The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender

by Marele Day

  ‘I’ve got a job to do.’

  ‘What crap! Is your job worth your life?’

  ‘My life is obviously worth something to someone.’

  ‘Yeah, but for how long?’

  The question hung in the air like a noose from the gallows.

  In a low voice Collier continued, ‘What makes you think it’s Lavender? He could do better than some untried kid. Who’s ever heard of Mark Bannister? Harry could afford the best writer in the country to tell his life and crimes to. Maybe someone else was feeding the kid the information. Any number of people could be doing it, for any number of reasons.’

  ‘You, for example,’ I said evenly.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You. You seem to know so much about him. Maybe it was you feeding Mark the information.’

  ‘Now look, you may be just testing the water but let’s get one thing clear right here and now.’ He jabbed his finger at me. ‘If and when I write a book about Harry Lavender it’ll have my name on it. I won’t be hiding behind some two-bit kid with an artificial heart. And I know so much about Lavender because it’s my business to know, OK?’

  He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t emotional. He was telling me how things were. I was sorry now I’d said it, sorry I’d forgotten there were still people like Collier in the world.

  ‘Same again?’ I said, pointing to his glass.

  ‘No thanks,’ he said, standing up, ‘I’ve got to get back to work.’ He buttoned up his jacket. ‘If I were you I’d take a good long holiday. Preferably out of the country. And I’d take it before someone put me permanently on holidays.’

  I sat in the car and didn’t switch on the ignition. I looked up and down the street in the rear vision mirror. It was a one-way street and the only way out was past a little row of decaying terraces. No-one was walking along the street except for a couple who turned into the pub. Somewhere a dog barked. Behind that was the humming of the city. Harry Lavender’s city.

  I had eyes and ears in every pore of my skin. Something about the rubber on the side window was wrong. It was rippled, as if someone had been trying to lever it off. Or had succeeded.

  I checked the glove box. Nothing moved. The pedals checked out and the dash looked innocuous. I got out and checked the fenders and the rest of the car. No transmitters. Then I lifted the hood and looked at the engine. Nobody hit me over the head with a blunt object and I couldn’t find anything that looked like a bomb.

  I got back in the car. Sooner or later I was going to have to turn on the ignition. I thought about my life. I’d had the husband, the kids, the career. What I would have liked was another 50 years.

  I had to do it. I had to put the key in the ignition and turn.

  I concentrated ki, breath energy, in my abdomen and exhaled forcefully. Did it for a full ten minutes till the shouting and the tumult died.

  Then I turned the key.

  The car started purring. I wiped my clammy hands on my knees and put on the indicator. No-one else put on theirs. I slid out onto the road and before getting to the crest of the hill tried the brakes. They were perfect.

  By the time I got to the crest I’d decided it was kids. Not that they were stupid enough to try a car as conspicuous as a ’58 Daimler but sometimes bits went missing.

  Though what kid would want to souvenir a piece of window rubber?

  Halfway down the hill I put the brakes on again.

  A car came up behind me. Full pelt.

  An inch away from my back bumper bar it swerved and shot into a side street.

  A black Porsche.

  I proceeded down the hill and looked up the side street. The car had disappeared.

  THE sins of the father . . . Guy’s baby . . . he threatened to cut Guy’s wife and baby . . . the knife slicing open the fly screen . . . the sins of the mother . . . my babies . . .

  I didn’t go straight home, I went to a public phone box.

  I listened to the beeps and a voice hundreds of miles away.

  ‘Gary? It’s Claudia.’ . . . ‘Yeah, fine.’ . . . ‘Nothing much. Just the usual.’

  The usual beating up of security guards, the usual eyes watching and waiting, the usual sweat popping out of porous skin, the usual intrusions into my room. The usual.

  ‘Look, Gary, I’ve had a hard day, all right?’ I bit my lip, but the words and the shrill tone of them had already gone along the cables.

