No Safe Place

by Jenny Spence

  Steve steps back.

  “Come on!” I gasp, holding the door open.

  He shakes his head.

  “North shore,” he tells the driver, and slams the door.

  I twist around in disbelief to see him strolling casually back the way we’ve come. He’s already got a baseball cap on, and he seems to be chatting on a mobile phone.

  “Where to on the north shore?” enquires the driver.

  “Milsons Point please,” I say, almost hyperventilating.

  As we’re approaching the Harbour Bridge I get a text:

  U R clear

  I gradually recover my breath, but my brain is in turmoil. The moment when he stepped out of the lift and raised his head to look around plays over and over in my mind. I’d forgotten seeing him that day in West Melbourne, but the image must have burrowed into my memory. Just a man who looked at the sky, as if to check for rain, then put the hood up on his jacket and hurried away. Just someone in the street, I thought, but he was watching Carlos’s house, waiting for his opportunity. And now he’s here.

  What have I done? I’m like the man in the story who fled to Samarra, only to find Death waiting there.

  I climb the steps at Milsons Point Station, my legs like lead. While I’m waiting for a city-bound train my other phone rings. If it’s Brett, I’m going to drum into his head once and for all that . . .

  “Elly?” It’s Nick. “Remember what I told you? Time to get rid of that phone.”

  Now I start shaking, and every instinct tells me to hurl the phone away and run in the opposite direction. But I need to do this right.

  I cross over to the other platform and wait for the next train to Hornsby. In the four long minutes before it comes, I delete all my personal information from the phone. I leave it turned on but set the profile to Silent.

  When the train finally arrives I get on and prowl up and down through the carriages. Luckily for me, Sydney trains tend to be old and clapped-out. It doesn’t take me too long to find a seat that’s starting to fall apart. It’s a quiet time of the day, so there’s no-one to observe me when I sit down and stuff the hated phone far into the deepest fissure.

  I get off the train at the next station and cross over again. I don’t breathe easy until I’m on the bridge, knowing the phone is well on its way to Hornsby.

  The train takes me through the city and I sit frozen in my seat, my eyes fixed on the doors. At last we get to Newtown and I slink through the street to my refuge. I’ve never given Brett or anyone here any hint of where I’m staying, and thanks to Steve I’m confident no-one’s ever followed me home. But even so, I know that things are closing in on me again.

  I’ve seen the killer at last. He’s still after me, and he’s not Brian O’Dwyer.

  I SMS Steve: Can you hire a car for me?

  sure will be there about 6 comes the immediate reply.

  I duck out, heart thumping, wearing a different headscarf and looking fearfully around, a sense of foreboding overwhelming me. Making for a two-dollar shop I’ve seen, I buy a striped plastic carrier bag. A refugee’s bag. Into it, I pack all the possessions I don’t need with me. I copy the files, our evidence so far, onto a spare USB stick and put that in as well.

  The rest of my things, the bare essentials, go into my overnight bag. I take a change of clothes, a couple of scarves and beanies, Diana’s coat and Wolf Hall, in case I find myself with time to spare. I’m still a long way from the end of the book, but I’m starting to wonder if Thomas Cromwell is ever going to actually get to Wolf Hall. Right now, the likelihood of that seems roughly equivalent to my chances of moving to Canton Creek.

  While I’m waiting I tidy up the flat, put the sheets and towels through the wash and take out all the trash. It’s the most soothing thing I can think of to do.

  As soon as Steve arrives I say: “Steve, it was him. He killed Carlos.”

  “Him? In Melbourne?”

  “I saw him outside Carlos’s place, that day,” I say. “I didn’t think anything of it – but that was him.”

  “Figures,” he said. “He did a sort of double take when you came down the street, like he’d been expecting someone else. So I kind of sauntered along behind him . . .”

  “Oh, Jesus, Steve!”

  He grins happily. “Anyway, when you went into that building he sort of looked around, then he went in after you.”

  “Oh, God!”

