In the past, when life became too complex, I moved on. Ran away might be another way of saying it. Ray had made that impossible with his renewed threat to kill Meagan. Why did I give a shit? Perhaps softness was taking a grip as I slipped into my forties.
Where would I go this time? Going back to London wasn’t an option, nor was Boston, Hamburg, or Antigua. Going back is never an option for me, only going on—another new place, another new life with the same old shit and baggage. I was tired of that formula. I wanted to stay.
In this large, cosmopolitan city, I could blend in, make contacts, and have an okay life, as long as I was careful and not too greedy. I’d started to establish that over the previous months and then what happened? Carol bloody Todd, that’s what.
When I boiled it all down, if Carol didn’t exist, I would be where I wanted to be, doing what I wanted to do. I could hang at the bar, make contacts, do an occasional job, screw with Meagan sometimes, and have a good life—a damn good life. Easy Street.
Bloody Carol!
It started to make sense. Brookes would have other jobs he might send my way once I’d proven myself. I still had the book incriminating the Reeds. I could use that if I stayed here. I’d kept that as a trump card, maybe it was time to think about using it. Either trading it with Brookes for something, or maybe try some extortion. Nah; blackmail and extortion are messy. Look where it had got Carol.
Bloody Carol!
As the pieces fell into place, a sense of calm and purpose returned, interwoven with bouts of sleep, whiskey, and cigarettes.
Three days later, Saturday morning, I called her mobile. She answered the phone on the second ring. ‘Morning, Micky. How’re you?’
‘Good. What are you doing today?’
‘Nothing much; are you coming over?’
‘I’m on the boat. It’s a great day for a sail and I need to shake the cobwebs out. Thought I might sail to Pittwater if this wind holds. You want to come?’
‘Sure. Sounds great. Where are you?’
‘Just sailing across the harbour. How about I pick you up at Watson’s Bay.’
‘Half an hour, okay? I need to get dressed and pack some food.’
‘I’ve got food and there’s no hurry, I’ll be another twenty minutes at least. Do you know the old Customs wharf?’
‘I think so. I’ll find it anyway.’
‘You might want to look for parking near Gap Park. It can be a bitch at the weekend. I’ll keep a lookout for you.’
It was a great day for a sail; that much was true.
The wharf in Watson’s Bay was close to The Gap, in Gap Park, a favourite spot for jumpers that couldn’t take any more. An increasingly popular attraction for the terminally morbid.
There was a small, crescent-shaped beach at the northern end of the bay. It was open to the light westerly wind, but there was almost no chop. The anchor dug into tight, white sand and held the bow firmly into the wind. By the time I’d lowered the dinghy into the water, she was there on the end of the wharf, smiling and waving enthusiastically.
‘What have you got in here?’ I said, as she handed me a duffle bag and two plastic bags.
‘Something to eat, something to drink, and something to wear.’
I steadied the dinghy against the wharf as she climbed down the short ladder and sat carefully on the back seat. As I set the oars, she reached out and touched my arm. She’d made her face up, lightly accentuating her lips and eyes.
‘Thanks, Micky. Thanks for calling me. I’ve never sailed before. I’m really looking forward to it. How long will it take?’
‘Not long. It’ll be over before you know it.’
She hung on to the sides of the boat as I rowed steadily until we were alongside. After climbing aboard, she reached over and took the bags.
‘So this is the famous yacht,’ she said looking around. ‘I’ve been waiting for an invite.’
‘Not famous, and her name is ‘Nina’.’
‘Named after someone?’
‘No,’ I said with a snort, ‘I just liked the name. Put your bags in the saloon.’
She went below. I started getting the dinghy on deck for the short passage to Pittwater. It was only a thirty-nautical-mile sail, but with the wind in the west, it would be choppy when we turned at Barrenjoey to enter Broken Bay. Everything else was ready to go, so once I had the dinghy lashed to the foredeck, I started the engine, raised the anchor, and motored away from the bay.
‘So you’ve never sailed before?’ I asked as we cleared the northern arm of the bay.
