Fall (29 page)

‘Whoo!' he panted. He jogged away on spotless white sneakers, more of an exaggerated walk than a jog at all.

‘Shit,' I seethed.

‘Yes. A very time-consuming one, apparently.' Hooky turned back to her iPad, which blipped the next alert.

Tara lingered in the dark alcove by the tunnel's fire escape door watching the pretty runners go by, little pods of them bobbing away like ducks being carried along by a river current, smiling as they huffed past, their little fists pumping. Now and then there would be a big wave of them, a hundred at once, whooping and howling at they entered the tunnel, relishing the thrill of their voices ballooning around the ceiling, echoing back to them. A group covered in glowstick bands bumped past, waving their fluorescent sticks and making dim triangles of pink and green and yellow in the air, a little flock of fireflies.

Tara understood their rapture at the night air. The metallic taste of the city's bitter fumes wafting from a hundred thousand exhaust pipes lying between the buildings and a ruddy red blanket of delicious smog perfumed everything, coating the park tree leaves with ash. The city was alive – it was breathing and humming and belching out stinks, it was crawling with humans. Every night she spent out of the attic room was a thrilling night for Tara, the ritual of the kill filled with so many more things than the hunt itself. She was unused to travelling the city streets, even when protected from its glorious nooks and crannies and shadows and wonders by a car.

It was thrilling to see the people in the tunnel. To be within
reach of them. Tara felt, in their proximity, one of them – briefly, before someone noticed her and ruined the illusion. Tara recognised the way she was instantly rejected. It was the same as it had been before the surgery. Even when the mouth forced its way into a smile and the hands came forward – reaching, gripping, touching, soothing – the eyes always betrayed the sense that Tara was far beyond the acceptable limits of the human mould. Once she was grossly too large for it, and now she was strangely too twisted. Her school teachers had spent years kindly kneading and stretching and cramming Tara into that rigid plastic-fantastic mould. Then there was Joanie beating at her fleshy edges, trying to cut away the excess with her sharp words. But there was just no fitting Tara, no fitting her anywhere. She was the elephant in every room.

A big swell of runners filled the tunnel. Tara leaned out of the shadow a little to see them coming up over the hill, silhouettes sloshing around the tunnel mouth, hands in the air as their voices rose. Aussie Aussie Aussie. Oi Oi Oi. She turned a tiny tranquilliser dart in her fingers, stroked the impossibly thin tip with her thumb. Tonight she wouldn't bother with the little dart gun she'd fashioned. She wanted to get close to the runners. The sheer bulk of jostling people forced three runners down the side of the tunnel, between the interlocking red road barriers and the tunnel wall. Tara leaned back into the fire escape shadows as they trotted past her, unawares. She heard the voices of the cops leaning on the police car just outside the fire escape and to the left, on the other side of the barrier.

‘Inside the barrier, you lot,' one yelled. ‘Inside.'

Tara saw just the tips of his fingers as he flailed his arm. At the end of the tunnel, one runner tried to escape the press of
the crowd by cutting along outside the barrier, thought again when she saw the policeman gesturing, and sunk back into the group.

‘Might have to go up there and shift that last barrier,' one of the cops said to the other. ‘Push it back against the wall so they can't squeeze through.'

‘Mmm,' the other agreed. Neither moved.

A tight group of orange-clad runners passed, determined faces and downturned mouths. A pod of teenagers and a father with a young son huffing away at his sides. Chills rippled up Tara's spine as the cheers suddenly rose from the people passing.

Run, run, boys and girls,

Try to get away,

We won't stop, can't stop,

Gonna make you pay.

Two women ran down the outside of the barrier. Tara leaned back and caught the flashing blue and red of the police car at the side of the tunnel. As they passed, she slipped back into the safety of the dark, a slick sea snail snapping shut the door of its shell. One of the officers let out a dramatic sigh.

‘Idiots,' he grumbled, walking past the alcove. Tara watched him bumbling against the stream of runners who ducked and weaved out of his path. One last woman slipped through the gap between the barrier and the tunnel wall, glancing cheekily at the officer as she passed.