  “Yeah. So I kinda knew, that’s what I was there for.”

  “Steve, I love you!”

  He looks alarmed.

  “Hey, you know what I mean,” I add. “Anyway, how did you find that way out so fast?”

  “There was a plan in the foyer, safety thing I guess. Showed the service elevator, so I figured that would do.”

  “Brilliant. Oh, God. Helena must have set it up. Brett called her and told her we were going there. I don’t understand. Somehow, she and Gleisman are connected with all that other stuff, Talbot and so on.”

  “I always thought Talbot was the wrong anaconda.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, I can’t stay here and I can’t go back to Melbourne, so I’m going to go to the source. There must be someone up there, on the Liverpool Plains, who knows what really happened when they did those tests. I’m going up there to find out.”

  “I should come,” he says, looking worried for the first time.

  “No, Steve, you shouldn’t. You’re a great shadow here in the city, but you and I would make an odd couple, travelling together in those parts. We’d be noticed.”

  “I guess.”

  “I’ve packed up everything here, and I’m paid up until Saturday. I’ll give you the spare key. You can sort things out if I don’t manage to get back.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m down to the super secret phone now. They were onto my other phone, and I had to get rid of it,” I say.

  “The Ukrainians?”

  “Right. Nick called me.”

  “Who do you think got your number to them?”

  “Brett must have given it to Helena,” I say. “He was one of the few people who had it. He told her I was onto this scam, and she must have told him to get me out of the office and down to that empty building.”

  “And she called the killer,” says Steve. “The same killer. It’s like it’s a business, and he’s the fixit guy.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought!”

  “And in this business,” says Steve. “You’ve got Helena and Daniel Gleisman and Sutherland Investments.”

  “And Peter Talbot was on the payroll too,” I say. “Is Ravi checking out Gleisman’s clients?”

  “Sure,” he says. “I wish I’d got a picture.”

  “Of the killer? Steve! You weren’t trying to take a photo, were you?”

  “He wouldn’t have known.”

  “You can’t be sure of that! Those phone cameras make a little click. He would have been onto you like a shot.”

  “Nah. Mine’s on silent. But he turned the other way just when I had it lined up.”

  He shows me a couple of images on his phone: a neon yellow jacket, the back of a shaved head.

  “The bastard,” I say. “We’re going to get him.”

  I call Lewis, but it goes to voicemail.

  “This is Elly,” I say. “I’ve seen the killer. He nearly got me. There’s something I have to do right now, but I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you everything.”

  “You know,” says Steve after I’ve hung up. “That story you told me, about the fake document you wrote, and the one you’ve found here. There must be a bit of that around.”

  “Must be,” I agree.

  “People doing that would get paid pretty well,” he continues. “But it would have to be discreet.”

  “Like, they’d get paid through something like the Mercantile Mutual Bank?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So you think Talbot was providing some sort of equivalent service and getting paid for it?” I
think about it. “It wouldn’t be documents because he was an engineer, and engineers can’t write.”

  “I’m an engineer,” says Steve.

  “Sorry. Anyway, I reckon Peter Talbot’s job would have given him opportunities to manipulate the truth to order.”

  “Yeah. Worth a thought.”

  I consider waiting until I hear from Lewis, but there’s a knot of fear in my stomach. I’m not going to breathe easy until I’m out of Sydney.

  36

  The car is parked in the side street. Steve melts into the night, and I get in with my overnight bag and my computer and examine the controls.

  It’s a very smart little car, and it’s got GPS. I should have known Steve would go for the best. I’ve never driven anything with GPS. Experimentally, I tap in Acacia Ridge.

  “Drive thirty metres and turn left,” instructs a calm, accent-free female voice.

  I’m ridiculously tickled at the confidence of this little machine. Not only does it know the whereabouts of a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, but it has no hesitation in launching me on a direct path that will take me straight there. None of this human “Well, let’s work out the best way to get across the harbour, then get out of the city, then head north and try to figure out which turn-off to take . . .”

