by Kim Westwood
He nods. ‘I know.’
‘So Gail must have thought there was a chance of something like this happening?’
‘She felt it necessary to cover every base. Frank was just acting according to her instructions. Her contact in NW will find out about our LIC representative, and how far up the food chain he really is.’
‘What about our discovery at Ferguson’s?’
‘A dead end. We pulled out the surveillance equipment yesterday.’
‘And the informant who told Gail about Barrow Road?’
‘Even I don’t know who that was. But it might be worth asking around the street racers again to check if they’ve seen or heard anything new.’ He opens his mobile and copies a number onto a slip of paper then passes it across. ‘Titania gave me her details.’
I suppress an arch comment about his superior people skills.
‘She’ll know how to find Skinny,’ he adds. ‘He and Lola would be the ones to get the word out to the rest, I imagine.’
I kick my heel slowly against the chair leg. ‘I was meeting Marlene Bott at the Good Bean.’
‘Oh?’
‘She wants her love letters back.’ Even now, discussing my boss’s private life feels wrong.
Anwar is matter-of-fact. ‘Gail mentioned she was getting some grief from an over-amorous party.’
Marlene had certainly showed her over-amorous side, but seemed more upset over the loss of what had supposedly been promised her than of her ‘soul mate’. That’s the fertility crisis for you. Her revelations about Gail selling her healthy eggs through a broker were no great surprise — viable ova fetch big money — but that my employer gave a toss who they ended up in is anathema to everything I know of her.
‘Did Gail ever mention anything to you about wanting a baby?’ I blurt, and Anwar looks genuinely shocked.
I take that as a no.
Feeling shaky and nauseous from no sleep, I go home for a kip. Late afternoon, I call Titania. Briefly I explain, and she gives me Lola’s number.
Lola registers the urgency. ‘Hold on a sec,’ she says.
She’s back fast. ‘He says meet him under the Angels Gate Bridge in an hour.’
I thank her and ring off. Street racers being middle of the night types, I thought I’d have trouble winkling them out before dark.
By the time I get to Fishermans Bend, dusk has settled in all its nooks and crannies and Barrow Road is gloomy and forlorn, too many empty-socketed eyes facing across the river to the twinkling lights of humanity. Skinny parks his burbling monster — a different one to the other night, and a smidge more compliant with the emission laws, but still scaring the birds from their roosts in the concrete arches above.
Arm in arm with Lola, he strolls appreciatively around Albee’s panel van, calling it ‘my ride’ despite assurances I’m just minding it for a friend.
‘What’s the stress?’ he asks.
I tell him the situation with Gail, and describe Doug Smeg. He listens without seeming to, his eyes roving the unlit site, the street behind. Finally they come back to me.
‘She special to you?’ he asks of Gail.
‘Very,’ I say, and my chest hurts with an unsayable fear. I scribble down my mobile number and hand it to him. ‘This is me, twenty-four hours.’
He passes it to Lola for safekeeping, and she pops it in her studded shoulder bag. If anything turns up, we can both trust her to remind him to call me.
‘No promises,’ he says.
That’s good enough for me.
My mobile beeps in my pocket. I excuse myself. It’s Ellie telling me to get myself to the hospital.
Albee has woken up.
Ellie beams at me from the far side of Albee’s bed. Sarah is nearby, flicking through clipboard notes. All hospital decorum flung off, I rush over.
‘Lazybones,’ I say into his ear, and feel him chuckle.
I straighten towards Sarah. ‘When? How?’
‘We extubated him this morning. Usually there’s some disorientation at first, but he came to very calmly.’ She looks down at him. ‘Wish they were all like you.’ She moves his call button closer to his hand, then turns to us. ‘His heart rate is staying nice and steady, so do me a favour and don’t excite him.’
The three of us are left to our reunion. I can’t stop smiling at my friend in the bed. His face has thinned to wan, but he’s the same old Albee.
‘We missed you,’ I say. I take his hand in mine, holding it as if it might break. He seems so fragile beneath the crisp hospital linen.
Ellie pulls up the armchair. ‘Don’t you dare do anything like that again,’ she tells him sternly.
