No Safe Place

by Jenny Spence

  “You got a CV in this other name?” he enquires.

  “Give me five minutes.”

  I go to my cubicle and fire up my computer. It doesn’t take long to change a few details on my CV. Thinking up a new name for myself takes longer. I send it all off to him, then start trawling through the latest messages from Ravi and Steve Li.

  Steve has been busy. He’s very interested in the bank that Talbot was using. Judging by the information he’s sending me, what really interests him is how Carlos discovered it and how he got into it, and he’s been having a look himself.

  Worried, I send off a hasty message:

  “Steve. Please just concentrate on the Carlos data and possibly the email traffic. No hacking yourself. Understood?”

  He’s quick to reply:

  “No worries, Elly. But plenty of dodgy stuff there. Talbot was pretty tame. Are we chasing the right anaconda?”

  “It’s all we’ve got,” I type. “But keep your eyes open for anything about his wife, Fiona. And Brian O’Dwyer.”

  I spend a couple of hours organising my work and handing over all my odd jobs to Scott, who seems keen enough. It’s hard to tell with his dour manner, but he seems pretty focused. After that I call a brief meeting with Luke, Ravi and Steve, so I can tell them what happened at the cemetery and explain why I’m going.

  They’re awestruck, excited and a little envious. As usual I feel like knocking their heads together. They’d react in exactly the same way if I told them I’d got down to an advanced level in the dungeon and was gearing up to fight a minotaur. But I need their help, and their thirst for adventure doesn’t seem to affect their reasoning powers.

  “Ravi,” I say as we’re dispersing. “You don’t happen to know a Suresh Chandra, do you?”

  “Don’t think so,” he says. “What, is he about my age?”

  “Older,” I say. “Mid-thirties at least. He was with Peter Talbot on that walk.”

  “Ah. Well, I’ll ask around.”

  “Be careful, Ravi,” I say. “We don’t know who’s involved in this, and we don’t want to expose ourselves.”

  He puts a finger to the side of his nose and flashes me his brilliant smile.

  I ponder whether to tell Lewis what we’ve found out. The trouble is, what we’ve been doing thus far isn’t exactly legal, it doesn’t constitute evidence against anyone with the possible exception of Peter Talbot, who seems to be dead, and it hasn’t taken us one step forward in finding our killer. Worse, Lewis would inevitably tell us to cease and desist, and that might make things awkward when we didn’t.

  Without any notice, Webster visits the office in the afternoon, flanked by a couple of plain-clothes cops I don’t recognise, probably the police IT experts. They’ve come for the backup CD, which Sunny meekly hands over.

  “Hi,” I say, waylaying Webster on her way out. “How’s the investigation going?”

  “Ms Cartwright, isn’t it?” she says coolly, though we both know damn well she knows my name.

  “Carlos had a lot of friends here. If there’s anything we can do to help . . .”

  “We’re conducting a very thorough investigation,” she says stiffly. “When we make an arrest you will be informed.”

  Oh, thanks very much, I think, standing aside to let her pass.

  I send Sunny and Viet Lei to the market with some money and detailed instructions. They come back giggling, having bought me a cheap blue parka with a fake fur-trimmed hood, a large overnight bag and a few other bits and pieces. They’re just in time, because Derek’s on his way out to see a client in Richmond, and he’s waiting impatiently for me. I thank them and grab the stuff before running after him.

  “Okay,” he says in the car. “Sydney all sorted. You start on Monday, address in York Street. You’ll see it all in email. I suppose you want some cash for expenses?”

  “Yes, that’d be good. I’ll have to come back to the office after the hairdresser.”

  “Nah, not safe. Go to pub, I’ll get the guys to bring it to you. They love that. Think it all a game anyway.”

  “Great, Derek, thanks. Tell them I’ll be there around six.”

