Washed Up

by Berry, Tony

  There was scorn in her voice.

  ‘There’s always trouble there. Bloody brothel. Fights, screams, cars and weird people coming and going 24/7. Ever since they built that prison on the back.’

  Jardine watched the woman finish strapping the child into the pusher and begin to wheel it away from him. She looked over her shoulder at him. He saw nothing but fear. If he ran after her, she’d probably scream – the last thing he wanted.

  ‘Prison?’ he called out. ‘What do you mean, prison?’

  ‘Look at it. All steel and fences and locks. A few small windows so high no one can see in or out.’

  Nothing new in that, thought Jardine. He could take her to dozens of modern homes which had turned their backs on the world: suburban fortresses with blank exterior walls and light-filled open plan interiors. She was beginning to sound like a Save Our Suburbs nutter who considered progress was a dirty word. Only the thought of Bromo and the girls locked in that limo kept him hassling her. He risked a couple of quick steps towards her, talking as he moved.

  ‘But why prison? What do you know? Help me.’

  The urgent pleading in his voice struck the right note. The woman stopped and twisted round to face him, fists clenched around the handlebar of the pusher. She brushed a wayward strand of lank black hair off her forehead.

  ‘There are girls kept in there,’ she said, her voice low, eyes flicking left and right, Jardine keenly aware of the nervousness still with her.

  ‘And in that block of flats next door.’

  Her eyes did the signalling.

  ‘Look at the bars on the windows. Who needs security like that two floors up? Everyone knows it’s a brothel. Purple Lounge or something like that. That’s bad enough. But it’s the girls. They can’t get out. Sometimes we hear them screaming. Mostly they’re too frightened.’

  Her outburst ended on a flat note, her voice trailing downwards, hinting at a lost cause. Jardine heard the despair in her words. He weighed them against what he’d seen. They fitted in, and with what Bromo had relayed from his talks with Lottie and Adriana. He stepped towards the woman, closing the gap between them, sensing she would no longer turn and run, offering his hand.

  ‘Hi, I’m Peter. Peter Jardine.’

  She brushed again at her straggling hair then put her hand in his.

  ‘Hi, I’m Jess.’

  No surname was offered. He decided it was wise not to ask. She indicated the bundled body in the pusher.

  ‘And that’s Shannon.’

  She flicked her hand in the direction of the street he’d driven along.

  ‘We live over there.’

  Jardine pointed to one of the benches.

  ‘Can we sit and talk?’

  Her eyes gave him a quick once-over. He saw the wariness but the fearful look had faded. She nodded, still subdued, and wheeled the pusher towards the bench.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ she said. ‘There’s another to pick up from prep. Casey.’

  He wasn’t surprised. So many parents seemed to choose their kids’ names from minor celebrities who achieved fleeting fame on TV reality shows. Jardine took a chance, seizing on an idea that rushed into his mind. One of many. Desperate situations created desperate solutions. You reviewed them all, played the options.

  ‘I’d like you to do me a favour,’ he said. ‘Walk with me back down the lane. I want to see what’s going on. We’d look like a normal family. That way, they’re less likely to suspect me.’

  She seized on his final comment, her words sharp and quick.

  ‘What do you mean, “less likely”?’

  Both hands gripped the handlebar, ready to push away. She’d thrown him off balance. He hadn’t thought. He cursed his own words. He wasn’t dealing with stolid foot soldiers waiting for their leader’s plans, primed to obey and follow, no questions asked, no reasons given. The woman had choices. She was also scared.

  ‘It was a figure of speech,’ he stuttered. ‘They don’t know me. They weren’t even looking when I drove past. I’d like to get a closer look, suss it out, see what’s going on. They’re not going to hassle a couple with a child.’

  ‘You hope.’

  ‘I promise.’

  He crossed his fingers inside his pocket and stole another glance at the scene being acted out in the laneway. Not much seemed to have changed. Heads were bowed, the huddle was tight and its participants were taking little notice of passers-by. All concentration was on the car and its contents. At least, that’s what it looked like from where he stood alongside the twitchy Jess and her pudgy Shannon who had begun oozing a dribble of snot from both nostrils. The woman bent her arm and checked her watch.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘I’m running late.’

