Chapter 5 — Red

Red walks through Sydney Airport’s flowing hoards, angry and watching for anything unusual. Until last night he didn’t think Tate would actually try to kill him. But if Tate’s the one who just tried to have Mia shot, he’ll try any fucking thing!

He would have to be a bit more creative in an airport. But with his dollars and influence he could easily have Red fingered by security, taken into a room and slotted. He wouldn’t use Dog to do that. Why the hell would he use Dog at all? The guy has to be a psychopath. How did he get let out of jail in the first place?

Red looks at a woman in black jeans and a sunflower T-shirt, walking a short distance in front of him. Something about her easy athletic movement reminds him of Mia, except that she’s not wearing a fashion-house outfit, her arms are too skinny and her hair is cut short and kind of weird.

She turns and it is Mia—now smiling and running to him. He should be running too. She stops just in front of him. Oksy isn’t with her.

‘Hello to you,’ she says, looking up at him, her smile distorted by a swollen bottom lip.

‘Hello,’ he says, with a half-smile.

He wants to really smile. He can’t believe that only two days ago he was imagining all this shit about her. The fact is, she’s been raped, the rapist has tried to kill her and all Red can do is talk shit in his head. She’s amazing. And here she is trying to cheer him up. He could cry. He could do a lot of things.

‘That was the bonnet of a car,’ she says, pointing at her mouth. ‘They kept me in overnight but I’m all good now.’

He takes her hand and tells her she could’ve been killed; that he’s sorry he wasn’t there. He’s never there. He feels the place on her ring finger where the wedding band was. She looks into his eyes: tears well. Tate is already a dead man, but stealing that ring has taken things to another level. Red longs to find the fucker and kill him as slowly as possible.

Red asks if she’s brought the Glock. She tells him it would be too awkward in an airport and she has a security guard anyway. He tells her a security guard is nothing more than a ‘security blanket’.

Mia puts her arm around him and tells him she’s glad he came. She’s scared for him, she says. She squeezes him tight. He pushes his face into her hair, breathing a perfume that reminds him of an ocean. It’s been a long time since she held him like this.

A tall guy about the height and shape of Dog walks around a corner in a hurry. It’s not Dog. Red would be dead if it had been. All this home and family stuff is distracting. First things first: bullets need to burst some heads, Dog and then Tate. After Red’s finished with those two he’ll probably be dead anyway. And Mia can say, I warned him.

‘So this is your military man,’ a voice with an accent says.

Red jumps. Mia laughs. A well-dressed, blue-eyed man is walking towards them. Red shakes his hand. It’s an okay handshake. This must be the guard.

‘This is Nick,’ Mia says.

‘You were in the Balkan War, I hear?’ Red asks.

‘Yugoslav,’ Nick corrects him.

‘Thanks for looking after her.’

‘I didn’t, it was the man up there,’ Nick says, pointing up. ‘Mrs Jackson said she didn’t need me.’

‘She does that,’ Red says, looking at her and grinning.

‘You know this Dog?’ Nick says.

‘A bit.’

‘What is he? Is it true about military time?’

‘It’s true,’ Red says. ‘Toured with the navy in Iraq. Won an Olympic medal in the ten thousand metres.’

‘He knows how to run.’

‘He’s a nutter.’

‘You’re different,’ Mia says, looking Red up and down.

‘It’s the army skinhead,’ Nick teases, laughing. ‘She misses your red curls.’

‘Not true Nick,’ she says, patting Red on the head. ‘I like this smooth man.’

‘Good for lice,’ Red says, looking away.

Something inside is melting, like it was when he was seventeen.

‘You’re tranquil or something,’ she says.

‘Don’t have much to talk about in a swamp.’

‘No, I mean your demeanour. You talk differently—like you used to,’ she says, laughing melodiously. ‘And your outfit—’

‘It’s not an outfit!’

‘Well, this!’ she says, fingering his shirt. ‘Pink R.M. Williams.’

‘And that,’ he says, looking down at his old jeans and boots, ‘is whatever was in the cupboard.’

He’s lying. He knows that for a fact. He thought about it last night when he was dressing. He chose these because he’s about to do a dirty deed from which he might not be coming back. In the meantime, he wants to have a few hours with her: to somehow say goodbye to her and little Oksy without really saying so in words.

‘It’s different to army,’ she says.

‘Jackaroo,’ he says.

‘Yes, and I like it.’

‘Still, doesn’t take away the shit happening.’

‘What?’

‘Everything.’

‘But it’s like, you’re—happy.’

‘What would I be happy about?’

‘I don’t know honey, but it’s beautiful. Don’t you think so Nick?’

Red looks at Nick but Nick’s not listening, another good sign. He’s preoccupied with a crowd of journalists who have emerged from nowhere, cameras up like snakes, ready to strike. Red wonders what the regiment is going to think of this. They won’t give a shit unless he talks about the regiment.

Cameras flash. Nick crosses his arms and stands next to Mia, watching the crowd like he’s a bouncer. Mia takes Red’s hand and whispers that she didn’t tell anyone about his arrival, that she has no idea how they found out. Red grins at her, puts on a pair of dark sunnies and tells her he doesn’t care.

He’s a bloody liar!

Of course he cares, especially if they ask questions about that missing wedding band, or worse, her pregnancy! Not that they would know about that. But then, it wouldn’t surprise him if these nosey bastards did know about it.