  The hairdresser in Richmond passes me on to a third-year apprentice, my penalty for making a last-minute appointment on a Friday. The girl tries her utmost to convince me a screaming platinum blonde colour would look better than the subdued shade I’ve chosen, but she approves of the haircut that I’ve found on the Internet and printed out, and her hands are quick and deft. Two hours later she stands back proudly, holding up a hand mirror so I can see the full effect, and I go through a pantomime of surprise and delight.

  A bit after six o’clock, clad in my blue parka with the overnight bag on my shoulder, I wander into the down-market Spencer Street pub that we favour. A group of my colleagues are clustered at one end of the bar, and I hover at the other end for a while, trying to look everywhere without making it obvious. The Friday-night crowd is at its peak, and the crowded bodies give me good cover as I move in.

  “Is this the Carron Tavern?” I ask Chang.

  He smirks, then does a double-take and elbows Sam. I’m aware of a flurry of activity in the group as Chang turns me towards the door and starts earnestly giving directions, pointing and explaining. There’s a minute tug on the strap of my bag.

  “Thanks so much,” I say. “I really appreciate it. Thank you.”

  I leave quickly. Despite the short blonde hair, or maybe because of it, I feel naked and exposed. But I have to psych myself up, so I walk with as much confidence as I can around the block to the nearest station, and flee the city.

  Before the train gets to Footscray I unbutton the hood from the parka and wrap one of the new scarves around my head, hijab-style. I’d rather not risk having my new persona seen here. Nor do I want remarks on my appearance from the Ng family, so I grab a takeaway from one of Lily’s rivals and take it up to my room.

  The package that was slipped into my bag is satisfyingly thick. I count out two thousand dollars. It’s typical of Derek to keep a lot of cash secreted in the office safe, trusting his own security more than the bank’s; and it’s great for me. I won’t have to give myself away by using plastic for quite a while.

  I have fun browsing the net, looking for somewhere to stay in Sydney. Using a credit card might give me away, so I can’t do the usual online booking. Instead I track down the phone numbers of places that will take cash. I narrow it down to Surry Hills and Newtown, then start making calls. The apartment I find is small and ridiculously expensive, but everything else about it is perfect.

  When I call Miranda she’s in some noisy pub and I can’t get any sense out of her, so I write her a chatty email, saying I’ll be seeing her in a week or so. It’s a coded way of telling her where I’m going. When her teaching prac’s over she’s heading off to Sydney to stay with her cousin and do whatever awful things they get up to.

  I send Carol a briefer email, just telling her I’m okay. Then I sort out all my stuff and pack it into the new overnight bag to make sure it’s going to fit.

  With my little world under control I climb into bed, spread all my coats and scarves over the top and, still chilly, fall into an uneasy sleep.

  21

  Late on Saturday morning, old Footscray emerges from the suburban streets and congregates around the station. There’s still an ethnic Australian population after all: they just shop at the big twenty-four hour supermarkets and get their fast food from McDonald’s. Football season is well underway, and few AFL teams have a more faithful following than the Bulldogs of Footscray. It’s a sea of red, white and blue as the fans set off to cheer their champions. Cosmopolitan Footscray is well represented too, and I know if Nam were here he’d turn out, like me, in a regulation beanie and scarf to join the throng. In my case, though, it’s just camouflage, bought cheap at the market yesterday.

  The anticipation is palpable as we push onto the train, even though as far as I know Footscray is pretty low on the AFL ladder. The a
tmosphere is so beguiling I almost wish I were going along with them. Maybe in a different, simpler world I would, though I don’t know what my Dad would say, seeing me in any colours other than the black and white of his beloved Collingwood.

  “Who are we playing?” I ask a tattooed veteran with two excited grandsons.

  “Hawks,” he replies gloomily. “We’re gonna get done like a dinner.”

  That’d be okay, then. Dad wouldn’t mind me supporting the Bulldogs against Hawthorn. The teams are all pretty homogenous now anyway, players traded back and forth whether they like it or not, but the spectators haven’t changed. Dad reserved a special hatred for the Hawthorn fraternity, whom he saw as a bunch of silvertails, while the Bulldogs in his view were a good, solid, working-class team.