  ‘Are the kids there? I’d like to talk to them.’

  To hear their voices, to know my flesh and blood was safe. My babies.

  ‘But it’s late. Shouldn’t they be home from school by now?’ The usual tightness in the stomach, the usual adrenalin scouring the body.

  ‘No, Gary, I’m fine. Just a hard day. You know what the city’s like.’

  Keep them home. Don’t let them go to school, don’t let them go riding, keep them safe Gary, keep them from Har . . . from harm.

  ‘Oh of course, the school bus.’ Time and roads are slow in the country.

  ‘No Gary, really. I just wanted to say hello.’ . . . ‘Yeah. In the school holidays. I’ll be at the airport.’ . . . ‘I bet they are, they even get to go in the cockpit.’

  Don’t send them down. Keep them out of this place. He owns it, owns everyone. How can you be sure . . . the hostess . . . keep them Gary, hold them to your heart and never let them go.

  I WAS STANDING on the edge of the blue light teetering, shot up, overdosed, the ganglia overloaded and the circuits shorting. I had to perform lobotomy, to incise the brain, slice it open and expurgate.

  Who else would know he was dying of cancer? If a journalist knew, who else?

  Those bold black letters were made by a computer printer. On which of the thousands of computers in the city had they been written? Mark’s? Harry Lavender’s? What about Ronny O’Toole? Even a child could use a computer. A child like Sally.

  He was leaving me alone but he was not leaving me alone. He was not beating up my body, he was beating up my nerves, one malignant finger after the other weighted on the pressure points, screeching discordance playing on the nerve strings.

  A system of unarmed combat using hands and feet. But not just hands and feet. The harmony of mind, body and spirit, the concentration of these to a point of bright light, intense and cutting as a laser. Hours in America—I could do it then—sitting in the pose of the warrior, pulling ki down into the body. The breath, the energy of the universe of which every living thing is merely a pulse, a beat of the central heart. Legs burning with pain and focussing on that pain, transforming it to red energy, to power, building spiritual armour, emptying the mind of everything else except that bright pearl of light, the target, the bull’s-eye you could hit blindfolded, the arrow that could go through walls and find its mark.

  I breathed open the channels, breathed in the ascending light and breathed out the brooding darkness. I punched at the shadows, punched them out and away, and away again, till the force field was shimmering.

  Then I entered the program.

  THE room was full of afternoon light. Time had passed, the sun had shifted, or rather the earth had shifted in relation to the sun. In the thin eye membrane where the inner and outer connect, I could feel it.

  I had to get into the system. I knew it could be done and I knew who could do it.

  I placed the receiver back on the phone, picked it up again and called Otto.

  ‘It’s Claudia.’ . . . ‘Yes, fine. Haven’t got time for that now, I’ve got a job for you, a big one. You’ll be paid. Out of my expenses. Remember when we went to that flat in Bondi the other night? Yes, with the modem. I want you to break into a system.’ . . . ‘I know you’re not a hacker but you know how to do it.’ . . . ‘Don’t talk to me about ethics. It’s open slather out there. The system I want you to break into has no ethics.’ . . . ‘Program your computer to run through random phone numbers.’ . . . ‘OK, data transmission numbers. When we get to the next stage I’ll have more information for you.’ . . . ‘Don’t fob m
e off with that. It’s not your time, it’s the computer’s.’ . . . ‘You don’t have that many customers. OK, clients. Stop being so wishy-washy, you know you’ll love it.’

  I knew Otto like a brother. It was just a hypocritical front. Like all the boys, he just LOVED drama.

  There was a tougher system to get into, one that Otto with all his expertise couldn’t help me with, a system that called for completely different tactics. The nervous system of Sally Villos.

  ‘Sally? It’s Claudia. Claudia Valentine.’ She didn’t hang up.

  ‘How are you?’ She was much better thank you, and apologised for her abruptness the other day. Would I like to come over for a drink?

