“Nice.” He led her through to the firing range stalls.
Through a pair of thick wooden doors, Georgina found a new world, a world run by weapons fanatics. Following Shane past stalls filled with both men and women firing their pistols at targets, Georgina entered an empty stall. “Is this it?” She scanned the area.
“This is it,” he shouted back. He put the cases down and opened them, taking her Bobcat out first, followed by his Beretta M9.
She noticed the size difference between his huge M9 and her handbag filler. He handed her the Bobcat and showed her how to eject the fully loaded magazine. Then, upon his instruction, she pushed the magazine in, and held it down by her side. “What now?” Shane pressed a green button on the wall of the stall, and a whirring noise made her turn and face the target. It moved towards her. “Really? You want me to shoot that?” His confirmation made her raise the firearm and hold it with both hands.
He nudged her feet further apart with his own. “Remember, squeeze the trigger, don’t pull it. It will recoil some, even that tiny thing.” He stood behind her.
Georgina closed her right eye, focusing on the target ahead. When she squeezed, the gun bucked a little. The paper shaped like a person moved when she fired, so she assumed she hit it. “And again?” She hoped he would say yes. With a nod from him, she took the stance once more.
Several rounds later, the pistol’s dark grey grip hot, she stepped back as Shane pressed the button to bring the target up to them.
“Not bad for your first time, George.” He sounded surprised. “Every round hit.” He stood forward, his M9 down by his side, waiting for her to finish whirring the new target away. “How far do you want it?”
Georgina kept her finger on the green button. “You’ve had heaps of practise. This evens it out a bit.” Letting go only after the target had finished whirring, she grinned. “There. Try that.” Shane had experience. Taking another step back, the headphones over her ears, she watched as he squeezed off ten rounds. “Are you done?”
“Yeah, I think so. This magazine only holds ten rounds.”
Just as she suspected, his clustering of shots were better than hers, every bullet hitting the centre of the target’s chest or forehead. How he could be that good, she had no clue. Shane didn’t sleep with his gun, at least she didn’t think he did. Georgina thought she would have known by now if he did. “Hook up another.” She waited for him to pin a target up and send it away from her. “That’ll do.”
Closing her right eye, she squeezed off six rounds in fairly quick succession, loving the recoil; she could see now why people enjoyed guns. “All winners. Maybe not as tightly grouped as yours, but they’re all on target.”
“You’re a natural,” he encouraged. “But this isn’t a competition. I just need to know you have the tools, if this pom freak comes for you and I’m not there. Will you feel safer knowing a gun’s in your bag whenever you go out? Remember, you can shoot someone in self-defence only, and you’ll need to prove you were fearful of your life in court.”
“Great! Comforting! I feel so much safer.” It didn’t matter; she would never shoot Elf Man. She lost her thoughts when her mobile bleeped twice. “Probably one of the girls,” she told him, retrieving it.
“Please no.” She opened Chatter. “Elf Man!”
Georgina gasped at the sight of her parents stood smiling at the camera on Elf Man’s message. “No!” Without thinking, she ran from the gun club to her Jeep in the car park.
25
Kereama was grateful Amelia let him stay at the house. His girlfriend overreacted at the hospital, as she always did, about everything. “Drama queen” suited her. Insanely hot, every guy wanted a piece of her, but he sometimes wondered if she was worth the aggro? He’d never touched the girl on the Metro. He smiled at her, sure, but he didn’t think it a big deal. Amelia did.
Saturday lunchtime he’d left the hospital after much begging. Amelia had relented and came to pick him up. When she arrived, she allowed him to stay in the house. He would be sleeping in one of the spare bedrooms. Unable to argue, he agreed. Back home, she helped him inside and vanished, leaving him to fend for himself for the weekend.
Tuesday morning, Kereama lay on the couch when the doorbell rang. “Ames! They’re here!” He winced as he pulled himself to his feet from the sofa. Every time he moved, the stitches stung. “Don’t worry, I’ll get the door.”
At the front door were two police officers, the same two officers who had spoken to him at the hospital. “Please, come in.” He let them in, showing the way into the living room. Amelia came walking down the stairs. Kereama noted her nonchalant expression. “Have you identified him yet?”
