Deadly Investment

by Andres Kabel

  He trudged back to the corridor. Now the murder resided in him, stacked alongside all the others. Yang must have seen it on his face. The security guard held his hands up in the ghostly light. Tears slipped down his cheeks.

  “Blood everywhere,” Yang said. “It all over my hands and I must touch my face, I see it there. Sir, I cannot forget.”

  ***

  On his way to the parking lot, Tusk paused halfway across the Yarra River pedestrian footbridge. He entwined his fingers and stretched his arms above his head, a delicious pull of muscles, while he looked back. To his left the affluent glitter of Southbank, to his right the green disk of the Casino, Melbourne’s new icon of greed. Near the middle, beckoning like a lighthouse, the red-and-gold logo atop Scientific Money House. Savage Murder House, he thought.

  He walked on. The city cast its tendrils deep. He grew up on its outskirts, came down here to raise hell as a teenager. Later, in the dark years, many a time he passed out in a gutter surrounded by skyscrapers. And as a copper he grew to know every one of the myriad narrow lanes in the cracks between office towers. The building spines, dark and lit at the same time, filled him with a stew of dread and excitement.

  Walking along the dank passageway that ran along one side of the station, he kept tripping back to the stairwell. He took out the beach photo, and tried to imagine the professorial face, accustomed to musing over a desk, raised in terror at the looming killer. As well as fear, Tusk sensed disbelief. “You!” Kantor had known the killer.

  When he came out into Flinders Street, rain had begun to pour down. As he waited for the lights to change, he sank into familiar reverie.

  ***

  Sometimes Tusk labeled his life as before and after William Bell.

  In 1994, when his daughter Yolanda was born, Tusk had wept with joy. Even with his long and irregular Homicide hours, whenever he was home at night, he sprang up when she cried, changed her nappy, and brought her into the bedroom for Dana to breastfeed. On one such night, wind slapping branches against the wooden house, he’d been rocking her when the phone rang. The dispatch officer was curt.

  “Dell Road in Prahran. A messy.”

  He pulled up outside a cramped terrace house in the shadow of the Prahran Town Hall. Blue and white tape, tossed by wind, held back a dozen spectators. Fingall, the toughest of them all, motioned him toward the open front door.

  Tusk’s footsteps sounded on the tiny front veranda. A fetid stench hit him. He blocked off his sense of smell and eased in. Tiny bedrooms, barely room for a bed, off a dark corridor. A body in the living room, on the floor. A naked bulb high overhead. Dancing shadows. A television hissing white noise, two couches—one cracked underneath, a coffee table covered with magazines, an impressionist print on the far wall, peeling green wallpaper. And the body…

  A cap lay a couple of meters away, but Tusk didn’t need it as confirmation. It was a teenage boy, face smooth and finely featured, eyes blank and somehow uncolored, cheekbones honed as if in a sculptor’s workshop. An innocent’s face.

  The rest was fucked. The boy’s hair had been shaved off and lay in tufts over the floor, caked with matted fluid. Arms bound behind the back with wire. So too the ankles. His clothes, Tusk identified later as a school uniform, folded on a couch. Burn pockmarks dotted the upturned chest and down the arms. Thin crosswise cuts up both legs, a precise handiwork. Entrails oozed from a gaping hole where his belly button would have been. A jagged cavern had been ripped in his groin, dark red; where was the poor sod’s cock?

  Tusk stood motionless, playing out the horror perpetrated on this boy.

  The autopsy revealed that the boy had died over a number of hours, all of them in extremis. He’d gone missing after school, but his parents had failed to ring the police. His name? Tusk sighed, his neck muscles bunched, spelled the letters now. William Bell.

  Before that night he’d seen many vile deeds. Helped solve, or not solve, more than a few gruesome deaths. But no event so clearly signaled to him that the world was amiss as that boy’s face framed by a monster’s artistry.

  Tusk and Fingall were the only observers who failed to spew after the sight. Fingall was a hard case, inured to anything. Tusk? “Fuck it,” he muttered as he kneaded his neck, “I was so cool, but that was the beginning of the end.”

