by JR Carroll
Teddy got home around five and Elaine still wasn’t there. There was no sign that she’d been around at all during the afternoon. An uneasy feeling was building in him, as if somehow or other she’d cottoned on to his activities of the last two days. He checked the bathroom and her chest of drawers: all intact. Maybe she’d gone to see her mother. But all day? Teddy began to realise that his feeling of disquiet about Elaine stemmed from a guilty conscience, from the knowledge that he deserved to be punished. That made him feel better: it was all in his own head.
At six-thirty she came home. Teddy heard her car pull up and then the door slam shut. He sat in the lounge room watching the news with a can of beer in his hand, perfectly cool and composed. There had been an item about the Pyrenees job, but police had no real leads yet, except photofit descriptions of the two men, one short and the other tall, with balaclavas on. Big deal. They’d found the Marquis in Maryborough, but there was no mention of the 929 in Blackburn. Good. The trail was cold. Goldilocks, whose name Teddy learned was Brett Jennings, aged twenty-six, was still in intensive care, so at least Teddy wasn’t a murderer yet. He heard the rattle of Elaine’s keys in the front door, she came in and his heart gave a flutter. Why? Teddy drank his beer and crushed the can.
‘Hi,’ he called out, relaxed and normal.
No answer came back.
Teddy got up. Elaine was in the kitchen, smoking at the table, elbow cupped in her hand. Elaine didn’t smoke. Teddy walked past her and got another can from the fridge. She didn’t look at him. There were negative signals shooting out from her in all directions. A quick glimpse of her face as he went past had shown her to be tight-mouthed and expressionless. He thought she’d been crying.
‘Hi, I said. What’s on the menu tonight?’
She drew on the cigarette, but didn’t speak.
Teddy drank from his can, leaning on the fridge and looking at her back. She was trembling slightly.
He walked up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. Elaine flinched.
‘What’s wrong, baby?’ he said innocently. ‘Gotcha period? Pain in the old tum tum?’ He couldn’t see her eyes close, the smoke spat from between clenched teeth. But there was no mistaking the mood Elaine was in tonight. What to do? Teddy was on the back foot: he couldn’t keep trying to jolly her along if she was just going to sit there like a block of stone. A man felt pathetic behaving like that.
He tried again: ‘So. How’d you put in the day?’
‘How did you,’ she said quietly, bitterly.
Teddy didn’t hear her properly. ‘What’s that?’
She just shrugged. Then she crushed her cigarette and went out of the house into the back yard among the weeds. Teddy stared after her. What was that she’d said? ‘How did you,’ something like that. Christ. He put the can on the table and followed her outside. He’d better sort this thing out, whatever it was. Teddy had a dreadful feeling that Elaine had reached a crossroads, that she might try to leave him again. That was just not on, as well she knew.
He wandered casually over to where she stood, hands in his pockets. She saw him coming and looked quickly away, but not before Teddy noticed that she was crying.
‘What’s up, honey? Got the blues again?’
No answer. She covered her face with both hands and her shoulders shook.
‘Tell you what. How’d you like a little holiday in Bali or somewhere? Yeah, Bali. You’ve always wanted to go there.’
He came closer and stood alongside her. She didn’t move.
‘I love you, Elaine,’ he said, and put an arm around her waist. ‘Come on, baby. Snap out of it, willya?’
Elaine summoned all her resolve into a single action and whacked him hard: slap! flush on the cheek. The force of the blow stung her hand. Teddy got a tremendous shock: never had she been game enough to raise a hand to him before.
‘Shit!’ he said.
Elaine made to leave, but he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back. She screamed at him to let her go, that she hated, hated, hated, hated him. But Teddy wouldn’t release her; she twisted to free herself and flung her hand in his face again, this time raking skin with her fingernails.
That was it. Teddy snapped her in the mouth.
Not hard, just a jab—but hard enough. Blood burst from her lip and ran down her chin. She brought her hand up and blood ran over it. She held the hand under the chin, catching the drops. A piece of tooth hung on her lip. She spat it into her palm.
