Dark Ink

by Gary Kemble

  ‘And then I thought, maybe he was on drugs – ice or something. Maybe he couldn’t actually feel the pain.’ Harry made a mental note to get Phil to check the toxicology report, even as Sandy shook her head.

  ‘There may have been drugs and there may have been blackmail, but that’s not what this is about. There were notes. Something about a goddess?’

  ‘“I have sinned. I give my life for the Goddess.”’

  ‘They were all blokes. That’s something. You need to go looking at all the badass goddesses out there. Kali. Lilith. Ishtar. Louhi.’ She noted Harry’s distracted expression. ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry – I’ll email you a list.’

  ‘Thanks, Sandy.’

  ‘It could also just be a woman. A woman who has set herself up as a goddess.’

  Harry considered this.

  ‘I’ll keep my ears open, my eyes open,’ Sandy said.

  ‘I’m sorry – I haven’t even asked about you. How is all that going?’

  Sandy laughed. ‘If by “all that” you mean the ghost-whispering – yeah, it’s okay. I think I’ve finally come to accept that I’m always going to be this way. I’ve started doing a bit of “work” for people. But, you know, I’m not making a big deal of it. Trying to keep it low-key. And, you know, it stops me being lonely, right?’

  An awkward pause.

  ‘So, how are things with Bec?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know, I mean, we had a really great date. It was just like old times. Better than old times. But… trying to keep my hopes in check.’

  ‘Be careful.’ Sandy smiled.

  They finished their tea, talking about nothing much. Politics. Whether the Labor Party was going to survive. Harry told Sandy about his karate training. Sandy told Harry about her gardening. By the time they’d finished their tea, Harry was starting to feel almost human again.

  Sandy checked her watch. ‘Well, I’d better get going.’

  ‘What, you didn’t come down here just to see me?’

  ‘I do have a life, Harry. Lunch and a movie with friends.’

  ‘So… the world isn’t going to end just yet?’

  The smile faded on Sandy’s face. ‘No, not just yet. Not with you on the case.’

  CHAPTER 9

  Harry spent the rest of the day cleaning and drinking water and Berocca. His body felt sore, as though he’d run a marathon in between drinking pints of stout. But as far as he could remember, he had only walked from the bar to their seats, and a couple of times to the toilet.

  Around lunchtime he got a text from Dave: How did you pull up this morning?

  Harry grinned and replied: I’ve been up for hours you lazy bastard.

  He flipped open his laptop, expecting to just spend a bit of time dicking around on Facebook. But then he checked his email and saw a message from Johnny, the guy who said he’d been raped by staff at St Therese private school.

  Hello Mr Hendrick

  Thanks very much for looking into this for me.

  I don’t know about meeting. I guess I would have to at some point, but as you can probably understand, that would be a big deal for me. I just need to process it, get my head around it.

  You should go and talk to the groundsman. Shane Packard. He wasn’t involved. I mean, I don’t know that he was involved. He wasn’t one of the ones who… you know… At the time I didn’t think about it, but I’ve thought about it a lot since then. Hard to believe he didn’t know about it. He knew about everything going on in that place.

  I remember the time they took me and a friend of mine in the changing room by the footy field. The place was a mess. After.

  That prick Glengarry, the headmaster, told us to clean it up, but we just grabbed our clothes and ran for it, soon as we could.

  He never mentioned it. Someone must’ve cleaned that shit up.

  Johnny

  Harry sat there for a long time, thinking about that email. Thinking about what Johnny must’ve gone through. Then he googled ‘Shane Packard’ and the school’s name. Found an ‘About us’ page with a grainy black-and-white picture of an oldish man with glasses and a head of shaggy dark hair. Harry made a note to follow it up during the week.

  He was preparing for a quiet night in. He’d scanned through the films on Netflix and decided it might be time to watch The Evil Dead remake. A pizza might be good. His phone buzzed. Lee-Anne Stewart.

  He’s ‘working late’ tonight. Which is funny, because it’s a Saturday. He’s going to leave for his ‘union thing’ from home.

