Washed Up

by Berry, Tony

  ‘Hi. I’m Marsha. I guess you must be Liz. Bromo told me a bit about you.’

  It was like watching dogs in the park, sniffing and testing, making judgments, hesitating whether to play or fight. Bromo decided to let them get on with it. Women’s business.

  ‘I’ll go and scrub up. Seems I’m making the place look untidy.’

  As he moved towards the bathroom, Marsha started talking, her voice low, head bowed, chin tucked into her chest. Bromo saw another turn coming on. This woman contained too many surprises for comfort. At least this time his thighs were out of grabbing range. Her voice had dropped to a soft murmur, broken by brief pauses. He was reminded of church services, the monotone of incantation and response. He still feared another trance.

  ‘You okay?’

  She raised a hand, hushing him.

  ‘She’s on the phone,’ said Liz.

  Bromo caught on, recognising the pose of a habitual phone user – curved and huddled, oblivious to those around them. He watched and waited. Marsha was hunched up, one hand cupped over an ear. He assumed it was Alex on the line and looked for hints in her demeanour, seeking signs of alarm. Her body spoke of urgency and drama. She was doing more listening than talking. Her brow creased, her head nodded, silently confirming the message being delivered. Bromo drew his own conclusions.

  ‘Doesn’t look good.’

  Liz saw no reason to disagree and said nothing. She ran her fingers through her hair and reached for a bottle from a chrome drinks trolley alongside her. She waved it briefly at Bromo. He nodded. She had always been a good judge of mood and right now a couple of fingers of the Scottish solution seemed to fit the occasion extremely well. As Liz splashed the liquor into three glasses, Marsha unfolded from her huddled pose. There was a blankness about her face that alarmed Bromo. He foresaw her mind taking another wander down trails he had no wish to follow and searched for a prompt to keep her focused. It wasn’t needed.

  ‘That was Alex,’ she said. ‘He’s dead.’

  Briefly Bromo was confused. Surely she wasn’t one of those who believed in channelling, who thought they could converse with those who they quaintly said had “crossed over”. The puzzled frown he flashed at Liz was enough to alert Marsha to the shortcomings of her words.

  ‘Sorry. Not Alex. The other guy. Your mate in the white suit. It seems his dash through the woods was all too much on top of the injuries he’d already suffered. Alex did his best.’

  She reached out towards the glasses of whisky. Her hand was steady but her voice was shaky, betraying her outward calm.

  ‘I think I’ll have one of those.’

  She lifted one of the glasses off the bar and took a hefty gulp. Bromo followed her example.

  ‘Well, that’s one problem less to deal with,’ he said. ‘Death by accident and natural causes. Nice and neat.’

  He smiled at Liz as a sense of relief started to flow through him. The stress of the past few hours was lifting, blown away by the news in Alex’s phone call. He flexed his fingers, replaced his glass and moved to walk past Marsha to continue his journey to the bathroom. Liz was right: a clean-up was badly needed.

  Marsha crashed her glass down on to the drinks trolley. She stepped quickly in front of Bromo, close up and confronting. He bent his arm to gently brush her aside. He couldn’t abide people who couldn’t handle their booze.

  ‘Is that all you can say?’

  Her voice was strident, her face flushed. Too late he realised the whisky was not to blame. He drew his arm back close to his waist, a sudden shift from attack to defence. This was one angry woman, although the reason for her outburst escaped him.

  ‘What more do you want? A eulogy for a murderous thug?’

  She stepped in even closer, face turned up, her words spitting out at him.

  ‘How about sparing a thought for Alex! He’s the one sitting out there in the bush with a couple of corpses and the police about to arrive. It’s your bloody mess but he’s the one who’s been left to clear it up. And you can’t even be bothered to ask me how he is.’

  Liz moved in behind Marsha, taller by a whole head, resting her hands gently on her shoulders. Bromo watched Liz’s fingers begin kneading at Marsha’s taut muscles and tried to face down the double pair of eyes boring into him, saying more than any spoken word. They were waiting. He felt chastened and wished it was his shoulders that Liz was massaging. He shrugged.

  ‘Okay, I’m in the wrong. It’s been a hard day.’

  It was a poor excuse, and he knew it.

  ‘What can I say? I didn’t mean to leave Alex in the shit. He was great. I wouldn’t be here now but for him.’

  He stepped away and towards the bathroom.

  ‘Let me clean up and then I’ll call him.’

  ‘That can wait.’

  Bromo heard Marsha’s words as much as a command as a comment. He turned and watched as she slowly folded her arms across her chest and leaned back into Liz and rolled her shoulders beneath the rhythm of her fingers.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what else he had to say?’

  ‘Surprise me.’

  He caught the glare of a reprimand in Liz’s face. It was another black mark. They were stacking up and the odds weren’t good – two stroppy women against one weary and battered man who simply wanted to close the door on the world and all its evils. Marsha was making sure he put such dreams on hold.

  ‘He said a few things to Alex before he died,’ she said. ‘The way he tells it, the guy wasn’t all that happy and decided to spill the beans on his mates.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Bromo. ‘Whatever happened to loyalty?’

  Liz pursed her lips and chastened him with a shushing sound. One more black mark. He moved to the drinks trolley and picked up his glass. He waved it in Marsha’s direction – a signal to continue.

  ‘Which mates?’ he prompted.

  ‘Some estate agent. Theo something-or-other. He didn’t quite catch the name. And a cop and someone at the town hall. Your man reckons they’re somehow involved in a chain of illegal brothels.’

  Bromo nodded in understanding as he looked at Liz. She nodded back in agreement, still working on Marsha’s shoulders. It was making sense. Theophanous tied in with the rates notices Liz had produced. The town hall link was probably Steve Delgado and there were no prizes for guessing the cop’s name would turn out to be the weaselly Vern Rosen.

  ‘Any other names, details?’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t remember them. It was all confused. Too much to take in. Alex was in a rush. Probably in shock. He said the guy was rambling, not making much sense towards the end. It would be good if you did phone him.’

  She put a hand up to her shoulder, stilling Liz’s kneading fingers. She smiled and mouthed a “thank you” as she unhitched her phone and pressed in some numbers. She spoke briefly then handed the phone to Bromo.

  ‘Be nice,’ she said.

  Bromo feigned surprise: as if he would ever be anything other than nice.

  ‘Men can be nurturing caring creatures, too, you know.’

  He turned away as he heard Alex McIntyre’s voice on the line and missed the scornful looks that greeted his remark.

  ‘I’ll call Pete Jardine and get him to come over,’ said Liz.

  Bromo acknowledged her decision with a wave of his hand. It was something else he had been remiss not to think of sooner. He was losing his touch, in need of a refresher course. A ridiculous thought. Why update something you had every intention of leaving well behind?

  He sauntered to the far corner of the tile-floored room, listening carefully, head down, voice soft as he responded to Alex, wanting to pump him for information yet wary of adding to his trauma. He glanced across to Liz. She was similarly posed, in contact with Jardine, her every gesture and movement expressing concern and urgency. Marsha appeared to have drifted off into a private world. She was settled deep into an armchair, head back, eyes half-closed and sipping occasionally at the tumbler of scotch she was nursing in han
ds clasped in her lap.

  Bromo squeezed out an apology and gave McIntyre full rein. The man needed to talk. The words were tumbling out in a haphazard sequence of events. He was exorcising the shock of Carl West’s last moments, interspersing details of the actual death with revelations of the man’s vengeful final words. Bromo subdued his own impatience. There were questions he wanted to ask but he judged it unwise to stem McIntyre’s flow of words. He would wait to shut the floodgates and meanwhile cherry-pick the information he needed from the stream of information tumbling down the line. He saw Liz give him a thumbs up and interpreted it as meaning Jardine was on his way. There was silence at the other end of his phone. He cursed the network’s unreliability before realising McIntyre had dried up.

  ‘Thanks mate. You’ve done well. Bloody well. I feel for you.’

  Bromo expected it to suffice; McIntyre didn’t seem the type to be comfortable with gushing praise. The grunted acknowledgment of his words were no more than he expected. By letting McIntyre ramble on he had learned most of what he needed to know. Questions were almost unnecessary. He double-checked a couple of names and an address. There was nothing more he could do. For now, McIntyre would have to cope with the police on his own. Explanations would come later. He decided to hang up.

  ‘Gotta go, Alex. We’ve a few crims to catch.’

  He heard a chuckle from McIntyre. A good sign. It was followed by a question.

  ‘Yeah, she’s fine,’ Bromo replied. He raised his voice. ‘When this is all over you should take her for a drive along the Boulevard. She’d enjoy that.’

  He closed the phone and handed it to Marsha. He made no comment on the blush reddening her cheeks and met Liz’s raised eyebrows with a slight smile and an enigmatic explanation.

  ‘Secret women’s business.’

  An uneasy silence followed, Marsha shifting around in her chair, Liz looking puzzled and Bromo scratching his earlobe and smiling secret thoughts about the elephant he’d brought into the room.

  The buzzing of the security system brought welcome relief. Peter Jardine’s voice crackled over the intercom as Liz pressed the button to let him in.

  He was wearing a fawn ribbed, woollen jumper zippered up to the neck, paint-splattered trousers and tattered old running shoes. He stepped across to where Marsha was sitting, hand outstretched.

  ‘Hi, Liz has already briefed me. You must be Marsha. I’m Peter.’

  She smiled, took his hand and nodded, still switched off. Jardine moved alongside Bromo, gripping his arm.

  ‘Good to see you, mate. Things didn’t look too good when they had you in that limo. Must’ve been pretty rough. You look like shit.’

  Bromo looked him up and down, taking in the rag-bag attire.

  ‘And you look like you’ve been shopping at the Salvos.’

  Bromo moved away, resuming his broken journey to the bathroom.

  ‘I think I’ll clean up before I get any more compliments,’ he muttered. ‘And next time you see someone being kidnapped, try calling in the cavalry. I’m sure they’d appreciate it.’

  Jardine’s shoulders sagged and he threw a look of helplessness across to Liz.

  ‘But I—’

  His attempt at an explanation trailed away. Bromo had disappeared into the bathroom.

  ‘He’ll get over it,’ said Liz. ‘He usually does once he’s had a couple of malts. The main thing is to plan where we go from here. We have to assume the two girls are still in that house if they weren’t in the car with Bromo.’

  Marsha prised herself languidly out of her chair and stood with hands clasped high above her head, stretching shoulder and neck muscles, holding the pose as she spoke. The top button of her shirt was already open. The one below popped apart as she stretched, exposing the white uplands of firmly rounded breasts.

  ‘Any chance you might need a spare pair of hands?’ she said. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help, I’m happy to hang around. Otherwise I’ll be on my way.’

  She brought her arms slowly down to her side, flexing and circling her wrists, first one way and then the other. The slow hypnotic movements had Liz and Jardine transfixed, still trying to get her measure and uncertain of her mood.

  ‘I’ve got a gun in the car, if that’s any help,’ she said.

  Bromo emerged from the bathroom, thrusting his arms into his jacket, his hair tousled and damp, all traces of blood and dirt cleansed from his face and hands.

  ‘Amazing what a splash of cold water will do. It really helps to concentrate the mind.’

  He looked at Marsha.

  ‘What’s all this talk about a gun. I thought you handed it back to Alex.’

  ‘There’s another in the truck. A rifle, down the side of the seat.’

  Bromo raised his hand to his brow and ran it slowly down the side of his face, feeling the stubble of two days’ growth. Now she tells him. Not only was Marsha moody and irrational but she drove around with a lethal weapon by her side. He felt Liz and Jardine staring at him and sensed their unease at Marsha’s presence. They seemed to have forgotten the role she played in rescuing him from Carl West’s manic attack. He kept his focus on Marsha, distracted by the open shirt and noting her confident, almost cocky stance with legs apart and hands firm on hips. She detected his concern.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s not loaded. We call it El Desperado. It’s for when things get really desperate.’

  Her comment did little to ease the tension in the room.

  ‘Shit!’ said Liz.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ added Jardine.

  ‘Must be fun times in the McIntyre household,’ said Bromo.

  Marsha burst out laughing.

  ‘You’re all on the wrong tram. I’m not talking domestic desperate but farming desperate. You townies have no idea what life’s like out in the bush, even almost on the city fringe where we are. Bloody climate change doesn’t mean watering our lawns on alternate days or hand-washing our cars. It means drought and floods one after the other and nothing in between. If our cattle aren’t being swept away by the rivers then our sheep are falling over for lack of feed and water.’

  She paused, drew breath and spread her hands in a gesture of despair.

  ‘That’s when we call on El Desperado. To put them out of their misery. Desperate times, desperate solutions.’

  She sank back into the armchair. The fire and fury went out of her voice and became a low monotone.

  ‘It just seemed things were getting pretty desperate here and I thought you might like an extra body. Didn’t mean to give the wrong impression.’

  Bromo moved to the drink trolley and tipped a generous measure of scotch into his glass. He raised it towards Marsha.

  ‘Message received and understood. Guess I’m a bit touchy. Too many guns for one day.’

  He gestured towards Jardine.

  ‘How’s young Luke shaping up? The wounds healed yet?’

  ‘Better than that,’ said Jardine. ‘He’s got his confidence back, too. Decided he was safe with us and started spilling the beans about the guy who knifed him. Luke knew him as Mr Morris but his real name is Carl West. He’s a has-been actor who works as a stand-over man for Con Theopoulos, the estate agent, collecting rents, threatening tenants.’

  ‘And architects,’ said Liz.

  Bromo’s eyebrows shot up in query. Liz took up Jardine’s story.

  ‘It seems he was the one writing those nasty notes and getting Luke to spray graffiti on my walls. He also tried putting the hard word on me over some dodgy planning permissions that Theopoulos was trying to push through council.’

  Jardine pulled a bar stool away from the kitchen bench and sat down, one leg dangling, the other touching the floor.

  ‘Luke also reckons his Mr Morris, or West, is the same Maurice that Lottie and Adriana say Melissa O’Grady got involved with, maybe even killed her, although that might be hard to prove.’

  ‘Impossible,’ said Bromo.

  He realised the others hadn’t made the co
nnections. They were all holding pieces of the jigsaw without fitting them into their slots.

  ‘Carl West is the same murderous little sleazebag who is playing his final role as a corpse in the Bunyip State Forest. He’s history.’

  ‘So, it’s game over,’ said Jardine.

  Bromo glared at him.

  ‘Seems you’re forgetting something. What about Adriana and Lottie?’

  Jardine winced. Bromo took it as an admission of guilt for his oversight and decided it wasn’t worth rubbing in. Marsha concentrated on the contents of her glass. Liz found something to attract her attention in the huge wooden beam running the length of the ceiling. There was enough tension in the room already.

  ‘Let’s get the girls out of that prison of a brothel and then we can decide how to deal with all these nasty little people who think they’re above the law.’

  Bromo moved over to a highly polished, dark timber table and pulled out one of the high-backed chairs ranged along its length.

  ‘Take a seat everyone. Our council of war is about to begin.’

  TWENTY NINE

  They talked for an hour. Twice Bromo got up and refreshed his glass, all scotch and no water. Why mar what man had made perfect? Each visit to the bottle coincided with demands from Jardine for the police to be called in. Liz expressed cautious support for the idea. Marsha stayed resolutely on the sidelines, more observer than participant at this stage. Bromo used Vern Rosen’s suspected involvement as his main weapon of attack. He quoted Grant Mayfield’s opinion that Rosen was not to be trusted and suggested they remember the number of recent cases of police found to be more on the side of the criminals than the law.

  He knew his argument needed to be stronger yet held back from saying more. It would mean delving into a past he was fighting to escape, revealing too much that needed to stay buried and forgotten. There had to be ways of fighting these people other than through police raids and the interminable court processes that would inevitably follow. It could take years to get a resolution and even then it could well end with little more than good behaviour bonds and the proverbial slap on the wrist.