‘No. Not sailed; I’ve been on a sailboat on the harbour a couple of times, but not with the sails up. Is there anything I need to know?’
‘Just relax, and enjoy the ride.’
After turning the bow into the wind, I raised the mainsail and turned towards North Head. The main filled with the twelve to fifteen knot westerly and Nina leaned over a few degrees to starboard. With the genoa unfurled, she leaned a little further and started romping along. The motion changed when I eased the gearshift into neutral, and when the engine stopped we were left with the soothing sound of the bow slicing through the waves and the water chuckling along the hull.
‘This is lovely,’ Carol said when I engaged the autopilot and sat beside her at the forward end of the cockpit. She looked genuinely happy, excited even.
‘Not bad, eh?’
We sailed past North Head and into the Tasman Sea. The motion changed as the long ocean swell gently lifted and fell. When we were a mile offshore, I changed course to almost due north and tightened the sheets a couple of turns. We were close reaching in relatively calm seas, making eight knots: Sailing at its best. Carol was loving it. When a small school of flying fish broke the surface and glided, she whooped and called out to them like a happy child. Her cheeks were red with excitement, her eyes bright, and her hair blown wild by the wind. I’d never seen her look so good, so sexy and feminine. I turned my mind from those thoughts.
Four hours after departing Watson’s Bay, we rounded the Barrenjoey lighthouse at the northern end of Pittwater. It occurred to me that the last time we were here, Carol murdered a nasty lawyer and there was a fire not long after we left. I pushed those thoughts away too.
The wind had eased to a light breeze. We motored the last couple of miles into Palm Beach, where we anchored in six metres of clear water. We were both salty from wind-blown spray. We changed into shorts, and a T-shirt for Carol, and plunged in.
It felt good to swim again. The water was chilly and we were soon back in the cockpit, scrubbing our bodies dry and waiting for the coffee to boil.
Carol had discovered the binoculars. She was busy checking out the shoreline and people on other boats.
‘There’s a chippy just two doors from the bar. How good is that?’
‘Outstanding, but how about we just hang on the boat for the night. I wouldn’t mind a night away from a bar, if that’s okay with you.’
‘Oh. Are we staying the night?’
‘Of course. We’d have to sail into Sydney in the dark if we headed back this evening. Wouldn’t you like to wake up surrounded by all of this?’ I splayed my arms to encompass the bay and beaches.
‘I’d love that. Brilliant!’ She gave me an impromptu hug, letting her lips brush my cheek as she moved away.
As always, Carol was hungry, so we ate early in the shade of the cockpit awning. I pushed back the pervading thoughts and tried to enjoy the evening. She was wearing a loosely tied sarong, and was being both entertaining and alluring.
When I suggested a round of poker or rummy, she agreed enthusiastically, asking if I wanted to split the proceeds of Bateke Road right then, so that we had real money to lay down.
‘You’ve got it with you?’ I asked, trying to hide my surprise.
‘Of course: I didn’t want to leave it at home. Some bloody criminal might break-in. There’s a lot of that happening lately.’
‘Bastards, every one of them.’ I tried to read her fa
ce, not knowing if she was serious or not. It was impossible to know. She wore a subtle grin and looked out at me from under lowered eyes.
‘Wanna see it? Wanna feel it? Wanna slide your fingers through it?’
Before I could answer, she scurried below, retuning with the duffle bag.
‘I thought you said that was for clothes.’
‘You don’t like me in this,’ she said, smoothing the sarong down her front and pushing her chest forward.
‘Show me what’s in the bag?’
She reached into a side pocket, pulled out the case she’d found in the safe, and said in a low, smoky voice, ‘Put these on for me, Micky. I can never wear them in public, but I want to feel them rolling against my skin tonight.’
She handed me the case and turned to make it easy for me to snap the clasp. When she felt the weight of the triple loop of pearls on the back of her neck, she turned back to face me. The effect was more dramatic than I expected. She looked stunning.
‘Well?’
