I was too hot in my flannie so shrugged out of it and knotted the sleeves around my waist. Bad move. I instantly felt like the world’s biggest bogan and untied the thing, bunched it up and carried it in my hand. Did I really used to dress like this? And more to the point, had I ever dressed like this and picked up guys? I seemed to remember that I had. The world was indeed a strange and amazing place.
I’d wanted to meet Chris Ferguson in person as visual cues are the only way to tell if someone’s being straight with you, and also because I’d been desperate to get out of the house.
After giving him a brief rundown over the phone he’d suggested the Goldfish Bowl, a bar attached to the Crest Hotel and so named because of the plate glass windows that made it a cinch to see in and out. Not the best place to hang if someone wanted you killed, but then no one knew I was in Sydney.
I was a couple of minutes early and the bartender, a chunky blonde guy with fat sideburns, was just upending barstools and laying down beer mats. I ordered a Virgin Mary that came in a tall glass with a giant stick of celery poking out, took it to a high round table and watched the passing parade on Darlinghurst Road. Not that there was much to see. Even Sydney’s most notorious vice district was pretty quiet before noon on a Friday. Apart from a couple of dodgy guys in thongs and jail tatts, all I saw were tourists: an endless parade of khaki shorts, polo shirts, chunky sandals and bumbags. Suddenly I didn’t feel so daggy in my nineties jeans and band t-shirt.
A skinny older guy pushed through the glass door and glanced over at me. Chris Ferguson had told me I’d recognise him by his facial hair and he wasn’t fucking kidding. He had a beard a bushranger would have been proud of. He would have looked like he’d sailed in on the First Fleet if it hadn’t been for his faded red t-shirt, Dunlop volleys and jeans with a yellow form guide sticking out the back pocket. I waved, he nodded, and after ordering a schooner of beer, he ambled over and sat opposite.
I shook his bony hand. ‘Thanks for meeting with me.’
‘No worries. How long’s she been missing?’ His voice was sandpaper.
‘Five days, give or take.’
He nodded. His cheeks were hollow, deep lines bisected his forehead and his thinning hair was the same grey-brown as his beard. He dug around in his front pocket and produced a pack of unfiltered Camels. ‘You mind?’
My throat hurt just looking at them. ‘Go for your life.’
Ferguson sparked up, shook out the match and gazed at me from behind the billowing cloud of smoke. ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.
‘When exactly you talked to Andi, and what about, if that’s okay?’
He sipped his beer and foam clung to his moustache. ‘Let’s see, Andi called me in mid-June. Said she was in Sydney and wanted to meet up to talk about the Cross, in connection to some story she wanted to write. I’d met her once before after my lecture at RMIT and we’d had a smoke and a bit of a natter.
She’d lived around here till she was fourteen and it turned out I knew her mum, vaguely.’ He drew back hard on his ciggie, as if it were a joint.
‘Really? You might have met mine. Peta Kirsch ring a bell?’
‘Can’t say it does. I’ve met a lot of people over the years and this doesn’t help.’ He lifted his beer and took another mouthful. ‘Anyway, I arranged to meet her, mainly to turn her off the idea.’
‘Why?’
‘She’s a good kid, and Canning told me she was talented, but it’s all been written about before. Corrupt cops and politicians, dodgy developers, Juanita Nielsen going missing, Sallie-Anne Huckstepp murdered. And by people who actually lived through it, not some journalism student who was in nappies at the time. I was gonna suggest she devote her time and skills to something more original, more relevant to her experience and what’s happening today.’
I was listening to him, pulling little stems off the top of the celery and gnawing on them. I nodded so he’d go on.
‘Anyway, turned out the story hadn’t been covered after all.’
‘What was it?’ I stopped chewing, sat up straight and stared at him. Finally, I was getting somewhere.
‘Article about a missing person.’
‘The one she wrote for uni in May?’
‘Nah, new one.’
‘She writes about missing people and she becomes one.
That’s too weird.’
