Bright City Deep Shadows

by Graham Storrs

  “You’ve seen one city, you’ve seen them all,” he said.

  “Nah, this one’s special.”

  “How would you know? How many cities have you ever lived in? Or even visited?”

  I stooped and rounded on him. “Why the hell are you being such a bloody sook? You did a great job. You solved it. Can’t you just be happy for one single night?”

  He looked shifty, guilty even. “It’s not over.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not over. All we’ve got is half the story. Not even half. We still don’t know why Anning did it. We still don’t know why Anning was taken out, or by who.”

  “Whom.”

  “Right, my grammar is so fucking important right now.”

  “Sorry. It’s like a reflex. But who gives a stuff why he did it, or what he’s mixed up in that got him killed? I don’t. Why should I?”

  “You should care because it mattered to Chelsea.”

  “What? I mean, what would you know about what Chelsea cared about? I mean – Jesus! – to you she’s just a picture on a whiteboard. I’m the one who knew her. I’m the one who lived with her, shared her life. You’re just some bloody stranger who doesn’t have a fucking clue who she even was.”

  He was staring at me, his face set hard. I realised I had been shouting and, sure enough, when I looked around, people were staring at me.

  “You know I’m right,” he said. “That’s why you’re being such a prima donna. You act like a complete wanker but you’re not as stupid as all that. Not by a long way. Why did she meet Anning? What was in the envelope he used to lure her into that alley? Why does a respectable businessman, a young Turk, going places, suddenly risk everything to kill some woman he hasn’t even seen in years? What did she know about? What was she going to find out that scared him so much? And who were his accomplices? And why did they have him killed?”

  “Accomplices?” I had to admit, I’d asked myself all the same questions he was asking me – maybe not in such a clear and pointed way, but they had been rumbling around in my head for the past few days. But accomplices? “Why should Anning’s murder have anything to do with Chelsea?”

  “Oh, come on! Don’t be so bloody obtuse. You think it’s a coincidence? And that car you described, that big, shiny black Jeep? Do you know what those things cost?” I began to make a guess but he talked over me. “A lot more than a couple of scruffy thugs can afford.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “This is gang-related, Luke. Organised crime. Chelsea was onto something big and someone with a lot of clout wanted her out of the way. That’s why it isn’t over, Luke, because Anning was just a link in the chain.”

  “That’s – that’s just wild speculation. You’ve built this whole edifice out of one car? What if one of them works in a garage and they borrowed it for the day? What if it was a hire car? What if one of them got it as a great second-hand bargain after a crash and restored it? It could be anything. We just—” A sob caught in my throat and I had to stop. Ronnie looked as surprised as I felt. I forced myself to go on. “We found Chelsea’s killer. Why can’t we just leave it at that?”

  “You’re really asking me that?”

  A wave of exhaustion washed through me. “I thought I could just stop all this, start...”

  His face hardened. “What? Start rebuilding your life? Start moving on? You’re going to stand there spouting women’s magazine crap at me? You saw Anning’s body. This shit is real. There are two killers on the loose. They work for somebody who lends them nice cars for doing his little errands. He’s probably the one who decided Chelsea had to die. Don’t you care that he’s out there, thinking he got away with it?”

  Dammit but he knew how to press my buttons. “If you want vengeance so much, you go and hunt down Mr. Big. This is your obsession, not mine. Oh, no, wait. If I drop out you’ve got no excuse to go tracking down killers, have you? If I let it go, you’re just a sad old geezer with a vigilante complex.”

  He took a step towards me, fists balled, head down. I was sure he was going to hit me and, if he did, I was sure I’d need an ambulance. He was built like a brick dunny and, despite his age, looked like he could bounce me like a ball if he felt like it. For a second he glowered at me from under his brows and I held my breath. Then he turned quickly and walked away. My heart was hammering and my breathing was short. I felt sick. But he’d gone. Gone for good, I hoped.