  She tossed a green fibrous shopping bag at Jardine.

  ‘Carry that,’ she said. ‘It might help make you look normal.’

  He grinned. At least she wasn’t against him. He fumbled with the bag, trying to guess its almost non-existent contents and slinging it over one shoulder.

  ‘Dirty nappies,’ Jess said. ‘They’re wrapped. Smell’s not too bad.’

  ‘I’ve known worse.’

  They walked at a gentle pace out of the park and into the lane. Down three cracked steps, out of the grassed arena and into the oil-streaked roadway. There was no footpath. This was merely a space between buildings where garbage trucks squeezed and tradesmen parked, not a general thoroughfare – a space where the sun penetrated only at high noon, at all other hours barred by the high walls of the buildings on either side.

  By some unspoken agreement they eased into a casual gait that belied the nervous tension that beset them. Jardine felt Jess gradually relaxing at his side as she pushed the stroller forward, dutifully filling the motherhood role she played every day. He breathed easier, gaining confidence in her support for his subterfuge. He counted five people clustered around the long black limousine, their backs turned to him, their focus on the car. Its rear door was wide open. The man with the dog had disappeared. Two men were squeezed into the opening, like saplings bending before the wind, their arms reaching forward. Their clothing identified them – the dapper, wiry man in a business suit and one of the pudgy Asian men, bare-footed and his baggy track pants sliding down his backside away from his yellow T-shirt. The two tall bouncers and the other Asian man leaned on the car, hovering, their backs to Jardine, concentrating on whatever was happening inside.

  Briefly, the Asian man stood as erect as his rotund shape would allow. He stepped back from the car and tugged his track pants back up to his bulging waist. Jardine paused, hoping the man’s action would widen the gap and open up his view into the car. Jess stopped alongside him.

  Too late Jardine realised their lack of movement created more attention than if they had kept going. It triggered an immediate reaction in the two bouncers. They pushed back off the car, turned, and took two steps forward and slightly to the side, alert and ready for action. Jardine heard a quick intake of breath from Jess. The taller of the pair shuffled his legs wider apart, firming his stance, holding his ground.

  ‘You got a problem, mate?’

  Jardine shook his head.

  ‘No, not at all. Just wondered if you might need some help.’

  Jess thrust the pusher forward.

  ‘Come on Peter. Let’s keep going.’

  He heard the tremor and urgency in her voice. It was a reminder he had a promise to keep – that there would be no trouble. He put a hand alongside hers on the pusher’s handle and resumed walking.

  ‘Sorry, love.’

  He raised his voice and looked back at the men.

  ‘Just being neighbourly. I thought they might need an extra pair of hands.’

  The men maintained their aggressive stance. Jess didn’t answer but quickened her pace until they reached the end of the lane and turned into the street.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ he said. ‘I hope it didn’t cause you too much grief.’

  She shrug
ged. Her emotions were hard to judge. Relief was probably over-riding everything. And she was running late for Casey. He was beginning to understand. He fumbled in his top pocket and found an old tram ticket. He wrote down a number and gave it to her.

  ‘Call me if there’s any trouble, or if you find out anything more about that place. I’d like to help.’

  She looked at the ticket, then at him. She was poised to move.

  ‘And your friends? Back there? What’s going to happen?’

  So many questions, so few answers. At least she was concerned. Maybe he’d won himself a reluctant ally. For now. however, Jardine knew Bromo and the girls were on their own, wherever they were. He wasn’t even sure of that. It was all supposition and imaginings. First, he had to take the long way around the block to retrieve his car. Jess moved away, coiled protectively over Shannon’s huddled form, increasing her pace as she hurried off to collect her other child.

