Who Sings for Lu? (26 page)

Their turn now. Back to where it started: fucking Botanic Gardens. This time not running free and excited out of their minds on sexual intention. Hell no.

But bound and tied, knocked around by the old prick too, the heavies added their whacks, mouths taped with duct tape. But they did throw blankets over the pair. Sydney not a warm place at night this time of year, who knew that better than two guys who’d spent many a teeth-chattering night sleeping, or trying to, in Jay’s car?

Couldn’t talk for the tape, not call for help, attention, nothing. Not even console one another or agree to tell the same story. Just had to sit — lie down on the dew-damp grass in the finish — till morning came. Transported in the back of a van for maybe a couple of hours, trussed up like chickens, finally the back doors opened and they were hauled out like so much merchandise roughly handled, it was dark but soon a familiarity, couldn’t figure what though. Till after the van departed, the lit pathway reminded them of — it couldn’t be. Except it was. The scene of the — well, admit it — crime. Un-fuckin’-believable.

Didn’t see themselves on the newspaper front pages till days after, in their bound and mouth-taped state. How fuckin’ embarrassing. Funny thing, they did find sleep at some stage of their shock and disbelief at realising exactly where they were. A few hours, maybe. Woke before
dawn. And when it came, a weak filtering through the trees, slight mist across the park, they saw the first person to notice them, stop and stare in astonishment, come tentatively closer but then he, a jogger, turned away and took off like a scalded cat. Jay and Bronson unable to exchange anything but looks, so tight was the duct tape on their faces, and nylon rope tied tight from shoulders to toes.

Not that there had been much talking when they were held in the strange-looking cell at god-knew-where. When they did try and talk, one of the goons would tell them to shut the hell up. Too afraid even to share theories, guess at what on earth had happened. Like, one minute comfy in your apartment, thinking your landlord both kind and cunning sending you a gift box. Next, a gun in your faces, with two ugly dials behind it, the other dude holding a cosh. Jay copped a whack with it when he said, ‘What the fuck …?’ after one of them had said in quite a polite tone, ‘Gentlemen.’ Which was far from what they, the tricksters, turned out to be.

The two did, in the daylight, get to read the same sign hung round each other’s necks, though Bron had to use his bound feet to flip Jay’s sign over.

Read: GUESS WHAT THESE TWO DID?

No guessing to it. They did it. Not that they were going to own up to anything, not if no other information helpful to the law had been on their persons. Soon as the duct tape came off, even in the presence and by the hands of police with scissors, they imparted to each other that their mouths were closed. Shut. Staunch. Or if they did talk, it would be singing off the same lying page, as Jay had managed to say to Bron, ‘Say it was the Lebs. Nothing else.’

A photographer turned up at the park and snapped a heap of shots while the seemingly co-operating cops stood and conferred on what to do with the pair of kidnap victims. Like they didn’t give a shit.

Separated at the cop shop, fuckin’ mug cops thinking they could divide and rule, turned out they said near the same thing. That the same Lebs who beat them up months earlier had come back and kidnapped them but no they hadn’t tortured, only threatened to. But it was frightening on its own, held in a cell for several weeks and they did get knocked around don’t worry about that.

Each in his own mind blaming Deano. He must have ratted. Not that they were likely to find out. Grilled for hours on where they were on a certain night in this self-same park they’d been found. Objected to why no questions about being tied up, ‘Why don’t you go round up some of the Leb mobs?’ Trying to bluff the cops.

Two days of not cracking, then they got thrown into the same cell.
Careful, be wired for sure.
Dumbfounded that each had told the same story. Seemed to say they were fated to be best mates, go through life together, shit like this but good times too, like living in the nice apartment and having honest jobs that they genuinely enjoyed. Not all gloom. Do that again. In the police cell expressing bitterly — for the sake of hidden microphones — how it stank they were being treated not like victims but as if the signs hung round them did actually mean something. Like
to do with rape? Us?
Let the cops record their outrage.

Neither mentioned Lu, didn’t even whisper her name.
Why give up a buddy? Even if she gave up on us by saying she’d never talk to us again.
We can win her round, one day, if we ever see her again.

