She pulled herself together, sniffling. “I think so. The woman with the Italian name. I didn’t pick up. I didn’t know what to say. I don’t want to say I was there in case it implicates me. You and Ronnie were supposed to sort this out. You were supposed to put an end to this. Now what am I going to do? I’m all alone again now.”
I felt sorry for her but Ronnie was a far more urgent problem.
“You have to find out where they took him. They still think you’re with them, right? So you need to find out from them if he’s all right.”
“I can’t! These men are not my friends. We don’t just meet socially and have drinks and stuff. They’re blackmailing me, forcing me to help them. If I upset them too much they... You know what they might do.”
It was frustrating beyond all reason. I wanted to yell at her and force her to help me but, at the same time, I understood her fear and her reluctance to make things worse for herself and her parents. I was marching up and own my motel room, every muscle tense and straining. I wanted to scream and smash things. But I forced myself to calm down enough to speak.
“How did you leave it with them? What did Opperman say?”
“Once they discovered Ronnie, that was the end of it. Kurt told me to go home and wait for his call. He told me not to talk to the police or anyone.”
“All right,” I said, although nothing was even approximately right. “All right. We wait for his call. You let me know the minute you hear something. Will you do that?”
She said she would and I hung up. I started dialling Bertolissio but stopped half-way. She’d just tell me to stay out of it and let her do her job or something. But she ought to know about Ronnie. So I sent her a text explaining that Opperman had him and might have killed him by now. I didn’t go into the details and didn’t mention Debra. The last thing Ronnie needed, if he was still alive, was for Opperman to think Debra was talking to the cops.
No, I had to find Ronnie and I didn’t have much time.
I called an Uber with no plan in mind but, by the time it arrived, I had one. The driver was a big, bubbly woman in her mid-forties who called herself Mimi and, although she was white, had a mass of black dreadlocks tumbling down her back. I told her to take me to Chelsea’s office.
“Mimi,” I said, as we drove along. “How much do you make in a day?”
“Good day or bad day?”
“Good day.”
“Including tips?”
“Including everything.”
“Before or after the company takes its cut?”
“Please, just tell me.”
She thought for a moment. “One day, last Christmas, I made over four hundred bucks. It was a twelve hour shift, mind but, you know, you get it while the going’s good, hey?”
It didn’t seem much for such a long day’s work but it was a lot more than I’d ever earned doing gig work. I was relieved she hadn’t said it was more.
“I’ll give you twelve hundred if you’ll be my driver for the rest of the day.” Three times a good day’s pay seemed like it should buy me an eager and willing driver. Yet she didn’t seem hugely impressed with her good fortune.
“What’s the end of the day? Nightfall? Midnight?”
“Midnight.”
“I’ll need breaks.”
“I’ll be reasonable. Meals are on me.”
“You know you could hire a self-drive car for the day for a couple of hundred? Nice one, too.”
“Do we have a deal?”
“You doing something illegal?”
“Absolutely not but I might need you to drive fast if I ask you to.”
She shook her head, dreadlocks dancing. “No way. I need a clean licence.”
So, not so eager and willing. “OK, just this trip then and I’ll work something else out.”
She was silent for a minute. I’d just about decided I’d have to rent a car after all, leave a trail for the cops, waste all the time going to a rental place and filling in forms, when she spoke again.
“I know someone.”
“Who?”
“My nephew. He’s not a rideshare driver or anything but he’s got a car and he doesn’t care about his licence. Same deal, hey?”
“Sure. No worries.”
“OK. We’re here.” She pulled up outside the office. “Will you be in there long?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“It doesn’t matter. When you come out, Dicko will be waiting.”
“Dicko?”
“Yeah. My brother married a moron. She named him. But he’s a good boy.”
I pointed to the parking spaces under the office. “Tell him to wait in there.”
So now I was going to be driven around by Mimi’s nephew, Dicko. It might have been something I’d have worried about a few days ago, in that other life I used to lead.
* * * *
Chelsea’s office was already starting to feel familiar. When I walked in, people didn’t stop to stare at me – just glanced my way and carried on. I recognised a couple of faces. Kazima didn’t rush over to greet me. In fact, she was sitting beside a young man at his desk, engrossed in whatever he was showing her. I walked over and they both looked up. Surprised, she jumped to her feet and greeted me with a smile that barely disguised her desire to ask, “What are you doing here?”
“Can we talk?” I asked and she showed me to her office. The name on the desk had been changed, I noticed. She’d also put up a couple of wall hangings – a hide shield and a tribal mask.
“Family heirlooms?” I asked, studying them.
“Nah, tourist junk from the last time I went to visit my family back home.”
As dismissive as this was, I could sense that she was asserting herself. I could hear the confidence in her voice. Her new role had been good for her. It was odd to think that she had been working here, getting the company back on its feet, establishing her leadership, dealing with her loss and building a new life for herself and the people here, while I had been running around in a state of constant fear and confusion, fighting and struggling and sinking deeper into the quicksand. I could almost feel the invisible barrier that had been growing up between my dark life and the bright, normal world around me.
