There was no point in trying to get back to sleep. There never was, after one of the dreams.
They varied but the effect was always the same. Whether it was the blood and the laughter and the guns, the tiny figure falling from the rock or the clawing hands slipping away into the dark, it didn’t matter; they burned through her like acid and poisoned the whole day ahead.
This time it had been her parents. That had happened before. Fractured images of her father and his bottle, the blur of dark hair and maybe-smiles that was all she had left of her mother. In this dream she had been standing in a burning house – maybe her childhood home but it was hard to tell – as her father poured petrol on the flames and she begged him to stop but the fire didn’t affect him and then through a window unobscured by smoke and flame, her mother watched and Maggie tried to reach her but then the fire built and Maggie was sinking into it but still her father stood clear and determined, pouring that petrol.
In life he had never operated with such determination. His bursts of violence had vanished as soon as they arrived; forgotten the moment he took another swig from that newly opened bottle. Sometimes he asked her where the bruises had come from.
Her mother, for all she knew, might as well have been lurking outside windows, watching and doing nothing to help. Maggie had been maybe five when her mother had slipped out of the door and never come back, escaping her husband’s fists but leaving her daughter to them.
It had been about a year since the decision to try to find her, the decision that sent her father down the stairs and Maggie on the run. So far she had found only trouble. The last solid clue to her mother’s whereabouts had led to a torn-up leg, more fuel for the nightmares and the vague hint that her mother had gone ‘north’. So Maggie had done the same, except ‘north’ could mean just about anywhere and so she had ended up here, pouring drinks and keeping quiet and hoping that the dreams would stop.
For a while, they had. Then Len had walked into Andrew’s bar.
There was a hint of sunrise over the buildings now, a slight touch of red in the pale blue. It was pretty. It looked, to Maggie, like spreading blood.
She went straight to her car that morning, skipping the run that had become a daily ritual once her leg had healed enough for exercise. Her car was parked on a residential street about a ten-minute walk from both her apartment and the bar in either direction.
The car was a station wagon, probably around twenty years old. It was a drab tan colour and fairly battered along either side. Its licence plate was the third Maggie had used – a fake, unregistered.
She didn’t keep much in the car. An old, worn book of maps and a few other odds and ends: rocks and a couple of knives tucked under the front seat, rope, a crowbar and a chisel in the back along with some other spare licence plates. Maggie liked to be prepared. She locked up the car and leaned against it, thinking through the slowly formulating idea. It wasn’t a great one. It couldn’t be without her knowing more about Len. But she had tools at her disposal, and that was a start.
She had breakfast at a small café on the main street, watching families in garish Hawaiian shirts and bathers pass by, the occasional car moving in either direction towards the beach or the nearby city of Cairns.
Generally her days weren’t spent doing much of any use. She’d bought a pile of books – nothing intellectual, pulpy crime novels – and would read them down by the marina, until the first splashes of sunset on the still water and the windows of the boats told her it was time to head to work. On the days when she didn’t work, she might catch a bus to the Daintree rainforest, or even Cairns. A couple of weeks back, she’d got a boat to a small island about an hour off the coast. She’d walked around all of it, relaxed under trees in the centre and had only just caught the last boat back. Not because she’d lost track of time but because part of her genuinely considered staying. Stupid idea. But a nice one.
Much of the rest of her time was spent at the gym. At first it had been purely to gain her strength back, but she soon went beyond that; a new tautness to her already lean body that she liked. Preparation not for anything specific, but preparation all the same.
By the time she arrived at the bar that night, she was no clearer on her plan. Like a scattered jigsaw puzzle, she had a few pieces that fitted together reasonably well, but the key was gaining information. She didn’t ask Andrew about his bandaged nose and pretended not to notice his eyes darting to the door every time he ventured out of his office. She got to work, kept her head down, laughed at Evie’s snide comments about customers and didn’t blink when Len entered, wearing the same suit and smile as the night before. She made his drink before he could try to talk to her and only looked at him when she was sure his back was to her.
