Comeback

by Lindsay Tanner

  ‘Jack? Angelo Evgenides’, a voice boomed out from his phone. ‘Mate, your payment’s nearly two weeks late. What’s the story?’

  Jack mumbled a few excuses for failing to keep up with his cab-lease payments, but they didn’t sound very convincing.

  ‘Sorry, mate. We’ve got to keep the cash rolling in, meet the interest payments and all that. Can’t wait forever, you know. Few more days and we’ll have to think about cancelling the lease. Don’t really want to do that — you’ve been with us a fair while, but I don’t want to go broke either …’

  Muttering promises he wasn’t sure he could keep, Jack extracted himself from the call as quickly as he could. The need to find another driver was closing in: Ajit was just going through the motions now, and for some reason he’d had a terrible run himself. His plan to work really long shifts by himself until he found another driver was starting to look ridiculous.

  Radiating defeat and despair, he trudged up the stairs. His front door was wide open.

  Shit. Must’ve forgotten to shut it after all that madness with Phil.

  He recalled his missing watch. At least there was nothing much else worth stealing. His computer was crap; you wouldn’t be able to give it away. His TV wasn’t much better. So what did it matter if the front door was open all day?

  He heard movement in the kitchen. A wave of panic flooded through him. Maybe the Auspart thugs were in the flat.

  Jack did his best to creep silently along the corridor and into the loungeroom. ‘Shit!’ A man in a shirt and tie appeared out of nowhere and almost barged into him. They stared at each other for a second or two.

  ‘Mister van Doyne? I’m from Compton Calzanotto. We need to have a chat …’

  ‘It’s van Duyn, as in spoon’, Jack replied automatically. Why was it anyone about to give him grief always got his name wrong? Did they do it deliberately?

  ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to move out.’

  ‘What?’ Getting his name wrong was forgotten.

  ‘Place’s being demolished. Owner’s done a deal with a developer, going to build a new block. You’ve been on a monthly tenancy for a fair while …’

  ‘So … when?’

  ‘This is your month’s notice.’ He handed Jack an envelope.

  ‘But …’

  ‘Better drop by, see if we’ve got anything else for you. Pretty tough at the moment, hard to get a cheap flat in this area now.’

  ‘Can’t you hold off a bit, give us a bit of time, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Sorry, schedule’s pretty tight. They’re doing up next door at the moment …’

  Oh no.

  Jack could hardly say the word. ‘Auspart?’

  ‘No idea. Same mob as next door, though.’

  ‘Arseholes. Knew they’d get me somehow’, Jack muttered.

  ‘One other thing. Sorry, but you may not get much of your bond back. There was another bloke here, said you were sub-letting to him, and it looks like you’ve let pests take over. Fair bit of damage in the bathroom, too. Breaches of the lease, I’m afraid …’ So the stupid prick came back while I was chasing him around Brunswick. Typical. Jack felt pretty stupid.

  ‘You’re fucking joking! I just let him crash here for one night — he didn’t even stay, and he’s not paying rent or anything …’

  ‘Sorry, mate.’ The agent shrugged. ‘Not up to me, we’ll let you know.’

  Jack stood there as he edged his way past and left.

  He felt like crying. Or maybe killing someone. What else could possibly go wrong?

  He walked slowly into the bathroom. As he relieved himself, he gazed idly around the squalid, tired fittings with a tinge of nostalgia. It was crap alright, but it had been home for a fair while. What was he going to do now?

  His eye caught something glinting in the light on the shelf above the basin, something mostly obscured by a large bottle of shampoo.

  The watch.

  Jack’s brain spun off into yet another new orbit. Maybe he wouldn’t throttle Phil after all — just hit him a few times. He might have been wrong about him stealing his watch, but it looked like Phil had helped to get him evicted, and put his bond at risk.

  Auspart were the real cause of this latest disaster, though. Could they have bought the flats just to get at him? It didn’t sound very plausible. Funny coincidence, though.