  It was too easy, too easy by far.

  In the city I rented another car. After the little incident with the transmitter I was changing cars more often than I changed my underwear.

  I could have picked a better time than six to be wending my way across the Harbour Bridge. The peak hour traffic was thick and only eased up after Manly. I was grateful I didn’t have to join the lemmings every day.

  The Sally that answered the door this time was a very cool little number. The make-up had a signature, as did the earrings, lace blouse and black tube skirt. It was cocktail time. Happy hour.

  The heavily glossed lips parted. ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’

  ‘Got caught up in the traffic.’

  ‘Come in.’

  I came in, past the mirrors, to the living room, and remembered to sit on the edge of the lounge chair.

  ‘Scotch?’

  ‘Just mineral water thanks.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, disappointed, but she poured me one anyway. And a tequila for herself.

  ‘Have you heard from your parents?’

  ‘I got a postcard from them this morning. From Italy. I’m so envious. Italy must be so romantic.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’ I sipped at the mineral water.

  ‘How are your investigations going?’

  ‘We’re getting there.’

  ‘Sounds awfully glamorous.’

  No. It didn’t. It sounded bland and non-committal. The conversation was beginning to sound like two actors reading scripts from different plays. It was my turn now to read from mine.

  ‘What sort of car do you drive, Sally?’

  ‘Daddy left me the Porsche,’ she said, crunching on a bit of ice. ‘It’s in the garage at the moment, something wrong with the brakes. I nearly ran up the back of this big old car today. Nearly killed myself.’

  And nearly killed me, I thought. A coincidence. A coinciding.

  She was playing me and I didn’t like it. That wasn’t all I didn’t like. I didn’t like her.

  Cute, flighty and ultimately dangerous.

  ‘Mark’s sister told me you moved his things over here.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said brightly. ‘They’re in my bedroom. Would you like to have a look?’

  The bedroom was large, with pale pink walls and a single bed, her childhood bed, with a large teddy bear leaning back on the pillows. Beside the bed was a photo of a bride and groom.

  ‘These your parents?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  I studied the photo. The man and woman were only a few years older than Sally was now. She didn’t look like either of them, though beneath the mask of make-up she could have been anybody’s daughter.

  She handed me a packet tied in red tape. ‘These are his papers. The clothes are in the wardrobe.’

  There was a driver’s licence, birth certificate and passport. I opened the passport and Mark’s face stared out at me. I could still see the kid that mucked around at the bus stop. A healthy, youthful face, despite the heroin, more alive in the photograph than it should have been because now he was dead. Sally saw it too and looked away.

  Apart from the multiple entry visa for the United States, the passport was clean.

  ‘Was Mark planning to travel?’

  ‘Yes, we were going to go to the States. To New York.’

  ‘Are you still going to go?’

  ‘I could,’ she said, playing with a loose thread in the bedspread, ‘but it wouldn’t be the same now. Maybe in a while, when all this . . . when my parents get back.’ She stretched into a pose on the bed, still playing with the bedspread, the pearly nails making whorls. ‘New York’s the place, I could really make a name for myself there.’

  Out of the corner of my eye I watched her catch glimpses of herself in the mirror, turning her face to the better profile. I had a strong desire to pick her up and shake the shit out of her.

  The next item was an address book. It had very few entries and they were mainly first names.

  Under H was a number with no name.

  ‘Whose number is this?’

  She stuck out her well-glossed bottom lip and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’

  I looked at her sharply: the pun was unintentional.

  ‘Didn’t you ever get curious about it?’

  ‘Mark’s address book was no concern of mine,’ she said, running her thumb along her fingernails in an offhand, world-weary manner.

  I continued leafing through, wondering why she was letting me do this. On the inside back cover were two marks where sticky tape had been, as if an extra page had been stuck in. I looked for traces of words on the inside back cover but it was smooth as a baby’s bum. I asked her but with a pout and another shrug she said she knew nothing about it.