The male police officer, Senior Sergeant Scott Kennedy, spoke first. He produced a photograph taken at Carlton Station. A busy photo with hundreds of travellers in it, circled in black pen he saw a face, or rather half a face. The person highlighted wore a baseball cap. “Is this it? Is this the sum total of days of effort? It could be anyone.”
“We don’t think he’s just anyone, do we, Janae?” The sergeant was sat on the sofa, wearing a light blue short-sleeved police shirt and shorts, carrying a sidearm holstered on his hip. He looked like he enjoyed visiting the gym and had blond hair. “After interviewing Miss Thomas, we believe you know him. Random stabbings are rare, Mr Tua. Extremely. As in they don’t happen at all.”
“If you tell us what you can, we’ll try to locate the suspect for you.” Incremental Sergeant Janae Willis, a fit and healthy ginger woman in her early thirties with her hair tied in a ponytail, went on. “But we need your help. If not, more than likely he’ll slip through our net, I’m afraid.”
“I’ve told you everything,” Kereama complained. “I was standing inside the train when I felt a stabbing pain in my side. I couldn’t see shit because heaps of people were getting off. All I’ve got; I’m sorry!”
As suspected, they couldn’t help him locate Elf Man, and Kereama didn’t want to involve the police in this matter. He sat there, answering questions as well as he could without giving anything away. For a good fifteen minutes, he and Amelia nodded or shook their heads at the appropriate times. When they concluded their interview, the female officer stood first, followed closely by the senior sergeant. Kereama matched their move.
“As you’re no doubt aware, the New South Wales Police Force takes knife crime very seriously, Mr Tua. And in doing so, we’ll keep looking into this for you until we apprehend the suspect. Please, if you think of anything else that might be useful in identifying him, give me a call. My line’s open day or night.”
After showing Sydney’s finest to the door, and promising to contact them if he thought of something helpful, he closed it, hoping they didn’t suspect anything. Elf Man knew too much about them; he could get them in a whole heap of trouble. “Thank God they’re gone.” Kereama leaned against the wooden door. “I think that went well.”
“They suspect.” Amelia looked airy and cool in her open shirt, bikini top and skirt over her bikini bottoms. “They’re not stupid. Why else did he make that point about random stabbings?”
“I don’t care. They can’t prove anything, and until they can, we’re safe. All we need is Shane and Oli to come through for us and we’re set.” He didn’t hold out much hope. “Nothing to it.”
Amelia sighed. “Come on, I’ll give you a hand.”
Accepting her offer, he let his girlfriend-for-now take some of his weight, easing the pressure on the stitches, and hobbled back to the living room. “I am sorry.” His voice was low, quiet. “But I only smiled at her, Ames, honest. Nothing happened.”
Amelia helped him to the sofa. “Look, I overreacted, I’ll admit. But I’m not ready to forgive you yet. I saw the look in that girl’s eyes; she was eating you all up, which means you must’ve at least encouraged it. And what about your tour girls, huh? And don’t lie to me, Kay, you fuck one at every gig.”
“Ames, who told you that?”
“Save it!
If you’re going to sit there and lie to my face, I’ll go back upstairs. Otherwise, we can talk, like grown-ups. We can get past this.” She perched on the coffee table in front of him and reached out for his hand. “If we do, it has to be me, and only me, baby. I can’t be hearing whispers that you’re fuckin’ your fans.”
No use. Futile even, to argue his innocence. Amelia had him. When he was about to speak, Amelia’s mobile rang.
“We’ll be right there, George.”
“What’s going on?” Kereama attempted to pull himself up.
“We’re driving over to George’s parents’ house,” Amelia announced, helping him to his feet. “Elf Man’s over there, apparently. George wants us as backup.”
26
The sun beamed down on Georgina as she turned right onto Bando Road. On any normal day, she enjoyed the drive over to North Cronulla Beach; not this time, though. The thirty-minute journey along the M1, A1 and The Grand Parade in her Jeep while worrying that Elf Man had done something to her parents made her nauseous. “I swear if he’s touched them.” She let the end trail off. If Elf Man had hurt her mum, Georgina would tear him apart with her bare hands.
