Good Money (18 page)

Phuong took the book and started flicking the pages. ‘We have to talk to Cesarelli,' she was saying. ‘Bring him in tonight.'

‘You think Adut was selling drugs to Tania?'

She scratched her part, and smoothed the hair back down. ‘Not drugs. This is about money.' She had her phone out, her thumb flicking across the screen. ‘Maybe he's gone beyond drug dealing, diversified, expanded his operation.' The phone at her ear: ‘Bruce? Yes. There's a development with Brodtmann.' She walked outside onto the landing, speaking rapidly into the phone.

Expanded beyond drug dealing to what, kidnapping? Adut was a silly delinquent, not a kidnapper. It seemed wildly unlikely. Phuong came back and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Pack a bag, okay?'

There was a pause. I realised Ben was in the room; he was going around with a garbage bag, picking up DVDs.

‘They might come back, maybe even tonight. They've searched your place for something. Who knows, maybe it's this book they're after.' She waved it in my face like she was scolding a puppy. ‘Who knows you have it?'

Mabor? Mrs Chol? ‘No one.'

‘Well, you're not safe here,' Phuong said.

‘I'm not leaving.'

‘Ben, talk sense into her.'

Ben frowned at Phuong, like an Aztec virgin might look at a priest holding a knife. ‘Yes, I suppose. We … we can go to Woolburn.'

‘Out of the question.' I folded my arms.

Phuong walked through the mess. ‘Stella, you should listen to Ben.'

‘I don't believe anyone has ever uttered that sentence before.'

‘Take some advice for once and stay with your mother. At least for the long weekend. Get some pampering?'

I laughed. ‘If by
pampering
you mean scorn, then my mother's it is.' The adrenalin was waning, leaving me teary-eyed. It was a violation, the flat, the damage — not just the smack on the face.

Phuong took my arm. ‘I'll help you pack.'

‘Fine. I'll go. But it's not pampering. Just saying.'

We went to my room, and together we pushed the mattress back on the frame. The doona was in a heap on the floor. I found the corners, ready to fling it out over the bed, when my laptop dropped to the floor. It had been hidden among the bedclothes. A little luck at last. Phuong pulled a sports bag down from the wardrobe and I threw some clothes in it. I put the laptop in a satchel and put the overnight bag on my shoulder. Ben was already packed. The whisky bottle stuck out of his backpack.

We walked out together, and Ben pulled the door shut behind us.

At street level, Phuong held me by the shoulders. ‘Go and be safe,' she said. ‘And when you get back and things settle down, you are going to tell me everything — why you held on to that evidence. And whatever possessed you to think this was in any way about you.'

‘Yes, of course, we'll have a long talk about things,' I lied. And I followed Ben, who had walked up the street to where the Mazda was parked. My legs, all of a sudden, were unfit for the task of coordinated movement. He reached the car ahead of me and threw his backpack in the boot. He put the bottle on the passenger seat. I dumped the satchel and bag in the car.

Out the back window, the street was dark and still.

‘You all right?'

‘You owe me a phone,' I said, and tipped some whisky into my mouth, felt the burn, its cleansing goodness. Ben gunned it, and we fishtailed up Roxburgh Street. For a while I watched the sleeping suburbs go by. I wondered if I'd ever see Tania alive again.

19

A PALE
yellow sunrise, a rural location. An open landscape with hills in the distance. I saw Ben drop my laptop satchel on the ground and drive away. My brain struggled to understand what was happening; neurons were firing all over, to no avail. A conniption of small dogs leapt and yelped around my feet. A terrible confirmation. I turned around and saw the farmhouse. Now I knew my exact whereabouts and could, therefore, confidently identify the senior citizen in a soiled pink dressing gown coming down the path towards me.

Delia Hardy's gaze swept over me. Her rheumy eyes lingered on my hair, and moved on to my clothes. ‘Bedraggled, as usual.'

