Left Luggage

by Andrew Christie

  “What next?” said Betty after John had handed over his credit card and given the salesman the delivery address.

  “Lunch? What do you fancy?”

  They ended up at a restaurant on a corner among warehouses in Alexandria, where they sat outside beneath giant fig trees, drinking pinot gris and eating rare steaks. Things could be worse, thought John. “I had a call yesterday. My father’s things have arrived. Jorge’s things. I’m going to go and have a look at them tomorrow. Do you want to come? We’ll have to go through it all eventually to see if any of it is worth keeping, and I’m going to need some furniture for my house.”

  The storage units were in an old brick warehouse set back from the road with a car park out front. Jimmy eased the van into a slot near the door. The rest of the car park was empty except for an aged and neglected green Corolla. Large climbed out of the van, saying, “You wait here. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  There was no one in the front office so he pressed the doorbell button that was screwed onto the counter. Bells chimed behind the flimsy office partition and a young bloke in a collar and tie, too big for his skinny neck, stuck his head around the corner. “Help you?”

  “I certainly hope so, mate. I want to find out about a storage unit. Never had one before, not sure how it all works. How big, how much, all that?”

  “Ah, yeah. Sure,” the boy said, glancing back behind the partition before coming over to the counter, and leaving behind the girl or the computer game that he had been in the middle of before he was interrupted. Expecting a quiet day, no doubt. The boy’s name tag said Bevan. What kind of name was that – sounded like a health food.

  “Yes, I don’t need it for long, I’ve got a container of furniture coming over from Europe. Nowhere to put it all till I can finish the renos. The builder is running six weeks late. Reckons it’s the weather, but it hasn’t rained for weeks. I think it’s mostly that he’s a fucking idiot. Sorry, language, but I should have known better when his price was so low. So, long story short, I need somewhere to store the new furniture in for a couple of months.”

  “Sure, okay. Do you know what size the container is?”

  “Just a regular-size one, not one of the really big ones.”

  “Twenty footer?”

  “Yeah, sounds about right.”

  “Okay, you’ll need a six-by-three.”

  “What’s that – metres? You sure that’ll be big enough?”

  “Yeah, it’ll be fine, we had a container come in yesterday. Twenty footer, went in a six-by-three no worries.”

  “Okay, you’re the expert. Any chance I can have a look at one of these six-by-threes?”

  “Sure. I’ll just see what we’ve got available at the moment.” He jiggled the mouse to wake up the computer screen that sat on the counter, then began typing. “Yeah, we’ve got four— no sorry, three available in that size. Yeah three, the other one went yesterday.”

  Bevan led Large through a side door into the warehouse. It was divided into low corridors lined with green roller shutters. Each of the doors had a metre-high white unit number painted on it. “All the six-by-threes are down here. We get quite a few builders using them. They like ’em close to the front ’cause they’re getting stuff in and out all the time.” He pulled out an access card and swiped the reader beside one of the doors, then bent and lifted the door.

  “Looks secure and dry. S’pose that’s the main thing.”

  “Certainly. Security is very important. We’ve got cameras on every corridor, covering every unit.”

  “That’s terrific,” said Large.

  When they got back to the office, Large took a pamphlet with the prices and contact details, and said he’d call back when he had a date confirmed: “Don’t want to start paying for it till I need it.”

  He stepped outside, waiting in the sunshine until Bevan had disappeared behind the partition, back to his girlfriend or his porn or whatever he’d been up to. After five minutes, Large quietly opened the door and went back inside, using the folded-up pamphlet to stop the door clicking shut. Then he slipped behind the counter and jiggled the mouse, bringing the computer screen to life. It was still on the six-by-three storage units page. The last one let was yesterday, unit number 402. Large wrote down the address on a yellow sticky note, then got out of there.

  Returning to the van, he said, “I got the number of the storage unit and an address, but I don’t know how much good it’s going to do us.”

  “You reckon they’d leave the guns and money here?”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Large, “but maybe they’d take the risk. It’s got a fair bit of security, cameras and shit. Might be safe ... But they’ll have to move it at some stage.”