  And then the address.

  ‘Ah shit,’ Harry muttered.

  He rubbed his face, thought about what to do. He hadn’t accepted any money from her. He could just tell her he’d changed his mind. But he didn’t like to let people down, and this could be worth following. He’d kick himself if he saw this story in the Brisbane Mail next month. Which it probably would be – Lee-Anne didn’t seem like a person to be put off easily.

  He texted her back.

  Harry changed, grabbed a box of muesli bars, and headed for the car. He drove through the Saturday night streets. Felt a slight pang as he passed the Paddo Tavern. It wasn’t his scene and, to be honest, he’d never been that into pubs and clubs. But when he saw those places heaving on a Saturday night, he often felt like he was missing out. The people always seemed to be having such a good time and if anything, it made him feel more removed from his peers, more removed from society.

  He snaked around the city, made sure his brain was in gear as he pulled into the winding suburban streets where Lee-Anne and her unionist husband lived. What did he want to get out of this? What would make it worthwhile? An address. From an address he could establish who lived at the house, and whether or not they were a sex worker. Or if the premises was a legal brothel – that would be the most likely outcome. Lee-Anne seemed pretty sure that’s what her husband was getting up to.

  Harry pulled to a stop a few doors from Lee-Anne and Don Clack’s place. He could see the black Mercedes sitting out the front of the house. Life must be looking up for unions, Harry thought. He ripped open a muesli bar and checked the time on his phone. The street was a typical one for this part of the city – tightly packed with refurbished worker’s cottages. Often they’d been raised on their stumps and built in underneath. This was one of the areas of the city that hadn’t gone under in the most recent floods, so building in underneath was still a popular choice to get a bit of extra living space. The Clack place was the grandest on the street. It looked as though at some point they (or the previous owner) had bought the neighbouring properties. This wasn’t a worker’s cottage; it was a full-sized Queenslander painted in heritage colours, with verandahs all the way around, a bifurcated staircase down the front, and lit up like a Christmas tree.

  Harry was about two-thirds through his makeshift dinner when he saw Clack descend the front steps, wearing a long-sleeved shirt tucked into jeans. He looked much like he did on TV and in the papers. Once a big man, a union enforcer in the truest sense of the term, he’d gone to seed – his big frame supported a sizeable paunch. Meaty jowls added a bulldog-like aspect to his face. Glasses perched on his bulbous nose. He climbed into the car.

  Harry expected him to head towards the city, or the southside, where most of the legal brothels were based. Instead, he turned in the opposite direction, away from the city, deeper into the northern suburbs. He drove fast, weaving in and out of traffic, and Harry’s Corolla struggled to keep up. Harry floored the accelerator, urging his car on even though he knew that talking to cars was the preserve of the crazy and the desperate. Maybe I fall into both of those camps right now.

  Eventually Clack pulled off the highway and wound through suburban streets. A poorer area than Harry lived in, but not destitute. The houses were mostly built in the 1980s. Lots of brick. Not much thought put into the architecture. But, much like anywhere in Brisbane, the higher the elevation, the grander the houses. At the top of the hill he pulled up outside a large brick home. It had
a portico out the front and a stone driveway. The property was fronted by a fence of brick pillars and wrought-iron spikes. Clack pulled into the driveway. He pressed a button on the intercom system (another nice eighties touch). Moments later, the gate opened and Clack drove in. The gate closed after him and the front door opened. Harry couldn’t see who opened the door, because the unionist blocked his view.

  Harry pulled over and finished his muesli bar. He noted the address and the time in his notebook. Googled the address just to see if there was anything obvious. It didn’t look like a brothel and he hadn’t heard of one out this way, but then he wasn’t that plugged in to the Brisbane sex work scene. Nothing. Not even an old ad on realestate.com.au. Whoever was living there had been there for a while.

  He wondered if Lee-Anne was the jealous type and had got it wrong. Maybe this was a legitimate union function. Or maybe Clack was using union fees to satisfy a lover, rather than to pay a sex worker. That would still be a good story. He sat for a while, staring at the black gates, tapping his foot against the clutch, thinking. The property line continued up the road, where a big mango tree stood, its boughs drooping over the fence. Harry got out of the car, idea not fully formed in his head. Just going with his instinct.

