Thrill City (16 page)
The courtyard was laid with gravel, the tables nothing much to look at, and the seating a mix of wooden benches and bottle-green plastic chairs filched from a cheap outdoor setting. Coloured light bulbs dangled from a paling fence and in the far corner a tree straggled up from the rocky ground. With the humid summer evening and the aroma of pounded spices and bubbling oil, I could almost imagine I’d wandered into some roadside food stall in South East Asia, and guessed that was another reason Sean was so fond of the place.
I spotted him at a tiny table for two in the corner, wearing his striped work shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He waved and I hurried over.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said. ‘Got a flat.’
It was sort of the truth.
‘No problem. You want my seat?’ He stood.
‘Thanks.’
I liked to be flush up against a wall in public places—it made me feel vulnerable sitting with my back exposed—and Sean, sweetheart that he was, always obliged. The creepy sensation was particularly bad that evening, after the note and the tyres. I guessed I should tell Sean, but figured maybe later. I didn’t want to ruin dinner and I knew he’d demand every last detail of the tyre slashing. With my licence cancelled, what possible excuse could I have for tooling around the ’burbs?
Sean had already collected cutlery and paper napkins for us, and glasses that had more in common with jam jars than Reidel flutes. A tapas plate was at the ready plus a bottle of champagne, wedged into a plastic ice bucket.
‘You beauty,’ I said, spying the booze.
‘Not only that, I scored us the last whole snapper with chermoula,’ he boasted.
Daily specials were crossed off the blackboard as soon as they ran out. The snapper was always the first to go.
I reached for the bottle and noticed the orange label as I dug it out of the crushed ice.
‘Shit, is this Veuve Clicquot?’
He nodded.
‘Fancy,’ I said, remembering Chloe hum the wedding march. A ridge of panic spiked my spine.
We thunked, rather than clinked, our glasses. I took a big gulp of French champagne that filled my mouth with an ocean of tiny, delicate bubbles and tasted smooth, creamy and immeasurably better than the shite I usually drank. Smiling broadly to hide my unease, I popped a marinated octopus leg in my mouth and gnawed vigorously. Cuban salsa filled the air and beams of low orange sunlight seeped through gaps in the fence.
‘So, what did you want to tell me?’ I asked as casually as I could.
Sean smiled, his lips turning up at the corners, the light’s peachy gleam offsetting hair that would have been described as titian had he been the tempestuous heroine in a Mills and Boon romance.
‘Do you think the snapper’s enough?’ he stalled, squinting at the blackboard menu on the exposed brick wall. ‘Maybe we should get the Andalusian claypot as well . . .’
I drew my fist back and whacked him on the arm, a little harder than I’d intended.
‘Shit!’
‘You deserved it.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘Tell me what the goddamn Veuve’s about.’
He sipped his champagne, really drawing it out, until finally he said: ‘How do you feel about moving to Vietnam?’
In my mind I saw a giant billboard with the words
What
the Fuck?
spelled out in thousands of glowing bulbs. In real life I just sat there with my mouth hanging open like a grouper trawling for bait fish.
Sean sat forward in his seat, talking fast, body bouncing involuntarily, like a kid at Christmas.
‘I’ve been offered a job with the Federal Police, an intelligence position, gathering information for local and international law enforcement agencies on all sorts of stuff. Drugs, human trafficking, smuggling, you name it. It’s a two-year contract, based in Ho Chi Minh City—Saigon— but there’ll be lots of travel. The money’s great, they pay for housing and medical insurance, airfares, an overseas bonus, and there’s annual leave. I know I keep telling you, but Vietnam’s amazing: insane cities, dense jungle, white sand beaches, incredible food, and on top of that you’re a stone’s throw from Thailand, Cambodia, Laos . . .’
‘You sound like you want to accept,’ I said.
‘Look, the Asian Squad’s been great, but this position seems like the perfect way to utilise my language skills. I can be of much more use over there.’
‘Let me get this straight.’ I spoke slowly. ‘You want me to move overseas with you?’
‘Uh-huh.’ He nodded.
‘What’ll I do there?’
‘Well, running a house is a full-time affair. Cleaning, cooking, ironing. I’ll expect you to go to market every day . . .’
I raised my eyebrows.
Sean laughed. ‘You should see the look on your face. I’m joking. I’ve got you a job, if you want it.’
