Left Luggage

by Andrew Christie

  By nine thirty they were in Pyrmont, Jimmy driving the white Hyundai van, Large in the passenger seat with a street directory open in his lap. His reading glasses were balanced on the end of his nose. Jimmy had offered the use of his smart phone. “It’s got maps,” he’d said, “tell you where to go.”

  Large knew where to fucking go; he didn’t need some electronic Simple Simon telling him. “This is it on the left,” he said, “Bowman.”

  Jimmy braked and indicated left.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Pull in here,” said Large. The apartment they were after was on the ninth floor of a sixteen-storey tower.

  Large waited in the Hyundai while Jimmy checked the car park. He was back in two minutes, leaning in the window. “It’s got those see-through mesh shutters. No blue M3.” He looked up and down the street again. “What do you want to do?”

  “We wait. He’ll be here.” It was a beautiful night, the clear sky grading from the glow of city lights into dark blue overhead. There were even a few stars visible. Every now and then fruit bats crossed the sky.

  It was ten twenty before the midnight-blue BMW M3 crawled up the narrow street and turned down the ramp into the car park. They had a glimpse of a dark-complexioned young man driving the car that had been stolen and resprayed specifically for him. The one he had neglected to pay for.

  “Showtime,” said Jimmy, reaching for his bat.

  “No rush,” Large said. “Let him get comfortable, have a piss, settle down with a drink, put the telly on. We’re in no hurry.”

  Ten minutes later, a pizza delivery scooter pulled up in front of the apartments. “I think that’s my cue,” said Jimmy.

  “Yeah, get going,” Large said.

  Large watched Jimmy catch the door after the pizza kid had been buzzed in. He locked the van and strolled across to join him.

  As they were going up in the lift, he said, “You know the drill?”

  “Sure. Course. I don’t say anything or do anything unless you tell me.”

  The lift arrived and they stepped out into a lobby with corridors leading in both directions. “We want to send a message with this guy,” said Large. “‘Don’t fuck with me.’ We want to scare the living shit out of the cunt and anyone else thinking about not paying up.”

  Jimmy nodded and led the way along the corridor. He’d heard this speech before.

  “Nine-oh-eight?” said Jimmy, stopping in front of the door.

  “Yeah.” Large knocked. Jimmy stood to the side, out of sight of the peephole.

  Large produced an envelope from his pocket and when he saw movement behind the peephole he smiled and held it up beside his face until he heard the locks working. The man who opened the door might’ve been twenty-five. He was wearing gold chains and a white towelling bathrobe. It didn’t look like he had anything on underneath it.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  Large stepped forwards, shouldering the door open and pushing the man back as he moved quickly into the apartment.

  “Hey. What the fuck?” the man said.

  Jimmy followed them in, peeling off to check the bedrooms and bathroom.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” the man shouted.

  Large put a finger to his lips “Shh.”

  Jimmy came out of the last bedroom shaking his head, confirming there was no one else in the apartment.

  “Get the fuck out of my house or—”

  “Or what?” said Jimmy, standing beside the man with his baseball bat out, slapping it rhythmically into the palm of his left hand. The guy pulled his robe closer around himself.

  It was a nice apartment. Floor-to-ceiling windows looking north and east over the harbour and to the city lights, great view of the bridge. Large wouldn’t mind living somewhere like this, a bit closer to the city. He’d miss the trees though, the birds in his garden. He was checking the framed photographs in the shelved room divider that separated the dining room from the living room. Family photos, a lot of them featuring a pretty girl.

  Large turned to the man. “My friends don’t like people taking the piss,” he said.

  “Look, I’ve got no idea what this is about but ... Do you know who I am?”

  “It’s Ricky, isn’t it? Do you know who I am, Ricky?”

  “No, but—”

  “Have you got twenty grand, Ricky?”

