by L.J. Hayward
Chapter 4
Erin put the disk into her computer and hit play. The screen flickered into life, a grainy, dark picture swimming into partial focus. Static lines creased the image and Erin squinted, trying to make out details.
It was a nightclub, bar to the left of the screen and dance floor in the upper right corner. She could just make out bodies twisting and gyrating to music she couldn’t hear. The rest of the room was crowded with young people in groups or pairs, drinks in hand while they laughed and yelled over the general noise. The girls wore a wild range of small clothes and big shoes while the boys were, for the most part, various shades of the same T-shirt and jeans uniform. Altogether, they were just a silent pantomime about the excesses of youth.
They all looked incredibly young. Or perhaps that was just how it seemed from Erin’s perspective. How long would it be before these kids were slapped in the face by life? Before the fun of a night out clubbing became nothing more than a wistful memory while the reality of surviving in a world that didn’t really care tried to drag you down…
Erin shook herself and glanced at the other woman in her office.
Heather Veilchen stood by the door, back partly turned to Erin as she looked through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall at the front of the office. Vertical blinds on a slight angle gave them modest privacy from Ivan, Erin’s assistant. Mrs Veilchen wore coal-black slacks, a pearlescent silk blouse and a pair of Jimmy Choo’s that would have cost most of one of Erin’s pay cheques. Her hair was a lustrous, white-blonde, curling around her shoulders. Long, slender fingers tipped in black-polished nails twined through its ends. Dark sunglasses covered her eyes despite the night pressing in at the window behind them.
Accepting an appointment after work hours was nothing unusual. A lot of people seemed to think coming to a private investigator deserved the added drama of a late night appointment. But actually wearing sunglasses? Erin supposed she should have just been grateful Mrs Veilchen hadn’t worn a trench-coat as well. Though if she had, it would have been some high-end designer construction suitable for wear over selected items of French lingerie.
“What am I looking for?” Erin asked.
Mrs Veilchen didn’t move. “You’ll know when you see it.”
Dear God. More unnecessary drama. Someone really needed to give the collective populace a wake call regarding the correct handling and use of a P.I.
Erin turned back to the computer. The action had progressed very little. Group dynamics may have altered but the overall image was the same. Resigning herself to ‘knowing it when she saw it’, Erin waited.
A bare minute later, she knew what it was.
A girl tottered off the dance floor, a hulking young man dragged along behind. They worked their way to the bar and while the girl winced and motioned to her feet, the young man scanned the area for a free stool. There were none. Still, the young man was determined to find somewhere for his girl to sit. He picked a man sitting on his own, slouched over the bar, glass of something held negligently in one hand. The young man leaned in to shout something. Not very surprisingly, the loner ignored him, taking a slow pull on his drink. With a tug on her boyfriend’s sleeve, the girl urged him away, but the young man shook her off. This time, he grabbed the loner’s shoulder.
The loner finally released the glass, but only long enough to knock the hand from his shoulder. That done, he returned to his drink, downing the last of it before pushing it toward the harried bartender in a silent command for a refill.
Undaunted, the young man curled his large hand around the loner’s upper arm. He was a big man, bigger than the loner, who had a taut, wiry leanness Erin associated with someone recovering from recent illness or addiction.
Whether the loner didn’t notice the size difference, or didn’t care, Erin had no idea. Either way, the loner looked down at the hand around his arm with slow deliberation that screamed ‘now you’ve gone and pushed the wrong button’. The young man missed it, but he didn’t miss the cane that suddenly appeared in the loner’s other hand. And, swinging around with the pull of the young man’s hold, the loner didn’t miss his arm with the heavy head of the cane.
Erin sucked in a startled breath, almost feeling the blow on her own limb.
The young man jumped backwards, mouth gaping in some exclamation of pain, arm drawn in close to his chest. His girlfriend lunged past him, tiny breasts thrust out at the loner, arms flailing as she yelled at him. The crowd around them peeled away, giving the combatants room to move and themselves room to watch. A bouncer began to bulldoze his way across the floor from the door.
As calm as you please, the loner simply slipped off his stool, righted his hold on the cane and leaned on it. His left leg was stiff as he shifted weight off it, jeans bulging around his knee like they were covering something extra – an orthopaedic support, Erin guessed. Hence the cane. The jeans themselves were ripped and faded, T-shirt grungy and may have once advertised a tour for the Divinyls; something vaguely resembling Chrissy Amphlett in her school girl outfit bent provocatively over a microphone stand on the front. His hair, in serious need of a shampoo and cut, hung over his eyes and shoulders.
At first glance, this half-dead apparition seemed harmless. He hunched over the cane, head lowered, hair hiding his face, too thin to be an apparent threat to the bulky young man. But Erin knew better than to rely on initial impressions. The loner had moved fast and accurately. There was no doubt he’d hit the precise spot he’d intended—cause pain and shock but no real lasting injury. Despite his handicap, if it came to a fight between these two, Erin wouldn’t bet against the loner.