Questions are being thrown at Mia. How does she feel? Why did they take Claudia? Was she really sure it was Dog?

Playing nonchalant, Red leans against a pole behind Mia and checks his phone, the crowd and the baggage carousel. A melee like this—past the security checkpoints and close to the exits—would be an ideal time for a killer to strike. He looks at faces, eyes, jewellery, hands and feet.

Bloody hell! Mia’s feet are different! Those joggers she has on are well past their ‘use-by date’. The old Mia really is back. Caradoka is in and Green Avenue is out.

‘Can you tell us any more about the party on the yacht?’ asks a regular-looking guy who Red thinks should know better.

‘There was no party,’ Mia says.

Not to be put off, the fool points at Red and says, ‘What about you Mister Jackson? What do you make of this rumour about a love triangle?’

Red waves him away and walks to the carousel where he’s pretty sure his grey bag has just rounded a corner. It has. He pulls it off the conveyor belt, Mia finishes up with the paparazzi and they hurry for the exit—journalists following and nagging like bloody school teachers at a carnival.

Minutes later they’re driving through drizzly darkness, Red and Mia sitting next to each other in the back seat. Nick apologises over his shoulder about the filthy state of the car. Mia says it’s her fault. Red just stares out the window, holding Mia’s hand and wondering why Oksy didn’t come.

The car zips along past dripping shopfronts, which advertise everything Aussie: plastic koalas, ugg boots, flags and vegemite. Something about those shops makes Red think of Mia: her worn joggers, her swollen mouth and the way she’s always out there, vulnerable, playful.

They stop in a queue at traffic lights. A red glow floods the car’s interior. A tail of paparazzi backs up behind them. No one speaks.

Nick holds up the screen of his mobile with a message from Elvis that simply says OK. Christmas carols play on the radio. Nick accompanies the carols with an easy crooner’s voice. The carols are interrupted by a news flash announcing election promises. Lights go green, Nick accelerates and tyres chirp.

‘This little brute is unbeatable at lights,’ Nick says, patting the steering wheel.

‘Can you lose them?’ Red asks, jabbing a thumb back at the media.

‘Not a problem sir,’ Nick says as they approach the next set of lights, which are turning red.

He accelerates across the intersection and through a sheet of water, only just beating a bus—the driver leaning on the horn. Red turns around to watch the big yellow oblong barge across behind them, raising a bow wave as it goes. The paparazzi are cut off. Red laughs out loud. He likes this Yugoslav.

‘Mrs Jackson worries about Dog and the big man,’ Nick says, glancing at Red in the rear view. ‘The death threats.’

‘We’ll get it sorted,’ Red says.

He stares out his window, wishing he hadn’t said that.

‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’ Mia asks, looking at Red as if she’s about to cry. ‘You’ve already got a plan.’

‘It’s a plan for love!’ Nick yells over his shoulder. ‘Am I right, Mister Jackson?’

‘Yep,’ Red says. What else can he say? Nick should keep his mouth shut.

Conversation stops, rain showers against the windscreen, lights blur and Red waits for Mia’s next question. Of course she will know. But he doesn’t have to invite her into it. His dad taught him that one: Never show women or children an unfinished job.

‘Mister Jackson!’ Nick says. ‘I think your wife miss you.’

‘I miss her,’ Red says.

‘But you have to talk, to speak.’

‘We will.’

Red looks at Mia. She watches the street. Nick’s efforts are not helping.

‘I didn’t speak,’ Nick says. ‘I come back from the war and my woman, she wants to talk the romance, the home and the family but the war is all I think about. Forget the war.’

Red pushes his hands together and cracks his knuckles. Romance? You’ve got to be joking. He’s already had this sermon from Ludya. This is a war: a declaration of war against his family!

Nick angles his way through more traffic snarls. Red talks politely to Mia. But with every minute of courteous, the temperature lowers. After the good start at the airport, it’s more like they’re acquaintances exchanging polite streams of information: Oksy’s ballet concert’s tomorrow night, the Kimberley’s looking greener, the Year 3 music teacher thinks Oksy’s amazing.

‘I have to see someone at ten thirty,’ Mia says. ‘Would you like to come?’

‘Love to,’ he says. ‘I’m starving actually. Could we make it dinner?’

‘Um, yeah—I’ve already eaten—but why not?’ She gives him the wide-eyed look she uses for things that can’t be talked about in the presence of a third party.

‘Mister Jackson,’ Nick says, laughing. ‘Even Nick is not trusted.’

Mia rolls her eyes and puts wireless ear buds in. Nick is so hit and miss and that was a miss. Red shrugs, takes out his new smartphone and waits for a message from a Sydney warehouse, which was supposed to have come by 8:30. It’s now 8:35. A text bubble appears on his screen.

Parcel ready for pick-up at 2am

His pulse quickens. A numbered locker inside that warehouse will now have twenty grand’s worth of black alloy sniper’s rifle, ammo, a thermal imaging scope and five more phones. The next bit will be more straightforward—a meaty trail bike, backpack and leathers, all ready to go at a twenty-four-hour yard.

He suppresses a smile and watches the rear-view mirror. Still no tail following. They’re almost home. Oksy will have lots of questions. Or will she?

