The Courier's New Bicycle (18 page)

Anwar said he'll ring me when he finds out where Gail's body has been taken; meantime, I have to go be with Albee.

My bike's still at the speakeasy, but the panel van is parked outside. I climb into it, grief-stricken and drunk, then sneak along every side street between home and hospital in an effort to avoid the notice of the roving Temperance Units and emissions patrols.

Driving, I think of Marlene's note. There's nothing I want less than a mutual sob session, but maybe she has something useful to say. She's got cosy at various times with a number of Gail's competitors, and occasionally I wondered if my boss was using her as a source. Information, even from Marlene, would be welcome right now, because while I believe there'll be no lack of takers for Gail's territory, I can't bring myself to believe anybody would be so desperate as to kill her for it.

I find a parking spot around the corner from the hospital entrance, and text off a message. If Marlene wants to talk, let her.

Overhead, a single old-style neon shines down, punctuating the dark of the deserted street. Drained, I stare across the parade to the buildings of the university precinct. Behind them the sky is beginning to lilac up. How many dawns have I seen lately? Too many. I blow my nose, zip up my jacket and step out of the van.

 

Five hours later, the Glory Hole's statuesque cloakroom attendant is waiting for me in the Good Bean and attracting the interest of the regulars.

Frank clasps my shoulder with a thick hand, the droop of his eyes telling me the news of Gail has reached his establishment. He shoots a glance down the row of tables.

‘One of yours?'

‘You could say that.'

Marlene has pretensions to a Lamborghini lifestyle and never visits what she calls the bohemian section of town, but has made an exception for me. As for getting past Frank, she's in luck. He has his own set of identifiers that decide entry to, or rapid exit from, the Good Bean. Top contenders for the latter are Nation First politicians and exponents of B2N; next, known snitches for Neighbourly Watch. Clearly he's decided Marlene fits none of these.

Her eyes are rimmed Hepburn-like with liner, her cheekbones subtly rouged. A dove-grey jersey dress with fur
trim sheaths long, graceful limbs above stiletto ankle boots. She looks suitably downcast, but this is a woman who, even in sorrow, knows how to dress for effect.

I say hello and sit, feeling woolly-headed from grief and lack of sleep, unable to dredge up any small talk. She saves me the trouble by launching straight in.

‘We've not been close,' she begins, ‘but we both had a very special connection to Gail, so I'm hoping we can help each other.'

‘Sure.' It comes out a bit lame, but this is more than Marlene has ever said to me in one go.

‘I heard about Albee. How is he?'

‘Still in a coma.'

She tuts sympathy and sips her latte. ‘Of course you know Gail and I were lovers?'

I nod, not sure Gail would have used that word in relation to her.

‘She was my first,' she adds from under her lashes.

I assume she means lesbian bedmate, but she could mean vegetarian cooking teacher for all I know. I wait for what might be next.

She reaches for a hanky, then dabs expertly at her made-up eyes and says, ‘I've asked myself a million times: why did she do it?'

Marlene knows as well as I do that Gail is too smart for this to be an accident, but, unlike me, she's assuming Gail did it deliberately to herself. For a moment I'm lost for an
answer. I finger my mobile in my pocket and wonder why Anwar hasn't got back to me.

‘I don't know,' I say wearily.

A coffee appears at my elbow, the lush aroma reaching my nostrils. Distractedly I stir in the
crema
with my teaspoon while Marlene fiddles with her hanky, building up to something.

‘I heard you were at her house afterwards. I don't suppose you saw anything there addressed to me?' she asks.

‘Actually, I didn't get past the front door, thanks to an overly diligent member of Neighbourly Watch.'

Her eyes narrow ever so slightly, and a tiny warning light blinks on in my hindbrain.

She treats me to an especially shiny look. ‘I fell head over heels for her,' she confesses. ‘I'd be devastated if she left me nothing, not even a note. We were … soul mates.'

I feel an involuntary recoil on those last two words and shift in my chair to cover. Now she's getting really spooky.

‘Like I said, Marlene, I didn't even get in the door.'

She sags in exaggerated disappointment, then presses in close. ‘I'm going to let you in on a little secret.'

Please don't.

Too late.

‘We were planning to have a baby together.'

My mouth opens in an ‘O' and stays there.

‘I think you know already Gail was a fertile,' she says
sotto voce
. ‘What you might not know is that she'd been selling
her eggs through a Red Quarter broker: the madam of the Shangri-La.'

Savannah
. Marlene knows a hell of a lot for someone who I thought was just a casual fuck.

‘Anyway, she promised me one of her egg sets, and I've been having the fertility supplements and uterine rejuvenation shots to be ready for the embryo transfer.'

Gail's egg implanted in Marlene's rejuvenated womb? I don't want to ask about the dollop of donor sperm.

‘Unfortunately, her silly broker refused to take me on as a recipient, and so Gail was going to sign a special permission for a set to be released directly to me for my procedure. I know she wouldn't have forgotten.'

‘Silly' is the last word I'd use to describe Savannah, and as far as I remember from Tallis, the donor–broker relationship is a secret kept between those two. I suppress the spurt of anger, and shrug.

‘If I come across anything with your name on it, I'll be sure to hand it over.'

Marlene's shiny look tarnishes. ‘I'd like to believe you wouldn't withhold from me, Sally — but I don't.'

My shoulders tighten. My
friends
know never to call me that.

Her tone drops further into hurt. ‘If you can't bring yourself to give your blessing to Gail's and my fertility arrangement, perhaps you could find it in your heart to do one other little thing, for her sake?'

I curse silently. ‘What do you want, Marlene?'

‘I posted her some very soppy love letters, which I'd be mortified if anybody else read. You were closest to her, so you might know where to look for them.'

