Shoot Through

by J. M. Green

  ‘Less time in the morning.’

  ‘Like you need a practical reason.’

  Her bare shoulders shrugged lightly with an in-breath.

  ‘Now,’ I lifted the cocktail menu. ‘Where’s the booze?’

  ‘I’ve ordered two martinis.’

  ‘God bless you.’ I dropped the list, placed the sunglasses in their case, and switched my phone to vibrate.

  We remarked on the things of the day, the coming election, the heat, the latest madness from leaders in the UK and the US. Our locally made insanity was inferior, less flamboyant, just as egregious, myopic, lacking in courage, and delivered with the usual banality. Battles for seats, power, and money were all conducted with typical moral illiteracy.

  This was grist for our mill, but I was aware that both of us were uneasy. The martinis were consumed. That helped. But Phuong, who was almost never on edge, continued to fidget.

  ‘I’ve taken up rock climbing,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Sounds dangerous.’ But that was, of course, the point.

  ‘No, it’s fun. A good workout. I go to Rock With You, an indoor place in the city, but I’m going to scale a genuine rock soon.’

  Today, a new challenge. Next week, she’s broken the international record for backwards blind-folded rock-jogging. I said encouraging things, as always, though I sensed this information was merely basecamp for a much higher topic. One she seemed hesitant to mention. And her nervousness made me nervous.

  She inhaled, paused, exhaled and said, ‘Um.’

  I waited.

  She straightened her posture. ‘That raid on that bikie house last year, remember? You and I and the crazy bikie woman with the AK-47, and then soggies arrived —’

  ‘Of course I remember.’

  ‘When she gave her statement …’ She paused again.

  I sensed danger. We were straying close to the fund. I tipped my martini glass, missed my mouth, and spilled the precious alcohol down my front. ‘She what?’

  ‘Well, it seems … That is to say, she said …’

  ‘Said what?’ My mouth was becoming dry. I needed moisture. I poured some tap water into the cocktail glass. I took a sip of the water. This wouldn’t do. I nonchalantly raised my arm to wave to a waiter for two more martinis. In the process, I smacked a passing woman in the face.

  ‘Watch what you’re doing,’ she snarled.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Phuong ignored the exchange. ‘So we didn’t pay much attention. Then we had corroborating, that is, matching versions of … And now we’re reasonably confident …’

  ‘Jeez, Phuong, confident of what?’

  ‘A very large sum of cash was stored at the site and is now unaccounted for.’

  I tried to scoff, but only coughed. ‘Based on the word of bikies? They’re all liars.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She pulled an olive off the toothpick with her teeth and chewed. The pause was a tactic to make me talk. It nearly worked. I was nervous as hell. I could barely sip the water.

  ‘It’s funny because several sources say the same thing. They’re so outraged, calling it theft and unethical and all that.’

  ‘Probably one of the bikies took it.’

  A petite shrug. ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  She looked at me almost sadly. ‘I have an idea.’

  I could feel warmth on my face.

  The woman I slapped was pointing me out to her friends, and they shrieked with laughter.

  ‘An idea?’ I muttered. ‘You mean evidence. Fingerprints or something.’

  ‘Not fingerprints. Other indicators: signs of a break-in at the house, and two witnesses reported seeing a woman at the house the day before the raid. Mid-forties, long dark hair.’

  I nodded rapidly. ‘A bikie moll.’

  ‘Said she was a real-estate agent, that her name was Marion Cunningham.’

  I laughed way too loudly.

  ‘There’s no registered estate agent in Victoria with that name.’

  ‘Round up all the Happy Days fans!’ I said.

  Two fresh martinis appeared. I snatched mine up and drank half. Phuong stared at me. I felt a chill, colder than the vodka in my glass.

  ‘We have a hair from the scene. That is a real breakthrough. It’s gone to forensics for analysis.

  ‘A hair? Big deal. Hairs are everywhere.’

  ‘It was found in the secret underground location where the money was stashed.’

  ‘Can I just ask something? Why do you guys even care? I mean, it’s crime money, not the money of some upstanding citizen.’