  The football fans pour off the train at Southern Cross. I remove my beanie and scarf and stuff them into my bag, pull up my hood and continue on to Parliament Station.

  It’s a pleasant day, and I join the tourists strolling through the lovely Treasury Gardens, accompanied by the twittering of birds. It always feels like London to me. On the far side, I let myself be absorbed into a group meandering along the footpath admiring the pretty houses of East Melbourne. At just the right moment I slip into the lane that runs behind Diana’s place.

  I walk quickly up the lane, then crouch for a while between the wheelie bins and the fence, watching the street that I’ve just left. A few people stroll past, but they don’t turn their heads. Cars pass without slowing down. Would I know? What am I looking for?

  At last I straighten up, tap in the code and slip through Diana’s back gate. Her cat, stretched out in a spill of sunlight on the garden wall, raises his head like a sphinx to gaze at me disdainfully.

  Diana is at the kitchen window, startled. She moves to open the door.

  “How about you!” she says, giving me a hug, then standing back. “I like the hair.”

  “Oh!” I say. “I try not to think about it.”

  “No, it looks good. Spunky.”

  Diana’s approval comforts me. She’s effortlessly elegant herself, with smooth, prematurely silver hair that emphasises the flawlessness of her skin and somehow makes her look eternally youthful. Her clothes are always soft and layered, with subtle colour variations. All my best things are her hand-me-downs.

  When I was fourteen, my parents finally relented and let me apply for a scholarship to a boarding-school in Melbourne. I was desperate to get away from the stultifying country high school I was at and the girls who teased me about my hippie parents and my strange clothes. Things weren’t that much better in the city, where I discovered the class system for the first time. It had never occurred to me that there was such a thing or that I would be somewhere near the bottom of it. But then Diana’s parents went on an extended trip to Europe and she came into the boarding house for a term. For reasons that mystified me at the time she took a liking to me. We never did have the midnight feasts I’d dreamed about, but we got up to a lot of innocent mischief and I had a friend for life.

  After Diana’s parents came home we spent a lot of weekends at each other’s houses. She loved Canton Creek, regarding the rough conditions and lack of electricity as charming, and she got on well with the other kids in the collective, Mark and Carol. It eventually dawned on me that her family was richer than I’d imagined people could be. Their house was vast and ornate, with rooms that didn’t seem to have any purpose other than to contain beautiful things gleaned from trips to exotic places. There was a downside – there’s always a downside – in that if Diana wanted to see her mother she had to make an appointment. I don’t know what that does to a person’s character, but she grew up with a fierce sense of loyalty to her friends.

  Now she draws me into her warm living room, where the Saturday papers are spread out on the round dining table, inherited from some gracious ancestor.

  “You haven’t had lunch, I hope?” she says. “I went mad at the market. There were so many good things to buy. I can’t possibly eat it all.”

  “Where’s Harry?”

  “It’s the end of the semester,” she says. “I think he’s gone to the snow with Rachel. He’s hardly ever here anyway.”

  Harry’s sporadic presence don’t trouble her. He’s a tranquil boy and they adore each other.

  “Miranda’s gone bush,” I say, “kicking and screaming.” I describe Miranda’s last-minute panic about going to a country town and we laugh. Diana’s a sort of indulgent aunt to Miranda. Her own daughter, Chloe, is a few years older. I guess Chloe would be about twenty-four now. When was her birthday? Yes, she’d be twenty-four. If she’s alive.

  I sigh with pleasure as Diana starts pulling little packages out of the fridge and brings down her big orange squeezer. For a few hours, at least, I’m determined to put my troubles aside.

  Over a lunch that consists of small helpings of delicious things – breads, cheeses, pâtés, little quiches, some fantastic dark quince paste and fresh orange juice – and between occasional excursions into gossip and other personal musings, I fill her in on what’s been happening.

  “This is serious stuff,” she reflects. “Your crime passionel I can understand – sort of. But one thing that stands out about you and Carlos and especially poor old Mabel is that you’re all completely harmless. What could motivate someone to want to do that – to be able to do that? In such a cold-blooded way?”

