The Tribute

by John Byron

  Eventually she went back to preparing dinner, holding the knife awkwardly in her left hand, two of its fingers slightly crooked on the handle. The memento of an earlier lesson on the price of resistance.

  There’d be no guitar practice for a while. She’d probably have to find another accompanist for the kid’s ward Christmas concert. She wondered what she could tell them.

  Murphy barely spoke to her for the rest of the evening, other than to order another gin. Then over dinner he drank a bottle of shiraz, less the glass he poured for her, while grizzling about the homicide case, politicians, the Dragons’ shithouse season, Sylvia’s lack of interest in the concerns that burdened him. Over fruit salad he finished the leavings of a chardonnay in the fridge door, then moved back to the sofa with the first whisky of the night and switched on the news channel. He didn’t even notice when Sylvia said goodnight and went to bed.

  Tuesday 4 December – afternoon

  Murphy was giving Jo a lift home on a classic Sydney scorcher when the traffic lights went amber on Anzac Parade, just past the SCG. He floored it.

  ‘Dave,’ said Jo, in their mother’s voice. He grumbled but came to a halt.

  A wiry character with prison tatts and a squeegee lurched out from beneath a Moreton Bay fig and smeared the windscreen with muddy water.

  ‘He must be fucken ripped to do a cop car,’ said Murphy. It was unmarked, but still.

  ‘He’s pretty strung-out,’ observed Jo. The man’s eyes were glassy, and his jerky limbs were on full auto. The damp rollie in the side of his mouth had long gone out.

  ‘Dunno whether to run him in, take him to hospital or give him a couple of bucks,’ said Murphy.

  ‘You’re not serious …’

  ‘What, about running him in? It’s illegal, this routine.’

  ‘At least he’s trying. Anyway it’s baking out there. Give him a break.’

  ‘I’m not saying I’m gunna, just that I oughta.’

  Jo opened Murphy’s glovebox. ‘Any coin in here?’

  ‘Reginald Scott Southee,’ Murphy said, instead of answering.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Jo lifted out the Holden owner’s manual, a Police Force logbook and an abused paperback: Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog.

  ‘Your friendly fucked-up window washer.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Next came a slab of black polymer that Jo recognised as a spare Glock magazine, full of bullets.

  ‘He’s got a record as long as your arm, and my name’s on half the arrests. Known him for years. He asks for me whenever he gets collared. Last year I booked him for robbing that servo over there.’ Murphy pointed across the intersection. ‘Srinivas Aravamudan, nicest man in Sydney. Reg here tried to hold up the one punter soft enough to let him shit in a clean dunny.’

  ‘So he’s trying to go straight; you should encourage him.’ Jo found a hoard of coins at the back of the glovebox.

  Murphy eyed the murky streaks across his windscreen as Southee came around his side. ‘You don’t call this robbery?’ He lowered his window to the fierce heat.

  ‘How ya goin’, Sergeant Murphy?’

  ‘All right, Reg?’

  ‘Didn’t notice ya till you was already wet.’

  ‘Our secret then, eh, Reg?’ Murphy turned to Jo. ‘You got that coin, sis?’

  Jo picked out five twos and handed them to her brother, who shot her a look over his sunnies. ‘Go on, tightarse,’ she said. He dropped two into his lap and handed the rest to Southee.

  ‘Thanks, Sarge! I always said you’re a top bloke. Don’t care what everyone else says.’

  Jo laughed out loud, but Murphy just shook his head. ‘Do me a favour and leave Srinivas alone, will you?’

  ‘Nah, we’re tight as, Sarge. Jes’ a misunderstandin’.’

  The lights went green. ‘Better get off the road, mate.’

  ‘See ya, Sarge!’ called Southee as he scampered in front of the car for the shade. Murphy raised his window as they took off.

  Jo piled everything back into the glovebox except the novel. ‘Don Winslow, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, for surveillance. Those shifts get fucken long.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Oh, shit yeah, you should read it. Only I have to keep back-tracking to pick up the thread. Too long between stakeouts.’