‘What?’
‘Investigative assistant to the senior liaison officer. Yours truly.’ His grin was a mile wide.
‘State coppers wouldn’t take me, no way the feds would.’
‘They will if I insist. Besides, you’ll be working in a civilian capacity, you won’t be sworn in. You’ll need a police check though. You don’t have a record—’ squinting—‘do you?’
‘Arrested a few times, charged once, never convicted,’ I muttered. My mind reeled. Vietnam? Just up and leave? What about my business?
‘I’ve just started the agency.’
‘And there’s too much heat on you to run it. Why not stick it on the backburner for a couple of years, get more experience working with the police, then come back when everything’s blown over? Hell, if things go well you could even apply for a job as an officer and forget the PI shit. Isn’t that what you always wanted, to be a cop?’
‘I used to.’
‘And why was that?’
I shrugged. ‘I dunno, sounds wanky, but to help people, I suppose. Exploitative scumbags have always pissed me off and I thought there’d be a fair bit of job satisfaction bringing down bad guys.’
‘Fair enough.’ Sean crossed his arms on the table and looked at me steadily. ‘In your opinion, what are the most common cases an inquiry agent is hired to investigate?’
I sighed. There was no point trying to lie.
‘Insurance claims, WorkCover fraud, cheating spouses. Tracking down defaulters so credit companies can repossess their cars.’
We were silent for a bit, sipping champagne. Damn him. It was as bad as arguing with my mother. I tried another tack.
‘What about Chloe?’
He was ready for me. ‘You’ll miss her, of course, but we’ll be coming back to Australia at least once a year, and she can visit anytime.’
An image popped into my head: Chloe tottering around some crazy South East Asian city on spike-heeled platforms, using a combination of mime and pidgin English to hit the befuddled locals up for ganga. I shuddered. Far as I knew she’d never been further north than Surfers Paradise.
‘What about the baby?’
‘You arranged to babysit?’
‘Hell, no.’
‘Look. The contract doesn’t start till the middle of the year and she’s just about to pop, right, so you’ll be around for the birth. Having a kid takes up a lot of time and she’ll probably be out of action for the next two years anyway. Chances are you won’t be missing much. You really into newborns?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Right, so by the time we get back it’ll be two or three. They’re cute at that age, don’t puke on you so much and you can actually talk to them. No mess, no fuss.’
‘Chloe won’t be happy.’
‘She’ll have her hands so full she probably won’t even know you’ve gone.’
Maybe I had tickets on myself, but I doubted that.
Sean continued: ‘Opportunities like this come up, you’ve gotta take a risk and grab them. You want to apprehend real bad guys, or poor bastards who can’t keep up payments on their cars?’
He had me there. He had me on pretty much everything, although there was one point we hadn’t yet covered.
‘You realise you’re suggesting we move in together for two years. What if it doesn’t work out? That’s the biggest risk of all.’
‘Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb, that’s where all the fruit is.’
I groaned. ‘Spare me the motivational quotes. You really serious? You really want to do this?’
‘Yes.’ He reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
‘What if I said I couldn’t move to Vietnam.’
‘Then I wouldn’t take the job.’
‘You’d give it up for me? Why?’ I asked.
‘’Cause I’m in love with you, you idiot.’
I
woke up at nine, naked and sweating, the electronic chime of a mobile phone piercing my brain. Sean’s side of the bed was empty, and I dragged myself across a tangled expanse of sheets in search of the noise. My handbag lay slumped on the floor and as I hung my head over to dig around inside, blood rushed painfully to the back of my eyeballs.
Lying down again I stared at the unfamiliar number lighting up the display, and as I waited for whoever was ringing to leave a message, I attempted to measure the extent of my hangover and ascertain how, exactly, I’d gotten to bed.
Turned out Sean had brought two bottles of Veuve to Claypots, the fish hadn’t soaked up either of them, and I’d had the bright idea of going for after-dinner cocktails at the Vineyard. If I was wasted I wouldn’t have to contemplate the daunting prospect of moving halfway around the world with someone who’d just told me he loved me.
I had vague memories of groping Sean under the table at the bar, no recollection of the cab ride home, and hazy, strobing visions of animalistic sex on the lounge room floor. I kicked free of the twisted sheet and raised both legs, pointing my toes at the ceiling. Red and brown scabs crusted both knees. There was no clever excuse for carpet burn. Everyone knew exactly what you’d been up to, roughly where, and in precisely what position.