Teddy didn’t know what to do. Instinct told him that this was not a time to back down. He felt that he had gained some sort of advantage, asserted himself, taken charge. And after all, she had hit him first.
He pointed a finger at her, legs spread, heart beating fast. Elaine spat and wept.
‘Now settle down, Elaine!’ he said. ‘Settle down!’
But she wouldn’t. She sat on the ground, sobbing and dripping blood from her mouth, now not even trying to stem the flow. The blood mingled with mucus from her nose and formed a thick strand that swung off her chin.
‘I hate you,’ she blubbered in her snot.
‘Yeah, that’d be right. Just don’t get any ideas, that’s all. Go and clean yourself up. Go on!’ He made to whack her over the top of the head; she flinched; he stilled his hand.
‘You broke my front tooth. Bastard!’
‘It’s your own fault. What’d you have to whack me for? Why? Tell me that.’
‘How long’ve you been fucking Josie?’ She shook her head hopelessly, sobbing still, got up and staggered into the house, not waiting for an answer. Teddy stood in the yard resolute, undaunted—scared. Fucking hell! How’d she find out? Josie wouldn’t have been dumb enough to say anything. But women did go in for this heart-to-heart stuff. Maybe she’d let it slip. Maybe her conscience had got the better of her.
‘Fuck!’ he said, spitting.
He got into his VK and headed for the Quarry. At nine he phoned her from the public bar to make sure she hadn’t taken off. She hadn’t. He asked how her tooth was and she hung up on him.
‘Fuck!’ he said, slamming the phone down.
Now he was really going to have to pull out something special. What could he buy her? How long was he going to have to wait for this to blow over?
TWENTY
Teddy got through Tuesday without incident. Elaine didn’t speak to him at all. She went out for a while—to the dentist, he thought, having heard her making an appointment on the phone in the morning—and then came back and froze him right out. Christ, he could feel the ice crack in the air any time he happened to go near her, to the fridge if she was in the kitchen, wherever. Teddy watched a movie on TV, turned the radio on for news bulletins, hung around the place waiting for Elaine to soften just enough for him to worm his way in, to put an arm around her and say how sorry he was for having to belt her, that he had lost his head for a split second; to say earnestly that he loved her, that he was a complicated man who sometimes didn’t understand his own actions. What he really wanted to do was get her into bed. That was where their best reconciliations happened, both crying and fucking insanely for hours, as if they’d just started up. The previous night, however, she had stayed right over on her side, and when he’d tried to cuddle her she’d just said ‘Fuck off!’ like a snake spitting poison. And he could hear her crying softly for a long time, while he stared at the ceiling, frowning, wishing she’d stop.
Tuesday night, same thing: he came at her with a hard-on, prodding her behind with it, and she practically jumped out of bed. Teddy gave it away after that. Once or twice he considered trying to get a conversation started, but didn’t think that would achieve anything either. She really had it in for him this time. He wished to Christ he knew how she’d found out about Josie. Maybe he’d go and see Josie next day, explain the problem and see if she had any ideas. It looked as if they were going to have to cool it, too, or even call the whole thing off. Once he found out exactly how much Elaine knew, and how much was just guesswork, he could sta
rt making promises, mend fences. There was no point owning up to things unnecessarily, was there? It was only a matter of time, of toughing the situation out. But it didn’t feel that way just at the moment.
Oddly enough, Teddy was more worried about Elaine and what she might try to do than the Pyrenees job, even the possibility that this Jennings guy might snuff it and then it would be a murder investigation too—the cops’d really pull out all stops. But so far luck was holding: no further leads, no sign of cops sniffing around, nothing. He thought occasionally about Graham, about how staunch he would be under pressure, if they got onto him for some reason, just suspecting involvement but making out that they knew more than they did. Teddy’d know how to play that game. You give the cunts nothin’, take ’em nowhere. Give it a fortnight, he thought. This’ll go off the boil then. There’s always something else to take the heat. But it would be nice if Goldilocks pulled through.