Albee looks befuddled. ‘What did I do?’ he croaks, then winces, his windpipe still sore from the tube.
I glance at Ell then back to him, and go for the unadorned truth. ‘You used some bad kit,’ I say softly. ‘Not just your average bad — stuff laced with pesticide.’
He takes in my words then closes his eyes. ‘I don’t remember … it’s all a blank.’
‘Don’t even try yet,’ I say as he reopens his eyes and stares up at the hospital ceiling. ‘When it comes back, we’ll be here. You won’t have to remember alone.’
His fingers squeeze mine weakly. Give him back his workshop with his beloved bicycles and the old assured grip will return in no time.
Sarah swishes back, and Ellie and I are shooed away. I go without trepidation, knowing his nursing team very well now and no longer terrified on his behalf every time his clothes have to be removed.
Ell and I head down to the hospital foyer, where I give her the news that Anwar thinks Gail is still alive.
‘That’s wonderful!’ she replies, then her enthusiasm falters.
I draw her over to a seat by the florist’s. ‘Out with it.’
Her eyes are anxious, their blue-green framed perfectly by shoulder-length auburn hair. She’s always had a genuinely unaffected beauty.
‘Sarah says Neighbourly Watch has been keeping tabs on Albee, wanting to be notified when he wakes up.’
And now he has. My stomach takes an elevator drop. I don’t want them asking Albee any questions.
‘Ell, I think there’s more to this than Albee making a mistake with his bedmates or his T. I’m trying to find out what happened, but until then we can’t let them at him.’
Her look in reply is one of such immediate understanding, all the years of persecution still resident, that I want to loop a charm of protection around her for what she’s suffered — and may yet — in the name of truth to self.
We hug goodbye, and she makes for the lifts while I quicken my step for the door, passing the usual huddle of smokers puffing their sick lives sicker. Funny how, with so many things declared immoral, this vice slipped through the policy net. But then, Nation First has never been averse to corporate sponsorship.
I walk along the road towards the van, thinking about Neighbourly Watch. There wasn’t much they could do while Albee was in a coma, except get his address. So now there are two things I need to do before I go back home.
The security door to Bike Heaven is hanging open and Albee’s flat has been completely trashed. I pick my way through the mess. They’d ignored the shopfront and workshop and come straight in here. It’s a thorough job: every cabinet and drawer in every room emptied, the contents strewn. Was this the person who injected Albee covering their tracks, or Neighbourly Watch after evidence? It’s lucky I took the kit that first night. Whoever did this would have found nothing.
Leaving, I tape over the shattered pane in the glass door and try to close the security screen — but it won’t snib, the jamb chiselled away. All I can do for now is tape it closed too.
My second job is in Toorak.
Thanks to a contingency override set up by Gail, Anwar’s and my ID codes verify automatically now at Checkpoint Charlie. The barrier begins to whine open, the guard not lifting his gaze from his TV screen. I wonder what his counterpart thought last night when the ‘emergenc
y’ vehicles barrelled in and out. Not much, I guess. The world could explode both sides of the perimeter and these guys would still be sitting impassively in their sentry box minding the gate.
I clunk into gear and drive on. Albee’s van, with its fluffy dice and shag pile carpet, is beginning to feel just a bit too comfortable. If I’m not careful, it’s going to make me soft.
I re-enter my code on the number pad outside Number 5, and Gail’s gates swing apart. The van bumps across the boundary towards the darkened house, the security lights triggering as I pull up.
The door to the portico is locked: Anwar said he’d secured the house. I get out the set of keys bequeathed to me. On the key ring is an engraved tag with the words CARPE NOCTEM. Gail’s little joke, and the code for her alarm.
The beeping starts once I’m through the portico and inside the front door. I punch in the number equivalent of each letter and press ‘Enter’. The beeping stops. Yay, me.
The sensor on the foyer lamp registers my presence and light pools out. The living area is peculiarly undisturbed, given what must have happened here last night. At the far end is a set of French doors opening to the back patio. I look out at shadows, thinking about Gail’s broken phone and Marlene’s love letters. I need to see for myself that the letters aren’t somewhere in the house. As for the donor permission, this is where Marlene’s story really jars. Or is it just that I don’t want it to be true?
