Vengeance List

by Gary Gregor

  Sam never considered himself to possess anything other than a perfectly normal sexual appetite. He was not into kinky sex, or same gender sex, or indeed any sex that required him to dress in anything that had feathers hanging from it. He had, he believed, a healthy, respectful attitude towards members of the opposite sex, with perhaps a couple of exceptions. Jennifer Foley was one of those exceptions.

  “Slut” was not a word that fit comfortably in his vocabulary, but if one was to apply the general perception of the meaning of the word to someone, it could easily be Jennifer.

  Jenifer had cheated on Russell for as long as Sam had known them both, and he became aware of her infidelities long before her husband did. Or perhaps, for reasons known only to Russell, he did know but chose the path of ignorance. In the fullness of time, he suspected something was going on, but he would have to be deaf as well as blind not to.

  Sam also knew Jennifer preferred police officers when it came to her infidelities. He knew because the rumours were far too consistent for them to have no basis in fact. But Russell was his friend and partner. While he knew the smart thing to do would be to talk to him about the rumours, he was never able to bring himself to broach the subject, and it was a failing on his part he long regretted.

  He wondered if perhaps it was just, for the most of his adult life, and certainly since the onset of his own sexually active years, he had been around police officers, and he really had nothing else with which to compare. Although, if he were honest with himself, he didn’t think there was any other section of the community offering as many and varied range of sexual exploits as the police force could. He was sure most of it was nothing more than boastful, chest pounding talk. Cops generally liked to think of themselves as a macho bunch of individuals, but he knew there was, for the most part, a foundation of truth to the rumours and innuendo circulating with monotonous regularity through the ranks.

  Notwithstanding his error in judgement with Jennifer Foley, Sam found himself wondering if his apparent normality in regards to his appreciation and practice of things sexual left him wanting in some small way. He preferred to think not. He liked sex as well as the next man, or woman. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy his liaison with Jennifer the day she came to him carrying a bottle of whiskey and wearing no underwear, he did. He enjoyed it as much as he had ever enjoyed sex with anyone, in truth, more than most. Jennifer was good at it. She had, after all, plenty of practice, and it was far more than the deceit it involved on both their parts that made it a memorable day for him. When she did those things to him, thoughts of deceit, morality, or a sense of right or wrong came much later; after she was gone. That was when he consumed the last of the whiskey she left behind, and the best part of another bottle of his own as guilt descended upon him and threatened to consume him.

  It wasn’t as if he had cheated on his wife as so many others of his colleagues had, and did, with scant regard for the ethics of their behaviour. He was single. He was not seeing anyone on a regular basis, hence no one was getting hurt – except Russell Foley. Sam had cheated on his best friend, and betrayed that friendship. Afterwards he did feel it, and he didn’t like the feeling.

  Now, a year later, while he had managed to consign the memory of it to a place where it would hopefully remain dormant and distant in the overall scheme of things, it still reared its ugly head occasionally. Just to remind him that he was human after all, and perhaps when it came right down to it, he wasn’t really much different from anyone else who might find themselves in a similar situation.

  It was a short drive from his home to the place where Sam played squash every week at this time. He started playing the game a couple of years earlier following a challenge from Kevin Thiele, a solicitor with the Australian Legal Aid Service. Their respective work commitments notwithstanding, the two met every Thursday afternoon to thrash out their individual frustrations on the court.

  Sam felt no more like playing today than running a marathon. It was hot, he was tired, and he was still suffering lingering effects of his night on the town with Paddy O’Reily. He forgot to ring Thiele and cancel, and he would be inside warming up already. He saw Thiele’s car parked near the entrance. Perhaps a good, hard workout might blow away the cobwebs and the lethargy.

  Thiele had never beaten Sam on the squash court; not once in the two years they had played. He had, over the time they had been friendly rivals, become mildly philosophical about his consistent failure at the game. Sam was a particularly good player; but Thiele was a particularly bad one.

  Kevin Thiele had never been a person possessed of any great motivation. At fifty, his life to this point never really reached any great heights. It would be fair to say it had barely gotten off the ground. It was more a case of a series of attempts amounting to very little. Even during the years studying law, he never seemed able to display any genuine interest in his future as a solicitor. His position at the bottom of his graduation class was proof of his lack of enthusiasm for the profession.

  Thiele was, by any standard, an uninspiring man who began in his current position as a nervous, quietly spoken, recently graduated young lawyer, and was still in the same job twenty-six years later. He approached his work with considerable lack of both self-confidence and self-belief. To those who knew him, he appeared to live his life and carry out his duties with just sufficient expertise to ensure his continued survival in the legal profession, and the business of life itself.

  Every once in a while, he thought how nice it would be to beat Sam one day. While they were pleasant enough thoughts, they were not powerful enough to spur him into putting in any extra training time on the court, or into seeking specialised coaching with a view to improving his technique. His ability as a squash player never improved much beyond awkward and uncoordinated. It seemed he had long ago accepted it was his lot in life to always come in behind the leader. Someone had to lose, or so his brand of logic told him. There had to be a certain number of losers in life; at least one for every winner, he reasoned. It was not something that depressed him particularly. That’s the way it was. Those were the cards he was dealt. He could either play them or fold, but he couldn’t change them. He was one of those whose destiny it was to be always positioned somewhere closer to the back of the pack than the front.

