Two-Way Cut

chapter 1

The thing is, shed moved into this house only a few days ago, and yet they’d found her. Before that there’d been another house, and before that a couple of cheap and nasty flats. Cheap and nasty houses, too, so who was she kidding? The thing is, they’d found her at each of her boltholes and told her she was a dead woman.

This time they’d buried her car in a truckload of sand and placed a cardboard coffin on top of the heap. There was a doll dressed in a blue uniform cap and overalls inside the coffin. Overalls because some of them thought she was a lesbian. Lived alone, no boyfriend, didn’t mix, she had to be a dyke, right?

She was actually straight, but that wasn’t the issue, it was just their way of putting the boot in further. Some of them wanted her dead, and they were cops, and knew how to find her. Knew how to make her dead.

So there and then Leah Flood walked away from all of that. Literally. No more flats or houses in this city. She shoved clothes, toiletries, Swiss Army knife, sleeping-bag, tent and a couple of paperbacks into her pack and hit the road. Leah didn’t look back, not even at her buried car. It was a good car but a rope around her neck now. A rattly red MG with personalised plates, LEAH82 for the year she was born, shed not last five minutes on the open road.

Hitchhiking was a different matter. It was November, warm days and cool evenings, so she could camp in barns, under bridges, amongst ti-trees along the coast. Rent an on-site caravan or cabin whenever she needed to treat herself or put her clothes through a washing machine. Pay cash for everything so that she wouldn’t leave a trail of electronic records.

Lose herself, in other words. Vanish off the face of the earth.

And so the first thing she did when she left the house, ignoring the stares of the neighbours, was to take a bus ten blocks to Whitehorse Plaza, where she found a branch of the ANZ and cleaned out her savings. Five thousand dollars. Could she exist on twenty dollars a day? That would buy her over a year of freedom, and maybe by then her enemies would have forgotten her.

Next she altered her appearance. Her face was well known, so she couldn’t do much beyond going into a salon and asking them to cut her hair into a pageboy and put a red rinse through it. She didn’t need spectacles but bought a pair of sunglasses with bright green frames to distract attention from her features.

She examined herself in a restroom, liking the effect. Maybe with new looks Ill get a new personality, she thought then rejected the notion. She needed to be the person shed already become these last few months: vigilant, determined, solitary.

Finally she left the shopping-centre and boarded a bus and spotted the Subaru again. Shed first seen it from the bus window on the way to the shopping-centre and given it the benefit of the doubt, but here it was again and Leah didn’t believe in coincidences. It pulled in behind the bus and tailed it, staying well back. Leah thought rapidly. She needed access to an exit and a line of sight along the length of the bus, and so she moved seats, stationing herself on a side-facing seat near the drivers door. Would they try to take her on the bus? Phone ahead and put someone on board? She glanced around at the other passengers: a teenage girl with her mother, and an elderly man with a walking-stick. Leah couldn’t expect much help from them.

The minutes passed and the bus belched through the endless tracts of tiled roofs and drought-blighted lawns, more passengers embarking, and then on the other side of the river the houses grew smaller and older, the traffic heavier, and the air more toxic. Collingwood and then Fitzroy, two of the poorest of the inner suburbs, but in pockets also rich and desirable: certain streets with gentrified houses, outdoor cafs, expensive clothing, fancy coffee, Porsches at the kerb, the occasional TV star. But none of that interested Leah. In Fitzroy she could catch a tram to the main train station, which would give her access to the grasslands at the edge of Melbourne and the endless roads to the west. Just stick out her thumb and go.

But she couldn’t afford to let the men in the Subaru know she was going to the station. Several people got ready to alight at the stop for Brunswick Street. Leah let them get off first. She didn’t want them behind her but on the street where they could shield her. She paused on the top step, her head out, glancing back along the flank of the bus. The Subaru was waiting at the kerb a short distance behind.

She stepped down, jostling her way through a clump of pedestrians, and turned into Brunswick Street. A hundred metres down she paused outside a bookshop and gazed, without taking in the details, at a poster advertising the latest Isobelle Carmody novel, then switched direction and darted across to the other side of the street. She ran then, back toward Johnston Street, as if to catch the lights.

Leah was going to flush them out, see how good they were, see how many they were.

She turned right into Johnston Street, jogging along it to a sidewalk caf, where people were drinking coffee under striped umbrellas, and ducked left into a narrow side street. Halfway down she paused and looked back. The street was clear.

But she knew she hadn’t lost them. By running shed announced herself. They were out there, regrouping, setting up the next stage. She had to nip this in the bud, and the only way to do that was to let herself be the bait.

Back on Brunswick Street she headed south towards the city centre, keeping pace with the crowd. Half of the pedestrians were locals: yuppies, students and wannabe artists; the other half were tourists from the suburbs trying to look cool. In other circumstances, Leah would have found them irritating, but today she needed themas potential witnesses, obstacles or saviours.

She edged through some backpackers huddled outside an internet caf. There are ways of tailing people so you cant be spotted and ways of spotting a tail. A careless tail will always turn away abruptly, drop to fiddle with a shoelace, pause outside an unlikely shop window. Without drawing attention to herself, Leah began to scrutinise the people around her. She used reflective surfaces: car and shop windows, peoples sunglasses, store mirrors, car chrome and duco. Now and then she stopped abruptly and doubled back to see if that disconcerted anyone, made anyone change direction abruptly with her. She entered a vast, noisy pasta restaurant by one door, studied the chalked menu for a while, then left by way of an alley outside the kitchen. When a taxi pulled up outside a pub to discharge a passenger, she got in, told the driver to U-turn, and watched to see how her pursuers reacted.