‘They suit you.’ I didn’t know what else to say, other than they were hard, multi-layered and sexy like her. She was waiting for more, but when it didn’t come, she pushed a smile into her eyes and dipped into the bag again. She removed three wrapped parcels and laid them on the cockpit table, arranging one in front of me, one in front of her, and a third, smaller one in the middle.
She pointed to them in turn and said, ‘Yours, mine, and the slush fund.’
I picked up the Christmas paper pack in front to me, admired the bow and the tinsel star, then pulled the narrow ribbon and peeled it.
‘Three stacks of fifty thousand,’ she said proudly. ‘Same for me, and there’s forty-eight thou in the slush fund.’
All I could think of to say was to ask where she’d found Christmas paper in the middle of May, so said nothing for a while, and then asked, ‘Anything else in that bag I need to know about?’
‘Not unless you want to check out my spare undies.’
I said nothing about her not wearing any, which made spares seem pointless. I went below and retrieved a pack of playing cards. When I sat at the cockpit table and started shuffling them, she said, ‘Are we playing for keeps?’
I continued shuffling and cutting the deck as I looked up at her. ‘I always play for keeps, sister.’
Her eyes narrowed and brightened. There was something tearing through her mind that amused her, but she wasn’t saying what. She slowly and deliberately pulled the ribbon on her own pack, carefully unwrapped it, and drew out one stack.
I dealt a hand.
She won that first play with three tens against my pair of queens. Five hundred slid across the table beneath her lightly spread fingers and glowing eyes.
She won the next hand too, and the one after that. I was down two and a half thou, but it meant nothing.
Two hours later, I was down ten thousand and a half-bottle of Jameson. We were both a little drunk and she was getting giggly and slurring her words. Poker deteriorated into snap, then into 52 card pickup as she tossed them and her winnings into the air. A couple of bills ended up in the water, and in her semi-drunken state, she followed in a rescue mission before I could stop her.
It would have been so easy. She was flailing in the water. I could jump in and land on her, breaking her neck or winding her so badly she’d drown. Just one jump and she’d be gone. I could raise the alarm in the morning; say she went missing during the night. I looked down at her. Her movements were smooth, lithe, and sexy as hell. They’d find her stiff, naked body downstream, drowned with a high blood/alcohol level. Open and shut case. Easy, Micky.
She gripped the wet hundred-dollar bills between her lips as she climbed up the boarding ladder on the transom. The sarong had slipped to her waist. She pulled the knot and let it fall to the aft deck. The moonlight painted her wet body in shades of silver and grey as she took one of the towels and patted at the rivulets of water running from her hair and sliding down her chest and stomach. It was a show and she was a practiced, first-class performer. The towel ended up on the deck with the sarong as she walked towards me wearing only pearls, the two bills still held lightly between her lips. Her face closed with mine, her lips parted, the bills fell to the deck.
Refuge Bay
A slight rocking woke me just before dawn. Water slapped the transom and the fading sound of an engine slid in through the open hatch above the bunk.
Carol was still asleep, but stirred when I rolled out of bed. I told her to go back to sleep, that it was still early. She mumbled incoherently, curled up, and pulled the corner of the sheet over her shoulder.
There were playing cards and money strewn across the cockpit floor, glasses and an empty bottle on the table amidst piles of cash and the still wrapped slush fund. I put the cash away, picked up the cards, and cleared the glasses before putting the percolator on the stove.
The clock struck four bells: six o’clock. The light breeze had died away to nothing during the night. The sounds of early morning life drifted across from the shore. I was glad of the time alone as I sat and gazed out at whatever held my eye for a few seconds before moving on to the next. Dogs barked and joggers jogged. Optimistic fishermen were launching their runabouts for an early assault against the fish of Broken Bay.
Something on the side deck caught my eye. I looked over the coaming, and the knave of hearts stared accusingly back at me. I hard-eyed him.
‘What the fuck are you looking at, loser?’
‘I thought I could smell coffee.’ The words were sluggish, but still startled me. ‘What time is it?’