  “Yeah, but when?” Jimmy said, starting the engine and backing out of the parking space. “And who are they?”

  “I got a name, but we should take care of the money and guns first. Get them out of the picture then watch to see who turns up looking for them.”

  “Okay. How do you want to do it?”

  “Dunno.”

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  402

  On Wednesday morning, Betty sat outside Forest Court on the bench by the gates, waiting for John. It was overcast and likely to stay that way according to the morning radio, but it was still warm, still pleasant enough. She was early, but enjoyed watching the morning people going past on the street, office workers in a hurry, plugged into earphones, school children dawdling along, talking to their friends.

  Jorge’s furniture was in storage somewhere nearby, apparently. John was still bitter about it, that she had kept it but hadn’t told him. It wasn’t her fault, she had just forgotten about it all. It never occurred to her that John would be interested in them. John and Jorge had been separate parts of her life. There was no overlap for her. Jorge had gone, and later John had been born. She had kept them separate, she had put Jorge away in her memories and got on with having a baby, and continuing to work. Continuing to pay the bills.

  John pulled his white ute into the kerb right on time. He didn’t say much, just gave her a quick kiss and held the door open for her. He was back in the driver’s seat and had the engine running while she was still trying to get the seat belt to click.

  “Here, let me,” said John, taking the buckle from her hands and slotting it into the end of the belt that poked up between the seats.

  “Merci,” Betty said. She didn’t understand why they made seat belts so difficult and fiddly.

  It was only a short drive. In five minutes they were bumping up over the kerb, and driving right into an old warehouse that provided storage spaces for the people who had moved into trendy new inner-city apartment buildings, only to find that they didn’t have enough room for all their junk. The warehouse was huge and anonymous, full of people’s excesses.

  John steered the ute between white-painted columns, the tyres squealing and squeaking on the grey concrete floor as he spun the wheel and backed up to a green roller shutter with 402 painted on it.

  “What a strange place,” said Betty.

  “It’s just a storage warehouse,” said John. “Just somewhere to put the stuff till we decide what to do with it.”

  John got out and came around to open Betty’s door. She clambered out and watched while John held a card to a little plastic box beside the roller door. A light changed from red to green and there was a click. John reached down and lifted it with a loud clatter. The space inside was jammed full of furniture. Betty couldn’t tell how far back it went, but it looked like a long way. A fluorescent light in the ceiling flickered into life, brightly lighting the top layer but casting deep shadows further down.

  “There’s a lot,” said John, turning to look at her.

  Betty didn’t say anything. She stood, resting on her stick, just looking as the jumble of furniture started to resolve itself into once familiar shapes. Shapes remembered from another time, another life. All Jorge’s things. She could make out the
ugly heavy oak desk she had never liked, and beneath it the curves of a lovely Danish chair he had been so proud of. There were bookcases, a leather upholstered sofa, boxes too, a lot of them, stacked up along one wall. So much. Stuff. Just stuff. All of it Jorge’s. Forgotten, like him, put away and left alone, not thought about for years and years. Now, here it all was again. Still the same. Betty moved to the door. She ran her hand along the blue upholstered back of the sofa. It was dusty, gritty feeling.

  She had met Jorge in 1968, that mad year when anything seemed possible. When the swell of change and discontent that had been building through France finally broke across their lives, turning Paris into a battlefield, littered with burning cars and drifting clouds of tear gas. She was away when it all started, arriving back from Tan Son Nhut, and the aftermath of Tet, to find Paris full of revolution and madness. She took her cameras and went straight to the occupation site in the Quartier Latin and began working.

  It was a nightmare scene, the day fading and the streets lit by the glare of car fires. Nervous young people standing around behind their barricades in groups, talking, some holding hands, some standing on top of the barricades, trying to see what was going on, what the police were doing. Others stood ready beside the mounds of cobblestones, pulled out of the road and piled up to serve as barricades, a ready source of missiles to be thrown at the riot police. Slogans and graffiti had been painted across the walls lining the streets. Most of them were revolutionary slogans, but some of the students apparently couldn’t help making jokes. Some were enigmatic: Sous les pavés, la plage! Beneath the cobbles, the beach! Which was what it looked like: with the cobblestones removed, large sections of the road had turned to sand.

