Private Oz (Private 7)

HO MADE FIRST contact from his home phone about 11 pm.

The cops were at the house with tracking equipment. Talbot, Yender and Thorogood were there to babysit. I had Mary and Darlene with me this time.

Ho tried to keep the call going, but the foot soldier at the other end wasn’t dumb. The call ended before the police expert could locate the caller to less than a square mile. Ho gave the anonymous Triad member a cell number. The guy clicked off before saying when he would respond. We just had to wait.

“We brought along some technology that might help,” I said. Mark gave me his usual contemptuous look, but Yender and Thorogood were all ears.

Darlene paced across the room carrying a couple of small boxes, put them on a low table and opened the lid of the top one. Then she plucked out a cell and removed the back cover. “Put your SIM in here,” she said to Ho Meng. “When they call you we can get a better trace on them than with the conventional gear.” And she flicked a glance at the police operator with his suitcase-sized tracking unit resting on the couch close to the home phone.

Darlene then picked up the second box, prised open the lid.

We could all see inside. A white pad with a black dot the size of an aspirin on top. “A micro transmitter,” she said. “We can place this anywhere on your body and it’ll pick up conversations and relay them

to a receiver. You’ll be close by in a van, right?” Darlene asked the cops.

“I’ll be with the assault unit,” Yender replied. “Inspector Talbot will be in the van.”

I glanced at him. He ignored me.

“Okay.” Ho nodded. “So what happens now?”

Thorogood looked up. “We’re ready when they are. Just need the word.”

Chapter 87

JULIE O’CONNOR HAD fallen asleep in front of Australian Idol and was dreaming about her father again. In her dream, none of the bad things had happened. He was still alive. She’d finished school, gone to college, become a Police Forensics officer.

She was woken by the crowd on TV roaring and shrieking as the winner was announced. And it all came rushing back – the reality of her life. She closed her eyes again and there was her mother screaming at her. When she hadn’t reacted, Sheila had begun to torture her. She had kept her locked in her bedroom for days, forced her to shit in a bowl left stinking in the corner, gave her only beetroot to eat.

Later, the torment got worse. Sheila would tie her to a chair in the kitchen, gag her and burn her arms with cigarettes.

On her eleventh birthday, the first since her father’s death, she received nothing. Then, just before bedtime, Sheila tied her to the chair again and told her that if she made a sound she would have her feet put in the fire in the lounge. Her mother had then pulled out an incisor with a pair of pliers.

This treatment continued for four years. She could never say a word for fear of worse torture. She hid the scars and the marks, made excuses for every lost tooth, every bruise. Then, one day something snapped inside her.

On the evening of her fifteenth birthday, Julie knew she would be in for a traditional ‘gift’. As Sheila busied herself getting ready to go out, Julie slipped a kitchen knife into the back pocket of her jeans.

Her mother appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. She was wearing far too much make-up. There were two lengths of cord in her left hand.

“In the chair.”

When she didn’t move, her mother began to smile. Took a step toward her. “At last …”

Julie pulled the knife from her pocket and swung it round, stopping two inches from her mother’s face.

The woman screeched, the smile vanishing instantly.

“You! In the chair,” Julie hissed. And when her mother didn’t react, she’d moved the knife an inch closer.

She tied Sheila with the cords meant for herself, gagged her with a tea towel and then brought the knife to the center of her forehead.

Sheila was shaking, her eyes filled with terror and hatred.

Julie had moved the knife a fraction of an inch, scoring her mother’s flesh. The woman screamed under the cloth but it came out as nothing more than a muffled hum. Julie heard a rush of liquid and saw her mother’s urine flow over the front of the chair and onto the floor.

“You didn’t once make me do that, you useless bitch!” the girl announced proudly. She pulled the knife away and pocketed it again, turned and walked out.

Chapter 88