  ***

  An Indian woman looked sharply at him and moved away. He must have spoken aloud. Head like a boulder, mouth bone dry, the dry before a beer. Tusk jogged across Flinders Street, through the rain, then made his way to the parking lot. He drove numbly.

  The rain had given up by the time he reached the outskirts of Belgrave. Belgrave: end of the railway line, a suburb more rural than residential. Nearly home. He sniffed the freshness of the air, sped past silent, wet lawns.

  The car crested the driveway of their home, a weatherboard house with a wide back veranda overlooking a large block. He saw the front door open and his heart pinged. Like a bear in a stream, he shook his head to clear it. Mustn’t let Dana see me in this state, he thought. Christ knows she’s seen enough of it.

  “Daddy!”

  Yolanda raced across puddles to leap toward his face, her arms wrapping around his neck. He lifted her up to his chest, inhaling the soapy smell of her hair, driving out William Bell and Kantor Keppel.

  “Daddy!” Nelson was clutching his legs.

  “Hey,” Tusk said, squeezing Yolanda before lowering her. Nelson squealed when Tusk roared his fake lion roar and bent down to kiss the hot cheek.

  “Got you,” he said, reveling in the matchstick arms grabbing him, the kicking legs at his stomach.

  “What about me? Where’s the hug for the woman of your dreams?”

  He gazed mock-seriously into Dana’s brown eyes. “My Belgrave woman.”

  “You’ve got one in each suburb?” Dana’s voice cut through the quiet of the driveway like a megaphone. The voice that had made him stare across the room at the police ball the night they met.

  “Nearly, m’dear, nearly.” Tusk laughed, a silly giggle that he couldn’t contain, and the children chimed in.

  Dana’s hair, masses of dancing black ringlets, shook as she laughed. She wore a tracksuit, signaling that she’d been to the gym earlier in the day. He stared at her beak of a nose, marveled yet again at his good fortune. Nobody else could have done what she’d achieved. Tackled the violence. Calmed the spirit. Took him off the cancer sticks and the hard liquor, cold turkey. Gave him a reason to live.

  He hadn’t told her much when he left in the morning, just that his old mate Gentle had an idea for a job, but she must have sensed what that might mean.

  “I’ve got work,” he had said. “If it goes well, it’ll mean a lot of money.”

  “That’s great news,” she had said, giving him an uncertain smile. Tusk had learned to keep to himself, but Dana never hid a single emotion. Christ, he loved her.

  “Gate noos,” Nelson had echoed.

  Tusk hoisted Nelson under his arm, and with Yolanda in tow, took them inside to brush their teeth. He read to Yolanda, wrestled with Nelson, and then switched on the television in the family room while Dana bustled in the abutting kitchen. While he scanned his long list of To-Dos in the notebook, Dana filled him in on her day. Ever since she gave up teaching with the birth of Nelson, she’d built up a network of friends in the local community that amazed Tusk. In this world far away from the city, she was a ball of energy, out and about continually.

  Bully barked at the back door. When Tusk let him in, the German Shepherd raced around the room and leapt up to lick Tusk’s face. Tusk gave him a stomach rub, watched the start of Water Rats, another useless cop show.

  He rang Gentle’s mobile. No response. He rang his sister. As usual, Elizabeth did all the talking. A social worker’s life seemed as busy and wrenching as a copper’s.

  “You sound happy, Mick,” she said.

  “Do I?”

  “Dinner,” Dana called.

  “Gotta go, Liz.”

  �
��Take care now.” He crossed the task off his To-Do list.

  With the television still on, they ate an aromatic Mediterranean stew, looking out onto the dark expansive garden. His favorite room, so open and comfortable, with its high exposed timber ceiling. As always, he marveled at the portrait photograph on the wall, the blonde pale Estonian gravely holding hands with the olive-tinted Greek with jet-black hair.

  “So come on,” Dana said. “Cough it up. What’s this great new job? Should I book a dirty weekend at a hotel?”

  Tusk felt a weight in the pit of his stomach. “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Let me be the judge of that. Have I met this Gentle what’s-his-name?”

  His fingertips etched patterns on the condensation on his beer glass. “Peter Gentle. I was friends with him for a year in school. Before I went off the rails.”

