The Spiral

by Iain Ryan

  You may be a secret agent.

  An adolescent detective.

  Young Indiana Jones (there are tie-ins).

  A barbarian.

  But your interior is always constructed by the author. None of these characters are written to account for any of your moods or any disposition other than the composed and rational self. You never freak out in these stories, even while under attack from vampires and lizard men and samurai. The heroic you at the centre is always so composed, so neat, so good and jolly and kind.

  It’s not real.

  This is just a repeatable, idealised version of you.

  You’re always fine.

  You don’t lie to yourself.

  You don’t doubt.

  You don’t chew yourself up.

  You don’t hurt people.

  You’re the hero, after all.

  You’re up to this. You can handle it. You with your blank backstory and your designated role and your whole life reduced to binary sets of choices and do-overs.

  If only.

  I keep staking out Sam Hell. I find myself standing on Brunswick Street in the mouth of an alleyway with my fists clenched and rammed into my hoodie pockets, watching, waiting for something to happen. Voices bounce around in my head.

  Have you ever played one of these games, Miss Wasserman?

  It’s not my sort of thing.

  My whole body tenses when I hear the phone ring now.

  Then on a Thursday afternoon at work, all hell breaks loose. I’m in my office, half-asleep at my desk, when the wall shudders hard enough to knock one of my degrees to the floor.

  Kanika.

  By the time I’m in the hall, Howard is running through her door. ‘I’m fine,’ she screams, followed by, ‘I’m not bloody fine. Shit! Shit! Shit!’ I can’t see her but I can hear her crying.

  A postgrad hangs back in the hall with me.

  ‘What is it?’ I say. ‘What’s happening?’

  The postgrad’s eyes widen. ‘Didn’t you see the email? They took another one.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Someone grabbed a girl last night. Pulled her into a van down by the ferry terminal and drove off. Security just sent through a briefing.’

  The door to Kanika’s office slams shut. I go back to my desk and check my inbox. There’s a photo and description of the missing girl. Sarah Holdings, nineteen, blonde, five foot eight. Tan/cream knit jumper, jeans, black backpack. She’s a first-year undergrad studying history. The van she was pulled into is dark grey. It was parked on a road I jog along often.

  So, it’s bad.

  Real bad.

  Sarah Holdings kind of looks like me.

  That night, Howard takes us all to the staff bar, telling Kanika there’s nothing more they can do. They’ve already made all the calls: the Brisbane police, the Vice Chancellor, various women’s groups on campus. The Centre has issued a press release: ‘Enough’s Enough: A Response to Our History of Violence’. We’re all feeling a mix of things. Anger. Despair. Fear. Impotence. We drink the house red and slog through the bar’s putrid bain-marie and try to keep it together.

  At some point – later in the night – Kanika fishes the missing person flyer of Andrew Michael Besnick from my handbag. I’ve been using it as a bookmark. ‘Why do you have this?’ she says. ‘Do you know him?’

  I spin the stem of my wine glass between my fingers. ‘I feel like I recognise him. I’m not good with faces but, I don’t know, I’ve seen him.’

  ‘It’s Brisbane,’ Howard says.

  ‘True.’

  ‘Have you looked him up?’ says Howard.

  ‘He’s not on any of my class lists.’

  Kanika refolds the flyer. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it? I mean, it’s weird that you’re walking around with this but it’s also odd that I spend all my time researching lost girls and never think about missing boys. We don’t really have a lot of them, do we?’

  ‘There were heaps of those at the police station. A message board full of them.’

  ‘What police station?’ says Howard.

  ‘The Valley. I’m still looking for the dictaphone.’

  ‘What dictaphone?’

  ‘Did they have it?’ says Kanika.

  Howard’s eyes are on me.

  ‘Jenny’s dictaphone. And no, they don’t. They don’t have any of her stuff. They’re hopeless.’

  Drunk and straight from the bar to the cab rank and then into the Valley alone. I sit on a bench in the student night scrum and watch Sam Hell across the street. I’m a stationary object in a heaving mass of tripped heels, bad hair and popped collars. It’s so loud and insane that I forget myself for stretches.