  The sun was floating downwards over the cemetery as Jack got off the tram and made his way back to the estate having handed over the cab to Ajit. As he opened the door, noise burst out from within a huge room that looked as if it had once been a real church. Angry voices echoed around him as he stepped inside.

  ‘You’ve been seen, Michael! We know all about your deal with those crooks …’

  ‘ … complete lies! Why should I have to put up with …?’

  ‘Comrades! We won’t defeat the developers by yelling at each other!’

  ‘We won’t if we have a spy selling us out to them …’

  Jack stared at the small group of about a dozen people scattered around in the far corner of the enormous room. Dempsey looked like he was about to hit one of Fletcher’s offsiders. Emily was sitting on the fringe of the group. Then he saw Franklin sitting at the back of the group. He winked at Jack, which made him feel nervous.

  Jack sat down next to Emily and whispered, ‘I’ve worked out what’s going on. Why all this shit’s happening. The housing minister’s in on it — he was a partner or something with this Clarkson guy who owns Auspart. They owned that company where the kid got killed back in 1994. The whole thing stinks!’

  Emily nodded, but didn’t respond. Jack assumed she didn’t want to disrupt the meeting, so he turned his attention back to the argument going on around them.

  Calm and composed as ever, Mary continued: ‘I can’t see how we can avoid this issue. It is clear we have someone giving information to Auspart and maybe the police, too. The paper that Richard circulated wound up in their hands. They knew what we were going to do at the rally. Michael, you’ve been seen meeting with them by several people, in places that suggest you were trying to hide …’

  ‘I’m just doing my job, for Christ’s sake! Of course I meet with them. I’m trying to get them to change their plans …’

  ‘Not much sign of you reporting it to the Tenants Association, though.’

  ‘You’ll get your fucking report, if you just give me a chance …’

  The arguments continued until finally Fletcher stepped in. ‘Comrades, comrades’, he cut across them in a condescending tone. ‘We have to resolve this, not just sit here accusing each other.’

  Franklin leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, stretching back to his fullest extent.

  ‘There’s an easy way to settle this’, he said. ‘They haven’t done a great job of securing their office. Someone’s come along and pulled away the temporary stuff they’ve whacked up in the front window. We could just walk right in, have a quick look around. Shouldn’t be hard to find something …’

  ‘You mean, break in?’ Mary asked.

  ‘Not breaking in if the front door’s open. Maybe trespassing — nothing worse than that.’

  ‘Won’t their records all be on computer anyway?’ Dempsey sounded rattled, which confirmed Jack’s suspicions.

  ‘Still in the dark ages. It suits them to do stuff on paper. You can get rid of paper records. Bit harder once it’s on a computer.’ Franklin flashed a suggestive smile.

  ‘If there’s a rat, won’t he tip them off?’ Fletcher’s offsider asked.

  ‘Then let’s do it straightaway’, Franklin replied. He looked around the group, daring anyone to disagree. No one did.

  ‘Okay. Jack, you with me? Shouldn’t take long.’

  Jack was stunned. He hadn’t signed up for anything like this.

  ‘
Er … not too sure about that …’ He looked over at Emily for moral support, hoping she would be as appalled by the idea as he was.

  She wasn’t. ‘I’ll stand guard outside if you like.’

  Jack looked back at Franklin. He was jammed: how could he say no?

  ‘Alright, but it had better be quick. And we’d better work out some way for Emily to warn us if the cops front up.’

  The discussion dissolved into several different conversations. Jack wondered what would happen if they came back empty-handed. It seemed like everyone now assumed the problem had just been solved.

  ‘Dark enough soon, but still a few people about. So we won’t look suspicious, out on the street’, Franklin said.

  ‘You sure about this?’, Jack whispered to Emily.

  She looked back at him with the same blank expression on her face, as if she was somewhere else entirely.

  ‘Come on, Jack. Let’s get moving’, Franklin called out.

