Marko is the one sulking now. He is not talking, gripping the steering wheel too hard and pushing his top row of teeth into his bottom lip. Eventually he gets over himself, and says, ‘Elaine?’
‘A neighbour. Pretty much.’
‘A hot neighbour.’
‘Sarah’s got a girlfriend.’
‘We were wondering if she told you.’
I am the last to know everything. Up ahead, a black car has stopped on the side of the road. Either the driver is making a phone call or he is lost. The car is not fully off the road, which tells us it is someone from the city; someone who thinks there won’t be any other cars on a back road like this, and if there are they will just be driven by stupid rednecks.
Marko slows to check there’s no trouble. A man in a dark-blue suit is sitting in the driver’s seat, and looks like he’s been bashing his phone against the dashboard. His face is deep red beneath short, black hair. He winds his window down, and looks like he’s going to tell us to piss off.
Marko gives him a bored ‘Everything okay?’
‘Fucking GPS, fucking hopeless fucking thing.’
‘Where are you trying to get to?’
‘I’m supposed to see a guy called Tito Slade who lives at Five Trees. It’s out this way somewhere, but the fucking GPS keeps telling me it’s on the other side of Waterglen. Fucking stupid thing.’
I look at Marko, and shake my head.
‘Never heard of him, mate. Sorry.’
‘Yeah, well, fuck you too, you stupid hicks.’ He winds his window up.
We leave him, and Marko asks, ‘You want to tell me what’s going on?’
‘I don’t know why someone would give my address for Tito.’
‘He looked nasty.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You seem to be attracting “nasty” all of a sudden.’
‘Tito got himself into trouble with some bad people. I think I’m getting a bit of his overflow.’
We take Wilson Road, and then turn off at my mailbox. Marko helps me carry the food in, and, as I stack it into the fridge and freezer, he returns to his ute and gets an overnight bag. He dumps it on the kitchen floor. ‘I was thinking about staying the night, but when we saw that angry bloke on the road, it made up my mind for me. I’m here, whether you like it or not. I hope your girlfriend doesn’t turn up.’
I don’t argue.
The phone rings, and he looks a question at me. It seems a good idea to ignore the phone, but I answer it anyway. It is Sarah.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re not fine. You’ve just been in the hospital because someone attacked you.’
‘Yeah, but I’m out, and I’m all good. Just a knock on the head.’ I tilt my head in accusation at Marko, and he doesn’t pretend he wasn’t involved.
‘You’re going to get yourself killed, you bloody idiot, being mixed up in whatever you’re mixed up in.’
‘It’s all under control.’
‘You know as well as I do that nothing is under control.’
‘Well …’
‘Do me a favour, Dave, and get yourself away from these people that are hurting you. Stay with Marko. Be a farmer. Look after yourself.’
‘Will do.’ I put the phone down. I don’t need to think about Sarah being annoyed with me. She has been annoyed with me ever since she stopped hating me.
Marko takes a plastic container, which looks like it holds a casserole, out of the fridge.
‘I’ve got to run round and check a couple of things before we eat.’
He puts the container back. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No need. I’ll be right.’
‘You probably should be just sitting down, taking it easy, after that knock on the head.’
‘I will after I’ve checked a couple of water troughs for the stock.’
‘I’m coming.’
‘Seriously, I don’t need you to. I’ll be fine.’
He squints at me, and I know he’s thinking there’s something I don’t want him to see — probably the mess the place is in. I know he doesn’t want to shame me, so he says, ‘Well, be quick.’
I drive towards the hiding tree, my head still thumping. Marko’s assumption is right. There is something I don’t want him to see, but it’s nothing to do with the farm. I need to check that the boxes are still there and haven’t been taken while I was in hospital by whoever knocked me out.
I drive as fast as the track will allow me, and pull in close to the hiding tree. The boxes are still there, dry, and they haven’t been chewed by curious animals. I thought it was a safe place for them, but now I can’t convince myself of that. I feel like I need to be able to keep an eye on them at all times. I put them in the ute, and then speed back to the house. Before I go inside I take the box of money and put it in the meat room under a wheat bag behind a timber chopping block.
‘That was quick.’ Marko says when I enter the kitchen. He looks pleased to see that I am still alive.
He heats up a casserole for lunch, and I’m stunned to see him working at the stove. We eat without talking, and I am glad of it. The sound of a car, a powerful, expensive car, makes me look out the window and see the black sedan arrive. There is a forceful, impatient knock at the door. I take the shotgun out and give it Marko, who looks alarmed. He breaks it to confirm it is empty. I answer the door to a pacing man. He sees me, and the recognition is instant.
‘You!’ His anger has obviously not dissipated. ‘You’re fucking Tito Slade!’
‘No.’
‘Then who are you?’
‘Since you’re on my property, I think I get to ask that question first.’
He pushes his mouth shut, and fumes. Then: ‘Frank. Tito Slade has something that belongs to me. I’ve come to collect it.’
‘Tito Slade never lived here. He’s dead.’
Silence. Frank’s head bobbles just once, and he contains it. This is bad news, and it softens him.