‘How’s Oksy?’ he asks.

‘She’s tired,’ Mia says.

Tired: the ‘go away’ word. He can’t talk. He’s been away for ages. Maybe his being away is just another form of ‘go away’.

Nick throttles back, weaving the car in and out of a twisted labyrinth. They go past rows of terraced houses with balconies of iron lace, headlights revealing colour schemes of dull blue, yellow and green. The colours are bad enough, but it’s the cartoon shape of these buildings that really gets Red. They remind him so much of an outback comic strip called Ettamogah Pub. Like the pub in the comic, they all look as if they were bulldozed together when they were soft and then left to solidify. He never could understand Mia’s love affair with this place of squashed buildings.

The rain stops. A purple-flowered jacaranda tree glides past. Number eleven comes into view on the right, its navy blue exterior looking brown under an amber streetlight. Nick parks the car up on the kerb just behind a transit van, which has sunflowers painted all over it. That would be Mia’s of course.

‘Wait here,’ Nick says.

Opening his door, Nick walks to the house and waves his torch across the yard. Red puts one hand on the door handle, preparing himself to move quickly. This is all so amateur, if only he had a bloody weapon.

Elvis appears from the backyard and talks with Nick. They check their phones. Nick lights a cigarette.

‘Please darling,’ Mia says, looking into his eyes and touching his arm.

That was the second real look Mia’s given him in half an hour. What’s she trying to tell him? Maybe his marriage isn’t as dead as he thinks. He takes a deep breath and stays put. It’s only thirty seconds between now and having the Glock.

Mia kisses him on the cheek. Nick walks back to the car and tells them it’s ‘all clear’—a clearance that feels like a joke to Red. But hey, he’s still alive!

Unable to take any more of the ‘home security manoeuvres’, Red gets out of the car, pops the boot, lifts his bag out and follows Mia to the house. On the way, he recalls a ‘going to jail’ scene in an old movie: a prisoner walks along behind a prison screw who opens one gate after another on the way to a cell. Red tells himself to snap out of it. For Christ’s sake, he’s about to see his daughter and this is all he can think? No wonder Mia’s had a gutful.

Mia stops at the gate and opens it for him. He hesitates. He fails in this place. Fights happen here. One time he even bought Oksy the wrong kind of bike for Christmas. His bloody tomato patch was a failure, and he hasn’t even fixed the squeak on the gate yet.

‘It’ll be okay,’ Mia says. ‘She’s talked about you every day.’

A security light activates. He steps inside the yard and walks past their massive old frangipani, its big leaves sticking out in clumps from knobbly branches: everything dripping wet. Mia stops to smell the flowers, picks a bunch, passes them to him for a whiff and then ties them into her hair.

The door opens before they knock. A brown-eyed girl greets them. Mia explains to Red that this is ‘Jemma’ the nanny. The girl cradles their orange tabby cat ‘Ginger’ and stares at Red like he’s a wife-basher. Red smiles and says hello to the cat, which climbs into Mia’s arms. Ginger and Red never really saw eye to eye.

Inside, Mia kicks off her shoes, tells him that the gun is under her pillow and beelines for Oksy’s bedroom. The babysitter heads upstairs.

He goes to the bedroom. Glock is all he’s thinking, but something pulls him up short. It’s been a long time. The bed has the same white cotton sheets. The wall at the head of the bed has the same huge oil painting of the Styx and the floor’s a mess as usual: clothes everywhere, Christmas wrapping paper, his Longhorn boots where he left them and Oksy’s shoes next to them.

Of course, little Oksy sleeps in here while Daddy’s away.

He finds the Glock. The dull black sheen on the barrel has one small rust spot. Otherwise, it’s looking good. Mia’s already refilled the magazine. If only she’d had the other two with her. He loads the breech and checks the mechanism: all working well. He kisses it, takes a shoulder holster out of his bag and straps the gun under his shirt. The spare magazines go in his pocket.

He needs to dump his phone. He takes a new one out of his bag, pulls the old one apart, breaks the SIM card and throws the lot into a bin.

Taking off his boots, he walks into the living room in his socks, enjoying the feel of a hand-me-down Russian rug. It should have been replaced a long time ago, but Mia says it goes with the old-library smell of the house. Red especially loves the dark blues and earthen reds.

He flicks a light switch on. Books overflow from shelves everywhere: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekov and of course more Dostoyevsky. The house of the spilling books, Ludya calls it. Anyone would think they were living in Russia.

He likes this part of Mia’s life. And he did once grind his way through Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. He has to admit he identifies with the main guy and the tangled mess of shit in his world.

The rest of the room has changed. More like it was before they were married. A photo of Tate’s yacht on the wall, which Tate presented to her framed, has been replaced by one of Red and Mia after they got back from their first date. On the mantelshelf, instead of Mia the power dresser in her new Green Avenue building, it’s a studio portrait of the three of them. Mia sits in the middle in a bright yellow dress, brown hair falling down around a face that suggests her Eskimo blood. A toddler-sized Oksy sits on her knee in a flowery top and pants, radiating laughter and red curls. Red stands behind them in jeans and white T-shirt.

The wall above the photos has what it always had: a dark wooden frame with one of Mia’s favourite quotes, written in her calligraphy hand.

I tore you from the old red hills and in tearing made you free … you can be all things other, you cannot be a slave – G.K. Chesterton.

