Yet his instinct tells him that she is not heading toward the back door.

When he reaches the ground floor there is no sign of Tara Weston, and he has not heard her footsteps running toward the back door.

“Then where has the little bitch got to?” he thinks, starting to wonder if she is distantly related to Harry Houdini.

He has already started down the wide corridor toward the back of the building, when he spots the door to the basement steps.   He grins his broadest shit-eater grin, recalling again how he had entered the building this way many hours ago after slaughter the chauffeur.

“That’s where the little bitch has gone.”   He recalls seeing a large board holding the keys to the Westons’s five cars, plus spare keys for the house.   “The little bitch thinks she can just drive off!   Well, she’s got another thing coming to her!”

Then wondering if she really can escape from him that easily, Voss pulls open the basement door and peers inside.   Even without turning on the overhead light, he sees the blonde girl standing at the opposite end of the room near a large wall safe.   Grinning his broadest shit-eater grin, Voss thinks, “I’ve got the little bitch now!”

Aiming the revolver in her direction, he reaches out to flip on the light switch with his other hand.   But then, to his astonishment the wall safe suddenly springs open and Tara Weston races inside.

*      *      *

“Come on, please?” says Tara, having heard Roderick Voss’s footsteps even before she saw him standing at the top of the basement steps.   As the maniac switched on the basement light, Tara turned to run toward the garage, knowing it was too late now to try outrunning him.

Just in time, Richie Travers grabbed the beautiful blonde girl’s arm and pulled her toward the safe.

“No, in here,” he whispered, dragging Tara into the walk-in safe.   “Now help me to pull the door closed.”

With difficulty, allowing for the safe door’s immense weight and Richie’s injuries, they managed to pull the door inward.

*      *      *

Roderick Voss watches in amazement as the twelve-year-old girl races into the walk-in safe, then actually pulls the door shut on herself.

“Stupid bitch!” he shouts, racing down the stairs, then across the basement floor to reach the safe.

He carefully checks the door all around and confirms that the door is undoubtedly locked.

“She’s done it to me again!” he says in astonishment.   “How did she know the combination to this thing?   Surely the Westons didn’t entrust the combination to a twelve-year-old brat?”   But over the last few hours he had acquired a grudging respect for Tara Weston and now had to concede that she was no ordinary brat.

“So what now?” he wonders.   “I’ll never open this thing in a million years.   But there’s no need, surely?   In twelve hours or so the little bitch will die of oxygen-starvation in there.”

*      *      *

“Now we’re safe from that bastard,” said Richie, lying against a row of security boxes along one wall of the walk-in safe.

“But we’ll die from asphyxiation in here in a few hours,” insisted Tara, wondering if Richie Travers was a false guardian angel after all.

“No,” said Richie.   Reaching into his inner vest pocket, he pulled out the small penlight.   “That’s a myth.   Like me, you’ve probably seen dozens of murder mysteries where someone is murdered by being locked in a walk-in safe and dying when the air runs out.   But that’s all crap.”

“How come?” asked Tara.

Richie shone the beam of the penlight on a small red button near the right-hand wall beside the door.   “Because all walk-in safes have an emergency release button inside, in case you do lock yourself inside.   I noticed this one near the door when it first opened.   Press that button and it will override all other locking mechanisms, timers, and so on and swing the door open in a few seconds.”

“But the maniac is just outside the door.”

“Yes,” agreed Richie, sounding weaker than ever from his injuries.   “So we have to resort to Plan B.”

“Plan B?” asked Tara, puzzled.

“Walk-in safes also always have a built in telephone.   Separate from the house’s other phones.   So even if he’s cut the phone lines out there, the phone in here should still work.”

Pointing the beam of the small torch into the safe, he said, “Help me down the back, that’s where they usually put the phones.”

“But who do we ring?   Will there be a current phone book?”

“In an expensive safe like this, the phone is usually linked directly to either a security company, or the nearest cop station,” explained Richie as they located the small phone on the wall at the back of the safe.   “So with any luck we won’t even have to dial.”