  Thick curtains were drawn over the front windows. He walked closer to the house, looked up and down the quiet street. Down the road someone had their stereo cranked up. He scanned the property, looking for signs of security cameras or motion sensors. Cameras could be small enough to be invisible, but most people wanted potential intruders to see them, and then move on to an easier target. Harry couldn’t see any. He walked along the street in front of the house, then doubled back in the shadows under the mango tree. He told himself all he wanted to do was watch and wait. If it was a legitimate meeting, there would probably be other people coming too. Harry didn’t want to be seen lurking when they arrived. If they arrived.

  He found a handhold on the tree trunk, then wedged the toe of his boot into a crevice and pulled himself into a fork between two branches. Then up again. He crouched on the branch. The tattoo on the back of his neck itched. He pulled out his phone and took some photos of the car sitting in the driveway. He waited. He wished he’d thought to bring a warm coat and some gloves. When he’d imagined a stakeout, he thought of himself sitting in his car with the heater running, munching on coffee and doughnuts. His stomach rumbled.

  He considered his options. He didn’t really want to leave here without some indication of what was going on inside. Call it his curious journalistic nature. His impatience. Before putting his phone away, he checked the time. Don Clack had been in there just over ten minutes. If it was a sex thing, then he probably had another fifty or so. If it was a legitimate meeting, then that wasn’t going to be over in less than an hour. Why drive all this way, on a Saturday night, for a meeting that was going to last less than an hour?

  Overthinking was something the old Harry used to do. Think and think and think about it, and then do nothing. Repeat for fifteen years. No. Harry edged along one of the biggest boughs that crossed the fence line. He walked with his hands out, like a trapeze artist, squinting through the gloom to watch where he was putting his foot. Above him, something thrashed in the tree. He ducked. One foot slipped off the bough and his hand shot out, grabbing another branch to steady himself. It creaked, but held, and he regained his balance. He peered into the gloom and saw the outline of bat’s wings against the deep green of leaves.

  He squatted again, staring at the house, much closer now. There was a gap in the curtain, but not wide enough to really see anything. It looked like there was a lamp on in the front room. Probably a lounge room. The front windows of the house were surrounded by garden beds. He peered back through the foliage, towards the street, to make sure it was still quiet out there, then dropped to the grass below.

  He crouched, waiting for a sensor light, waiting for a dog to growl through the darkness. Waiting for a voice. When none of these things happened, he rose on the balls of his feet and crept to the front window. Crouching low, he peered through the gap between the curtains. White carpet. A white leather lounge and glass coffee table (more relics of the eighties?). A stained glass lampshade in the corner casting a warm glow over the expensive-looking modern art on the wall.

  No people. But in the middle of the floor, a neatly folded pile of clothes. Jeans. Long-sleeved shirt. Boxers. Next to the pile of clothes, Clack’s black leather shoes, socks stuffed inside them.

  Harry crept along the front of the house to the door. There was glass on either side and Harry risked a peek through one of the panes, but saw only white tiles leading away into the darkness of the hallway through the middle of the house. He could make out harsh white fluorescents to the right, but again, no sign of movement. He looked at the entry area. A couple of pairs of shoes. High heels. Women’s runners. A couple of coats hanging on a rack, both women’s. Outside, just a raffia mat. On a whim, Harry picked it up. But no, that trick didn’t pay off this time. There was just dirt and a dead cockroach. He set it back, and continued around the side of the house.

  He could hear the people next door, cranking the barbecue by the smell of it. His stomach growled again. He heard the familiar sound of someone cracking open a beer as he assessed the head-high gate that blocked his path. It was locked. He could climb it, but there was a high likelihood the people next door would hear or see him, and Harry couldn’t risk that. Besides, he was hungry and thirsty and his urge to keep exploring had withered away.

  Fuck this for a game of soldiers.

