Tropic of Death (34 page)

‘What are you doing?’ she shouted.

‘What’s it look like? Making a run for it!’

Rita glanced over her shoulder at the Porsche, swinging back onto the road for the chase.

‘You’re not going to outrun a Porsche in this tank,’ she said.

‘If we make it to the cane fields, we can.’

He took a hand off the wheel to scrabble around on the dash, then popped a pill.

‘Are you on speed?’ she asked.

‘Mild uppers. To grease the reflexes.’ With Freddy gunning the engine, the Land Rover roared along a link road, his pursuers gaining ground. ‘I knew this would happen. They’ve been creeping around after me all day.’

He narrowly missed colliding with a sheep lorry as he cut across its path onto the highway, horn blaring. The trailing Porsche had to slam on its brakes to avoid a side-on crash.

‘Come on, come on, come on!’ urged Freddy, picking up speed.

‘A couple of k and we’ll shake them.’

But the Porsche was soon closing the gap again, matching Freddy’s lane changes as he weaved in and out, overtaking everything in his path.

‘This is crazy!’ said Rita. ‘You can’t play dodgems on the damn highway!’

‘Oh, no,’ he groaned, as they bore down on a queue of vehicles halted by red lights at a busy intersection on the edge of town.

‘This is no time to stop.’

Without indicating, he swung across traffic to the squeal of tyres and a chorus of horn blasts, and zoomed off along a side road. It wasn’t long before the Porsche was following.

‘Buckle up, Van Hassel!’ he said, a manic note in his voice.

‘We’re taking some shortcuts!’

Rita heeded his advice, grappling with the seatbelt and locking it as the four-wheel drive lurched around a bend in a spray of pebbles. Freddy veered off at a junction with a gravel service road, spewing out a cloud of dust in his wake as the car juddered over humps and potholes.

‘They’ll have to slow down,’ he cried out above the noise, ‘or bugger their suspension.’

Rita turned to look through the rear window. Sure enough the Porsche was easing back. It fell further behind and out of sight as they skirted the raised banks of a reservoir and raced on past a quarry and a rubbish tip, Freddy wrenching the wheel just in time to avoid smacking into a dumpster.

‘Outta the way, arsehole!’ he yelped, swinging the car onto the roadside bank and accelerating past.

Rita shuddered at the near miss but saw the benefit of Freddy’s dose of amphetamine.

When they reached a T-junction, he took a hard right. They were travelling on a sealed surface again.

‘Do you know where you’re going?’ she asked.

‘We’re on Golf Links Road,’ he answered. ‘And we’re heading in the right direction.’

With no sign of the Porsche on the stretch of road behind, Freddy kept up the pace along a broad curve of avenue lined with flowering wattle trees, then around a brick-walled corner of Whitley cemetery, only to find he was hurtling towards the slow procession of a funeral with not enough room to stop.

He whipped the wheel sideways - ‘Hang on!’ - and cannoned past the cortege like a sacrilegious joyrider, startling the driver of the hearse, which slipped into a ditch, dislodging its wreaths.

Rita voiced her disapproval. ‘Not nice, Freddy.’

‘It was that or ram them.’

‘You’ve just earned a thousand years in purgatory.’

‘Better than Billy giving me hell.’

Before the words were out of his mouth he was jamming on the brakes as they rounded a freight depot and skidded to a halt just short of a coal train rattling through a rail crossing.

‘Shit,’ he said.

‘Why don’t we just stop here and let me deal with the bouncers?’

Rita suggested.

‘You’ve gotta be kidding. Those fuckers are tooled up with shotguns.’

‘Shotguns?’ Rita thought about it as the train cleared the crossing. ‘Then what are you waiting for? Shift it!’

He flattened the accelerator pedal and they thumped over the rail lines as the Porsche raced into view behind. It was cutting the distance rapidly. Up ahead was a long straight sweep of open road.

‘Time to improvise,’ said Freddy.

He hauled the car into a sliding turn that took them through the entrance of the Whitley golf course.

‘Where does this lead?’

‘To the clubhouse,’ he said, ‘but don’t let it bother you.’

‘If you say so.’

With the white weatherboard building looming ahead, Freddy only increased the speed.

‘Brace yourself !’ he warned. ‘We’re going off-road!’

