Drewe’s car and the Honda were parked. Ted Withers jumped from the car the second it stopped.
‘Get down!’ I yelled.
He ignored me and began to walk towards the house. The whipping, slapping sound came again and Withers staggered back as if he’d walked into a glass wall. I didn’t think, I moved. Out of the car, ducking low, almost crawling. I scurried across to where Withers was twitching on the ground. I grabbed his arm and pulled him back into his car. His feet clawed at the ground. I couldn’t tell whether he was co-operating or resisting but I pulled him anyway. Another shot sounded but it clanged into the car I’d just left. I hoped Drewe wasn’t doing anything foolish. I pushed Withers into the passenger seat of his car and tucked myself in behind the wheel with my head below the dashboard. I turned the ignition, shoved the lever into reverse and put my knee on the accelerator. The door swung wildly and the car slewed and bucked as it roared backwards. I didn’t try to steer it beyond keeping the wheel from spinning. Blood was leaking from Withers and getting all over both of us. He was swearing at me and the world.
A bullet whanged off the roof and I heard someone shout ‘Left! Left!’ I tugged at the steering wheel and then there was a grinding crunch and we stopped. I fell out of the open door. My first impulse was to try and crawl under the car but a hand gripped my shoulder and guided me back behind the tree I’d slammed into. Morton was there along with several other cops. Then I heard a struggle and more swearing from Withers as he was manhandled back under cover. His face was white and his clothes were soaked with blood but he was still fighting. He saw Morton and stopped struggling.
‘Leslie,’ he said, ‘Glen’s in there.’
‘I know, Ted. We’ll do everything we can. Take it easy till the doctor gets here. I’d say Hardy here saved your life.’
Withers’ colour was worse, greyish. He was close to collapse. ‘Fuck him,’ he said. ‘He got her into this fucking mess.’ He sagged at the knees and one of the cops gently lowered him to the ground.
‘Hardy,’ Morton said, ‘you all right?’
I was wiping blood from my face with my sleeve. ‘Yeah. Where’s Drewe?’
‘He went sideways when you got Ted’s car moving. You bloody nearly ran over him.’
‘He did all right,’ I said. ‘Will you please tell me what’s going on?’
Morton wasn’t listening to me. He looked across to where a uniformed cop with a rifle fitted with a telescopic sight was squatting, training the weapon on the house. ‘I can see him, sir,’ the marksman said. ‘He’s at the open window, top left. But I’ll need another couple of square inches of him to be absolutely sure of a shot.’
‘Wait,’ Morton said.
22
The sequence of events, as Morton gave them to me, was this: Glen had gone to the house to interview Gina Costi in order to discover whether she’d told Renato about Oscar Bach having raped her. At about the same time Morton got through to Sergei Costi on the telephone. He outlined the problem in general terms and asked Costi to come into town for a discussion. The next bit Morton had to reconstruct from a panicked and interrupted telephone call from Costi. Renato had overheard Glen talking to his sister. He had gone crazy and burst in threatening to kill the girl and Mark Roper. There had been a struggle and Glen had been shot. Costi Senior had quickly rung Morton with the gist of this before his son had cut him off.
‘No communication since then,’ Morton said. ‘We don’t know the condition of Sergeant Withers or the other people in the house. We don’t even know how many people are in there.’
A policeman came scuttling across towards us, bent low. He glanced hesitantly at me but Morton made an impatient gesture and he spoke up. ‘Sir, we’ve had a communication from the house. From Renaldo Costi.’
‘Renato,’ Morton said. ‘Go on.’
‘He says he wants Mark Roper brought to the house. If he doesn’t get here within an hour he’s going to kill Sergeant Withers, his mother and father,’ he glanced at his notebook, ‘Mrs Adamo and himself.’
‘Jesus,’ Morton said. ‘Is the line open to the house?’
‘He said he’d cut it off in ten minutes. That’s about four minutes ago.’
‘Ring it and patch me through from my car. Quick!’
‘Sir.’ The cop ran off, forgetting to bend over.
Morton looked at me. ‘Siege and hostage situation. Terrific’
‘What’ll you say to him?’
‘Stall him. What else can I do? I can’t deliver a citizen up to him like a sacrifice.’
‘Substitute?’ I said. ‘Decoy?’
We moved to one of the police cars and Morton snapped his fingers while an officer fiddled with the radio. ‘I was trying not to think about it. What’s this Roper look like?’
‘Tall, dark, thin, young.’
Morton stood about four inches shorter than me; both of us looked every day of our ages. ‘Lets me out, and you.’
‘This time of day he’d be wearing a blue overall. He’s a pest exterminator.’
Morton nodded. He spoke rapidly to a hovering sergeant who nodded and hurried away.
Then he picked up the radio. ‘Mr Costi. This is Assistant Commissioner Leslie Morton. Can you hear me?’
The voice came through loud and clear- young, slightly sing-song, although very Australian. ‘This is Ronny Costi. Who’d you say you were?’
‘I’m the senior policeman here. We should talk… ‘
‘Nothing to talk about, mate. Everything’s fucked.’
‘It doesn’t have to be like that, Mr Costi. Now…’
The voice went up into a scream. ‘My sister’s been raped and that little cunt Roper’s told everyone about it and this family’s buggered. It’s history. I’m going…’
Morton must have figured he had nothing to lose. His voice cut across the raving. ‘Listen to me! We’re getting Mr Roper here. We can talk some more. We’ll get your brother too…’
‘No! Leave him the fuck out of it!’
‘Mr Costi! Let me talk to your father.’
Renato let out a stream of curses in Italian and English; I caught only the obvious Italian ones about the Madonna and violating her; the English ones were in the same vein without the religious associations. Morton’s knuckles went white as he gripped the radio handpiece. He glanced across at the marksman who was still in position. The marksman shook his head and signalled that he didn’t have a target.
Morton tried again. ‘Renato, Ronny, listen…’
The voice went suddenly calm. ‘Shut up, cunt. Roper better be here fuckin’ soon, or we’ll all be dead and I just might get a few of you cunts out there as well.’
The connection broke. Morton handed the radio to the policeman who’d operated it before. He called the central communications room, spoke briefly, waited and shook his head. ‘Line’s dead, sir. He’s cut it.’
A shot from the house. The windscreen of the Honda Glen had driven disintegrated. Another shot screamed off the roof of the car and whistled away into the trees.
‘He’s back at the window,’ the marksman said. ‘But I still can’t get a big enough piece of him. I could try… ‘
‘No,’ Morton said. ‘He’s just crazy enough to start killing if he gets scared or wounded. We’d better get things straightened up around here. Sergeant Crowther!’
Morton issued instructions for the road to be closed and enquired about progress on bringing Mark Roper, Bruno Costi and a priest to the scene. Sergeant Crowther told him that everything was done that could be done. I could see Morton’s eyes drifting over the physiques of the dozen or so cops as he requested shields, bullet-proof vests and more weapons to be brought up.
Sergeant Crowther said, ‘Should we call the heavy squad, sir?’