  Jardine looked up at the sky. Dark clouds were massing in the distance. The promised cool change and storms were crowding in from down the bay. He stepped back across the entrance to the laneway. Only the shorter of the two bouncers remained, arms folded across his chest. The limousine had gone.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The first thing Bromo saw as he opened his eyes was the stretched cloth of the jacket cloaking Bomber’s shoulders. The man was sitting upright in the driver’s seat, staring at an unravelling highway as windscreen wipers kept up a metronomic beat against the rain. As he gradually came to, Bromo recalled his attackers at the girls’ house bundling him into the back seat of a long, black limousine with darkened windows – the underworld’s vehicle of choice. Now the limo was purring its way along one of the freeways away from the city.

  Bromo saw Bomber’s eyes flick up to the rear vision mirror, focusing briefly on the back seat.

  ‘He’s awake,’ Bomber growled out of the corner of his mouth.

  The alert was directed at the man sitting alongside him – a complete contrast in that he was thinner, shorter and pale against the dark.

  ‘So? He’s not going anywhere.’

  Bromo recognised it as the voice of the third, unseen, man at the girls’ house. It spoke the ugly truth. As Bromo struggled to sit up, he found his ankles had been tied together. The metal cuffs on his wrists had been replaced by twine or rope. Not so hard, but chaffing as he moved and tested the binding. As the man had said, he was going nowhere.

  He looked out of the window, seeking a landmark. They were in the centre lane, driving well within the limit, avoiding unwanted attention. Cars streamed alongside to left and right, headlights shaping gleaming rivulets in the wet and greasy road. On the other side of the median strip, three more lanes of vehicles headed ceaselessly in the opposite direction. Beyond the motorway, there was deep blackness sprinkled with only occasional pinpricks of light. He guessed they had passed the outer limits of suburbia where so-called battlers struggled to meet mortgages on houses built according to fantasies, not needs.

  ‘Thanks for the lift, guys, but I think we’re going the wrong way,’ said Bromo.

  It was as if he hadn’t spoken. Neither head turned. No one answered.

  He tried again.

  ‘I think we should have turned off about half an hour ago.’

  Nothing. There was no sign of a response from driver or passenger, or even that his comments had been heard. Maybe he was dreaming, the throbbing in his head all part of a bad night’s sleep. Through the rain, he saw the green fluorescent glow of an overhead road sign. Another, much smaller sign glowed on the left-hand verge. They were approaching a junction. At least he’d have some idea of where they were. He focused on the signs. The big one advised that Warragul, Moe and Traralgon lay ahead, triplet towns of the gloomy La Trobe Valley.

  Bomber steered the car towards the left lane. Goodbye Warragul. The small sign was barely visible through the darkened side windows and the sheeting rain. Two words. Something North. No help. This was unknown territory. He might as well be in the middle of the Simpson Desert as being driven around the fringes of a city of three million people.

  The car’s headlights now shone on a narrow road full of twists and turns. There was a sense of climbing and of flat farm grazing country giving way to woodland. Trees arched overhead. Scrub and bush hemmed them in. Bomber glided the car to a brief halt at a T-junction then turned right. A signpost was wedged back against the forest. A thin veil of overhanging branches ensured it provided no clue to their whereabouts. Two hundred metres along, they made another turn, to the left. It took them on to a dirt road, the car’s tyres whirring in a broken cadence so different from their smooth tune on the hardtop.

  ‘This is a limo, not a bloody tractor,’ Bomber complained.

  ‘Shut up and keep driving,’ snarled his passenger.

  Bromo agreed with Bomber, but said nothing. The shift on to the rougher road sent all the wrong messages. His heart rate leapt several notches. The old wound on his ear lobe began throbbing, the irritation made all the worse by being unable to scratch it. Instinct told him the danger level had soared. He had more to fear than merely being bounced around on the back seat with nothing to hang on to.

  Memories flooded back of a similar journey in his former life, trussed and bundled into a rusting old Chevrolet by two black market gem dealers who had been lying in wait outside a hotel on the outskirts of Colombo. After thumping and pushing him into the car they had taken him on a manic ride to a Sri Lankan fishing village where they’d dumped him beneath a pile of nets and cray pots. He’d lain there concussed and helpless until stumbled upon by a one-legged beggar seeking somewhere bed-like where he could doss down for the night.