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,' she giggled. The officer waved a tired hand, heading towards the end of the barrier. He went to the opening and dragged the last barricade diagonally against the wall, cutting off the gap. When he looked back down
the aisle, it was empty. He assumed the last runner must have jumped over the barrier and rejoined the crowd. His offsider was looking at the tunnel wall above the runners, the shadows of hundreds of people lit up red, then white, then blue, a strobe of pumping limbs against the flat grey curve.

It was a little cruel, Eden thought, to send the runners up Arden Street. She trotted along past the bus stations at Coogee Beach, listening to the rise and crash of waves on the pale sand and watching the runners ahead of her grinding slowly up the massive slope towards Bronte. She'd caught a ride to the cemetery on Malabar Road and clopped down the long, steep hill, looking along side streets at the ornate beach houses nestled between the trees. The black horizon of the ocean cut into the grey sky beyond them, million-dollar views ruined by the occasional hulk of a brick apartment block stuffed with backpackers leaning out windows. Out on the ocean, sheet lightning flashed pale pink. As she ran, she listened to the buzz of police activity. Her long abdominal scar was as numb now as the rest of her, her legs working like machinery, pulling tendons in her feet and ankles, making her dance over the asphalt. The McDonald's on the beachfront was lit a painful white and crowded with runners waiting to use the toilets. They swirled in both directions around the roundabout at the bottom of the slope, a couple of jokers doing the full circle before powering at the hill, heads up, eyes on the clouds shifting across the skyline.

Halfway up the slope she saw the runner a few metres ahead of her waver slightly, the side of her right foot scraping the
gutter. She dug in, head down and calves straining. The head down part wasn't a good idea, Eden thought. She watched the runner waver again and then stumble sideways into the bushes out the front of one of the houses on the slope, wet orange rose petals raining on the grass.

‘You alright?'

Eden bent forward over the woman, grabbed her bicep. The woman rolled, looked up and squealed, her whole body tensing rock hard beneath Eden's fingers.

‘Jesus!'

‘Hey, what are you doing?' someone yelled. Eden straightened as two men ran towards her. When they spied the ‘Police' lettering on her back they slowed.

‘I'm alright, I'm alright.' The woman laughed nervously, still panting from the run. She let Eden drag her to her feet. She was a chubby little thing with the face of a young bulldog pup. All cheeks. ‘The rooftop. The shadow of the rooftop made a … made a hood over your head.'

Eden looked across the road at the curved triangular roof of the postmodern monstrosity of a house. From the ground, the roof's silhouette must have made a perfect hood shape around her face as she bent over the woman. It was almost laughable. The spectre of the Sydney Parks Strangler was so close to the surface of the woman's mind, she was ready to pick Eden as the ghoul on the loose. More runners gathered around them to see what drama was unfolding, the squeal having drawn their focus from the hill. Their chattering was an excited mumble bubbling and sputtering in the dark.

‘What is it? What happened?' someone asked.

‘She thought she was the Parks Strangler,' someone else asked.

More runners arrived.

‘Did you say Parks Strangler? Where's the Parks Strangler?'

‘No, she thought she was the killer. But she's the police.'

‘What's wrong with her? Did the killer come after her?'

‘I don't know. I don't know what's going on.'

‘Where is he now? Was he here? Was he around here?'

‘Is she alright? Did anyone see him?'

Runners carried on past the group towards the top of the hill, catching snippets of the frightened words as they floated in the darkness. Little boats stealing cargo and carrying it on up the stream. Eden watched, stunned at how fast it was happening, the mouths jabbering all around her. She didn't like talking to groups unless it was behind the safety of a desk or near the protective proximity of a planning board. Still in hunting mode, she felt exposed, the faces all around her turned inwards, the hounds suddenly aware of the fox in their midst.

‘No, he wasn't here.' She put her hands up. ‘Just calm down a second, will you all?'

Someone at the top of the hill screamed. The message had been received up there. The killer was nearby, had made an attempt on a runner and fled. Eden watched the groups of runners gather in the centre of the road. The panic was thick smoke in the air.

