Draw the Brisbane Line (26 page)

Jenny leaned forward, frowning.  ‘To make a bad omelette?’

A soldier two tables away chuckled, a middle-aged rogue with the rare combination of red hair and a rich tan.  Jenny met his gaze and gave him a smile.  He smiled back and gave a slight nod, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

‘Oh, fucking hilarious,’ Jim sneered.

‘Lighten up Templeton,’ the red-head said.  ‘If we can’t laugh at
you
, how can we laugh at anything?’

‘How
can
you laugh at anything?’ Jim said, exasperated, twisting in his seat to address the red head.  ‘How, when violence and looting is sweeping down the coast as the populace descends into savagery!  When we’re losing our own bloody country?’

‘Jim,’ the red-head said softly.  ‘That’s exactly when we
do
need to laugh.’

‘Jenny,’ Al said, placing a rough hand on her arm.  ‘We’re about to have a meeting.  A town hall of sorts.  I think you should come along.’

Dave glanced past the cop’s shoulder to see Pia stepping in behind him, close, but not like she was planning on braining him or choking him out.  Her thumbs were hooked into the pockets of her jeans, the bag slung over her shoulder.  She’d apparently come to the same conclusion Dave had: that if the cop would turn his back on her, he either didn’t know who she was or what she’d done, or he knew but didn’t care.

He switched his focus from Pia to the cop’s face, and recognition triggered a small wave of relief.  ‘Tino,’ he said.

‘Come on,’ the cop said, a smile softening his habitually-hard face, the job mask.  ‘Let’s go inside.  I want to talk to you two.  And you, don’t put your fucking hand anywhere near the inside of that bag.  You hear me?  I can clear mine faster than you can clear yours.’

She nodded, and Dave thought she relaxed slightly, the tension in her shoulders ratcheting down a couple of notches.

Sergeant Tino Maniaci had been with the Byron Bay police for over five years.  Dave met him on his first day on the job, a call-out to his house at Wategos.  He and Jenny had started seeing each other about six months earlier, and initially everywhere they went was filthy with paparazzi.  That all died down after a few weeks, when the media realised it wasn’t a scandalous fling.  It only took them another month or so to get interested again, and they realised that Dave Holden and Jenny Lucas hooking up might give them the country’s next best thing to a royal couple.  The day Tino Maniaci was called to the house on Brownell Drive, Dave was engaged in a tennis sparring session with an enterprising photographer, although instead of a racquet, the guy had a camera.  And instead of being on a tennis court, he was twelve feet up a gumtree out the front of Dave’s house.  Dave was practising his high-altitude serves, hitting his target with impressive accuracy, the photographer swearing loudly at him and snapping away with his telephoto lens, which he would shield with his body every time Dave wound up for another serve.  Constable Maniaci and his guide for the day, Sergeant Hopper, pulled up in Dave’s driveway and stepped out to watch the show. 

‘Has he managed to return one yet?’  Tino said.

‘Not yet,’ Dave said.  ‘He’s blocking them pretty well, keeps crying fault.’

‘Yeah?’ Tino said.  ‘Let’s see.’

So Dave picked up a ball from the basket at his feet, tossed it up and twisted his body back far enough for limbo before sending a green missile at the hapless paparazzo, who was now loudly threatening not only Dave but also the two policemen on the scene.

‘Looked OK to me,’ Tino said, and turned towards his colleague.  ‘Sergeant Hopper?’

Hopper shielded his eyes to look up into the tree and said, ‘Yeah, looked pretty clean.  But maybe you want to let him down now, before the real media arrives.’

They let the guy out of the tree and saw him off.

‘Aren’t you worried about the photos he has?’ Tino said to Dave.

‘Nah,’ Dave said.  ‘You see the lens on that thing?  He was trying to get shots of us in the backyard, probably by the pool.  The best shot he would have got of me would be of my ball-toss and my winning smile.

Dave was probably right about that, because nothing about the incident ever made it into print.  The spotlight did swing back on Jenny and Dave as their relationship developed, but whenever they were staying at the house in Wategos, Tino Maniaci made it his personal mission to keep as many leeches away from the couple as possible.  Dave and Jenny often thanked him with dinner.

