to turn on the appliance.
They took their food out to a sun-saturated, wrought-iron outdoor setting in the backyard. Jill moved an overflowing ashtray from the table, her nose screwed up in distaste.
'So, you reckon we'll have to charge him?' she said, after several bites of the sandwich.
'Yep,' said Gabriel, chewing.
Jill leaned back in her chair. The sprawling gardens, although now overgrown, had obviously been professionally maintained at some stage in the past. The drone of a leaf blower on a neighbouring property couldn't drown out the manic activity of bees in the blossoms around her. She licked at a burgeoning cold sore on her lip. It thrummed under the skin – all that was left of her cold.
