Prohibited Zone (23 page)

‘What do you think? Is this it?'

‘Hard to know. I only had the blindfold off when I was inside.'

‘We'd better go inside, then.' He went round the back and returned half a minute later. ‘Back door's locked, too,' he said. He smiled mischievously. ‘But I must have leant on it too hard and it came open.'

I recognised the smell first, that sort of musty odour that comes with old age and neglect and a plague of rats. We were in the kitchen, which contained nothing but an old laminated table and a few wooden chairs. There was no fridge, no crockery. The hallway was dark, but Baz found a switch and a light came on overhead.

‘Strange that the power's still on,' he said.

We entered a room on the left and I knew immediately that it was the place. It had the same dimensions as the room I had occupied the previous night and the same peeling paint on the walls. The concrete floor had been swept, but I was sure it was the same floor on which I had lain. There were little stains that could have been drops of blood, mine. Then I found the clincher – the words I had scrawled on the floor. They were faint, but they were there.

‘Look at this,' I said to Baz. He squatted down and examined the scratches closely.

‘Free goo,' he read.

‘Actually it says “fuck you”.'

‘You wrote that?'

‘Yes.'

‘Interesting. I would have thought you would have written your name, just in case you disappeared without a trace. You know, left a clue.'

‘Good idea, now that you mention it.'

We spent half an hour searching the place but found nothing that might have helped identify the kidnappers. I stood for a while in the room and remembered the ordeal and wondered what it would have been like for Kara. Unpleasant, I concluded. Then I thought of what had happened later. It wasn't the best sex I'd ever had but it had a quality about it that somehow set it apart. It finally dawned on me what it was. Usually after sex I found myself wanting to be somewhere else, until next time, anyway. But last night with Kara, I hadn't wanted to let her go. My mind might have drifted to another place, as it often did, but it had taken her with it. Now, I had to admit, I missed her.

‘They seem to have covered their tracks pretty well,' said Baz. He had an appointment in town – probably with Katy, the cute waitress – and after a quick patrol around the house we departed, closing the gate behind us. As we drove up the valley along Worden Road I had an idea. The farmer had finished distributing hay and was straining the top wire of the fence next to the road.

‘Pull over,' I said.

The farmer looked up from his stooped position as I opened the car door and walked towards him. He was wearing a dirty-white towelling hat, a pair of shorts and a long-sleeved, mauve business shirt with multiple stains on it. He had white stubble on his cheeks and chin and the skin beneath the stubble was red. His ears needed a shave. Deep lines radiated out from the corners of his eyes as he squinted at me. He stood up, slowly, not quite achieving a straight back.

‘G'day,' I said.

He g'dayed me back.

‘You don't happen to know who owns that run-down old house at the bottom of the valley, do you?' I pointed in its general direction, although we couldn't see it from where we stood. He squinted at me for a while. Through the slits in his eyelids I could see that his eyes were a shrewd blue.

‘You mean the one off Muller Road, and that?' he said.

‘Yeah.'

He twanged the top wire of the fence a couple of times. He'd strained it well and it was taut. ‘Why, you want to rent it, and that?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Well,
I
own it,' he said. ‘You reckon it's run-down, and that?'

‘Nah, didn't mean run-down. Historic is a better word. Use it much?'

‘Nah, don't use it at all. I rent it out, and that.'

‘Is it being rented at the moment?'

‘Yeah, and that.'

‘Who to?'

He took off his hat and scratched his head, which was partly bald. The hair that he did have was long and grey and completely untamed. Then he wiped his brow with his shirt sleeve and re-donned his hat.

‘Dunno, but it's a short-term rent, and that, so if you want it it'll probably be vacant in a few weeks, and that.'

‘Ever see the tenants around?'

‘Nah, not much. They don't live there, they just use it occasionally, and that. But if you're interested in the place, have a chat with the agents.' He tilted his chin skywards and scratched his neck. ‘And that.'

‘And the agents are?'

‘Benstead, Benstead Neale, and that. They got an office in Stirling, and that.'

‘Thanks.' I turned to go but he hadn't quite finished.

‘What happened to your face, and that?'

‘Somebody decided they didn't like it the way it was.'

‘Ah.'

We passed the driveway to his house on the way up Worden Road and I noted the name on the gate: Groskreutz.

Baz decided he had time to detour via Stirling and we found the Benstead Neale office on the tree-lined main street. Stirling is a rich little village nestling in a sheltered valley just east of the lip of the escarpment. The footpaths were paved in tasteful brick, the shopfronts were all nicely painted, and most of the local women looked well fed and carried real-leather handbags and real-diamond rings. They all seemed to drive late-model four-wheel drives, too, or snazzy little town cars.

Benstead Neale was hard to miss, with a garish banner across the top of the building boasting that the agency ‘will put you on the map'. The windows were decorated with A4-size spreads showing different properties, some of which had ‘SOLD BY BENSTEAD NEALE!' stamped across them in red. We walked into a carpeted, air-conditioned room with a settee to one side and a fake mahogany counter opposite the door. A balding real-estate agent with a ruddy face and snub nose was chatting with a middle-aged couple on the settee, bizarrely opening and closing his legs at them. A woman sat at the counter, typing on a laptop computer. Behind her was a small array of filing cabinets. She looked up, pulling on a professional smile as she did so. But it vanished when she saw me. Her mouth fell open, her eyes widened and her hand went up to form two exclamation marks on either side of her head.