‘It does have a certain irony.’ Ferguson sucked on his smoke and the ash grew long but didn’t fall.
‘Who’s it about?’
‘Melita Kracowski.’
‘Who?’
‘Her working name was Melody and she disappeared from around here in nineteen eighty. Andi came across her on the national missing persons website while researching her earlier piece. Wanted to know if I knew her.’
‘Did you?’
‘Not personally. Knew of her.’
‘Pro?’
‘Dancer. Well, she did work at the Love Tunnel so who knows what she was doing out the back. They’re not all strictly strip clubs around here.’ He nodded at me knowingly, and I realised he knew exactly who I was. Christ, the whole world did these days.
‘The Love Tunnel,’ I said. ‘I read in your book that Sam Doyle used to run it. I’m starting to see how this all came about …’
‘How what came about?’
‘Andi started working at a restaurant Doyle co-owns after she got back from Sydney in June. She befriended his son-in-law and … it was all to investigate her article …’ Things were becoming clearer, but not clear enough. Did the money laundering have anything to do with the story or was that just coincidence?
‘You write about Melody in your book?’ I asked.
‘No. There were rumours, but I’d have got my scrawny arse sued if I printed them. The fucking libel and defamation laws in this country.’
‘What rumours?’
‘Well, Sam Doyle was a suspect for a while. He was her boss and he’d been shagging her.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, but he was rooting most of the girls at the Fuck Hole—sorry, Love Tunnel. It’s what everybody used to call it way back when. Not very subtle.’
‘Forcing himself on them?’ It was a sore point with me.
Ferguson laughed, dragged on his ciggie to the butt then crumpled it in the glass ashtray. ‘From what I heard it was the other way around. They didn’t call him Hollywood Sam for nothing. Bastard was good looking, especially compared to most of the other weasels on the scene. And charming, so I’ve heard. Everyone liked him, it’s how he worked his way up from being a shitkicker at the illegal casinos.’
‘And he was investigated in Melody’s disappearance?’
‘Yeah, but never charged. No evidence. You won’t believe his alibi for the night she went missing—he was swanning around at a bloody police retirement do.’
‘A gangster who ran a strip club?’
‘It was the eighties. Maybe you’d better read the rest of my book.’
‘Why would he have killed her?’
‘They say all murders come down to sex and money, or variations thereof, so take your pick. Not long after Melody disappeared Sam came into a whole lot of dosh. A girl he used to go out with at the club got hitched to some rich druggo, Edwin someone, and inherited the lot when he OD’d on smack. Then Sam married her and they were both on easy street after that. Got out of the strip biz and into property, a hotel, restaurants, gourmet food importing. Both well off and living the straight life ever since. Well, so they reckon.’
So Holly’s dad had been a junkie and Dillon’s despised stepmother-in-law, Rochelle, a dancer at the Love Tunnel.
Dillon hadn’t been kidding when he referred to the whole situation as Days of Our Lives.
I absentmindedly broke the celery stick in half, took a bite and pointed it at him. ‘Andi was so sure Doyle was involved that she went to work at his restaurant. Why, when no one else had any evidence?’
‘No idea. I can tell you she had a photo of Melod
y though.’
‘What, from the missing persons website?’
‘No, this was an original.’
‘Where’d she get it?’
‘Wouldn’t tell me, cagey little thing. Even after three more schooners I couldn’t pry it out of her. We played a bit of pool, put a couple of bets on and all she’d tell me was that the story had fallen into her lap. Saw it as a gift, and reckoned it was a ticket out of her McJob. She also said she was becoming completely obsessed with the case and I told her that was a good thing. Can’t be an investigative journalist without it. How else you gonna see the whole thing through to the bitter end? In hindsight, maybe that was the wrong fucking thing to say.’
If Andi was anything like me, I thought, it wouldn’t have mattered what he’d said.
Ferguson glanced at the clock above the bar, slid his form guide from his back pocket and tapped it on the table. ‘Gotta get a bet in on the second at Rosehill. Anything else you want to know?’