There was another problem too: Teddy still had the guns in the boot of his car. Graham had said, last thing, Oh get rid of these, will you Teddy? Drop them in the drink somewhere, he’d said. But it was hard to lose two shotguns, much harder than it sounded: ‘Oh get rid of these, will you Teddy?’, as if he was taking empty bottles out. You couldn’t just stop on the West Gate Bridge and sling them over the side. Teddy had cruised around, gone to Studley Park and Warrandyte, found deep parts of the Yarra, but there were always too many heads around. Most of the little creeks around the place had dried up. Teddy had decided that what he would have to do was take a trip to the bush, Lake Eildon perhaps, find a nice lonely stretch of water there.
On Wednesday afternoon he got a phone call. It was one of the guys he’d done the computer heist with, name of Glenn. Glenn said that the computers had now been disposed of and if Teddy would like to meet Glenn and the other gang member, George, at the Sylvania Hotel in Campbellfield on Thursday night he could have his cut. Teddy asked how much he was getting and Glenn said twelve grand. Teddy said he didn’t think that sounded like a one-third share in a pallet of computers. Glenn explained that it wasn’t a one-third share, that others were involved too, behind the scenes. There had been high overheads and everybody had to be paid. There wasn’t anything Teddy could do about it, so he said fine, see you at the Sylvania. What time? Eight-thirty? Terrific.
When he’d put down the phone Teddy did a quick calculation. In the last two and a bit months he’d picked up a total of thirty-two thousand tax-free dollars. So what was all this about a fucking recession? Teddy smiled and a chink of blue sky presented itself to him on the domestic front. Funny how just at that moment he began to feel that things were going to be all right between them. Elaine wasn’t home, or he’d have walked past her and given her a friendly slap on the bum and a wet kiss on the back of the neck. He didn’t know where she was, but understood that she had to be allowed some rope under the circumstances. What he’d do, he’d go into town and buy her something really classy and expensive, get it wrapped up nice. He didn’t know what it would be, this gift. Jewellery, he thought. Elaine didn’t have much jewellery. Teddy checked his wallet and got moving, feeling good, whistling as he unlocked the VK.
When Dennis got to St Vincent’s at just after two in the afternoon he didn’t know if he’d be allowed to see Brett, or even whether he’d still be alive. But Doctor Wallace had said if he could survive the first few days he had a fighting chance, and Brett had done that. He was still critical but stable. But the fine filament, that near-invisible thread, could easily have broken during Dennis’s three-hour drive to Melbourne. He breathed out deeply when, at the nurses’ station, he was told that Brett was still in intensive care and that Dennis could see him for a few minutes, although Brett was sleeping, half-drugged, half-unconscious, and probably wouldn’t know he was there. Dennis understood that and followed the nurse.
In the intensive care unit the first thing he noticed was the sound of the monitor beeping satisfactorily. Brett’s heartbeat was slow but relatively even, the nurse said. Only occasionally did it give a jolt or stutter before resuming its pattern. Dennis stood at the foot of the bed; the nurse departed. Brett was almost entirely enveloped in white—sheets, pillows, dressing covering his arms and most of his upper body. He was hooked up to a complex-looking drip system that fed into various points, principally the main arteries in both forearms. The duty nurse, who had been there all the time, sat in a chair to one side. Brett lay perfectly still.
Dennis came closer. He exchanged glances with the nurse, and both smiled politely. The left side of Brett’s face was bandaged, but not the right. Dennis could see one closed eye, a section of cheek, yellow bruises and pellet-marks that looked like small, lanced boils. He drew up a chair and sat next to Brett, studying him and scanning the life-support system that kept the fine thread from snapping. In a minute he took Brett’s hand. The hand lay absolutely limp and babylike in his. But it was contact of a kind. Dennis felt one of his eyes fill, then the other.
‘Hello, Brett,’ he whispered. The absence of an answer did not matter. ‘It’s me, Dennis.’
