Draw the Brisbane Line

by P. A. Fenton

  He opened their last protein bar, broke off half for Pia and chewed the other half himself. Just thinking about burgers left his palate disappointed as the artificial sweetness of the bar hovered over his taste-buds.

  After about half an hour on the highway, Pia took the turn-off for Byron Bay.

  ‘You’re thinking of staying in Byron?’ Dave asked.

  ‘Yes I am,’ Pia said. ‘Sleeping and eating.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s just … I thought Bangalow might have been a more logical choice. More low-key than Byron.’

  ‘And we want low-key because?’

  Dave pointed to his face. ‘Famous,’ he said. Then he pointed to Pia’s face and said, ‘Wanted.’

  Pia pointed out into the darkness beyond the scrub at the side of the road. ‘Isolated. Ideal abduction landscape. No witnesses.’

  ‘You’re worried about the QTA abducting us? They’d have to find us first.’

  ‘I’m not worried about the QTA abducting us, I’m worried about the QTA abducting you. Me they’ll probably just try to kill. And finding us shouldn’t be all too difficult. After all, you did speak to them with your phone.’

  ‘I didn’t speak to them, I spoke to Jenny.’

  ‘And Jenny’s with …’

  ‘If you’re suggesting I fucked up by taking a call from my fiancée, you might want to think about why you didn’t —’

  She cut him off with a raised palm. ‘I’m not suggesting anything. It’s a good thing if they come looking for us, but we need to be ready. I need to be ready. We can catch some food and some sleep in Byron. They’re not going to risk a grab in a place like that.’

  Dave’s stomach started to confuse hunger with nausea. All of a sudden he was a kidnapping target? They drew closer to the heart of Byron, the traffic hardening around them like cholesterol and slowing their progress to an eventual crawl. He became hyper-aware of the lightly-tinted windows in the car, exposing him to anyone who might want to wander up to the car and take a peek. He’d never understood celebrities who got around in baseball caps and sunglasses, as though that somehow made them less conspicuous. He was beginning to think he could relate to them a little better now as he slid low in his seat.

  ‘You’ve done your research, right?’ he said. ‘On me?’

  ‘I’ve read your file, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘I have a file?’

  ‘Shit yeah, you have a file. Your brother’s on the UN Security Council — your children will have files.’

  Dave suddenly felt very itchy as little spiders prickled his back. He shook them off.

  ‘So you know about my house here, don’t you?’

  ‘You have a house here? How nice for you.’

  ‘I use it probably three months in the year. I was hoping Jenny and I might move in here eventually, with our … Anyway, it’s pretty well stocked up, and —’

  ‘We’re not staying in your house.’

  ‘But it’s very secure. I have CCTV all over the place, and —’

  ‘And it’s down in a little bay, very close to Wategos Beach, the way in and out of which is narrow, steep, and singular. There’s one path into the house, and the rear backs into a vertical stone cliff. Unless you’ve got a helicopter stashed away there, we ain’t going.’

  Dave gave himself a moment to digest that before he said, ‘You’d know if I had a helicopter, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I certainly hope so.’

  ‘So where will we stay then? The car?’

  ‘You got an apartment in town?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So we’re staying in a hotel.’

  Dave covered a yawn. He realised by now there was no arguing with her; and that arguing with her was, to understate things a touch, not a great idea. That handgun was just a latch-flip away. So he held his tongue all the way to Byron Bay, his home away from home. He took them up through the winding roads which climbed up high into the hinterland behind Byron, the journey familiar to him like memories of childhood road trips.

  Jenny used to love the trip up through here. At least he thought she did. She claimed she could smell the calm in the trees.

  He slowed down as they passed through Bangalow, the sleepy town still out cold so early in the morning.

  ‘You sure you don’t want to stop in here?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said, flipping around on her phone.

  ‘Texting someone?’

  She twitched her head. ‘Browsing Twitter.’

  ‘What’s news?’

  ‘Well, we’re trending.’

  ‘But I sense not in a good way.’

