Thrill City

by Leigh Redhead

  He turned his head. ‘That’s a pretty chauvinist generalisation. It’s complicated. She grew up well-off but then her father deserted the family, left them destitute, and ever since then . . . having no money made her feel incredibly insecure.’

  ‘If she didn’t like being broke, why’d she become a writer?’ I laughed.

  ‘Some of us don’t get to choose,’ he barked.

  He was still in love with her and I knew I’d have to stop slagging the bitch if I wanted to find out what had happened. My shoulders were cramping badly, but I didn’t let up scraping the nail against the gaff. Felt like I’d gotten through one layer already.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘So she brought up the heist plan? For real this time?’

  ‘Yeah. She went on about it for months and months, telling me it really could work. I said she was being ridiculous. There was no guaranteed “amnesia” drug we could get our hands on, and anyway, I’m not a thief, a tough guy, the sort of person who’d ever do something like that. I couldn’t live with myself, I told her.’

  ‘How’d she convince you, then?’

  ‘She didn’t. She tried to do the heist on her own and she called me when it all went wrong.’

  chapter fifty-three

  Predawn light filtered into the dog shed. I kept rubbing my taped wrists against the nail in the tin while Nick spoke.

  ‘Isabella said she was doing an appearance at a bookshop, and normally I would’ve gone but I had a deadline for my fourth Zack book and stayed home to write. It was late, but those things often run on, people go for drinks after. I hated not being there. I was always worried she’d meet someone else, someone better, with more money. I never said anything, that jealous shit only pushes people away.

  ‘She called about midnight, whispering into the phone like she’d been crying, and told me she was in Lachlan Elliot’s bathroom and the drugs weren’t working. I asked what the hell she was talking about and she said she’d decided to go through with it, met up with him “accidentally” and went back to his place. Slipped him a couple of Rohypnol, but he was so wired from taking ice that they hadn’t slowed him down. Said he was trying to rape her and I had to come to her rescue.

  ‘I heard shouting in the background. Someone banging on the door. I told her I’d call the cops and come over, but she begged me not to get the police involved: they’d arrest her and I’d never see her again. I didn’t think that was likely, but there was something in her voice. I knew if I called the police, she’d leave me. I just knew. She gave me the address and told me the security cameras were off and the gate and the front door were unlocked, so I raced over.

  ‘It’s funny. I was in this panic, yet I was weirdly calm, like it was a dream . . . I grabbed gloves and a wrench, which was the only thing resembling a weapon I had, parked the car well away from his house and strolled up to his place all casual-like, making sure no one saw me go in.

  ‘It was a big place in South Yarra. New, flashy bachelor pad. Lots of black leather and chrome and shiny surfaces. They were on the couch when I got there and he was on top, shirt off, kissing her, and her dress was hiked up and ripped. She seemed to be struggling. Heavy metal was playing, Motorhead or something, so he didn’t hear me coming up behind him.

  ‘I took the wrench out of my pocket and hit him on the back of the head. Would have stunned a normal guy, but not him. He pushed off her, turned and lunged and we both hit the floor. I know what it is now. When someone goes crazy on that drug you need a SWAT team to restrain them and enough tranquillisers to kill an elephant.

  ‘At the time I didn’t know what was happening, except I was about to die. He’d pulled the wrench out of my hand easy as grabbing a lolly from a baby, and raised it, about to smash my face in, but it veered off, right at the last moment. Izzy had crash-tackled him, and it gave me half a second to roll away from the maniac. I grabbed the first thing I saw, this stupid sculpture of a Harley Davidson that had been sitting on the coffee table, made of chrome and about the size of a small cat.

  ‘Elliot had one hand around Izzy’s neck and the other pulled back about to belt her in the face and I swung the statue into the back of his head a lot harder than I had with the wrench, and heard the crack as his skull shattered. Most sickening sound in the world.’

  ‘That stop him?’

  ‘Yeah. That stopped him. He went down face first onto the polished boards. I looked at the motorbike and felt faint. There was hair on it, bits of scalp. I felt dizzy, like I was going to throw up, and I sank to my knees next to his body and rested the statue on his back. One part of my brain was still thinking like a crime writer, thinking, don’t get any DNA on the floor. They can test for blood, even after you’ve cleaned it up.