She gave it about an hour before, clenching her teeth and moving gingerly, she told Evie she was feeling sick.
‘Are you shitting me?’ she exclaimed. ‘You can’t bail in the middle of service.’
‘It’s a quiet night,’ Maggie said. ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘Andy won’t be happy,’ Evie warned, which seemed to Maggie like projection, especially as Andrew barely reacted when Maggie told him she had to go home. He was leaning against the wall out the back, drawn and distracted. More to keep up appearances than anything, Maggie asked if something was wrong. He didn’t react.
Maggie let herself out through the back door. In minutes she was around the front of the bar. The black car sat in the same place as it had the night before, the bulky figure of the driver again in the front seat, waiting. Len had to be paying well. That told her something. She glanced at her watch. Nine.
She walked fast to her car. She made it there in seven minutes, then got straight in and started the engine. She had dressed in black – dark jeans and a hoodie – just in case.
She drove slowly back towards the bar. She parked well down the road, where she was sure the driver wouldn’t notice her. She could only see the vaguest dark outline of the car, but it was a clear night and she would know when it left. She leaned back in her seat and waited.
It was just after eleven when Len strode out of the bar and got into the back seat. The car pulled away from the curb. Maggie started the engine and followed at a distance. Len’s car remained a dark shape ahead, and that was how it would have to stay for now. Despite the temptation, she didn’t turn off her headlights. Doing so would draw more attention than just an old car trundling along the road.
They drove for about half an hour, away from the tourist-courting centre of Port Douglas, heading towards Cairns. They took one turn then another, down narrower streets fringed with towering fences behind which sat squat, shadowy warehouses. Maggie didn’t know this area. Probably for a good reason.
Because of the distance between them, it took Maggie a moment to realise that Len’s car had stopped. She killed the lights and pulled over. Her heart picked up. She was rusty. If they had noticed that they were being followed, she had just confirmed any suspicions.
Maybe there was movement around the car, but it was hard to tell. After a few minutes, it became obvious that nobody was approaching her. Maggie gave it another ten, then got out, a knife in her belt and a rock in her pocket. She kept low and watched. There was no movement, but a dim light came from near Len’s car.
Keeping to the shadows of trees on the footpath, she moved forward, eyes sweeping the road for any sign of somebody watching. There was nothing. Her heart was getting louder and faster, but she ignored it. She couldn’t control a physical reaction, so there was no point in letting it affect her any more than it absolutely had to.
About a hundred metres from Len’s car, she stopped. It was parked near an open gate in a fence, through which a sloping driveway led down to a large warehouse. Inside the car she could see the driver, alone again. Len must have gone inside. The only light came from the warehouse.
She watched and considered for a moment, looking between the car, the driveway and the warehouse.
She hurried back to her statio
n wagon. She slung the loop of rope over her shoulder, grabbed the crowbar, then moved back towards the warehouse. She wasn’t sure how much time she had. She wasn’t even sure if she should be doing this now. The only thing she knew was that this might not be Len’s destination every night, and she could do something with what she had here.
A couple of vans were parked about five metres away from Len’s car on the opposite side of the road. She ducked behind one and tried to steady her breathing. She looked towards the warehouse again. Light shone from the high windows and under the door.
She took the rock from her pocket, aimed and threw. It hit the back of Len’s car with a clatter that made her wince.
The door opened and the driver, a gun in his hand, stepped out into the night. He was a thickset, towering man. A bodyguard too, then. He looked around, eyes narrowed, then walked towards the back of the car. He came around to the side Maggie was on. He spotted the rock and knelt.
Swiftly and silently, Maggie ran across the road then hefted the crowbar and brought it down hard on the back of his head. He staggered, raised a hand, started to yell, then she hit him again and again until he was down. Maggie ignored the blood as she looked towards the warehouse. No sign of movement. The driver remained still on the ground. He seemed to be breathing.