  Franklin ushered them through the door, then looked back over his shoulder. No one had followed them.

  ‘How come you’re here anyway?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Auspart, mate’, Franklin responded. ‘On a mission from God.’

  Something was nagging at Jack. ‘If Dempsey’s a spy, how likely is it they’d write his name down on anything?’

  ‘Of course they wouldn’t! We’re just pretending.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Fletcher’s keeping an eye on Dempsey for me. He’ll be shitting himself. Bound to try and contact them. If we don’t catch him in the act, we can just grab his mobile, and check the texts and calls.’

  ‘So it’s a set-up?’

  Franklin rolled his eyes and shook his head slowly from side to side.

  ‘Course it’s a fucking set-up! We’ll just hop in the front window, have a quick squiz, then scarper. Anyone pops by, we just say we’re looking for something she lost at the demo.’

  Jack felt intimidated by Franklin’s bluster, but he didn’t want to show it.

  ‘Er, okay, mate’, he mumbled, as they stepped outside.

  ‘You lost a valuable bracelet, okay? Think someone chucked it inside or something’, Franklin said to Emily. It sounded pretty lame to Jack, but she nodded.

  What happens if we get caught?

  16.

  Although it was only early evening, Drummond Street was almost deserted. The one streetlight cast a weak veil of light over the central part of the street, but the front of the Auspart office was shrouded in gloom. They walked past a very short elderly woman dressed all in black and bent almost double, but there was no one else around.

  As they got to the Auspart office, Emily finally spoke up.

  ‘I’ll hang around outside, and pretend I’m looking for my bracelet. If anyone shows up, I’ll yell out like I’ve found it. Lucky I’ve already got one on me.’ She showed her left wrist to Franklin. The garish blue-and-yellow bangle looked like something she’d picked up at the Victoria Market for $5, but Jack said nothing. He was surprised by this different side of Emily: calm, focused, resourceful. Between her and Franklin, he felt out of place. Was he the only one panicking?

  They hovered briefly around the lane where Jack had escaped from his beating, and Franklin started acting out his part.

  ‘Got to be here somewhere. You look in the gutter? Hey, maybe it ended up inside …’ His tone sounded as phony as a $3 note, but Jack didn’t care. He just wanted to get it over with.

  The big window at the front of the office had been replaced with a piece of thick plywood. It had been installed in a hurry, and somehow detached itself, so there was now a large gap where it had come loose. Franklin squeezed it out a little further, and edged his way through the gap into the front of the office.

  ‘Come on!’ he hissed at Jack, who followed him through the gap, cursing as his bruised body had to put up with more scrapes and bumps. Once they were in, Franklin dragged the board back into place.

  ‘It’s fucking dark in here’, Jack said. Franklin pulled out a small torch from an inner pocket in his jacket and switched it on.

  ‘A union official needs to be prepared for anything, mate’, he said to Jack.

  ‘Thought we were just pretending …’ Fear was welling up inside him.

  ‘No harm in taking a quick look around. Lady in distress, lost her bracelet, you know the story. Almost believe it myself …’

  ‘Yeah, good one. Even cops aren’t that stupid …’

  They stumbled their way around large desks and odd boxes, and made their way towards the rear of the office.

  ‘Good stuff’ll be back here. Upstairs is just a big meeting room and stuff.’

  Jack was scared now. Franklin wasn’t pretending — that was for sure. But it was too late to pull out now.

  ‘Shit!’ Jack cried, as he bumped his knee on a low piece of furniture that turned out to be a kind of tray attached to a printer. ‘Hey, mate, where are you? What’re you doing?’

  Franklin had disappeared somewhere into the hive of small rooms at the back of the building. Jack could barely make out the furniture in front of him. The only natural light was a small sliver creeping through the gap they had squeezed through to get in.

  He tripped and stumbled his way further into the rear of the office, and saw a thin shaft of light emerging from a room to his left. The light broadened as he found the entrance to what looked like a small storeroom. Franklin was standing there in a narrow passage between photocopiers, filing cabinets, and cardboard boxes.