‘Sam Doyle. People reckon he’s a real badass. Ever met him?’
Ferguson scratched his beard and the hair rasped against his fingers. ‘I’ve only heard stuff secondhand and I don’t know how much is real and how much is folklore. He used to work for Don Davison, heard of him?’
‘The name rings a bell …’
‘He was a Mr. Big who used to own half the Cross, moved to the Gold Coast and became a property developer before all the royal commissions went down. Anyway, I know Sam used to crack some heads for him back then, he was an ex-boxer, but he’d have to be pretty straight now, living in his Balmain mansion, running with the yacht club crowd. You still see him around the Cross sometimes, checking out the old haunts. This place has that effect on you, addictive, I reckon. I tried to move down the south coast once, couldn’t handle it. The silence was deafening.’ He checked the clock again and smoothed down the newspaper in front of him.
‘Think he’d kill someone, or have them killed?’ I asked.
He looked at me, green eyes like marbles. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past anyone.’
Ferguson went off to the sports bar down the road to put a bet on and I sat there finishing my Virgin Mary and crunching on celery, briefly wondering if it was true you burned more calories eating the stuff than you received ingesting it. It was a relief to finally know what Andi had been working on, even though it didn’t help me find her. I was pretty confused about where Trip fitted in though, and why Andi had gone back to his place when she was investigating Doyle. Hell, maybe I’d been reading too much into it, maybe she was just drug-fucked and horny. Bit of a coincidence though, that Trip had been the last one to see her …
I rang the detective sergeant who’d interviewed me at Homicide, Duval, and left a message on his phone telling him that although I was no longer investigating the case I’d come up with some new information. I gave him a rundown and Ferguson’s phone number, then sat there tapping my fingernails on the stainless steel table top considering my options. I could go back to my mum’s and spend a fun filled day staring at the lampshade trying not to worry about Andi, or I could continue on with my ‘concerned citizen’ shtick and possibly come up with some more useful information for the police.
It wasn’t a difficult choice. I drained my drink, slipped on my sunnies and stepped out the door onto Darlinghurst Road, heading into the heart of the Cross.
Chapter Twenty-three
Sun glimmered off the freshly hosed footpath and the windows of passing cars. Playbirds International and Porky’s were closed, the neon hushed and unblinking, but McDonald’s was open and a shop assistant was rolling up the shutters of an adult bookstore. I hadn’t been to the Cross in years. The last time it was three in the morning and I’d been off my face on a cocktail of speed, ecstasy and booze. I hadn’t realised there were so many trees. Solid old oaks and smaller, more delicate plants with fluttering yellow-green leaves grew from the pavement and clustered in the square near the famous fountain that looked like a dandelion bursting into seed.
Another thing I’d never noticed was the architecture.
Above their sleazy, street level facades the buildings were old and ornate. Flats down winding alleyways sported leadlight windows and wrought iron balconies, and ivy climbed up the walls. The place reminded me a bit of St Kilda: the back streets corralled by the Esplanade, Fitzroy and Barkly. I started humming a Paul Kelly song: ‘From St Kilda to Kings Cross’.
I saw an internet café and ducked inside to look up the national missing persons website. Andi wasn’t listed—maybe it took a while—but I found Melita’s name and clicked on it.
‘Have you seen this person?’ The question was typed in bold at the top of the page and a head and shoulders shot sat underneath. Melita was pretty, with a heart shaped face, thin eyebrows and a bleached blonde, slightly poodle-esque perm.
Her boobs looked too big for her slight frame, and too round and upstanding to be real. Did they have tit jobs back in the olden days? Must have done. Her vital statistics told me she was one hundred and sixty centimetres tall, had brown eyes and was twenty-four when she disappeared. It shocked me to realise she’d be my mum’s age, if she happened to still be alive.
At the bottom of the page a paragraph explained the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, but didn’t tell me much at all: ‘Melita aka Melody was last seen leaving work at Kings Cross in the early morning of 28 May 1980. She did not return home and her bank account has not been accessed since.
