The Courier's New Bicycle (22 page)

I am a machine, legs and lungs pumping, body tucked flat and low, eyes on the route ahead. Speeding along the city streets, a shadow with lights and reflectors flashing, a savage joy ripples through me. Adrenaline courses, quicksilver, in muscles and ligaments, joints and skin, and I feel nothing of the cold, the dark, the jolting surfaces. Tuned to the immediate, a kinetic fusion of parts, I am complete: this moment surely what I was made for.

I hunker down for the descent across Saviour and the pathway under the rail viaduct. Then I'm out and hugging the curves of the cycle track through the Docklands. The city is deserted, thanks to Sunday curfew. It gives me the perfect run. I whirr by fenced excavations,
KEEP OUT
signs wired to the chain-link. I'm no bigger than an insect to those concrete sentinels blotting out the western sky, each empty shell in its neglected place a testament to the human will and the desire to create — and the power of misfortune to take away.

I ease onto the pedestrian bridge and across the Yarra, its ink of cold rising from below. Barely a light shows on the other side, that black-swathed tract of industrial land become a foreign shore.

I move through the gears and grind on. The first peak of adrenaline fades; the second kicks in.

I'm on Barrow Road. The next turn is Pleasance. To my left, lights follow the arc of the freeway one kilometre away, its massive concrete girders rising slowly to the Angels Gate Bridge. I veer and Ferguson's brick chimney is dead ahead, a lodestone drawing me in.

A final burst of speed and the factory looms large, windows glinting beneath the black serrated roofline. As I angle steeply into the driveway and bump across the boundary, the rear tyre explodes and the wheel slides from under me. One foot wrenches painfully out of a toe strap, and then I'm down and skidding with the bike. The boundary fence stops my momentum, but not before I've shredded clothing and lost skin.

No time to assess the damage, I lift the bike and lay it behind the gate stuck partway across the entrance. The front light releases easily from its handlebar clamp. I drop the helmet and begin to sprint.

Anwar's van is parked out the back beside a stack of rusty drums. I flash some light on the factory window, no need this time to climb through: the door next to it yawns ajar, the lock hanging off splintered wood. Anwar's handiwork — I hope.

I'm about to cross the threshold when a vehicle noses around the corner. Not an eco-lite. The protection duo step out with Marlene and join me.

I make a quick check of the storeroom before stealing along the corridor, the others close behind. We enter the factory space and fan out, torches veiled, moonlight filtering through the roofline panes. I glance back to the square of glass that's the office window, then scan the mezzanine level with its row of squat emulsion tanks and feed lines dangling like entrails to the mixing bowls below.

No sign of movement. I take the key from Marlene's unresisting hand.

I'm halfway up the metal stairs when the door swings open and Anwar steps onto the landing wielding a crowbar.

My heart leaps into my throat. ‘Anwar, it's me.'

He lowers the weapon.

Gail appears, and relief floods through me. I launch myself clumsily up the remainder of the stairs.

Anwar reaches up to a lantern hanging from a sprinkler pipe and the gantry is revealed in an uncompromising light. Gail runs a hand across her jaw. I see the marks on her cheeks from where she's been gagged.

‘How excellent to see you, Salisbury,' she says. Then, ‘You're bleeding.'

‘Fell off my bike,' I say ruefully, and she raises an eyebrow.

I grin like a fool — until I remember who's about to arrive. ‘Doug and the others will be here any minute.'

Neither of them seems overly perturbed. ‘I've been making arrangements for that,' Anwar replies. Confused, I glance down to Marlene. Her chaperones have mysteriously disappeared.

A figure steps into the factory space, torch beam flashing. The beam fixes on her.

‘That's my favourite frock, Marlene — bit nippy for it tonight, though.'

Marlene and her frock together with Doug tweaks a memory in me of the service alley beside the Neighbourly Arms, Marlene captured in my mind's eye,
in flagrante
. I realise Doug was the other in the clinch. Little wonder he looked familiar that night at Gail's.

As I descend the steps, three NVB lackeys emerge from the corridor. The other two are probably guarding the entrance. Coming straight from the speakeasy relieved of their tasers and nightsticks means they've calculated good odds for themselves. Maybe they didn't pay enough attention to Marlene's departure with her two buddies.