  ‘Izzy turned down the music and that helped me concentrate. I couldn’t go near his head, so I felt his wrist for a pulse and there it was. Faint but even. I hadn’t killed him.

  ‘Meanwhile, she’d picked up Elliot’s shirt from the couch— one of those banker-ish blue-striped things with the white collar—and wrapped the weapon in it. He’s still alive, I said, we have to call an ambulance. She knelt on the other side of him and looked down, almost tenderly. “No, we don’t,” she replied, raised the statue and smashed it down onto the back of his head so hard that when she took her hands away the thing was still lodged in there. He convulsed, once, and was still.

  ‘I stared, shocked, but I think she mistook my look for confusion because she smiled and said, “I wrapped it to stop the blood spatter. It would have flown off from when you hit him before. I did learn something reading your crime novels. Now quick, go to the kitchen and get some garbage bags.”’

  I was silent for a moment and took a break from rubbing my bonds against the nail. The cramp had spread from my shoulders, up my neck and melded with the pain in my head. Outside it was fast getting light and I saw Nick clearly, lying on the dirt floor, looking up at the ceiling. He seemed serene.

  ‘You still could have called the police,’ I said. ‘Self-defence.’

  ‘Not when you’ve just robbed somebody,’ he said. ‘Izzy had seen the money and she wasn’t going to let it go. After we’d wrapped up Elliot’s body and stuck it in the boot of his BMW—the garage was attached to the house so that part was easy—she showed me this secret room he had it stashed in. There was a lot more than a hundred thousand, almost five, all wrapped up neatly in plastic and already packed into suitcases. And the drugs, bricks of white powder, bags of crystals, vacuum-packed satchels of ecstasy tablets all stamped with little panda bears. There were even a couple of handguns. I told her we had to leave the drugs and the guns, but she said no: JJ had contacts in Adelaide, he could sell the stuff on. Besides, if we wanted to make it look like he did a runner, we couldn’t leave anything behind.

  ‘We packed a suitcase full of his clothes and toiletries and put everything except the money in the boot with the bagged-up body and the murder weapon. Oh, and a spade from the gardener’s shed out the back. I drove his BMW to Daylesford and buried the body, then went on to Adelaide to see JJ, hugging the speed limit, nearly shitting myself all the way.

  ‘Izzy stayed at the house and cleaned up some more, then turned everything off, reset the alarm, locked up and put the suitcases with the money into the back of our car and drove home. The next day she went to a signing at Readings in Carlton, which went very well, from what I heard. I dumped the shit with JJ and said he could do what he liked with it, keep the proceeds. I left the BMW to get stolen and god knows where it is now, probably rebirthed and in Western Australia or somewhere. I caught a Greyhound bus home under a false name and arrived back less than twenty-four hours after I’d left. No one even knew I’d been gone.

  ‘Soon as I got home Izzy cracked open a bottle of French champagne and showed me the round-the-world air tickets she’d purchased while I’d been gone. She was dressed up to the nines, wearing her usual lipstick and a new vintage flapper dress, and she put “Fairytale of New York” on the stereo and began twitt
ering on about all the places we’d see and how maybe we could get married overseas, maybe in New York, maybe on Christmas Eve, if they let you get married on Christmas Eve. I had half a glass of champagne, then went to the cupboard where we kept a bottle of cheap scotch that someone had left after a party. I didn’t stop until I’d finished the whole thing.’

  chapter fifty-four

  ‘I wish you’d told me this before.’ I’d worn away another layer of gaffer tape and was rubbing against the nail with renewed gusto, trying to ignore the pain, fear, thirst, and pressure on my bladder.

  ‘Can’t have a deathbed confession without a deathbed.’

  ‘Stop talking like that.’

  ‘Why? It’s obvious you’ve got just as much of a death wish as I do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m assuming it’s about what happened to your mother, because of that case last year? I kept trying to work out why you were so hell-bent on tracking me down, why you wouldn’t let up and why you constantly put yourself in danger—even when I kept giving you an out.’

  ‘I was working for Liz. Wanted to give her her money’s worth.’

