Blood Work (5 page)

Erin shook
herself and glanced at the other woman in her office.

Heather
Veilchen stood by the door, back partly turned to Erin as she
looked through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall at the front of the
office. Vertical blinds on a slight angle gave them modest privacy
from Ivan, Erin’s assistant. Mrs Veilchen wore coal-black slacks, a
pearlescent silk blouse and a pair of Jimmy Choo’s that would have
cost most of one of Erin’s pay cheques. Her hair was a lustrous,
white-blonde, curling around her shoulders. Long, slender fingers
tipped in black-polished nails twined through its ends. Dark
sunglasses covered her eyes despite the night pressing in at the
window behind them.

Accepting an
appointment after work hours was nothing unusual. A lot of people
seemed to think coming to a private investigator deserved the added
drama of a late night appointment. But actually wearing sunglasses?
Erin supposed she should have just been grateful Mrs Veilchen
hadn’t worn a trench-coat as well. Though if she had, it would have
been some high-end designer construction suitable for wear over
selected items of French lingerie.

“What am I
looking for?” Erin asked.

Mrs Veilchen
didn’t move. “You’ll know when you see it.”

Dear God. More
unnecessary drama. Someone really needed to give the collective
populace a wake call regarding the correct handling and use of a
P.I.

Erin turned
back to the computer. The action had progressed very little. Group
dynamics may have altered but the overall image was the same.
Resigning herself to ‘knowing it when she saw it’, Erin waited.

A bare minute
later, she knew what it was.

A girl
tottered off the dance floor, a hulking young man dragged along
behind. They worked their way to the bar and while the girl winced
and motioned to her feet, the young man scanned the area for a free
stool. There were none. Still, the young man was determined to find
somewhere for his girl to sit. He picked a man sitting on his own,
slouched over the bar, glass of something held negligently in one
hand. The young man leaned in to shout something. Not very
surprisingly, the loner ignored him, taking a slow pull on his
drink. With a tug on her boyfriend’s sleeve, the girl urged him
away, but the young man shook her off. This time, he grabbed the
loner’s shoulder.

The loner
finally released the glass, but only long enough to knock the hand
from his shoulder. That done, he returned to his drink, downing the
last of it before pushing it toward the harried bartender in a
silent command for a refill.

Undaunted, the
young man curled his large hand around the loner’s upper arm. He
was a big man, bigger than the loner, who had a taut, wiry leanness
Erin associated with someone recovering from recent illness or
addiction.

Whether the
loner didn’t notice the size difference, or didn’t care, Erin had
no idea. Either way, the loner looked down at the hand around his
arm with slow deliberation that screamed ‘now you’ve gone and
pushed the wrong button’. The young man missed it, but he didn’t
miss the cane that suddenly appeared in the loner’s other hand.
And, swinging around with the pull of the young man’s hold, the
loner didn’t miss his arm with the heavy head of the cane.

Erin sucked in
a startled breath, almost feeling the blow on her own limb.

The young man
jumped backwards, mouth gaping in some exclamation of pain, arm
drawn in close to his chest. His girlfriend lunged past him, tiny
breasts thrust out at the loner, arms flailing as she yelled at
him. The crowd around them peeled away, giving the combatants room
to move and themselves room to watch. A bouncer began to bulldoze
his way across the floor from the door.

As calm as you
please, the loner simply slipped off his stool, righted his hold on
the cane and leaned on it. His left leg was stiff as he shifted
weight off it, jeans bulging around his knee like they were
covering something extra – an orthopaedic support, Erin guessed.
Hence the cane. The jeans themselves were ripped and faded, T-shirt
grungy and may have once advertised a tour for the Divinyls;
something vaguely resembling Chrissy Amphlett in her school girl
outfit bent provocatively over a microphone stand on the front. His
hair, in serious need of a shampoo and cut, hung over his eyes and
shoulders.