  Her gaze turned away, and I breathed with relief. I gnawed my olive and watched her for a change. I’d known her for twenty years, and she was as ageless as ever, with that unreadable Sphinx vibe. She turned back to me, her expression resolute.

  ‘When can you provide a hair sample?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘To rule you out.’

  ‘Right. Oh, any time. Soon. I’m busy this week. And next week. Maybe the week after?’

  I finished my drink, managed not to spill any. ‘Well, it was great catching up, Phuong, but I have to go.’

  She frowned. ‘It’s so early.’

  ‘I know, but I have a house guest, and she’s a real pain in the arse.’ It was the most truthful thing I’d said all evening.

  ‘Family?’

  ‘Sort of,’ I said, avoiding her gaze. She had terrifying powers of truth extraction. I had to leave before I made a full confession. How would that help? Phuong would have to arrest me, and, frankly, that would be really awkward. Honestly, I was doing her a favour.

  ‘Loretta!’ I yelled as I entered the flat. ‘I need one of your hairs.’

  No response. I checked the bedroom, the bathroom, the couch. The flat was empty. Perhaps she and Nigel had skipped town. I could live with that.

  I kicked off my shoes, poured myself a white wine, and stared at the wall — the only wall that wasn’t closing in on me. I felt under attack from all angles. Percy-bloody-Brash and his tick-tock text could get in the bloody bin. Phuong and the hair. I had to be careful with that. I understood now that taking the money had put my best friend in a difficult position. If she had any suspicions about me, then she’d raised the hair as forewarning — and that was not proper procedure. Procedure was a warrant and the hair in an evidence bag on the spot. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected. And consequently, conflict now existed between her loyalty to her job and her loyalty to our friendship. Nice one, Hardy, you idiot.

  I needed to work through every one of these complications methodically.

  First, the hair. Surely fudging hair evidence wasn’t difficult. Loretta had hair. If her DNA wasn’t on a police database somewhere, the matter would be shelved. The bikies would stop crying. Phuong would move on. Everything would go back to normal. Sorted. Good.

  Now the Brash dilemma. Could I solve the thing in a week? Maybe. I reached under the magazines for Joe Phelan’s phone. It was charged and ready and, mercifully, Joe did not have a passcode. First impression: the phone was light-on app-wise. No games, no social media, only the bare necessities. The message inbox contained only three text messages, exchanged with a single unnamed contact. The first exchange was two months ago.

  Phone (Joe): lovage seed x 110 pks

  Response: yes

  The second exchange was a month later.

  Phone: parsley x same?

  Response: y

  And the third was three weeks ago.

  Phone: lovage and basil?

  Response: orders cancelled. supply ceased.

  On the face of it, Joe had been ordering seeds. This he might have done through prison channels, since his herb business was sanctioned. Clearly, the herbs were a code for other goods. I used my phone to google
the number, not expecting much. To my surprise, I got a match. An IT company called ‘The Best Bits’.

  I called the number, and it went to voicemail: ‘Best Bits is currently unavailable. Leave your details and the nature of your IT snafu, and we’ll be in touch.’

  I ended the call without speaking. I was about to put my phone away, when I remembered the photos I’d taken at AGP Shed 2. The photo I’d optimistically snapped of the email from Al Coleman — Enrique darling, we’re all set and ready to go here — was a whole lot of nothing.

  I swiped through my photos from the AGP shed office and studied a series of invoices. They were billed to Corrections Victoria, marked Attention of Enrique Nunzio. Most were for boring farm supplies: feed, vet services, fuel. There was a bill for cattle haulage valued at fifty thousand dollars. And a bill from a company called BlackTack for consultancy for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That was expensive consulting. Actually, no. Consultants charged like wounded bulls.