  ‘It went a little above and beyond that—you wouldn’t be here otherwise. I think you’re punishing yourself for what happened. Like me. I put Zack through it in my last book, Dead End, so I know what I’m talking about. It was sort of cathartic to write after the whole thing with Lachlan Elliot. Not that I mentioned any details, nothing that could identify me.’

  I couldn’t believe it. Chloe had been right about clues in the books. If only I’d listened to her.

  ‘But Isabella did, didn’t she? That’s why you ran out of the tent at the writers’ festival. She mentioned specifics in Thrill City. The motorbike statue. His house. The haul of cash and drugs. It’s what you were arguing about under the tree, before you kissed.’

  He turned to squint at me.

  ‘I was so damned paranoid about that statue—which ended up in the Yarra, if you’re interested. But the police never mentioned anything about it being missing. They interviewed his friends, his cleaning lady. Even if they knew about it, the story never came out. But Craig Murdoch must have known.’

  ‘How? Hard to imagine a biker reading one of her books.’

  ‘No idea. But it got her killed and me and JJ identified. Nerida, aka Desiree, too.’

  ‘But why were they after Victoria?’ I asked.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘And me?’

  He shook his head. Shrugged. ‘Guilt by association? Who knows. It’s all too late now.’

  ‘There’s got to be a way out of this.’

  ‘Always have to solve the case and win the day, don’t you? The plucky little stripper who could. Maybe, as well as the guilt thing, you’re trying to impress Daddy. You said you hadn’t seen your father in years. Perhaps that’s why you’re a PI.’

  I glared.

  ‘I’m not trying to insult you. Zack was going through the same issues in Dead End. It’s a legitimate motivation.’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck about my dad, so why do you?’

  ‘Since I’ll never write again, it’s nice to know I got my facts straight when I did.’

  Was it just my imagination, or did Nick seem happier than he had since I’d met him? Writers, goddamn freaks. I was about to tell him so when the door to the shed was wrenched open. With all the talking we hadn’t heard Watto and the other bikie approach. They stood silhouetted in the doorway. The sky was the palest blue and a bright pink glow emanated from just below the horizon.

  ‘Rise ’n’ shine,’ said Watto, cigarette clamped between his teeth. He bent down and dragged me out of the shed by my feet, then took his hunting knife from its sheath. My heart seemed to drop into my stomach, or perhaps my bowels, but he just bent at the waist and cut through the gaffer tape on my ankles. He handed the knife to the other bikie, the fat one with the long hair I’d seen at the pub, and gestured for him to do the same. The guy frowned.

  ‘Sure that’s a good idea, mate?’

  ‘I’m fucken sick of draggin’ ’em around. Me back’s fucked. And he’s not going to try anything.’ He pointed to Nick.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I fucken hope she does.’ Watto grinned.

  They hoisted us to our feet. Nick was led away to a large corrugated-tin shed a couple of hundred metres from the house, and Watto pushed me towards an old wooden farmhouse with a sweeping, bull-nosed veranda. I guessed they didn’t want Rod Thurlow to know I was there.

  ‘Nick!’ I called. If I’d thought things were bad before, getting separated made them a thousand times worse.

  ‘See ya, Simone,’ he called back over his shoulder. A generator hummed somewhere out the back of the house and I had a feeling that this time, Watto had all the facilities he needed.

  As he pushed me up the stairs to the veranda I took one last look around. Nothing for miles but desert and scrub, the red dirt lit up a heartbreaking crimson as the sun peeked over the horizon. I wondered if Chloe’s baby was a boy or a girl. I was fucked.

  The front door opened onto a long hallway. I glanced left and saw a lounge room with old, overstuffed furniture and two bikie-looking guys. A skinny one wearing leathers, asleep sitting up in a recliner, the other fat, wearing a t-shirt, smoking a bong and watching what had to be satellite TV. There was a handgun on the table and a shotgun leaning on the wall near the disused fireplace. Watto kept the knife to my back as he talked to the guys inside.

  ‘Hey, Davo—wake up!’

  The skinny guy in the recliner stirred.

  ‘Thurlow’s coming. Soon as he lands, get the money and bring it here. Any problems with those cunts, call me.’ He looked at the fat one in the t-shirt. ‘You finished cooking yet?’

