The Inheritance

by Gabriel Bergmoser

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s head back.’

  She knew he was disappointed, even if part of him hoped that the turnaround didn’t mean what he knew it did. She talked idly with him as the lights of the house grew nearer and the music got louder. Back at the party, now packed with raucous dancers and stinking of sweat, she got another beer and had polite conversations with people whose names she quickly forgot. And Mike, who could have stuck close with her and tried to change her mind, told her he’d be right back and didn’t return.

  The night got late. Most people now were too drunk to notice or remember Maggie. That was fine. She leaned against the balcony with her beer. Through the sliding glass door, she saw Mike huddled on one of the wicker couches with Evie. Mike was leaning close, saying something. Evie laughed and tucked some hair behind her ear. Her eyes were half closed. Enjoying the attention. Knowing where it would end.

  Maggie finished her beer, placed the empty bottle on the balcony then, hands in pockets, left.

  She didn’t walk along the beach. Instead she made her way up the dark road, under shadowy palms and the cries of bats.

  Friends and parties, relationships, steady jobs that grew into careers and all the rest, all the accepted milestones of a respectable life. She generally operated under the assumption that those things were out of her reach, but maybe they weren’t. Of course, there were realistic considerations, passports and tax file numbers and the rest, but nothing was insurmountable with the right money and the right connections. If she really wanted to, she knew, she could adopt the guise of somebody innocuous and everyday. It would take time and effort, not least to shed the impression of ‘mysterious’ that even Evie’s friends had picked up on, but it could be done.

  At what point, she thought as she swatted away an overhanging branch, was enough enough? Would there ever come a time when she had adequately made penance? When the past would become something faint and distant, something that might as well have happened to someone else? Her own mistakes, many and ugly as they were, at a certain point had to be left behind. Already, realistically, had been. There was no direct way to make up for the things she had done, the people she had failed. The boy, not so different to Mike, who she’d led down the wrong road in blind pursuit of her mother. The road she had returned from alone.

  Wind moved through the trees. The air was touched with cold now, a hint of impending winter. Not that winter meant much up here, which was one of the reasons she liked Port Douglas.

  If she was going to stay, then she couldn’t keep going the way she had. Her solitude was having the opposite effect to what she wanted, making her stand out. Maybe the only practical option was to, at least for a while, pretend. To play the part without being it. And if, over time, the lines between the pretence and the reality became blurred, well, she could live with that.

  Another gust of wind. Maggie stopped. She turned. She scanned the empty road behind her, the still buildings, the gentle sway of the trees. For a moment there, she was sure she had felt eyes on her.

  She was a shadow with no last name and a first generic enough to seem fake if anyone decided to dig a little deeper. She had cut off the past at the root and thrown away all the things she could have been in exchange for a life on nobody’s radar or record. The problem was how fragile that life could be and how thoroughly she had risked unbalancing it by following Len to that warehouse.

  Paranoia was the consequence of the way she lived. One of them. The street remained still. She started walking again.

  Having her coffee the next morning, Maggie again felt somebody watching her.

  She read her book, had a second coffee, paid and left. As she walked up the busy street, she casually glanced over her shoulder. There were lots of people out; the weather was typically perfect and there was a carnival on down at the beach. It would be hard to spot anybody conspicuous even if she tried.

  By the time she arrived at work, she was almost certain it had all been in her head. Still, she found herself checking the door more often for signs of Len or one of his cronies. She even looked a little closer at every person who came into the bar, but as far as she could tell they were the usual combination of regulars and tourists, none of whom paid any abnormal attention to her.

  She turned down Andrew’s offer of a drink that night. Standing in the cooling night air out the front of the bar, she waited for several seconds, looking to either side. The street was empty. She listened. Distant snatches of conversation and music. Leaves in the wind. A car passing, several blocks away.

  She started to walk. She kept her hands in her pockets. She wished she had brought the knife with her. In the first days of this job, she had, every night. She’d become complacent.

  There it was again: that feeling, so distinct and so hard to define, of eyes on her. A shiver, a sense of crawling across the back of her neck. She didn’t slow or turn. She glanced at a car ahead. The reflection in the windscreen was dark and distorted but enough to show nobody behind her. She stopped and turned. Her eyes swept across the road. There was no rustle in a hedge or flash of movement as somebody ducked behind a car. The road was as still as it had been when she had left the bar. She picked up her pace. The sense grew again. Ahead was a narrow alley. Briefly, she considered ducking down it, doubling back and taking the long way home. She could lose whoever was there – if, indeed, somebody was there. But she was unarmed and for anyone who meant her harm, a narrow, dark alley was practically a gift. She passed the mouth of it. Ahead, a rock lay to the side of the pavement. Without slowing, she picked it up. It didn’t make her feel much better.

  Most nights she took a shortcut to her apartment along a back road. Tonight, she went via the main stretch of the town. She glanced behind her as she passed the dark shops. There were a few people still out, talking, laughing, stumbling. Good. Witnesses were a strong deterrent.

