Left Luggage

by Andrew Christie

  “Oh, you’d love Paris,” said Betty. “I miss it very much.”

  “I’m sure you do,” said Annette. “But it’s lovely here, isn’t it?” She looked around her. “And you’ve got that fabulous courtyard. So close to everything too, Glebe shops just up the road, all those cafés.” She smiled at John. He was glad that she was talking-up Glebe.

  “Annette needs to go through all my portfolios,” said Betty. “So we can choose which ones to have printed up. Where have you put them?”

  “They’re in storage. I can get them out.” He turned to Annette. “Do you need all of them?”

  “Preferably.”

  “There are a lot. Do you want to take them back to Canberra? Have you got a car?”

  “No, I flew up. I wasn’t planning on taking them back to Canberra. I can do it here.”

  “My apartment isn’t big enough,” said Betty, looking around the crowded room.

  “No,” said John, “it’s not. But my place is. You could use my front room.”

  “No. Your house is horrible,” said Betty. She turned to Annette. “John is renovating his house. C’est un gâchis.”

  Annette turned to John and raised her eyebrows in a query.

  “She says it is a complete mess,” he explained. “It isn’t. The front room is fine, I can tidy it up.”

  “Are you sure? It needs to be dust free.”

  “It will be fine. I’m just using it for storage at the moment. What do you need?”

  “Oh, just a table and a chair. And some decent light. Power for my computer.”

  “The front room’s got big windows, and there’s a good lamp you could use,” he said.

  Before Annette left they arranged for her to return the following Friday. John would have all the portfolios at Camperdown and the room ready for her by then.

  After she had gone, Betty told John about Billy and his camera.

  “He’s a strange kid, Billy. Full of surprises. You must have impressed him.”

  “I think he just liked my cameras. Do you know when his birthday is?”

  “His birthday? No idea, why?”

  “I would like to buy him a camera. A good one that he can learn with.”

  “That’s a bit extravagant isn’t it? You hardly know him.”

  “But you know him, and you like him, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Well then, find out when his birthday is.”

  “How am I going to do that? I take it you want to surprise him.”

  “Of course. That is the fun of it. Ask his mother.”

  “No. I don’t get on with his mother. I don’t think anyone does.” John scratched at his neck. “Leave it with me, I’ll find out somehow.”

  The next day John caught up with a couple of blokes from the regiment. He hadn’t seen Sam Morris for five years, and it was even longer for Tommy Jackson. They were consultants now, high fliers in corporate security, although John had heard they still had ties to the government and the spooks. Everything was tax deductible for these guys. Sam had rung John out of the blue, invited him to lunch. “Might be able to put a bit of work your way, if you’re interested. If not, well, be good just to catch up, sink a few.”

  They had lunch at an expensive restaurant, all linen tablecloths, discreet staff and expansive views of Circular Quay. The food and the wine were excellent.

  Sam and Tommy were based in Brisbane. “We’re in town to talk to a new client. Thought we’d look you up. See how life’s treating you,” Sam said.

  “Heard about your adventures at Chahar,” said Tommy.

  John wasn’t really surprised. That kind of fuck-up tended to get talked about.

  “Yeah,” said Sam. “You get any blowback from that?”

  “Not so far. Where’d you hear about it?”

  “It’s an incestuous business. People like to gossip. Why the hell did you get mixed up with those IRC idiots?”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” John said. Chahar had been his first and only job for IRC. A new company, good pay – he should have known better. After the regiment, after the IED and the burns unit, John had worked for a few years for private security firms. It was good money and mostly straightforward work, usually keeping some rich prick alive, even if most of them didn’t deserve to be. Chahar was the last. Things went wrong and good people got dead along with the bad. He’d been lucky to get out in one piece.

  Chahar Qal’eh was a village about forty kilometres outside Kabul, just off the A1 on the Kabul-Behsud highway. Not much of a village, just a collection of low mud compounds strung out along fertile riverside land, and overlooked by steep, dry hills. John had been part of a three-man IRC team. The client had his own bodyguard and drivers. The team leader was a young Pommie guy called Mike, ex-para; chatty, confident. Management material, but he seemed to know his shit. The other guy was a heavy-duty local called Mahmoud. Mahmoud was solid. John had worked with him before, and was glad to find him on this new gig. The guy had started out fighting the Russians when he was just a kid. He’d been fighting ever since. The fact that he was still alive said it all.

  The client was young, close to someone in the government, according to Mike. He had business in the village, some land deal. So they had rolled out in the morning. Three soft-body SUVs, client in the middle with Mike and the bodyguard, John up front, looking out for trouble, and Mahmoud bringing up the rear with his M249, ready to discourage anyone following them.

  The meeting was in a family compound on the eastern edge of the village. They arrived just before 11am, and Mahmoud and John went in first to check the buildings while the others waited outside with the vehicles. It was dark inside the thick walls. The family watched, their eyes shining in the gloom, as John and Mahmoud moved from room to room. The buildings were clear, just the family. No fighting-age men, no children. No weapons visible, which was the best you could hope for in Afghanistan. Mike and the bodyguard went inside with the client to do the deal, leaving John and Mahmoud outside with the drivers. Mahmoud took a position by the gate, watching the road and their vehicles, John stayed inside the compound, by the door to the main house. It was all fine till the shooting started inside.