  Bong guy shook his head.

  ‘Another couple of hours at least,’ he said.

  What was he making, a pot roast?

  Watto pushed me into one of the bedrooms. Wasn’t much there except a wooden chair in the centre of the room, and a laptop computer sitting open on an old school desk. The window was covered by a faded floral curtain, and a battered wardrobe stood at the back of the room next to a metal bed frame, no mattress. A bare hundred-watt bulb hung from the ceiling, attached to a frayed cord. What was really worrying was the blue tarpaulin spread out across the floor under the chair.

  He pushed me onto the chair and gaffer-taped my ankles to the legs, but with only one layer this time. I flexed my wrists. The tape there was definitely looser. I tried to pull my wrists apart, but the tape hung on by a tough ligament of gluey thread. If I’d been stronger, if I’d exercised, lifted some weights in the last couple of months instead of sitting on my arse . . . I hadn’t even eaten anything in the past few days. When had my last meal been? My stomach felt hollow and acidic. I was weak as a kitten.

  Watto was over by the laptop, fiddling with a webcam attached to the top of the screen and a couple of small speakers to either side. I remembered him attempting to video his aborted chainsaw attack. Was he doing a snuff movie? Trying to make a few extra bucks on the side?

  He looked at his watch, hunched over the computer to type something in, punched enter and then stood aside, lighting another cigarette.

  A Media Player screen filled the monitor, and on it a blurry face. As the image sharpened I finally realised why he was going to kill me.

  chapter fifty-five

  The face on the computer screen had the same moustache and pale, grey-blue wolf eyes, but was thinner and paler. I’d always thought he looked like an actor playing a lawyer in a daytime soap; now he looked like an actor playing a lawyer who’d been in jail for almost a year. His hair was grey, the tennis tan had been replaced by a putty-coloured pallor, the pinstriped suit swapped for a loose cotton top. I could just make out the wrinkled bullet scar on his throat.

  ‘Good morning, Simone,’ said Emery Wade, the murdering bastard I’d helped put away.

  It took me a few seconds to form words. ‘I thought
you couldn’t speak. The bullet—’

  ‘I had an operation.’ The voice coming through the speakers was still deep, but with a hitch to it, like a scratch on a record.

  ‘You’re in jail.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You—you can’t have a computer on the inside.’

  ‘Indeed you can, if you’ve got a legitimate use for it, say, preparing your own or another’s defence. I’ve become quite the jailhouse lawyer in the last ten months. What you can’t have is internet access, but I’ve so many good friends in here it wasn’t too hard to smuggle in Wi-Fi. Mobile phones are also banned, although quite a few of my associates seem to use them regularly for business.’

  ‘Like Craig Murdoch?’

  Wade smiled. ‘He’s my latest client. Imagine my surprise when I heard on the news that you’d gotten yourself involved in a little project of his.’

  ‘Real coincidence, but that’s Melbourne for you. Everyone knows everyone.’ I didn’t feel quite as brazen as I was trying to sound.

  ‘Serendipity.’

  ‘So, what, you guys teamed up and now you’re going to kill me so I can’t testify against you?’

  ‘That’s one reason. The other is that I’m going to derive a great deal of pleasure from your extended demise. I ordered Watto to draw it out from the beginning and I’m sure he scared you: the note, the slashed tyres, the mask. Knowing you were being watched, gradually realising that nowhere was safe. Did you really think you could fuck with me and get away with it? You stupid bitch.’ He shook his head.

  Watto was standing back, smoking and scratching a scab on his arm, watching like we were a mildly interesting movie.

  ‘There’ll be other people to testify,’ I said. ‘A whole roomful of cops saw you try to kill me and there’s video of you basically admitting to murder.’

  ‘I’ll probably go down for attempted, but I can argue I was provoked by a rather unpopular and possibly mentally unstable inquiry agent, so I don’t think I’ll get more than a couple of years. As for the video, it was illegally obtained and is being struck from the evidence as we speak. And I have plans for the other witnesses—’ he looked down, as though to consult a document—‘most notably Alexander Nikolai Christakos and Sean Callan Shields.’