‘Nutbush City Limits’. I wondered what you got a couple of cops for a wedding present. Fluffy handcuffs? Matching flak jackets? A toaster?
‘Great. There’s a dress fitting in a couple of weeks so I’ll get your number off Alex.’
Graham sprang onto the granite benchtop and Suzy smacked his nose and pushed him straight back down. ‘Bad cat! You shouldn’t let him up there, Alex. It’s unhygienic.’
The cat flattened his ears, got down on his belly and shimmied under the couch.
Alex grabbed his keys and his phone. He was kissing Suzy goodbye when my mobile rang. I turned away to answer.
‘Simone Kirsch.’
It was Joy. ‘There’s been a development,’ she said. ‘Andi’s credit card’s been used—in Kings Cross.’
The interview with the Homicide Squad took a couple of hours. I told them everything I could remember about the hit and run and all I’d uncovered regarding Andi’s disappearance.
The shit was gonna hit the fan at Jouissance, but it wasn’t my problem anymore.
Alex had driven us to the police complex in his Commodore, and I’d had a long chat to Joy during the ride, telling her what had gone down. She’d agreed it was best I back away from the case and I assured her that after Gordon’s murder the cops would go all out to find Andi, including following up the Sydney lead.
By eight o’clock I was waiting for Alex in the lobby, watching cars and trams flash by on St Kilda Road and plain clothes and uniformed officers come and go through the automatic doors. Before becoming a PI I’d applied to join the Victoria Police and had been rejected, probably because of my ‘showbiz’ past and the fact that I’d spent my formative years with a whole bunch of dope growing hippies.
I’d always thought the urge to enlist stemmed from a childhood incident in which a female copper saved my mum from a violent boyfriend, but there was probably a bit of rebellion involved as well—what better way to flout an alternative upbringing than join up with the filth? I also had a sneaking suspicion that prancing around doing policewoman shows had made me hot for the uniform, cuffs and gun. It was probably just as well I’d never gotten in. Kowtowing to authority wasn’t exactly my strong point and everybody on the force except Alex and Sean seemed to hate me. The Homicide detective sergeant who interviewed me about Gordon actually said he’d find something to charge me with if I showed up again, which was so unfair. It had been at least three months since I’d visited the squad.
My mobile chirruped. I was expecting my mum, knowing Joy would have talked to her as soon as I’d hung up, but it was Curtis.
‘What’s the deal?’ He didn’t bother with the usual pleasantries like hello.
‘What deal?’
‘The missing waitress, the murdered chef and Trip Sibley. Word on the street is you were almost roadkill.’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘C’mon, I heard you’ve given a statement.’
Word sure travelled fast out there on the street.
‘No comment. How’s Chloe?’
‘Fuck. Even more psycho than usual. You know those posters she stuck up? Put her own phone number on them and in between strip shows she’s running around interviewing every basket case who calls. Hey, you’re not giving someone else an exclusive, are you? John Silvester? That bloody Andrew Rule?’
They were the big guns of Melbourne crime writing and Curtis couldn’t stand it. I suspected he had an inferiority complex after years of writing for a titty magazine.
I decided to wind him up. ‘So what if I talked to them?’
Curtis sputtered down the other end of the phone. ‘But, but what about our friendship? And all the times I helped you out with information? Look, I need this story. I’ve been working on the book full time and my byline hasn’t been seen for months. This is my career we’re talking about.’
‘And that affects me how?’
I hung up and was just thinking I ought to write a book of my own—How to Lose Friends and Alienate People—when the phone rang again. This time it was my mum.
‘Joy told me what happened. Were you actually going to call or was I supposed to find the story on page three of the Sydney Morning Herald, like last time?’
I explained that I’d had to turn my phone off during the interview and she settled down some. When she asked who tried to kill me I told her I didn’t know, despite my suspicions.
‘Are you alright?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Have the police caught them?’
‘Nope.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Well, I can’t go home. The cops agreed that whoever tried to run me down probably knows where I live so I’m looking for somewhere else to—’
‘Stay here.’