  The CRS police formed up in battle lines opposite the barricades was like a medieval scene with their high domed helmets, circular shields and long batons. The attack was preceded by more tear gas. Betty moved to the side of the street, trying to stay clear of the worst of it. A man with a scarf tied around his face emerged from a drift of gas to throw a cobblestone at the police. Through her viewfinder she watched his body leaping and arching with the effort to send his heavy rock at their lines. She was between the students and the police, who moved forward slowly at first, staying in formation, round shields up and long batons in the air. Betty kept her camera visible and tried to get out of their way. When the police charged, she backed herself against the building, seeking shelter in a doorway, still working her camera, still getting the shots. Then they were on her, police swinging their batons, protesters swinging long timber poles. A cop fell against her, swore and lifted his stick ready to hit her, but she fell back with the door as it opened behind her. A big man pulled her into the hallway and slammed the door shut on the policeman. That was Jorge.

  John was dragging some of the furniture aside so he could get at the boxes. He pulled some out and put them down near the tailgate of the ute. He used a large folding knife to prise the wooden top off one of the boxes. Books. Betty ran her hands over them. Jorge had so many books. She pulled one out, half remembering the grey cloth cover. Balzac. The smell, it was his office, lined with bookshelves, the green reading lamp on that awful desk. Jorge looking up, smiling. Oh Jesus, she thought. Dear Jorge.

  They had spent the night in the front room of his apartment overlooking the street, with the sound of shouting and sirens building and fading outside. Drinking tea, talking quietly. At first about the riot, then about themselves. When the riot quietened down they went to bed, made love, slept in each other’s arms.

  It was a fine Sunday morning when they emerged to find the street littered with burnt-out cars and vans, and the smell of tear gas still in the air. There were other people wandering about too, looking at the damage, as if unable to believe what had happened the previous night. In those few weeks the crescendo of turmoil in the city built and built and then faded away as the street protests gave way to strikes. In the end the revolutionaries lost the political battles but they had changed something in France. It was never the same again. And Betty and Jorge continued their affair. In July they had moved in together. Stayed together until Jorge was killed.

  John emerged from the back of the storage unit dragging an expensive-looking suitcase. It was held closed by a wide leather belt looped through the handle. He set it down on the floor in front of Betty.

  Oh dear God, not that. Not after so long, it wasn’t possible. “No,” she said quietly to herself. Surely it had gone. The police had taken it. She was sure it had been gone when she got back, when it was all over. Betty felt cold, her leg was trembling. Her stick clattered to the concrete as her hand lost its grip.

  “Mum? Are you okay?” John asked, concern in his face and in his voice. He put his arm around her as her legs gave way.

  By the time they got in to see a doctor, Betty was feeling a lot better. She just wanted to go home, but the young female doctor insisted on examining her. John agreed with the doctor of course – “Just in case,” he said. The doctor said her blood pressure was a bit low, told her to rest and then sent them on their way. Betty could have figured that out for herself.

  John picked up some fresh bread on the way back to Forest Court and made sandwiches for lunch. They ate, sitting together in the old armchairs. John was watching a news channel on the television. Betty was looking at it, but not watching. She was thinking about the suitcase.

  It was the same suitcase. Not Jorge’s though; it was Rashid’s. The last time she had seen it had been in 1975, sitting in the middle of her Persian rug while she and Jorge shouted at each other. Now here it was, back again, in Sydney. Betty had presumed that the police had taken it when they searched the apartment. Thirty-seven years ago. Before John was born.

  In the end they did it the old-fashioned way. Jimmy went in just on closing with a balaclava on his head and interrupted Bevan’s computer game by sticking a Glock in his face. The kid nearly pissed himself at the sight of a real gun. Jimmy took Bevan’s access card and locked him in an empty unit, saying, “Don’t make any noise. You really don’t want to make me come back here and have to shut you up.” Then Jimmy opened up a few random units and made a bit of a mess, took a few bits and pieces. There wasn’t that much to take anyway, it was mostly just furniture and weird sporting equipment. When he got to number 402 it was much the same – just older stuff.