He doesn’t mind the quote himself, just wishes they’d left the ‘I’ out. But she has to have God in everything, even after all this, still there looking over her shoulder. It’s one of the things he doesn’t like about this room, along with a crucifix above the archway and a charcoal sketch of Sister Anastasia, done by Oksy.

‘Oksy’s really sleepy,’ Mia says, walking into the room. ‘But she’s alright.’

‘To talk?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now?’

‘Uh huh, and she made this for you.’

Mia hands him an open cardboard box with grass, leaves and army men stuck on the floor. On the outside, in bright green texta, are the words, Love You Daddy xox. Remember the badger. Next to that is a photo of a badger coming out of a hole.

‘This is impressive,’ he says.

‘Just go in and make a start darling.’

‘What’s the badger about?’

‘It was in those Chronicles of Narnia we read to her. Remember? The witch and the werewolf?’

‘Oh yeah,’ he says, recalling a scene where a dwarf and a werewolf were arranging a bargain with a witch. The badger had spoiled the deal.

‘Help will come.’ Mia says, quoting the badger. ‘It may even now be at the door.’

‘Dunno about that, honey.’

‘Well Oksy does,’ Mia says, a flash of anger lighting up the gold in her eye.

‘What if the help’s not coming?’

‘It’s a start, okay?’

‘But what if—’

‘What?’

He stands there for a full twenty seconds, looking at the floor. Mia puts a hand on his shoulder. She’s right. It’s a start, even if he doesn’t believe it.

Taking Mia’s hand, which is surprisingly cool, he follows her down the dark hallway. She pushes the door open and leads him into Oksy’s room. A yellow night-light casts a soft glow.

He waits for a moment to let his eyes adjust. Oksy lies flat on her back: a sheet covering most of her. Red steps carefully across a toy-covered carpet, leans over and kisses her on the forehead, his lips touching a bead of sweat.

‘Hello sweetheart,’ he says.

‘Poor thing’s too hot,’ Mia whispers, pulling the sheet back.

Sitting on the side of the bed, Red watches and waits. She rolls away and pushes her face to the wall. He looks at Mia and back at Oksy. Nothing changes. Oksy sleeps on. He takes her hand and kisses it. There’s no response. She won’t be waking by the look of it. He stands up and walks out of the room. Mia follows.

Without another word, Red walks to the coffee machine in the kitchen. Filling the grinder with beans, he goes to work on a coffee. He’s forgotten how to set the temperature—but that’s okay, he needs something else to think about right now. He turns to ask Mia but she’s gone to the bedroom. He finds an instruction manual and looks up ‘Espresso Temperature’.

The coffee is finally made and Red stands at the kitchen window, sipping a nicely frothed latte and looking through their jasmine vine at the street. He doesn’t like the way the light always shines through this window. Perfect for a drive-by headshot.

Someone walks past outside. Red flinches, draws a heavy curtain across the window and takes his coffee over to the dining table. The table is red cedar. He and Mia fell in love with it the moment they saw it and took about two seconds to decide to pay the one grand the shop was asking.

Mia still hasn’t emerged. He begins sifting through a pile of unopened mail on the table. Mia’s not the greatest at keeping up to date with rate notices and electricity bills.

He hears Mia cough.

‘Are you okay?’ he asks.

She continues coughing. He walks into the bedroom. She’s in the ensuite. He knocks on the door, asking if he can help. His phone says 9.01 pm. They might not be going out after all.

She flings the door open and walks out in a white bra and orange pyjama pants, more bony and thin than he has ever remembered her. Ignoring him, she goes to the kitchen, takes a bottle of Mylanta from a shelf and swallows a spoonful.

He follows her. He wants to handle this well. He shouldn’t hassle her; he should just leave her alone. Bullshit! He puts an arm around her. For a long time they stand facing the now-curtained window, her breathing slow and deep and him not knowing what to do except keep holding her.

Her breathing turns into whole-body shaking and loud sobs. They stay there holding each other. The sobs die down. She lets go and they sit at the table, Red with his coffee and her with her shoulders hunched over and fingers pushed up into a messy pile of hair. She takes a tissue and blows her nose.

‘I can’t—’ Mia sobs, ‘have this baby.’

Of course not! Red almost says but bites his tongue.

‘I’ve booked a clinic,’ she says, ‘and postponed our plane flight by two days. I want this terminated before we fly home.’

She walks back into the bedroom. He follows her in. She takes off her bra and points at a purple scar on her breast, her mouth quivering.

‘What happened?’ he says.

His words hang like fruit bats fried on a power line. She slaps him hard across the face. Talk about a stupid ask.

‘Why weren’t you here?’ she yells.

He stands speechless, blood running out his nose, eyes riveted to hers.

‘He hurt me,’ she sobs. ‘And you weren’t there!’

Pushing him onto the bed, along with a stream of not her kind of words, she rips his shirt off, exposing the gun in its holster and a large mauve tattoo of Venus, running from his right nipple down to his hip: another of his mistakes—the tattoo being his idea of a wedding present for her.

‘I don’t want this baby, I want your baby,’ she yells, pummelling his chest. He tries to push her away. She grabs his neck and bites so hard he shoves her off the bed and onto the floor. ‘Tell me,’ she whispers up at him, ‘are you mine? All of you?’