Doug's gaze goes from me to the gantry, Gail there next to Anwar still holding the crowbar. He speaks almost lazily. ‘Here's a turn-up for the boys back at HQ: three curfew-breakers loitering suspiciously on private property, one with a weapon.'

Plan B a failure, he's reverted to his official role.

Marlene makes her move. ‘Doug, I'm so glad you've arrived. I hope you don't think it was me who brought these people here. They found out all by themselves.'

I want to smack her for oh so many reasons. The innocent act may be her last desperate throw of the dice, but surely she doesn't think he'll buy it?

The answer is in a curt ‘Shut it, Marlene.'

Mr Perspicacious
.

Doug turns to the nearest of his lackeys. ‘Get the others.' To the other two he says, ‘Search that one.'

That one would be me.

Right on cue, the protection duo return hauling a slumped figure each. They prop the bodies against a wall then go stand in the exit.

‘I was going to warn you about them before you so rudely interrupted me,' Marlene snipes.

Doug's three shift uneasily and look to their ringleader. He probably told them this would be a simple job, easy money. But with the humiliation at the speakeasy and now the change of odds, their thoughts are clear as neon: easy money is slipping from their grasp.

As Anwar and Gail gingerly make their way to the factory floor, I walk up to Doug. It's all I can do not to take a swing at him.

‘We'll pass on the offer of a trip to Neighbourly Watch Central,' I tell him. ‘Here's your insurance policy.' I shove the jump drive into his hand.
For Gail, and my sister.

He pockets it, surprised.

‘Michael believes you stole it from his house. My advice is, run with that. We all want a happy ending, so if you and your goons leave, we'll consider our grievances null and void.'

The protection two move obligingly from the exit, but Doug shows no sign of leaving.

He sneers at me. ‘Tough talk, coming from a skinny-arsed genderbender. I wonder does that swagger of yours match up to reality?'

I stare at him. I didn't know I swaggered.

I'm worried he's about to pull another swifty when I hear it — and so does everyone else. A rumbling in the distance, like a battalion of tanks.

The rumbling turns throaty. The tanks have V8 engines and exhaust modifications. The sound rolls along the street and enters Ferguson's lot, burbling up the service road then around the back, the side, the front, until the entire building is reverberating. As the smell of petrol seeps in, I want to rush excitedly to a window and hoorah like a kid: Skinny has brought the street armada to Ferguson's.

The circle complete, engines idle soupily. Then the horns start up a tooting, shrieking cacophony. Engines rev again and blatt more fumes, then cut out. It's eerie, the sudden silence, as if all the air has been sucked from the building. Transfixed, we wait.

Skinny saunters in.

His racing leathers are a patina of famous brand names and fancy stitchwork; his metal-toed boots clip loudly on the concrete. Instinctively he seems to know who the protection duo are, and gives them a deferential racer's salute. They return his gesture with nods.

‘Andy Pandy.' He grins roguishly at me and winks at Gail, then claps Anwar on the back like an old friend. Swivelling to Marlene, he treats her to a fast once-over. ‘Who's the show pony?' he asks, and she huffs offendedly.

‘The one with the key,' I reply. ‘Not that we needed it.'

Skinny fixes finally on Doug. ‘And here's Mr Important.' He struts over, facing off with his opposition even though he reaches only to the other's shoulder. ‘My cavalry is bigger than yours,' he says.

Doug is circumspect enough not to reply. His offsiders have edged away from him. They take a few more steps backwards then seize their chance, retreating down the corridor. No one moves to stop them.

Outside, a cheer goes up and the horns ring out their strident tones again. The three are running the gauntlet of the street racers. If they get through the circle, it'll be a long walk back to the city.

A different sort of din starts out front, accompanied by more shouts. There's the clang of metal on metal, and smashing glass.

Skinny cocks his head at Doug. ‘Mate — you're gonna need a new ride after tonight.'

He turns to us. ‘When your business is done here, come tell me.' Then, boots and buckles jingling, he exits the building.

Gail limps off the bottom rung of the stairs.