  “Shit,” said Large, driving the van west on Parramatta Road.

  “Shit yeah.”

  “You looked—”

  “I looked all through that fucking unit,” Jimmy cut in. “No suitcase. Nothing but old, ugly furniture and books. A sofa, a couple of armchairs, desk, couple of wardrobes.” Jimmy counted them off on his fingers. “And yes I looked inside the wardrobes. I looked inside every fucking thing, even the boxes. Nothing but bloody books – no fucking suitcase full of guns and money.” He had crawled all over that unit, dragging the sofa and armchairs into the corridor so he could open the wardrobes.

  “They must’ve moved it already,” said Large.

  “Yeah? You reckon?”

  Large hit him without taking his eyes off the road, the edge of his left hand slamming into Jimmy’s nose. “Don’t get fucking lippy with me, you prick.”

  “For fuck’s sake.” Jimmy was bending over holding his nose. “It’s not my fault,” he whined through fingers rapidly filling with blood.

  Large just kept driving, concentrating on keeping his speed in check, keeping the van between the lane markings, remembering to stop at red lights. Pushing his rage down.

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  Pike

  The water in the swimming pool was perfectly aquamarine and clear as crystal. The cloud had cleared away overnight and the mid-morning sun reflected a liquid tracery onto the white rendered walls of the house. A slight breeze, sneaking into the garden between the house and the garage, was the only thing moving the surface of the water. A wattlebird hopped busily around in the big grevillea by the fence. Its detailed investigation of each
of the spidery flower spikes was interrupted when Large stepped onto the terrace, naked except for a white towel around his neck, his pale, freckled skin stretched tight over solid muscle and fat. The wattlebird flew up into the Davidsons’ lemon-scented gum, as Large dropped his towel on the sunlounge, took three strides across the slate paving, and sprang into the air. He caught his left knee in both hands and planted an enormous bomb on the unsuspecting pool. The delicate play of reflections on the walls smashed apart in a shower of light and water. The plume of white water displaced by Large seemed to hang in the air as if unwilling to share the pool with him, until gravity made the choice for it. Large stayed on the bottom while the surface slapped and slopped at the pool edge trying to regain its equilibrium. His eyes bulged and stared, and a small stream of silver bubbles leaked out of his nose as he fought the urge to breathe. When he couldn’t hold on any longer, he pushed off with his legs, shooting out of the water like a missile from a submarine, sucking in a huge gasp of air, and crashing backwards onto the water. He floated on his back with his arms stroking the surface, sucking in air, and watching a plane pushing its way into the clear blue sky over Botany Bay. Large turned over and set out to swim his usual twenty fast laps of the pool. It didn’t take long, the pool wasn’t that big. When he had finished the laps he pulled himself out of the water and dried his face on the towel, leaving the rest of his body to drip dry as he lay on the banana lounge. Only ten minutes in the sun, then he’d go inside. With his fair skin he was a prime candidate for melanoma, that’s what the doctor reckoned.

  He hadn’t decided what to do yet. His gut said they’re onto you, run for it. Those machine guns cannot mean anything good. Maybe they’re setting you up, maybe they are just seeing how the system works. Either way, if it was the jacks, he didn’t want to be anywhere near the shipment of Glocks. But his head said it was too weird, too untidy a setup. Dennis wasn’t supposed to be working that day, he only swapped shifts at the last minute to help a mate out. If he hadn’t been there the guns would have been found and all hell would have broken loose. No, it made more sense that someone was trying to piggyback on his setup. But he couldn’t get past the coincidence, the fact that Dennis wasn’t supposed to be working that shift. It was only an accident that he spotted them. Could Dennis be playing his own game? It was possible, but Large doubted it. There was no way to be sure. He could send Jimmy over, but he needed Dennis sweet until the Glocks came through. Conspiracy or cock-up? He usually backed cock-up, but in this case he was betting a long stretch. The whole mess was doing his fucking head in. They had to get the guns, that was the key. Get the guns and then deal with the pricks who had brought them in. He was completely dry by the time he pulled himself off the lounge and stalked back across the hot stone paving into the welcoming shade of the house.