Private Oz (Private 7)

“It’s human skin. I suspect there was a serious struggle. Ho must have taken a chunk out of the other guy.”

“But what’s the blue?” Thorogood asked, studying the image. It showed a highly magnified ragged rectangle of skin. One corner was dark blue.

“Stumped me,” Darlene replied, “… for a few seconds. Then I realized it was probably a bit of a tattoo.”

Thorogood looked at Darlene, back at the picture.

“Very clever,” I said.

“Oh, I’m even cleverer than that.”

I flicked a glance at Thorogood who was now giving Darlene a skeptical look.

“I took a sample and ran it through a gas chromatograph that separates out the constituents of a blend. Tattoo ink is a cocktail of many different ingredients. The gas chromatograph pulls these away from each other and gives a readout to show everything that makes up the blend. This is what I got.”

I took another sheet of paper from my science whiz. It showed a graph with different colored bars lined up across the paper.

“There were forty-seven different compounds or elements in the ink – vegetable dyes, traces of solvent, zinc, copper. But one thing stood out.”

I handed the sheet to Thorogood.

“An unusual level of Antimony.”

We both looked at Darlene blankly.

“Only Chinese tattooists use that type of ink. It’s most commonly found in the tattoos of Triad gang members.”

Chapter 10

Three Years Ago.

IT WAS ONE of those perfect Sydney mornings. Pristine blue sky, not a cloud in sight, a crispness to the air that made you kid yourself everything was right with the world. Even the traffic was light for 7 am and I had the roof down on the old Porsche convertible I’d bought fifth-hand ten years before.

We were en route to the airport. Becky, my wife of nine years, our three-year-old son, Cal, and me. Becky looked amazing. She was wearing a diaphanous dress and a thick rope of fake pearls. She was tanned from the spring sunshine. When she moved her hands, the collection of bangles at her wrists jangled. She’d put on a bit of weight and looked better for it. We’d made love that morning while Cal was asleep and I could still visualize her.

I glanced round and saw her long auburn hair blown back by the warm breeze. She was excited about our trip to Bali. We all were … our first holiday in two years. I’d been working hard to build up my PI agency, Solutions Inc., and I was only now able to take a week off, splash some cash on a fancy resort.

I’d woken up that morning feeling more relaxed than I had for years. I’d had nice dreams too. I was back on our wedding day. Nine years before. It was a bitter-sweet occasion. I’d bumped into Becky by chance one morning at Darling Harbour. The old spark was there, we were both single. It just happened. We were meant for each other. Within a year we were married.

Mark must’ve heard I was with Becky, but seeing as I hadn’t spoken to him since my second year in college, I had no idea what he’d thought about it. He would never forgive me for what happened at his party. I could hardly blame the guy. What did sting for a while was that only a few of my family turned up at the registry office in Darlinghurst. But hell, it was a long time ago and even that wasn’t going to ruin my mood.

Cal was strapped in the back, a suitcase next to him. On top of that was the brightly colored Kung Fu Panda carry-on bag he planned to wheel to the plane and put in the overhead locker. He’d not flown before, but I’d told him all about it the previous night in lieu of a bedtime story. Cal had the same auburn hair as his mother, the same eyes. In fact, there wasn’t much immediately obvious about his looks that confirmed he was mine. But he definitely had my temperament – patient and calm, but vicious when riled.

“So you looking forward to the trip, little man?” I called to Cal over the noise of the road and the wind and the powerful engine. “I know I am.”

He nodded. I saw him in the rear-view mirror, a big smile across his face, baby teeth gleaming.

“What you looking forward to most, Cal?”

He thought for a moment, forehead wrinkled. Then hollered: “Catching fish!”

I glanced over to Becky and we both laughed. I turned back and saw the pickup truck on the wrong side of the road coming straight for us. And I knew immediately that this was the end. I could feel Becky freeze beside me, watched as the ugly great vehicle covered the distance between us. With each vanishing yard, I felt my life … our lives together … drain away.

Chapter 11

I DON’T REMEMBER the impact … no one ever does, do they? The horror began

when I started to open my eyes. But at first, everything was blurred and I was stone deaf. I just saw colored shapes. Then my hearing came back … but I couldn’t make out a single human sound. Instead, a loud, shrill whine, the engine free-wheeling in neutral.