‘Hi, Mum.' I put my arms out and saw the whisky bottle still in my hand. My mother sniffed impassively, the spectacle not unprecedented.

‘Can't wear a dress? Just once? Do your hair?'

For Delia, the idea of live-and-let-live was for the weak.

‘Nice to see you too, Ma.'

She gave me a brisk pat on the shoulder and shuffled back to the house. The dogs followed her. I followed the dogs.

Inside the old farmhouse, the Hardy family home for over sixty years, a familiar aroma forced its way into my nostrils. I'd never come across it anywhere else. Its composition was a mystery, but it included Ajax and boiled chook, thickened with ennui. I poked my head in a couple of rooms: the same furniture in the same positions. Renovation was not in my mother's vocabulary. The stubborn, unapologetic monotony of it closed in on me. Memories ran like blood from a cut.

I found Delia in the kitchen, where some concessions to progress had been made — in 1970. An electric stove had been installed next to the old wood stove, and a two-door electric fridge droned in the corner. The room was cosy-ish, though, and a fire glowed in the wood stove.

‘Long drive,' I said. ‘I'm a bit tired — mind if I have a lie down?'

‘Of course not,' said my mother. ‘Have a rest. We'll talk later.'

Talk?
Good God
, I thought,
will the torture never end?
I headed for my old room.

‘Tyler's pec-deck's in there.'

‘Pardon?'

‘In your room. His gym equipment's in there. And his weights. You can have Kylie's bed, if you don't mind the birdhouses.'

‘I don't mind.'

‘She can't work on them at home because of the twins. They're that wild. No control. Can't tell her. Knows everything.'

I went to Kylie's room, then changed my mind and opened the door to my old room. A pectoral-declinator was jammed up against it but I managed to squeeze past — other than that, the room was untouched. One of my first proper paintings was framed and hung above the bed. The perspective was terrible and the subject, a desert landscape, was a cringe-worthy cliché. But the use of colour, I had to admit, was tolerably imaginative.

I went back to sit among the birdhouses in Kylie's room, and then collapsed on the bed. Assorted pieces of wood at various stages of construction surrounded me. In high school, Kylie had received praise for a birdhouse constructed in woodwork. That moment of success kicked off a tumult of backyard entrepreneurship that had never slowed. Year after year, Kylie pumped them out, selling them on consignment to ye-olde-worlde joints in Warrack and Ouyen that offered vintage items, the odd genuine antique, and an assortment of crass shite. The birdhouses walked out the door.

I lay between the musty, striped flannelette sheets on my sister's old bed and heard screeching from the kitchen. It was my mother. ‘Where's Ben?' That's how we did things around here — you simply stayed where you were and yelled.

‘He's putting the car in the shed,' I yelled back. It was a guess.

‘In the shed? But your father's —'

‘He knows, Mum.'

‘I better go and see what he's up to.'

‘He's not up to anything.'

I groaned and got up. I found Delia outside, putting on her gumboots. She stamped them on and set off for the sheds. The chooks were out and they darted around her, little brown bantams that
bok-bokked
amiably. I trotted along after her with the terriers, another dog in the pack.

The sheds, five in all, were built by Dad and a mate, and each had a separate purpose. They had thick, redwood posts and stood in a row at the back of the house. The largest was padlocked. It was big enough to house a Cessna — which it had, until my father's plane slammed into the Mallee dirt one summer evening in 1983. Now it housed the wreckage. After his ill-advised crop-dusting attempt, the pieces had been sent to the aviation people as part of their investigation. When they finished, it was returned on the back of a flat-bed truck, and my mother locked it in its hanger, where it has remained, untouched, ever since. My mother undid the lock, and I helped drag back the wooden door. It was dark inside, but I could see the plane, coated in dust and bird shit; one wing broken, the other sheared off. The nose was crumpled, the fuselage burnt.

‘See Mum? Safe and sound.' A rat ran out from under the door and the dogs gave chase.