But, just as the bouncer reached the cleared fight zone, the loner turned away from the young man and his feisty girlfriend. He limped past the bouncer, cane pressed to his left leg, taking the weight of each step in his upper body. Behind him, the girlfriend jumped up and down, gesturing as if she alone had sent him running.
The loner’s retreat brought him toward the camera, toward the exit of the club. A path opened up for him; his painful and solitary march watched by dozens of people. Some winced with each hitch in his stride, some calling out obvious insults, while others slumped in disappointment, probably wondering if something else exciting would happen so they could report back to their friends. And the loner just walked through it as if they didn’t exist.
If only he would lift his head. Erin could make out very little of his face under the shock of hair, a hint of jaw and straight lipped mouth. His limping stride made it difficult to judge his age from his gait, as did the gaunt quality of his body. If Erin was right about the Divinyls on his T-shirt, that might put him closer to her age than that of the majority of clubbers around him. It was a shaky assumption and one that was probably wrong, but at the moment, it was all Erin had to go on. Hopefully Mrs Veilchen would shed more light on this man.
About to turn to the woman, new movement in the video caught Erin’s eye.
A gaggle of girls came into view from the entrance to the club. There were four of them, young and laughing, clinging to each other as they tripped over their own feet. This was not the first club they’d visited this night, already well on their way to unstable intoxication. Preoccupied with each other, they slipped into the path opened up for the loner with all the innocence of a fly crashing into a spider’s net. The girl in the lead walked backwards so she could face her friends, head tossed back in the throes of an outrageous giggle. She stepped right into the loner.
He flinched from the impact, turning his right shoulder toward her to protect his injured side. The girl bounced off with a startled laugh and turned, supposedly to apologise.
Whatever her intent had been, it didn’t eventuate. Instead, she took one look at him and all the fun drained from her face. Her friends piled up at her back, urging her forward, but she was planted to the spot, staring at the loner in awful recognition. He returned her gaze, his expression hidden from Erin.
Did he know her? What was their history together?
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On the screen, the stunned girl tried to back away from him, head shaking, mouth opening and closing. Erin wished the picture was clear enough for her to lip read. The girl, trapped by her seemingly ignorant friends behind and immobile loner in front, spun on a shaky heel, ready to fight her way through the crowd.
She wasn’t fast enough.
The loner dropped his cane and grabbed her sequined top. Pulled back toward him, she staggered, almost toppled them both over. He kept them upright. She clung to his arm, a reflexive action to keep from falling.
So it was, that when his right fist smashed into her face, she couldn’t roll with it. Her head snapped back at a painful angle. Black blood sprayed from her nose, her legs gave out and she let go of his arm, disappearing from view as she crumpled to the floor.
Choking back a repulsed cry, Erin hit the pause button. The picture froze on the image of the loner’s fist poised for more violence. From the moment the girls walked into the club to the moment Erin paused the tape, not even a minute had passed. It had happened so quickly, so unexpectedly.
Hands curling into fists, Erin stared at the man in the film. It didn’t matter now that he’d walked away from one potential fight. She had no sympathy for an arsehole who would assault someone half his size. Swallowing against the rising anger, she turned away from the image before she could put her own fist through the ghost of his face.
“Who is he?” she asked Mrs Veilchen.
“I don’t know,” Mrs Veilchen said, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond the glass wall, beyond the outer office space. Perhaps she looked at her own private viewing of the tape.
“Who’s the girl, then?”
Mrs Veilchen shrugged her narrow shoulders. “She’s not important. It’s only him I need to find.”
Erin looked at the image captured on the security tape. Not important? Hardly. She was very important to the loner and therefore important to Erin. There was a clear shot of her face, but it was hard to make out specifics with blood covering half of her features. Stepping back through the footage revealed no helpful pictures of his face, though. Even if he had shown his face to the camera, Erin doubted she would have been able to use it. The picture quality really was crappy.
“Surely in this day and age a nightclub could afford a digital system,” Erin muttered.
“This was from six years ago.” Mrs Veilchen faced Erin, her too-thin face dwarfed by the glasses.
Erin ejected the disk. “You don’t have anything more recent to go on? A bad tape image from six years ago is going to be a hard place to start from.”
“I only know that he still lives in Brisbane.”
Erin sat down and put the disk back in the case. “I’m impressed you found out even that much.”
“My resources are not insubstantial, Ms McRea.” She sat as well, slender legs crossed, hands resting demurely on her knee. “But I am not a professional investigator. I feel I have exhausted my knowledge. I don’t know how to proceed from this point.”
“I understand. But before I can decide whether or not to take your case, I need to know more. You don’t know who this man is, yet you wish to find him. You say you don’t know the victim from the tape, so she is not the reason. So why?”
Mrs Veilchen didn’t move but Erin got the distinct feeling that the woman was not looking at her anymore.
“He has stolen something from me. I want it back.”
“Have you gone to the police?”
A little snort escaped Mrs Veilchen, a human sound at odds with her detached persona. “They won’t be able to help. The item in question is not something I want… acknowledged.”