The cops either going to charge them or they would walk.

Walk it was. ‘But don’t wander too far, boys. You got a lot of questions to answer.’
Sure, officers — not.

Looks like another city, right? Try a small town
— Nah, our faces too well known, have to grow beards —
fuck that, nor a mo. People will think we’re firemen!
No time for funnies now, man.
Would the five-day stubble work?
Yeah, it might. Fashionable too.
Us fashionable, who you kidding?
Better to go to a big city, get lost in the crowd.
Just get our arses someplace else, put this all behind us. Count ourselves lucky.

‘Who
was
that guy?’ Meaning the one who smacked them around. ‘Man, was he pissed or what?’ Jay as he had copped most of it. He always did.

‘I’m not what? Who am I not?’ he’d demanded of the young man just assaulted. Well, not the person who had done such as this, not for years and years, since a teenager and a Scottish immigrant boy at high school had taught him how to use the forehead in a fight. Not since then had he been that person.

Weighty human presence burst into the room behind him.

‘Mate, mate! Come on, this is our job.’

‘Get out. I’ll yell if I want you.’ Didn’t even look at the pricks, just at that rather handsome young man looking at his hand smeared in blood from his likely broken nose.
But on his feet, give him that, when I had the first one as the tougher guy.

And the eyes that were not hating, far from it. Eyes of a kid, not the nineteen, twenty-year youth-man at least six foot, but the eyes of a child finding a confusion of unanswerable questions. Looking at him like at a father, indeed a grandfather: a child seeking guidance, asking a sturdy hand.
And all I gave is violence back?

‘Whoever you are, I was just saying I ain’t crawling to no one. Not saying I’m not sorry …’ This was taking some doing, talking like this, with a busted nose, in captivity, confronted by an enraged probable relative of his victim.

‘But, like you said, how many times has sorry been said in history? To never fix nothing, right? I know that. Bron too. But, you know …’ He wiped at the bleeding flowing out his nostrils. Pulled up a shirt to stem the flow, pinched the top of the nose so it made him wince at the pain. Walked like that to the toilet, spat out blood, three times. Coughed and spluttered a while.

Came back to the exact spot he was, said, ‘If it takes something like this to make us know better, isn’t that the same as a sorry not fixing anything? I mean, you can’t say sorry when you don’t know you’re wrong.’

First words to come to his head:
Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.
Words meant, one could assume, to be passed down the ages as a wisdom, a man’s atheism notwithstanding. But to hell with that liberal you’re-forgiven rubbish.

He replied, ‘If you can talk like that, then you did know better. You did know it was wrong.’
Wrong
.

‘Talk? Mister, we all know talk is cheap. It’s other stuff we just never got taught, getting dragged up not brung up.’

‘Excuses, excuses. In your position what else have you got?’

‘You. Guess that’s about all we’ve got, mate, is you.’ Deferential, but not fawning. ‘To ask you to give us a break,’ he said. ‘Please.’

That was when Straw Mathews decided he’d gone far enough. But
not because he wasn’t family — he was part of the family. Didn’t have to be blood related to hurt for one another.
I love that kid, her little sister, the mother and the father. Not finished either, only on this matter.
Nothing more to say. The kid said it. Talk is cheap. And if you don’t know better?

But he did. Why the matter ended right there. This part of it was over.

Everything happened at once. Like the first time: Anna, Riley’s consequent total change, the business gone, husband too, meeting his lover, and then Lu in the unexpected flesh.

On being told on the telephone Detective Sergeant Ahern was no longer there, that he had been posted to another police station ‘in the bush somewhere’, Claire felt relief she didn’t have to break her word to Lu. And anger that she should even feel guilt. Glad she wouldn’t have to deal with the disturbing Ahern again: the man was worse than creepy. Mildly curious what had happened to the detective and why. Sure his successor would be keen to get hold of the full facial shots of one Luana O’Brien, and associate. Deal with the new cop in charge of the case soon.

More immediately, Anna was getting back to normal — as normal as could be expected. At least she was talking, if not about the incident. Had a few phone chats to her music-school friends who said they would be visiting very soon, including her cello tutor. The girl — woman, a mother had to keep reminding herself — on her way back.

