Life or Death

by Michael Robotham

  Two weeks into his new job, he noticed a vehicle with blacked-out number plates, three up, waiting in the parking lot. He called the police and cleared the tills, hiding the money under the spillage pans. The men came in with sawn-off shotguns and balaclavas. Audie recognised one of their tattoos. It belonged to a guy who was dating one of the dancers and would hang around to make sure that none of the punters got too touchy-feely with her.

  Audie put his hands in the air. People were crouching under tables. The girl on the pole had covered her breasts and crossed her legs.

  The armed men broke open the registers and grew angry at the slim pickings. The guy with the tattoo waved a gun at Audie, who held his nerve. The sirens were coming. Shots were fired. One bullet shattered the mirror above the bar. Nobody got hurt.

  Urban Covic arrived in the early hours, his face still creased from the pillow. The manager told him what had happened. He summoned Audie into his office.

  ‘Where you from, kid?’

  ‘Texas.’

  ‘Where you going?’

  ‘Haven’t worked that out.’

  Urban scratched his chin. ‘Kid your age has got to decide if he’s running away from something, or running toward it.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘You got a driver’s licence?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘From now on you’re my driver.’ He tossed Audie a set of keys to a black Jeep Cherokee. ‘You pick me up every morning at ten unless I tell you otherwise. You run errands if I need ’em doing. You drop me home when I say. I’ll double your salary, but you’re on call twenty-four hours a day. If that means sleeping in the car, you sleep in the car.’

  Audie nodded.

  ‘Right now, I want you to drive me home.’

  And that is how his new career began. He was given a room above the bar. Squashed under the apex of the roof, it was barely wider than a corridor, but it came rent-free with the job. There was a skylight and a bed of rough pine. Piled in the corner were his books and a rucksack. He had kept his engineering textbooks because of some vague notion that he might finish his degree one day.

  Audie ferried Urban to meetings or collected people from the airport or picked up dry-cleaning or delivered packages. That’s how he met Belita – when he went to pick up an envelope from Urban’s house. He didn’t know that she was Urban’s mistress – he didn’t care – but from the moment he set eyes upon her he had the strangest feeling that his blood was running backwards, pulsing through the valves of his heart in reverse, cascading instead of climbing, reaching his extremities and rushing inward.

  Sometimes you can sense when you meet the person who is destined to change your life.

  20

  Moss becomes conscious of birds chirping and the ringing of a bicycle bell that sounds whimsical and cheerful. For the past fifteen years he has woken to a dawn chorus of banging, burping, coughing and farting, with each new day offering no more promise of light than a small square window above his head. Waking up this way is nicer, he decides, even if the bed next to him is empty. Crystal left early, driving back to San Antonio. He can still recall the weight of her as she straddled his thighs and kissed him goodbye, telling him to be careful.

  Swinging his feet to the floor, he opens the curtain a chink and studies the parking lot. The gleaming towers of Dallas are in the distance, catching the sunshine on their mirrored edges. Moss wonders if the rich aren’t trying to build stairways to Heaven because it’s easier than squeezing a camel through the eye of a needle.

  Showered, shaved and dressed, Moss drives north into Westmoreland Heights, where most of the streets are lined with wooden cottages that are worth less than the vehicles parked out front and some of these cars are jacked up on breeze blocks or gutted by fire. There are small pockets of promise in the blighted streets – a new building or prefabricated warehouse – but every unmarked wall is an invitation to a spray-can and each unbroken window an inducement to a thrown rock.

  Moss parks outside a convenience store in Singleton Boulevard. The upper-floor windows are boarded up and the lower ones are covered in metal bars that are so thick you can’t read the posters stuck to the inside of the glass.

  A bell sounds as he enters. There are boxes stacked from floor to ceiling, and cardboard pallets wrapped in plastic, holding cans of beans and corn and baby carrots. Some of the labels are in foreign languages. The woman behind the cash register is sitting in a large armchair covered in a tartan rug. She’s watching a TV infomercial with a smiling couple feeding vegetables into a blender.