‘Ben's car's over here.' I pointed to the shed next door. Delia ignored me. Nothing new under the sun. She reached up and put her hand on the wing. I looked for signs of Ben. He was nowhere to be seen.

‘I'm going to bed,' I said and went inside the house.

Sometime later, I woke to the sound of repetitious thumping. I opened an eye. Standing by my bed were two young boys with identical faces; the taller one was bouncing a football on the lino.

‘What are you doing in Mum's old bed?' said one.

‘It is nearly lunchtime,' said the other.

‘Hello.' I frowned, but their names were lost. ‘Boys.'

They stared at me. The one with the ball kept bouncing it. ‘Mum's talking to Nana.'

‘Is she? That's nice.' I prayed for some magical guardian angel to come and jam the football down his throat. ‘Hey, does your mum keep headache pills in her handbag?'

‘Yeah.'

‘I'll give you five dollars if you go and pinch some for me.'

‘Ten,' said the taller one. ‘Each.'

‘Get lost.'

Chair and Blad, or Blair and Chad, or something like that — the little bastards — ran laughing out of the room. I rolled over, bedsprings creaking, and stared at the wall. My heart was a lump of cold lead; if I had the energy I would have cried. There was a tap on the door, and a hand with a cup of tea was extended like a white flag. Ben's head appeared.

‘Not tea,' I said.

‘Do you good.'

‘Coffee,' I said. ‘Double shot.'

‘Ha ha, very funny.' He looked at me for a moment then frowned. ‘There might be some instant somewhere.'

I groaned — something I had been doing way too much of lately.

‘Outside,' Ben said, and put the tea on the dressing table. ‘When you're ready.'

I put on my jeans, and an old jumper I found in the chest of drawers — a purple hand-knitted sack — and went to inspect the bathroom cabinet. Powders. Ointments. Nothing bought this century. I found a box of Bex, emptied four packets into my mouth, and then put my lips to the running tap and drank for several minutes. I looked at my face in the mirror: frightening. I waited a moment to see if it would all stay down. Some therapeutic dry swallowing seemed to help. I snuck out, avoiding Kylie and Delia in the kitchen, and found Ben behind the sheds.

‘Let's walk down to the creek.' He set off across the paddocks without waiting for an answer. He walked away, down the track beside the fence. I went after him. These hills, usually brown, were a glossy English green after the rainy autumn. I lost sight of him, and the thick brush slowed my progress. I found him by the creek sitting on the embankment. I sat beside him.

‘Creek's full,' Ben said. He kicked a small rock; it tumbled into the water with a
plop
.

I watched the current divert round the new obstacle. ‘The guy who broke into my flat, what'd he look like? Was he short, stocky, wearing a hoodie?'

‘I didn't get a good look at him. He snatched your phone and was gone. But he wasn't short — more medium. Why?'

‘There's been a bloke hanging around the flats, short, wears thongs. Thought it might be him.'

‘What is it you're not telling me?' Ben asked. ‘The person who broke into your flat was looking for something, a
particular
thing. What have you got that's so valuable?'

Not a school-boy's exercise book — I now saw how preposterous that idea was. It was a teenage bookkeeping system, a means for Adut to keep track of his deals. After he was murdered, Cesarelli asked Marbor for it. The book's existence was inconvenient, but I doubted Cesarelli had managed to trace it to my flat let alone send a goon to break in to get it.

‘Well?' Ben demanded.

‘A DVD Tania gave me.'

He tilted his head. ‘Not
The
Blue Lagoon
?'

‘That is what the label says, but it's not a movie. It's a report about mining.'

Ben pulled a bent cigarette from of his top pocket. ‘Where is it now, the DVD?'

‘Still in the laptop. The one place the burglar didn't look.'

‘Bloody amateur.' The same pocket yielded a matchbook. He lit the smoke, and piffed the burnt match into the grass.