It looked like Dave was going to be feeding Tino again as they moved to the rear of the restaurant.  The three of them sat at a table made from four large pieces of timber bound together in a clear hard resin.  Dave flipped open the lid of the pizza box as soon as they sat down.

‘Sorry Tino, there might not be enough in here for you.  We’re starving.’

‘Fuck yeah,’ Pia said as she lifted a slice out.

Dave’s salivary glands immediately triggered a flood, and he grabbed his own piece.  A thin slice of char-grilled chorizo threatened to drop off the edge on a separated layer of cheese, but Dave caught it all in his mouth and bit off the corner of the slightly crisped base.  The red peppers provided just the right amount of sweetness, taking the edge off the saltiness of the sausage.  Pia went for her second piece before Dave was halfway done with his first.  He picked up the pace of his own consumption, his brain demanding that he eat more, more, more.  By the time the craving had subsided — and he suspected his brain might be tricking him into thinking he was really still hungry — there was a single slice left in the box and a stunned Sergeant Maniaci staring at it and them.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Tino said.  ‘I’ve seen starving dogs eat a raw sirloin with more decorum than that.’

Dave looked at Pia.  ‘You done?’ he said.  She nodded as she licked the grease from her fingers.  ‘Go on Tino,’ he said.  ‘It’s all yours.’

‘I was beginning to wonder,’ Tino said.  He lifted the slice out of the box and put it away in three bites.

‘What were you saying about decorum?’ Dave said.

Tino shrugged and said ‘woof’ though a mouthful of pizza.  He wiped his hands on his trousers and lifted a thin mobile phone out of his shirt pocket.  ‘Do you guys have any idea what’s going on here?’ he said.

‘If you’re asking us for information,’ Pia said, ‘you really are in trouble.’

‘Do you realise,’ Tino said, ‘that you’ve probably picked the worst place in the country right now to pop in for a bite to eat and some shut-eye?’

‘I thought the pizza was pretty good,’ Pia said.

‘It was better than pretty good,’ Dave said.  ‘But what’s so bad about Byron?  From what I’ve seen in the last day, it’s pretty fucked up just about everywhere.’

‘True, it is,’ Tino said.  ‘But there’s a concentration of bad shit heading this way.  Have you seen all the rioting and looting on the Gold Coast?’

‘We’re heard a bit,’ Dave said.  ‘On the radio.  Sounds pretty ugly up there.’

Tino shook his head.  ‘It’s quite a distance worse than ugly.  Did you know a state of emergency has been declared?’

‘Where, in Byron?’ Dave said.

‘From Brisbane to Grafton, more or less.’

‘Jesus, that’s quite an area,’ Dave said.

‘What does that mean exactly, a state of emergency?’ Pia said.

‘You know what it means,’ Tino said.

‘Sure, but what does it mean for
you
.’

‘It means I can exercise discretion.  It means if certain obnoxious Americans who are currently wanted for questioning in the shooting of an Australian citizen are seen in my town — not that I’ve seen such a person — I can decide whether to take them down to the station and lock them in a cell until the AFP arrives.  Or not.’

‘I’d go with
not
, if I were you,’ Pia said, and flicked her eyes to the bag at her feet.

Tino rubbed his eyes and nodded.  The red rims flared bright and leaked into the whites, tinging them pink like blood dripping into a glass of milk.  ‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right.  But I’m really tired, you know, and really stressed.  So maybe you could be a little bit less of a dick about it.’

Dave flinched, but Pia just nodded.  ‘Fair enough,’ she said.

‘To be frank, emergency or no, I’d rather leave it to your people to handle your situation.  I can do without the fucking complication.’

‘But people have seen you talking to us,’ Pia said.  ‘Talking to me.  How far will the ignorance pleas get you?’

‘How about I just say you had a gun on me?  Maybe on Dave too.  How’s that work for you?’

Pia shrugged, and grabbed the handle of the black bag.  ‘Good enough?’

Tino nodded once.  ‘Dave,’ he said, ‘what exactly are you
doing
here?’

‘Just taking a break Tino.  Passing through.’

‘You couldn’t have picked somewhere quieter for a kip?’

‘I suggested Bangalow.’

‘Bangalow would have been a much better choice.  Have you noticed how it’s …’ He examined the sports watch on his wrist.  ‘Half past three in the morning, and you’ve just eaten pizza in a restaurant which would normally have closed about five hours ago?’