  * * * *

  I woke up the next morning on the sofa, the half-empty bottle of rum on the floor beside me. I had vague memories of throwing up in the bathroom – thank goodness for small mercies – and watching idiotic American cop movies on Netflix, cheering through the endless fight scenes. I’m not a big drinker, never have been, so the hangover that assailed me that morning was cruel and pitiless. The carolling magpies outside seemed intent on driving their long beaks through my skull and the smell of cleaning products from yesterday’s housework made my fragile stomach heave.

  I made it to the bathroom with the help of furniture and walls to lean on and was hit by the stench of vomit and booze. I dry-heaved for a long, miserable time, then managed to find some pain killers and fill a glass of water from the tap. I was sure my skin smelled of rum, oozing out through the pores.

  I made it back to the sofa, clutching a second glass of water and lay down, waiting to die.

  The doorbell hit my ears like a thunderclap.

  “Go away!”

  The doorbell rang again. And again. And again. And—

  “What?” I gasped into the intercom, having staggered all the way to the door.

  “DI Reid, Mr. Kelly. Can I come in?”

  “You can, but you may not. I’m not feeling very well. You’ll have to come back.”

  “I need to talk to you about the Anning murder. I promise I won’t keep you long.”

  I buzzed him in, pretty sure that the pest wouldn’t go away and it would be better to get it over with. I left the door open and went to sit in an armchair, feeling the need of something to prop me up.

  Reid came in with a detective I’d never met, who closed the door behind them. He looked disgustingly fit and healthy, clear-eyed and energetic. He took in my dishevelled state and the rum bottle on the floor at a glance.

  “Been celebrating your release,” he said. Perhaps seeing there was only one glass, he added, “Drinking with the flies were you?”

  “Look, it’s none of your business but, yes, I had a bit of a bender and got shit-faced. Now I feel like death warmed up. So, can we get through the questions real quick before I start chucking up again?”

  He sat on the sofa and the anonymous sidekick got out his notebook.

  “First off,” Reid said, “I’d like you to come in as soon as you can and spend a bit of time looking at some mug shots. See of you can identify either of the men you saw at Anning’s house.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “And, if that doesn’t go well, maybe you could sit down with our artist and try to put together pictures of the two men.”

  “All right.” I was sure I’d feel up to it in a couple of days. “Didn’t you get their rego from traffic cams or something?”

  “We did, but they’d used false plates.” He gave a winsome smile. “Millions of dollars worth of surveillance cameras and computers, hundreds of man-hours spent scouring the video, and they can beat it in one minute with a screwdriver and a bit of painted tin.”

  I closed my eyes, just to get a rest from the light that was searing my retinas, and wondered how long it would be until the painkillers kicked in. “Is that all?”

  “Just a couple more things. When you were in Anning’s office, you said you looked at his computer. Can you tell us what you saw on the screen?”

  “What? You’ve got the computer. You can dig around in it at your leisure, surely?”

  “You’d think so, right? Only it seems our tech guys are having trouble getting in. Super-strong encryption on the hard disk, they tell me. So, you’re the only one wh
ose seen whatever he’s got in there.”

  I shook my head in disbelief and immediately regretted it. “I don’t know. There was a game – some kind of multi-player shooting thing.”

  “Silent Empire?” the other cop asked, checking his notes.

  “What?”

  “Was the game Silent Empire?”

  “I don’t know. I have no idea. I don’t play computer games.”

  “So, what else was there?” Reid asked.

  “I dunno, loads of windows that looked like they were full of code or something. I’m not much of a computer user. I poked around a bit but it was all really strange, not like the computers I’m used to.”

  “A different operating system?” the guy with the notebook asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Anything at all you can remember?” asked Reid.

  “No, nothing. It was all gibberish to me. And I was, you know, in shock or something. I wasn’t really taking much in.”

  Reid pursed his lips and nodded. I wondered if he thought it made him look deep and thoughtful. “Right-o then, we’ll get out of your hair.” He stood up, as did his companion. I got up too. Almost over. Soon I could lie down again. “If you want to know a great hangover cure, I recommend—”

  “No thank you. If you so much as mention raw eggs or oysters, I might puke on you in self-defence.”