  ‘Have you tried short stories?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. Good idea, sis.’

  ‘Try Lydia Davis. Some of hers are really short.’

  ‘How short?’

  ‘A few pages. Some just a page.’

  ‘What’s the point? You wouldn’t even get going.’

  ‘No, she can pack entire movies in. They’re brilliant.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Murphy sounded sceptical.

  ‘Or Lucia Berlin, if you want them gritty.’

  ‘She a crime writer?’

  ‘Not exactly. Sort of. You might be surprised.’

  Murphy was quiet a couple of beats. ‘Not sure we share the same tastes, sis.’

  Jo laughed. ‘You could be right.’ She crammed the novel back into the glovebox as Murphy pulled over in front of a row of shops.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Just getting Sylvia some flowers.’

  ‘Oh, aren’t you nice?’

  ‘I do me best,’ said Murphy. ‘Need anything?’

  Saturday 15 December – evening

  Averse to crowds at the best of times, Porter disliked the city, detested extended-hours shopping and loathed Christmas. Yet here he was, in Anthony Hordern & Sons department store in Pitt Street, doing his late-night, last-minute Christmas shopping.

  He had to be insane.

  Everyone was abrasive and intemperate, angry to be spending money they didn’t have on pointless trinkets for people they didn’t even like very much. Adults were abusing their spouses and children; children were annoying their parents and siblings; customers were haranguing the staff; and staff were snapping at their colleagues.

  When Joy to the World started playing, he found the irony intolerable. He needed a cool shower, a glass of sauternes and a decent sleep before the twelve-hour dayshift to come.

  Porter settled on a soft-toy globe for his niece’s four-year-old and found a queue feeding two cash registers. He was fourth in line when another shopper stopped to the left of the head of the queue instead of joining its tail. She clearly had designs on the cashier in front of her: her back was ostentatiously turned to the queue, right shoulder angled between them and the cashier. The interloper knew exactly what she was doing, although she was feigning ignorance.

  The man in second place leaned over to the newcomer and said, ‘Excuse me, there’s a queue.’ Porter heard him distinctly from two positions back, but there was no visible response from the woman.

  ‘Excuse me?’ the man tried again. Still nothing. He turned to the others in the queue, and was encouraged by supporting sighs and eye-rolls. He reached to his left and tapped the interloper lightly on the elbow.

  ‘DO. YOU. MIND?’ boomed the woman.

  ‘Yeah, um, there’s just the one queue here for both registers,’ he said civilly.

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘Uh, sorry, but there is. We’ve all been waiting for some time.’ He gestured down the line. The customer in front of him was called forward, promoting him to head of the queue.

  ‘There was no queue for this register,’ she said.

  By now the cashier in front of her was aware of the argument. She looked like she needed a cigarette, a foot-rub and a glass of red wine, instead of an encounter with some wretched sociopath looking to start a brawl. Porter shuddered in sympathy. Hell was other people, all right. Manifestly, Sartre had once worked in customer service.

  ‘You may not have seen the queue, but it was here,’ said the man, his voice hardening. ‘I’m next in line.’

  ‘You may well be next over there,’ she insisted, waving to her right. ‘I am next here.’

  ‘Look, it’s just a mistake, no big deal. Just take
your —’

  ‘Do not tell me what to do; do not touch me; do not speak to me,’ she bellowed.

  The outburst was loud enough to stop passing foot-traffic. Anyone could tell at a glance what was going on and who was at fault, yet the newcomer maintained her pretence. Porter felt hackles rising right along the queue. This person was, as they say, a piece of work. The young woman in front of Porter decided to give it a try.

  ‘Look, you can’t just push in,’ she said to the interloper.

  ‘I am not pushing in,’ came the breezy reply. ‘I don’t know what you people are doing, but I am waiting for That. Girl. There.’ She pointed at the exhausted cashier in front, who had just bagged the previous purchase and was waiting for the receipt to print. She looked out at them with a kind of resigned dread.