The monitor beeped on. Dennis sat quietly, watching Brett. In his mind he could see the big fellow mixing it on a football field, fording rivers in Cape York, strolling down a hillside into a dying sun with Dennis, bunch of rabbits strung with wire, rifle glinting on his shoulder. Those fucking rabbits. If they hadn’t gone shooting that day Brett would not be here: Dennis would be carrying poisoned blood instead. Didn’t he see the two shotguns? One, even? Or did he just hear the kiss-off speech, see a syringe poised, about to be administered? Coming from the hall door as he did he would not have been able to see much at all, nor would he have had time to work out a plan or calculate the odds against him. He would’ve gone in blind—knowing, however, that the bandits were somehow armed. Dennis wondered how he would have acted in such a situation. His performance on the floor, with the shotgun in his mouth, had not been good. That had frankly shocked him and even now caused blood to rise in his face at the vivid memory. Don’t demean yourself any further, the smiling bandit had said, needle poised. Take your medicine like a man, sir. But Dennis hadn’t been a man at all. If his mouth had not been taped he would have begged for his life.
He squeezed Brett’s hand lightly, with almost no pressure. Brett had not moved at all since Dennis had arrived. He had hoped that some hint of acknowledgement might result from his touch, his familiar voice, but no chance. Apart from the monitor there was just the barely discernible rise and fall of his chest to indicate the presence of life. Dennis squeezed the lifeless hand again and said, his voice cracking, ‘You’re going to be all right, mate. You know that, don’t you?’
Supposing he does make it, he thought, what sort of life will he have? Semidisabled at best, scarred and ruined, perhaps with permanent psychological damage. No more of the beloved karate.
Then he thought he felt something, the feeblest movement in Brett’s hand. Or perhaps it was just nerves twitching. He returned the squeeze, just in case. Back came the answer.
‘Brett,’ he said.
He watched the half-concealed face. Slowly, laboriously, the exposed eye partly opened, blue and bloodshot. Dennis could barely see for his tears.
‘Hello, mate,’ he said.
Brett blinked. Then squeezed again.
‘You’ve been here three days now. You’re getting there, don’t worry.’
Another blink. Then the corner of Brett’s mouth moved. He was trying to speak. Dennis’s heart beat fast. He leaned closer.
Brett breathed, ‘… Teddy … Help me, Teddy …’
Dennis swallowed, nodded. What did this mean? Was Brett delirious? Dreaming? It didn’t matter: he’d spoken. He was coming good, showing signs. He was going to live! Dennis felt with complete certainty that his own presence had contributed to that, even though Brett probably didn’t realise who he was communicating with. Something was working between them.
He squeezed again. ‘Teddy? Is that what you said?’
Brett
blinked. ‘… Hel’ me … ’eddy …’
‘Help me, Teddy?’
Squeeze of the babyhand. Just a little stronger now. There seemed to be some urgency to it. Dennis thought, Who could Teddy be?—and then a thunderbolt struck out of the blue. Brett was not delirious. Brett was trying to tell him something—something vital that had been locked in his memory all this time.
‘“Teddy. Help me Teddy.” Is that what the guy said, Brett? The one you hit?’
The big hand squeezed his, held the squeeze. Brett’s eye closed wearily, his whole body seemed to relax, as if some monumental task had just been accomplished. In an instant he was asleep again. Dennis held onto the limp hand and dimly heard a nurse come in and tell him that would have to do for today.
He drove to the Parkville Motel, a down-market and inconspicuous establishment, walking distance from Sydney Road. Traffic was solid coming up Royal Parade as he made his left turn into Park Street. He had no booking, but assumed there would be no problem getting a room. There wasn’t. He paid in cash for three days, with the possibility that he may wish to extend.
He unpacked, leaving the Walther in a zipped-up compartment before locking the suitcase and putting it in the wardrobe. Then he had a long shower. His shirt had been sticking to him from the encounter with Brett, and now he reeked of sweat and something indefinable—adrenalin maybe. He ripped off the bandage on his face and examined the wound, flinching at his reflection in the mirror.
Dennis walked into the rendezvous with Des Carlysle feeling strong for the first time in weeks, months. The pub Carlysle had chosen was Nellie’s Tavern, the corner bar of the Old Melbourne Hotel on the fringe of town. It was five-thirty exactly, the appointed time. He had told Carlysle that he would be able to recognise Dennis from the cut on his cheek, and Carlysle did.