  Dana was the only one who knew all about those years.

  “A strange guy,” Tusk went on. “One of those genius types, thin and always thinking. A real brain. Hardly grown up at all, still soft and unreal, still mouthing off. Not my type of mate at all, really.”

  He swigged the last of his beer and smiled. “But he’s got something. I can’t describe it, Dana. Half the time I feel like laughing at him, half the time he gets me excited. He’s got some crazy enthusiasm that I love.”

  He watched Dana’s wide hips swinging on her way to the kitchen to pull out a steaming pie from the oven.

  This is heaven, he thought, biting into fresh apples and crisp pastry.

  “Okay, he sounds interesting, Mikey,” Dana said. “So what kind of job has he lined up for you? What does he do, anyway?”

  Tusk couldn’t bring himself to explain what an actuary was. “He’s unemployed like me. Been off work even longer. It’s a lucrative assignment together. A private detective assignment.”

  There, he’d said it. He retrieved another beer from the fridge. Dana sat back, arms folded under her breasts. Her eyes were wide and wounded.

  “You’ve got to be joking,” she said. “How many times have you said you don’t want that kind of work?”

  “This is different. Those offers were for regular work, crap work like following people, that kind of stuff. This is different. We’re just doing one job. Investigating a murder for a widow.”

  “Murder.” Bully’s ears pricked up at Dana’s harsh tone.

  “Yeah. You might have read about it, a city exec beaten to death.” The stains on the stairs, that smashed waxen face… “The widow isn’t satisfied with police progress. Dana, it’s not like police work. We just snoop around. When we figure who it is, we let the police mop up.”

  He was repeating Boy Wonder’s pitch. The difference was that Gentle actually believed it could be that simple.

  He wanted to say so many things to Dana. So many things left unsaid for too long. Like: Look at me, Dana. Tossed on the bloody scrapheap at age thirty-four. Driving taxis, digging swimming pool holes, even training to be a masseur, for Christ’s sake.

  Like: I miss every minute in the Force. This morning in the autopsy room, smelling that special stench of a days-dead corpse, it felt like a welcome childhood memory.

  Like: If there’s a God, until last year I was doing exactly what He ordained, until those sanctimonious pricks screwed me.

  Instead, he took her hand. She was breathing hard. Try the trump card, he thought.

  “Dana,” he said. “I’ve agreed to try this for five days. If it’s a flop, or if I don’t like it, I can pull out then.”

  “You won’t.” She yanked away her hand. “I can hear it in your voice already. You’re back playing cops and robbers. And you love it.”

  He stood up and moved behind her. He massaged her rigid shoulders, felt them relax. Her hair tickled his nose while he talked in her ear.

  “Just five days. And if we’re successful, my share is $40,000. Imagine that. The lucky break we need.”

  His hands slid down to rest on her breasts. He felt her deep breathing against his chest. She turned to look him in the eyes.

  “Okay,” Dana said. “Five days, you say. Okay, but you talk to me, Mikey. Talk to me every one of those five days and tell me what you’re feeling. I will not see you slide down that slope to craziness like before. Got that?”

  “Dana.” He lifted her hair up and ran his lips across the back of her neck.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes, yes, yes.”

  She pulled away and stood with arms on hips.

  “And just because you persuaded me to go along with this madness, doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. I thought we had put all that…that life behind us. Now I get to worry about you again, every bloody hour of the day.”

  “I know, Dana.” He wanted to reach out to her, but knew he shouldn’t. “Thanks.”

  She headed into the kitchen. Tusk directed a sleepy Bully outside and rang his uncle.

  “Uncle Mart, I can’t take the cab out for a week.”

  “What, you’re not liking to work for your old uncle?”

  His uncle owned three taxis. Should have sold out years ago, but still drove one of them. Tusk liked working for him, enjoyed the ease and trust.

  He stayed up to watch the 10:30 news. Interviews with a few of the four thousand Kosovo refugees about to board flights to Australia. Five hundred days until the Sydney Olympics. Boring predictions about the State budget the next morning. No news about Carlton, his football team, bastards had only won three of their six games this season.