  Two shots. John called to Mahmoud, then went through the door with his M4 up. First room was empty. Shouting from the next room, sounded like the client. John crossed to the door fast. There were women screaming.

  “Don’t. Fuck—” That was Mike, his voice cut off by more shooting: two shots followed by a burst from an M4. John went through the door, crouching. Mike was down, the old guy from the family was down too. More women screaming. The bodyguard had a big pistol out, coming round at John. He didn’t wait, he put the bodyguard down, a three-shot burst, head and throat. The client shouted something and pulled a pistol.

  “Put it down!” John heard himself shout but the gun kept coming and John fired again. Screaming, lots of screaming. The tables with tea and little bowls of almonds and dried mulberries had been up-ended. Four down. The client and the bodyguard dead. The guy from the house and Mike bleeding badly. The women shouting and screaming. Mike screaming. Total fuck-up.

  John heard Mahmoud shouting from outside then the heavy rattle of sustained fire from his machine gun. A young man with a weapon appeared at the back of the crowded room. John fired over the heads of the family and the guy disappeared through the door. John grabbed Mike’s webbing and started dragging him out of there, keeping his weapon on the people in the room. Mike’s blood left a long red streak across the floor.

  Mahmoud was crouched by the front door. He pointed to the other side of the courtyard near the corner of the house where there were two bodies on the ground. “There are more.”

  “There always are,” said John.

  There was no sign of the drivers so John hoisted Mike onto his shoulder and ran for the closest vehicle. Mahmoud covered the house and the walls while John lifted Mike into the back seat. The Englishman had been hit in the chest and thig
h and was white, in shock. Bleeding out. He’d been screaming before but he wasn’t making any noise now. Mahmoud jumped in the front seat and got them moving. John stripped off Mike’s webbing and went to work trying to stop the bleeding. It was no good – Mike died before they got near the hospital.

  John had no intention of waiting around for whatever local justice or family retribution may follow. “I need to get to the airport. What about you?”

  “I will go north. To my family.”

  “Time to go home.”

  “Certainly.”

  They left Mike’s body at the hospital, and drove north out of Kabul. Mahmoud dropped John at Bagram and kept going. A US Air Force major who owed John a favour got him a no-questions-asked lift on a medevac flight to Ramstein. Two days later he was back in Perth via London. That was the last time he’d worked security.

  “Come and work for us,” said Sam. “We need trainers. No one will be shooting at you – we leave that shit for the kiddies.”

  “Who are you training?”

  “Anyone with the cash,” said Tommy.

  “At the moment we’re working in Malaysia and New Guinea. They’re good people to work with,” said Sam.

  “Funny bastards,” added Tommy, grinning, “good sense of humour, and keen as.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” said John, “but I’m okay for money at the moment, plus I’m in the middle of renovating a house. And my mother is here now. I’ve got to stick around to keep an eye on her.”

  “That’s okay,” said Sam, sliding a business card across the linen table cloth. “If you do decide to get back into it, keep us in mind.”

  After lunch, John led them around the Quay and into the Rocks. Leaving the George Street tourist strip behind, they walked up between the damp sandstone walls of the Argyle Cut.

  “Where the hell are we going?” asked Tommy, concerned that they had walked past a series of perfectly good-looking pubs.

  “The Hero of Waterloo,” said John. “It’s worth the walk.”

  The Hero was a small pub, quiet at this time of day. The walls were lined with raw convict-hewn sandstone blocks, and there were no video screens. John got the first round in and carried them to a table near a big old fireplace.

  “Nice joint,” said Sam taking his beer. “Definitely worth the walk.”

  “It’ll get noisy later on but it’s a great place for a quiet drink in the afternoon.”

  “Do you hear from Smokey at all?” said Tommy. “He was from Sydney, wasn’t he?”

  “No. Not for years. Yeah, I think he grew up in Hornsby. Somewhere up that way.”

  “Bastard seems to have gone completely off the radar.”

  “I thought you two were pretty tight,” said Sam. “Thought he might have kept in contact, after you saved his arse in Uruzgan.”

  “Didn’t save his legs,” John said. “We were in different hospitals. I visited him a couple of times ...” He shrugged. “I guess we each had our own problems. Smokey was different too.”

  “Yeah. Ending up in a wheelchair is bound to change things,” said Tommy, finishing his beer. “My round, I think.” He stood up, pushing his chair back noisily.

  John drained his glass and held it out to Tommy. He wasn’t sure why Sam and Tommy were interested in Smokey, they had never been that close in the regiment, but if Smokey wanted to stay dark that was his business.

  They called it a day soon after five. The pub was getting noisy, starting to fill with after-work drinkers. Sam and Tommy caught a taxi to their hotel, John decided to take a bus from Circular Quay. John couldn’t remember the last time he’d caught a bus.

  The Quay was full of office workers waiting for a bus to take them home, and tourists making their way back to their hotels.