Anna asking after Straw when he failed to show up two days in succession, fond as they always had been of each other, closer since this crisis. With Katie, Straw was like a second father — perhaps her first. Good reliable Straw. Riley claimed him incapable of having a
conversation about anything but race horses, which wasn’t true; he had a lot of views on lots of things, if you gave him a chance.

Straw would come over on a tractor to take Anna to see Raimona. Pleasure disguised as farm business in case Sandy Tulloch turned up unexpectedly; a remote chance since Tulloch’s relationship with the family was now severed. Katie would join the pair, and from the deck Claire would watch the trio heading to Raimona’s private paddock. An hour or even two later Straw would drop his female charges back, always left with that awkward cheek kiss of his for the girls, Claire if she was near, muttering or whistling to himself to cover his embarrassment at being demonstrative, did mister action-man. He did call to apologise he’d forgotten to say he’d be away a couple of days, to Anna’s mobile phone, presumably still with the very poor image of Lu in its digital memory.

Anna never once mentioned her father, and, Claire realised, she noticed not a single exchange of texts between them, when before it could be several times a day; even home from Sydney she and her father texted each other between house and anywhere on the vast farm. Riley had no doubt changed his number, like he had changed his life. Unbelievable. But then so had life been the last few months. And the word ‘changed’ wholly inadequate to fully describe it.

Something else: the family lawyer phoned, he wanted to come out to the house. No, Claire did not feel up to anything on the legal front, meaning the lawyer was a tedious pedant who took three times the necessary to explain things in his droll manner. Lawyers. Asked: Can you just tell me what it is by phone? Most reluctant, he said. Please, she said, I have neither the time nor the inclination. And what could it possibly be — to do with the handover of the business to Sandy, perhaps?

Derek Kemble required Mrs Chadwick’s instructions on sixteen-plus million dollars deposited in the law firm’s trust account. So Riley was not dishonourable on the money front, even if the sum alarmed rather than thrilled. She told Kemble to just leave it there in the meantime. ‘I’ll instruct you in a few weeks. Thank you and goodbye.’

So who needs money? I certainly don’t. Would set fire to it if I could turn the clock back. And if that is being selfish and living in a cocoon, then leave every painful thing that has happened, even Anna’s suffering, and
give us back our husband and father. We’ll heal our girl, heal our marriage wounds. Not too much to ask. I’d pay sixteen million for it.

But what if this was a final farewell act? The thought suddenly came. No. Thinking back over two decades for any sign of suicidal tendency — not a one, not even close.

So it was a gesture to say it was the end of his life as he knew and had made of it, along with her input and Straw’s. Never thought Riley would ever turn his back on money. But then nor had she imagined any of the past months’ events. It was just life turning adversely and so happened to take a family with it.

Three days passed. Claire still intending to call the new officer in charge of Anna’s case — to give him the photographs — when a call came from Randolph Huddlestone, PI. With concerns now about those photos. He too had assumed the tough-looking male in the shots was one of the three male offenders. ‘But my enquiries say he is very much not one of them. Indeed, he was in prison when the attack took place and has a legitimate business, so it would appear, cleaning up rental properties for what seems to be quite a large client base.

‘And not only does the female suspect work for him, she is registered in the company’s disclosure as a thirty per cent shareholder. I’m asking, with respect, Claire, if this really is the woman you and obviously the police are seeking?’

‘But of course. She owned up to it. In a letter. And to my face. The attack was her idea. As to the other person, I accept he cannot have been involved.’
But still, we are the company we keep.

Quite the opposite to what Randolph said. ‘Don’t judge people by the company they keep. Life is more complicated than that.’

The phoney wise philosopher again. Even if he were right, a bit different when your own daughter went through a nightmare. Of course people could be judged by the company they kept.

‘And have you read the papers?’ he asked. ‘Watched the television news?’

No, she had not. Not interested. The man irritated her with his presumptions she was inclined to watch television news or even read the papers. They were leisure activities. When life was going along normally, contentedly.

But, by God, did Randolph have interesting news to report. And there was one person who could confirm if these two characters found bound and gagged in the Botanic Gardens were known to her: Lu.