‘What?’
‘It’s perfect. You’ll be miles away, safe, and you can go home when the police make an arrest. I’ll buy you a ticket on the internet. Can you make it to the airport before nine?’
I thought about it. Surely things would be resolved by the end of the weekend and in the meantime I could stay at Mum’s, eat her gourmet food, drink her pricey wine, enjoy the warm Sydney weather and loaf around. Sure, I’d have to put up with her hassling me to finish my degree, and the occasional dig about stripping, but it’d be better than staying at some crap motel on my own. I had clothes and stuff stored there and it would end up being a cheap weekend, which I desperately needed since my erstwhile best friend had cut off my only source of income.
‘Sure. I can make it by then.’
She rang off and called back a couple of minutes later.
The flight left at nine fifteen. As I hung up Alex emerged from the lift.
‘How’d you go?’ I asked.
He loosened his tie. ‘Reprimanded for failing to warn you off and my commanding officer told me to stay the hell away from you, said you were a jinx.’
‘You believe that?’ I was starting to think it wasn’t too far off the mark.
‘I’m not superstitious.’
‘Give me a ride to the airport then? I have to fly to Sydney.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘I thought you were off the case. You’re not—’
‘My mum wants me to stay with her till the trouble blows over.’
He looked like he didn’t quite believe me. ‘Promise you won’t start chasing Sam Doyle around?’
‘Cross my heart.’
Chapter Twenty-one
I opened my eyes, blinked and looked around. I was in the spare room, lying on a single bed beneath a quilt embroidered with the astrological wheel. A large mahogany wardrobe loomed directly opposite, and my old student desk was to my left, petrified chewing gum stuck to the underside. Sun streamed in the window, passing through a translucent parrot sticker, and when a grevillea rasped against the pane the colours danced on the wooden wall. For a moment I imagined I was ten years old, in my loft bed in our house in the bush. Mum’s Sydney Queenslander was a lot like our old place, only bigger and plonked down in inner city Annandale. It was painted forest green, surrounded by native plants, and Tibetan prayer flags hung from the rafters of the bullnose veranda.
The springs squeaked as I got out of bed wearing a pair of men’s paisley pyjamas I’d picked up from Newtown St Vinnies ten years before. I opened the door to the lounge and padded through a dark room crowded with bookcases and overstuffed thirties furniture, passed through the kitchen, with its scarred oak table and garlands of chillies and garlic hanging from the curtain rail above the sink, and headed for the bathroom at the back of the house. The mirror was all steamed up and the clear shower curtain hanging over the old claw foot bath was new and patterned with multicoloured fish. I peed then wandered back to the kitchen and opened the freezer, rooting around for the coffee tin like a rat in a rubbish bin.
‘Hey, honey, sleep well?’
Mum walked in clipping small silver hoops into her earlobes. She was shorter and thinner than me, with close c
ropped brown hair, high cheekbones and blue-green eyes. In her grey hipster pants, thin red belt and fitted white shirt she looked hot, especially considering she was pushing half a century. The only signs of age were the fine lines around her mouth and eyes and a sprinkling of silver hairs that glimmered in the light. They did say fifty was the new forty. So what did that make twenty-eight? The new eighteen?
I let her hug me for a few seconds before I pulled away. ‘Can’t find coffee,’ I croaked, opening and closing cupboard doors.
‘There isn’t any.’
‘You’re kidding.’
She always had the good stuff, a special blend from Jamaica, hand harvested by Rastafarians, apparently.
‘It’s no joke. Steve and I have been detoxing. Organic food, no dairy, wheat, coffee, alcohol. We’ve been making our own tofu, too, fermenting soybeans in the laundry.’ She picked up her rectangular, black framed glasses and slid them on her face. They were her trademark, along with the burgundy lipstick she was never without. ‘We feel great.’
‘Absolutely fantastic.’ Steve appeared in the doorway. He was in his late fifties, wiry, and always wore his white hair back in a ponytail. He walked over and shook my hand. He’d been on with my mum for ten years, but we still hadn’t got to the hugging stage. Give it time.
