Black Ice Part 17

But it had worked. Christian had been enthralled the whole night. Her wallet was now full of cab vouchers I don't ever want you on a bus again, he'd said. And she was to meet him in the city when she finished work tomorrow. Shopping. She'd just come out and told him: it'll be clubbing tomorrow night, and I need some new things. You don't mind, do you, darling?

She leaned her head against the headrest. So tired. She'd catch maybe four hours sleep before getting up for work again. A single tear made it out through her squeezed-shut eyes. She hadn't imagined how hard this would be. Smiling at him, kissing him, his hands on her. She'd once loved him. Now she hated him. She felt like a wh.o.r.e.

But one thing was certain. Seren snapped open her eyes and shot the driver a gaol-house stare that put his eyes back on the road. Cab vouchers and pretty clothes wouldn't buy her. Cocaine, lavish dinners, not even love would do it.

She would sell what she had to offer, but it would cost Christian a million dollars.

34.

Wednesday 10 April, 2.30 pm.

'Please, keep your voice down, Ms Templeton,' said the real estate agent.

Seren's eyes darted around the small office; people turned their heads away quickly, pretending they hadn't been watching the encounter. She hadn't realised that her voice had carried.

'I'm sorry.' Seren dropped into the chair in front of the woman's desk. 'It's just that this is a nightmare; I haven't had any sleep. I had to report the robbery when I got home and then I had to go to work.' She ran a hand through her hair. 'Look, I promise, if you could just give me another week . . .'

'Well, look,' said the woman behind the desk, 'you know that I'm supposed to report any delay in your rent payment to probation and parole, but if you could get me a copy of your police report, I'm sure I can persuade the owner to give you another week.'

'Thank you so much,' said Seren, struggling not to give in to the tears tightening her throat. 'I'm trying so hard. I can't believe someone would do this to another person.'

The woman averted her eyes for just a moment. Seren realised that the agent was probably thinking that she had a hide: she'd only been out of prison a couple of weeks and here she was complaining about thieves. She stood to leave. At least she now had a little more time to make up the money that had been stolen; support and understanding was not going to happen. That was fine by her. She was used to it.

She hurried back to the unit, reminding herself that she would need to go back to the police station after work tomorrow to request a copy of her statement.

The robbery was just more proof that she had to get her son out of this life. She hadn't wanted to ask Christian for any cash this early in the game, but she was going to have to now. She wouldn't be able to meet two rent payments with next week's wages, and she could not allow probation and parole to hear that she had fallen behind in her rent. She couldn't believe that they would throw her back in gaol for that, but an image of Maria Thomasetti pointing at her release conditions caused her to lengthen her stride.

Tonight Christian would take her to System; the club in which she'd previously seen him doing deals. It would be her first chance to get something recorded something that would get her out of here forever.

35.

Wednesday 10 April, 2.30 pm.

'Here, have another one,' said Gabriel.

'No thanks,' Jill said. 'I'm stuffed. Why'd you bring so much?'

Gabriel, in the pa.s.senger seat of Jill's Magna, raised his eyebrows in answer. His mouth was full of one of the salad sandwiches he'd made before they left his apartment that morning. He'd seemed to just a.s.sume he'd come with her to stake out the Station Hotel. Mondays and Wednesdays, Skye and CK had told her, were the days that their dealers, Aga.s.si and Urgill, did business at the Station. And Monday she'd seen them arrive at the hotel in a black, three-series BMW to do business with Nader. Would Nader show up again today?

She shook her head at Gabriel, who again offered her more food. 'Cashews?' he said.

'I don't want any,' she said, grabbing a handful.

Their car sat behind a van, parked adjacent to the cemetery. Jill noted that the van had been here Monday too; it didn't look as though it had moved. Someone's probably living in it, she thought. The impossible housing prices in Sydney meant that some people lived wherever they could. She'd heard there was quite a demand for shipping containers: dropped onto someone's vacant land for a little rent each week, they could each house a small family.

The afternoon was murky and miserable. The hotel's trade just a dribble of people in the couple of hours they'd been here didn't appear to be picking up. A young man leaned against the wall near the entrance to the pub. Jill watched him zip his hoodie a little higher, the wind whipping his wispy blonde fringe into his eyes. The trees in the graveyard next to them rattled and moaned, skeletons shaking.

'Well, lookie here,' said Gabriel. 'Aren't they your boys?'

'That's them,' she said, recognising the BMW.

Gabriel smiled happily, popping cashews into his mouth and munching; he looked like he was at the movies.

The two men stepped out of the car. Aga.s.si, Jill knew from his sheet, was the overweight, balding bloke in the suit pants and brown leather jacket. Urgill was probably around the same age, and would've weighed even more, but his weight was all in his chest and arms. He carried himself like a weightlifter, too, or maybe a boxer.

'Action,' said Gabriel.

Jill wasn't sure what Gabriel meant by that, but she also sensed something was about to happen. Maybe it was the way that Aga.s.si dropped his cigarette, not even half finished. Or it could have been the set of Urgill's jaw, the tense carriage of his shoulders.