‘Oh my God, your face!'

‘It's okay,' said Baz, soothingly. ‘He's just had surgery.'

‘Oh.' With an effort she switched her gaze to him and he seemed to have a calming effect. Her hands fluttered down, coming to rest on the keyboard of the laptop.

‘Actually,' he went on, ‘we're interested in a rental property you have on Muller Road north of Bridgewater.'

‘You'd like to rent it?'

‘Possibly.'

She typed something into her computer. She had to use the backspace key more than once.

‘Lot Ten, Muller Road?'

‘Could be.'

She looked up again, only at Baz. She hadn't been able to reapply her professional smile but she had mastered the look of horror.

‘It's already leased.'

‘That's a shame,' I said. ‘It's exactly what we're looking for.'

She kept her eyes on Baz. ‘Really? It's not in very good condition, you know.' She turned her laptop so we could see the picture; it looked better in the photo than it did in reality, and it was a terrible photo. ‘Michael only has it on the books as a favour to the owner.'

‘Michael?'

‘Yes, Michael Benstead. You had better speak to him.' She stood abruptly and retreated behind a door at the back of the room, pausing before she left for a quick, wild-eyed glance at me. We didn't see her again. She probably needed a lie-down.

Benstead was wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit, a five-thousand-dollar wristwatch and a smile that was cheaper than a whore's lip gloss. His handshake was as earnest as a TV preacher. The laptop lady must have briefed him because he didn't pass comment on my face.

‘The house is a bit of a shambles, I must admit,' he said, and gave a little chuckle. Baz chuckled, too; I wasn't quite up to one. ‘My father-in-law seems to think it's a mansion and can never understand why people aren't beating each other up trying to rent it. I keep advertising it for him anyway. Much to my surprise, a guy took out a short-term lease on it only a few weeks ago. And now you're interested. I might have to increase the rent.'

That counted as a joke in the real-estate world. Baz chuckled again.

‘We only need it for a week or so,' I said.

‘I'm sure that won't be a problem. All the standard fees will still apply, though, of course.'

‘The thing is,' I said, ‘we need it next week, and your assistant told us it's being rented at the moment.'

‘Yes, that's right. The lease expires in about five weeks.'

‘Perhaps you could give us the contact details of the current lessor?'

‘I'm afraid I can't. Against company policy. And privacy laws, I might add.' His thoughts were still on our endeavour. ‘So you want this place next week, for a week? Perhaps you can tell me what you want it
for
. We might have something else that's suitable.'

Baz and I had agreed beforehand on a basic story. ‘We want to do a photo shoot,' I said.

‘What sort of photos?' His smile was starting to go limp at the edges and his eyes had never lost a sheen of suspicion.

‘Oh, you know,' I said, waving my hand vaguely. ‘Colour photos.' Our story hadn't been very elaborate.

‘It's for a fashion magazine,' said Baz. ‘You might be surprised, but Adelaide has some of the brightest young fashion designers in the world, and we're doing a theme on apocalyptic visions.'

‘I see.' It probably helped that Baz looked like he was out of a fashion magazine himself. It seemed that Benstead was almost buying it.

‘We want to show the most modern trends in fashion against a backdrop of decay and despair,' said Baz. ‘A sort of comment on the state of the world generally, you know? Affluence and terrorism, side by side. We're all primed to go, but at the last minute the house we had lined up fell through.'

‘And the name of the magazine is?'

Baz barely blinked. ‘
Piss-Elegance
,' he said. ‘It's a new publication.'

I snorted, trying at the last moment to turn it into a sneeze. It was enough to lose Benstead.

‘Leave your name and contact number and I'll inform the current lessor,' he said curtly. ‘You never know, you might hear from them.'

‘Well, if that's your attitude I don't think we'll bother,' said Baz. ‘Thank you for your time.' He turned and walked out, and I followed.

‘That worked well, I thought,' I said when we were back in the car. ‘
Piss-Elegance
just has that ring of authenticity about it.'

Baz shrugged modestly. ‘It came to me in a flash of brilliance.' ‘I'd even call it piss-brilliance.'

He laughed. ‘Maybe I
will
start up a magazine like that one day.'

‘With you on the cover?'

‘Bugger that. Nah, I would be the mastermind behind the scenes, calling the shots and screwing the girls.'

‘You're a sexist pig, Rice. Will you be needing a partner, by any chance?'

He dropped me back in North Adelaide and we agreed to keep in touch. We clasped hands, thumb around thumb, before I got out of his car.

‘Try not to get kidnapped again,' he said.

‘Good luck with Katy.'

‘No luck required, mate.'

I had just started Rolley's car when my phone rang. It was Kara.

‘West, there's a problem,' she said.

Another one.

19

‘
W
HERE ARE YOU
?'
SHE DEMANDED
. She sounded breathless.

‘North Adelaide.'

‘How long will it take you to get to West Beach?'