“And I’ll be by your side,” Shane said, holding on for dear life.
Georgina let out a huge lungful of air upon seeing her dad tinkering with his car. He had the bonnet up and his head inside the engine. A massive smile formed, as she pulled up outside her parents’ driveway. Welling up, she scrunched her eyes and wiped her nose, breathing deeply. “Oh thank God!” She opened her door.
“I thought we weren’t seeing you two until Sunday?” her dad said.
Letting out a laugh, she opened her eyes to find her old man walking towards them, cleaning his oily hands with a cloth. He wore a really old pair of dungarees over jeans and a black Rip Curl T-shirt. “Hi, Dad!” she said, getting out of her Jeep and hugging him, a little tighter than normal. “We were nearby and thought we’d drop in.”
She stood back and let Shane shake her dad’s hand. They had a good relationship, her dad being footy mad, and a lifelong Swans fan didn’t hurt. “Where’s Mum?”
“In the garden pruning, I think.” He invited them inside.
Having walked through the house, Georgina found her mum outside with her pruning shears. “Hi!” she said, hugging her even tighter than her dad. When asked why she stopped by, she lied and said they were in the area. And to her delight, her parents invited her and Shane to stop for lunch.
Happy that they were safe and well, Georgina went into the house with her mum and found her dad and Shane sat at the kitchen table tucking into Tim Tams and drinking turmeric and lemon myrtle tea, her mum’s own version of the recipe. “There had better be one left, Shane. I want a biccy, too,” she said, going into the cupboard, only to find the Tim Tams gone. “You’re so selfish, honestly.”
Breaking a Tim Tam, he offered her half.
“Leave him alone, George!” her mum scolded. “If you want, Anzac biccies are in a tin at the back of the cupboard. I only baked them yesterday.”
“A bit early for these, isn’t it?” she asked. “Not that I’m complaining.” She reached in and pulled out the mentioned tin, lifted the lid and inhaled that coconutty, golden syrupy and oaty goodness. “Mmm, I love your Anzacs.”
“So does your dad.” Her mum was fumbling at the counter. “I’ve been baking a batch a week to keep him happy.”
Being an aborigine, her mum had some terrific recipes, which Georgina grew up on. Shane loved eating at her parents’ house. Outside, came a long beep.
Kereama and Amelia are here, she thought, rushing out front to find them parked behind her Jeep. “They’re fine,” she told them, a big smile splattered across her face. “Come inside, Mum’s making us lunch.” She didn’t need permission to invite them. Amelia might as well have been their second daughter. “And she’s baked her Anzac biccies.”
Once everyone had said hello, Georgina sat her friends at the table. She made them all drinks. And after they’d helped themselves to food, she plated herself some seared kangaroo fillet and salad. “So, anything exciting happened recently?” she asked, trying to elicit the correct response.
When her parents shook their heads, she asked, “So, you haven’t had visitors?”
Shane and Amelia glanced at her.
“Ooh, we had a friend of yours come say hi.” Her mum seemed pleased with herself for remembering. “Such a lovely young man, so polite. He said you gave him this address, so I assume you must’ve known him for some time. He wanted your current address, but I said no. He understood, didn’t he?”
Her dad nodded.
“Oh? Did he leave a name?” Acting normal was the best course of action, Georgina decided, not wanting to alarm them.
“And what did he look like?” Shane asked. “Do I need to worry?”
Kereama winced when he laughed at Shane’s joke.
“Danny, I think he said,” her mum said. “Yeah, but I can’t remember his surname.”
“The only Danny I recall from a while back is Elfman.” She hoped the name would register. Her mum’s face lit up, and she confirmed it. “What does he look like now?”
The question puzzled her mum. “How would you describe him, darling? I don’t know, an unruly mop of dark hair I wanted to brush for him. I could tell he was a pom, his skin pasty white like they all are. And he had these thin lips. He was nicer to talk to than look at, poor fella.”
“He seemed all right,” her dad added.