They approached the younger, blonde man and some animated conversation looked to be taking place. Aga.s.si was doing the talking; Urgill kept his mouth shut and his fists clenched.

'Is this some kind of shakedown?' said Jill.

Gabriel unwrapped another sandwich, smiling, eyes on the show.

The youth waved his arms a little and vehemently shook his head. Finally, he threw his hands in the air and turned to walk away. Urgill exploded into movement. He grabbed the kid's hand and wrenched it up behind his back, swivelling him around in one action. Nice move, thought Jill. Single-handedly Urgill propelled the kid in the direction of the BMW. They could hear him yelling now, until Aga.s.si stepped in front of him, momentarily blocking their view. The next thing they saw was Aga.s.si aiding the kid to stand upright.

Aga.s.si's eyes swept the street, spotted them, paused. Jill had her head in the map book; Gabriel took another bite of his sandwich, grinned at her.

'Couldn't you put your head down or something?' she hissed.

'Don't worry, he'd be expecting us to be watching; they're putting on a show. They never made us. It's cool.'

The gorillas shoved the young man into the back of the car. Aga.s.si went in after him. Urgill folded himself in behind the wheel.

Jill started the Magna. Although there was clearly a crime in progress, she decided it was not of sufficient urgency to risk blowing her cover. Yet. The blonde boy in the BMW would likely have disagreed with her, but today was not his lucky day.

She waited until the target vehicle was a block ahead before she pulled out to follow them. The black car stayed just under the speed limit. Three cars behind, Jill indicated right to turn with them off Marsden onto the Great Western Highway. A minute later they signalled left.

'Hey,' she exclaimed, 'they're going to '

'Merrylands,' said Gabriel. 'Told you it's the place to be.'

'This house ever come up on any of your radars?' asked Jill.

'Nope,' said Gabriel. 'Not any that come to mind, anyway.'

The Merrylands street was working cla.s.s, a poster child for the multicultural melting pot that made up Australia. Jill saw a woman in a hijab b.u.mping a stroller down the front steps of her home. The woman waved h.e.l.lo to her neighbour, an Asian woman wearing a conical sunhat, even on this drizzly afternoon. Jill spotted the Aboriginal flag displayed as a sticker in the front window of the house in front of which she'd stopped; and, cracking and billowing in the wind, on a flagpole in front of the fibro home across the road, was a one-and-a-half-metre-wide Australian flag.

'Who lives here, then?' she wondered aloud.

'The bloke they abducted,' said Gabriel.

'What makes you say that?'

He didn't respond to the question; said instead, 'Interesting that we're in this street in Merrylands, don't you think?'

She grunted in reply. She'd been here before: the Nader family home was a few doors down. Was Kasem connected to this kid?

They sat silently for a little while. Jill grew increasingly tense. The young man they'd seen forced into the car was clearly a dolphin. She believed in the saying that the world was divided into dolphins and sharks. This afternoon she had watched two sharks take down a dolphin, and she felt uncomfortable sitting here doing nothing. The fact that she wasn't in there helping him, that she was pretty much using him as bait, made her wonder which species she most resembled. It was a question she'd asked herself many times before.

'Here he comes,' said Gabriel. 'Nader.'

He was right. Jill had told her partner that Kasem had driven her and Jelly to his parents' house in a late-model silver Porsche 911. It purred around the corner and pulled up out the front of the dolphin's house. Jill was aware that the ride probably cost more than the house itself, maybe even more than it and the one next door combined. She would bet her own apartment that the Porsche had been paid for in cash.

Nader got out of the car. Jill held her lower lip between her teeth, watching him uncurl himself from the driver's seat and step into the street.

Gabriel watched her. 'Well, this is fun,' he said.

'We gonna leave this guy in there with the three of them?'

'Your call.'

Jill screwed up her nose. Trust Gabriel not to go all Rambo and decide to storm the house, rescue the victim. She'd have to make the decision, live with the results. She thought through Kasem's record. No murders she knew of.

Blondie, you're on your own for the moment. 'We'll wait,' she said.

Oh my G.o.d, oh my G.o.d, oh my G.o.d. Damien couldn't stop thinking it, over and over. He'd actually tried praying to Jehovah, but he couldn't get his thoughts straight, and had ended up just mindlessly repeating the mantra.

His gut ached. Even with all the bullying he'd copped at school, he didn't think he'd ever actually been punched. He'd definitely never been punched like that. Who were these guys? What did they call themselves? He forced himself to try to think what the fat one had said outside the pub. It was a tennis player's name Aga.s.si, that was it. The other one, who knew? Damien just wanted to stay away from his fists.

From the chair into which they'd pushed him, his eyes shot around his lounge room. Oh s.h.i.t. They were moving over to the chemicals. Don't touch that, you idiot, he thought, trying not to panic.

He tried to find his voice. 'Ah . . .' Nothing. A beaker clattered to the floor. Oh my G.o.d. He tried again. 'Um?'

'WHAT?'.

s.h.i.t. Aga.s.si. Coming over.