‘That did seem a bit unusual,’ Dave said.  ‘No music festival on at the moment is there?’

Tino snorted and shook his head.  ‘Anyone around here strike you as particularly festive?  They’re all terrified.  That shit happening in the Gold Coast?  Bloody rioting, looting.  It’s like all the arseholes in south-east Queensland have just been given golden tickets to Cuntsville, and every last one of the fuckers has decided to go to town.  Pardon the French.’

‘Please,’ Pia said.  ‘You call
that
swearing?’

Tino leaned in over the table, Dave and Pia both copying the gesture until they were in a tight huddle over the empty pizza box.  Dave could smell cheese, chorizo and Tino’s stale sweat mingled with his aftershave, something musky and old fashioned, the kind of cologne you might find in a supermarket near the razors and body sprays.

‘They’re coming,’ Tino said in a low voice.  ‘They’re coming here.’

‘You don’t think there’s anything worth looting between here and the Gold Coast?’ Pia said.

‘Of course there is’ Tino said.  ‘But for some reason these shits have all decided to target
my
town.  They’ve been coordinating on Twitter.  Look, they even have their own fucking hash-tag for it.’

Tino tapped and swiped a few times at his phone and spun it around for Dave and Jenny to see.  Dave peered closely at the screen and scanned some of the tweets:

Big Dick Dan
@qldr54

Heading to Byron now, Surfers is fucked #byronburn

The Hitman
@qldr192

I can’t w8 to tear that shit up #byronburn

Stevie Hooker
@qldr689

I’m gunna get a Porsche and a Renoir #byronburn

The Reckoner
@qldr117

This place is wide open boys #byronburn

Moore Billy
@qldr244

QUEENSLANDER!!!! #byronburn

Tino took the phone back.  ‘There are hundreds of tweets like that.  We’ve identified close to a thousand of those Queenslander user names … even if a lot of them are bogus, it doesn’t look good for this town.  Everyone’s busy fighting fires on the Gold Coast, there’s no way the march south can be stopped.  Our best hope is they all get stuck in traffic, or run out of fuel, but that can only take out some of them.’

‘They on bikes?’ Pia asked.

Tino nodded.  ‘Just about every motorcycle dealership in south east Queensland has been cleaned out.  Even the moped rental places in Surfers.’

‘Well,
they
won’t get far,’ Dave said.

Tino shrugged.  ‘They drive through the towns along the old coast road, siphon some petrol along the way … it’s do-able.’

Dave turned to Pia and set, ‘Let’s stay in Byron, hiding in plain sight.  Genius.’

Pia shrugged a single shoulder.  ‘Who’s gonna worry about you and me with all this shit going down?’

‘Actually,’ Tino said, and typed something else into the Twitter app on his phone and showed the result to Dave and Pia.  ‘This one isn’t quite as popular as
Byron burn
, but it has a decent following.  Some tweets use both hash-tags together.

Dave at the screen and read out the lengthy hash-tag he saw repeated in post after post of hatred and vitriol.  ‘Hashtag Daveholdenkillsqueenslanders.  Great.  Clary is going to absolutely love this.’

‘Who’s Clary?’ Tino said.

‘My PR manager.’

‘Or maybe your
former
PR Manager,’ Pia said.

‘Yeah,’ Tino said.  ‘I think your man Clary might be distancing himself from you now.  There’s this tweet in particular …’ Tino swiped through the list and stopped at one near the bottom.  ‘This one would concern me, if I were you.’

Dave read it and felt a swarm of tiny ants crawl out the back of his shirt and up his neck.  The tweet was just a couple of words and a number, and that bloody long hash-tag, but that didn’t lessen the deep unease he felt when he recognised the address of his Byron house on that small screen.

‘Jesus, they’re going to torch my house, aren’t they?’

‘Probably,’ Tino said.  ‘After they ransack it.  Then they probably won’t be able to help themselves from doing the same to your neighbours’ houses, and a lot of them are likely to be home.’

‘Oh Christ.’

‘You said it.’

The waiter with the piercings leaned over the table to take away the empty box, and replaced it with a fresh large pizza with the works on a round wooden slab.

‘I think I love you,’ Pia said, and the waiter winked at her.  She lifted a slice and took a bite and said to Tino with a half-full mouth, ‘So what’s your plan of action?’