Yet more pointless drama. “I’m sorry, Mrs Veilchen, but I won’t consider your case if you want to hide things from me. The more information you can give me, the better my chances are of resolving this. Either you tell me what he stole or you leave this office now.” Erin pushed the disk across the desk toward the silent woman.
“The item he stole is not important.” There was a touch of pleading in Mrs Veilchen’s voice now, but none of it touched her face. “I only wish you to find him for me. That is all. I will take care of everything after that.”
Nothing in the speech reassured Erin. She didn’t like the cold distance in this woman. The man she was after was violent yet Erin didn’t want to be a part of this woman’s revenge. No good could come of it.
She pushed the disk the rest of the way across the desk. “Thank you for considering Sol Investigations, Mrs Veilchen. Perhaps I could refer you to someone more suitable to your case.”
Mrs Veilchen opened her purse that was only marginally larger than the disk she put in it. “That won’t be necessary. Thank you for seeing me.”
She stood and left Erin’s office with a stiff spine, not pausing in the outer office as Ivan asked if he could help her. He stared after her then turned to peer at Erin through the thin gaps in the vertical blinds. He quirked an eyebrow in question. Erin grimaced in response. Ivan grinned and turned back to his work.
Letting out a long sigh, releasing tension she hadn’t realised she’d held, Erin tidied up her desk. Late appointments weren’t so bad when they resulted in a case that would earn money, but when they amounted to little more than wasted time and a terrible image she wouldn’t be able to shake for weeks, Erin could do without them. She just wanted to go home, forget about other peoples’ problems for the rest of the night and deal with her own.
Standing, she turned to close the blinds on the window. Beyond her twelfth storey office, Brisbane’s night time cityscape stretched away. Tall buildings studded with lights; streets streaked with white headlights and red taillights; the dark river twisting back and forth, its shores sparkling like chains of phosphorescent pearls.
In many ways, Brisbane was not a big city. It was considered ‘sleepy’ by those who lived in Sydney and Melbourne, and it certainly wasn’t as crowded and condensed as those other, more metropolitan cities. But it was large and sprawling. It was a lot of room for one man to lose himself in.
Even if Mrs Veilchen had been a bit more forthcoming, Erin wouldn’t have wanted the case. There was too little to go on, and way too much ground to cover.
The phone beeped and Ivan’s voice came through.
“You have a call, Erin.”
She felt like telling him to take a message. It was too late to be dealing with anything else. Before she could say anything, Ivan continued.
“It’s Sol.”
“Shit.” Erin turned and hit the intercom button. “What does he want?”
“Ah, to talk to you. You know I don’t bother him with silly little questions about the details.” There was a blend of sarcasm and real trepidation in Ivan’s tone. “Line one.”
Suppressing several more grumbles, Erin picked up the phone, hit the flashing line and said, “Hello, Sol. How nice to hear from you.”
“McRea.” His thick Mediterranean accent moulded her name with new inflections, none of them pleasant. “You didn’t take Heather Veilchen’s case.”
Erin resisted the urge to smack her head against the desk. “I don’t think the case would be something Sol Investigations should become involved with. She wasn’t willing to tell me everything, and won’t go to the police, so it’s most likely not above board. Taking this case might harm our professional integrity.”
There was a heavy pause. Erin’s heart beat frantically, the usual response to talking to her boss. It wasn’t often he called, less often he visited. Despite the fact she’d worked for him for three years, Erin was still nervous about dealing with Sol. She did her work and she was good at it. He paid her wage, dispensed bonuses and kept out of her way. Most of the time.
“And?”
And he somehow always knew when she was holding something back.
“And I didn’t like her attitude.”
Sol’s chuckle was smooth, deep and chilling. “McRea, you know we don’t let personal opinions get in the way of our client’s needs. Mrs Veilchen
has utilised Sol Investigations in the past, never with any difficulty. I don’t see why she should be turned away this time.”
A lump of objection and fear lodged somewhere in Erin’s larynx, making it impossible to produce further objections.
“You’re an able investigator, McRea. I don’t think Mrs Veilchen’s missing person case will take you too long.”
And that was it. The case was on board.
“Yes, sir. I’ll start first thing tomorrow morning.”
“No. Now.”
The door to the outer office opened and a courier walked in. He handed Ivan a package the size of a DVD disk. Ivan signed and the courier left. Erin closed her eyes. It had been a while since she’d had the urge to quit, but it was back with a vengeance. She liked her job but when Sol got involved and made things like this happen, she wanted nothing to do with it.
“How is William?”
The question would have sounded innocent coming from anyone else. From Sol, it just sounded loaded.
“He’s fine, for now.”
“Good to hear. If you resolve this case successfully, there will be your usual bonus at the end.”
And he hung up.
Her strings sufficiently pulled and tangled, Erin waved Ivan into her office. He brought the package, already half unwrapped.
“Isn’t this the same disk that left with Mrs Snow Queen not five minutes ago?” Ivan frowned at it.
“It would appear so.” Erin took the disk and shoved it a little harder than necessary into her computer. “Open a file, Ivan. Mrs Veilchen is now a client.”