Picking up the receiver, Richie said, “Weston estate.   There’s been a number of murders.   We need the police and at least two ambulances.”

*      *      *

As Tara watched on, fascinated, Richie Travers hurriedly summarised what had happened that night at the estate, then hung up.

“See, that wasn’t so …” Richie said, before finally collapsing from his injuries.

Squealing in shock, Tara Weston raced across to attempt to revive him.

*      *      *

Outside in the basement, Roderick Voss is still debating the best course of action, when he hears sirens outside and the sound of a helicopter overhead.

He looks toward the door to the underground garage, wondering if he can make a break for it that way.   But hearing footsteps behind him, he spins round as three police officers run down the basement stairs.

Voss knows that surrender isn’t an option.   Despite Australia’s lame justice system — notorious for giving brutal mass-murderers the lightest possible sentence — he knows that having killed the third richest billionaire in the country he will be locked away in solitary confinement for the rest of his life.   “One law for killing the rich, and another for killing the poor,” he thinks.

So, grabbing the revolver from his vest pocket, he quickly fires off the remaining six shots, killing the three police who crash down the stairs to lie in a heap on the concrete floor in the basement.

“Jesus!” cries a fourth cop.   He and two more police leap through the doorway and open fire in the general direction of the wall safe — where Roderick Voss is standing.

Cursing the parentage of all police, Voss goes to throw his empty revolver at them.   However, half a dozen or more rounds slam into him and toss his corpse backwards against the walk-in safe.

*      *      *

Inside the safe, Tara Weston was cradling Richie Travers’s head in her lap, crying from helplessness.   When, to her surprise, the phone on the wall above her head suddenly rang.

Gently lowering Richie’s head to the floor of the safe, Tara stood up, lifted the receiver, and said, “Hello.”

“Is that Tara Weston?” asked a middle-aged, female voice.

“Yes,” she replied hesitantly.

“You can press the emergency release button now, love,” said the woman.   “The police have taken care of the badman.”

Hanging up the receiver, Tara hesitated, wondering if it was a trick.   If the woman was really in cahoots with the murderer?   But hearing Richie moaning, she realised that he needed help desperately.   So, almost whimpering in terror, she crawled to the front of the walk-in safe, then felt around the wall till finding the emergency release button.

With a whirring of gears, the door swung open and Tara looked out at nearly a dozen police and emergency services officers.

“Are you all right, love?” asked a police lieutenant, Elaine Maylor.

“Yes.   But my friend needs help badly,” said Tara, pointing into the safe.

Two ambulance officers raced into the walk-in safe, and after a minute or so they returned with Richie Travers on a collapsible stretcher.

*      *      *

Five minutes later the stretcher was being loaded into the back of an ambulance at the front door of the Weston estate.

As they placed Richie Travers gently into the ambulance, two police officers, Lieutenant Elaine Maylor and Senior Sergeant Aaron Powell discussed Tara Weston’s immediate future: “In the long run she can live with her relatives in New South Wales,” said Elaine, “but in the short run she might well have to go into care.”

“Perhaps we should take her round to Community Services Victoria,” suggested Aaron Powell as dawn finally began to break.

“No, I want to go with Richie!” insisted Tara.   “He saved my life!”

Then before the two police officers could stop her, the twelve-year-old climbed into the back of the ambulance.

“Ready to go?” asked the ambulance driver, a grey-haired man of at least sixty.

“Just about,” said Elaine Maylor, climbing into the rear of the ambulance with Tara.

Aaron Powell locked the rear door of the vehicle, then patted the side of the van and said, “Okay, take ‘er away.”

*      *      *

Despite the objections of Elaine Maylor and others in officialdom, Tara Weston waited in the Royal Melbourne Hospital while they operated on Richie Travers.   Then, even after the surgeon’s verdict that Richie would recover, Tara sat beside his hospital bed for forty-eight hours, until he finally woke up.

THE END