  “Fair enough.” In the doorway, he stopped. “Just one more thing. Can you come by at three this afternoon to take part in a line up?”

  “In a what?”

  “An identity parade?”

  “You want me to pick out the shooters? You’ve got some suspects?” If he did, what was all that stuff earlier about mug-shots and artists?

  “No, no. We need you to be in the line-up so our witness can confirm it was really you they saw at Annings house.”

  I stared at him, stunned, as the implications of what he had said sank in. “You still think it was me?”

  He smiled. “We just want to be sure. That’s all. See you at three. Bring your lawyer if you like.”

  * * * *

  I lay in a stupor, feeling awful and fretting anxiously for a couple of hours. For lunch I had some toast and a boiled egg. The eggs were past their ‘best before’ date but the one I had seemed OK. I really needed to get myself together. I needed to do some shopping, take out the rubbish, put the clothes I’d washed twice now into the dryer and, after last night’s excesses, clean the loo. I got as far as shuttling the washing from the front loader to the dryer above it before my anxiety got the better of me and I had to call Terry Marchant.

  “It’s voluntary, you understand?” he said. “Unless they change their minds and decide to arrest you.”

  “So… should I do it?”

  “I’d recommend that you don’t. There’s always a chance this woman is a complete flake and fails to recognise you. That wouldn’t be good.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. I suppose I’ll have to call them.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll do that. It’s always better coming from your lawyer.”

  I hesitated. “I should tell you, I’m not investigating Chelsea’s death any more. As far as I’m concerned, I got what I wanted.”

  “A wise decision. These things are best left to the proper authorities.”

  “Unless they’re trying to frame you for the crime.”

  “Quite.”

  “So… that means I’m not working with Ronnie any more.”

  “Hmmm. So you think that means I should drop your case?”

  “Well, I suppose.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it. I agreed to be your lawyer in this matter – which, it appears, is still very much active – and I’ll see it through to the bitter end. Is that all?”

  I thanked him profusely and immediately returned to fretting again. Had I made the right decision, cancelling the line up? If the witness said I wasn’t the man she saw, I’d be in deep trouble. But if she identified me correctly, even Reid would need to get off my back. The way things were, I was in limbo again. And didn’t it look suspicious, not doing it? And what if the witness would have identified me today, but then they arrested me and made me do it a week or a month from now and she couldn’t remember?

  I needed to get out and do something or I’d drive myself mad second guessing myself. I’d packed up the whiteboard and had all the folders and file cards and all the rest of that now-useless junk in a big plastic bin bag. I grabbed it all up and struggled out to the car with it. It was all going to the op shop. Maybe some schoolkid could make good use of it all.

  I headed out towards Ipswich, thinking I’d get out of the city and spend some time in a quiet, regional town but, part-way there, I remembered how dismal and run-down most regional towns were and turned off the road. I passed through Kenmore, telling myself I’d go and see my mum and dad but I kept on going, winding along country roads until I ended up in a suburb called Karana Downs. This had a little park – Kookaburra Park, according to the sign – and I parked there and got out. It was actually really pretty. The Brisbane River there was broad and slow and opened into a wide pond where a flock of black swans and a couple of pelicans were floating about. The park was deserted and I was very grateful for the peace and solitude. I walked along the water’s edge, at one point disturbing a big brown snake that wriggled away into the rough grass. I found a tree to give me some shade and sat under it, watching the swans, trying to absorb some of their perfect serenity.

  But it wasn’t working. Reid was still on my case, still convinced I was some kind of crazy arrogant killer, thumbing my nose at the ignorant cops, trying to show them how smart I was, still trying to discover how I was doing it. Somehow I’d colluded with Anning to kill Chelsea. Somehow I’d tricked a witness into giving me an alibi for killing Anning. Or, and I supposed this possibility must have been driving Reid crazy, the witness was real but I’d paid those two thugs to shoot Anning and then turned up at the crime scene just to get my supervillain kicks at the cops’ expense.