  At Sam Hell tonight, all three of the security guards I recognise are on duty. They stand around checking IDs and moving on the drunks and dickheads. This is the first time I’ve seen them all here together since that first morning with Roberto.

  I change spots. I make my way into the little alleyway down the street where I can watch the club more intently from the shadows. There’s a group of girls with me in the alley; they’re standing guard while one of their crew vomits into a plastic bag. They don’t seem to notice me and they provide a type of cover. I probably look like their frumpy sister.

  3.13 a.m.

  I pop a flu tablet from my bag and wait for it to spark me up. I rest my head against the alleyway wall.

  My eyes close.

  Just for a second.

  Just for a moment.

  Have you ever played one of these games, Miss Wasserman?

  It’s not my sort of thing.

  A particularly loud groan from the alley jolts me awake. I head back out onto the street and into the throng. I hit the 7-Eleven for a coffee and take it around the block, down the perilous mall and along the back of the entertainment district until I come to the backstreets behind Sam Hell. Staying out of the light, I make my way to the rear loading dock. I haven’t been back here for a day or two. It’s usually empty but tonight it’s full of cars. Two dark figures stand in the lot, smoking. I wait for them to finish and watch as they open the rear door of the club, light spilling out. It’s Roberto Agrioli, out at night for a change. The other person is a woman. Thin, tall, old. Dressed in a long gown that hangs off her. An ex-dancer.

  I creep over and start writing down licence plate numbers, car makes and colours. Up against the wall of the club, there’s a little fenced-off car space covered in chain-link and shrouded under thick black gauze. This is where Roberto usually parks but tonight his tan Commodore is over by the kerb.

  There’s a hole in the gauze. I put my eye to it.

  A new vehicle parked inside.

  A grey van.

  UQ St Lucia. A mid-afternoon dark sky. Another winter storm predicted. I take Campbell Road, jogging and watching the Forgan Smith tower track around in the distance. I overslept. My head is a cascading feed of data points. Sarah Holdings, nineteen, blonde. Missing. A van down by the ferry terminal. Jenny rode that same ferry to campus. We rode it together. I get instant flashes of it: early evening, near dark. Jenny’s hair sprayed across her face in the wind as the lights of the Story Bridge pass over. She tells me, ‘I want to be like you, when I grow up.’

  I laugh and lean back into my seat. ‘Who was that guy you were talking to tonight? The one with black hair?’

  ‘Ryan? He’s my room-mate. I think you’re about to review the last part of his thesis.’

  I shrug again, tipsy. ‘I forget who is and isn’t my student these days.’

  ‘I like him,’ Jenny says.

  I’d forgotten that.

  I keep jogging, pushing memories from my mind. I’m getting confused. I’m not sure I’m remembering things right, things I don’t even want to think about. But that’s the underlying trouble with memory. Memory isn’t fact. Memory is subjective and loose. A memory can get close enough to fiction that the line blurs. What good is it?

  I step up onto the front lawn of Forgan Smith wi
thout breaking stride. There are news trucks parked by the Centre steps, a cluster of them. Channel Nine, Seven, Ten. A group of technicians mill around. They have a small area at the Centre entrance lit for a broadcast. Cables snake out.

  I show my staff card to a security guard nearby and he ushers me into the building. In the foyer, I find Howard, Kanika and two other researchers: Melissa Gregg from the cultural studies unit downstairs, and Roberta Binyon. Roberta steps close and puts an arm over my shoulder. I don’t really know Roberta. Not well enough for this. All I know about Roberta is that she loves crying. She cries at every student event, every reading, every meeting. She might actually be studying crying. Lachrymology or something. True to form, she is crying today. ‘It’s just so sad,’ she says and she shows me a photograph of a teenaged girl. Everyone else is holding a similar photo. They’re the portraits from Kanika’s office wall, the missing girls.

  Howard spots me and says, ‘There you are.’

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘We’re doing a spot for TV.’