  The bedside lamps were on when he slipped under the blankets. Dana laid down her magazine and slid onto him, wet and trembling. Sweet vertigo flooded his body.

  Paul Rodgers’ soulful, aching vocals—Free’s “Be My Friend”—welled up in him. The first time they’d made love, he’d chosen it, or rather it had chosen him, as his secret song to Dana.

  She fingered the bullet hole scar on his belly and the long white scar down his arm. He shivered.

  “No more of these,” she breathed into his ear. “Got that, Mikey?”

  CHAPTER 16

  Peter Gentle cried out, “Hey!”

  He attempted to turn toward the person gripping the back of his suit. Another figure came from the front and thrust a cold hand into his face, across his lips, cutting off all sound. The Scientific Money annual report flew from his hand. Horror flooded him. His two assailants jammed up close. Grunts, the smells of garlic and aftershave. Although he squirmed, they wrenched him sideways with ease, and then his forehead struck a car door frame as they shoved him in.

  One of his attackers plunged into the car with him, shoving Peter’s body aside for room. Sharp pain seared Peter’s head. Take my money, he tried to yell, but a hand forced his face down, and another throttled his mouth.

  Doors slammed. The car jerked as its engine roared to life, and then they were moving. The man was sitting on Peter’s feet, leaning over to restrain him. Peter smelled petrol fumes. He thrashed, desperate to be gone from this nightmare, to find himself strolling down his street again, but something hard, it had to be a fist, crashed into his side. He doubled up in pain. A rent in the car seat cut into his cheek, the hard shapes of his mobile and Palm Pilot pressed into his side. Warmth flooded his groin; he’d pissed himself.

  “Don’ move.” The voice was hoarse and deep. An Italian accent.

  God help me, Peter moaned silently. His heart hammered in his chest. He curled into a fetal ball and shuddered uncontrollably.

  After what seemed only minutes, the car bounced. A squeal of tires and they stopped.

  “Out.”

  The car door was flung open. He was thrown onto the ground like a limp puppet, wet gravel tearing his hands. He ended up on his side, winded, cheek resting in water, right knee pulsing with pain. He’d never realized the ground could be so hard. His eyes at ground level, he saw puddles of glinting water, a chain fence in the distance, and next to him two feet in Reeboks, and a knee on the ground, the tracksuit fabric darkened with w
ater.

  Images spun through Peter’s numbed mind. Home, not his parents’, but his apartment—the kitchen, the bed. Draconi’s. Harvey Jopling smiling. Mick running toward him. Strangest of all, his father’s worn face.

  He began to sob, wrenching exhalations of terror. He tried to get up on his elbows, but a hand shoved him down.

  “Please.” Snot bubbled in his nose.

  “Shut up.” The man with the hoarse voice again, only this time the voice held pleasure.

  The ring of Peter’s mobile sliced through the quiet. Relief pierced him; it had to be Mick.

  “Fuck.” The man Peter thought of as Hoarse snatched the phone from Peter’s jacket pocket, smashed it into silence on the ground.

  Any hope left in Peter died.

  A savage pain tore at his back. A shoe. Another kick wrenched a scream from his mouth. He thrashed under the strong hands of Hoarse, then another kick crashed into the back of his neck, and he tasted blood in his mouth. His head swam.

  A finger traced the tears down Peter’s cheek. He jerked onto his back to look up into a thin face dominating the sky, a thin face dark as the night above it, no features visible except for a pointed chin. He smelled aftershave, something familiar.

  “Hey, cock suck.” A sibilant voice, almost loving in its slowness. “No one’s gonna come to grief here, understand? Just listen. Just listen real good. Okay?”

  Peter nodded. Pain ballooned from his back and neck. He tasted vomit in his throat.

  “Playing at detective. It’s gotta stop. Okay?”

  “Yes.” Peter’s voice came as a wheeze. He blinked tears from his eyes, trying to focus, to stay alive.

  The man leaned over. “You wanna play cowboys, this is what you get.”

  Peter saw teeth glint. The maniac was smiling. Peter wanted to say yes, anything, anything you want, but never managed a sound as the thin man gently picked up his wet left hand and deftly snapped the little finger back with a crack and a surge of pain.