  The man paled visibly. “No—”

  Large nodded and Jimmy stepped forwards, swinging the bat hard into the calf of the man’s right leg. The pain made Ricky cry out and lift up his leg. Jimmy hit the other leg and Ricky fell howling to the floor. He tried to push himself up again, but Jimmy hit him hard on the upper arm.

  “That was by way of introduction,” said Large. “A bit of a stinger, to get your attention. You will note that my colleague is starting with the nice, well-padded muscly parts. Next he’ll move on to your bony knobbly bits: knees, elbows, shoulders, that kind of thing. After that it’ll be your soft, sensitive parts.”

  As Jimmy stalked around the man on the floor with the bat cocked on his shoulder, Large picked up the remote control and turned on the television. It was a big flat-screen with a surround-sound system, tall banks of speakers arranged either side of it. Large flipped through the channels until he found a rock music channel. Metallica, very appropriate, he thought, turning the volume up.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  An Extraordinary Australian

  “What time is your flight?” John said. “I can give you a lift to the airport.”

  Annette Morgan had arrived on Friday morning, just after ten o’clock, and had been working through his mother’s portfolios ever since. Now it was late afternoon and John had just knocked off for the day. He was contemplating a beer.

  “Oh, I’m staying in town for the weekend,” she said. “The kids are with their father, so I’m going to catch up with some old friends. And do a bit of shopping. A girls’ weekend.”

  They had arranged that she would come every second Friday to work on the portfolio. It coincided with the weekends her kids were with their father and meant that she could stay in Sydney if she wanted to. John had cleaned up the front room as he had promised. It looked alright too, rough but clean. There were no skirting boards or architraves yet, and the un-sanded floorboards were spattered with plaster and paint, but there was no dust. He had moved out his tools and ladders and replaced them with a stack of boxes that contained all Betty’s portfolios and a trestle table set up beneath the tall front window for Annette to work at. He hadn’t had a decent chair so he’d bought one from a furniture shop in Alexandria, one with wheels and that went up and down, so Annette could adjust the height to suit herself. He’d even remembered a power board for her computer.

  “This will do fine,” said Annette when he showed her the front room. “Plenty of light, as you said, and not messy at all.” She gave him a smile.

  John had showed her around the rest of the house too – at least, all the rooms that had floorboards.

  “It’s a big place isn’t it? Bigger than it looks from the street.” She was right, there were four bedrooms upstairs and plenty of room downstairs. A lot of floorboards to be replaced, a lot of walls to reline, and skirting boards to install. “It will be great when it’s finished, won’t it?”

  John was just starting to realise how long it would take to finish.

  Annette set herself up at the table with a laptop and the portfolios. John left her to it and went back to pulling up the old floorboards in the back bedroom. He was throwing them off the veranda into the rear yard for the moment. Later he would stack them and cut them up for firewood.

  At lunchtime they walked down to the café near the park and bought sandwiches and coffees. Annette paid. “It’s my shout.” When John protested, she held up her hand. “No, I insist. I can claim it on expenses anyway.”

  They sat outside on the street overlooking the park. There were a lot of people having their lunch, workers from the university and the hospit
al mostly, sitting alone or in small groups on the bright green grass.

  “Your mother has an amazing body of work,” said Annette. “I knew a lot of her famous images, the prize winners, the covers, but there is so much more in her portfolio. She was a wonderful photographer. An exceptional eye.”

  John didn’t know how to react to this kind of praise for his mother. He was proud of her of course, and he enjoyed her photographs as much as anyone, but it seemed that he had been listening to people talking about how wonderful she was all his life. “So you think it will make a good exhibition?” he asked.

  “Oh yes. People will love it. They will know some of the images already, the famous ones, but there is so much more, and they probably don’t know she is Australian. There is a wonderful story to tell there.”

  John chewed on his sandwich, wondering if the boy who got sent back to Sydney for school each January would rate a mention. Or Jorge.

  On the way back, she stopped on the street, opposite his house. “I love this place. With the park and the café. There’s nothing like this in the suburbs in Canberra.”

  “I bet you don’t have trouble finding a parking spot in Canberra though.”