  ‘OK.’

  Kanika grabs me by the arm. ‘You were supposed to be here half an hour ago. I’ve emailed you four times. Go get changed.’

  When it’s time, we all stand in line before the cameras on the steps of Forgan Smith. Howard says a few words before introducing Kanika. We hold up our photographs as she makes her call to arms.

  ‘Laura Hartop, Kelly Anson, Rosario Faust, Maya Kibby and Sarah Holdings. These are only five names from a possible fifteen. Five real people, real women, all taken. This, must, stop. These women were taken from us while the very institution that promises them a duty of care looks the other way. This is not a hoax. My data shows a very clear pattern of prolonged aggression from an unnamed perpetrator or perpetrators—’ Roberta really starts bawling at this ‘—and if your daughter or sister or friend attends this facility for her education, then her life is now in clear danger. It’s time for the University of Queensland and the Queensland Police to actively address the …’

  The glare off the cameras casts the whole scene in an eerie golden light. Is this happening? The world slows. I look at the back of the photograph I’m holding. There’s an inscription: ‘Laurel Colegrave UQ Gatton, 1996’.

  ‘… and so I say to you today, it must stop,’ shouts Kanika. ‘If we don’t act now, as a community, I fear we will render this institution unsafe forever. Thank you.’

  Voices roar. Cameras start flashing. Pop. Pop. Pop. We’re supposed to rip our photographs in half now – that’s the plan – but I freeze. I’m just holding mine, staring into Laurel Colegrave’s blank face. I’ve never been to Gatton. I didn’t know we had a campus out there.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  Kanika snatches the photo from me and tears it in half. ‘This is nothing,’ she screams for the cameras.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  A monstrous wind comes in, blasting us all back a step, the chill of winter rain in it. The TV people look to the sky. Another gust arrives. Then another volley of questions.

  ‘Fuck this,’ I whisper.

  Roberta reels around and hisses, ‘What did you just say?’

  The city is flash flooding by the time I reach New Farm. Thick torrents of water rush the gutters. I buy a flat white and head into the Coles, straight to the Health and Beauty aisle and to the vast rainbow of hair dye they stock there. The best thing about being blonde is that it’s interchangeable. A clean canvas. I need something dark. My natural inclination is Jet Black but it’s going to look terrible. My skin isn’t what it should be, courtesy of my stakeout diet and the lack of sleep. Besides, black hair on paper white skin is strictly for teenage runaways. It’s a beacon. Please fuck with me. Same thing with Intense Red, although I could probably pull that off. I just don’t want that sort attention, so I play it safe and grab something called Espresso Brown.

  Back in my apartment, I pull out the dress I wore to a wedding three years ago – black, neat – and match it with woollen stockings. I dye my hair in the bathroom sink and do my makeup the way Dora used to do it.

  We need to bring out those eyes, girl.

  The whole thing starts to feel enchanted and eerie.

  When I’m done, the long mirror in the bathroom shows me a picture of my long-lost sister. I look just like her. A well-kept woman.

  Is this who I could have been?

  I look like the sort of person who has a clearly defined office job and a successful partner, someone who can channel their ambition and stress into something useful, who can aim it directly at things. A couple of kids. A mortgage. A marriage. The right politics. A pleasant demeanour. A future. A decent handbag. Proper holidays. The whole deal.

  Disguises always betray the wearer.

  I stare into my eyes.

  What else is in there?

  Who else?

  I’ve always found it upsetting how we can just recreate ourselves.

  Back in the Valley.

  Friday night.

  Drunks slipping over in the rain.

  A horrible vibe running like a cold streak.

  I’m in my regular alleyway, pumping myself up for the walk across the street to Sam Hell. I have two small pictures in my hand: Jenny Wasserman and Sarah Holdings. Two blondes. One possible connection: that door, right over there.

  I start walking.

  But my phone vibrates.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Erma, it’s me.’

  Dad.

  I say, ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Have you spoken to your mother lately?’

  ‘No. Is she all right?’

