Black Ice

by Leah Giarratano

  Marco shot her a withering look. She didn't blame him. If he knew that a lot of the money she had in their bank account had been used on storage fees for the few possessions they owned, he would probably have been even more cynical. He would never know of the plans she had for every remaining cent. Shopping for their new home would have to wait until her first pay cheque; the money in her account was earmarked for revenge.

  'And tonight,' she continued, 'if the truck doesn't get our beds here on time, we'll camp out!' Her smile stuck to her teeth as she considered the state of the threadbare carpet in the cheap rental flat. Her skin started to itch just thinking about trying to sleep on it.

  Together they walked through their new home. The tour took five minutes, the unit consisting of a combined lounge and kitchen area, two dark bedrooms, and a dingy bathroom with an outlet for a washing machine. Without speaking they made their way back to the kitchen. Seren could hear a baby crying somewhere close by.

  'I'm hungry,' said Marco.

  'Me too,' she said. 'Let's go check out the shopping centre. I've never been to the shops in Eastlakes.'

  'I've never been to Eastlakes,' Marco mumbled.

  Seren grabbed her handbag from the floor and walked towards the door. 'Come on baby, what do you want to eat?'

  As she unlatched the front door, a hairy arm pushed through. Seren recoiled.

  'Hey!' she said, instantly manoeuvring Marco behind her.

  A barrel chest and oversize belly stood in the doorway, blocking her exit. Seren smelled the beer that had helped the body get that way. A roaring sound filled her ears. The man wore gaol ink and his meaty hands and face were crossed and pocked with scars. He remained between her and the door.

  'I saw you guys moving in,' he said, smiling a gap-toothed leer. 'Wayne Treadmark. People call me Tready. I'm in 612.'

  'Okay, Wayne,' she said, heart thudding. 'Well, pleased to meet you, but we're actually on our way out again, so –'

  'Where are you going?'

  'My son is hungry.'

  'Hello there, mate. Come on out and say hello to Tready. Don't be a little poofter, hiding behind your mother like that.'

  Seren felt Marco make himself even smaller behind her back. She reached behind her and gripped his upper arm firmly. With her other hand she held her bag in front of her stomach; she straightened her back and walked directly into the man's chest. Caught by surprise, he stepped backwards and out of the flat. She let go of Marco, pulled the door shut and grabbed her son again. She began to march him along the external corridor that would take them to the lifts.

  'Hey. I could go something to eat,' Tready said, following them. 'You going down the plaza? Just let me grab me smokes and wallet and I'll be right with you.'

  'Actually, we're going to meet Marco's father,' Seren lied. 'And he doesn't like me speaking to strange men.'

  Tready was silent a few moments, taking his time to look her up and down.

  'Well, I'm not a stranger no more,' he said, finally. 'We're neighbours. And youse are going to get to know me real well.'

  16

  Friday 5 April, 11 am

  The thing about undercover work that got to Jill was that there were no routines.

  Pillows completely surrounding her body – she'd slept in this illusory fortress every night since the kidnappers had let her go – Jill decided she would never get used to the lack of structure. She could wake when she wanted, go to bed whenever. Probably most people would love the freedom, she imagined, but for her, structure meant control, and control in Jill's life was like a sentry with an Uzi nine millimetre keeping the hell-people at bay.

  Although right now, at ten o'clock in the morning, with the sound of rain coursing through gutters outside, she decided she should at least try to sleep a little more. The building complex beyond her front door smelled like a homeless wet dog, and she was bunkered safe in bed. Her sheets were Kmart cheap, but no one would guess that inside the covers nestled a premium duck-down doona and pillows. She huddled her head in deeper and let the feathers envelop her face. She hadn't had nearly enough sleep.

  But it was no good. Her body simply could not get used to sleeping at ten in the morning, even if she'd only gone to bed at four.

  She sat up and stretched, sighing. Another day out here. She stood and crossed the lino to the kitchen. At her insistence, the unit had no carpet – lino could be bleached and scalded with boiling water. Even so, with her boy-leg briefs and singlet she wore socks: she couldn't get the floor that clean.

  She opened the fridge and leaned in.

  When she'd started this assignment, she'd promised herself she would never let anyone else into her unit, but the rule had since been broken a dozen times. People here had few boundaries and her neighbours had gaped at her, offended, when she didn't ask them into hers, or pop around to theirs. So to fit her cover, that meant No-Frills food in the fridge. Well, sort of.

  She pulled a carton of eggs, some butter, milk, and tasty cheese from the refrigerator, as always astonished by the four-litre cask of chardonnay at the back. Her neighbour, Ingrid, had stared hard at her when she'd come in to Jill's unit for the first time and seen the contents of the fridge.

  'Where's your wine?' Ingrid had asked, one hand on her hip, the other on the still open fridge door.

  Jill met her look blankly.

