Strange Ink

by Gary Kemble

  ‘Rabs,’ Crow said. ‘We’re looking for Rob. You seen him?’

  ‘Not lately. He came in a few days ago for some work, but nah, not since then.’

  Rabs stepped over to his trolley, blocking view of the shirt. The men moved further into the room, flanking Rabs. Rob rested on the balls of his feet, ready to spring out if they moved on the tattooist. There was no way he was going to let Rabs be added to the list.

  ‘What do you want him for? Nothing good, by the looks,’ Rabs nodded at the axe handle.

  Heathy piped up. ‘We just want to have a little chat.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve heard about your chats. You boys been busy tonight?’

  ‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’ Heathy stepped forward, getting in Rabs’ face.

  ‘Nothing,’ Rabs said. He gently but firmly pushed Heathy back a step. ‘Just looks like you’ve got a bit of tomato sauce on your t-shirt. . .’

  As Heathy turned, Rob saw the bloodstain. While Heathy glanced down at the mess on his shirt, Rabs reached behind him and pulled Rob’s shirt from view. He placed his other hand on the chair, then raised his fingers, palm out, towards the cupboard where Rob hid. Wait.

  ‘You boys been running the Dreadnorts sausage sizzle?’

  Heathy raised a tattooed hand and put it on the side of Rabs’s head.

  ‘You want to be careful asking questions, Rabs. Rob asked the wrong questions. So we’re going to have a little chat with him. If you don’t want us to have the same conversation with you, I suggest you shut your fucking mouth.’

  Crow stepped closer. ‘We love your work, Rabs. But you might find it hard to tattoo with broken fingers.’

  Rabs, with nowhere else to go, sat back in the chair. He pushed the shirt onto the floor. ‘Oh, I get it. You’re the big men, right? Sorry, I didn’t realise.’

  Crow took a step backwards. ‘Heathy, check out the front.’

  Heathy went around the back of the chair, right past the cupboard. The stink of petrol, grease, sweat and blood trailed in his wake.

  ‘Nuh. No-one out here.’

  He returned to the room, stood with his back to the cupboard. Rob could put a round through his kneecap. From this range, it would take out his whole joint. He’d walk with a limp for the rest of his life. But Heathy was blocking Rabs and Crow. And Rob still didn’t know what Crow was packing. He visualised it. Heathy going down, blood pulsing out of his leg. Rob trying to push out past Heathy’s body and come up into a firing position. No, it was too risky.

  ‘When he was here a couple of days ago, did he say anything about his plans?’ Crow urged.

  ‘I’m not his mum, Crow. I’m not his secretary. Why would he tell me his plans?’

  ‘I don’t fucking know. Maybe the silly bastard trusts you.’

  Heathy snorted out a laugh. He shuffled to one side. Crow was on the other side of the room, looking around at the designs on the walls.

  ‘If you happen to see Rob, or that slut of his, give us a yell, hey?’

  Rabs said nothing.

  ‘I know you’ve done a lot of work on Rob, but don’t forget who pays the bills, okay?’

  ‘Sure thing, Crow.’

  Heathy followed Crow to the back door.

  ‘This has been fun,’ Rabs said. ‘We should do this again some time.’

  ‘Fucking cunt. Don’t forget what I said.’

  ‘Sure thing. Catch ya.’

  They shuffled out the studio door, leaving both it and the back door open behind them. Rob could see through to the shadowy storage room. That was where they cut the drugs after they arrived from Afghanistan.

  Moments later their Harleys fired up; Rob felt the reverberation beneath his feet. He trailed the sound up the side of the building, sat there listening while they disappeared into the traffic.

  ‘Wait,’ Rabs said.

  He walked past the cupboard. Rob heard the beaded curtain clattering. A few moments later Rabs was back.

  ‘All clear.’

  Rob squeezed out of the cupboard, stretched his back, then moved to the corner of the room so he wouldn’t be visible from either door. Rabs was flushed, and sweating. His chest heaved as though he’d just run a hundred metres.

  ‘I mean it,’ Rabs said, ‘that was a lot of fun.’ He tried to grin, but it withered on his face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rob said.