‘I’m trying, okay?’ he says, jumping off the bed before she has another go.

What about a suicide mission for the family, does that count?

Tearing a tissue out of a box and holding pressure on his bleeding nose, he watches Mia walk back into the ensuite: her skin so smooth and tight, her ribs showing. He rubs the bite on his neck. She’s still got the sting and he’s been stung. He wants to fuck her now. Maybe later tonight: that could be the goodbye.

Don’t be stupid. She’s pregnant, she’s sick and you think she wants sex?

Mia re-emerges. The bedroom clock says 9.17. Red sits on the end of the bed, watching and listening while she dresses in a black skirt and jacket and talks about everything, including a fuller version of the yacht story, a blackmailer’s archive called the Magic Wand and a plan for a trial by media involving Michelle Colton.

Red bristles at the mention of Michelle. The last time Mia and Paddy went out on a limb with Michelle it went sideways. Red’s trail bike and sniper plan is looking better every minute.

‘With Claudia kidnapped,’ Mia says, ‘we need to act. We have to light a fire.’

‘Don’t like it,’ he says. ‘After what they did to Claudia, you should lie low.’

‘But that’s what Tate’s counting on.’

Red unzips his bag and pulls out a khaki R.M. Williams shirt.

‘What are they for?’ she asks, pointing into the bag at a pair of blue trail-bike boots.

‘I love them,’ he says, grinning and thinking fast. ‘Thought I might go for a ride while I was in town.’

‘Don’t bullshit me, darling. You’ve got some plan. Can you at least wait, please?’

He raises his eyebrows, starts buttoning his shirt, and keeps his mouth firmly closed. He fucked up there. She’s figured it out. But there’s no way he’s waiting for anyone—not now.

While he’s buttoning, she explains that the person they’ll be seeing tonight, over a late dinner, is Michelle. She adds that if Tate is killed, his death will automatically trigger a logic bomb: everything on the archive, including her rape, will be downloaded onto the internet.

Red points out that Michelle works for Tate, for Christ’s sake—the bastard is on her board. But Mia won’t be told. This is bad. Red knows how these guys think. There’s only one way to fix this. Foras Admonitio is the way.

‘About this appointment,’ he says. ‘What’s in it for Michelle?’

‘Nothing. She’s got everything to lose by even talking to me.’

‘No kidding—is she paying you or what?’

‘No, it’s not like that. We’re all in this together.’

‘So where are we meeting?’

‘At the pub.’

‘The Frog and Pond?’

‘No, the Uptown, where no one knows us.’

‘Bullshit, Mia, everyone knows you two.’

‘But they won’t be friends who will want to join our conversation. It’s always quiet on Monday nights. And it’s not just a conversation—it’s this.’ She holds up a black USB drive.

‘Is that the Magic Wand thing you were talking about?’

‘No, honey, but it’s a good start. We’ve got Tate and Adams on here.’

‘Backed up?’

‘Paddy has copies and I’ve backed mine up,’ she says, putting a hand on her laptop.

‘You’ve got to do better than that,’ he says.

‘I have, actually, and you’re going to laugh, Gorgeous. It’s in an empty shampoo bottle in the bathroom.’

‘Not anymore it isn’t!’

Red stands up, almost knocking his chair over.

‘Calm down, honey,’ she says, putting a hand on his arm. ‘There’s no way people would look in there.’

But he’s not calming down. Taking a roll of plastic wrap from the kitchen, he walks to the bathroom, finds the shampoo bottle, tips a red USB drive out of it, wraps it up and smears Vaseline on the plastic. Unscrewing the hand basin’s U-bend, he lowers the package into it and—whilst screwing everything into place—anchors a tag of plastic in the thread.

Returning to the kitchen, he waits while Mia trades text messages with Michelle, confirming their 10.30 pm slot. Mia’s already feeling better and wants to get pizza from a place called Harry’s, which she and Michelle both know.

Red tells her she’s looking good, really good. She disappears into the bedroom and comes back out in a pair of old black jeans and a grey hoodie, explaining that ‘looking good’ is the last thing she wants tonight—she wants to blend. He thinks she looks even better than good in those tight jeans and almost says so, but he says nothing.

While they wait for a taxi, he goes back to sifting through Mia’s mail and pulls out a small brown package with no return address. The thing is well taped like it’s an eBay purchase but the post-office stamp is from Newtown, just one suburb away. Opening it with a table knife, he finds a little cardboard box.

Mia grabs it off him, her fingers trembling. Ripping it open, she pulls out a small grey cylinder, the shape and size of half a pencil, a hole for a lanyard in one end. Red just stares, finding it hard to believe what he’s looking at. The last time he saw something like this was on a table in a high security briefing room.

‘My God in heaven!’ Mia whispers, smiling. ‘This could be number two!’

‘Another Magic Wand?’ he asks, breathing again.

‘Uh huh.’

‘It’s a “TT”, you know.’

‘A what?’

‘We call them “TTs” in the regiment: “Tungsten Terabytes”. That casing is military grade: waterproof and almost unbreakable.’

Mia looks inside the box and shakes it. A crumpled piece of paper falls out. Flattening it, she holds it up and reads a handwritten note aloud: ‘Mia darling. This is the other back-up Wand, which she got from Tate’s safe. He only ever made two genuine ones. She says that one of these is a fake—it could be the one I gave you or it could be this one. God bless you.’