I'm surprised she doesn't think of Anwar as Gail's closest friend, but let it slide. I suppose she still believes my boss was bedding me.

‘Maybe she entrusted you with some of her personal effects?' she presses. ‘They say suicides often do that before the … event. It'd be protecting Gail's privacy if I had them — and saves you from getting into any trouble later.'

Trouble with whom?
Now she's pushing all my buttons.

‘I've got nothing for you,' I say. ‘Sorry.'

Marlene draws herself up haughtily. ‘Have it your way and play the dumb courier,' she hisses. ‘Just don't be surprised when there are repercussions.'

She swivels expertly out of her chair and swishes down the narrow aisle beside the counter. Frank lifts his pear-shaped posterior off a barstool and goes behind the register, but she sashays right past. The front glass rattles and then she's gone, an angry swirl of movement out the door.

Left with her bill, I sit awhile trying to get my head around the notion of Marlene and Gail having a baby. Eventually, I give up. It's as counter-intuitive as a Cute'n'Cuddly dung beetle and my imagination just won't go there.

Marlene can look for her own letters. She doesn't need my help. Besides, I can't see Gail keeping them. Seems to
me, the desperation to conceive has consumed a number of Marlene's other capacities, including niceness. I'm wondering what ‘repercussions' might be headed my way when Frank comes over, bar cloth slung over one shoulder.

‘Your boss left something with me earlier in the week,' he says quietly. ‘Said it was to go to you if anything happened to her.'

He gives my table a perfunctory wipe, then removes a manila envelope from the big front pocket in his apron. My name, Gail's handwriting. It clinks as he hands it over.

I cast a guilty look towards the door. Something for me and not Marlene. I half-expect a jersey-clad cyclone to come swirling back to denounce me for being an arrant liar.

‘Another coffee?' Frank asks.

My stomach is saying no, too much caffeine already poured into a foodless cavity.

‘Might as well.'

I poke diffidently at the envelope then cast my gaze across the Good Bean customers, their backs hunched and heads together over the tables — all, it seems, with secrets to share. I'm not sure I want to open mine.

I tear the end of the rectangle then tip it, and a set of keys lands on the table. A little shake and a second envelope slides out, embossed with the plush letterhead of Curlewis & Yang, Barristers & Solicitors. In the envelope is a certified copy of Gail's Last Will and Testament. The first page reveals Frank to be executor of the will. I glance down to where it
says ‘Residuary Estate', and there my eyes stop. My name is written in as sole beneficiary. Gail's protected Toorak citadel is her last gift to me.

Tears prick, the pages blur. I lower my head to my arms on the café table and weep soundlessly.

Anwar's seated behind the desk in Gail's secret office at Cute'n'Cuddly — and he looks like crap.

‘Hey,' I say wearily. He'd rung just as I got home from the Good Bean and was sinking into a pit of exhaustion on the couch.

‘Rough night,' he replies in his understated way.

There's a chair placed my side of the desk, but I don't want to sit in it. I close the door and choose my usual position against a filing cabinet.

He leans forward with a concise intensity.

‘She's disappeared.'

‘Pardon?'

‘There's no record of her arrival at either of the city morgues, and nothing in the Ambulance Service's log about a pick-up in Salmon Close. In addition, the police say they never attended a call-out to that address.'

I can't process what he means. ‘Someone else took her body?'

‘If there was a body. I think she's been abducted.'

My mind races back twelve hours. I didn't see the ambulance, just the police cars. Or was it that I saw the blue flashing lights zoom past and
assumed
that's what they were? Then there was Doug Smeg from the Local Incident Committee blocking my way as he'd delivered the news.

Anwar interrupts my runaway thoughts. ‘The SOS guard said the ambulance and police cars arrived at the northern neighbourhood entrance at 11.45 pm, and left the same way several minutes later.'

‘If she didn't call them, how did they get into her place?'

‘Good question.' Elbows on the desk, he steeples his fingers. ‘Her gates were jammed open. The security system had been disabled and the surveillance hard drive taken. I found her mobile in pieces on the back patio.'

I remember Doug's searching hands. ‘The LIC rep was looking for a drugs cache,' I say.

‘Describe him to me.'

‘Big mean guy called Doug Smeg. More 'roids in his system than is good for anyone.'

Anwar looks interested. ‘Sounds like the go-between who arrived here Monday with an offer on Cute'n'Cuddly. He was representing a syndicate that preferred to remain anonymous — as did he; but we have him on camera.'

He opens Gail's I Spy screen set in the desk, and brushes it with a finger. Then he swivels the image my way and I'm looking at Doug Smeg sitting in Gail's front office.

‘Yep.'

He flips the cover down. ‘The deal was simple: cash upfront for a company in financial freefall. But their man was too self-interested to be just an intermediary. He informed us Neighbourly Watch had Gail and every person working for her targeted for “special attention”, and, as a bonus if she agreed to the sale, he could make her problem go away. She didn't appreciate being treated to the same tactics the NW racketeers use on the hormone farms, and he left unhappy. I'd say that's when they decided to up the ante.'

My heart leaps in my ribcage at the thought of Gail still alive, then just as quickly bogs in a quagmire of terrible possibilities.

‘They could have killed her by now.' I hate to think it, let alone voice it.

Anwar frowns down at his fingers. ‘Mr Smeg must have got quite a shock when you showed up. But whether his news was the plan all along or a spur-of-the-moment decision, it made for an effective blindside and sent you away. You didn't call the police because you thought they'd been. No reason to mobilise a search, we begin to grieve — that is, until we can't locate her body.'

I leave my leaning post and plonk myself in the spare chair. ‘This morning I got a package from Frank at the Good Bean,' I say quietly.

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 ‘emergency' 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?