  ‘Throw away your old kitchen appliances, this does it all,’ says the smiling host.

  ‘It’s a miracle, Steve,’ says the woman.

  ‘Yes, it is, Brianna – a kitchen miracle. This is the juicer God uses in Heaven.’

  The live studio audience laughs. Moss doesn’t know why.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ asks the woman, without taking her eyes from the screen. She’s in her fifties with sharp features that crowd in the centre of her face.

  ‘I’m looking for directions. A friend of mine used to live around here. I think his mother still does.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Irene Palmer.’

  Moss can’t see her woman’s lower half but he can tell she’s reaching for something. A bell rings further inside the house.

  ‘You’re looking for Irene Palmer?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone by that name.’

  ‘Do you know how I can tell you’re lying?’ says Moss. ‘You repeated the question before answering. It’s sumpin’ people do when they’re making things up.’

  ‘You think I’m lying?’

  ‘See – that’s another tactic – answering a question with a question.’

  Her eyes have narrowed to almost nothing. ‘Don’t make me call the cops.’

  ‘I’m not looking to cause any trouble, ma’am. Just tell me where I can find Irene Palmer.’

  ‘Leave that poor woman alone. A mother ain’t responsible for ev’thang her children do.’

  She thrusts out her chin, almost challenging Moss to disagree with her. A man appears in the doorway wearing nothing but sweat pants and tattoos. Early twenties. Muscled. Packing attitude.

  ‘You got a problem, Ma?’

  ‘He’s looking for Irene.’

  ‘Tell him to fuck off.’

  ‘I did.’

  A big automatic pistol is tucked into the waistband of his sweatpants. It’s the first thing Moss focuses upon.

  ‘I’m a friend of Audie Palmer,’ says Moss. ‘I got a message for his ma.’

  ‘You can leave it with us. We’ll make sure she gets it.’

  ‘I was told to deliver it personally.’

  The bell tinkles and an old black lady enters, as wrinkled as a dead crimson rose. Moss holds the door open. She thanks him.

  ‘What can I get you, Noelene?’ asks the storekeeper.

  ‘This young man was here first,’ she says, motioning to Moss.

  ‘He was just leaving.’

  Moss decides not to argue. He walks outside and finds a spot in the shade, waiting for the old woman to reappear. She’s pulling a tartan shopping trolley with hard plastic wheels.

  ‘Can I help you with that, ma’am?’

  ‘I can manage.’

  She shuffles past him along the sidewalk, which is crumbling in places. Moss follows her for thirty yards. She stops.

  ‘Are you fixin’ on robbing me?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Why are you following me?’

  ‘I’m looking for Irene Palmer.’

  ‘Well, I’m not her.’

  ‘I know that. I’m a friend of her son.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Audie.’

  ‘I remember Audie. He used to cut my grass and clean up the yard. His school bus ran right by my place. Bright boy. Clever, you know, and always polite. Never any trouble …
not like his brother.’

  ‘Carl?’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  She shakes her head. Her silver hair is so tightly curled it looks like a ball of steel wool clinging to her skull.

  ‘Carl came out of the womb facing the wrong way, know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘He was always in trouble. His folks tried hard. His daddy ran a garage on Singleton Boulevard. Gone now. Factories have gone, the lead smelter, good riddance to that one. Poisoning our kiddies. You know what lead does to children?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Makes ’em stupid.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  She struggles to pull the trolley over the broken concrete. Moss picks it up like a suitcase and carries it for her.

  ‘What happened to Carl?’

  Noelene frowns. ‘Thought you said Audie was a friend.’

  ‘He didn’t talk about his brother.’

  ‘Well, it’s not my business to tell you. I’m not a gossip, not like some I could name.’ In the same breath she starts talking about people Moss should avoid. She calls them ‘no-goods’.