  “Prepaid only, mate,” the driver of the 438 said when John offered him a five-dollar note. “Read the sign.”

  “What?”

  “Prepaid tickets only.”

  John had no idea what the bus driver was talking about.

  “You need to buy your tickets first, we don’t sell ’em on the bus. You can get them over there at the information booth.” He pointed back over John’s shoulder.

  John shook his head and got off the bus again squeezing past a big woman with a shopping bag and a young man talking loudly on a mobile phone.

  He bought a ten ride ticket at the information booth and joined the crowd waiting for the next bus. When it came, John took an aisle seat next to a small Asian woman. The space between the seats wasn’t long enough for his thighs so he had to sit with his legs splayed. His left knee and shoulder were sticking out into the aisle and he was conscious that he was taking up more than his share of the bench seat. The young woman didn’t seem to mind though, she was totally engrossed in her phone, sending and reading text messages in rapid succession.

  The bus was completely full by the time it reached Town Hall. John’s knee and shoulder were getting bumped every time someone moved past in the aisle. A young man dressed in black with big white headphones on his head turned to let someone out and whacked John across the ear with his backpack. John gave the guy an elbow in the thigh and a muttered, “Watch it, mate.” The young man turned and glared at John, hitting the woman standing behind him with the backpack this time. John glared back and the boy looked away, the tinny beat of music leaking from his headphones. At Broadway, John decided he’d had enough. He got off so he could pick up some shopping and visit his mother on the way home. Glebe Point Road was crowded, mostly people on their way home. Ken Mallard was ahead of John, walking up the hill with a plastic shopping bag in each hand. John picked up his pace to catch up; he wanted to ask Ken how Betty was getting on in the village. A teenage boy on a BMX-bike darted across the road at the top of the hill and started coming down the footpath towards them. The boy was moving fast, swerving in and out, playing chicken with the pedestrians. Lining them up, veering away at the last minute, laughing, leaving a trail of angry stares and shouted abuse behind him. The people who saw him coming moved quickly out of his way. One man reading a notice in a real estate agent’s window didn’t, and got knocked face first into the glass.

  An old woman with a shopping trolley was ahead of Ken. She moved to get out of the way of the approaching bike but it followed her. She moved the other way and so did the bike, only straightening at the last moment, the teenager grinning as he raced past the terrified woman. Ken was next but he refused to play the game. He just kept walking. When the boy shifted his weight to swerve past him, Ken swung one of the white plastic shopping bags in front of the boy’s grinning face. The boy swerved, lost control of the bike and hit the footpath hard, landing on his shoulder then somersaulting onto his back. The bike clattered down the footpath on its side. Ken kept walking.

  John watched the boy get slowly to his feet. He looked at his bike then he turned and looked for Ken. When he started to move after him John put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t.”

  “Fuck off,” the boy spat, knocking John’s hand away. He looked back at Ken, then at John, before he went after his bike.

  John caught up with Ken near the top of the hill. “Bit of an overreaction back there?”

  Ken turned, smiling when he recognised John. “Maybe. He had it coming though. I don’t like smartarses.”

  “No,” John said. “You made that pretty clear. I think he got the message. Do you know him?”

  “No, just his type. They need a firm hand.” Ken kept punching the button at the pedestrian crossing while they waited for the traffic lights to change. “Probably got no dad.”

  John hadn’t had a father, either. “No excuse,” he said.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  Large

  Large carried his bourbon and Coke and his Telegraph through the cool gloom to a table at the back of the bar. He took out his reading glasses and unfolded the paper. “State of Confusion”, the headline bellowed. “I’ll say,” Large muttered, flipping the paper o
ver to the sport section to read about the latest fast bowler to bugger his back. He’d had a difficult day, and it wasn’t over yet. There’d been an unusual number of dickheads to deal with, and he was looking forward to a couple of quiet drinks and something to eat before he had to deal with another one.

  Jimmy arrived at the pub at 8pm, by which time Large had wrapped himself around a pepper steak, chips and two more bourbons. The skinny young man was dressed to impress: black jeans and black T-shirt, covered by an almost floor-length black overcoat. He even had a black beanie holding his blond hair under more control than it was used to.

  “Very fucking Matrix, that outfit,” said Large. “I didn’t see where it said fancy dress on the invitation.”

  Jimmy looked at his reflection in the glass doors. “The coat? It hides the baseball bat. I cut a hole in the pocket, so I can hold the bat inside the coat beside my leg. No one’s the wiser.”

  “Is that a baseball bat in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” said Large.

  “What?” Jimmy held up both his hands and waved them in front of Large. “No bat. I left it in the van. Didn’t think it would be cool in the pub.”

  Christ, thought Large, why do I always get the geniuses. “Did it cross your mind at all that we might not want to draw attention to ourselves by dressing like we’re going to a fucking Halloween party?”

  Jimmy looked down at himself then looked at the other people in the bar. None were looking at him. “Sorry. Thought it would scare the prick.”

  “It fucking scares me,” said Large. “Get us another bourbon while I take a leak. We’ve got an hour to kill yet.”