  Thiele sensed something lacking in Sam’s approach to the game this time. Although the outcome was never in doubt, his opponent was not attacking the ball with the same enthusiasm, and it reflected in the score; the gap between them wasn’t as wide as it usually was.

  Sam was always going to win, but this time, Thiele got closer than ever before to causing an upset. Being the negative soul that he was however, he never for a moment considered his game might be, at long last, on the improve. Rather, that Sam must be pre-occupied with something or other, and hence the uncharacteristic slump in his performance.

  They sat on a bench outside the glass wall that gave them a view into the court they had just vacated. Their eyes followed the style of two attractive young ladies playing as though they were born with squash racquets in their hands. For a while, they sat in silence watching the girls darting around the court, their tiny skirts offering occasional glimpses of tanned, well-proportioned thighs.

  With a towel draped over his shoulders, Sam wiped at perspiration dripping into his eyes and running freely down his face. He took a long sip from the orange juice provided by his playing partner; the agreed on trophy for the winner of their weekly game. It had not failed to escape Sam's notice that Thiele often pre-paid for the juice when they registered and paid for the court time; such was his lack of faith in his chances of beating him.

  “I almost whipped your arse this time,” Kevin announced, nudging Sam in the rib cage.

  “Kevin,” Sam laughed, “you could start two days before me, and I’d still beat you. Don’t you ever get tired of the floggings?”

  “You keep playing like you played today mate, and it will only be a matter of time before you are buying me t
he juice.”

  “Dream on, pal,” Sam said, his eyes still following the girls on the court.

  “Do I detect a pre-occupation with matters not related to thrashing me on the squash court?” Kevin asked.

  “Sorry, mate,” Sam apologised. “I’ve got a few things on my mind.”

  “Anything I can help you with?”

  “What, are you moonlighting as a counsellor now?” Sam joked.

  “No, just asking as a friend.”

  Sam turned to face the ruddy-faced, sweating solicitor. “Tell me, you are around the courts every day, what’s the talk in the corridors about this spate of murders?”

  “Shit,” Kevin shrugged. “What do I know? No one tells me anything. There’s a rumour doing the rounds that a few of the magistrates and judges are a little skittish, but shit, I just keep to myself. Always have. I prefer it that way. I doubt that I know any more than you do. You know me. I just front up every day and offer what meagre, mostly inadequate defence I can to the unwashed, unemployed, brain-dead drop-kicks who don’t have enough common sense to duck behind a tree when they decide to take a piss in the street.”

  “Don’t you ever aspire to anything even slightly greater than defending society’s sludge pit every day of your working life?” Sam asked.

  “Someone’s gotta do it,” Kevin shrugged. “Besides, I’ve been doing it for so long now that I’ve come to develop an affinity with the shit heads.”

  “Well,” Sam said, “I for one, am glad I left all that behind me.”

  “You don’t miss it?” Kevin asked.

  “I did at first,” Sam answered. “Until I got the P.I. business up and running; now I don’t have a lot of time to think about it.”

  “So, why the interest in these murders?”

  “I think everyone’s interested, and I suppose it’s the copper curiosity in me,” Sam explained. “After twenty years in the job, I was bound to take something away with me.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t help you mate,” Kevin said. “But I learn more about what’s going on by reading it in the paper than I do from gossip around the water cooler at work.”

  Sam got to his feet and tossed his empty juice container in a nearby bin. “Never mind, it was just a thought. It’s not that important.”

  They walked from the squash centre together, and from the open door of his car, Thiele called, “I’ll get you next week, Sam. I think I’m getting better at this game.” He said the same thing every week.

  On his way home, Sam decided to call into his office and check his phone messages. Paddy may have called. He found the light blinking. There were two messages. The first was Paddy’s rich, Irish brogue, telling him he had a small measure of success at the morgue, and he would fill him in early the next morning.

  “Not too early,” Sam muttered to the empty office.

  The second message, the one of most interest, was from Ann Curtis. She had a small, private function to attend that evening, and she would be delighted if he could join her afterwards. She asked him to meet her at the Darwin Sailing Club at eight thirty and said she hoped he could make it. Hoped he could make it! Shit! He would make it, or he would die trying.

  Given the perception the general population held in regards to the meaning of the word, Sam had never really understood why one of the city’s most picturesque places was ever named “Fannie Bay”.

  While the origins of its naming eluded him, he never allowed it to colour his appreciation of the area’s natural beauty. Residentially, Fannie Bay was considered one of the elite addresses in Darwin, if not the most elite. The area offered a sailing club, water ski club, museum and art gallery, bowling club, and perhaps its most infamous attraction, Fannie Bay Gaol.