  ‘We got some no-goods around here, ugly, dangerous people. You ever heard of the Gator Boyz?’ Moss shakes his head. ‘They recruit teenage boys to sell drugs. Their leader has this alligator on a leash – a real live one that he leads round like a pet dog. I hope that gator bites his leg off.’

  She pauses to catch her breath and leans on Moss’s arm. She notices his tattoos.

  ‘You been inside. Is that where you met Audie?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘You looking for the money?’

  ‘No.’

  She eyes him doubtfully. They’ve reached the front gate of a small unpainted wooden house with a neat garden. Taking her trolley, she walks along the path and bumps the wheels up the steps to a narrow porch. She takes out a key and unlocks the screen door. Just before it closes, she turns.

  ‘Irene Palmer moved to Houston. She’s living with her sister.’

  ‘Got an address?’

  ‘Might do. You wait here.’ The old woman disappears into the dark interior. Moss wonders if she’s calling the police. He looks along the shoulderless street to where a playground has been built beneath a strand of pines. The swing set is broken and someone has dumped a soiled mattress beneath the jungle gym.

  The screen door opens. A hand extends, holding a piece of scented notepaper.

  ‘Irene sent me a Christmas card. This was the return address.’

  Moss takes the note and bows his head in thanks.

  21

  The cab drops Audie outside the Texas Children’s Hospital. Money changes hands and the driver looks at the cash and suggests he deserves a tip. Audie says he should be nicer to his mother and gets a reply that no mother would approve of.

  After buying a coffee and a Danish from a place across the road, Audie sits on a concrete bollard and watches the front entrance of the hospital. Nurses depart in twos and threes, the night shift off to bed. Replacements arrive with wet hair and neatly pressed blue trousers and paisley shirts. Audie licks crumbs from his fingers and spies Bernadette over the lip of his paper cup. Homely and pretty, she’s wearing two badges on her blouse and walks with a slight stoop because she’s taller than she wants to be.

  Growing up, Audie didn’t have much in common with his sister, who was twelve years older and seemed like a know-it-all. He remembers Bernadette taking him to school on his first day and putting Band-Aids on his bloody knees and telling him lies to stop him misbehaving. If he played with his penis it would drop off, she said; and if he sneezed, farted and blinked at the same time his head would explode.

  Keeping his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, Audie walks into the hospital and follows Bernadette from a distance. She takes a crowded elevator to the ninth floor. Audie keeps his head down and pretends to be reading messages on his phone. When Bernadette disappears into a nursing station Audie waits at the end of the corridor, feeling exposed. Nearby is a door marked STAFF ONLY. He slips inside and finds a changing room. Tucking his cap into his pocket, he takes a doctor’s white coat from a hanger and hangs a stethoscope around his neck, praying that nobody asks him to perform CPR or clear an airway. He takes a clipboard from a hook on a gurney and walks along the corridor as though he knows where he’s going.

  Bernadette is making up a bed in an empty room, forcefully tucking in the corners and stretching the sheets as tight as a drum. It’s how their mother taught her to make a bed, and Audie remembers almost needing a crowbar to squeeze between the top and bottom sheets.

  ‘Hi, Sis.’

  She straightens and frowns, holding a pillow to her chest. Her face seems to run through the full spectrum of emotions and her head rocks from side to side, denying the evidence of her eyes. She looks frightened of him, or frightened of herself. But something melts inside her and she closes the gap between them, hugging him hard. Audie smells her hair and his whole childhood seems to come flooding back.

  She strokes his cheek. ‘You know it’s against the law to impersonate a doctor.’

  ‘I think that’s the least of my problems.’

  She pulls him away from the open door and closes it. Her fingers trace the scars that are visible beneath his short-cropped hair. ‘Amazing,’ she says. ‘How in God’s name did you survive?’

  Audie doesn’t answer.