I checked voicemail, discovered Rod Thurlow had been ringing, popped three Nurofen Plus and called him back. He was at his home in the Yarra Valley, and suggested we meet later that afternoon in town. Maybe I was still drunk, but I was determined to go to see him. Neutral ground was no good to me. I wanted to see where Isabella had lived.
By ten fifteen I was manoeuvring the Laser along winding blacktop, through small towns full of craft ‘shoppes’, and densely wooded corridors of national park. Sunlight flashed through ghost gums and lit up groves of bracken. Bellbirds pealed, and the warm air gusting in the windows smelled of eucalyptus and tasted of dust and dried-up twigs. Cicadas murmured, sharp and shimmering.
The well-judged combination of codeine and ibuprofen had suppressed any headache, and my hangover was of the dozy, brain-dead variety. Bad for interviewing skills, but good for stif ling nervousness, especially since I had to talk to a man whose fiancée had been brutally murdered. Not for the first time I wondered why the hell I wanted to do a job that involved so much unpleasant shit. I flicked open the glove box and found liquid courage in the form of my hip flask, now half full of warm whiskey. I’d have a slug right before I went in—real breakfast of champions when mixed with the five cheese singles I’d eaten while driving.
Despite living in Melbourne for four years I’d never actually been to the Yarra Valley. I’d always imagined it as a narrow gorge filled with the same scrubby brush I’d just driven through, so I got a shock when I rounded a bend and the landscape opened right up. The place was huge, an honest-to-goodness valley about five flat k’s across that wouldn’t have looked out of place in France or Italy. Rows of grapevines covered gentle slopes that curved towards meadows of lush grass. Rustic farmhouses dotted the landscape, jersey cows milled in paddocks, and yellow flowers bobbed their heads at the side of the road. The air smelled of grapes and hay, and even the quality of the light had changed. The harsh beams that had sliced through the eucalypts had been replaced by a soft glow, as golden and syrupy as an aged sauterne. Two huge butterf lies gambolled past the car, as though inserted by some Hollywood CGI whiz.
It was so pretty I almost burst into tears. I revised my hangover status to ‘brain-dead yet emotional’. I could have lost it watching a Kleenex ad with toddlers and fuzzy ducklings, and knew I’d better be careful. If Rod’s bottom lip so much as trembled while he talked about Isabella, I was a goner.
I checked my map, realised I’d missed the turnoff, doubled back and found a red dirt road cut into one of the ubiquitous vine-covered hills. I drove slowly, gravel popping as I negotiated the bends, and suddenly Rod’s place came into view.
‘Holy shit,’ I whispered and let out a low whistle.
At the end of a poplar-lined drive sat my dream house. Except ‘house’ was too modest a word for this two-storey stone Tuscan villa on top of the hillside.
I rolled the Laser up to the spiked iron gate, leaned out my window and hit the intercom attached to the wall. No one replied, but the wooden double doors at the front of the main building swung out and a pumped-up Aryan blond in a black quasi-military outfit emerged. He stalked down the driveway past silver-leaved olive trees and flowering shrubs in large terracotta pots. Slipping through the gate, he circled my car, examining it as though it might have been a giant mobile bomb. Finally he crossed his arms and stood by my window.
‘Hi,’ I said, chirpy as an Amway saleswoman. ‘I’m Simone Kirsch, here to see Rod.’
‘You have an appointment with Mr Thurlow?’ Hitler Youth asked, accent disappointingly Australian monotone.
‘He’s expecting me.’
‘See some ID?’
I dug out my wallet and flashed my driver’s licence. He hit the button on a plastic tag hanging off his belt and the gate slowly opened.
‘Turn left, park in the garage. I’ll escort you to the house.’
I did as he said, drove about twenty metres and found a garage cunningly disguised as an eighteenth-century barn. I turned off the engine and glanced in the rearview. The boy in black was still a good ten metres away so I quickly whipped the hip flask out of the glove compartment, unscrewed the top and took a couple of hefty gulps. The tepid whiskey stung my throat and brought tears to my eyes. I took another slug for good measure, coughed and shoved the flask back in the glove box, popped a Fisherman’s Friend mint in my mouth and crunched. Between the alcohol and the menthol my face was on fire.