‘How’ve you been?’ he asked.
‘Great,’ I said, which was a complete lie considering I’d almost been killed and there was no coffee in the house.
Steve checked his watch. He was usually a massage sandals and drawstring pants sort of guy but was dressed in jeans, a black t-shirt, corduroy jacket and desert boots. I guessed he was off to TAFE where he taught environmentally sustainable building techniques. Mudbricks and shit.
‘We should get going,’ he said.
‘Yep.’ My mum gathered a couple of takeaway containers from the fridge that held either vomit or baby shit, it was an each-way bet.
‘Chickpea curry,’ she explained. ‘There’s more in the fridge if you want some for lunch. As for dinner I’m thinking of organising a barbecue.’
‘Won’t all the little bean sprouts fall through the grate?’
Not my best effort, but my bloodstream was completely devoid of caffeine.
‘We’re allowed seafood. You should try to detox while you’re here, cut out the booze and coffee, lose the stress. Your whole lifestyle is no good for you.’
I smiled through gritted teeth. I didn’t just crave coffee now, I also wanted whiskey and a cigarette. Hell, I could have gone some crack.
She hugged me again, kissed my cheek and rested her hands on my shoulders. ‘It was good of you to help Joy, even though you didn’t find Andi.’
‘I just hope the cops can.’
‘Don’t we all. I’m so glad you’re here and you’re safe. I worry about you, do you know that? When Joy told me someone had tried to run you down, my god. I had heart palpitations, I could hardly breathe. Do you have any idea what that’s like?’ She’d started shaking me a bit.
‘Jeez, Mum, settle down. I’m fine.’
She let go my shoulders and took a deep breath. ‘We’ll be back at six. Oh yeah, before I forget.’ She dug around in her voluminous shoulder bag, pulled out a glossy brochure and threw it onto the table next to the carved wooden fruit bowl.
Sydney University. Bachelor of Arts. ‘Thought you might want to take a look.’
A couple of hours later I’d been to the shops and back, got my coffee fix, eaten some eggs, an organic tomato and a piece of soy cheese that tasted like a pencil eraser. I’d showered and dressed in an old pair of ripped black jeans, a Breeders tee, a red flannelette shirt and a pair of chunky Rossi boots I hadn’t worn for years. I slapped on a bit of my mum’s dark lipstick and bam, it was the nineties and I was on my way to uni. Or, more accurately, the uni bar.
I wandered around the house scratching myself, perused a bunch of books whose titles were enough to put me to sleep and watched a half hour of daytime TV before switching it off and lying back on the couch. The lounge room smelled faintly of charred wood from the open fireplace, and the sandalwood/vanilla scent of burned out Nag Champa incense. Above my head there was a square hatch with dirty fingermarks on the edges that led to the attic, and a round, rice-paper shade hanging from a light bulb. Probably the same one we’d had in seventy-nine. Mum was a hoarder, never threw anything out.
I stared at it, trying to breathe in the white light and expel the negative energy, as she would have wanted, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the case.
After the hit and run I was convinced the attack by the wheelie bin was no random mugging, but what was the point of it? Who had been hiding there, all dressed in black, and why?
I had a feeling it wasn’t the dude in the blue sedan. Anyone who was capable of running over a guy, twice, wouldn’t have settled for a love tap in a laneway. My mind was going around in circles. Trip Sibley. Sam Doyle. Yasmin. Andi. What had she been working on and where was she now? I knew there was nothing I could do and that the police would be going gang-busters, but it didn’t stop me feeling guilty, like I’d abandoned her. After all, she’d called me for help.
I rubbed my eyes, struggled off the couch and wandered to the fridge where I rested one hand against the open door and leaned forward to stare at the shelves, just in case some brie and pate had miraculously appeared. They hadn’t, so I mooched back into the lounge, moved some books and journals from the piano seat and sat at the upright bashing out ‘Chopsticks’, willing the harsh jangling to clear my mind. I noticed a bunch of old photo albums stacked on the bottom shelf of the nearest bookcase and after I finished the only tune I knew how to play, I flopped down to the floor and lay on my belly on the faded oriental rug, hoping the proverbial trip down memory lane might distract me.
