by Berry, Tony
‘Melissa no longer work here.’
‘Cool it, mate. Just a friendly question.’
Jason’s voice came booming over Bromo’s left shoulder. He’d moved in close, protective, not one to be shouted down.
‘Got some things we borrowed off her,’ he lied. ‘Thought she might want them back.’
The man tugged on the leashes, pulling the hounds to his side. Slightly less aggressive. Bromo breathed deeply, shuffled a few steps back, closer to Jason. He pushed his luck.
‘Do you know any friends we could give her things to, pass them on? Where’s she working now?’
The dog-man’s thought processes were visibly slow. Answering questions was not his domain. He hesitated, unsure.
‘No friends here. Bad person. She told to go. Maybe go to Purple Lounge.’
‘Bad? Why? What was she doing here?’
Bromo’s persistence was too much. The man let loose the slack on the leashes and snarled a command. The Alsatians leapt forward, front paws off the ground, clawing the air.
‘Go,’ yelled the man. ‘No questions. Melissa gone.’
Jason pointed his key ring at the truck and grabbed open the door. His other hand was on Bromo’s shoulder, pulling him away from the dogs.
‘Time to move, mate.’
Bromo scampered around the bonnet and into the passenger seat as the truck lurched forward, his door still hanging open. On the footpath behind them the man stood stock still, legs apart, his biceps straining against the pull of the dogs.
SEVEN
Bromo measured a couple of fingers of Lagavulin into a tumbler, added two cubes of ice and settled into his armchair. Dinner had been one of his better efforts – a precisely grilled steak of Atlantic salmon, its skin crisp and the flesh moist, served alongside a salad of mixed greens with thin slices of olive bread on the side. Normality reigned once more after his excursion into the narrow back streets of South Yarra.
“A damsel in distress” had been enough explanation to send Jason on his way with a disbelieving grin on his face and still on a high from their confrontation with the two Alsatians.
‘A poor excuse but it’ll do for now,’ laughed Jason. ‘Give me the real story some other time. And watch out for Melissa. She sounds like dead trouble to me.’
If only you knew, thought Bromo. How dead, and how much trouble there was swirling around her. As for the real story, he still wasn’t sure he wanted to unravel it. There were too many intimidating undertones, unseen messengers delivering threatening notes, bully boys with hungry dogs. It was all too ominous. It belonged in a territory he thought he had left far behind.
He looked at the two milk crates on the floor in front of him. Where to begin – with the blue or the green? Green made him think of vegans and vegetarians playing at being politicians: it was a wimpish colour. It faded badly. Blue was good. He liked blue, favoured blue shirts, wore blue jeans and enjoyed an occasional perv at the blue movies SBS slipped in between its documentaries and offbeat cartoons.
He tipped the blue crate upside down, spilling its contents over the carpet. He fondled his glass, took a sip and looked at the jumble before him. Nothing stood out. A vague hope that something would emerge from such a random view of the crate’s contents faded fast. It looked so bloody ordinary – a student’s cluster of foolscap folders, ring-binders, files and manuals. He kept looking, his eyes roaming slowly over the scattered leftovers of Melissa O’Grady’s life. It was like playing Kim’s Game, a contest that harked back to his days in the scouts when they had to study an assortment of objects, memorising them, spotting the intruder or which item the scoutmaster had moved when they closed their eyes.
The ringing of the phone fractured his concentration.
‘Yes?’ he snapped.
Silence, except for a gasping, intermittent breathing. Shit. A nuisance call. Some people had nothing better to do with their time. He was about to hang up when she spoke.
‘Sorry, Bromo. I didn’t mean to disturb you, but—’
‘What’s wrong, Liz?’
Bromo heard a quivering hesitancy in her voice.
‘You okay?’
She was still breathing unevenly, struggling with the words.
‘Someone’s been here.’
‘Where?’
‘Here. Home. My place.’
She was rattled, fighting to stay calm.
‘They’ve spray-painted a message on my gate.’
‘Slow down, Liz. Slow down. You indoors?’