  Bromo felt history was repeating itself: one car, two thugs and a severely handicapped Bromo Perkins in the back seat taking a scary ride into the unknown.

  ‘There!’

  The man in the passenger seat suddenly pointed at a clearing at the side of the track. Bomber turned the wheel and squeezed the brakes, bringing the car to a jolting stop a metre from a wooden picnic table with bench seats along either side. He kept the engine idling. The internal light clicked on.

  ‘Bad day for a barbecue,’ said Bromo.

  ‘Yeah, no one else is coming. It’s just you and us,’ said the passenger, turning to face Bromo.

  Shit! Him! No wonder he had been plagued by the voice. It was the nervy guy he’d tried talking to in the crowd outside the firebombed brothel. Bromo flicked through the names in his mental filing system. Something was out of kilter. The name wouldn’t come. Carl Morris … something like that. Or was it Morrie West? The man was sneering at him, probably thought it was a smile – it was that sort of mean and twisted face, pinched and narrow and devoid of anything resembling a laugh line.

  ‘We’ve met somewhere before, I believe.’

  Bromo put it as a question as much as a statement, feigning vagueness, hoping for answers. Carl West treated it as both, providing part answer, part confirmation.

  ‘You’re probably right, Mr Perkins. I’ll leave it to you to decide.’

  ‘Outside that brothel, Number 85. You skittled off when that cop called to you.’

  West’s sneering smile stayed in place as he gave a dismissive flick of his hand towards the driver. Bomber understood. He stilled the engine, opened his door and scuttled around to the rear compartment, head bowed and shoulders hunched against the rain. Bromo saw a flash of metal and heard the click of a blade springing open. He felt Bomber’s beefy open palm thump into his chest, pushing him back into the limo’s plush leather seating. He glimpsed the man’s other hand bringing the blade forward, low and fast, aiming somewhere at the centre of his body. He tried twisting to one side. He couldn’t move. Bomber was too heavy, pressing down too hard.

  In seconds, it was all over, as quickly as it had begun. Bromo felt the weight on his chest ease. Bomber pushed himself up, keeping the knife poised where he’d suddenly stopped its forward thrust, centimetres off Bromo’s groin.
>
  ‘Time for walkies,’ he said.

  He moved the blade backwards and down, slashing in two brisk movements through the cord around Bromo’s ankles.

  ‘Get up and get out,’ he commanded.

  Bromo decided he had little choice as Bomber grabbed a fistful of his jacket and tugged him up off the seat towards the open door. Behind him, dressed more for boardroom than bushwalking, stood Carl West, clutching a gaudy, king-size umbrella. He held it high to shield himself and Bomber from the pelting rain. The umbrella bore the logo of a car company – bragging rights for its sponsorship of a major golf championship spelt out around the covering’s outer edge.

  ‘Did you get that for playing around?’ punned Bromo.

  Both men ignored him. Another attempt at a bravado he didn’t feel trailed off into the gloom. Bromo felt Bomber tighten his grip and tug viciously at his jacket. He stumbled forward from the car, one foot squelching into a puddle of mud, the other stubbing its toes against a fallen branch. A double trip. He felt Bomber unclench his fist. Nothing could stop him hurtling onward and downward. He had become a 70kg sad sack projectile plummeting to earth. A brief flash of memory recalled the human cannonball at the Melbourne Show who’d fizzed like a damp squib. The crowd had laughed. No one was laughing tonight. There was nothing funny about being face down in a soggy mound of leaves, twigs and the remnants of some litterbug’s discarded pizza carton. Bromo felt a hand gripping the rope lashings around his wrists. He twisted his head to one side, seeking air, spitting out grit and dirt, scraping his cheek along the rough ground. There was an unforgiving tug at his bindings, the rope cutting into his flesh, searing the skin.

  ‘Up!’

  Bomber was not one to waste breath on words. He saved his energy to use elsewhere, such as giving Bromo a hefty push in the small his back. It directed him to the edge of the clearing, away from the car, its headlights illuminating their way.

  ‘Get him over there,’ whispered West, standing close to Bomber’s side.

  ‘In the bushes. Where no one will find him.’