‘I'm sure Doug won't mind me saying we've had some rather intense discussions here,' she says. ‘But while the conversation was scintillating, I'm afraid the accommodation
was below par.' She looks at our sparkly turncoat. ‘We spoke at length about you, Marlene, and I've had time to consider your needs. Doug brought me some documents to sign —'

Marlene is already dashing up the stairs, which puts paid to any theory I might have about high heels inhibiting their wearer's capacity for speed. I hear the office filing cabinet drawer being slid open.

Gail continues. ‘A legally binding agreement …'

Marlene returns to the landing, brandishing a sheaf of papers.

Gail lifts her gaze. ‘For a transfer of ownership.'

Marlene stills, not sure what's coming.

‘What did he tell you?' Gail asks her from below. ‘That they were my embryo-transfer documents and as the recipient you needed to sign too? Did he make you do it
blindfolded
? Because what you signed — as a witness — was the handover of Cute'n'Cuddly Pty Ltd to Doug Smeg Enterprises.'

Marlene shrieks her disappointment and flings the papers over the railing. Several sheets flutter down. I pluck one from the air and shine my bike light on it. A page of legalese in tiny print. It could be anything.

‘Well then,' Marlene says sharply from above. ‘I have some show and tell of my own.' Haloed in the gantry lantern's glare, she leans over the railing like an opera diva ready to spout an aria. Trust her to go for the theatrical reveal.

‘It's about my sperm donor.'

I glance at Doug.

‘We met here every Sunday and did it like hobos in that disgusting room. I jerked him off into a jar. It turned him on like crazy. Ask him. He especially liked it when I wore a prayer shawl.'

I think back to my first visit here. That explains the sequin in the sackcloth.

‘The candles and the porn were for ambience?' I enquire.

‘Doug's idea of foreplay.' She snorts. ‘But he didn't care about the décor so long as he got his equipment serviced.' She turns to Doug. ‘You thought you were going to be a daddy, didn't you?'

‘The little fellas are excellent swimmers,' he says, and Marlene begins to laugh hysterically. She's been treading such a tightrope of manipulation and deceit, I wonder if something's finally snapped.

‘I lied, Dougy,' she coos. ‘Someone else was going to do those particular honours, because you're firing blanks. I saw the results onscreen at the fertility clinic and none of them were even wriggling. You've got two saggy scrotal sacs of duds!'

‘You lying cunt.' Doug goes for the stairs.

He reaches her in a series of heavy-footed lunges, but she lifts one spike-heeled foot with the agility of a kickboxer and shoves it straight in his chest.

I revise my opinion of stilettos. Speed
and
accuracy.

Surprised by her unexpected force, Doug is sent down a couple of steps. He grabs the railing and the entire
construction judders. He launches for her again. This time the railing snaps off in his hand like a piece of peanut brittle and he tips forward, nose to metal.

As he struggles upright, there's an almighty crack. The structure beneath him sags, unhitched from the gantry, a metre gap opening to where Marlene is on the landing. He scrabbles for a hold as the stairs tilt and strain and the anchor bolts are wrenched from their base plates. Then the entire structure buckles like meccano and crashes to the ground, Doug with it.

We rush to where he's contorting, eyes wide, on the concrete, his body tangled in rusty iron. The piece of stairway poking from his chest doesn't look good.

‘Oh my God, oh my God!' Marlene shrieks from above as Doug vomits a gout of blood, and a pool of black begins to seep across the pale cement.

Anwar and the protection duo crouch both sides of him, trying to staunch the flow, but it's coming out of so many places. The next spurt gets them all.

Doug's body tenses to hiccup another viscous mass, then goes slack in a long gurgling exhalation, like a drain emptying.

One of the protection duo has her fingers pressed to his carotid. Appalled, we wait. She looks up at us, shaking her head.

‘Inshallah.' Anwar passes a hand across Doug's eyes and closes the lids.

In the shocked silence, the sounds of the outside begin to filter back. Marlene totters around the gantry and clunks
noisily down the far steps, oblivious to their missing bits. She crosses the factory floor, stopping a safe distance from where Doug's body has been skewered by wreckage.

‘Oh my God,' she moans, hand over mouth.