‘So—I’m confused,’ Red says, taking the note off her and re-reading it.

‘Yesterday’s Wand—’ Mia stops in mid-sentence. ‘Might not have been it.’

‘And all that shit for nothing,’ Red says.

‘Poor Claudia.’

‘Who the hell is “she?”’

‘Claudia’s code name for Tate’s IT guy: Slav.’

‘Good fella by the sound of it. I’d like to meet him.’

‘Maybe we should try it now.’

‘No!’ Red yells, taking it off her. ‘These gadgets have a thing called a “cyanide tablet”, a self destruct mode.’ Taking a biro off the table, he pushes it into a tiny hole. The device pops out of its cover, exposing a micro-keyboard of white numbers and letters in two rows. ‘It wouldn’t have started anyway,’ he says, pointing at the keyboard. ‘These little critters are the first line of defence. Once you know the combination, you push them in with a paper clip or a biro. But you only get three attempts.’

‘Michelle’s hackers could work it out, honey.’

‘Nah, this is coming with me,’ he says, putting it back in its case and into his wallet.

‘But these guys are professionals!’

‘What do you know about them?’

‘Don’t be stupid dear, we need to give this to Michelle.’

‘I will, okay? We just need to know more about these nerds first.’

Mia disagrees, telling him another delay could ruin everything: the light in her eyes turning dull, like brass, as if she thinks he’s talking shit, which he does occasionally. But he’s not talking shit now. He wants to remind her that he’s not just an army grunt; that yes, he lives in a world of low-tech mud crawling and stabbing, but he also lives in a world of high-tech sabotage and mind games.

She walks to the fridge and pours herself a glass of orange juice, still talking: talking about secret meetings with Paddy, Claudia and Michelle. Meanwhile, Red sits back down at the table and continues going through Mia’s unopened mail.

While he fiddles with the mail and she talks, he waits for her to remind him of an ‘I will’ he went back on just the other day. It wouldn’t be hard. It’s not the first ‘I will’ he’s gone back on. This table was another one. This is where his little Oksy would sit on his knee and eat breakfast while the sun poured through the window and the toaster toasted. This is where he told Mia—after he got her pregnant with Oksy—that he would leave the army once Oksy turned seven. Eight years have passed since then; in eight more years he’ll be forty-two and Oksy will be sixteen.

Mia stops talking, sits down at the table and sips her orange juice. He waits for whatever else she has to get off her chest, but that’s it. No one speaks.

Maybe he should just pull the pin on his big plan—join her and Michelle, for Christ’s sake. Or not! Killing Tate has a lot going for it. It saves Mia and Michelle a hell of a lot of trouble. Too bad if it triggers the logic bomb—at least then they’ll all know that she was actually raped. And who gives a damn if it screws the lives of a lot of politicians? Time to just keep the mouth shut, grit the teeth and yank the splinter out.

‘I love you,’ she says, touching his arm.

‘I love you,’ he says, taking her hand.

The accusing look fades. The other look comes and he kisses her on the lips. She takes his head in her hands and really kisses him. It’s been too long—to hell with the pizza and Michelle.

An alarm buzzes on Mia’s phone. She stands up and says the taxi is on its way. He sits there, looking up at her. She just melted him. How can she simply switch off like that and go to this freaking appointment?

She walks to a coffee table near the archway, which has a large candle on it. Lighting the candle, she whispers a prayer, looks at a picture on the wall and crosses herself. The picture is a sketch of the face of Christ with a crown of thorns. Something she might have done herself.

‘Did you do that?’ he asks.

‘The drawing?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No way!’ she laughs. ‘That’s a Michelangelo.’

‘Oh.’

‘I love the prayer,’ she says, pointing to words at the bottom of the picture. ‘It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. Son of Mary, put your fire in me.’

What does he expect? He invited that one. A taxi beeps outside.

‘Time to go,’ he says.

Mia calls Jemma back downstairs and issues instructions, which, by the questions Jemma’s asking, are going to be carried out to the letter. The taxi beeps and beeps again.

They walk out the door. At the kerbside, the cabbie chats through his window with a bemused-looking Elvis who leans against a jacaranda, smoking a cigarette and playing with his gun. They get in and the driver accelerates away, laughing about Mia’s ‘cowboy fella’—like he already knew what Red was thinking about Elvis.

Ten minutes later they come to a hill of bitumen, concrete and shops that have been strangled with power lines and grime. The place always makes Red think ‘country town trying to be city’, except there’s more people and it’s chock-a-block with bohemian cafes. And not even the dignity of a puff of red dust or a muddy river. And every man and his dog spilling their business onto the street; and this feeling of being checked out—another country-town thing, only a different question. A question they rub your face in just down the road at The Cross.

The taxi parks at the top of the hill near a flower stall. Mia pays the fare and they’re out and walking. Red steps on a dog shit, wipes his boot on a patch of dead grass and curses this little ‘hellhole’. Mia laughs and tells him it’s a ‘welcome home’ thing.

He stares at that flower stall. An old woman behind the counter smiles at him. He could buy Mia a bouquet. Not a good idea. It’s what Ludya was warning him against: the hypocrisy of coming home, playing the family man and then—in a moment of rage—wrecking Mia’s world by pulling that trigger. How are the flowers going to look then?