  She laughed. “Nobody parks on the street in Canberra anyway. They park all over the verges instead, kill the grass.”

  By four thirty, John had finished stripping out the back bedroom. When he stuck his head into the front room, Annette was sitting at the table with photographs spread around her, typing away at her computer. She had white earphones in her ears and didn’t notice him, intent on her work and whatever she was listening to. John watched her for a while, till he realised how creepy that would seem to anyone watching him. He knocked on the door and went over to the table as she turned and smiled. He liked her smile. “I’m knocking off now,” he said. “Beer o’clock. Can I get you a drink or something?”

  “I’m nearly finished, and yes, a beer would be lovely. Just let me finish with this image.”

  The photo was one that John didn’t remember, which surprised him – he thought he knew most of Betty’s work over the years pretty well. It was of an American soldier, Vietnam, judging by the helmet and the M16 lying across his thighs. The soldier was sitting on the front fender of a Jeep, facing the camera, looking directly at it. In the background, slightly out of focus, other soldiers were herding Vietnamese peasants down a road through a village. The soldier’s look was a challenge. It was a morally ambiguous image.

  It unsettled John, reminded him of too many villages in his own wars, too many judgement calls. Deciding if the guy on the other ridge with a rifle is a threat, up there where every second bastard carries an AK. What are you going to do if he comes this way? How close do you let him get to your OP? At what point do you decide that his life is worth less than the risk to your mission? End his life for tending his goats too close to you?

  They sat out on the front veranda drinking their beers and watching people going past on the street. Mostly people on their way to the park, with and without dogs.

  “What will you do with the house when you finish it?” Annette asked.

  “Live here.”

  “I thought you might be planning to sell it. Then do another one. Some people I know do that, constant renovation, house after house, year after year.”

  “No, I couldn’t live like that. This one will do me,” he said.

  “It’s a big house for one person.”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “I might take in lodgers. It’s a good spot, close to the uni and the hospital. Not sure I want to, though. I think I’ll enjoy the space.”

  “You don’t have a family of your own?”

  “No. I never got around to it, never made the time. Too busy with work.” That was what he always said but the truth was he hadn’t ever been able to hold on to a woman long enough to form a proper relationship, let alone have kids.

  “Work?”

  “Army. A while ago now. Bit of private work since. Not anymore though.” He watched her looking at the scars on his arm, her eyes following the twisted flesh up to his neck, meeting his eyes. “IED,” he said.

  She looked blank.

  “Bomb. Afghanistan.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t know what she had to be sorry for.

  Annette said, “You and your mother both ended up in up in war zones.”

  John nodded. “Mum used to say there is always another war somewhere. In the regiment, our greatest worry was that someone would hold a war and not invite us.” He took a sip of his beer. “We trained so hard, it was more dangerous than the missions. You go through all that ... You don’t want to miss the opportunity to put it into practice.”

  “To test yourself?”

  “Kind of, but it’s working together too. The team thing. You’re supposed to be the best at what you do, but at some point you need to prove it.”

  “Not like photography. That’s an individual thing, I imagine, and a bit competitive. Trying to get the best image, to get it published first.”

  “Mum always said it was about telling the story, getting it to a wide audience. The wider, the better.” He laughed. “Our lot don’t want the story told. Not unless we’re telling it.”

  “What did they call it in Iraq? Embedding? That seems like bullshit.”

  He smiled at her. “Yeah, bullshit. We’d rather the media stayed home and we emailed them happy snaps.” John decided to change the subject. “How about you? You’ve got kids? How many?”

  She smiled. “Two, Chris and Julie, ten and twelve now. They’re good kids. Mostly. I’m dreading sharing my house with two teenagers though.”

  “Husband?”

  “Divorced. Five years. Steve’s remarried, but the kids see a lot of him, which is good.”

  John finished his beer. “Another one?”

  Annette looked at her watch. “Oh, why not? Then I’ll call a taxi. I’m meeting an old friend for dinner at the Opera Bar, but I don’t have to be there till seven.”