Aiming directly at the clubhouse garden of ornamental shrubbery, the Land Rover smashed through it with a thud, the wheels chewing and spitting out a crush of myrtle bushes before bursting through hedges on the far side, to the astonishment of members wheeling their golf bags. There was no way of avoiding the number one tee, and the car tore through it, forcing players to scatter.

‘That’s some divot you left behind,’ said Rita, looking over her shoulder to see the Porsche emerge from the trail of mangled shrubs. ‘Billy’s boys don’t give up easily, do they?’

‘Me neither.’

Down the fairway Freddy charged, horn honking to alert the golfers. An alarmed pair on a buggy wobbled erratically into the rough as the Land Rover flashed past. The end of the fairway was hemmed in by strands of banksia and water obstacles, so the only option, with the Porsche slicing through the grass on their tail, was to head straight for the green. Four players were casually lining up putts until they witnessed the mayhem descending on them like a hoon rally. They flung their clubs and bolted out of the way, one of them jumping into a sand trap, another toppling into a pond. With the way clear, Freddy ploughed straight across the green, flattening the flag and burying the cup, before dropping with a thud over the bunker on the far side.

‘Hole in one!’ he laughed.

‘And a double bogey for Billy’s bouncers,’ added Rita, watching the Porsche grind to a halt on the lip of the bunker, unable to risk the drop.

‘Yay!’ shouted Freddy, with glee. ‘We’re winning!’

By the time they emerged from the back gates of the course their pursuers were more than a fairway length behind. A maintenance road led directly to a wide expanse of cane fields. With the crushing season underway, Freddy took his time picking a way through the crop to avoid the cane cutters. When he found a deep rutted track he turned onto it. The Land Rover was half a kilometre along it before the Porsche appeared. Instead of following, it stopped.

After a moment, it sped off along the road.

‘I told you we’d do it,’ said Freddy, with a note of triumph in his voice.

‘Where does this lead?’ asked Rita.

‘Just one way - to the coast road.’

‘And do the bouncers know that?’

‘Oh, shit. They’ll try to cut us off.’

He gripped the wheel with renewed determination as the car sped along the track through hectare after hectare of tall green cane, affording the occasional glimpse of sugar mills and chopper harvesters in the distance. The fields ended at a bend of the coast road that was empty of traffic. Freddy pulled onto it and headed north. The road climbed over a bluff with a rocky point below, where waves frothed over reefs and a clutch of islets dotted a bay.

They were nearing the bottom of a dip when the Porsche streaked over the crest behind, closing rapidly. To Rita’s surprise, Freddy turned off the road onto what looked like an old cobbled path sloping down an incline to the beach. Seconds later, the Porsche did the same. With less than fifty metres between the vehicles Freddy accelerated towards the water. He was aiming at where the path disappeared under the waves in what looked like a slipway.

‘Are you nuts?’ cried Rita.

She grabbed hold of the arm rest as the Land Rover hit the water with a splash and, amazingly, surged forward unhindered, the wheels gripping solidly without losing momentum.

‘What is this?’ she asked.

‘A tidal causeway,’ he answered.

She spun around in time to see the Porsche hit the water and slew sideways, engine-deep, wallowing in the waves, unable to go any further. The bouncers were clambering out, waterlogged and defeated.

‘Good timing,’ said Rita. ‘So where does this causeway lead?’

‘That little island, dead ahead.’

Driving steadily now, Freddy guided the car towards an isolated rise of land that lay like a hump in the middle of the bay. Rita could make out a cluster of buildings, and as they got closer she saw they were made of stone with slate roofs and arched windows.

The look was old and weathered, the style Victorian Gothic. On the slopes around them were what appeared to be vegetable gardens and orchards of mango and banana trees. She could even see pigs and sheep wandering around.

The car rose, dripping, from the causeway beside a jetty with a boat tied to it, bobbing on the waves. Freddy followed a cobbled lane to a courtyard and parked next to a kombi van with an image of the Virgin and Child painted on its door.

‘What
is
this place?’ asked Rita, baffled.

‘St Cedd’s Monastery,’ answered Freddy, switching off the engine. ‘Welcome to my safe haven.’

43
Of all Rita’s encounters since arriving in Whitley, this struck her as the most bizarre. She and Freddy were sitting on canvas chairs in the middle of cloisters, the rays of the afternoon sun casting a mellow light on the stone of the surrounding colonnade. There was a fishpond with lilies and a small fountain tinkling above the flagstones, and grapevines clung to some of the columns. Brother Ignatius was serving food and drink, with bread, cheese and olives already spread on a wooden table to which he added an unlabelled bottle of red wine and goblets. The soothing tone of voices singing psalms rose from the Blessed Sacrament Chapel nearby, drifting like a mood of calm through the fabric of the monastery.