  “Balzac said it was love and money,” I say. “The two reasons why people kill.”

  “Well, we can forget about love,” she says. “But I think money covers a pretty wide spectrum these days.”

  “Gain, anyway,” I say. “Profit.”

  “So there’s this Talbot character with two million in a mysterious bank account?”

  “Yes, there’s Talbot. But he’s dead.”

  “Could be dead.”

  “Supposed to be dead.”

  “Could be something in that,” she muses.

  “Two million’s a lot of money,” I say. “Enough to kill for?”

  “I don’t know.” She gestures vaguely. “I’d say most people in this street would be worth at least two million. I doubt if they’d think it’s enough to kill for. You and I wouldn’t think it’s enough to kill for.”

  “You and I wouldn’t think any amount was enough to kill for.”

  “True.”

  She starts grinding coffee. The smell wafts through the room, making me giddy with anticipation. I start on another tack.

  “What’s really important? What would people keep secret, so secret they might kill to avoid people finding out?”

  “Dirty deals, I suppose,” she says. “But people aren’t worried about being shamed. People don’t seem to feel shame anymore.”

  “No, they don’t, do they? And if they’re CEOs of big companies they seem to get huge payouts whatever they do. However bad it is.”

  “Yes,” she says. “And for all we know, there might be a lot fewer people wearing concrete overcoats as a result.”

  “There must be a class of secret where the dirty deal gets spoilt if people find out. That’s the sort of secret they’d want to protect because the dirty deal has to be abandoned and someone loses a lot of money.”

  “That would satisfy Balzac,” she agrees. “So what would said dirty deal be about in the world of water resources?”

  “Oh, you name it. Rigged tenders. Anything environmental. A contract to build a desalination plant when there’s clear proof that it’s overpriced and unnecessary.” She smiles at that. “Misuse of water allocations,” I continue. “Just about anything to do with water in this state is open to corruption.”

  “Yes, Elly, I’ve heard you mention water before,” she says.

  “Yes, well you just wait and see when we find out how chummy earned his two million dollars. It could well be in that area. It certainly wasn’t from doing overtime, or moonlighting in a bartending job with good tips.”

  “You keep your head down while you’r
e in Sydney,” she says, pouring the coffee.

  “I will. Which brings me to the big favour I want to ask you.”

  She’s only too happy to do what I want, and we get onto the Internet and book a flight for me in her name. She then insists on giving me her Qantas Club card.

  “If you show this when you check in you won’t need ID,” she explains. “It’s okay, they don’t know what I look like. You can even go to the lounge if you want. The food there’s better than what they give you on the plane.”

  I don’t think I’ll have the gall to go into the lounge, but I take the card gratefully. Then I get into my bank account and transfer the cost of the ticket into hers.

  “Done,” I say.

  “I don’t suppose you could have a teensy look at my computer?” she asks. “It seems to be a lot slower than when I bought it.”

  “No problem,” I say and start the administrative programs while she clears away the lunch things and puts on some music.

  I work steadily in Diana’s lovely book-lined study overlooking the back garden, surrounded by photographs of her beloved family: John, Chloe and Harry. Anyone who sees Diana as privileged, with her family money and this house inherited from her grandparents – “I could never sell it,” she said to me once. “It’s the only place I was ever happy when I was a child.” – would have a pretty distorted view of the world. She found her soulmate in John, and he was perfect for her; then within two years she lost him to cancer and Chloe went through one of those mysterious changes that cause beautiful children to destroy themselves and break their families’ hearts. One minute she was the perfect daughter, adored and adoring; next minute she was staying out all night, lying and stealing. You didn’t have to be a social worker to know what it meant, especially the stealing. Chloe grew pale and thin, and was careful to wear long sleeves to hide the tracks on her arms. Finally Diana confronted her. There was a lot of screaming and Chloe ran off into the night, taking nothing with her.