“How can I help you?”
“I need to borrow Karen again.”
She pursed her lips and nodded. “You said it would just be the once.”
“I’m in a hurry, so let me just apologise now and take her.”
Her brows descended over her large, clear eyes. “What’s going on?”
“I have a friend in grave and imminent danger. I need to find him. Karen can help me.”
“You’re still chasing Chelsea’s killer?”
“Yes, I am.”
“But they caught him. I mean, they found him dead. It was Simon Anning. I gave you his name.” Her eyes widened. “You didn’t…?”
“Kill him? No. Not me. But the man who had him killed is the same man who ordered Chelsea’s death.”
Her mouth fell open. She pressed a hand against her chest. “Dear Lord, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to get justice for Chelsea.”
She looked at me with concern in her eyes. “My family fled from wars and violence. I have seen horrible things. I know what evil looks like, what it does. You should not be chasing it. You should be running from it. And you should not be involving that little girl out there.”
“Karen is not a child. She’s old enough to make up her own mind.”
She shook her head, rejecting my premise. “From a position of ignorance, no-one can make a good choice.”
“Tell me about it! I haven’t had the luxury of enough information since this all started. But I also don’t have the luxury of doing nothing. A friend of mine is in trouble. Serious trouble. They might kill him. They are definitely torturing him. If I don’t—”
My phone rang. I snatched it out of my pocket, thinking it must be Debra. But it wasn’t, the number was Ronnie’s.
“Ronnie?”
“Well, if it isn’t Luke fucking Skywalker.”
I didn’t know the voice but I knew who it was. “Opperman!”
“Listen, my young Jedi, I’ve got your old Obi Wan here, mate.” I heard a roar in the background but, if it was Ronnie, he was gagged. Opperman laughed. “Fuck me but the Force is strong with that old cunt. What do you feed him on? Tell you what, you know that old gag about his blood being worth bottling? Well, I could arrange that. What do you reckon?”
“I don’t – What do you mean?” There was a racket in the background. In my mind’s eye, it was Ronnie trying to shout something and someone else beating the crap out of him. Whatever, Opperman was saying, I couldn’t concentrate on it.
“What you mean, little Lukie, is ‘What do you want?’ Go on, ask me.”
My stomach felt like it was full of ice. “What do you want?”
“Nothing. Well, nothing much. All I want is for you to keep your fucking trap shut and keep your nose out of my business for the next nine days. That’s not much, is it? And, in return, I won’t kill Obi Wan, here. But I’ll hang onto him, hey? Put him up somewhere nice, see to his every need, keep him comfy. What’s he like best, boys or girls? Never mind, I’ll ask him. So, are we all square, Padawan? You’re going to be a good little soldier, hey? Because, if you’re not, if I get a sniff of the cops or any more fucking snooping about from you, the old geezer is going to be taking a swim with an engine block tied round his wrinkly old neck.”
“I understand.”
“I hope you fucking do.”
The line went dead. For what must have been ages, I just stood there with my phone in my hand staring at the wall. I know what evil looks like, what it does. You should not be chasing it. You should be running from it.
“Who was that?” Kazima asked. She sounded worried.
“A Star Wars fan.”
“Luke?”
I snapped out of it and turned to face her. I noticed her eyes widen a little as if she’d seen something shocking in my face.
“So, can I borrow Karen for a while? No-one will know she was involved.”
She studied me for a long, long time. “If you can persuade her,” she said, at last. I set off at once but she caught my arm as I passed. “You keep her safe. Do you hear me?”
“Of course,” I said. I could see Karen at her desk, so pretty and delicate. She was looking back at me. “She’ll be all right.”
I walked out into the open plan area. Karen was still watching me. I tilted my head towards the door and went out. A moment later, she joined me.
“You want me to do something else,” she said. I nodded. “It’s just like before, at home. First one little thing, then another, then another.”
“I’m not trying to rip anybody off, or hurt anybody. I just need you to help me find a friend who is in grave danger.”
“How?”
“I – I don’t know. I thought you might be able to find his phone.” I realised she had brought her oversized laptop out with her. “You don’t have to do this. You can say no.”
She looked at me stone-faced. “Even though you’re my boss?”
I was appalled. “I own the company. I don’t own you. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.” She just kept on looking at me with the same blank expression. After a while, she looked away. “My friend’s life is in danger. He was helping me find the man who ordered Chelsea’s murder. Now they’ve got him and they’re holding him to force me to stop looking into it.”
She looked at me sharply. “So why don’t you stop, then?”
“Because I don’t trust them. I think they’ll kill him anyway. And maybe me too. And… another person who’s involved.”
“And what about me?”
“No-one knows you have anything to do with this.”
“Maybe,” she said.
It hadn’t occurred to me that they could possibly know but she was right, there were ways. The Brisbane tech community wasn’t that large. All it would take was an arrogant prick like that database guy I called to tell someone at Archerfield or The Brizvegas Games Factory that Karen had been doing secret jobs for me and Opperman might get to hear about it. Then she’d be a target, too.