Ignatius poured the wine, pulled up a chair and joined them.

‘It’s wonderful to have your company,’ he said.

‘Thanks for the hospitality,’ replied Freddy.

‘No thanks are necessary. It’s our duty to offer sanctuary. As our Lord said:
When I was hungry, you gave me food; when thirsty,
you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in.
‘

‘Matthew,’ noted Rita.

‘Ah, a detective with spiritual interests,’ said Ignatius, delight in his eyes.

‘Psychological interests,’ Rita corrected. ‘As a profiler I need to be familiar with a wide range of symbols, including biblical myths and metaphors.’

Ignatius couldn’t help smiling at her. ‘And what does the word psychology mean but a science of the soul?’

‘If you equate soul with mind,’ said Rita.

It was obvious he was fascinated by her presence. The way he looked at her was intense and not entirely flattering. It was as if he were observing a rare sight which, in his confined environment, in a sense she was. Her novelty value wasn’t lost on Rita as she watched him watching her, but there was genuine empathy in his manner as well.

He was wearing a plain cheesecloth shirt and cotton trousers and he didn’t look much like a monk, but more like a teacher or doctor with an alert, engaging face behind black-rimmed glasses.

Although pushing forty, he retained something of an adolescent’s eagerness, a wide-eyed simplicity bolstered by the innocence of faith. To Rita’s sceptical mind he also embodied a surrender to ambiguity. Many monks, she suspected, managed to remain devout and sin-obsessed at the same time, trapped in a spiritual contradiction and locked in a constant battle with their demons of repression. Whatever his inner secrets, Ignatius possessed a cheerful disposition.

‘What’s your religious background?’ he asked.

‘Dutch Protestant,’ she answered. ‘In my childhood.’

‘Ah, Calvinism. A heavy cross to bear.’

‘Well, I dismantled that piece of lumber years ago.’

‘Are you sure?’ Ignatius folded his hands. ‘The Freudians say we never erase the influence of our early years.’

‘Is that Freud you’re quoting,’ she parried, ‘or your namesake Loyola?’

‘Wonderful. A debate with an ex-Calvinist. You’ve made my day.’

‘My pleasure. But changing to a less righteous topic, what on earth’s your connection with Freddy?’

‘He was a little chorister when I was an altar boy,’ chuckled Ignatius. ‘A cherub with a naughty attitude. As you can see, he slipped through the Jesuits’ fingers.’

‘Very funny,’ said Freddy.

Rita turned to him, amused. ‘You were a Catholic choirboy?

What happened?’

‘I lapsed.’

‘More like a sabbatical from the faith,’ said Ignatius. ‘Freddy’s a bad boy with a good spirit. In the end he does the right thing.’

‘I hope so,’ said Rita.

‘And, of course, he did a great service to the monastery when he and his friend Stonefish got us online. They designed our website and keep a check on our internet services - all gratis and much appreciated.’

Freddy gave Rita a dry look. ‘That should knock a few centuries off purgatory.’

She laughed and clinked her goblet against his. ‘You’ll need all the brownie points you can get.’ She raised the glass to her lips, swallowed a mouthful of wine, and gave a nod of approval.

‘A full-bodied shiraz,’ explained Ignatius. ‘Product of a monastic vineyard.’

‘This monastery?’

‘No, one that’s inland. We’re a very small community these days, down to just a dozen brothers. No new recruits. We’re self-sufficient, but that’s about it. The life of a monk is losing its appeal in our increasingly secular world.’

‘What you’ve got here is very peaceful and civilised,’ said Rita.

‘Though I’m not sure what I’m doing here, other than sharing Freddy’s refuge. I should be getting back to Whitley.’

‘Relax, Van Hassel,’ said Freddy. ‘You’re marooned here until the next low tide.’

‘Then I’d better phone DSS Sutcliffe.’ She pulled out her mobile and looked at it. ‘No signal.’

‘It’s erratic,’ said Ignatius. ‘But you might want to hold off on that call anyway.’ He gestured at a fourth canvas chair, currently unoccupied, that he’d placed beside the table. ‘There’s someone who wants to meet you - someone you need to talk to.’