Gail being a minimalist, the ground floor is easy. I search to the back of every neatly organised drawer and cupboard, and then go upstairs. The cedar-framed window on the landing looks down onto a stand of almost leafless birches, winter come upon them in the few days since Nitro and I were strolling the garden.
I rifle through the desk in the study, knowing she’d never leave the important stuff easy to find — but then I’m assuming Marlene’s letters weren’t. After a quick check of the spare rooms, I enter the main bedroom, though I’m not comfortable doing it. Presuming Gail is still alive, her private space is exactly that.
Back down in the living room, I sit on the couch feeling thwarted, nothing to prove or disprove Marlene’s assertions. Mumbling expletives, I haul myself to my feet and go reset the alarm. In the portico I pause beside the roll-top bureau, reminded of Doug’s fingers crawling like a fleshy pink tarantula through its contents. I slide back the lid. There’s a pair of gardening gloves and secateurs, a stack of nursery labels, some pens and string … Did I honestly believe I would find something those searching hands hadn’t?
Marlene and her stupid letters.
Defeated, I squat on the outside steps, remembering Gail’s will tucked in Frank’s big apron. Nitro would have no qualms assuming ownership of the property, but to me this will always be my employer’s house and I an interloper to privilege.
I stare at the line of terracotta urns. What had I imagined after Marlene flounced out of the Good Bean? Each missive arriving in Gail’s letterbox; her walking back to the house knowing who it was from and chucking it.
I step onto gravel. Leaning over the urn closest, I shine the torch down inside — and let out a triumphant yip. Several envelopes are at the bottom. Not tied nicely together or wrapped for protection against the elements, but dumped in there like rubbish.
I use a stick from the garden to retrieve them: nine in all, addressed to Gail in a flowery script. Only one has been opened. Maybe it gave tone enough of the rest. There’s a hint of scent. I bring it to my nose and time stops its beat. It’s that scent, the one that wafted up from Albee’s sheets the night he was rushed to hospital.
I’m up to the fourth letter, Nitro sitting like a pudding on the others laid out on my living room floor. Anger at Marlene vibrates in me like a wire. If she was at Albee’s that night, she could have given him the OP-laced kit.
The night marches on. My body enters a twilight zone of exhaustion, rest something only other people get to do. Marlene, meanwhile, has gone from florid rehashings of her and Gail’s sex together to incensed at having been ousted from her beloved’s bed and removed from C&C’s buyers list. This is not the cosy picture described to me in the Good Bean. It seems Gail didn’t bother to reply, which really ramped her up.
Nitro comes over to butt my shin. I stroke his plush fur and pick up letter number six. Prurient fascination aside, I’m heartily sick of Marlene’s manipulative tones, her confessions of undying love alternating with remonstrations over ‘injustices suffered’. I skim-read six, seven and eight and open number nine.
It’s in the last paragraph that she lets it slip. Nitro’s purr machine pauses momentarily at my horrified ‘Oh no’.
Little wonder Marlene wants her letters back.
I ring Anwar, and after a short discussion we ring off. Next I text Marlene that I’ve found her correspondence and to meet me at the Shangri-La at 9 am. Then I crawl into bed with the cat, and sleep.
25
I don’t know if Albee’s ready for this, but I’m counting on the sense of smell being one of memory’s most powerful triggers. With all nine of Marlene’s letters secreted in my daypack, I’m walking in the entrance of the Jesu Christi Hospital under the cotton-ball pinks of yet another dawn to ask him, just out of a coma, to take a sniff.
Moved out of the ICU to a medical ward, he’s in a room of four beds, his by the window. I enter quietly, but he’s not asleep. He’s propped up on pillows, his body free at last of tubes and machinery, Paul beside him in the vinyl armchair carted from the ICU.
Paul goes off to find coffee. I swish across the privacy curtains and pull up the chair, searching my friend’s face for evidence he’s strong enough.