  ‘No, not in a good way. And it looks like we’re not the only ones headed to Byron.’

  ‘Yeah, who else is going to be there?’

  ‘Hashtag Byron burn. Whaddya think that means?’

  Dave felt an unfamiliar heat stir in his chest. What was that? Heartburn? Anger?

  ‘Rioters,’ Dave said.

  Pia nodded.

  ‘They wouldn’t. The locals, the tourists … that doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I don’t think they’re locals. I think they’re coming from the Gold Coast, and they’re bringing the riot with them.’

  The descent from the hills levelled out, and as they drew closer to the town, coming from the south through Suffolk Park, the traffic slowed them down to jogging pace. By the time they reached Byron proper they might as well have been walking.

  It felt surreal to Dave to see so much traffic in there at such a late hour, the town alive like it was New Year’s Eve.

  They found a parking space down the quiet end of Lawson Street, away from the shops and restaurants — many of which were open, to Dave’s surprise. He looked at his watch and had to double-check the time on the car’s display. It was just after three in the morning.

  ‘This is not normal,’ he muttered.

  ‘No?’ Pia said. ‘Byron Bay isn’t normally the town that never sleeps?’

  ‘No, not really. It used to be the town that never quite woke up properly, but that was a long time ago, before they discovered money. But this … this would be unnaturally busy in King’s Cross, this time of day.’

  The chatter of the late night diners and shoppers, and the big city white noise of cars moving slowly along the busy street, was abruptly beaten down by the unmuffled rumble of a pack of Harley Davidsons. Dave counted ten of them as they slowly stalked past their car, eyeing off everything and everyone they passed, as though they’d mugged royalty and claimed its sense of entitlement as their own. The lead bikie stared at their car as he drove past, seeming to hold eye contact with Dave. He was all belly and beard, his bramble-bush hair doing its best to conceal the scars on his face — some of them caused by acne, but only some of them. Loose coins rattled in the car’s redundant ashtray as the big hogs growled past.

  ‘This is wrong,’ Dave said. ‘They don’t belong here.’

  Pia stared after them, then looked back at Dave with a flat stare. She got out of the car and lifted her bag from the boot. ‘They don’t belong here? Who does? Is this place for wealthy WASPs and backpackers only? Come on Sportacus, let’s go get ourselves a room.’

  Pia led the way, walking towards the beach with just a bare imbalance in her gait hinting at the lethal bulk of her luggage. Dave followed behind, but found himself frequently having to skip a few steps to catch up to her as his attention strayed to the uncommon early-morning buzz around him. A pizzeria with a normal closing time of 10pm was blazing bright, flooding the small space so thoroughly with the aromas of baked cheese, tomato, oregano and pepperoni that it spilled onto the footpath. One of the staff, a dark-faced thin guy with a shaved head, whose face was almost as much steel as it was skin, grabbed a box and thrust it in front of Dave’s face. The small heat-escape hole in the corner of the box hooked his nose and held him in place.

  ‘Free pizza mate?’

  ‘You kidding?’ he said. ‘T
hat’s easily the best offer I’ve had in days.’ He looked at Pia, stopped a few feet away from him and glaring at him in irritation. ‘Easily the best,’ he repeated.

  ‘No worries,’ the pizza guy said. ‘We’re just trying to stay open. Have a seat inside if you like.’

  ‘Thanks, but …’

  A heavy hand dropped onto Dave’s shoulder from behind. ‘Why don’t you go on and sit inside?’ a tired and tense man’s voice said. ‘And take your girlfriend in with you.’

  ‘She’s not my …’ Dave started to say as he turned around. He stopped when he saw the panic-inducing blue of a policeman’s shirt and the stern copper’s face above it.

  Chapter 39

  Jenny stared down at the ugly bed and desperately wanted to lie down on it. Every part of her was in some unpleasant flavour of pain, and all she wanted to do was get off her feet and sleep it all away

  But she couldn’t.