‘Yes.’
‘Doors locked?’
‘Yes.’
Her breathing was slowing, becoming more regular, the voice losing its earlier tremors. He gave her a few more seconds. She needed recovery time.
‘Any damage inside?’ he asked.
‘No. It’s just the gate. The words. They gave me a fright. I was only out for half an hour, down to Safeway, and they were there when I came back. The really scary thing is someone must have been watching, waiting for me to go out.’
Bromo felt he knew the answer, but had to ask: ‘What do the words say?’
Liz confirmed his suspicions: ‘Give Up. Stop Now,’ she said.
It was almost a repeat of the note he’d taken off her windscreen outside Melissa O’Grady’s apartment. An order as much as a warning, direct and to the point.
‘I think I’d better come round.’
‘Would you? Do you mind?’
Of course he minded. Who’d happily swap a quiet evening of contemplation over a Lagavulin or two for pushing their bike around the streets of Richmond to visit some distraught woman who’d had her house spray-painted by vandals? On the other hand, when the woman was Liz Shapcott …
‘Get the scotch out,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there in ten. I’ve got news for you, too. Jase and I checked out one of Melissa’s addresses.’
EIGHT
Home to Liz Shapcott was a converted factory. Little of its 80-year-old exterior had changed. To passersby it was simply a basic solid, redbrick block with a single solid wooden door and a few steel-barred windows high in its outside wall. Only a smooth steel automatic roller door indicated modernisation – a recent replacement for the battered and rusty chain-operated entrance once used by trucks and delivery vehicles.
The roller door had become the spray-painter’s palette. The words glowed blood red against the metallic background. Bromo took his bike helmet off and stood appraising them. It reminded him of the pose he struck when playing culture-vulture at one of the shows Aurelia used to mount in her gallery. Stand back¸ one arm bent with chin in hand and elbow resting on the other hand. Look intent and knowledgeable. He considered the words neat and sign-writer perfect – a job done well and to be admired in other circumstances.
Liz answered his ring at first push on the bell. She was barefoot, clad in dark blue three-quarter leggings that hugged her thighs and an oversize white shirt that dived revealingly deep into her cleavage. She looked great for someone racked with fear.
She pointed towards the graffiti.
‘What do you think?’
‘Very neat.’
It was deliberately ambiguous. She could take it whichever way she liked.
‘A professional job,’ he added. ‘Probably done with a stencil.’
‘They must have been quick. I wasn’t away all that long.’
‘Yeah, in and out and on their way. Like a gigolo on the run.’
Her face relaxed into a brief smile as she stood aside to let him wheel his bike inside.
‘Thanks for coming, even with the bad jokes. They probably won’t come back tonight but I feel much better having you here.’
Yes, but for how long – a brief visit, a couple of hours, or was it an invitation to stay the night? He was back in fantasy land. Hell, a man was permitted to dream. No harm done; no one getting hurt.
He propped his bike against the wall.
‘Why do you keep saying ‘they’? What makes you think there’s more than one?’
&n
bsp; Liz hesitated and took her time over hanging his bike helmet on a hook.
‘A figure of speech. We all do it. It’s always ‘they’. Why don’t they do this, or why can’t they see that – it means nothing.’
‘Sure?’
He weighted the single word with every possible shadow and nuance of doubt. So many roads were leading to Liz Shapcott – Con the Greek estate agent, Melissa renting her apartment, the note on her windscreen and now the warning splashed across her garage door.
She ignored his question and led the way into the cavernous space where a furnace, lathes, rollers and presses once produced a medley of wrought iron adornments for the city’s grand terrace houses as well as railings, fences and gates for its public buildings and parks and gardens. Now it housed a commercial grade kitchen, large lounge area, a banquet-size dining table and, over in the corner, an office set-up twice the size of Bromo’s business premises.
‘Okay, Liz, I’ll accept you don’t believe Melissa committed suicide. But why do I feel I’m only being told half the story?’
She brought two bottles up from beneath a bar stretching half the width of the room and waved them in his direction.