  Harry started back for the tree then stopped and looked at Clack’s car. He walked over, casting another glance back at the front door, then peered inside. Clack had left his wallet in the centre console. Harry looked again at the glass panels beside the front door, and again out into the street. He cupped his hands against the glass, peered through. It didn’t look like the car was locked. And if it wasn’t locked, the alarm wouldn’t be armed, right? He wasn’t sure. He’d never owned a car that was worth enough to bother securing.

  He grabbed the car door, said a little prayer, and pulled. The door opened. The interior light went on. No alarm. Harry leant into the car, then saw movement inside the house.

  Shit! He jumped into the car, closed the door behind him and clambered over the to the passenger side, arm flailing for the dome light as he did so. He flipped the switch and it turned off. The outside light went on, flooding the car. He slid further down, heart hammering in this chest.

  Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.

  He was expecting Clack to arrive, looking for his wallet. Of course he’d be looking for his wallet at some point. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Harry should have just run for it. He could have easily got to the shade of the mango tree, beyond the reach of the porch light. He waited for the inevitable. Tried to think of some possible legitimate reason for being in Don Clack’s car. Tried to think how he was going to explain this to Lee-Anne. How he would explain it to the cops.

  Fuck. I’m finished.

  But Clack didn’t arrive. Harry slid up in the seat slightly, being sure to stay in the shadows. He couldn’t see anything through the glare. Then the spotlight turned off. Harry blinked away the after-image, still cursing himself. His legs cramped. Sweat ran down his back despite the chill. Jesus! What are you waiting for?

  As his eyes readjusted to the darkness, he could make out a woman’s form. Tall, shapely. High heels. Stockings and suspenders. A black nightgown that flowed like spider’s silk around her breasts and slim waist. She turned, and he saw the lines running up the back of her stockings. Caught a flash of red from her fingernails as she disappeared back inside the house and closed the door.

  Harry slumped, panting. For a moment, like the spotlight, an after-image of the woman remained imprinted on his retinas. He couldn’t remember why he was in the car. Then it came back to him and he wondered how he could have been so stupid. He grabbed the wallet, opened it. No family photos in this one. Barely any m
oney either. Credit cards – yes. One with Clack’s name on it, and one with the union’s. Harry pulled out his phone and quickly took photos of them, risking putting the dome light back on. He pulled business cards out of the side pocket. If this woman was an escort, she was top shelf, the sort who might have business cards. He flicked through them. ALP. Brisbane Lions. An accountant – Harry took a quick snap of this one. Then he stopped.

  The card was black and shiny, with pink writing: Hunted – Gentlemen’s Club. A phone number scrawled on the back. It took him a moment to remember where he’d seen a card like this before – in Zak Godwin’s wallet. Same handwriting. Most likely the same number. He took a photo and returned the card to the wallet, then placed the wallet back where he’d found it.

  Harry got out of the car, gently closed the door, then headed back into the shadows.

  CHAPTER 10

  Harry sat at the computer, staring at the screen but not seeing it. He was thinking about her. The mystery woman. What connection did she have to Zak Godwin, mirror eater, and what connection does she have with Don Clack, apparent adulterer? With the strip club?

  God, she was gorgeous. He kept seeing her slowly reveal herself through the shadows. Was she a stripper who moonlighted as a sex worker? Wouldn’t be the first time, but it just didn’t feel right. She was too beautiful. If she was a sex worker, like he’d thought the previous evening, she wouldn’t need to work extra hours at a strip club. He looked away from the computer, picked up the business card. Closed his eyes and raised it to his nose. He could still smell the perfume. His heart quickened as he pictured her turning away, revealing the stocking seams drawing lines up the back of her long, shapely legs.

  He opened his eyes, put down the card, rubbed his temples. There was a low buzzing in his ears, and when he closed his eyes the room spun slightly. It was much worse in the weeks after the lightning strike. The doctor said it would get better, and it had – mostly. He was tired, that was all. After getting back to his car, he’d waited for Clack to come out. It took just over an hour. Harry expected him to have a smile on his face, a skip in his step.