  I closed the address book and handed it back to her. ‘Let’s have a look at the clothes.’

  She opened an extremely messy wardrobe that was quite at odds with the rest of the house. Obviously the cleaning lady’s limits had been defined for her. There was one dinner suit, some Adidas running shoes, jeans and brightly coloured shirts. I started going through the pockets.

  ‘I . . . I’ve already done that,’ said Sally sheepishly.

  It was all right to go through pockets but not address books.

  ‘Find anything?’

  ‘Only some loose change.’ She gazed wistfully at the clothes. I shut the door on them.

  The sound system was neat and compact. Laser disc stuff. I opened everything that would open and wasn’t screwed down.

  ‘Looks like pretty expensive stuff. Where did he get it from?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said vaguely, ‘someone got it for him duty free.

  ‘Who?’ I was having a hard time keeping her away from the mirror.

  She swallowed. ‘Just someone. I don’t know.’

  The computer sat on her desk smiling its blank innocent smile.

  ‘Do you know how to operate one of those things?’

  ‘No, I’m not very good with technology.’

  I bit my tongue in time to stop a smart comment to the precious child. Then I noticed that the computer was plugged in. Why was it plugged in if she didn’t know how to operate it?

  ‘Didn’t you do Computer Studies at school?’

  ‘No, I did Art.’

  Oh God.

  ‘There seems to be something missing Sally — the fit.’

  She swung her legs over into a sitting position. ‘I threw it away. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you want to keep.’

  I was sick of playing her game. Now I played mine.

  ‘Did you do heroin too?’

  She looked at me, perishing the thought.

  ‘Did you ever shoot him up? It would be easy for a doctor’s daughter to get syringes.’

  Beneath the mask the eyes were flickering. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with that!’

  ‘But you didn’t mind advertising the fact that Mark did. You brought it up at the funeral and you brought it up again when I came here.’

  ‘So? There’s nothing special about it. A lot of people do smack.’

  ‘But they don’t all die,’ I spat back at her.

  She looked at me knowingly, the hint of a smile on the edges of the lipstick, a look that said I know something you don’t. �
�Mark was one of the ones who did.’

  ‘You don’t seem particularly perturbed.’

  ‘Well what do you expect? Mark’s dead but I’m not. I have to keep living.’

  Yes, we all have to keep living. For as long as we can. Even when you’re wading through mud and it all stinks, you have to keep going.

  She flounced off the bed and came back with the tequila, and like a defiant child took a slug straight from the bottle. She looked at me like she wanted to kill me.

  But it would take more than her eyes to kill me. And her Porsche.

  I tried to soften those eyes. ‘Why do you think he did all that stuff?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘He was . . . he was like that. Hyper . . . kind of paranoid. He said it calmed him down, nothing was ever a problem when he had the smack. He used to worry a lot. About the manuscript. Thought someone might steal it. Steal all his work.’

  It was the most believable thing she’d said so far. I’d been so concerned about my university thesis being lost or stolen I’d never let it out of the house. When I did eventually finish it and had to take it out to be photocopied I caught a cab. If I’d had the money to hire an Armaguard van I would have. I sat in the back clutching the thesis to my breast waiting for the accident to happen. It didn’t matter if I died as long as the manuscript was safe. When I got to the photocopier’s I wouldn’t leave it, I had to do it myself. All 120 pages of it, four copies. I smiled to myself. Who would want to steal 120 pages of waffle on ‘Syntactic Structures of Australian Idiom?’

  But someone might want to steal Mark’s.

  ‘So there was a manuscript.’

  She nodded. ‘Not on paper, on a computer disc.’

  I looked about the room. ‘So where is it now?’

  ‘I thought you might know that.’

  ‘Why would I know?’

  ‘Because . . . because . . . aren’t you taking charge of his affairs or something? I thought you might have found out where it is.’