‘Glenfiddich or Laphroaig? It’s the best I can do.’
He didn’t hesitate.
‘Laphroaig thanks. Your best is almost perfect.’
A long, black leather lounge sighed as he settled himself down. Liz bent over him as she handed him a glass of whisky and kissed him lightly on the top of his head.
‘Thanks again for coming. I feel much better.’
She backed away a couple of steps and sat in a capacious armchair facing him.
‘Good to have a man about the house, eh?’
‘Something like that. It depends on the man.’
It was the enigmatic, non-committal type of response he was beginning to expect from her. Over the past few years their relationship had moved gradually from the formality of business to one of warm but platonic friendship, yet he realised he knew little about her – whether there was a man in her life, now or at some time in the past, or if there were junior Shapcotts she had borne and reared.
The itineraries he had organised for her regular solo trips overseas revealed she shared his interest in music, opera and theatre and he frequently glimpsed her in the audience at local plays and concerts. A few questions in the right places confirmed she was highly regarded as an architect with a high priority for orderly planning and tight controls on developers. But the person behind these façades eluded him. Bromo likened it to warming chilled hands in front of a blazing fire: you could only approach so far before having to step back. He twirled the whisky around the tumbler and sniffed deeply at its peaty, iodine-laced aroma. Musing, dreaming.
‘Sometimes you just have to ask.’
‘Pardon? Ask what?’
Her response startled him.
‘Sorry. I must have drifted off to the glens and lochs. A good malt tends to have that effect. Thinking out loud.’
He sipped the whisky and looked around the high-roofed room with its original huge timber beams and scrubbed red brick walls.
‘Lots of space for one. Do you ever get lonely?’
She smiled: ‘Do you?’
Bromo looked down into his glass. He’d got too close to the fire yet again. A change of subject, at least for now, was the only solution.
‘It’s time to come clean, Liz. Tell me the whole story, not an edited version. I said I’d help, but I’m not going to work in the dark. You’re more involved than you’re letting on. Whoever sprayed those words on your door means business. Serious business.’
She shivered and bent forward, hugging herself for comfort, her eyes down and half-closed. Bromo wanted to hold her, enfold her. He felt himself lean towards her, arms starting to reach forward. He checked himself and took a nerve-settling gulp of the Laphroaig.
‘It’s not the first warning, Liz. There was another – on your windscreen.’
‘I guessed, Bromo. I guessed,’ she whispered. ‘There have been others before today. Always the same.’
‘Who’s doing it?’
‘That’s the really scary thing – I don’t know. These are just the messengers putting notes on windscreens and painting the gate. The big boys don’t run errands like that.’
She played with the chunky ring on her middle finger, twisting it one way, then the other, back and forth, a quarter turn in each direction.
‘God, they’re such cowards. Faceless. Too gutless to come out into the open.’
Sparked by her own words, she suddenly pushed herself up out of her chair, smoothing her hands down over her hips and standing tall, no longer hunched and folded in on herself.
‘One thing’s certain,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to let them win – with or without your help.’
Great, thought Bromo. This was what he wanted to hear. He could cope. Weepy, waffling women were off his agenda. The firm and feisty he could handle. This was more like the Liz Shapcott he knew. He drained his glass.
‘Another?’ asked Liz.
‘Only if it comes with the full story of what’s going on – what Melissa was up to and where you really fit into all this. Otherwise I walk and go find my own whisky.’
She looked at him. There were in a freeze frame. Bromo fancied he could hear the cogs of her mind trundling around. Liz didn’t move. Bromo’s arm stayed extended, clasping the empty tumbler. Then she moved. She seemed to have made a decision. She took his glass.
‘Still on the Laphroaig?’
He nodded. It seemed they had a deal. Or Liz had the deal and he was about to be dragged into places he’d rather not visit.
‘Good to see you’re having one,’ he said, watching her pour a white wine. ‘Calms the nerves.’
Liz handed him a generous measure of whisky.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my nerves, but if you have any more of those you’ll be falling off your bike.’