  She locked the door the moment she was inside and stuck her chair under the handle. She put her knife beside the bed. The apartment had one window. She placed her only glass on the sill, deliberately precarious. If somebody tried to come through, even silently, she would know. Once she was sure she had done everything she could, she got into bed. She lay there, wide awake, staring at the roof and feeling the simmer of hot, uncomfortable anger. She didn’t want to live this way. She didn’t like being forced into a position where she had to.

  She wondered if the person following her could guess just how far she would go to do something about the fact.

  The next morning, she was sure of it. Somebody was tailing her. The feeling remained strong as she took a corner seat in her usual café and watched the street. What frustrated her was that whoever this person was, they were very good. She had glimpsed nobody who stood out, no eyes quickly moving away from her, no overly casual figure rapidly shifting their attention to a phone or nearby store.

  She didn’t lend much credence to the idea that it was happening in her head. Some people laughed at the notion that you could feel eyes on you, but Maggie took the feeling at face value, especially when it lingered like this. There was some strange imbalance to the air when somebody was tracking you; it was a sense that the world wasn’t just moving around you in the way it usually did. Somebody had noticed you.

  By early afternoon, she had decided what she was going to do. Whoever was following her obviously had a decent idea of her day-to-day movements in Port Douglas. Their ability to elude her suggested that they also had a reasonable knowledge of the town itself. Therefore, her best option was to act as unconcerned as possible, then do something that would draw the person out, throw off their understanding of her routine and force them into a location where they weren’t as comfortable.

  Getting ready for work that afternoon, she took her old backpack from where it was secured under her bed. More from habit than anything, she checked inside. Once it had been full of cash. Now there was about half left of what she had started out with. She packed her knife as well, then slung the backpack over h
er shoulder.

  She kept her eyes forward and took her time as she walked to her car. The day was warm but mild. Even so, she felt like the heat was closing in on her, leaving her stuffy and uncomfortable. She checked in the boot. Everything where she had left it.

  She drove to work and parked down the road. It would have seemed a strange choice, given she could easily have walked, and that was what she was hoping for. If she was still being watched, this slight change in routine would be noticed. And that, hopefully, would prompt the person to do exactly what Maggie wanted.

  It was an unusually busy night in the bar. Even Evie didn’t have as much time for gossip or annoying questions. Andrew’s glances towards the door were fewer. Again, there was no sign of Len. Or, Maggie felt, anyone else suspicious. She worked hard, polishing and serving faster than she usually would. Unbidden, the image of a dark figure creeping over to her car, a flashing device in hand, eyes on the door of the bar, kept playing out in her head.

  It was nearly midnight by the time the whole bar was clean and Evie asked if they could have a couple of staff drinks. Maggie declined despite Andrew, who she suspected might have been swigging from a flask out the back, merrily urging her to stay. Instead, she hefted her backpack over her shoulder, smiled, waved and walked out the front door.

  The street looked empty again. Her car was exactly where she had left it. She crossed the road and rested a hand on the roof. She looked behind her, towards the distant lights of the main street. She walked to the back of the car. She popped the boot and lifted it. Nothing moved. She retrieved a pen from her pocket. It slipped from her fingers and hit the road with a slight clatter. She swore, got to her knees and leaned down sideways, as if it had fallen under the car.

  In the dark, it was hard to see, but there were no flashing lights or unfamiliar shapes. She picked up the pen and stood. She closed the boot. Then she went to the driver’s side door, opened it and got in. She waited only a moment before starting the engine.

  No bomb. No stalling. She pulled the car out of the park then hit the brakes. No cutting either, it seemed.

  She drove.

  It only took a few turns for her to get on the Captain Cook Highway. It was roughly an hour’s drive to Cairns, give or take, and the highway went straight there. At this time of night, there weren’t many other people out. That made her tail easier to spot, but also made her more vulnerable.

  By day, it was a nice drive; the left side gave way to the ocean, while on the right sat vast fields of towering sugar cane and, further along, a stretch of rainforest-covered mountains. During her first week, Maggie had stopped there and taken a cable car up into the trees, where the tiny village of Kuranda, all wooden boardwalks and shops that seemed to grow between the trees, was tucked away like a secret hideout that tourists kept exposing. She’d liked Kuranda and found the trip to and from peaceful and pleasant. At night, however, all she could see was darkness hemming her in: the trees and the hills’ looming shadows, the water a writhing void.

  And behind her, distant but close enough to see, a pair of headlights.

  It clicked home with a flicker of hateful vindication. He was real and he was here.

  She didn’t speed up or slow down. She suspected that if she stopped, he would kill his lights and wait – knowing, then, that she was onto him. He was taking a risk having them on at all. He was hoping, perhaps, that she would assume he was just another late-night driver while avoiding drawing the attention of a passing police car. It was the same tactic she’d employed with Len the other night.

  The obvious answer to the who was one of the gangster’s men, but she doubted it now. Mainly because Len had no reason to link her to the attack, but also because he would have been arrogant and brazen. If he was going to come for her, he wouldn’t be afraid to act fast and draw attention.

  Which begged the question of who the fuck this was.