  I hated using my phone for research. Phones were great for a quick fact check — but for intense reading of long passages? Not when my eyes weren’t getting any younger, and phone-neck was becoming an epidemic. A proper ergonomic desk with a proper computer monitor was preferable. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait until I was at the office. Consequently, my phone told me that BlackTack, according to the website, was a problem-solving company, emphasising discretion and confidentiality. Former elite intelligence units offer tailor-made solutions to business challenges. What kind of business challenge — at a low-security prison farm — required the services of ex-intelligence operatives? Enrique Nunzio, architect of a state-of-the-art agri-tech program, had paid them a lazy one hundred and fifty thousand bucks. Business challenges requiring that kind of money for the services of elite operatives were at the extreme end of the scale.

  A weird nervy sensation came over me — call it fear or paranoia or white cold terror — and I deleted the photos. I couldn’t say exactly whom or what I feared, but these days you can’t be too careful. All I had to do was find out who murdered Joe. Any corruption, any scams, all the rest of it, that was none of my business. I needed to distract myself, and eating was by far the best diversion.

  The night was not exactly young, more middle-aged, but with great skin and a positive attitude. So I rang Brophy to see if he’d eaten. He had, with Marigold, at Subway. I felt sorry for him — the things parents had to do.

  ‘Come over anyway,’ Brophy said, sounding a little desperate. ‘We’re watching The Bachelor. I’ll make you a cheese toastie.’

  ‘Tempting, but no. You and Marigold enjoy some quality time together,’ I said. ‘We’ll cheese toastie another day.’

  Tonight’s dinner would be solo. I scanned the cupboards to see what I could come up with. I came up with nachos delivered to my door at the tap of my phone. While I waited, I remembered to check Kylie’s paperwork. When Ben was involved, you couldn’t be too careful. Just as he’d said, he’d initialled every page. What a noob. With any luck, it wouldn’t void the contract. Thankfully, his babyish signature in full was also in the right place. At least Kylie’s ridiculous paperwork was off my to-do list.

  A scrap of paper was wedged into the contract, and as I detached everything from the clipboard, it fell to the carpet. Ben had written one word on it: DUFF!!!

  Duff? Or D-U-F-F? What on earth was he trying to tell me? Did he mean ‘up the duff’, as in, Loretta was pregnant? That, I already knew. The three exclamation marks were excessive. Surely he didn’t mean the brand of beer on The Simpsons. It was never beneficial to spend mental energy on anything Ben said, or wrote for that matter, so I binned it.

  One hour later, leftover cheesy corn chips were stuck to the cardboard box they’d arrived in and had tasted indistinguishable from, a half-cask of wine had been drunk, and my mood was one of bruised regret. Sure, I regretted the nachos and the wine, that was a given. It was as normal as getting wet in the shower. Order food, regret food. Drink alcohol, regret alcohol. No, this was a rare form of sweeping regret, occurring like a comet or a total eclipse, every few years or so. The regret of my lifelong everything, my nervous curiosity, my sideways distractibility, my drifting plan-less existence. My life was a disaster, the result of folly, greed, and a lack of impulse control. And now, in order to avoid jail, I needed a hair. A hair.

  I was at the point in a regret-a-thon where my thoughts turned once again to running away. I loved the escape fantasy. It held so much promise. It starred me, only slimmer, frolicking on a deserted beach, perhaps holding hands with Brophy. Running solved every problem. Phuong couldn’t send me to jail, Percy Brash couldn’t kill me, and Hardy-family shenanigans would cease to be my concern. A phone call rudely derailed my train of thought. The numbers said it was nearly midnight — I’d been in my head for hours.

  ‘What’sssup, girl,’ I sang, assuming it was Marigold, the only person who would call this late.

  ‘Velvet Stone of The Best Bits, returning your call.’ All business, this curt female voice.

  ‘A bit late, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it? I was working and time got away from me. I regret any inconvenience.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I was up.’

  ‘Right. What can I do for you?’

  I glanced at Joe’s phone. Lovage and basil were code for something. Like a kid at a party holding a tail with a pin, I went in blind but hopeful. ‘I’m looking for some … lovage seeds.’

  ‘Who is this?’ Sudden menace in the voice.

  ‘Samantha Stevens.’ I needed a hook. ‘From Athol Goldwater.’

  ‘You a cop?’