  Kirsty was still stuck out in traffic on the burning highway, and the thick fuckers in the helicopter wouldn’t go to her when they were already in the air. She wanted to scream when she thought they might have flown right over the top of Kirsty and Doyle. She wanted to storm the cabin and force them down, and she might have done that if Banksia hadn’t been there to hold her back. The wild blonde adventurer had pressed her mouth right up against Jenny’s ear, almost engulfing it, and said, ‘We’ll get her. Don’t worry, we’ll get her.’

  The chopper touched down in the middle of an open exhibition space in the RNA showgrounds. Two more Blackhawks crouched beside it under piercingly-bright floodlights, and Jenny, Banksia and Tait all bent low as they jogged away from the beating blades. Al kept himself military-straight, unperturbed by the giant blender over his head. Soldiers guarding the small fleet of aircraft with automatic rifles nodded to them as they moved through a tunnel between two stands of seats. Jenny had mistaken them for regular army in their camouflage gear until she noticed a maroon badge sewn over the breast of one of the uniforms, a straight-edged map of Queensland. Al led them out of the showgrounds and a short way down the road to an old hotel, the Brisbane Manor. He might have been speaking, but all Jenny could hear was the aural residue of the Blackhawk’s blade-slapping. They were flanked on both sides by conspicuously-armed soldiers as they made the short journey, and Jenny couldn’t understand what threat they were possibly being shielded from — until, through a gap in the men, she saw the familiar scramble of a television news crew, cameras and bright lights and an immaculately-presented female reporter trying to move quickly without disturbing her hair. Yvette Winterson, the grand dame of Australian television. Flashes began firing from cameras, illuminating the early morning darkness of the street. Jenny might have been freaked out if she wasn’t so accustomed to the experience. She heard Winterson calling her name, but she kept her face aimed at the moving feet in front of her.

  Al said his people were all staying in the hotel — it was certainly busy enough, uniformed men moving through the hallways and coming in and out of rooms which were more dorm than suite. Jenny, Banksia and Tait were all given their own rooms. The first thing Jenny did when she closed the door behind her was strip off her clothes and take a shower. Despite the warmth in the room and the humidity hanging in the air like an invisible hot fog, she cranked the shower up as hot as she could tolerate. The fixtures were old but the pressure was strong, and as the scalding spray reopened small scratches and cuts on her arms and on her legs, she welcomed the multitude of stings and nips which crackled over her body like electricity. It woke her up, and she watched the dirt wash off her body like paint, and swirl down the drain. She ran her hand over her naked belly, feeling the swell of the new life inside her. The casual observer wouldn’t see enough to reveal her condition, but in a few weeks those camera-wielding pricks outside would begin to realise there was more than loose clothing behind Jennifer Lucas’s altered appearance — and when that happened, her relationship with Dave wouldn’t just come under the spotlight. It would be seared, sand-blasted, pulled apart and reassembled as something so far from reality as to be almost alien. They were already put up on such a high pedestal, the golden couple … if they slipped off, the fall would surely kill them.

  Dave. Where was he? Somewhere further south, on the road with a killer. She missed having him close to her, and just speaking to him briefly on the phone reminded her what she’d been missing out on during their stupid bloody fight: him. His voice. His warmth. His capacity for both understanding and completely missing the point at the same time.

  For instance: the fight. The big one. In Dave’s mind, it was no doubt all about what would be best for their child, and that Jenny was disproportionately concerned with the continued climb of her Hollywood star. Such a moron. Her career would stay its course regardless of where they "based" themselves and their family. No, her concern was the child. It was all about the child. If he’d just spend ten minutes listening to her, listening to his own brother, without letting the clouds of Aussie-Aussie-Aussie propaganda obscure his world view, he might catch a glimpse of the ugly truth that Australia was not the same place it was when he was a child.

  She had to admit though, she did overreact a touch. She’d hoped the threat of walking out might have been the bucket of ice-water to snap him out of his stance, but he surprised her by not budging. This is something she hadn’t learnt about him, but a characteristic Tom had confirmed after she’d passed the point of no return: Dave Holden did not like to be backed into a corner. If he ever found himself there, he would fight.

