Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(73)

Now he was in between those two places, the lab where the nail scrapings had gone for testing and the triage department where Tox was fighting for life. He took out his phone and called Harry, but the call rang through.

‘Hi,’ he said after the message tone. He only noticed, at that moment, that his hands were covered in blood. In fact, his clothes were spattered all over with it. People were staring at him as they walked past, alarm in their eyes. ‘Um. Call me … uh … when you can. We got a DNA sample from the Georges River suspect. It’ll be three hours, they think, before they can give us a result. I’m, um, I’m not sure what to do now. Tox is … He’s … Just call me back.’

He sat down in a plastic chair beside a vending machine filled with high-sugar snacks. He had to focus now. There were units out there in the night searching for the killer, trying to track down the twelve men who’d been identified by their fingerprints at the abandoned hotel. They were now also checking emergency rooms and medical centres for anyone wounded, knowing Tox would have done at least some damage to his attacker. The killer wouldn’t have been expecting a man at Harry’s apartment. He must have seen the lights on, wondered if she might be there. What had he wanted with Harry? The same thing he wanted with the girls he had taken?

None of it made sense. No, it didn’t make sense if the theory was that this man was Sam Blue’s partner. Because if Sam Blue was his partner, his friend, he’d have no reason to want to hurt Harry. And why go around and break into Harry’s apartment if his intentions for her were good? Had he broken in? There was no way of telling. The door had been smashed down, and neighbours in the building were saying they thought the dead man in the hallway had done it. Had he got in another way?

Whitt needed to find this guy. Going to Harry’s apartment had been a bold act. Caitlyn McBeal had escaped him. His face had, presumably, been on the television – even if it was buried among the faces of other suspects. Now he was on the run, probably wounded. The killer must be in crisis mode. He would do now what killers in trouble always do. He would go home. Go to where it was safe. Not literally to his place of residence – the police would be covering the houses of the twelve men. He’d go where his heart lived. Where it had all begun.

But where on Earth was that?

Whitt stood. He had an idea.





Chapter 118


THE LIGHTS OF the town swirled in my vision, the black arms of the cliffs around us. The wind was making me shiver, but I knew it couldn’t possibly be as cold as I felt. I tried to walk slowly, to think. The bottle under my chin felt heavy. Bella had rolled the duct tape around and around my neck. It was pulling at my hair. Awkwardly tugging at the skin behind my ear. It was hard to walk with my hands behind my back. The tape there was too tight, jamming my unbroken wrist up against the cast on the other arm. When Bella had asked me to strap up, I’d been pleased with how awkward it was, taping my own hands behind my back. I had started the roll on my good wrist and given myself a little gap between my wrists, hoping she’d think I’d done it by accident. No luck. When Bella had taken over, she’d made sure the bind was nice and secure. My fingers tingled with numbness.

‘Speed it up, slowpoke,’ Bella said, jabbing the pistol into my ribs.

‘I’m going to trip if I go any faster.’

‘ I wouldn’t if I were you,’ she said. ‘You pull one of those wires out of the cap and the thing will blow.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s fertiliser,’ she said. ‘Ammonium nitrate and gasoline, a couple of other things. Swimming in the middle is a cheap mobile phone. Well, the guts of one. I pulled apart the phone and isolated the circuit that comes alive when it rings. When I ring the number, the circuit will spark the fuel. And you’re dead.’

‘When?’ I stopped walking. Stood before her, looked her in the eyes. ‘When you ring the phone? If you’re going to kill me, Bella, you might as well do it right here.’

‘That’s not the plan, honey.’ She smiled. She waved the gun at me. ‘It’s in your interest to just keep following my directions.’

‘Why?’

‘Because otherwise I’ll put a fucking bullet in your leg and you’ll have to drag yourself to town. That’s why.’

She shrugged, the gun in one hand, a phone in the other. I turned and kept walking. Soon we’d come into the reach of the lights. I could see the people standing in the street, hear the clink of glasses.

‘Where did you learn to do all this?’ I was rambling now, trying to get her talking, even if it was about her devastating plans. I needed to reason with her. She couldn’t stay locked in her own irrational mind. ‘How did you figure out how to build these things?’

‘It’s all over the internet,’ she said.

We’d checked the IP addresses and searches of everyone in the town. But Bella didn’t live in town anymore. She was visiting.

‘ You can find a plan for anything you want,’ she continued. ‘You don’t need complex chemicals or big exciting machines. I killed Zac with the timer from Dad’s oven.’ She sighed, looked up at the stars. A smile crept over her features. ‘Do you have any idea how wonderful it feels to say that? I killed Zac. I. Killed. Zac.’

‘He didn’t do anything to you. He was never a part of this.’