Mia stops, grabs a bunch of red roses and shoves it in his face. He’s left holding it while she pays. She turns to him with that look again. A crimson flush creeps up her neck and into her cheeks. He hasn’t seen that in a long time. The old woman laughs and jokes that he’s one lucky lady! He blushes and the old woman laughs louder and louder.

‘Proposing marry! Proposing marry!’ she calls out as they walk away.

‘Maybe I am,’ Mia says, kissing him on the lips. ‘Twice married just to make sure.’

Following the footpath to the crest of a hill, they come to a poorly lit street lined with cafes and coffee shops, tables and chairs spread out on the footpath. In the distance, city lights dominate the horizon: a yellow and black ‘Harry’s Pizza’ sign is barely visible in the chaos of winking lights.

The commando in Red switches to full alert. He tells Mia to stop for a moment, passes her the bouquet and has a good look around. It’s nice to at least have a weapon now, to have that Glock in its holster against his chest. There’s so much going on: cars driving past, pedestrians on both sides of the road and people on balconies. Given everything that’s happened, there would have to be someone watching them, watching him especially. What the fuck is he up to? Tate would have to be asking.

Mia tells him they’ll be late if they don’t keep walking. Threading their way around a scattering of tables and chairs, they walk past an emaciated old man who sits at one of the tables. The old man watches a boy who’s bringing him a plate load of food. The kid has the emaciation too. The old man tells a joke. The boy laughs, puts the plate down and walks away, the old man staring at him like he’s got a crush on him. That kid would be no more than ten.

‘On the hunt,’ Mia mutters as they go past.

‘Already got his prey by the look of it,’ Red says.

‘Indeed.’

‘Maybe that’s us,’ Red muses.

‘Sorry?’

‘Walking into a spider’s web: prey for a predator.’

‘If you have a better scheme, why don’t you tell me about it?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Bullshit! You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?’

‘I didn’t say that!’

‘That means yes!’

She takes his hand and sniffs the roses. Just like her mother, she wants to be closer when she feels he’s holding out. It’s suffocating. He needs to get this over with. He can’t wait to jump on that bike and ride and shoot and kill.

They walk in silence and stop at an intersection where the lights are red for pedestrians. Across the road is a pub with a neon-pink ‘Uptown’ sign —the walls of the building covered with slabs of red concrete and mustard-yellow tiles. A patron pushes a door open. A din of music flows out. Beyond the pub and up a shallow hillside, the Harry’s Pizza sign glows brighter and bigger. Red can already taste the hot cheese and smell the salami. Mia sees him looking at it and laughs.

A ‘sitting duck’ feeling comes over Red. They’re only an arm’s length away from cars cruising through the intersection, most with their windows darkened. He can’t see anything through that glass. The driver’s-side window of a spanking yellow Commodore slides down, the skin-headed man at the wheel—in dark sunnies—giving Mia a good look. Red notes the rego: AY657.

A wolf-whistle pierces the night. Raucous laughter follows: a crowd of painted, fish-netted girls on the opposite corner stares at them, a cluster of inflated condoms tied to the waist of one of the girls. Red waves, getting more whistles. Mia whistles back. The lights change and the jokes keep going as they walk past the girls.

‘It’s 10.15,’ Mia says. ‘This pizza might make us a bit late.’

‘Too bad,’ Red says. ‘I’m starving.’

He takes her hand and they cross the road, heading downhill towards a railway line that lies between them and the pizza shop. At the bottom, they reach stairs leading up to a footbridge that’s badly lit and overhung by an enormous Moreton Bay fig tree.

Walking up the stairs to the top of the bridge, they stop while Mia catches her breath. Leaning against the bridge’s railings, she smells the bouquet of roses and looks at the city’s ghost-like towers. She tells Red it’s one of her favourite views. He agrees that it’s pretty but he’s not there; he’s scanning every body, every face and every vehicle that goes past.

‘In forty-eight hours we’ll be up there.’ Mia points at an airbus, its lights blinking green, white and red. ‘Caradoka here we come.’

‘Nice,’ he says. What else can he say?

‘Someone’s in trouble,’ Mia says, pointing under the footbridge. ‘Hear that?’

‘Can’t hear anything,’ he says.

Red cranes his neck and looks under the bridge. It’s too dark to see. He looks back down at the street they’ve just come from. There’s that fucking yellow Commodore again, driving past the foot of the stairs, going real slow.

Whatever or whoever it was calling out, seems to have stopped. Mia shrugs and they walk off. She stops. This time, a loud sobbing definitely comes from somewhere below. Mia hurries back down the stairs. Red sighs, following her, but in no hurry. He’s bloody hungry and now some poor kid’s going to bugger up their night. When is he going to get his freaking pizza?

The crying stops and Red stops at the bottom of the stairs. Mia tells him to hurry, that she’s found a girl. He can’t see Mia, but the glow of her phone tells him she’s gone behind the Moreton Bay. Turning on his own phone light, he picks his way over massive tree roots, which snake down through cracked and broken slabs of concrete.

Why does Mia always have to complicate things, trying to fix what’s unfixable?

The sobbing starts again: Mia’s light waving in all directions.

‘Quick!’ Mia yells. ‘She’s bleeding.’