‘Albee, I want you to close your eyes and sniff something, then tell me what it reminds you of.’
He looks at me, amused, until he sees my seriousness. ‘Not a pair of your smelly old cycling socks then.’
I laugh. ‘Think yourself lucky.’
His eyelids flutter down trustingly. I draw one of Marlene’s envelopes from my bag and waft it near to his nose as he breathes in, out, and in again.
Nothing.
I make a wad of five envelopes, the scent stronger. ‘Try again,’ I suggest, and he takes another sniff.
I’m thinking my idea is a stupid one when his brow furrows. ‘Oh,’ he says, and his eyes fly open. ‘That’s Marlene’s scent.’
Bingo.
‘I remember she was … We were fucking.’
‘Albee!’ I can’t help myself. ‘With her?’
Even someone freshly woken from a coma can look embarrassed. ‘She’s very attractive.’
‘How could you have let her give you a jab?’
‘Did I?’ he asks, and my heart sinks.
‘Please, Albee, is there anything you can recall beyond the fucking bit?’
He frowns, eyes unfocused to the past, the memory cogs trying to turn.
‘She’d brought some T as a present,’ he says. ‘Told me it came special delivery from Gail. Normally I wouldn’t, but I was due for a shot anyway, and the polyshell had EHg’s logo on it. Not to mention I was already pretty far gone from what we were doing. She can turn the sex energy on like a solar flare.’
Marlene has never turned the flare my way — a small mercy for which I’m grateful — but there’s no doubt it’s a powerful talent, because she’d managed to bed not just one but two of my dear friends. I stuff the envelopes in my bag, anger rising. Even if she didn’t know the kit she’d injected into Albee was dirty, she pretended ignorance to me about it in the Good Bean, which makes her a liar, and a coward for deserting him.
Albee seems suddenly drained. I lay my hand on his. ‘I’m sorry to spring that on you.’
‘Don’t be,’ he says. ‘Ellie’s told me what’s been going on while I’ve been napping.’
I glance away, no words to describe the last few days. Looking back, I murmur, ‘If anybody wants to know, you can’t remember a thing, right?’
He nods. ‘Find Gail,’ he says.
Paul arrives
through the curtains with coffee and raisin toast from the Tum-Tum Tree café. We sip and munch awhile, Albee gone very quiet beside us. I have a fair idea what he’s thinking about.
‘A busy Monday planned?’ I ask him.
‘No rest for the wicked. They want to get me up for a walk after the white-coat brigade’s done its rounds. Meanwhile, Paul’s going to contaminate my mind with subversive literature.’
When not chefing for a restaurant in the city, Paul writes potboilers for a flourishing underground press. He holds up a dog-eared paperback, the title Knock & Drop splashed blood-red across the front.
‘Catchy.’ I down the last of my coffee then check my watch. I have to leave.
As I bend to kiss Albee, he whispers, ‘How’s it going with Inez?’
I straighten. ‘It’s not.’
He regards me with serious eyes. ‘You know what they say about people in comas being aware of everything going on around them? It’s true. As one-sided as it must have seemed, I remember the conversation we had just before I woke up.’
It was the night I poured my heart out to him; the night I felt a flicker of movement in his hand. I get a flush of embarrassment.
‘She hasn’t answered her phone or replied to any of my messages since the argument.’
Albee looks at me sympathetically. ‘Don’t give up trying.’
At the end of the corridor, I see Sarah at the nurses station talking to the nurse unit manager. She falls into step with me as I head for the lifts.
‘Just getting an update on the troublemaker,’ she tells me. I hear affection in her voice. ‘Seems he’s going leaps and bounds.’
‘You’ll be keeping an eye on him then?’ I ask hopefully.
‘As long as the hospital board doesn’t decide to rip up my contract. They’re purging the current nursing list of suspected subversives, so we’re having a staff crisis.’
‘Will you be okay?’
‘Yeah. I’m good at hiding my light under a bushel.’
We get to the lifts. I press the ‘down’ arrow, then turn to her. ‘Now he’s awake, I’m hoping to ask you another favour.’