There are grave fears for her welfare.’ The Missing Persons Unit urged anyone with any information, no matter how trivial, to call their hotline. It made me think of Chloe putting her own phone number on Andi’s posters and I shook my head and almost chuckled fondly until I remembered I didn’t like her anymore.
I printed out the page, folded it and stuck it in my notebook and sat for a bit, wondering how exactly this story had fallen into Andi’s lap. I reckoned it had to have happened in the June holidays when she was staying in Sydney, and I wondered if Joy knew anything about it. I rang and left a message on her mobile asking her to call me. Who else had Andi seen in Sydney who might know something? Maybe Daisy, her old school friend. I still had Andi’s address book so called her, got another darned answering machine and left another message.
I walked out of the internet café and strolled down Darlinghurst Road, looking for the Hot Rock Karaoke Bar where Andi’s credit card had been used, and found it wedged between a kebab shop and a bureau de change. The place was closed but I peered through the glass door and saw a set of stairs leading up to a black curtain. Was it just a karaoke joint or a front for something more sinister? And what the hell had Andi been doing there, if she’d been there at all?
I straightened up and that’s when I noticed something reflected in the glass. A figure across the road was facing me, holding an object that glinted in the sun. I whirled around, pulse suddenly racing, but it was only a tourist, a guy in khaki shorts and a shirt with big red flowers, taking pictures of the strip. I told myself to get a grip. No one knew I was in town, I was just another anonymous chick who hadn’t updated her wardrobe in ten years.
I watched the starburst fountain across the road, waiting for my heart to slow down. The Kings Cross police station was in the same paved square and I decided I might as well flash my license, tell them I was working for the family and ask if Andi had been spotted. Surely the Melbourne police would have faxed through a picture after her credit card had been used?
The station was a sixties building trimmed in yellow and blue with the chequered police symbol above the automatic doors. I climbed a set of stairs, passing a straggly palm tree, approached the desk and showed the young uniform my license, explaining why I was there. I took a seat while he picked up the phone, and a couple of minutes later an older male detective came out and looked me up and down.
Hopefully he was a Breeders fan.
‘Working for the family, are you?’
‘That’s right. We’ve had word her cred
it card was used in the area. I was wondering if she’d been sighted at all?’
‘No. I’ve canvassed the Hot Rock and businesses in the local area but no one recognised the photo. Just this morning someone was picked up using the card in a local bottle shop when the signatures didn’t add up. Renee McPherson. She’s known to police.’
‘Have you got her here?’
‘No, she’s been taken to the police centre in Surry Hills for charging.’
‘Did she say where she got the card?’
‘Refused to talk to us.’
‘If I fronted up at the centre would they let me speak with her?’
He laughed. ‘Not unless you wanted to bail her out.’
I left the police station and sat at the side of the fountain, smelling chlorine and feeling a fine spray of water trickle down my cheek. It was stupid, it was dumb, and I wouldn’t be able to pretend I was just a concerned citizen anymore, but I couldn’t help myself. I walked to Darlinghurst Road and hailed a cab.
Chapter Twenty-four
A bleached blonde with two inches of black roots staggered into the reception area of the police centre. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
I took in her pasty complexion and overplucked brows and figured she could have been anything from a ravaged twenty-five to a drug-preserved late forties. Her off the shoulder broderie anglaise blouse showed the rose tattoo on her right breast and a slice of white belly wobbled out over the waistband of her denim mini.
‘My name’s Simone Kirsch.’ I stuck out my hand but she ignored it. ‘I’m a private investigator and I’d like to talk to you.’
‘I don’t fuckin’ think so.’
‘I need to know how you … found the credit card.’
‘See ya.’ She reeled out the door and the desk guy laughed and shook his head.
I ran after her, overtaking her on the steps and blocking her way. ‘Come on, Renee, I just bailed you out.’
‘So?’
I tried another tactic. Begging. ‘Please. I’m looking for a missing girl and her mum’s really worried. I just want to know where you came across it.’
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