At first
glance, this half-dead apparition seemed harmless. He hunched over
the cane, head lowered, hair hiding his face, too thin to be an
apparent threat to the bulky young man. But Erin knew better than
to rely on initial impressions. The loner had moved fast and
accurately. There was no doubt he’d hit the precise spot he’d
intended—cause pain and shock but no real lasting injury. Despite
his handicap, if it came to a fight between these two, Erin
wouldn’t bet against the loner.

But, just as
the bouncer reached the cleared fight zone, the loner turned away
from the young man and his feisty girlfriend. He limped past the
bouncer, cane pressed to his left leg, taking the weight of each
step in his upper body. Behind him, the girlfriend jumped up and
down, gesturing as if she alone had sent him running.

The loner’s
retreat brought him toward the camera, toward the exit of the club.
A path opened up for him; his painful and solitary march watched by
dozens of people. Some winced with each hitch in his stride, some
calling out obvious insults, while others slumped in
disappointment, probably wondering if something else exciting would
happen so they could report back to their friends. And the loner
just walked through it as if they didn’t exist.

If only he
would lift his head. Erin could make out very little of his face
under the shock of hair, a hint of jaw and straight lipped mouth.
His limping stride made it difficult to judge his age from his
gait, as did the gaunt quality of his body. If Erin was right about
the Divinyls on his T-shirt, that might put him closer to her age
than that of the majority of clubbers around him. It was a shaky
assumption and one that was probably wrong, but at the moment, it
was all Erin had to go on. Hopefully Mrs Veilchen would shed more
light on this man.

About to turn
to the woman, new movement in the video caught Erin’s eye.

A gaggle of
girls came into view from the entrance to the club. There were four
of them, young and laughing, clinging to each other as they tripped
over their own feet. This was not the first club they’d visited
this night, already well on their way to unstable intoxication.
Preoccupied with each other, they slipped into the path opened up
for the loner with all the innocence of a fly crashing into a
spider’s net. The girl in the lead walked backwards so she could
face her friends, head tossed back in the throes of an outrageous
giggle. She stepped right into the loner.

He flinched
from the impact, turning his right shoulder toward her to protect
his injured side. The girl bounced off with a startled laugh and
turned, supposedly to apologise.

Whatever her
intent had been, it didn’t eventuate. Instead, she took one look at
him and all the fun drained from her face. Her friends piled up at
her back, urging her forward, but she was planted to the spot,
staring at the loner in awful recognition. He returned her gaze,
his expression hidden from Erin.

Did he know
her? What was their history together?

On the screen,
the stunned girl tried to back away from him, head shaking, mouth
opening and closing. Erin wished the picture was clear enough for
her to lip read. The girl, trapped by her seemingly ignorant
friends behind and immobile loner in front, spun on a shaky heel,
ready to fight her way through the crowd.

She wasn’t
fast enough.

The loner
dropped his cane and grabbed her sequined top. Pulled back toward
him, she staggered, almost toppled them both over. He kept them
upright. She clung to his arm, a reflexive action to keep from
falling.

So it was,
that when his right fist smashed into her face, she couldn’t roll
with it. Her head snapped back at a painful angle. His second blow
connected with her cheek, cracking her face toward the camera.
Black blood sprayed from her nose, her legs gave out and she let go
of his arm. He kept hold of her though, hauling her limp body up
for another blow to the face.

Choking back a
repulsed cry, Erin hit the pause button. The picture froze on the
image of the loner’s fist poised for more violence. From the moment
the girls walked into the club to the moment Erin paused the tape,
not even a minute had passed. It had happened so quickly, so
unexpectedly.

Hands curling
into fists, Erin stared at the man in the film. It didn’t matter
now that he’d walked away from one potential fight. She had no
sympathy for an arsehole who would assault someone half his size.
Swallowing against the rising anger, she turned away from the image
before she could put her own fist through the ghost of his
face.

“Who is he?”
she asked Mrs Veilchen.

“I don’t
know,” Mrs Veilchen said, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond the glass
wall, beyond the outer office space. Perhaps she looked at her own
private viewing of the tape.

“Who’s the
girl, then?”

Mrs Veilchen
shrugged her narrow shoulders. “She’s not important. It’s only him
I need to find.”