  I follow the instructions and set off through the city and over the bridge. Even so, it’s a while before I fully trust the GPS and I have a real tussle with it somewhere around Roseville. The Sydney freeway system starts off in grand style, then peters out, and it’s always difficult to find a good way to get onto the Pacific Highway far enough north to avoid the worst of the suburban traffic. The GPS claims to know how and I think I know better, so I get hopelessly lost for a while.

  “Turn right, turn right, turn right,” insists the GPS.

  Finally, like a naughty child who’s been forced to see reason, I give in to authority, and everything comes good. Suddenly I’m on the F3 going north with all the late commuters and the early interstate truckies, the car’s running smoothly and I can relax. I turn on the ABC and listen to a phone-in quiz show, shouting in frustration at the participants who don’t know the answers I know, and the host who’s too quick to give them clues. As the Gosford turn-off approaches the quiz finishes, and I suddenly realise how exhausted I am now that adrenaline has stopped pumping through me. It’s a long way to Acacia Ridge, five hours’ driving according to Ms GPS, so I take the Gosford turn-off and not long afterwards spot an anonymous motel that will be ideal for the night. They happily accept cash, and show me to a clean, unassuming room. I’m not expecting anything beyond basic sustenance, so it’s a pleasant surprise when I go into the restaurant and find a comprehensive Indian menu.

  There’s a complicated deal for getting an Internet connection so I don’t bother. We’re in the lee of some hills and my phone has no reception. I turn it off to save the battery. All my communications can stay on hold until I come back with answers, if indeed I can do that. Meanwhile, I need to try to get some sleep after the strain of such a terrifying day. I thought I was close to the end of this nightmare, but now I’m getting tangled up in unravelling loose ends.

  All my thoughts were focused on Brian O’Dwyer. I was convinced that he had killed Peter Talbot, that Carlos found out and that O’Dwyer killed Carlos and was stalking me. But he was safe in the arms of the law when I went down to Darling Harbour, and now I don’t know anything anymore.

  But I do, I reflect. Peter Talbot really is dead, and O’Dwyer is still the person most likely to have killed him. But how can they be connected to the man at Darling Harbour, the man outside Carlos’s house, the man who – I’m positive now – killed Carlos? It’s just like before. The only link is Carlos himself.

  I think back again. Carlos was digging up stuff about the Mercantile Mutual Bank. I thought it was because he had found something suspicious about Talbot’s disappearance and was trying to find out more about Talbot; but what if it’s the other way round? What if Mercantile Mutual was his starting point and he was looking around for anything interesting about its clients? Gold dust.

  Mercantile Mutual and Talbot are also connected to Sutherland Investments, and that leads us to Daniel Gleisman, and to Helena.

  Helena. The fixer. She seems like one of those people who don’t do things themselves, but they get things done. She wants to head the project I’ve been working on while she swans off and does her own thing, so she keeps Brett in thrall to do all the work. She wants a document falsified: she gets an expert to do it. She’s displeased that I may be close to finding her out: she sends someone to eliminate me. Did she also send him after Carlos?

  Cherchez la femme.

  I curl up for a long session with Wolf Hall and it’s surprisingly comforting. I don’t spend the night being chased down endless staircases or being burnt at the stake, though I do hear a phone ringing somewhere early in the small hours and leap out of bed, convinced it’s Lewis. It’s only when I’m standing in the middle of the unfamiliar room, looking dopily around, that I remember that I turned my phone off.

  37

  I’m on the road again in the early morning mist, letting the GPS direct me back onto the freeway, then north towards Newcastle. It’s a bright sunny day by the time the GPS directs me to turn left onto the New England Highway. I’m greatly relieved to find civilisation soon afterwards in the form of a café strip at Maitland. I take my computer with me and study some maps over two welcome cups of coffee.