Reaching the other side of the tree, Red finds Mia standing with a blonde girl in a shiny white dress: the girl’s hair streaked with blood. Pushing Mia away, she runs past Red. Mia shouts for her to stop, that she has a bed at the refuge.

Red tries to stop her. She slips over. He helps her up.

‘Fuck off!’ she yells and runs.

Red lets her go. Falling again, she picks herself up and scrambles across the rubble to the stairs. Mia goes after her, telling Red they need to stop her, that this bridge is a favourite suicide jump. There could be a train soon, she says.

Running past Mia, Red follows the girl all the way up the stairs: blood still running from her head. He can’t believe how fast she’s going in that tight gear. It’s like she’s high.

Running across the footbridge, she throws herself at the railings and starts to climb. She’ll go over. Red pulls her back down. She falls on top of him, splattering blood everywhere.

Red stands her up and pushes her face-first into the railings, locking her arm behind her shoulder. She begs him to stop, screaming that it hurts. He relaxes the grip. She turns to face him, limp, exhausted and laughing—the smell of weed, blood, girl and perfume, billowing. He looks around for Mia. She’s almost caught up.

Down below, behind Mia on the street, he can see the yellow Commodore, same number plate—parked at the kerb.

What if this whole thing is a set-up?

The girl crumples like a rag doll, falling all over him. He puts her arm over his shoulder and holds her up. She slips a hand inside his pocket. He wrenches it out. His wallet comes out with it, falling onto the path. Mia picks up the wallet.

‘I like you,’ the girl says, kissing him on the arm. ‘We could have some fun.’

Mia asks the girl her name. She tells her to mind her own bloody business. Mia makes a phone call, which Red knows will be to Green Avenue. The girl lashes out, knocking the phone to the ground. Mia picks it up again and asks the girl if she would like to come with them. The girl laughs, smiles at Red and says she would.

Their voices are drowned out by the roar of a train passing underneath. Looking down at the train, Red notices the Wand near his foot. He bends down to pick it up. At that very moment, a screeching male voice freezes his blood.

‘Get down on the fucking ground or get a bullet!’

Red straightens. A tall man in a hoodie has a .38 pointed at his head. Red can’t see the eyes, but that voice and long jaw has to be fucking Dog. The roar of the train fades. Dog repeats his order. Mia does what she’s told. Red slides his foot towards the Wand and nudges it over the side of the bridge.

‘On the fucking ground!’ Dog shrieks.

The girl screams and lunges at Dog’s gun hand. The gun goes off. Red launches himself at Dog. Something smashes into the back of Red’s head. He passes out.

When Red wakes up, rain’s falling on his face. It’s really dark. Mia’s crying.

Sitting up, he feels for the Glock. It’s gone, and so are the magazines. A wave of pain floods through his head. He starts to fall back. Putting one hand out, he plants it in a puddle. Jesus! It’s warm blood, lots of blood. His hand slips, and he falls sideways onto concrete. He’s near the girl, who lies there not saying a word.

Mia seems to be busy doing something to the girl. She explains that the girl’s losing blood: she’s keeping pressure on the gunshot, which went into the girl’s stomach. Holy shit!

Red tells himself he’ll get up soon. He breathes slow and deep. Mia bends over him, wipes his face and orders him to stay still. Ambulance and police are coming, she says. Red’s heart sinks. Why the hell did she have to call the cops?

The taste of blood fills his mouth. He asks Mia to help him up. She says he’s bleeding and needs to stay where he is.

‘They had this scanner thing,’ Mia says. ‘They were looking for the Wand.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said the police had it.’

‘I kicked it off the bridge.’

‘But I saw them empty your wallet and run, like they’d found it.’

‘No! It had fallen out.’

‘Oh … that’s good … I suppose.’

‘What about your USB?’ he asks, grabbing the railing and pulling himself up into a standing position.

‘They took it,’ she says, looking at her phone, which has just lit up with a message.

‘No!’ she yells, passing the phone to Red.

Get us fucking magic wand in 48 hrs or yr oksy is dead no cops, no media

‘Fuck!’ Red yells, grabbing Mia’s hand.

Battling to keep his brain clear, Red half jogs and half walks with Mia across the bridge to the pizza shop. Just as they reach the other side, a man with a pizza walks to a cab and then stops, staring at them. Red shouts at him to walk away. The man goes to open the car door. Red shoves a bloodied hand into his chest, knocking him to the ground.

Mia opens a rear door of the cab and climbs in with Red. The driver—a little Indian man—wants to know what the blood is about. Waving a hundred-dollar note, Mia screams that her daughter’s in danger. Red shouts the address.

The cabby nods a vigorous yes and accelerates into a rubber-burning take-off, running a red light. Past that one, they run another light, the cabbie screeching around corners and speeding down backstreets until they come to Jacaranda. Accelerating along the street, the cabbie almost overshoots number eleven: hitting the brakes, he puts the car into a gravel slide—but before they come to a standstill, Red opens the door, rolls out onto bitumen and sprints to the house.

What the fuck is he going to do without a weapon?

Jemma stands at the front gate, tears streaming down her face. There’s a body on the footpath. It’s Elvis, bleeding from the mouth, his gun next to him. Red grabs the gun, an ordinary old .38 Special, and runs past Jemma.

‘They’ve taken Oksy,’ she sobs.