  Rabs waved it away. ‘Don’t be. They’re murdering pricks.’

  Rob turned to leave, then stopped. He pulled out his gun and offered it to Rabs.

  ‘No. No, no, nope,’ Rabs said, ‘I don’t do guns. Besides, you need it more than I do.’

  ‘Take it.’

  Rabs shook his head.

  ‘Take it! Rabs, if they find out you’ve been helping me, they’re gonna come back for you. I can’t lose anyone else.’

  Rabs folded his arms across his chest.

  ‘Fine,’ Rob said, ‘I’ll just leave it here.’

  He clunked it down on the counter, and turned to leave.

  ‘You always were a stubborn bastard!’ Rabs called after him.

  CHAPTER 29

  Harry woke up with the now familiar throbbing. This time on his lower back. He rolled over and stared up at the ceiling, then pulled his iPhone from the charger. It was 5 a.m., and already stinking hot. He pulled the sweaty sheet off his body and set his feet on the floorboards.

  He reached around and gingerly touched the new tattoo, then twisted so he could look at it. It was on his back, just above the hip, balancing out the crushed Black Hawk. He took a photo. Sat down on the bed and looked at it. An angel. Nothing cherubic about this one. He was big, pissed off, clutching a sword. Compared to the other tattoos, it was rough. You could tell it wasn’t finished. Merely an outline. But Rob had made sure the names took priority.

  More names, under the avenging angel’s barely sketched feet. A name in Arabic script. It was at the top of the list so he assumed it was the woman in Afghanistan. Geoff. John. Ahmed – the Afghan Mullah Sensee.

  A roll call of the fallen. Rob’s personal list of people who must be avenged. Something he’d wanted to do himself, but instead it had fallen to Harry.

  For once, Harry didn’t need to try and unravel what the tattoo meant. He knew, because he’d been there with Rob when Rabs did it. For once, he could remember the whole dream. It was more like a memory.

  Harry stripped off his pyjama pants and picked his sweaty running gear off the floor. His shorts and singlet stank, but that didn’t matter. Soon he’d be on the road and adding more sweat, and he’d be far away, figuring out what the hell he was going to do next to end this thing.

  Shoes on. Out the door. The air was cooler out here but he could feel something underneath, that intensity of summer. As soon as the sun hit, the day would begin heating up in earnest.

  He set off down the road. He’d started to vary the run each day – part of Rob’s training, he guessed. Vary your route in case someone was watching.

  His feet slapped the bitumen, and soon he dropped into a rhythm, watching and yet immersed in his thoughts at the same time. He and Jess had worked out the meaning behind all of the tattoos, pretty much. Proving it was the next step.

  Harry turned up the hill, feeling his muscles burn as they worked harder. The tattoo on his back throbbed, stinging slightly as the skin sweated. Once, the pain would have been a big deal. Now, he could barely feel it, and it certainly didn’t bother him.

  Into sunlight at the top of the hill. As expected, already hot. The sun burned his skin, drying up the sweat a little before he plunged down the other side, down the hill and back into shadow. This morning, he felt as though he could run forever. Arms pumping, chest heaving, sweat falling in fat drops to the road below. At the point where he would usually turn to head up to the water tower, he kept going. He had a vague idea of where he was, but he wasn’t really seeing anything.

  He was running down a dirt road, in the blazing sun. In army fatigues. Loaded up with a huge pack.
>
  Every step sent a shockwave of pain through his body. Up ahead he could see another SAS candidate, shimmering through the heat haze. On the side of the road sat one of the selectors, face covered with a green scarf and sunglasses. He didn’t bother talking to him. There was no point. They hardly ever talked back. When they did talk back, they never offered words of encouragement.

  Ahead of him, the other candidate disappeared. When he got to him, he was sitting on the side of the road, piece of paper on his lap, trying to scrawl his name with a hand that was shaking so badly it could barely grip the pen. His face was a mask of pain, and disappointment. Another drop-out.

  Harry heard the horn and saw the car in the same instance. I’m dead. But as he thought it he was already leaping, tucking his head under as the car roared out of the side street. He felt the car’s bonnet against his back. Heard tyres squealing.