Nothing. They were good. She didn’t see a thing that looked wrong.

She got out again near the bookshop, gave the complaining driver twenty dollars, and retraced her movements along Brunswick Street. Leah was prepared to do this for two or three hours if necessary. She assumed they’d have more than one man on her. There might even be a tail in front of her. Leah didn’t care who or where or when, she wanted to isolate just one man, disable him, and ask him some hard questions.

But they were good. Leah went through the main strip of cafs and boutiques a second time, heading toward the city, and was several blocks along, adjacent to the Housing Commission flats on Gertrude Street, before she spotted a tail. It was chance, and her instincts: just ahead of her a woman with a basket of dirty washing had propped open the glass-paned door of a laundromat with her hip, angling the glass sufficiently to give Leah a clear image of the man a few metres behind her.

It was not only his face but also the way he walked that she remembered not five minutes ago, crossing against her at a traffic light. A tall man with pouchy eyes and an elaborately casual gait, more easily identifiable here, where there were fewer pedestrians. Leah scratched her head with feigned absentmindedness: she didn’t want the tail to see the tension in her. She kept walking. The street was broad and open. Her eyes darting, she searched for a way of ambushing the man.

Then she froze for a fraction of a second. Another man was keeping pace with her on the other side of the street. He was solid, compact, purposeful, not bothering to conceal himself, and now Leah knew what the plan was. They were hunting her as a team, herding her to where she could be trapped by the rest of the group.

Leah still had her house and car keys. She slid her right hand into her jacket pocket and fitted the keys between her fingers like spines. She kept walking, watching the second tail, taking note of his arms: they looked unrelaxed, hanging out from the stocky trunk as if prepared to tackle her at a moments notice. Leah doubted that shed be attacked out in the open, but somewhere isolated and contained. She looked back over her shoulder. The first tail was less than ten metres behind her. Leah wanted to run but suppressed the urge. She walked.

Cars, taxis, a bus, a courier motorcycle, people shopping, a kid on a skateboardit was an ordinary, moderately busy street in the middle of the afternoon, not a place for chaos. That would come somewhere nearby, somewhere narrow, dark and shielded from view. She felt a bleakness settle in her. Nothing was finished yet. Nothing was ever finished.

A hundred metres closer to the city were two rows of faded terrace houses, separated by an alley, and home to several struggling shops under the rusted verandahs over the footpath. The Subaru was parked just beyond the alley. And just then a third man appeared, stepping out from behind the Subaru, blocking Leah’s path. He had blunt features and the build of a weightlifter. Leah saw him crouch slightly, waiting to see what she would do.

Leah stopped, looking for leverages. She couldn’t find any. The first two men were keeping well back from her and the bodybuilder posed problems. If the guy had long hair or loose clothing then there would be something she could hold, jerk or twist, but his skull was shaved, he wore tight jeans and T-shirt, and there was only his body, hard, coiled-looking, like a black spring, and the expandable police baton that he was now taking from the small of his back. He jerked his head at the alley, meaning in there.

This was her last chance to make a run for it, but Leah was angry and focused now, needing to thrash this out, and walked a few metres into the alley. She stopped, turned around. The third man had followed her in; he halted when Leah did, the others stationed on the footpath behind him. He didn’t speak, just stared flatly at Leah. Then he gestured with the baton, ushering her deeper into the alley. Leah turned, walked, and after a few seconds heard soft footfalls as he began to follow her. She knew how it would go: they’d swarm over her, start punching, kicking, smacking their batons against her, and it would be done in silenceno arguments, no explanations.

Leah stopped. The alley was damp and narrow, smelling of urine and garbage scattered by rangy cats. Faint grey light leaked in from the street behind her. In front of her was a wall.

They were not counting on what she did then. She spun around. She began to shout. At the same time, she charged, zigzagging down the alley toward them, bouncing from wall to wall. The bodybuilder swung his baton, tracking Leah, but was slow to react. Leah reached the man and raked her keys across his face. The cold eyes filled with blood. The man grunted in pain, and his first instinct was to put both hands to his face. Leah wheeled, swung her fist, and drove the air from his body.

The other men began to fumble for batons. They hadn’t expected this. They’d thought it would be easy, three against one. Now they didn’t know if they should rush Leah, keep her trapped, or rescue their friend. You bitch, one of them said. They started toward her.

Leah continued to run, swift, low, shouting unnervingly. She ran right into the face of their batons. They swung, but she was too fast, and was running at the gap between them, so that they risked clouting each other. Suddenly they were at a disadvantage in that narrow space.

Leah’s shoulder drove into the first man, who doubled over, mouth opening and closing. He dropped his baton, crumpled to the ground. Leah scooped up the baton and swung it around on the other man, who backed on to the footpath, shocked at the speed and fury of the turnaround, then fled, scuttling in panic down the street.

It had all taken seven seconds.

A small boy and an elderly woman had seen everything. The boy began to cry, the old woman was gulping, but they didn’t move. Leah walked past them and across the street. They looked wonderingly after her then back at the men in the alley.

Leah walked south east toward the city centre, then cut across to the Victoria Market. It was a long shot, but it paid off, and thirty minutes later she had her ride out of the city.

They wouldn’t be expecting that. They would be expecting her to go deeper to ground.