She walked down towards the door of the warehouse. There were no guards outside; evidently the driver was supposed to suffice. Maggie paused near the door. A low buzz of voices, but nothing discernible. She moved closer then put her ear to the metal.
‘. . . anyway, mate, once the shipment comes in, we’ll be as good as gold. We’ve got people wanting product all over the place.’
‘You hear from Melbourne?’
‘Melbourne is gagging for it, Len. Ever since the Ford shit, they’ve been looking for an edge and they know this could be it.’
Maggie darted back up the slope to the car. The driver remained still on the road; she dragged him onto the footpath, trying not to grunt with exertion. She searched his pocket and found a set of keys. She glanced towards the warehouse again. Nobody was leaving yet.
She got into the car and started the engine. She looked out the window. No movement. She reversed the car, then swung it around and rolled forwards onto the driveway. She applied the handbrake and killed the engine. She stepped out. The wind lifted slightly. The warehouse remained still.
She unscrewed the fuel cap and took the rope from her shoulder. She cut a length of it, then, resisting the urge to check the warehouse again, fed it into the tank. She kept pushing until she held only a couple of centimetres. She pulled it out again. It dripped with petrol.
Letting the rope hang from the tank, she returned to the front of the car and pushed down the handbrake. The car didn’t shift. She took a lighter from her pocket and moved back to the rear. She pushed.
It took a moment before it started to move. As soon as it did, she flicked the lighter on and touched it to the rope. Flame danced and Maggie ran. She ran as the car rolled forward, as the fire raced up the rope, as she heard the collision, the yells, then the familiar rush of ignition and the surge of heat as the car went up in flames and the explosion filled the night.
CHAPTER TWO
For the first few days after, Maggie bought the newspapers and scoured them from top to bottom. There was nothing about a destroyed warehouse or a dead gangster. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. The first night after had seen Andrew watching the door nervously. Maggie, her head down over her work, had kept her eye on the entrance as well, but there was no sign of Len. Whether this was because he was dead, incapacitated or trying to work out who had attacked him, Maggie didn’t much care. Although her preference leaned towards him being dead.
As the week went on and the bar stayed quiet and calm, Maggie felt the undercurrent of tension slowly start to unwind. On the fifth night, sitting on the beach as the cool wind lifted her hair, sipping her beer, she finally felt like she could relax again.
The sixth was Evie’s night off, which always meant she would turn up at the bar with a gang of locals – surfers and casual workers, all around Maggie’s age, bleached blond and speaking in relaxed drawls. That was, when they weren’t laughing at every apparently outrageous joke they threw at each other. Andrew’s bar was hardly their usual scene but Evie got free drinks and could usually swing discounts for the others. They gathered around a couple of tables, buying jugs and telling stories and all the while Maggie went about her work and tried not to pay them much attention.
One of Evie’s surfer friends, Mike, physically almost identical to the rest but a little quieter, had taken to wandering over to the bar in between rounds to order drinks despite the fact that he’d barely touched the ones he’d left at the table. He was good-looking in that stereotypical beachy way, choosing to wear close-fitting shirts that showed off his muscles. His shaggy, salt-thick blond hair sat back from his tanned face and he pretended not to notice Maggie until she neared him. Then he smiled. It was, Maggie conceded to herself, a nice smile.
‘Thought I might get a rum and dry,’ he said.
‘To mix with the beer? You’re brave.’
‘Closer to stupid, but I’ll take it.’
At least it wasn’t Scotch. Maggie poured him the drink. Mike sipped it but didn’t return to the table. Maggie could have played coy and pretended to work. Instead, she waited.
‘What time do you finish?’ Mike asked finally.
Maggie shrugged.
‘There’s a party, a little later on,’ he said. ‘Down at Jamie’s beach house.’
‘Jamie has a beach house?’
‘Jamie’s parents do, and they’re in Ibiza.’
‘Port Douglas not tropical enough?’
‘Guess not.’ Mike drank. ‘So.’
‘So.’
‘You want to come?’
