Crystal Coffin (34 page)

Locklin came out above the spillway and turned right up the highway headed home. He hit the hundred zone doing almost twice that and thumbed another number into his mobile.

‘Maternity please,' he said and a nurse answered.

‘Helen MacLeod's room please,' and the phone clicked twice as she switched the call through.

‘Helen MacLeod's room,' a man answered.

Locklin's gut told him the voice didn't belong to a male nurse and that left only two options. ‘Who's this?' he asked hoping that what he'd told his gran about a guard on Helen's door was actually true.

Corporal Ryan didn't recognise the voice, but he heard the caution and took a guess. ‘Enjoying your joyride, pal?'

‘Sorry about that,' Locklin said, relaxing. ‘I had no choice, but I don't have much time and I have to speak to my sister. Can you put her on, please?'

‘Jeez, mate. You want apple sauce with that too?'

‘I'm serious! There could be someone on their way to kill her! I have to speak to her
now!
'

‘Come and make me.' Ryan laughed. ‘I'm here all night.'

‘That's all I needed to know, mate. Thanks,' Locklin said and hung up. His sister was safe. A truck full of assassins couldn't get past that ego.

‘We may have a problem,' Corporal Beattie said, as they neared a paddock full of the biggest chickens he'd ever seen. He checked the latest vector readings and frowned, still trying to keep his dinner down. ‘He just made another call, sir. It looks like he's moving, and I mean
moving
.'

Beattie translated the coordinates to a map reference and used a mouse pointer the shape of a cruise missile to indicate a midsection of highway about seven clicks north of Wivenhoe's main spillway.

‘Typical that a navy boy would head to water,' Harris noted. ‘He's got two strategic targets in reach, the spillway and the powerhouse, and he can go either way round the dam to elude us.'

Colonel Chang saw that too, but he wasn't playing with the same objectives as Harris was. He could see only one place their boy would be headed and that was a farm.

‘The spillway is the closest,' Harris said, continuing his line of thought. ‘If you set me down there, I'll secure it with the two ADGies until team one arrives from base, while you cut across the lake to the power station until team two can secure things over there. With a bit of luck and a tailwind we might just make it before he can paint-bomb the place.'

Chang agreed, but only because it gave him the opportunity to put the RAAF squadron leader and his twenty-year-old ADGies off before things got complicated, while still keeping them close at hand.

Four minutes later, he set the small group down a hundred metres off the centre of the spillway, putting them as close as he could to their objective without putting unnecessary down-wash air-pressure from the rotors onto the weakest point of the wall. A busted reservoir and a fifty foot tidal wave headed for Brisbane was the last thing he wanted on his plate today.

‘We don't need any more embarrassment from navy,' Harris said as he jumped out onto the concrete. ‘Try to catch him as far away from here as possible.'

‘Squadron Leader Harris,' Chang said, smiling as the loadie slid the door shut. ‘That's my plan exactly.'

Nikki leaned on the verandah railings to watch the lake turn molten black as the sun set. She wondered if the town had planned on fireworks and walked down the steps towards the stables, listening to the dry lawn scrunch under her sandals as she gazed around the sky. To her left she saw the dimmest remnant of dusk on the horizon and she climbed up on the timber rails to watch the stars appear.

A horse nickered nearby and she turned, surprised to see that it had been left tied up to the rail with its saddle still on.

‘Hello boy,' she said, recognising it as the horse that Jayson had been riding that morning. She climbed down on the horse's side of the rails and slid her hand along his chocolate shoulder. ‘Has he gone off somewhere and forgotten you?'

The horse nickered to her again and she patted his dark muzzle, wondering how heavy the saddle was. Then she latched the nearest gate open so she could carry it straight through to the tack room when she got it off, if she could figure out how to do that. She'd only seen a horse being saddled once, and that was a racehorse on TV for the Melbourne Cup.

She scratched her temple, studying the leather contraption, then lifted a flap near the stirrup and found three buckles that all seemed like the logical place to start. The buckles held straps that joined into one wide strap that went underneath the animal's belly and she figured they'd have to come off before she tried anything else.

‘Yeah, yeah, I'm hurrying,' she said as the horse blew up his belly and let out a whinny. ‘Hey, let that air out,' she said, seeing the buckles strain tighter. She heard a car skid through the gravel and poked the horse in the tummy. ‘Come on,' she said, ‘or you'll be here all night. That'll be Thorna back and I have to help her get the kids to bed.'

The horse whinnied again and Nikki held the saddle flap up with her head while she had another go. She heard a door slam and expected to hear kids crying as she struggled with the first buckle. The strap still wouldn't release and she gritted her teeth to pull harder as she heard footsteps behind her.

‘No!' Locklin shouted. ‘I need him!'

He jumped the fence and strode towards her.

‘You can't leave a horse saddled up all day,' she said. ‘It's cruel.'

‘I'll tell you what's cruel,' he said, pushing his arm between her face and the girth that she was trying to undo. ‘The truth. The truth is cruel, but it's necessary. And right now I need this horse saddled every bit as much as I need the truth from you.'

His arm pushed her shoulder until she was wedged between his horse's rump and his body. ‘Out with it, Nick,' he demanded. ‘Aaron Fletcher. Who is he to you?'