‘I’m looking for my brother’s remains.’
‘Why do you think they’d be here?’ In the history of the world, there have never been so many people so poorly directed.
‘He fucking sent me a weird note. It had my name on it, but the street address was wrong. I don’t know how I even got it. It had this address, his name, and the words “bones/remains”.’
Frank stops to take in the air he is suddenly in need of. ‘I presumed Tito lived here. Now you claim he doesn’t live anywhere.’
‘How would he have come by your brother’s remains?’
Angryman shuts his mouth, and stares at me. His face is puce again. ‘The Vasiliev family had my brother killed, then they took his body. They were going to do something with it, but I think Tito saved it, sent me the note.’
‘Tito lived …’ It’s better not to tell. ‘What was your brother’s name?’
‘Greg.’
‘Don’t know any Gregs, sorry.’
‘Also known as Fatboy.’
‘Fatboy Cakestand?’
‘What? No! Fatboy Costello.’
As he says it, Marko walks over, the shotgun slung over his arm as though he were a pheasant hunter. ‘Were you here the other day?’
‘Me? No. Hard enough to find it today.’
Marko looks at him, suspicious. ‘Well, I hope you weren’t. And you won’t want to be coming back, either.’
The angry man looks at Marko and the shotgun without concern. Maybe everybody totes a shotgun in his world.
‘So where did Tito Slade live? Can you tell me that?’
‘I don’t know. I just heard he died. He’s certainly never lived here.’
Angryman’s frustration returns red and hot. ‘What am I supposed to fucking do now?’
Marko moves the shot
gun to his other arm. ‘How about you stop harassing people, and bloody well piss off home?’
The angry man turns away, then turns back, as if he has something to add. After a couple of rapid steps in our direction, he leaps at Marko, his palms outstretched, reaching for Marko’s throat. They both go down, and the gun clatters across the floor. They roll, grabbing at each other, and I retrieve the shotgun, take a cartridge from my pocket, load the gun, click the barrel shut, and fire it into the back of the couch. The confined space makes the shot sound like a bazooka. The couch slips forward and blows stuffing out of its new hat-sized hole.
‘Let him go.’
Angryman has already let Marko go. He and Marko sit up and look at me like I might be the crazy one. I break the gun, and put it down. They refocus on each other.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ Marko spits this at the man who has put red welts on his neck. They are both breathing heavily.
‘My brother was murdered. His body hasn’t been found. How the fuck would you feel?’ Frank is calming down, but slowly.
I tell him that I think he’s confused. There are no murderers here. He stands, brushes himself down, straightens his coat and tie, and says, ‘So you normally have a shotgun at the ready when people visit?’
We don’t have an answer, so I ask, ‘Who is the Vasiliev family?’
‘Crooks in the city. Real nasty. Professional killers. They take people out, and the body is never found.’
‘Never heard of them.’ Marko, who is also standing again, makes this sound like it is a significant statement, which it isn’t. He still looks keen to throw Frank out the door.
‘You’ve never heard of Sergei Vasiliev?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t have TV, internet?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘And what do you do?’ I ask. The shotgun shot has given me a particular authority.
‘I’m a car salesman. Clean. Had some trouble when I was young, but nothing since. My brother is a different story.’ His anger is gone, and he looks like a different person, maybe even a reasonable person.
‘You want a beer?’
‘What?’ He and Marko say this simultaneously.
‘There’s something going on here, and I don’t know what it is. I think we need to talk.’
‘Oh, fuck off, Dave.’ Marko cannot believe me.
‘I’m serious.’ I go to the fridge, extract three beers, hand one each to the other two, and open one myself. They look at the beer in their hands in wonder. ‘Come on, drink up. Take a seat.’ I push a stool at the now not-so-angry man. His name is Frank Costello, and his brother has been missing for some months. He did a bad deal with the Vasilievs, and they put a contract out on him.
‘So he may not even be dead,’ Marko points out, still not happy with my idea of friendship.
‘He’s dead, all right. They sent me a message. Said there’d be a gift from the Vasilievs. But nothing ever came, except one day I got a note from some Tito guy.’
I’ve finished my drink, but the other two have hardly had a mouthful of theirs. I get out three more, and hand them around. They look at me like I have a problem.
‘So why would you believe Tito and come all the way out here looking for him?’
‘I didn’t know what else to do. Everybody tells me my brother is dead, but there’s no body, and the police have got nothing. Everyone is asking questions. Someone sends you a note saying they’ve got pieces of your brother — you follow it up, don’t you?’ He lets us see the desperate man he is.
‘I guess so.’ Marko finishes his first beer, and seems to be relaxing. ‘The Vasilievs send out gifts after they murder someone?’
Frank shrugs. ‘Apparently.’ He is just Frank now — a car salesman who probably gets ribbed for using too much cologne. Not a bad guy, though. ‘It’s actually pretty hard to get someone killed discreetly. It’s easy to do a drive-by or a shooting on a front porch, you know, in front of your family. But to remove someone, body and all, with no witnesses, is a real art. Most hitmen don’t get the significance of killing someone. It’s just fish in a barrel to them.’