Georgina, happy that her parents were safe, finished her food and then helped her mum clear the table, while everyone else sat chatting around the table. This could have been any normal day, Georgina thought, if only. Washing some plates in the sink, she smiled at her mum, who started drying up, as her mobile bleeped. “Shane, can you answer that?”
“We’ve got to go, babe,” he said. “Thanks for the delicious lunch.”
Georgina asked her parents for permission to leave. Her mum said “fine”, that she would finish up. “You’re the best.” She gave her a kiss on her cheek. From Shane’s abruptness, she took that the message involved Elf Man. After drying her hands, she walked with Shane, Kereama and Amelia to their cars out front. “What is it?” Shane had her phone in his hand.
The photo showed Shane and Georgina’s swimming pool. Elf Man had taken the picture from their back garden, trespassing. The only way in for him without a key to the front door was over an eight-foot wall. It creeped her out to think Elf Man had scaled their razor wire-topped wall. “Right, we’re phoning the police.”
Shane snatched her phone. “No, we’re not. Don’t be so stupid. He has things on us, George, and we’ll probably end up in the shit ourselves. I can’t afford to get arrested, can you? Hmm? Do you think the World Surf League will want you to participate if you were involved in beating up some pommie guy? He has photos of that, remember.”
“So, what do you want to do, Shane, huh? Shall we just sit around and wait for him to make a move? I thought you and Oli were fixing this on Friday? All I’ve had since you got back from the club is you skulking around the house, jumping every time your phone rings. Is there something you want to tell me?”
“Guys, we need to go.” Amelia walked towards her car. “We’ll meet you back at yours.”
Getting in her seat, Georgina took a couple of deep breaths and started the engine, her red Jeep waking immediately. She drove in silence. Instead of being nauseous, anger enveloped her. She had not confronted Shane about his behaviour over the weekend. “So? What happened on Friday, huh? And don’t tell me nothing.”
She reached Brighton Le Sands Beach, travelling on The Grand Parade. “Nothing. We found him, chased him and lost him again. Am I not allowed to be annoyed?” He crossed his arms and huffed.
“Really?” He didn’t answer her. Silence sat between them for the rest of the journey. Upon reaching their house, pulling up behind Amelia, she and Shane exited the Jeep and walked up to the front gate. Shane held his
Beretta down by his side. “Put that away, or our neighbours will see.”
“No way! Better to have one and not need it,” he said, opening the gate and stepping inside. “Stay behind me.”
Georgina did as instructed, hearing Amelia and Kereama behind her. Four against one, she liked the odds. They reached the house, went inside, and searched each room. Nothing. Her underwear drawer remained untouched.
They all agreed Elf Man had not breached the house. Outside, they checked the garden. Nothing. No signs of his presence, other than the photo. “I still think now’s the time to involve the police.”
“Are you mad?” Shane holstered his pistol in the back of his jeans. “We’re handling it ourselves.”
“Handling what? Are you kidding me?” The threat of her parents was too much for her frail nerves. “He’s in control here, not us. He knows everything about us. And what do we know about him, huh? Nothing. You aren’t dealing with this, Shane; he is!”
Palms out, she said, “Sorry! I shouldn’t have snapped. It’s not your fault.” Again, Oliver’s to blame, she thought.
He hugged her. Amelia and Kereama made their excuses and left them in the garden. A hug turned to a kiss. And when she calmed down, Shane suggested they have a quiet afternoon lounging by the pool, which sounded like Heaven to her. Some light music on, a couple of glasses of wine, sun loungers, the occasional dip; her idea of bliss. “You’re on, mister,” she said, standing up before heading to their bedroom to change into a bikini.
27
“Come on.” Amelia got up from the sofa. “I’ll help you up to bed.”
“You mean I can sleep in our room again?”
After having a long talk with him, she made her mind up. “Don’t get me wrong, Kay, I’m still pissed at you. But, I believe you when you say it won’t happen again. I just don’t want to be a laughing stock, that’s all.” When he nodded, she could tell he was serious. People made mistakes, although by all accounts Kereama had made many mistakes with many of his groupies. “So, yes, you can sleep in our bed. But no funny stuff, Kay. I’m not ready for that yet.”
Mr Invisible Page 11