Erin looked at
the image captured on the security tape. Not important? Hardly. She
was very important to the loner and therefore important to Erin.
There was a clear shot of her face, but it was hard to make out
specifics with blood covering half of her features. Stepping back
through the footage revealed no helpful pictures of his face,
though. Even if he had shown his face to the camera, Erin doubted
she would have been able to use it. The picture quality really was
crappy.

“Surely in
this day and age a nightclub could afford a digital system,” Erin
muttered.

“This was from
six years ago.” Mrs Veilchen faced Erin, her too-thin face dwarfed
by the glasses.

Erin ejected
the disk. “You don’t have anything more recent to go on? A bad tape
image from six years ago is going to be a hard place to start
from.”

“I only know
that he still lives in Brisbane.”

Erin sat down
and put the disk back in the case. “I’m impressed you found out
even that much.”

“My resources
are not insubstantial, Ms McRea.” She sat as well, slender legs
crossed, hands resting demurely on her knee. “But I am not a
professional investigator. I feel I have exhausted my knowledge. I
don’t know how to proceed from this point.”

“I understand.
But before I can decide whether or not to take your case, I need to
know more. You don’t know who this man is, yet you wish to find
him. You say you don’t know the victim from the tape, so she is not
the reason. So why?”

Mrs Veilchen
didn’t move but Erin got the distinct feeling that the woman was
not looking at her anymore.

“He has stolen
something from me. I want it back.”

“Have you gone
to the police?”

A little snort
escaped Mrs Veilchen, a human sound at odds with her detached
persona. “They won’t be able to help. The item in question is not
something I want… acknowledged.”

Yet more
pointless drama. “I’m sorry, Mrs Veilchen, but I won’t consider
your case if you want to hide things from me. The more information
you can give me, the better my chances are of resolving this.
Either you tell me what he stole or you leave this office now.”
Erin pushed the disk across the desk toward the silent woman.

“The item he
stole is not important.” There was a touch of pleading in Mrs
Veilchen’s voice now, but none of it touched her face. “I only wish
you to find him for me. That is all. I will take care of everything
after that.”

Nothing in the
speech reassured Erin. She didn’t like the cold distance in this
woman. The man she was after was violent yet Erin didn’t want to be
a part of this woman’s revenge. No good could come of it.

She pushed the
disk the rest of the way across the desk. “Thank you for
considering Sol Investigations, Mrs Veilchen. Perhaps I could refer
you to someone more suitable to your case.”

Mrs Veilchen
opened her purse that was only marginally larger than the disk she
put in it. “That won’t be necessary. Thank you for seeing me.”

She stood and
left Erin’s office with a stiff spine, not pausing in the outer
office as Ivan asked if he could help her. He stared after her then
turned to peer at Erin through the thin gaps in the vertical
blinds. He quirked an eyebrow in question. Erin grimaced in
response. Ivan grinned and turned back to his work.

Letting out a
long sigh, releasing tension she hadn’t realised she’d held, Erin
tidied up her desk. Late appointments weren’t so bad when they
resulted in a case that would earn money, but when they amounted to
little more than wasted time and a terrible image she wouldn’t be
able to shake for weeks, Erin could do without them. She just
wanted to go home, forget about other peoples’ problems for the
rest of the night and deal with her own.

Standing, she
turned to close the blinds on the window. Beyond her twelfth storey
office, Brisbane’s night time cityscape stretched away. Tall
buildings studded with lights; streets streaked with white
headlights and red taillights; the dark river twisting back and
forth, its shores sparkling like chains of phosphorescent
pearls.

In many ways,
Brisbane was not a big city. It was considered ‘sleepy’ by those
who lived in Sydney and Melbourne, and it certainly wasn’t as
crowded and condensed as those other, more metropolitan cities. But
it was large and sprawling. It was a lot of room for one man to
lose himself in.

Even if Mrs
Veilchen had been a bit more forthcoming, Erin wouldn’t have wanted
the case. There was too little to go on, and way too much ground to
cover.