  And oh, how they’d fought. Dave held off saying anything too irrevocable, too damaging. But Jenny, well … she always had a tendency to go high-drama in confrontational situations. She called him a moron, she called him weak, she called him Australia’s willing bitch, and then she packed up her things and left.

  Though had she really left? She’d cleared out her clothes and some mementos from the city apartment they shared, and went straight to the holiday apartment they shared. It was the adult equivalent of running away from home to the tree-house in the back garden. She just hoped Dave understood that.

  A knock at the bathroom door shook her out of her glum reverie. She just managed to get her hands and arms across her privates and shout out ‘Naked here!’ when Banksia’s poked her head around the corner.

  ‘Wow, you really are in the family way, aren’t you?’ Banksia said. Her voice effortlessly cut through the loud hiss of the shower as she examined Jenny’s naked body. ‘Your figure looks almost … normal.’

  ‘I locked the door!’ Jenny said. ‘I locked the door!’

  ‘So did I,’ Banksia said. ‘We have interconnecting rooms. No lock on that door.’

  ‘Can you give me a minute?’

  ‘Sorry love, this is just a quickie. I wanted to let you know that Tait and I are popping out for a minute. We’ve found a motorcycle to borrow, we’re going to nip over to his uncle’s place to see if he’s still around.’

  ‘Oh. OK.’

  ‘He’s just over near Paddington, we shouldn’t be long. Thought a bike might make it easier to negotiate the traffic. It’s pretty thick in parts, and only seems to be getting worse.’

  ‘Will you … Will Tait be back?’

  ‘Oh, sure. He won’t take off without saying goodbye to you. And I assume you don’t want him coming in right now. Or do you?’ She wiggled her eyebrows and gave Jenny a wink broad enough to crush a beer can.

  ‘I like my men with some hair on their chest,’ she said with a grin. ‘Out with you!’ She pointed at the door with a flourish, giving Banksia an eyeful of her bare breasts in the process.

  Banksia smiled, raised an imaginary camera and said, ‘Click!’ She ducked out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

  Jenny dressed in some clothes she borrowed from Banksia. For novelty value, she chose one of the Outback Warrior outfits, khaki shirt and matching shorts. Even with the slight swell of her belly, she still had to pop a virgin notch on the belt
, pressing down on the tight leather hard enough to make her thumb hurt. She pulled her hair back in the same pony tail Banksia liked to wear, looked at herself in the large bamboo-frame mirror in the bedroom and said, ‘Crikey! Look at the size of that croc!’

  Uncanny, she thought, if you shut your eyes and stuck your fingers in your ears.

  She stepped out into the hallway and was nearly knocked down by a couple of men in QTA uniforms. Both were very grim, very focused. They merely nodded at her, and one of them said, ‘Pardon.’ It was the least recognition she’d received in years. They continued on their way down the hall, almost marching in step and not saying a word. From somewhere up further she could smell bacon frying, and her stomach started to pull her along before her feet started moving, nearly tripping her up. She fell in behind the two QTA soldiers, almost subconsciously keeping an escapable distance between them as she kept an eye on the pistols holstered on their hips.

  The overhead lights were bright, almost clinical, but they failed to penetrate the dank cross-hatched carpet. She wasn’t sure if it was purple, maroon, blue or brown. It probably started life as a much brighter shade, but decades of wear had cooked it down to an unidentifiable dark tint, the kind of colour you’d see as a child if you tried to combine all the tubes in your paint set at once. Down the middle it was almost black. Old paintings and photos crowded the wood-panelled walls in mahogany frames, many of them probably of a similar vintage to the building itself.

  Aromas of fried eggs and toast and coffee — sweet Jesus, coffee — mingled with the scent of bacon and triggered sharp contractions in Jenny’s stomach. She followed the soldiers out onto the hotel’s veranda restaurant. A dozen café tables heaved with men in khaki, scraping bread rolls over plates wet with sticky yolks and ketchup. Some chewed on sticks of crispy overcooked bacon, and Jenny suddenly wanted nothing more from the world than one of those black and red rashers.