  Acacia Ridge is a bit off the New England Highway, just before you get to Quirindi, the capital of the Liverpool Plains shire. I’ve chosen it because it’s the closest thing to a town within cooee of the excavations done by Professor Bartholomew and his team, which seem to be somewhere out to the west. I know roughly where it is on the map and I can find place names nearby, but the satellite view on Google Maps doesn’t show much in the way of buildings. This is a distinction you learn if you spend time in rural Australia. You can go to a place that appears as a nice red dot on the map with a promising name like Welcome Creek, perhaps, or Paradise. But when you get there, all you find is a corrugated iron hall, loose sheets flapping in the wind, or a tumbledown brick chimney with a few scattered timbers, charred and weathered, and an ancient apple tree grown into a tangle.

  I’m hoping that at Acacia Ridge they can tell me where to find the shafts and any locals who worked on them; or if not, that they can direct me to some other place where there are people who can.

  It’s a long, long road and I’m glad I’m driving it in the morning, not in the afternoon with the sun in my eyes. Paradoxically for Australia, the country improves as I go west. I pass prosperous farmlands, comfortable houses with European gardens, picturesque towns with Scottish names: Lochinvar, Allandale, Dunolly. Ahead are Aberdeen and Scone. Somewhere out of sight on my right is the Hunter River, and when I finally cross it at Singleton it’s broad and deep.

  This is beautiful country. Deep, rich, dark soil – the legacy of some ancient volcanic activity – is combined with ample water. It’s too early for spring crops, but the chequerboard patterns on the hillsides show how carefully and profitably the land is being cultivated. I pass vineyards, olive groves and dairy farms. It couldn’t be more different from my part of Victoria with its sparse trees and thin, prickly undergrowth. Still, being out here makes me homesick, nostalgic for the smell of dust and eucalyptus.

  It’s past lunchtime when Acacia Ridge presents itself on a straight, narrow bitumen road. There’s just a few houses, some obviously empty, a handful of boarded-up shops in a main street that’s seen better days, and a ramshackle general store. About a hundred metres further down the road there’s the merest suggestion of a long-gone railway station opposite a one-storey pub. The place is deserted.

  I pull up outside the pub. I’m not sure if there’ll be food on offer or not, but they must get people stopping by occasionally. Inside, there are a couple of old codgers sipping beers and watching some sort of rural report on th
e widescreen television. A woman comes out from an inner room and looks at me with mild surprise. She’s middle-aged with wispy hair patchily dyed red, bulging out of stonewashed jeans and a fleecy top with a faded multi-coloured print.

  “Sorry, love. Been waiting long?”

  “No, it’s all right,” I say. “I just walked in. Don’t suppose you’re still serving food?”

  “I could do you a steak sandwich, I suppose,” she says generously.

  A steak sandwich would be pretty low on the list if I had a choice, but beggars can’t be choosers, so I nod.

  “That’d be great, if you don’t mind. And a bitter lemon while I’m waiting, thanks.”

  She pours the drink, then disappears. I sit on a stool and size up the old blokes, who’ve shown no interest in anything so far except the bottoms of their beer glasses. After a while the woman comes back and starts wiping the bar. Either I’ll be getting a very well-done steak, or she’s got someone else working on my lunch in the kitchen.

  “Nice out?” she enquires.

  “Yes, lovely,” I say, pleased to be given an opening. “It was a bit misty when I started out, but the sun’s nice and warm now. I hear you often get good weather up here.”

  “Oooh, it can get cold,” she says. “Real cold.”

  “Real cold,” agrees one of the old blokes, not looking at us.

  “Hot in the summer though?”

  “Boiling!” she says.

  “Boiling!” says the old guy. We all nod.

  Here goes.

  “I think my ex might have been up this way last summer,” I say. “I’m trying to track him down.”

  The woman looks sceptical.

  “He’s not in trouble,” I say. “We just need to sort out a few things. He’s a bit forgetful about stuff like, you know, forwarding addresses.”

  “I dunno,” she says.

  “He drifts around, but his sister told me he had some work up near Quirindi, with some mob from Newcastle University,” I say.