  ‘Reckon this is where it’ll be,’ he grunted.

  ‘What? Something saying who the rat is?’

  ‘No, fuckwit. I don’t give a shit about that. I mean the paperwork showing who in the industry’s hooked up with these pricks. Like the mob next to your joint. We’ve been chasing them for years. Always one step ahead of us, dodgy companies that own other dodgy companies that own other dodgy companies … Like a giant maze, trying to get to the real owners. And using fake contractor set-ups, so no one’s an employee. When something goes wrong, company just gets wound up, blokes left high and dry, that sort of stuff. Not going to let it happen this time, mate. There’s a bloke dead, remember?’

  ‘Why would they have that stuff here? Can’t be their main office, surely …’

  ‘Auspart’s a shell, mate. Pricks who own it are very clever. They make it all as complicated as possible, to get out of paying super, tax, all that sort of shit.’

  ‘Jesus. I’m starting to hope it’s only the cops who catch us …’

  ‘Relax, Jack. We’ll be fine. Hold the torch for me, will you …?’

  Franklin pulled out a small steel tool from his jacket pocket and wedged it in a gap between the drawer and frame of a filing cabinet, then levered it back towards him. After some grunting and groaning, the lock gave way and he yanked out the drawer.

  He flicked through an array of slim folders in the drawer, then threw them on the floor. Just as he looked like he was about to concede defeat, he returned to one of the discarded folders scattered on the ground.

  ‘Give us the torch.’ Jack passed it to him, hoping Franklin couldn’t see his hands shaking. Franklin held the torch close and glanced through one of the files. He grunted, pulled out a stapled A4 document of two or three pages, folded it, and put it in his jacket pocket.

  ‘Quick look at a few other bits, then we’re out of here.’

  Thank Christ for that, Jack thought.

  Franklin spent another minute or two flicking through other folders, then had a look in a couple of boxes. Nothing interested him, so he scooped up the files he’d looked through, placed them carefully back in the drawer, and did his best to return the filing cabinet to the condition they’d found it in. He turned to Jack: ‘Time to get the fuck out of here.’

  ‘What if they work out someone’s
been through their files?’

  ‘They’ll think it happened during the demo …’

  As they groped their way out towards the main office area, Jack heard Emily cry out: ‘Jack! Jack! I think they’re here! There’s a car …’

  Then he heard an enormous crash.

  ‘Fuck! Emily? Emily?’ he yelled out, no longer caring about being discovered.

  There was no reply.

  His heart racing, Jack blundered towards the front of the office, then looked back towards the storage area. Franklin was nowhere to be seen. There was no sign of the torchlight. He could barely make out the front end of the office, with only a few weak dribbles of light sneaking through gaps and cracks. He moved forward blindly, panic rising inside him as he bumped into pieces of office furniture.

  ‘Emily? You in here? What’s happened …?’

  He stood still for a moment, trying to get his bearings and listen for any sign of other people in the office. He heard a faint, low groaning noise from the front of the office.

  ‘Shit! Emily? You alright?’

  Jack groped his way towards the front, wading through what felt like a swamp full of rubbish. It looked like no one had bothered to clean the place up after the demo. The light was a little better near the front, and as he got closer he could see an enormous piece of furniture — some kind of cupboard, or maybe shelving — lying in his path. Lying beside it was a crumpled pile of stuff that looked like it had fallen from the cupboard as it had crashed to the floor. But as he got to it, he realised the crumpled object was Emily. He could just make out some of the lurid colours of her outfit once he was close.

  Jack fell to his knees beside her, and moved around so he was close to her head. He was facing back towards the rear of the office, which made it harder to see.

  ‘Emily? Can you hear me? You okay? Don’t worry, I’ll get an ambulance …’

  She didn’t respond. Apart from uttering a few barely audible groans, she seemed to be unconscious.