‘You know this how?’ Marko is almost sneering.
‘Like I said, I had some trouble when I was younger.’
‘What sort of gifts? Chocolates? Flowers?’ Marko is not disguising his disbelief.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you get lunch? You want something to eat?’ I ask.
Frank waves a hand and says he’s fine, but his face says he’d love to eat.
‘We’ve got some curry. It’s not bad. Go on.’
He doesn’t respond, so I get out a bowl, fill it and put it in the microwave. When it is hot I shove a fork into it, and pass it to him. He eats like it is a long time since he has.
Frank finishes, and passes the bowl back to me. ‘That was delicious. Thank you. Sorry — I’m not used to not having a takeaway place on hand. I was too early to have breakfast in town, and I’ve been driving around for hours with no food, and no shops in sight.’ We have crossed some sort of social threshold whereby he is now talking to me like we met in a pub or a service station.
‘You going to give him a tank of fuel now?’ Marko is derisive, but now it’s an act.
‘Had you heard of Tito Slade before?’
‘No. Don’t know a thing about him.’
‘Ever seen a reference to my address anywhere before?’
‘No.’
I tell them the things Elaine told me, and everything that has happened at Elaine’s and at my place, except for the deliveries of the boxes.
Marko is open-mouthed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this, Dave?’
I say something meaningless, and then Frank says, ‘So maybe it was the Vasiliev family that was blackmailing Tito.’
It seems like a reasonable link.
‘What would the Vasiliev family want from a bloke who does pottery and lives in the country?’ Marko has given up on the act. The intrigue has got the better of him.
‘I guess they’d want him to make pottery.’
‘Which means they’d want him to put something illegal in the pottery: it has to be drugs.’ And now Marko is talking as if he is a fictional detective, several steps ahead of us, the case already solved.
I tell him I had the same thought. ‘But the police kind of laughed at me.’
‘But …’ Frank is thinking out loud. ‘I saw an article on the net where this guy made crockery out of …’
‘I know. I saw something about that, too. I think the police probably did as well.’ I explain to Marko, and he looks like he’s not sure whether to laugh or be horrified. The fictional detective is back in the book. His face changes, and he asks, ‘So, the note suggested to you that Tito might know where your brother was buried?
Frank nods. ‘Stupid, I suppose, but I didn’t have anything else.’
I make a decision. ‘Marko. Frank. I’ve got to get something from my ute. Can you both stay here, and not attack each other or do anything stupid?’
Frank and Marko nod begrudgingly. I walk out to the ute, choose the box I want, and return.
I put the Fatboy box on the island in front of Frank and say, ‘I got this in the mail. It doesn’t have Greg Costello’s name anywhere on it, so it might be nothing to do with him.’ I put my hand on top of the box. I know Marko is probably gobsmacked behind me, since this is another thing I neglected to mention. ‘The name on it is “Fatboy Cakestand”, and I warn you it might be human remains.’
Frank gets up and comes over to the box. There are already tears welling in his eyes.
‘Like I say, it was his nickname: “Fatboy”. I don’t know about the other bit.’
Frank opens the box. His face suggests that for one moment he thinks I’m playing a game with him. He touches the ash uncertainly.
I realise he has no way of telling if he is looking at what is left of his brother, or the remains of a pet or a log. I pick out the ring and hand it to him. One sob hiccups its way out, and then he begins to howl. Marko and I don’t know where to look or what to do. Frank pushes the ring against his cheek, and in between sobs says, ‘It’s him. It’s him.’
After some time, he controls himself, wipes his eyes, and says, ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’ He puts the ring into his pocket, carefully closes the box, and slumps on the stool. He takes a white handkerchief out of his pocket, blows his nose, and then puts the handkerchief back.
‘I knew he was dead. I was only hoping to find some remains, but I guess you never really believe.’ He sniffs. ‘The family will be relieved. At least we have something.’
Dry-eyed, he looks around the room as if searching for context or explanation. ‘So how the fuck do you two fit into all of this?’
‘The trouble just turned up on my doorstep. Marko’s being a mate.’
And then the three of us talk for a while about nothing: sport and stupid people. It’s our way of building a defence against what we suddenly know. I am telling myself that Tito sent the boxes. But he must have had someone handle this for them to arrive this long after his death. Why me? Why money?
Marko breaks the mutual support, and says, ‘If the Vasiliev family are the ones sending tough guys to hassle Dave, what can we do about them?’
Frank gives a half-hearted laugh. ‘Nothing. They’re way too powerful, and I don’t think you two are killers.’
‘We could report them to the police.’
‘Good luck with that.’
We are silent, so far out of our league that we have nothing to say.
Frank finishes his beer, and says he’d better go. ‘Are there ever any cops around here? Like, to breathalyse me?’
I tell him, ‘Only when they have reason.’
We shake hands like old friends, and he takes his box and leaves. It is dark outside. The three of us have been together for hours. My head is beginning to hurt again, and I am ready for sleep. I tell Marko there are clean sheets in the cupboard if he wants them, but I’m not up to doing it for him. I’d like to talk to him about what he thinks of the things we learned today, but I’m too tired.
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