  As he came out of the shoulder roll something in his lower spine gave way. He staggered, fell. White-hot spasms wracked his body, from his shoulder blades to his knees. The world greyed out. When he came to, a man was by his side, shaking his arm.

  ‘Hey! Hey! You all right?’

  He had glasses. Grey hair. Business shirt, with a tie flung over his shoulder. Around his neck hung a black lanyard, attached to some sort of ID card slotted into the shirt’s pocket.

  Harry tried to sit up, but the man put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t. Just have a rest. You came down pretty hard.’ He sounded annoyed.

  The man looked around. The car had pulled up and its young driver was leaning out the window. ‘Jesus, mate! Jesus!’

  ‘Y. . .’ Harry’s throat closed. He could taste blood in his mouth. He cleared his throat. ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

  The driver cursed, slid back into his seat, and pulled out again into the traffic.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ The man looked back at Harry. ‘Just have a bit of a rest. You really should look where you’re going though. I thought you were dead.’

  Harry lay there. The concrete felt cool against his cheek. If he let himself go, he could feel the world spinning slightly. He breathed deeply, and the sensation passed.

  An ant walked into his peripheral vision, and he flashed back to the first nightmare.

  Well, he’s definitely dead.

  Harry forced himself up, ignoring the flash of pain from his back. Now that his body had cooled down, he felt himself cramping. He pulled his legs up underneath him, crossed them. His left knee throbbed. It was badly grazed and looked like it was going to swell. The good samaritan was down on his haunches, peering at Harry with real concern in his eyes. People passed by on either side, barely offering a glance. No-one else seemed to care.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll be okay.’

  ‘Do you have someone you can call?’

  ‘Sure,’ Harry said, although he didn’t. Not really. He wasn’t going to try and get Jess – she’d be on her way to work. Dave was at work. Christine? Yeah, and then he’d have to answer the questions. The lesser of two evils.

  ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I left my phone at home. I wasn’t planning on coming so far.’

  ‘That’s okay. Use mine.’

  The man handed over his phone. Harry considered just getting a bus home. But he was too exhausted. So he dialled Christine on the work number, which after so many years at the Chronicle was ingrained on his memory, and prepared his story.

  ***

  Christine sat across the table, nursing her glass of water. It was the first time she’d visited his house, and would probably be the last time. Her opening statement was about the smell.

  ‘Did something die in here?’

  ‘Only my self-respect.’ He opened some windows.

  Harry made coffee. Despite the heat, he felt cold inside. When he got home he’d changed in the bathroom, had a shower. Then he realised that he hadn’t brought any clean clothes in with him. Yeah, he could have just put his sweaty running clothes back on, but he couldn’t bear to even look at them. And he realised he didn’t want to hide the tattoos anymore. He wasn’t ashamed of them. And sure, he couldn’t explain them without lying or having the other person think him insane, but he was prepared to risk that with Christine.

  ‘Holy shit,’ she said, when he walked past. ‘Holy, fucking, shit! Wait!’

  He stood there, towel wrapped around him. She circled, examining the tattoos. Occasionally she’d stop, as though admiring a work of art in a gallery. She touched the poppies on his back. Goosebumps rose in answer.

  ‘Harry.’ It was all she could manage.

  ‘Let me get dressed,’ he said. For a moment he thought she was going to grab his arm. But she didn’t.

  He returned, sipped his coffee. Saw that Christine had helped herself to a glass of water. She didn’t say a word. But he could tell she was dying to.

  ‘Look, it’s no big deal,’ Harry said.

  She opened her mouth to argue but he held up a finger. ‘You know this one,’ Harry said. He pointed to his neck. She nodded. ‘That was the first. They say that these things are addictive. Maybe they’re right?’ he continued.

  Harry was impressed with himself. So far, he hadn’t lied.

  ‘Don’t ask me about mid-life crises,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s what it is. But you know, maybe I don’t want to go through my life being like everybody else. Maybe I want to do something different.’

  Again, not a lie. He did want to do something different. For the first time since uni, he wanted to break a story that was worth breaking.