Aga.s.si stood over him, his bulbous gut at eye height. Damien focused on the man's shirt: black with red hibiscus. It seriously did not match the brown leather jacket and grey suit pants. Concentrate, you d.i.c.khead, he told himself. He forced himself to look up at the unshaven jowls above him. Aga.s.si exhaled; a waft of sewer air buffeted Damien's face. He coughed, dropped his eyes back to the hibiscus and spoke.

'Ah, the anhydrous ammonia is really unstable at this stage,' he said. 'The reactivity point is pretty low.'

'What?'

'Um, the chemicals,' he tried, 'that your friend is f.u.c.king around with. They're pretty volatile.' He looked up. Aga.s.si gave him a watery, red-rimmed stare. 'They could blow the house up.'

Aga.s.si bawled, 'Urgill! You dumb f.u.c.k. Stop touching s.h.i.t!' He turned back to Damien. 'Good little set-up you got here,' he said, and smiled. Some sort of cheese coated his lower teeth.

'You can have it,' said Damien.

'Why would you want to walk away from all this?' Aga.s.si asked. 'Anyway, much as I'd like to, I can't take anything off your hands. You're going to need all your stuff.'

'Look,' said Damien, 'I don't understand what you want from me. If it's cash, I already told you, I can get it for you. If you want E, I've got a hundred tabs you can have right now. There's no ice cooked yet, so I can't help you with that.'

'You know,' Aga.s.si said, looking around the room, 'even though you got all this s.h.i.t in here, you got no f.u.c.king security. Anyone could get in here, man! I've never seen a shop like it. d.a.m.n, usually you got at least a couple of motherf.u.c.kers with guns on the door. I mean, look at your f.u.c.ken door. You're going to have to get something that can take a bit of hammering. This is a dangerous business you're in, Damien.'

'I have to go to the toilet,' said Damien.

Aga.s.si gave him a sidelong look. 'I'm trying to give you some business advice here, Damo, and all you can tell me is you gotta take a p.i.s.s?'

'Number two, actually.'

'Yeah? See, here's the thing. I don't believe you. You're gonna try and run or maybe become a hero all of a sudden and bring some kind of weapon out here.'

Damien spoke in a small voice, to his lap, 'I always have to go when I get nervous.'

Urgill crossed the floor. 'Don't know what you're nervous for, son. We haven't done anything to you, yet,' he said.

Damien put his head in his hands. How the h.e.l.l had he ended up here? He'd skipped a lecture to meet Byron at that pub. f.u.c.king Byron! What was going on? Had he set him up? Damien should be studying. His half-yearly exams would be on him soon. He'd never failed an exam in his life. He was certain that he couldn't feel any more dejected.

And then his front door opened and Kasem Nader walked in.

Damien had been neighbours with this man all his life but they had never spoken. The schoolyard anxiety he'd experienced every time Nader or one of his brothers was nearby was magnified a hundred times. He thought he might cry.

Nader beamed at him and stretched out a hand. 'Stand up, Damien. I don't think we've properly met.'

Damien struggled to his feet. He had to reach out a hand to steady himself when his legs didn't quite agree with the standing up idea. 'h.e.l.lo,' he said.

Nader looked around the room, taking in the cooking equipment in the corner. 'You know what's great?' he said. 'To see a local boy come good. You're doing real well, I'm told, Damien.'

'Who told you?'

'Well, Damien, you see, I make it my business to always know my compet.i.tive environment.' He smiled, reached out a hand and rested it on Damien's shoulder; he stood almost a head taller. 'I've got a running SWOT a.n.a.lysis. I daresay you've heard of SWOT, given you're a uni boy and all. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. SWOT. It's a business concept.'

'What's that got to do with me?'

'Well, everything, Damien. We'll start with Threat, shall we? I always think it's best to start there myself. You're selling ice and E on my turf, cutting into my profits. That's a threat to my business, you see,' he said, gestering to the cooking equipment. 'And that would be a Weakness for me. And I hate weakness.' Nader gave Damien's shoulder a squeeze so hard that his knees buckled again. He raised his hand to the shoulder being gripped and moaned.

'Sorry, brother.' Nader released his grip and gave Damien a cuff on the arm. 'Just back from the gym. I'm a little pumped up. Do you work out?' He clutched Damien's bicep, giving it a press. Frowned. 'Never mind. You're a uni boy. You exercise that brain of yours.'

Damien felt a little faint. His mother had never really been a touchy-feely kind of person, and to date he'd not had a lot of physical contact with anyone at all. Nader handled him almost intimately, as though he really was his brother. Big problem there. Since they were old enough to walk, Damien had been watching the Nader brothers nearly kill each other in knockdown brawls in the street.

'Anyway,' said Nader, 'that brings us to the Opportunity part of the SWOT. You, Damien, are apparently an excellent cook. I like excellence in my business, and I propose a merger.' He grinned widely.

Damien stared at the pockmarked carpet. What with Whitey traipsing in with grotty feet all the time, and Byron dropping cigarette ash, the floor coverings were filthy, and he doubted he'd get his bond back on this place. This was his chance to get out of all of this.