‘And I might have to stay the night,’ Bromo muttered out of her hearing as she went to a desk in the office corner of the room. He cranked up the volume.
‘Got any CDs?’
‘Of course.’
She pointed a remote control at a small cube sitting on a shelf against the far wall.
‘What’s your fancy?’
‘It’s your house – your choice.’
She bent over a tower stack of CDs and fed a couple into the slot of a small stereo unit. Smetana’s rippling, undulating, orchestral picture of the Vltava River poured from four minuscule speakers set high up in the rafters.
‘Something soothing and something raunchy,’ she announced.
Bromo wriggled his backside and made room for her as she sat beside him on the lounge. She clutched a thin, bright yellow, A3-size cardboard folder held tight by an elastic cord. On its front was a drawing of a decorative circle surrounding the head of a tiger gripping a bright red poppy in his jaws – the emblem of the Tiger Poppies.
‘Brings back memories,’ said Bromo.
The last time he’d seen the emblem had been on the walls of a deserted factory where a street kid wielding a shotgun had bailed him up. The youth was protecting his work; the designs he’d painted had been done at the request of Liz and her fellow activists as they decided on an identifying logo.
‘What became of him?’
‘Who?’
‘The baggy pants druggie.’ He pointed to the logo. ‘The kid who designed this. Last time I saw him the cops had shot his legs from under him and he was chock-full of funny chemicals.’
‘He came good,’ said Liz. ‘We gave him a bit of help. He’s settled into a job with a design studio. Several of their clients have been very impressed by his work.’
‘Brownie points for the Poppies.’
Liz gave him a sideways glance, assessing the level of cynicism. Some people just couldn’t help themselves. Maybe this time he was being genuine. She gave him a pass mark and tapped the folder.
; ‘It’s all in here, such as it is. It’s more word-of-mouth than solid evidence. There are too many frightened people out there. They’re not keen on putting anything into writing.’
Bromo sat up with a jerk, eyes flicking up towards the speakers. Smetana had made way for the raw and strident voice of Maddy Prior in her spine-tingling version of The Blacksmith. He sipped his drink.
‘Great choice. Goes well with the scotch.’
He extended his hand towards the folder.
‘Can I look?’
‘Take it with you. I’ve copied everything on to disk.’
Bromo reached for the folder as Liz laid it on the seat between them. Their hands touched, his resting on top of hers. Maddy Prior was between tracks. Bromo felt the fragility of the silence – a precious porcelain-like moment. He pressed gently on the back of her hand and felt her tense. Neither moved, but one of them would have to.
Maddy Prior did the trick. She launched unaccompanied into Blood and Gold and Liz pulled her hand away. The moment was gone.
‘You mentioned something called the Purple Lounge. What’s the connection with Melissa?’
Bromo told her about his escapade with Jason, making light of the security guard and his dogs, lacing his story with jibes at his mate’s GPS, leaving the serious stuff until last.
‘I’d say Jason was pretty spot-on when he said the place we went to is some sort of brothel. Melissa was definitely working there.’
‘A prostitute? I can’t believe it.’
‘Hold it, Liz. From what you’ve told me, she was probably doing reception work. Even cleaning the rooms. Whatever. Something happened. They’re not happy with her at Number 85. She got the boot, or walked out. Mastiff man let slip she might have gone to the Purple Lounge.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Don’t know. I’ll do some checking. It sounds like another knocking shop. It shows there could be some link between Melissa and the local whorehouses. Maybe something to do with her studies. Research. That’s something else we’ve got to check.’
Liz nodded and seemed to accept his verdict. It was something for later, for tomorrow. Bromo stood up, put his glass down on a low coffee table and eased his shoulders back, feeling the crack of locked joints. His mind was churning. He sneaked a look at Liz, lying back on the lounge – sleepy and languid. He wanted her. He felt he was on the edge of one those man-woman relationships that were a permanent minefield in his life. And he was minus a map or guide. He cautioned himself: one step at a time.