  There were several potential answers Maggie could think of, and none of them boded well. A thug would be easy enough to deal with, but the other options created a whole pile of new problems. Namely, that she had been found. That it was naive to have thought she could fly under the radar. Maybe the truth was that the past always found a way to get its hooks in and drag you back.

  Well, it could try.

  Maggie slowed as houses and buildings started to appear around her, and she entered Cairns. There were more cars on the road now, but the pair of headlights in her rear-view mirror remained. Or had they got closer?

  Cairns didn’t feel much bigger than Port Douglas. There were very few skyscrapers; most of the buildings were low and throughout it had the feel of a fashionable suburb in a major city or else a resort town grown too big, with the waving palm trees and ocean sounds under the bustle.

  She parked as centrally as she dared, near a line of closed restaurants and bars. She knew she was near the sea and the expansive public spaces around it. The noises of the still-open nightclubs were faint and there weren’t many people on the street. She checked the rear-view mirror. The one advantage of the highway was gone here. She had no idea where her follower was. She could only guess he was still on her tail. She stepped out of the car, bag over her shoulder in case she had to run, covering the knife with her jacket. She breathed in the warm air and looked behind her. Then, locking the door, she walked towards the sea. She put both hands in her pockets and kept her head down. Nobody spoke to her as she passed. Maybe one or two giggling teenagers gathered around a rubbish bin stopped to watch, but they said nothing.

  Not far from the ocean was a vast stretch of courtyard fringed with art installations and palm trees. In the midst of it all was a giant public pool, the water barely touching your feet in some places, deep enough to swim in others, electric neon blue under the streetlights. Sticking out at various intervals were towering stainless-steel poles, at the top of which were triangular fish. Whether they were weird fountains or just for decoration Maggie had no idea. She walked along the edge of the pool to the furthest point, close now to where the ocean began after a paved walkway. The streetlights kept everything illuminated; the steel fish gleamed against the sky. She stopped and turned.

  At the other side of the pool stood a man. He was in the shadows, but beyond that made no attempt to hide himself. Maggie’s hand went to the knife. Her heart had picked up. She didn’t move.

  The figure approached, stepping into the light. He was dressed simply in a blue business shirt, sleeves rolled up, and dark trousers. From a distance, she could see that his sparse hair was closely cropped. He was slow but he didn’t falter as he came closer.

  The wind picked up, rustling the trees. Neither spoke. In the distance, Maggie heard a yell followed by raucous laughter.

  Whoever she had been expecting to emerge from the shadows, it was not him. And she couldn’t deny the pang of something keen and aching, something so unfamiliar she’d almost forgotten what it meant, something that slammed into her the moment their eyes met and he smiled.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The last time Maggie had seen Harrison Cooper, she’d still been at uni. She was in theory headed to class but was hungover enough to know that she’d likely go lie down in a park somewhere until the headache subsided. Still, she’d stopped in at a café near campus to at least make one serious attempt to wake herself up.

  She knew, waiting in line, that the booze was only one part of the sour taste in her mouth and the throbbing behind her eyes. The night before, watching Ness and that prick, had been a harsh reminder of just how out of her depth she was here. Hence the drinks.

  She hadn’t recognised Cooper immediately. She’d glanced at him, felt a sense of some vague familiarity, then a jolt as she realised who he was. He stood to the side, waiting for his order, frowning down at his phone. His face was more lined than before and he’d clearly given in to his encroaching baldness by cutting his hair close, but there was no mistaking him. Her coffee forgotten, she’d stood there, rigid and uncertain. It would have been easy enough
to just shuffle forward, order and leave. He hadn’t seen her since she was a kid. He wouldn’t even glance up as she left. The line moved and Cooper stayed where he was. Maggie tried not to look at him but she couldn’t help it. She was waiting for his name to be called out, for the moment he’d take his coffee and leave. She was waiting but she didn’t want that moment to come and so once she’d ordered her own, she stood beside him and said, quietly, ‘Hi.’

  He looked up at her. His frown deepened and she went to make some excuse, a mistaken identity or something else but then his eyebrows went up and in a voice that sounded just slightly choked he’d said her name.

  The rest was awkward. He collected his coffee but asked if she wanted to sit. She hadn’t said yes, exactly, but he’d taken her half-shrug to mean as much. Maggie held her own coffee tight but didn’t drink as they faced each other across the table. She didn’t want to make eye contact, but she made herself do it anyway. She might not have been able to pinpoint what she was feeling, but Cooper didn’t need to know that. She wanted him to see confidence and solidity. She wanted him to know that none of what had happened had broken her. Nor had his failure to ever intervene.

  So she asked casual questions. Was he still a cop? Was he still on the drug squad? He’d answered briefly, then tried to steer the conversation to her. How was she? What was she studying? Did she have friends? The subtext always – but you turned out okay, right?

  Part of her wanted to be direct. To tell him about the foster homes, about the fights and the bruises and the scars. About the missing years after his regular appearances at her father’s house during her childhood. But she didn’t. She gave brief, innocuous answers and as she did something dawned on her.