  'Ah, I'm out,' she'd managed finally. Was it even lunchtime yet? She'd glanced at the clock on the oven. Nope.

  'Well that's no bloody good, is it, Krystal?' her neighbour had said. 'Come on, we'll go round to mine for a couple.'

  Ingrid had the cask bladder unpacked from its box, luridly silver, wobbling right there on the shelf in the fridge. She'd held the bag full of wine over a coffee cup and squeezed down hard. The pale yellow liquid jetted from the plastic spout like a horse taking a piss. Jill stared down into the cup when Ingrid pushed it over to her. It even frothed up like urine.

  What a way to break the drought, Jill had thought.

  After a year, aged fifteen, when she couldn't get enough alcohol, Jill hadn't had a sip until last October when she'd tasted a mouthful of butterscotch schnapps in the company of Gabriel Delahunt, her former partner. Despite her fears that once she started she'd never stop, she'd had only two glasses of wine since. Both were with Scotty, her other work partner. Each evening had left her feeling completely flummoxed and she hadn't found a reason to have a drink since.

  Until that day at Ingrid's. Her neighbour had smiled at her, coffee cup raised, ready to toast. Alcohol was currency around here; wine the most expensive foodstuff in Ingrid's home. Jill couldn't refuse.

  Now, in her kitchen, blinds drawn against the drizzle outside, she found an onion in the cupboard and took a small glass lemonade bottle from the shelf. Inside was grass-green extra-virgin olive oil, but it appeared pretty unspectacular housed this way. She diced half the onion finely and trickled a small amount of the oil into a pan, adding a thumb-sized knob of butter. When the melted butter foamed, she dropped in the onion and turned the pan down. She cracked two eggs into a bowl and flicked them together just two or three times with a fork. The secret to soft scrambled eggs – don't over mix them; Gabriel had told her during one of his out-of-the-blue cooking lessons when they'd been racing through traffic on the job a few months ago. She splashed just a dash of milk into the eggs, and slid two pieces of bread under the grill. Next, she grated some cheese into the egg mixture.

  The onions smelled delicious, sizzling in the butter, and were just changing from opaque to translucent. She slipped the eggs into the pan, again swirling once, twice, with the fork. The buttery froth rose up around the eggs and Jill immediately turned the heat off and put a plate over the top of the frypan. When her toast was cooked, she slid the fluffy eggs over the top and smiled all the way back to her dining table. Thanks, Gabriel, she thought. These eggs were worth the extra couple of kilometres she'd run this afternoon.

  Her sunny mood evaporated after the first bite when the guilt kicked
in. She hadn't called her mum in a couple of days and had no idea how Cassie was getting on. That was the other thing about undercover work. The irregular hours meant that the times she would ordinarily have kept in touch with her family and friends were spent working – cultivating the networks that would lead to the next bust.

  She picked her mobile up from next to her plate and scrolled for her parents' number.

  The call was answered almost immediately. 'Hello, Frances Jackson.'

  Jill was surprised. Her mum usually let her calls go through to the machine to deter telemarketers, picking up only when the caller spoke.

  'Mum, hi.'

  'Cassie?'

  'No, Mum, it's Jill. I guess Cassie didn't stay with you guys then?'

  'Hi, darling. No. She left the same day we brought her home. She let me drive her to her unit. I got her settled in, and she seemed okay. Very tired, of course.'

  'Did she say whether she'd get some counselling?' asked Jill.

  Frances sighed down the phone. 'Well, we talked about it for a little while, but she said she didn't need it. She said that she'd been stupid and learned a big lesson and would never do anything like that again.'

  'Anything like what?' said Jill. 'Overdose?'

  'Oh, you don't think it was deliberate, do you?' Frances sounded terrified.

  'No, Mum. I really don't,' said Jill. 'I think Cassie just has too much money and too much time on her hands. She hangs out with too many people just like her, and they all think that the whole world is a big carnival and they should get on as many rides as they can.'

  'I hope she's going to be all right,' said Frances. 'Anyway, how are you, darling? Is everything okay? It's not like you to call at this time of day.'

  'I'm fine, Ma. Believe it or not, I just got up.'

  'What's going on? Are you sick?'

  'I'm fine. I'm eating scrambled eggs. I have to give you this recipe.'

  'Hmm – sleeping in and eating properly. Whoever you are, could you put my daughter on the phone, please?'

  'You're a riot,' Jill said. 'What're you doing today?'

  'Groceries, bills, gardening, cooking. You know the drill. What about you? How's the case going?'

  Jill's mother knew nothing about what she was doing, other than that she was working on something she couldn't discuss, and it involved living away from home for a while.

  'Really well, actually.' Not a lot more she could or wanted to say.

  'Any idea when you'll be working back at Maroubra?'

  'Not in the short term.' If ever.

  'It was nice to see Scotty the other day,' said Frances. 'Have you caught up again since?'