The colour fell from her face. ‘How do you know that name?'

‘I asked you first.'

He felt her chest rise and fall faster against his and saw the charm of her angel teasing him as it rolled against her skin. He tugged it sharply before she could stop him and the chain snapped.

‘Ow! That's mine!' she cried as it slid away from her neck. ‘Give it back!'

‘How bad do you want it?'

‘
Now!
'

‘Truth first.'

‘You,' she said, injecting venom into her words, ‘are going to look lovely in that. Take it, since I can't stop you.'

‘I think I will,' Locklin said, pulling out his cigarette packet and lifting the lid. ‘It will go nicely with these.' He pulled out the baby angels. ‘What do you think?' he said, stepping back to hold them up. ‘Make a nice set?'

‘Hey, they're mine!' she screamed trying to grab them, but he clenched them in his fist. ‘Give them back!'

‘Don't you want to know where I got them? There was this little glass box —'

‘Stop teasing!' Nikki spat, getting more confused by the second. The last time she'd seen the earrings had been in Sydney the night her mother died. ‘If you even know about that, you know it isn't glass.'

‘Crystal then.'

There was a long silence as she let that sink in.

‘You've got the coffin? I thought it got smashed.'

He shook his head. ‘You can have everything,' he reminded her, dangling her jewellery close enough that she could kiss the angels if she puckered her lips. ‘If you —'

She snatched at them, but he was faster.

‘Ah, ah, ah,' he said tugging them out of her reach again. ‘The truth first or I ride away.'

She kicked him in the shin and he swore and jumped, but he held them higher.

‘If you work for Aaron Fletcher,' she snapped, ‘you already know the truth. Quit playing stupid games.'

‘I don't work for Aaron Fletcher. Well, all right, I do,' he corrected, thinking that from her point of view he worked for the guy who owned the place. ‘But he doesn't realise it's me, or if he does, he doesn't realise who I am.'

‘Oh yeah?' she asked, thinking Maitland owned the land and Fletcher must have put him here to keep an eye on her. ‘And who exactly are you?'

Locklin thought about that. He was born MacLeod. He felt like a MacLeod, but all that was too complicated to get into now.

‘Okay look,' he said. ‘You don't trust me and I don't trust you, but somewhere in between we both have things we want. Here's yours,' he said handing her the earrings and necklace as he backed off again. ‘I'll give you the crystal coffin when I'm finished what I have to do and you can either trust me on that or forget it. Either way, I'm getting on my horse in five seconds. Now, which is it going to be?'

She only needed four seconds. ‘He's my stepfather,' she said. ‘I'm Nikola Renee Dumakis and he murdered my mother and tried to blame me.'

‘Renee Dumakis?' he asked, more surprised than he thought he would be. ‘The Arts Minister? You're her
daughter
?'

Nikki held up the earrings, teasing him for a change. ‘Ah, ah, ah,' she said, mimicking him. ‘It's your turn.'

‘I'm Jayson MacLeod,' he said, taking a deep breath to let it out slowly. It was the first time he'd explained it to anyone and he closed his eyes so she couldn't see how much it hurt. ‘He murdered my father,' he said slowly, ‘and our neighbour too I think, and he fixed things to make them look like suicides.' He clenched his fists, forcing down his grief to let his rage boil up again. Rage was one thing he could control and he gripped it quickly, opening his eyes to finish his introduction. ‘Pleased to meet you Nikola Dumakis.'

Nikki blinked hard, trying to connect his confession about who he worked for with the assumptions she'd made and the bombshell he'd just lobbed on her.

‘When?' she asked, trying to make sense of it.

‘My dad three weeks ago and our neighbour about a year ago,' he said, not wanting to distract her with the idea that the neighbour he was talking about was also Thorna's first husband. She could figure that bit out for herself later. ‘When's not important,' he went on. ‘It's why.
Why
is he doing this?' He pointed at the jewellery in her hands and gave her the cigarette box to store them in. ‘What's the link,' he asked, watching her put all the jewellery inside, ‘between your crystal coffin and this land?'

‘
This
land?' she echoed, as her heart tried escaping through her throat. ‘What do you mean? I
chose
to come here. He doesn't even know I …'

The look on Locklin's face told her she was wrong and her heart pounded so hard it made her skin throb. She slumped against the horse, breathing harder. He put his hand on her shoulder, unsure if she was going to fall, and she clutched at it, like a drowning sailor grabbing for a life raft.

‘Tell me what you know about your side.'

‘Well,' she said, her thoughts more frantic than her words. ‘They
were
worth a lot, all handmade crystal and twenty-four carat white gold. There was a crystal church to put it all in, but I saw it smashed to pieces.'

‘Not the coffin,' Locklin repeated. ‘I've got that. It's heavy crystal, so it must still be worth a mint, yes?'

‘It doesn't matter what it's made of,' she insisted, as the horse stuck his nose in the air and whinnied again. ‘It's what it
does
that makes it worth something. You could recycle it from plastic and it would still be priceless to whoever uses it properly.'

‘Why?' Locklin asked, as the horse snorted twice and stamped at the rail. He stroked its neck, noticing that Nikki's fingers started to tremble around the cigarette packet.

‘You've lost someone close. You must understand!' she said, trying not to cry.