  The old prison was closed down in nineteen-seventy-nine, and no longer served as a place of incarceration for lawbreakers, but was now a popular tourist attraction for visitors and locals alike.

  Sam arrived fifteen minutes early. In all his years in Darwin, he had never been inside the sailing club. He stood just inside the door, and cast his eyes around the room. The building was large, open, and airy. The air conditioning, working in conjunction with slowly turning ceiling fans, cooled the room pleasantly. Memorabilia of all things nautical adorned the walls and hung from the ceiling. There were about thirty members enjoying the facilities. Several sat in the dining area, others stood at the bar running the full length of one wall.

  Several pairs of eyes looked in his direction. He could not see Ann among the guests. He knew it was a requirement that he be signed-in by a member, and he hesitated, before crossing to the bar.

  The girl behind the bar fit the image of the club as a place of recreation for those who enjoyed sailing and associated activities. He guessed she was about twenty-four or five. She was certainly pretty, and wore a cute little blue and white sailor suit, which obviously had the desired effect given that all those drinking at the bar were men. Sam cast a quick eye over them all, and wondered how many of them actually sailed as opposed to using the club merely as a place to socialise. Perhaps it was just the pretty lady in the pretty little sailor suit that brought them here. Either way, they were spending money, and that had to be pleasing to the committee.

  “Can I help you, Sir?” the sailor girl smiled.

  “I’m not sure,” Sam answered. “I was supposed to meet someone here, but I’m a little early and I don’t see her anywhere.”

  “Is your name Rose?” the girl asked.

  “Yes, it is,” Sam answered, unable to conceal his surprise.

  “Professor Curtis is expecting you, Sir,” she continued. “She asked that I take care of you until she can join you. She is in our committee room at a private function, and will be with you shortly. If you would care to enter your details in our visitor’s book, I will see that someone signs you in as her guest.”

  “Thank you,” Sam returned her smile.

  “You’re welcome,” she said. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Whiskey please, Irish if you have it, ice and just a splash of water.”

  While she prepared his drink, he returned to the entrance and entered his name and address in the register. Back at the bar, he was surprised to learn his drink had been placed on Professor Curtis’s account.

  He carried his drink outside, and found a table on the neatly manicured lawn, stretching across the front of the club, and separating it from the beach leading down to the water’s edge.

  He sat in the moist, humid quiet of the approaching night, watching the huge, golden orb of the sun as it descended slowly behind the distant horizon. A gentle, welcome breeze drifted off the ocean. It had been a long time since he had taken the time simply to sit and observe the special beauty of a Top End sunset, and this one was beautiful. Somehow, it seemed to bring a sense of perspective to the seedy, crappy side of society more familiar to him.

  Prior to the devastation thrust upon it by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Day 1974, Darwin was, by any interpretation, a wild, ramshackle, frontier type town where booze and bad manners walked hand in hand. Not a lawless town as such, but more a bare-knuckled, knock-about town, where raw toughness was essential to its survival.

  Reborn, post cyclone Tracy, Darwin was now a frangipani, bougainvillea adorned tropical oasis at the end of the “track,” slicing through the heart of a vastness that spread east, south, and west of the smallest capital city in Australia. It was a vibrant, cosmopolitan, cultural melting pot; home to over fifty ethnic groups, and where the thick, humid air was wrapped lightly in a delicious potpourri of aromas typical of the strong Asian influence, and reminiscent of the food markets of Singapore.

  “It’s nice isn’t it?”

  Surprised, Sam turned at the sound of her voice, behind him. Ann Curtis smiled down at him, walked around the table, and stood between him and the sea, positioning herself in the burnt orange frame of the setting sun.

  Sam almost gasped aloud. She was truly beautiful. He could not drag his eyes from the d
ark outline of her body, sheathed sensuously in an almost transparent white dress that hung from perilously thin straps over exquisite shoulders, to a point just above her equally exquisite knees.

  Shit! He thought. Say something. What? What should I say? Where the hell is my tongue? Please God, don’t let me say anything dumb.

  “Wa… was I gawking?” he stammered, almost upsetting his drink.

  Ann laughed. “As a matter of fact, you were. But it’s okay. Really, I’m flattered. But if you start dribbling into your drink, I’m out of here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sam smiled, recovering a degree of composure. “I never heard you. I guess I was lost in my thoughts… you know… the sunset and all… and there you were, standing there, and I love your dress, and oh… shit, I’m sorry… you know, you really are beautiful, and, I'm sorry I said 'shit'.”

  Ann absently flicked her thick, auburn hair. It caught the last glow of the setting sun behind her. Sam wanted to tangle his fingers in it, and bury his face in its faintly perfumed softness.

  “Well, thank you for the compliment, and your apology is accepted," Sam heard her say.

  “Now, should I stand here with the light shining through my dress until it gets dark, or are you going to ask me to join you?”

  “Oh… no!” Sam groaned. “Am I that obvious?”

  “I’m afraid so,” she answered, slipping into the seat opposite him.

  “I suppose you think I’m a lecherous pervert?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” she smiled. “Have you been waiting long?”