  I was too exhausted to laugh. ‘As if. I’m a friend of Joe’s.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to pick up where Joe Phelan left off.’

  Irritated snort on the line. ‘Ten thousand, and I’ll tell you everything.’

  ‘Dollars?’

  ‘No, lovage seeds.’

  ‘When and where?’

  ‘Be at Rock With You at five tomorrow afternoon.’

  Naturally, the meeting was to be at Phuong’s new favourite place. ‘How will I know you?’

  ‘Lots of tattoos — both sleeves, legs, neck.’

  ‘That doesn’t exactly narrow it down.’

  ‘Shaved head.’

  ‘Still not helping.’

  ‘A pet rat will be on my shoulder.’

  ‘Okay, that’s good,’ I said. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  13

  ROCK WITH You had been easy to find. It was the first two floors of an apartment tower, billed as luxury, modern, serviced. The climbing wall was tall, mostly straight except for random scary slants and was dotted with faux-rock-like objects, onto which mad Saturday-morning urban adventurers were grabbing hold. The wall faced a vast window onto the street, affording witnesses in the building across the road an uninterrupted view of folks plummeting to their death. I’d had a hard time explaining to the woman at the counter that I didn’t want to climb. She wanted me up there, panicking, holding a signed public-liability waiver.

  ‘Sick view out the windows when you’re at the top.’

  Sick indeed.

  I whiled away the minutes waiting for Velvet Stone to drop, thinking about what Loretta had said when she came home last night. She’d taken one look at the phone and pronounced it a dual SIM.

  ‘Some companies offer free texts, some have free calls. If you use a dual SIM, you get both deals. Save heaps, like thirty bucks a month. If you’re on the dole, it all helps.’

  ‘How do you switch between SIMs?’

  Lightning-thumbs tapped, and she’d handed it back to me. ‘Second SIM.’

  It was another phone entirely. I’d checked the phone-call log and messages, but found nothing. It had some apps, though. Tradie tools, mostly, like a spirit level and a laser measure, as well as a weathe
r app, cricket scores, a voice recorder, a clock, notes.

  ‘If you’re not using it, can I have it?’ she’d asked. ‘Better than my shit phone.’

  I thought about it. Her phone was more cracks than screen. I had the Best Bits contact, that was the windfall. ‘We’ll see.’

  She hugged me hard with her bony arms, her protruding belly pressing on my hip.

  ‘Ben says hi.’

  Her face lit up. ‘Did he? What did he say?’

  ‘He asked how you are, and how the baby was. He was very concerned.’

  Loretta beamed, teared up a bit. ‘He’s a keeper,’ she said, heading for my bedroom.

  ‘Where were you tonight?’ I called after her.

  She closed the door.

  Velvet Stone was swinging across the fake rock face like a chimpanzee. As discussed, I knew it was her from the masses of tattoos, the shaved head, and the small grey thing that scampered from her head to her arm. She glanced down and must have seen me wave, because she immediately began to rappel to ground level.

  ‘Samantha Stevens.’

  She looked at me without blinking. ‘Let’s go, Samantha,’ she said. ‘My place is just around the corner.’

  A surprise move. A change of location was not part of the arrangement, but I went along with it, grateful Phuong hadn’t shown up. Hopefully no crazy accomplice was waiting there with a baseball bat. We walked around the corner, away from the buzz of the main city street and into a quiet lane behind the centre. We were walking along a row of red-brick warehouses, possibly the only un-renovated buildings in the city and no doubt marked for demolition. We reached a door at the end of the lane with a faded sign that said, Bell Please Ring, with an arrow pointing to nothing.

  Velvet undid a padlock and moved the door back, the rat sitting still on her shoulder.

  Inside was a squat with a mattress on the floor, a makeshift sink, and a camp stove. A table was spread with monitors and keyboards. Dozens of cables led away from them, no doubt filching power from elsewhere. The windows were painted over, a small lamp the only light source.

  Her unblinking stare remained fixed on me, though her manner was weirdly detached, as if I was a specimen in a jar.