‘Did I miss an invitation?’
‘You’re invited.’
‘Speaking for Jamie?’
‘To be honest, for me.’
He was forward. Relatively. Maggie liked that. He didn’t ask again but just watched her with that slight smile – confident but not cocky. If she told him she wasn’t interested, he would take it with ease and wander back to his friends and that would be it.
‘Alright,’ Maggie said. ‘I’ll come.’
The smile broke into a grin. Mike finished his rum and returned to the table. Maggie watched after him. There was a tingle of something in her stomach, something daring and unfamiliar.
Apart from Evie’s crew, the bar was quiet and before long Andrew, a slight slur to his voice, called for a free round for everyone and told Maggie to knock off. His good mood had lasted, then. Maggie sat next to Evie and drank her beer. Mike was glancing at her from across the table. She didn’t look at him. She gave brief, polite answers to the questions from Evie’s friends and then somebody said they should head to the party and together they moved out into the night. Maggie hung slightly back from the others. Usually, she would go home around now. But then what? She’d lie in that narrow single bed staring at the peeling roof until she fell into a sleep she’d likely be thrown from by nightmares.
The beach house looked like some rich person’s idea of easy seaside living realised by an overpaid interior decorator. There were light-blue curtains and lots of wicker with big windows looking out over the dark mass of the ocean and the sand in front of it. Already the air was thick with music and talking. It didn’t take Maggie long to decide she’d be happier out the front. There were people out here as well, loud and boisterous, but there was fresh air and the sea as well. She leaned against the balcony and watched it as she drank.
‘Bit much?’ Mike asked as he joined her.
She sipped her beer. He asked if she wanted to go for a walk.
She didn’t reply. Just straightened up and moved for the stairs that led down onto the sand.
Together they wandered up the beach, away from the pulsing music. Other houses sat up from the sand, most
ly dark and quiet. The beach usually felt peaceful to Maggie, but not tonight. She didn’t begrudge Evie’s friends their party. She just wished she could enjoy it as much as them.
‘You’re a bit of a mystery, you know,’ Mike said.
‘That so?’
‘Evie reckons you just like to cultivate the taciturn stranger thing,’ Mike said. ‘But that doesn’t seem right.’
Maggie was impressed that he knew the word ‘taciturn’.
‘You can’t be much older than us,’ Mike said. ‘Probably the same age, right? Early twenties? But Evie says you live alone and you don’t talk to anyone. You work and sometimes you hang out in town and that’s it.’
There was a question underscoring everything Mike said, of course. He was throwing out the bait because he was too curious not to, but he didn’t expect a bite and he was okay with it.
Maggie slowed. She looked out at the water.
Mike didn’t say anything but he stopped when she did. He was deliberately not looking at her. But he wanted to. And, Maggie realised, she wanted him to.
He moved a little closer. She turned her head. Caught his eyes. He was nervous.
It would be so easy, really. The right reply. Maybe they would go back to the party, they’d laugh, they’d drink more, then stumble back to someone’s house. Or maybe they would skip the party altogether. If she asked him right now to come back to hers, he wouldn’t hesitate. For all that she was mysterious and ‘taciturn’, Mike had no reason to think she was, in the end, all that different from the rest back at the party. Someone with a story, sure, but someone too young and too real for that story to be anything outside of the ordinary. And she could let him believe that. The likelihood of him learning the truth was slim. For tonight, maybe more than tonight, she could be one of those girls back at the party. She could laugh and drink and take a guy home and do all the normal things.
But she knew she wouldn’t. Because even in the dark he couldn’t miss the scars. She was careful to wear clothes that covered them, but there was no way to do that if this night went the way she was imagining. And while he was probably too decent to say anything about them, he would remember. Then all it would take was somebody asking the right questions and for Mike to think he was doing the right thing and even this tentative quiet would collapse from under her, or else become some lingering snare that would catch her down the road, a marker of where she’d been for anyone who cared to look.
The Inheritance Page 2