  The second time Annette came to work on his mother’s portfolio, John asked her to stay the night.

  She declined. Politely, but definitely. They were both embarrassed.

  “Sorry,” said John. “I didn’t mean ...” But he had. He didn’t know why he had put the thought into words. He just enjoyed her company, liked her smile and her laugh. They got on.

  The two of them had been sitting out on the veranda again, at the end of another warm autumn day. John had ordered pizzas, which they ate while they watched the day fade. Just chatting.

  Annette had spent the morning in Glebe with Betty. “Talking through her career, getting the timeline right,” she said. “I hadn’t realised how many wars she had covered.”

  “Yeah. She was busy. Lots of wars over her lifetime.”

  “She went to Vietnam seven times.”

  “That was where she started, where she got hooked. On the drama, the adrenalin.”

  “She’s an extraordinary woman. An extraordinary Australian.”

  “My extraordinary mum.” John raised his beer bottle and took a swig. He had picked up Annette from Glebe at midday and brought her back to Camperdown to work on the portfolio. They had lunch at the café near the park again before getting back to work. This time, John paid. He insisted, she demurred. Afterwards they went back to the house. She went to the front room, he went upstairs to continue working on the bedrooms.

  “That is really good pizza, but I don’t think I can eat any more,” said Annette.

  John smiled and looked across at her. She was sitting in a cheap plastic chair with her feet up on an old milk crate. Her smart but sensible white shoes rocked back and forth on the edge of the paint-stained crate. She was wearing a dress today, blue, with a belt and white buttons down the front. She looked far too crisp and clean for his half-renovated house.

  John was sitting on the cracked pavement with his back to one of the timber posts that supported the upstairs veranda. He was wearing bui
lding clothes: stained shorts, a faded and holey Mambo T-shirt of indeterminate colour, and thick purple socks. He had left the boots in the laundry when he had stopped work.

  “That’s okay, I’ll have the rest for lunch tomorrow. We never had pizza at Mum’s place when I was a kid. She hates it.”

  “How can anyone hate pizza? It’s our national dish, isn’t it?”

  “It should be,” said John.

  Annette stood up and picked up their empty plates, started walking towards the door. She paused beside him and looked down. “Another beer?”

  He nodded, and before she could move away he put his hand on her bare ankle, and asked her to stay the night.

  She paused. “No, John. I don’t think so.”

  He removed his hand and Annette disappeared into the house with the dirty plates. John could still feel the warmth of her ankle on his palm and his fingers.

  Annette came back a minute later with an open bottle of beer for John. “It’s getting late. I should get going.”

  “Of course.” John called her a cab. They sat in awkward silence while they waited. Mosquitos were starting to buzz around them as it got dark, but neither of them wanted to go inside. Eventually the cab arrived, cruising slowly down the street, checking the house numbers. John waved to the driver and the cab swung across the road, did a cumbersome three-point turn and pulled up in front of the house. Annette shouldered her bag, she looked up at John. “Thanks. For the pizza, and lunch too.”

  “Pleasure. Good to see you again.” He offered her his hand, but she looked at it then leaned forwards and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Bye,” she said.

  John watched the taxi drive away then went inside. Tomorrow was Saturday. Billy would be over bright and early. John still hadn’t asked about his birthday.

  Billy was waiting on the veranda at seven thirty when John got back from his run. After breakfast they started on the new floorboards for the upstairs bedrooms. The hardest part was getting the boards up to the top floor. Instead of bringing them up the stairs they had lifted them up onto the back veranda, Billy down below leaning them up against the house, and John up top, bending over the balustrade, lifting and sliding the four-metre boards across the railing, then carrying them through to the front rooms. It took most of the morning just to get the timber up. After an early lunch they had started fixing them, cutting, clamping and nailing. It had been a good day’s work, all the timber for the front two rooms was upstairs, and John could finish the floors during the week. Then they’d be ready for sanding.