  The new combatant turned to Porter and said, ‘Mind my spot,’ then stepped out of the line towards the invader. ‘Listen, you entitled arsehole,’ she hissed with impressive venom. ‘You can pretend all you like, but you know fucking well we were here first. We’re just as fed up as you, and we all just want to go home. You’re not helping. Now get in the line and wait your fucking turn like everyone else.’

  The interloper quaked and fumed in her confected fury. In her wrath she became very Brünnhilde, summoning the Teutonic pantheon. The vampire slayer stepped back into line in front of Porter and resumed nonchalantly scrolling on her phone. Porter felt like shaking her by the hand.

  Then the cash register on the left became free, and the moment for physical action had arrived. But the fellow in front looked at the quivering intruder, muttered, ‘Oh, who cares,’ then walked off in search of a demilitarised cashier elsewhere. Porter looked to the heroine in front of him, but the cashier on the right called her forward, and she went over shaking her head.

  The monster smiled triumphantly and advanced on her chosen cashier.

  Porter stood at the front of the queue, enduring the awkward silence that had descended. At least nobody had appended themselves to the interloper’s one-woman queue, innocently or otherwise, to extend the misunderstanding.

  The woman who had been in front of Porter only had the one item, so his turn came quickly. While the cashier scanned his gift, he looked across and noticed the interloper berating her poor cashier. He was not surprised – character was always revealed in the treatment of service staff – although the cashier endured, and before long the fiend was on her way.

  Porter concluded his own transaction and headed for the elevator, but spied the villain waiting there, so he rode the escalators instead to the third floor and had his present gift-wrapped. He took the elevator back to the ground floor, heading for the exit.

  And then fate intervened, as it will when the old gods have been woken from their slumber.

  He was weaving between the cosmetic counters, enshrouded in their miasma of sickly musk, when he saw the Valkyrie in deep conference with a sales consultant. Curious and still vexed, he sidled closer. Being both the main thoroughfare of the ground floor and a densely populated retail zone in its own right, the area was a seething crush of ill-tempered, impatient, overburdened shoppers, so neither woman noticed Porter standing a metre away. As the sales consultant turned to retrieve a vessel of the agreed concoction, the malefactor opened her Birkin bag, extracted her purse and withdrew a Hordern’s store card.

  From beside a Denison Bank credit card.

  Well, now, thought Porter. How about that.

  Not since he’d conceived his entire Tribute had he experienced such a moment of celestial inspiration. The idea didn’t develop: it simply manifested, fully formed. It had been there all along, like a tiny orchid in the middle of the desert, waiting to be found.

  His Project was presently in need of a female to complete the study of the generative organs for Volume V. And now here she was, volunteering at precisely the crucial moment.

  It was her destiny.

  Porter observed the transaction, resisting the Brownian motion of the jostling crowd. Just as the target was moving to slide her store card into her purse, he deflected a passing father of two small children into her back with a well-timed bump, causing her to lose her grip on both the purse and any remaining composure. She berated the man mercilessly, while one child wriggled from his grasp and the other started wailing. Apologetically, the man bent to retrieve the purse, but Porter was already there. He palmed the store card and handed the purse to the father, who unwittingly muttered his gratitude to the author of his evening’s latest woe. Porter stood up in a spiral motion and navigated to the exit without a backward glance.

  Only when he was safely at home did he take the card of Mrs Amber F Darcy from his pocket, then thoroughly washed and dried it before sliding it into a plain white window-envelope.

  —

  The following day was agony, staying out of Darcy’s file until 2pm when his help-desk colleague would depart. He found himself incapable of conversation, despite Nicole’s best attempts, and he could not bring himself to read the Sunday papers – not even the breathless updates on his own activities. Compounding matters, the networks were all working properly, so it was unusually quiet for the season. By 1pm he was beside himself, so he gave Nicole an early mark, citing the lull. She offered only token resistance. As soon as he saw her car turn into the traffic, Porter opened Amber Darcy’s customer profile to examine the prospects.

  Patience, care and scepticism, he kept telling himself.