  Christine held her palms up. ‘Okay. Tattoos aside. What happened this morning?’

  ‘I’ve been running every day. Maybe another aspect of this mid-life crisis I seem to be having. I usually do a block, turn up to the water tower, back down again. Something like that.

  ‘I was bored. I wanted to push myself a little. I guess I chose the wrong day to do it.’

  Christine nodded. ‘It’s thirty degrees out there! It’s not even ten!’

  She took a sip of water, as if to emphasise her point. ‘And you should be drinking this, not that.’ She nodded towards his coffee.

  Harry shrugged. ‘Water’s next on the menu. Anyway, I really appreciate you coming to pick me up. I didn’t have anyone else I could call.’

  She stared at the table. ‘That’s okay,’ she said, eventually.

  Harry finished his coffee. Poured himself a glass of water. ‘See?’

  ‘So how’s this scoop you’re working on?’

  Harry shivered. ‘Yeah. I’m getting there.’

  ‘You’re not coming in to work today.’

  ‘Well, I was. . .’

  ‘That wasn’t a question, Harry.’ Christine finished her water and got up. She laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll cover for you.’

  ‘Thanks. For everything.’

  Christine shrugged. ‘You owe me.’

  ‘I’ll buy you a drink at the Christmas party.’

  ***

  After Christine left, Harry shuffled around the house, jittery with nervous energy. He could feel the storm building inside himself, could feel the electricity in the air but couldn’t do anything about it. Sweat poured off his body. He stripped down to his boxers and walked from room to room, the tin roof tick-tick-ticking as it expanded with the heat of the day. A dog barked somewhere nearby. Eventually he slumped back to his laptop, fired it up, tapping pen against pad as he waited for it to boot up.

  There was an email from SASmate.

  ‘Saw your message. I’m interested. But I’ve been slammed so many times I’m wary. Can you tell me more?’

  Harry stared at the email. Hit ‘Reply’.

  ‘I have to be careful too. I’ve been burned before. I’m a reporter with the Chermside Chronicle. Trust me – I’ll give you plenty of information before I ask you to commit. Do you use Skype? We can chat online if you feel better about that? This is my Skype username: haz_hendrick.’

  Harry read through the email.
Clicked ‘Send’. There wasn’t much more he could do. SASmate, whoever he was, clearly wanted to engage. He’d seen this over the years at the Chronicle. People wanted to dish the dirt but they didn’t want to be associated with it.

  He went through his files. He was getting there, but he still had a long way to go. Without documents, a lot of what he had was hearsay. And when levelling it at a high-ranking politician – a high-ranking, incredibly popular politician – his story would need to be watertight. Already he was thinking that Miles would baulk at running it, no matter how good it was. It was too big for the Chronicle. He could sell it freelance, if he needed to. Hell, if it came to it, he’d set up a blog and publish it online.

  He had documents showing that Swenson Constructions was in trouble. He hoped that those documents would show a massive drop-off in revenue, that couldn’t solely be attributed to the GFC. He had witnesses that could put Crow and Heathy at the scene of a murder and an attempted murder. He had a line connecting Swenson to Cardinal, but on the surface that looked legitimate. Cardinal’s property purchases were eccentric, but there was no law against that. Some might wonder where a former soldier found the cash, but then that could be explained away by Swenson helping him with his ‘investments’. And he didn’t have anything that linked Cardinal to the Dreadnorts. He didn’t have any proof that Cardinal had been smuggling drugs into the country.

  Harry got up and walked to the kitchen. He poured himself a drink of water, sculled it, then fetched a beer from the fridge. The VB carton sitting next to it was almost full of empties. He didn’t remember drinking them. He’d really developed a taste for it.

  When he got back to his computer, his Skype window was open. A message, from SASmate.

  ‘You there?’

  Harry sipped his beer, set it down beside him.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So what’s this info you’ve got?’

  Harry considered, then set his fingers to the keys once more. ‘It’s tricky. Like I said, I’ve got to be careful.’

  ‘Har. You sound like me.’

  ‘I’ve got information that suggests a well-known politician has been doing some things he shouldn’t.’