  The problem with the elaborate conspiracy theory Reid was spinning was the same problem all conspiracy theories had; once you go off down that rabbit hole, any and all evidence can be twisted to fit the theory. I could tell that Bertolissio wasn’t buying it but maybe Ronnie was exaggerating her influence over her blinkered boss.

  So where did that leave me?

  Sitting in a park watching the swans, still waiting for the axe to fall.

  And then there was the other thing, the thing I’d got myself stupid drunk to avoid thinking about. My last conversation with Ronnie. I hated to admit it, but Ronnie might just have been right. Until I knew why Chelsea had been murdered, nothing was really over. All my life I would be waiting for the second shoe to drop and it never would. I remembered a story about some great composer or other who, after he’d gone off to bed, heard a friend noodling around on the piano downstairs. The friend played chord progressions but having moved to a point where the final closing cadence should have brought the sequence to a satisfying end, he suddenly stopped and went to bed. The great composer tossed and turned in his bed, every fibre of his musical soul yearning for that final, closing chord. In the end, he had to get out of bed, go down to the piano and play the damned thing.

  Well, Ronnie was right. I’d never have any peace until I went down and played that chord.

  I got up. I took a pace or two back towards the car. Stopped. It was still unfinished, still to be done. I had to get on with it. But what was I going to do? The last few days of being a detective had been an emotional roller-coaster I just didn’t want to get on again. It had been a period of fear and horror, punctuated by the thrills of success and the shame of my own incompetence. I’d pushed a woman into breaking the law for me. I’d looked into the glazed eyes of a dead man. I’d spent a night in a police cell, not knowing if I’d ever be free again. Was finding the truth worth the risk of plunging myself back into all that?

  And where would I even start?

&nbs
p; Ronnie would know.

  No. I’d burned that bridge. If I was doing anything at all, I was doing it alone.

  My phone rang.

  “It’s Kazima. I’ve got those documents ready for you to sign if you’d like to come by the office.”

  “Great,” I said and meant it. I needed something to do that didn’t involve standing in the sun, dithering. “I’ll be right over.”

  “No rush.”

  “Give me twenty minutes.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was more like half an hour before I turned off Coronation Drive, crossed the river, and threaded the streets to the office. The visitor’s parking space was full so I had to block some people in by parking behind them. No-one is going to complain, I told myself, feeling guilty. I’m the boss now. The whole car park is mine – well, sixty-two per cent of it, anyway.

  Kazima waved me over from her office when I arrived. Karen spotted me as I walked across the room and I thought she looked worried to see me there. I gave her a smile but walked on. There was a man in the office with Kazima, a tall, cadaverous creature in a grey suit. She introduced him as Tony Longman, the company lawyer and I tried not to grin. At least his name would be easy to remember. Longman was as dry and humourless as he looked. We got straight down to business. He showed me several multi-page documents with little plastic “sign here” tags helpfully stuck to the pages.

  “Can we really do this before Stacey’s appeal is heard?” I asked. I then had to explain that Stacey had threatened to challenge the will.

  “She hasn’t lodged any challenge,” Kazima said. “As executor, I would know. I see no point in waiting, just in case.”

  “She really has no grounds that I can see,” Longman said. “Being upset is not something the courts consider sufficient.” I think that was his idea of a joke. He handed me the documents firmly with a “stop messing about and get on with it” air.

  I started turning pages. He urged me to read them carefully and I made a show of at least skimming them as I flicked through, scribbling my name with the lacquered, Parker ballpoint he handed me for the job. It took about five minutes. After that, Kazima signed some things. Then he took his pen back and witnessed the documents. It seemed too easy. In just a few minutes, with just a few strokes of the pen, I’d taken ownership of Chelsea’s company, given a chunk of it to Kazima, and become the owner of Chelsea’s unit, her car and the contents of her bank account. You’d think I might have been elated but I wasn’t. After Longman left, I tried to explain to Kazima my feeling of having got the prize by cheating.