  She had a husband, living at the same address, while their son attended university in Brisbane. The Darcys did most of their banking with the Fort. They’d both spent liberally in the current statement cycle on their joint credit card, although Porter conceded it was the season for it. The husband had a separate credit card in his own name, as well as a savings account in rude health, with both statements being mailed to the office. Reliably a sign of bad behaviour.

  Porter found that the husband was presently travelling, having used his solo card the previous afternoon at a lavish new hotel in Fremantle, then at an upscale restaurant nearby. He was booked to return from Perth on the following night’s red-eye, landing in Sydney early Tuesday morning. While Porter was in the airline database, he checked the son’s travel plans: arriving home next Saturday, just before Christmas.

  Son studying in Brisbane; husband philandering in Perth; Mrs Darcy home alone. He could undertake this auxiliary dissection for Volume V the very next day. There would be little time, but the abbreviated work programme rendered it feasible. He found his way into Darcy’s email and calendar – to view only, not to amend: with his method of clearing diaries now in the public domain, it would be foolhardy to rearrange her commitments. Fortunately, her next scheduled engagement was a tennis lesson on Tuesday afternoon. His excitement began to build.

  Now just settle down, he admonished himself: this is how people make mistakes. Using the full array of data sources available to him, he spent the rest of his shift conducting his painstaking due diligence on the candidate and the site.

  He established that she would by all indications be alone the following day in a large, well-screened house that sat behind a high wall, well back from the road and far from neighbours and cameras. So it could be done.

  But should it be done? He’d be killing her and leaving her husband to find her, a week before Christmas.

  Was that bad? he wondered.

  Compared to what? he replied.

  So that settled it.

  He would take her Hordern’s card to her house early the next morning, simply a fellow patron of her favourite department store who’d seen some brute barge into her at the cosmetics counter. He had found the card on the ground and deduced it was hers; not trusting the feckless department store staff to see it safely returned, he had taken this task upon himself. He’d found her in the telephone directory, and of course now he recognised her. You are indeed Amber Darcy? Yes, she would say; she would be cautiously grateful. Or if not actually grateful then at least gratified. He wou
ld pour on the misanthropic scorn, casting himself as the last bastion of a dying chivalric code. When he offered her the charge card, visible through the envelope window, she would open the door: she had to.

  The plan wasn’t perfect, but it was adequate. He only needed to turn on the charm well enough and long enough for her to flick the latch. Once she’d made that fatal mistake, the rest would ensue.

  On his way home from work, Porter reviewed it all from first principles, but in his heart he knew he was going to do it.

  And he did, the following day. He dissected Amber Felicity Darcy on her family dining table, the Monday of the week before Christmas.

  And he had to admit, as he drove away through the tastefully lowlit streets of Neutral Bay, he had rather enjoyed it.

  Monday 17 December – afternoon

  Fresh from swimming laps at Wylie’s Baths, Sylvia crossed quickly to Jo’s apartment block to escape the blazing heat. On weekends she always knocked, but on weekdays she just let herself in, since Jo was never home. So Sylvia was as surprised as Jo when she walked in to find her sister-in-law making tea in the kitchen. What was more surprising was that Amy Chartier from the Homicide Squad was sitting on the sofa strumming a guitar. There was a palpable air of relaxed intimacy that stopped Sylvia in her tracks.

  ‘Oh, Sylvia,’ said Jo. ‘Hi.’

  Amy turned and smiled. ‘Hey, Sylvia,’ she said.

  ‘Amy, hello.’ Sylvia looked across at Jo, who hadn’t moved a muscle. ‘Hi, Jo.’

  Then Jo laughed and the mood relaxed. ‘Come in, sis.’

  Sylvia entered the room and closed the door behind her, setting her beach bag down on the kitchen bench. Amy came over and slid her arm around Jo’s waist, erasing any residual doubt.

  ‘Want a cuppa?’ Jo asked Sylvia, her eyes sparkling with mischief, her skin glowing with something electric and fresh. She turned her head and kissed Amy’s temple.