  'I called him. We're going to meet up on the weekend for a bike ride.' Jill now wanted out of this conversation. Her mum's next questions would be about her feelings – for Scotty, about Gabriel – and she'd rather have a conversation with a speed dealer than go there. 'Mum. I have to go. I'm sorry. I'll give you another call soon.'

  Jill cleaned away her breakfast and took a shower. That was the other thing she'd fixed as soon as she got in here – a new showerhead to ensure the water coursed hot and strong. She donned her uniform for the day – Playboy hipster tracksuit pants in baby blue, matching midriff hoodie, a white singlet, push-up bra and sneakers. Her hair went into a high ponytail, and she slicked on lots of black eyeliner. Sitting down on her bed, she picked up a cheap jewellery box from the nightstand and began pulling on the ten silver rings Krystal Peters always wore. She was not prepared to have any more piercings for this assignment – one in each ear was enough for her – but lashings of inexpensive rings and bangles seemed to help her blend in with her neighbours. Some spangly silver earrings completed her outfit. Ta-dah, she checked out Krystal in the mirror, as always bemused and a little shocked to see her standing there. She picked up her handbag and set off to wake Ingrid.

  It had turned out that Ingrid Dobell – Jill/Krystal's new bestie, and her neighbour from across the hall – was hooked in with plenty of the speed and smack dealers in the Fairfield area. She didn't use herself – told Jill she'd seen the damage it had done to her father and brothers – but she'd grown up in the area and had a lot of friends. When Jill had moved in, supposedly on the run from a bad break-up with her man in Brisbane, Ingrid had come around to drop off a welcome pack: a shiny red laundry bucket packed with a bottle of no-name washing-up liquid, some Chux, a small jar of instant coffee, a roll of toilet paper, a package of shortbread biscuits and a carton of milk.

  In her kitchen, Jill had unpacked the bucket, touched by the thoughtfulness. At ten-thirty the next morning, she'd gone around to thank Ingrid.

  'Come in, come in,' said her neighbour, standing back from her screen door, waving Jill inside with the smoke from her cigarette. 'Don't mind the mess. Haven't got around to getting my place done yet.'

  Actually, the unit wasn't terribly untidy. Some unfolded washing on the couch, a few dishes in the sink, shoes on the floor. Jill would have had to have typhoid fever to leave her place like that overnight, but she'd been expecting a lot worse of her new neighbours.

  'I'm a carer for Mrs Dang, next door to you,' said Ingrid. 'Poor love has schizophrenia. I make sure she's taken her meds, had something to eat, and I tidy up a bit.' Ingrid took a seat at her kitchen table; with a bare foot, she pushed out the other chair for Jill. 'She's not too bad this morning. Only asked about her cat once.'

  'Her cat?' said Jill.

  Ingrid laughed and blew smoke towards the ceiling. 'Yeah, poor thing. She thinks the government took her cat to do experiments on it.'

  'Where is her cat?'

  'Never had one as long as I've lived here, and that's coming up for nine years now.' Ingrid laughed again. 'Doesn't worry me. She's good fun, and I'm gettin' the carer's pension to look after her.'

  'No shit,' said Jill.

  'Yep. Not bad, eh? Mind you, she wouldn't cope on her own. I've been doing this shit for her for years anyway. She's fucked.' Ingrid finished her cigarette and looked around for another. 'Anyway, Krystal, what's your story?'

  It was over the first glass of wine a week after they met that Jill had sounded Ingrid out for some contacts. She'd seen no drug paraphernalia around her flat, so she was a little worried about Ingrid's reaction, but she figured that she might as well try to get something if she was going to have to drink this crap.

  'So, Ingrid,' she tried. 'You wouldn't know where I could get any shabu around here, would you?'

  That had been three months ago, and Ingrid's initial introductions had led to others that had resulted in the takedowns Lawrence Last was so happy about.

  Jill wanted more. Despite the busts of numerous clandestine laboratories, there was still a huge amount of crystal methamphetamine on the streets. Although her brief was to try to find ice and ecstasy dealers, it was the proliferation of dodgy ice cooks in particular that most worried the authorities. The manufacture of ecstasy was quite an art. Getting it right could be tricky, and production was most often a large-scale affair by professionals. Ice was another thing altogether.

  Locking the door to her unit, Jill thought about the massive proliferation of this drug over the past five years. The problem with ice, she thought, is that half the country knows how to cook it. Theoretically. She knew that she could go to the internet today, and within five minutes collect twenty recipes. But most people manufacturing it were taught face to face by a friend. She knew that there were plenty of small operations making enough to service a local group of ice addicts, but large-scale production generally originated in Asia. The source ingredients required were tightly controlled in Australia, meaning that major meth production was rare. But there was certainly plenty on these streets, and Jill and everyone else around here knew that someone had a bloodline to a major supply. So far though, no one had been able to give her any useful links to the really big players.