  ‘The police came to see me,’ she says.

  ‘I figured they would.’

  ‘Why, Audie? You had one more day.’

  ‘Best if I don’t tell you my reasons.’

  The hum of the air conditioner is the only sound in the room. It moves a strand of hair that has pulled loose from her bun. Audie notices the flecks of grey.

  ‘Letting yourself go?’

  ‘Stopped using the bottle.’

  ‘You’re only, what?’

  ‘Forty-five.’

  ‘That’s not old.’

  ‘Walk in my shoes.’

  Audie asks her how she’s doing and she says fine. Neither one of them knows where to begin. Her divorce came through. Her ex-husband had been affectionate and smart and successful and a violent drunk, but mercifully the alcohol affected his aim and Bernadette knew how to handle herself. Her new boyfriend works on the rigs. They’re living together. Kids are out of the question. ‘Like I said, I’m too old.’

  ‘How’s Ma?’

  ‘Sick. She’s on dialysis.’

  ‘What about a transplant?’

  ‘Doctors don’t think she’d survive one.’ She goes back to making the bed, but her eyes suddenly cloud. ‘Why did you come back here?’

  ‘Unfinished business.’

  ‘I don’t believe you robbed that armoured truck.’

  He squeezes her hand. ‘I need your help.’

  ‘Don’t ask for money.’

  ‘What about a vehicle?’

  Bernadette crosses her arms, her eyes filled with doubt. ‘My boyfriend has a car. If that were to go missing, I might not even notice for a week.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Parked on the street.’

  ‘Keys?’

  ‘Didn’t they teach you anything in prison?’

  ‘I don’t know how to hotwire.’

  She jots down her address. ‘I’ll leave ’em on the wheel.’

  Another nurse has come to the door, Bernadette’s supervisor. ‘Is everything all right?’ she asks, addressing Audie, wondering why the door was closed.

  ‘Fine,’ he replies.

  She nods and waits. Audie holds her gaze until she grows self-conscious and turns away.

  ‘You’ll get me fired,’ whispers Bernadette.

  ‘I need one more thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Those files I left for you – did you print them out?’

  She nods.

  ‘In a day or two, I’ll call and tell you what
to do with them.’

  ‘Am I going to get into trouble?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Am I going to see you again?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  Bernadette steps away then back again, opening her arms, squeezing Audie so hard he can barely breathe.

  ‘I love you, little brother.’

  22

  Cassie has packed and repacked her suitcases but still hasn’t left the motel. Staring at the digital clock between the beds, she can hear it ticking inside her head, as though challenging her to make a decision.

  Spencer’s rucksack is tucked beneath his bed. Is that even his real name? How did he get those scars on his head? She pictures the violent force and feels something shake loose inside her.

  Scarlett is watching Dora the Explorer on TV, lying on her front with her chin resting in her cupped hands. She’s seen all these episodes before but still gets excited. Maybe kids like knowing what’s going to happen next.

  Cassie grabs the rucksack and begins going through the pockets, unzipping compartments and searching. She finds a notebook and takes it into the bathroom, closing the door and sitting on the toilet with her dress forming a hammock between her knees. She opens the book. A photograph flutters out. Cassie picks it up from the tiled floor. It shows a young woman, dark-skinned and beautiful, holding a bouquet of flowers. Cassie feels a stab of jealousy and can’t understand why.

  She slips the photograph between the pages, hard against the spine, and goes back to the beginning. There is a name written on the inside of the front cover: Audie Spencer Palmer. Below there is a price sticker and a label saying, Three Rivers FCI.

  The pages are full of handwriting that is small and spidery and difficult to read. Cassie struggles to comprehend more than a few sentences. It looks and sounds like poetry with phrases like ‘perceptions of the truth’ and the ‘pathos of absence’, whatever that means.

  Taking out her cell phone, she consults a torn page that she ripped from the telephone directory. A woman answers and seems to be reading from a script: