Love, Honour & O'Brien

by Jennifer Rowe

  With no one else to call, there was no further reason to stay in the phone booth, but Holly found she was strangely unwilling to leave it. It had become, in the space of five minutes, a refuge. Its smell was familiar. Its smeary perspex half-walls shielded her from the curious stares of the stroller-pushing women, the glances of the suits. She wondered if she was having a psychotic episode. Could it happen so quickly?

  She finished her coffee and ate a few chocolate chip cookies, leafing sightlessly through the Yellow Pages so that it would look as if she had a right to be where she was. After a while, she called Andrew again. His phone was still turned off.

  Then, quite suddenly, all her confusion, all her doubt, all her fears, were washed away by an enormous flood of anger that left her panting, red to the roots of her hair, but clear-headed. So Andrew had dumped her. Well, he had the right, even if his timing was, to put it mildly, unfortunate. But he had lied to her. He had vanished and left her to cope with the mess he’d left behind. And he’d stolen her money!

  Forgive me, he’d said. The bastard! Did he think he could get away with this? Don’t try to find me, he’d said. Forget I ever existed. Forget you? Sure, Andrew, thought Holly. No problem. But no way am I going to forget my entire severance pay and twelve hundred dollars. I’m going to find you if it kills me. And when I do . . .

  But, as slowly the rage subsided and the red mist that had clouded her vision began to fade, her breathing slowed and she began to face a few facts.

  Other people would soon be looking for Andrew, too— debt collectors working for the real estate agents and Home Comforts, and, for all she knew, dozens of other people and companies to whom he owed money. But when they found him, there would be no money for her. She would be last on the list to get paid. If, indeed—the words ‘legitimate withdrawal’ echoed in her mind—she qualified for the list at all.

  So. If she wanted her money, she had to get to Andrew before anyone else did. Make him pay up. Shame him into it—well, maybe not. Shame had never been a big issue with Andrew. Threaten him with exposure, then. But if they made a deal, she wouldn’t be able to pass on his whereabouts to the police, and that would mean becoming an accessory after the fact or something. So . . . threaten him some other way. Set a trap for him. Surprise him, overpower him, tie him up and then . . .

  Holly bared her teeth, savage pleasure rising in her at the thought of Andrew in her power. Andrew was scared of physical pain. He had told her, chuckling, that he had fainted when he’d had his ear pierced. Andrew was proud of his masculinity, often stood in front of the mirror stark naked, admiring himself.

  She imagined Andrew tied to a chair, his pants around his ankles, begging while she smiled and sharpened a knife. Yes! But would he know she’d never go through with that? Maybe. Maybe other, less bloodthirsty threats, threats she could actually carry out, would be more effective. Andrew didn’t like moths. Or spiders. Or cockroaches. She could take a bagful of crawlies with her, to the final showdown. There were plenty of possibilities.

  How to find him, though? He had no family—or so he’d said. She knew none of his friends. Come to think of it, she didn’t even know if he had any friends. When she and Andrew had been together, they had been alone. He wanted it that way, and she had been only too happy to agree. When they were apart, who knew what he did? Not wanting to appear possessive, as she gathered some of his past girlfriends had been (the receptionist Aimee for one, perhaps?), she had never asked.

  For the first time she realised how cocooned had been their existence, how little she knew about this man she had been about to marry.

  Mum was right.

  Don’t think that!

  There were business contacts—Andrew always called them ‘contacts’—but Holly didn’t know who they were, and anyway she suspected that they would know as little as she did. Australia was large. Her resources were pathetically small. How on earth was she going to find Andrew McNish? She didn’t know where to start.

  And at that moment, Holly always believed, fate raised its middle finger to get her attention and guided her gaze down to the Yellow Pages, open in front of her. There, immediately following Invalid Aids and/or Equipment, was the heading that was going to change her life.

  Investigators.

  3

  Holly was surprised to see just how many private investigators there were in the Blue Mountains directory. If the industry obeyed the usual rules of supply and demand, untold numbers of nasty little problems were wriggling under the mountains’ peaceful, nature-loving surface. Problems that police, social workers, priests and marriage guidance counsellors couldn’t fix or wouldn’t touch. Many more than she had realised.

  She found the thought depressing. Misery loves company, they say. But as Holly pored through the entries, taking in the offers to follow and secretly photograph spouses no longer trusted, to locate runaways, absconding business partners and debtors, to spy on employees, detect embezzlement and collect unpaid debts, she felt as if she were slipping through a crack in the world and into a dark, oily subterranean realm where many other, unknown victims also struggled. She tried to shake off the feeling and focus her mind on making a sensible choice.

  Some of the ‘Investigators’ listings were very brief, confined to a name, address and phone number. Others were large display ads for companies based in Penrith, the large township on the plains at the mountains’ base. Using reassuringly sober borders and dignified type, these firms claimed long experience, and promised expertise, reliability, integrity and discretion.

  They were very similar, in fact, to the ads for funeral directors that Holly had once come across in the Sydney directory while looking for Furniture, Retail, except for the long lists of services offered (including de-bugging of premises, corporate investigations and armed VIP escorts), and their frequent references to state-of-the-art surveillance equipment.

  Holly didn’t feel comfortable with either of these options. To choose one of the very brief listings would have seemed somehow reckless, a leap into the unknown. On the other hand, she couldn’t help feeling that the companies represented by the large ads, up to their ears in the excitement of solving corporate crime, stuffed to the gills with arcane expertise and bristling with guns and surveillance equipment, might regard her loss of severance pay plus twelve hundred dollars as rather paltry.

  Possibly, even probably, both these feelings were quite irrational. But even while considering this, Holly found herself automatically gravitating to her natural comfort zone: the middle ground, represented in this case by the small display ads. There were quite a few of these, so Holly narrowed her choice down by considering only those that mentioned reasonable rates and contained the phrase ‘No job too small’.

  The first number she dialled had been disconnected. Her second call was picked up by an answering machine. The recorded voice, which was very husky and of uncertain gender, said it was sorry that the office was unattended at present, but that Holly’s call was very important to it and if she would kindly leave her number, it would call her back. As Holly no longer had a phone number to leave, she could do little but hang up.

  Disconcerted by these failures, but still hopeful, she moved to her third choice, dialling what in this case was a mobile phone number, then pressing her finger on the ad in question like a talisman as she waited for results.

  O’BRIEN INVESTIGATIONS

  *Domestic and Personal *Missing Persons Our Speciality

  *15 Years Experience *Friendly, Personal Service

  *Reasonable Rates *Discretion Assured *No Job Too Small

  ‘O’Brien.’ The male voice sounded tired. Traffic roared in the background.

  ‘Oh, hello! O’Brien Investigations?’ squeaked Holly, quite shocked to be talking to a real person.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the man. ‘What can I do for you?’ His voice was barely audible. It sounded as if he was standing at the edge of a highway—a highway that carried a lot of trucks.

  ‘I’m—
I want someone found,’ Holly managed to stutter. ‘Could you do that?’

  ‘Husband?’ asked O’Brien wearily.

  ‘Fiancé,’ said Holly.

  ‘What? Sorry, can you speak up?’

  ‘Fiancé!’ bawled Holly. ‘The wedding was today, but he left. And he took all my money.’

  Passing suits glanced at her then looked quickly away.

  ‘Right.’ O’Brien sounded depressed, as if he had heard the story a million times. Was that reassuring or not?

  Holly realised that he was speaking again.

  ‘I’m in the middle of moving offices,’ he said. ‘Chaos, you know?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Holly, her heart sinking. Was he going to say he couldn’t take the case? Should she have left out the bit about not having any money?

  ‘I’ll come to you,’ said the voice on the other end of the phone. ‘What’s the address?’

  ‘I haven’t got any chairs,’ shouted Holly, meeting the eyes of the passing crowd defiantly.

  She thought the man sighed, but it was hard to tell because of all the background noise.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘Phone box in Springwood,’ yelled Holly. The phone had begun to crackle.

  ‘I’m breaking up,’ said O’Brien ominously. ‘Springwood. Okay. The pub halfway down the main drag—the Vicky?’

  ‘You mean the Victory?’ Holly roared. ‘Near the corner of—’ ‘See you there in an hour. Beer garden. Name?’

  ‘Holly Love!’ shrilled Holly. ‘I’m—shortish, and blondish. Sort of. And I’m wearing . . .’ She looked down, to check. ‘Black jeans and a pink top. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ said O’Brien. ‘Bring a pic of the loser.’

  The phone went dead.

  The conversation hadn’t gone the way Holly had planned it. She hadn’t asked O’Brien’s rates, for one thing. But at least he was coming. And he did seem experienced. That tired, gravelly voice had sounded like the voice of a man who had seen it all.

  Holly backed out of the phone booth. Traffic noise washed over her. The bright light hurt her eyes. She started walking, her overnight bag heavy in her hand, her quilt bag bumping against her leg. She walked quickly. She had a lot to do. If she hurried she could get back to the house, have a shower, pick up a photograph of Andrew, and still be at the Victory at . . .

  She glanced at her watch and was amazed to see that it was still only eleven o’clock. So she was due to meet O’Brien at midday. That was when the wedding was supposed to have been. The coincidence seemed to her extraordinary, and she found herself snorting uncontrollably with humourless, mad-sounding laughter as she turned off the main road and headed for the shell of her home.

  The beer garden of the Victory was almost empty when Holly arrived just after midday. The lunchtime crowd was still to gather. The desperates needing a quick slug or beginning their daily ritual slide into oblivion were inside at the bar, close to the action.

  Groups and couples sat at the few tables that were occupied. So O’Brien hadn’t arrived yet. Holly threaded her way to a sunny spot that gave her a good view of the door. Foremost in her mind was the annoyed realisation that she had not needed to give O’Brien a description of what she was wearing. Because she’d done that, she had felt compelled to put on the black jeans and pink top again, after her lukewarm shower, even though the very sight of them made her sick, and they smelt damply of foolish optimism, humiliation and sweat.

  On the way to the Victory Holly had stopped at the jeweller’s where she and Andrew had bought their wedding rings. It wasn’t far from the office. That was why they had gone there. She had paid for both rings, she remembered, because Andrew had forgotten his credit cards. Or so he had said. They had joked about it at the time. Now it seemed a joke in bad taste.

  The ring she was to have worn had disappeared with Andrew, but she still had the ring they had chosen for him, in its little black velvet case. The old jeweller, who remembered her, took it back and refunded the money without a word. He was so totally unsurprised that she wondered if he had been expecting her. Maybe in his job you developed an instinct for these things.

  As she left the shop, hearing the tinkling of the bell over the door, feeling the jeweller’s faded eyes on her back, she remembered that he hadn’t smiled at the joke over the forgotten credit cards. At the time, she had just thought he didn’t have any sense of humour.

  Well, at least she had a reassuring amount of money in her wallet again. More than enough, surely, to pay O’Brien a retainer, or advance, if that was the done thing in the private investigation business, and to bail out her car. What was left would have to support her till her parents’ birthday cheque cleared. It would be a near thing. She had to find another job, very soon. And another place to live.

  She quickly looked away from that thought by glancing at her watch. It was already twelve-ten. She was attacked by the fear that O’Brien had reconsidered. Got a better offer. Was being stood up getting to be a habit with her?

  ‘Holly Love?’

  Holly jumped and twisted violently in her chair. A man stood behind her. He was in his fifties, she thought, and had one of those narrow, slightly swarthy faces which, possibly under the pressure of late nights, alcohol, cigarettes, disenchantment and too few fresh vegetables, had somehow fallen forward and concentrated itself into a humped, beaky nose. Dark sunglasses shielded his eyes. His hair was grey-blond, the layered cut growing out, fluffing slightly over his ears and jutting out over his forehead. He was wearing a faded blue shirt with the top button missing, a crumpled, striped tie with a tiny knot and rather tight cream trousers.

  This was O’Brien. She would have recognised the voice anywhere, despite the absence of crackling and traffic noise. She realised that he had come into the beer garden by a door that led from the public bar instead of by the more direct route through the lounge. Because he wanted to sum her up from a distance before she saw him? Or just because he hadn’t been able to resist picking up a quick drink on the way to the meeting?

  Filled with misgivings, Holly murmured her agreement that she was, in fact, Holly Love. O’Brien sat down wearily, pulling out a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘Mick O’Brien,’ he said, sticking a cigarette into his mouth and lighting it in what seemed to be a single movement. ‘Want a drink?’ Gripping the cigarette between his teeth, he began patting his pockets with both hands, as if looking for his wallet.

  ‘Oh—I’ll get them,’ said Holly, jumping to her feet. She knew she was being outmanoeuvred by an expert, but felt incapable of resisting, and just wanted to get it over with. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Anything—whatever—Scotch,’ said O’Brien. ‘Double. No ice.’

  Holly went to the lounge bar and bought the drinks. By the time she got back, O’Brien had taken off his sunglasses and pulled the knot in his tie down to about necklace length. He had obviously decided that she didn’t need impressing. His eyes were small, pale and strangely blank. He seized the drink and swallowed it in a gulp. Holly sipped her mineral water.

  ‘I brought the photo,’ she said, after a moment.

  O’Brien nursed his glass and looked at her broodingly.

  ‘The photo of Andrew—my fiancé . . . ex-fiancé,’ she urged, pushing the picture towards him. ‘You were going to—’

  ‘Oh, sure, sure,’ he said. ‘Yeah. So.’ He slapped his pockets again and pulled out a chewed pen and a small black notebook. The notebook’s vinyl cover was smeared with something yellow. A picture of O’Brien eating a bacon and egg roll in his car flashed into Holly’s mind.

  O’Brien picked vaguely at the yellow smear, then flicked open the notebook. He prised a business card from beneath the inside cover flap, scribbled on it, then pushed it over to Holly.

  ‘New cards haven’t arrived yet,’ he said. ‘Bloody printers.’

  Gorgon Office Supplies offered a twenty-four hour service on business cards. Of course, Holly thought, thi
ngs were probably different in the mountains.

  O’Brien’s shaky printing revealed that his new office was in Mealey Marshes. This was a small village in the upper mountains, he told Holly, between Wentworth Falls and Leura, more or less. Off the highway, in a nice little valley. Not on the tourist beat, which suited him.

  Holly was reassured. She had never heard of Mealey Marshes, but the other names were very familiar. Anne, Paola and Justine were always talking about the Leura shops, and Justine had a friend whose aunt had once had a holiday house in Wentworth Falls.

  O’Brien’s top lip quivered as he suppressed a yawn. He flipped to a fresh page in his notebook and wrote ‘Holly Love’ at the top.

  ‘So, what’s the story?’ he said. ‘Done a runner, has he?’

  Holly cleared her throat. ‘How much—?’

  ‘Don’t worry. You can afford me.’ O’Brien grinned wolfishly. It was suddenly possible to see what he had once been. Much better looking, for a start.

  Holly told the story, from beginning to end. O’Brien drew spirals and took a few notes. Occasionally he asked a question. Once he said, ‘It always comes down to money in the end, love,’ and she thought tolerantly how cynical he was, while another part of her mind wondered if he was calling her by a casual endearment or if by some chance he had remembered her second name.

  Halfway through the process O’Brien put his sunglasses back on. Holly didn’t know if this was a good sign or a bad one, but she was glad. His eyes had been worrying her. They looked exhausted. Haunted. The irises were dim, grey-blue. The whites were yellow-pink. And when he blinked, his lids stayed shut for a fraction too long. Mornings obviously weren’t the best times for O’Brien.

  When she had finished, he nodded.