Priors. Stuart Jackson E.
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quiet, with little traffic and few pedestrians. Taylor left the coffee shop and she ordered another coffee.
*******
They waited for almost ninety minutes. In that time she realised that if Green did come out in his car, that it would not be easy to identify him. There had been two cars emerge from the underground parking area and she had had to strain to clearly see the faces of the people in them.
He was driving a dark blue Nissan and had the driver’s window down as he waited for the stream of traffic on his right, so that he could turn into the street. She could see him clearly. He drove up the street away from where Taylor had parked his taxi and she hurried from the cafe.
“Blue car,” she said as she slid into the front seat beside Taylor. He already had the engine running.
“Nissan. Saw it. EWP 886.”
He pulled out into the stream of traffic and followed. The Nissan was already a block ahead and Taylor ran a red light to keep it in reach. She looked sideways at him and he said, “I have done this before, you know,” without taking his eyes from the road in front of them.
Green broke away from them at the next set of lights and there was nothing Taylor could do. He waited impatiently for the lights to change and then she saw him smile.
“What is it?”
“Bit of a bottleneck up ahead,” he said. A large removalist’s van was halfway across the road and had stopped the Nissan. “Take your time, buddy,” Taylor muttered. “Take your time.”
The traffic lights changed and the car in front stalled. Taylor hit the horn and the driver in front half-turned in his seat and gave him a sign with two upraised fingers. He re-started the car and they were on their way again.
The removalist’s van was still blocking the road and Taylor stopped in the line of traffic. There were six cars between his taxi and the blue Nissan. He always knew, when she had first explained this to him yesterday, that getting out of the city and keeping in contact with the car - all without drawing attention to themselves - would be the most difficult part of the operation. Traffic lights, policemen, pedestrians, traffic jams. Everything worked to make keeping the tail almost impossible. Professionals used multiple car teams. They couldn’t do that.
At Spencer Street Green turned left. There was more traffic now. Traffic lights at the end of Bourke and again at Collins. On their right the building that had once been the Railway Administration Offices and were now inner city luxury apartments. Ahead of them, at the Flinders Street intersection, the traffic was bunching up. Taylor knew he could lose Green here.
But they got through and they followed the Nissan across the Spencer Street Bridge over the Yarra. They continued down Clarendon Street and through South Melbourne and then south-west, under the bridge that had once carried the trains and which now carried the tram, and along Canterbury Road to St Kilda, then cutting easterly until they got onto St Kilda Road.
St Kilda Road became Brighton Road and then the Nepean Highway, heading south.
“Where’s he going?” she asked, and realised it was a silly question.
“South,” Taylor said, and turned to her and smiled quickly. “Patience,” he added. “Patience.”
He had to concentrate on the driving because the Nepean was awash with cars. It was busy at the best of times, but the traffic changed, slowed and then reached the maximum of 80, bunched and made it difficult for him to keep up with the Nissan. And lots of lights. And big trucks that blocked his view. He had visions of seeing Green on a side road as they sped by, trapped on the highway until the next exit.
After Mordialloc the nature of the Highway changed, narrower, running almost totally straight and flat, and only a block back from the Bay. They couldn’t see the water. The traffic had thinned out, but the changes in the road and flow still required Taylor to concentrate heavily.
They were silent as they drove along. He snatched glances at her and each time her eyes were staring ahead, her head moving slightly when the Nissan overtook another car and she temporarily lost sight of it. Her hands were clenched in her lap.
Two nights ago he’d asked her: “He’s important, is he? Christie?”
She ‘d looked at him, determination in her eyes and said, simply, “Yes. Very important.”
And he’d agreed to help her. He’d poured himself a scotch and they’d talked until two in the morning. Until they were happy with what had to be done.
They slowed down for the trip through Frankston, shops, pedestrians, slower traffic and then the Nissan turned left and joined the Frankston - Flinders Road. Mornington Peninsula, Taylor thought.
He’d balked at mention of the gun, but she’d insisted.
“There’s no other way,” she’d said, and he’d nodded.
The following day he’d spent an hour at home when he knew he was to be alone. He took the polished wooden box out of the locked cabinet in his study and sat in the garage to check the two pistols that the box held. Two Sig-Sauer P220s. They’d both originally been 7.65mm calibre pistols, but he’d converted both while in Vietnam to 9mm Parabellum. He stripped them down and checked the parts, and re-assembled them. He’d loaded both with nine round magazines. Then he’d wrapped both of them, together with two spare loaded magazines and one silencer, in a towel and into the small leather carry bag. He’d kept the bag under the front seat of the cab ever since. And it was there now.
They crossed the Mornington Peninsula Freeway and the amount of traffic dropped dramatically.
“This is going to be harder,” he said, watching the Nissan as the gap in front of him drew wider.
“You’ll lose him,” she said.
“It’s either that or alert him to the fact that he is being followed. Which do you want?” He knew it wasn’t a fair question. Quickly, he added, “I’ll try my best to keep him in sight, but I can’t get too close to him. He’ll ...”
“To the left! He’s turned off!”
“I see,” he said calmly.
He didn’t know the area too well. Names on the signposts were familiar - Somerville, Hastings, Balnarring - but he’d lost his sense of direction. Were they heading south still, or had Green doubled back somehow? Had he noticed the car behind him?
Overhead the clouds gathered, thick and black. On the horizon a narrow strip of light between clouds and the ground. It was getting dark.
And then they lost Green.
“He turned here, I know he did.”
“I saw him, too,” she said, frustration in her voice.
The road stretched out ahead of them, long, flat, and straight. Empty.
Taylor put his foot on the accelerator and sped down the road, slowing as the reached the first intersection. They both looked down it. Nothing. He sped on to the next one. Nothing. They could not make out where the next intersection was.
“If we can’t see it now, he couldn’t have got to it before we came onto this road.”
“Which means he turned off onto one of these two roads.”
“Which?”
They looked at each other and Taylor said, “The first one.”
She nodded and he turned the car. They’d lost maybe two minutes. He reached the intersection and turned. Again, nothing on the road in front of them. He accelerated.
“Got him,” Taylor said.
“What? Where?”
“Back there.”
He drove on, giving no sign of stopping.
“Where