  ‘She is. I mean, I think she’s fine. I just wanted to call because Euan was arrested last night.’

  Dora’s husband. Or ex-husband now. The guy hanging around our family house while my sister recuperated from that car crash all those years ago. They were together a long time. Euan’s the reason we don’t talk.

  ‘I heard she left him?’

  ‘I don’t know. She doesn’t talk to me about him.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He hurt a woman,’ my father says. ‘It was some woman he worked with. I don’t know much more but, your mother, you really should call her. Or you should try, at least.’

  Should, should, should.

  My breath turns thick.

  My face burns.

  ‘Thanks, Dad. I’ll try and call.’

  ‘How are you? I’ve been thinking …’

  ‘Yes?’

  He pauses.

  I feel a blankness sweep the rest of it away.

  ‘Dad, I’ll call you back. I’ve got to go.’

  I hang up.

  It’s not a sign, it’s not an omen.

  It’s not useful data.

  It’s not relevant.

  I recognise the security guard on the door but he doesn’t recognise me in my new outfit. ‘Half price for girls,’ he says. Downstairs, after a slow descent in heels, I find the club almost empty. There’s a lone dancer working the sad T-shaped stage. A small group of middle-aged men sit around the edge of it, gawking. Further back, another half-dozen men sit at tables, some accompanied by dancers, some alone. Stage light flickers on their stone faces like they’re watching a screen. I’m still standing by the stairs, taking it all in, when a woman in a fluorescent green bikini wanders out of the gloom.

  ‘Hey, darl.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘You need a drink?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Her body is toned to the point of muscle and bone. It’s the sort of thing that probably looks great onstage but up close her tight biceps and calves give her a physical menace. I order a gin and tonic and take a seat near the back of the club. On the sound system ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ cuts sharply into ‘In Da Club’. The girl onstage keeps grinding. The men sit around, motionless.

  ‘Here we are.’ The woman in the bikini places my drink on the little table beside me and swivels into an adjacent chair. She crosses her legs
with exaggerated precision. ‘Let me guess. First time in a place like this? You meeting someone?’

  I smile. ‘Yes and no.’

  ‘You want a smoke? I’m technically on a break.’

  ‘I’m good. What’s your name?’

  ‘Leia.’

  ‘Like Princess Leia?’

  ‘Never heard of her.’ Leia blasts out a jet of smoke. ‘I’m just fucking with you. Who are you?’

  Despite all the dread running raw under my skin, there’s something calming about Leia. She’s that good at her job. I tell her my name is Samantha.

  ‘OK, Sammy, at the end of this cigarette, you’ve gotta buy me a drink or I’m going back to work.’

  ‘I’m actually looking for someone.’

  ‘Another dancer?’

  ‘Do you know a girl called Jenny? She worked here last year. Blonde. About my height. Big eyes.’ I haven’t even completely opened my hand to show her the photograph when she reaches over and closes my fist.

  ‘You don’t want to do that in here, darl. And I don’t care.’

  Leia gets up and walks away.

  I head to the bathroom. I shut myself in a stall, take long deep breaths. It’s fine. This is all a mistake. Just get out of here. I leave the stall and wash my hands alongside a plump girl touching up her make-up. I assume she’s another dancer. She’s wearing a pigtail wig and lederhosen.

  I hold my photos up to the mirror. ‘You seen either of these two?’

  The dancer’s pupils momentarily dart across. ‘Maybe,’ she says.

  ‘I can pay you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m a friend of theirs, their teacher, actually.’

  ‘They runaways? They don’t look like runaways.’ She snaps her makeup kit shut.

  ‘One of them used to work here.’

  ‘I ain’t seen either of them working here.’

  I push open the door and step back out into the loud throb of the club. I’m standing a few feet from the bathroom door, taking in the stage show – a new girl, blonde, young, just like Jenny – when an arm wraps fast around my chest and another drags my feet up, sweeping me into the air. I’m so confused I don’t scream, opting for, ‘Hey!’ before a sweaty palm tightens across my mouth.