The album was bound in orange vinyl with a spiral spine, and the first few pages contained pictures of my mum and dad before I was born. Her: a hippy goddess with a waterfall of waist length, centre parted hair and the widest flares I’d ever seen.
Him: a kind of bohemian surfie with a shoulder length blonde mane, straggly goatee, and perpetually toting a guitar. He’d moved to America over a decade ago and apparently worked with computers, was remarried and had a couple more kids, but I hadn’t spoken to him in years.
Leafing through, I came to my baby pictures. I’d like to say I was a gorgeous infant but the truth was I had a widow’s peak and an intense stare which combined to produce an interesting ‘spawn of Dracula’ effect. My brother was a different story. The next sequence of photos had all been taken in New Zealand and after a couple of pages of my heavily pregnant mother backdropped by rolling green hills and snow-capped mountain peaks, Jasper appeared with his angelic smile, big round eyes and shock of dark hair. His father was part Maori, hence his exotic good looks, and damned if the kid hadn’t known how to work the camera even then. On the next page there was a photo of me holding him, and none too happy about it by the way I was staring into the lens like Damien from The Omen. For half siblings we didn’t look at all alike—in fact with their shared ancestry he could have passed for Andi’s brother much more readily than my own.
Andi. The photos of us at Potts Point should have been in between my baby shots and the ones of New Zealand, but they weren’t. When I thought about it I couldn’t recall ever having seen any, but they’d definitely been taken. I remembered my mum urging me to stop crying and smile for the camera during the Tonka Truck Christmas. I checked the rest of the album, wondering if receiving a prime mover as a four year old was the reason I was so fucked up in the present day, then flicked through the others but couldn’t find the pics and resolved to ask my mum about it.
The absence of photographs reminded me of Andi’s missing pictures and then I was back to obsessing about her, wondering if the credit card being used meant she was in Sydney, or if someone was laying a false trail. An image of Trip Sibley flashed into my head. He’d been here since this morning. I got a wobbly feeling in my guts and m
y pulse started to race. Maybe I could just have a look around … No. I’d promised everyone I’d stay here, let the cops work it out and wait for everything to blow over. Hey, maybe it already had.
I scrambled off the floor and jogged up the hallway to the room Mum and Steve used as an office. It was crammed with shelves and filing cabinets and two huge desks covered in books and papers were wedged adjacent to each other. Mum’s overlooked the veranda and a paperbark tree in the narrow front yard and I sat, booted up her iMac and checked the Age and Herald Sun websites. The vehicle used in the hit and run had been found burned out in semi-rural Hallam. It had been stolen from a supermarket car park earlier that day. I also learned the police were questioning all the employees at Jouissance, and that the restaurant was closed for a few days. I wondered if they’d talked to Trip yet. I checked my email next, hoping for something from Sean, but it wasn’t to be. There was, however, a message from Chris Ferguson, the journo who’d written All That Glitters. I opened it.
‘Sorry for lateness of reply, been away. Re: your question. Yes, Andi Fowler did contact me. We met up in June. Give me a call.’ Then his number.
I hesitated. I’d told the police about the missing library book, but didn’t know if they’d follow up on it. And even if they did, it might be days before someone got around to interviewing Ferguson. If I spoke to him, then passed on any relevant information, it wasn’t like I was actively investigating the case. It was just, like, being a concerned citizen, right?
I picked up the phone.
Chapter Twenty-two
At ten minutes to midday I emerged from the Kings Cross underground station and walked up Victoria Street, past majestic plane trees and three storey terraces, some immaculately renovated, others with sagging roofs and crumbling brickwork. It was a gorgeous spring day, a deep sapphire sky peeking through branches dotted with budding green leaves.
At eighteen degrees it would have been a heatwave in Melbourne but a fair few Sydneysiders considered it cold enough for a scarf and beanie. Puhlease.
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