“All right. It was a stupid idea. I’m sorry.” I put my hands up in a gesture of capitulation and started to leave.
“What’s his number?” she asked. I stopped dead. “Does he have location services turned on?”
“I really don’t think...”
“I’ll need somewhere to work.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Aren’t we going back to your apartment?”
“The bad guys burned it down.”
“Oh my god! Was anybody hurt?”
I blinked at her. I hadn’t even asked. Fortunately, I was spared the embarrassment of a confession by Dicko, who called back from the driver’s seat, “Here we are, mate.”
Mimi’s nephew, the reckless driver, turned out to be a skinny bloke in boardies and a mullet hairdo, barely old enough to have grown a little facial fuzz and a bunch of zits. Perhaps to compensate, his car was an ancient Holden Torana, painted in bright yellow and red. From the noise it made, I’d say its exhaust needed replacing. And from the smell of the interior, I’d say new upholstery and carpets wouldn’t have hurt either. Karen had looked rather distressed when we found it in the office car park, but not quite as distressed as I had been.
“Bright, isn’t it?” I said, when Dicko proudly showed it to me.
“Chicks dig that,” he told me, with a broad wink and a nod towards Karen.
Of all the “chicks” in the world who were unlikely to “dig” that dayglo monstrosity, I’d have put the tasteful and refined Karen close to the top of the list.
We pulled into the car park of a small hotel in Highgate Hill. We left Dicko in the car and went inside to the bar. We got a couple of soft drinks and went out to sit beside a small pool. I waited while Karen checked that the wi-fi was OK and, when she gave me the nod, went back in to order some food. Karen was sitting back, sipping her drink when I returned. I felt a little irritated that she wasn’t hard at work but I tried not to show it, forcing myself to remember she was doing me a big favour.
“Why don’t you just let the police find your friend?” she asked.
“Because if the cops show up, bad things might happen to him.”
“But what can you do, even if you find him?”
“I really don’t know. But he’s an old man. I can’t let them just torture and kill him without trying to do something.”
She nodded to herself and took another sip. “Very brave, or very foolish.”
“Definitely the latter. I’m scared to death all the time. I thought grief was bad but I didn’t know then what it was like to live with constant, gut-wrenching fear.” I smiled, as if I were joking. “And, of course, the grief doesn’t go away; the fear just insinuates itself into whatever space there is left in your tormented soul.”
“A poet,” she said as if she were remarking that I was right-handed.
“Oh, worse than that; I’m a philosopher.”
She smiled. It was surprisingly impish. “Like Confucius.”
“Only without the wisdom.”
She smiled again. “‘By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.’ I had a rather old-fashioned education. I acquired all my wisdom by imitation.”
Despite everything, I found myself smiling, too, and felt a pang of guilt because of it – and of regret that I couldn’t just sit there in this woman’s pleasant company all day.
“We need to press on,” I said as the food arrived.
“I’ve already tracked your friend’s phone. I know where he is. At least, I know where he was an hour ago.”
The last scraps of my mellow mood were washed away by a wave of irritation. “Then why are we sittin
g around chatting? This is really urgent. I’m not kidding. His life is in danger.”
She nodded. “I believe you. I just wanted to know you a bit better. If I told you and you went and killed someone, that would be on me.”
“More Confucius?” I asked, bitterly.
“Don’t be cross. What if I told you and you went and got yourself killed? That would be on me too.”
“I’m not your responsibility. My decisions are my own to make.”
“And so are mine.”
It was outrageous. I felt my anger building. “Are you saying you won’t tell me?”
She pursed her lips and furrowed her brows. It was very cute, like a child making a very grown-up decision. “No. I will tell you. Just don’t go rushing off like a crazy man. Eat your – what is that?”
“A club sandwich.”
“Eat that, finish your drink, and then go.”
I looked at the sandwich. It might as well have been a pile of sand for all the appeal it had. “I won’t do anything crazy, I promise.”
“No, I think you will. I think maybe you think your friend’s predicament is your fault.”
“It is!”
“He is not your responsibility. His decisions are his own to make.”
“Touché,” I said grudgingly, annoyed to have been so easily hoist by my own petard. “But it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. I need to get him out of this mess, somehow.”
She took a forkful of the salad she’d ordered and chewed on it. She ate with her mouth open, little fragments of green leaves adhering to her teeth. I looked away, oddly disturbed.
“Eat your sandwich,” she said. “A few more minutes won’t hurt.”
“I don’t want it.” Even to myself, it sounded petulant. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
She carried on eating. It was infuriating. “How did you manage to trace him so quickly? I was only gone a couple of minutes.”
She waved a dismissive fork. “There are apps. Besides, with his number I was able to hack into his location history. If you look for his phone, you won’t see it. Someone keeps taking the SIM card out. But his history is all stored in the cloud. They took it out when they got where they were going last night. Then they put it back in to make a call about an hour ago. Then they took it out again. But the location last night and when they made the call were the same, so I assume he’s no longer on the move and he’ll probably still be there when you send the police for him.”
Bright City Deep Shadows Page 23