I groped for any lame excuse for sitting there cursing a playing card, but nothing came. ‘Early.’
‘Who are you talking to?’ She tried to stifle a wide yawn, sat opposite me, stretched, and sat staring glassy-eyed across the still water.
I scooped the card and went below.
Five minutes later, I came back up to the cockpit with two mugs of strong coffee. She wasn’t there. I looked forward, thinking she must have gone to the bow and was waiting on the foredeck. She wasn’t there. I checked in the water around both sides, figuring she must have taken a quick wake-up swim. She wasn’t there either. Then I noticed the hatch above the bed in the aft-cabin was open. She’d curled up in bed again, dead to the world—but not dead enough for Brookes.
It was close to eleven when she finally woke for real. She looked pink and well rested as she sat opposite me dressed in t-shirt and shorts.
While she’d been sleeping, I’d been going over the plan, looking for holes and tripwires. It was low risk. The cops would question me as a known associate, but that was going to happen whatever occurred.
We had some brunch at the cockpit table, watching and commenting on the stream of boats coming and going. She seemed to be interested in it all, asking questions about why some boats are a particular shape, and why some can go much faster. She was in good spirits, and mine reluctantly lifted to meet them. Before I realised it, the clock struck four bells. She asked about that as well, wanting to know how and why ships used the system of bells.
‘So,’ she said after I’d explained, ‘that makes it—two o’clock?’
‘And time we set off to Sydney.’
‘Couldn’t we stay another night? Last night was so much fun. I’d forgotten what it’s like to laugh and play and ....’
Her words trailed off and she looked down. For a moment, I felt sorry for her. I saw another woman sitting there—a normal, vulnerable, and unfulfilled woman reaching middle age, frightened of a cold and lonely future. I felt like telling her not to worry, but that would spoil the surprise.
‘Or do you have to get back to Frankie’s?’
‘No.’ I said, trying to shake off dark thoughts and sympathy.
‘No, you don’t have to get back, or no, we can’t stay another night.’
She had the pouty lips again, the sad, take-me-to-bed-and-make-it-better eyes.
I caved in. ‘Sure, sure we can stay, but let�
��s move away from all these people. There’s a secluded bay down the other arm where we can be alone.’
She beamed a wide smile at me, squeezed my hand, and said, ‘Thanks, Micky. This is such a treat, to be away from everything: makes me feel really—alive.’ She squeezed my fingers, let them slide through hers and fall away. ‘Shall I put these plates away now and clear up the galley?’
‘Just put them in the sink. We’ll motor around there. The wind’s too fickle round the headland for easy sailing.’
‘How far is it?’
‘Six or seven miles. About an hour.’
She got up, cupped the nape of my neck in her left hand, and kissed my forehead. ‘Thanks for bringing me here, Micky.’
She piled plates and dishes, tucked a pepper mill under her arm, and descended the companionway steps. ‘Coffee?’ she called out from below.
‘Sure. You know how to use that primitive percolator?’
Her laughter rippled from the companionway. ‘I still have one of these things somewhere too. Just don’t use it any more since I got the deLonghi.’
What the fuck was I about to do?
I started preparing to leave as she tidied and made coffee. By the time she reappeared, I was behind the wheel, driving slowly forward with my heel operating the anchor winch control. She slotted the mugs into the cup holders forward of the compass binnacle, kneeled on the cockpit seat and leaned against the lifeline, watching the water ripple along the hull.
The sun was high as we motored at seven knots through the flat water. Carol watched the shoreline through binoculars, taking an occasional sip from her mug and commenting on the things she was seeing. I set the autopilot and sat beside her as we headed for West Head, some two miles away.
She handed me a mug. ‘When was the last time you did this?’
I had to think about it before answering. ‘It was in New Zealand: Marlborough Sounds, last October.’
‘Was that as nice as it is here?’
‘Everywhere’s different. Hard to say one’s better. It’s more remote, unpopulated, and the fishing’s great.’
Flank Street Page 16