 

We were heading to an alert in the Cross City Tunnel when the radio broadcast came through. Only seconds old, the alert popped up on Hooky's screen as we were stopped outside the hardware store on William Street, deciding where to go next.
A few runners trotted here and there, but the street was mostly empty, except for a couple of junkies who had wandered down from the Cross, staggering and twisting like the undead as they made their way against the flow down the middle of the street. Hooky put her iPad away and I hummed the bike up towards the mouth of the tunnel. The entire thing was manned by two porky male beat cops who leaned, side by side, against a squad car flashing the red and blue up over the tunnel walls. I stopped the bike beside them and lifted my visor.

‘Any dropouts?'

‘Not that we've seen.' One of the cops got off the car, picking me as a detective. He was suddenly straight-backed, looking up and down the tunnel lined with red plastic barricades to keep people off the gutters. The other cop was picking his nails.

‘No one's approached us.'

‘We might have a runner down in this area,' I said. I turned as I heard a dull thumping start somewhere close by, probably a car going over the top. ‘I'll get one of you to run up over the top, see if you can spot anything.'

The alert cop dashed into the tunnel. The thumping continued. I felt a strange tension in my chest at the sound, like a hand was on my heart, gently squeezing, urging me. Urging me towards what, I didn't know. It was probably just the bike rattling my guts around for the first time in decades.

‘Heron One to Command. We're getting multiple reports of a target sighting up here on Arden Street near Queens Park.'

‘Archer to Command. Reject that call please. I started a game of Chinese whispers.'

Eden sounded tired. I sat listening, one hand on the bike, looking at Hooky. She was listening to the muffled
voices through my helmet, squinting as she tried to pick out the words.

‘Heron Two to Command. I've got runners panicking up here. Arden and Bronte.'

‘Command to Heron One and Two. I've got backup on its way to you. Bronte and Tamarama units respond.'

There was no response from Eden. It was possible she couldn't get through the chatter with the Eastern suburbs unit radios alive on every frequency as cars rushed to the top of Arden Street. I lifted one foot off the ground, straightened the bike and felt Hooky wrap her arms around my waist.

I stopped. The thumping had stopped. Hooky jostled me around the ribs with her arms, made my stomach flip.

‘Let's go, dickhead.'

‘Hang on,' I said. I let her take the weight of the bike. A weird, queasy sensation had come over me, half the light-headedness that comes after too many skipped meals and half the guilty terror of a bad hangover – the sensation that something is wrong. I'd had the feeling before, running into the church to capture Jason Beck. At the time I couldn't have known that he'd just murdered my girlfriend. I'd passed it off as the usual fears a cop experienced rushing into an unfamiliar environment to confront a criminal.

I was looking at the entrance to the tunnel when the thumping started again. It was so faint I hardly heard it above the rush of cars overhead.

I ripped off my helmet and ran into the dark alcove beneath the glowing green exit sign and hit the iron crossbar with both hands. The fire door swung open ten centimetres and thumped into a figure on the ground. All my muscles tensed at once.
There was pure darkness before me. All the emergency lights were out.

‘Amy! Amy! Amy!' I howled over my shoulder. I saw her drop the bike like it was made of cardboard. She leaped over it. The cop with the nail obsession stood dumbly at the bonnet of the patrol car. I shoved open the door, pushing the soft, limp thing behind it sideways and slipped into the dark. I drew my gun and peered into the murky red and blue of the stairwell. Amy slid into the stairwell with me. She fell on the body on the ground, gathering her arms and pulling the woman backwards, into the light cast by the doorway. I rushed blindly up the stairs, gun drawn, ears pricked. There was no one there. I could feel the emptiness of the space around me. No light came through from the above exit door. I sprinted back down the stairs.

‘She's alive.' Hooky's voice in the dark was high, thin. ‘Help me. Help me! She's alive!'

I could hear the two beat cops calling for backup. I kneeled in the dim light and looked at the crushed figure before me. A tiny plastic tube crunched under my knee. I groped in the dark and felt the spike, the wetness. A dart – still full, it seemed. I looked at the victim's swollen lips moving in a bloodied face. I wiped dampness from the woman's eyes with both hands. There was no telling how old she was. One eye was already swollen shut.

‘Face,' she said. Her hands were on my hands, trying to touch her face. ‘Hard face.'

‘It's alright,' I said. I was stammering, almost crying with terror and anger. ‘You're alright, love. Your face is alright.'

She passed out in my arms.