The Fix (26 page)

‘I'm next in the shower, I think,' I said to her. ‘The journo'll be here soon.'

‘You know your shirt's inside out, don't you?' she said.

She poured her milk and I went to the en suite.
I realised I needed to shave as well. I tried to recall the pieces of Aimee Duroux's that I had read. She would want some details and some backstory, but the lie would hold. Unless Ben blew it, in which case he would be on his own.

Once I was dressed, I rinsed some grapes, cut them into bunches and put them on a platter with some cherries. I went over Ben's wardrobe choices and told him not to do much with his hair, since there would probably be a make-up person with the photographer.

‘So you're talking make-up now? Clothes, and now hair and make-up?' Hayley had come out of the bedroom wearing a bikini and a baggy T-shirt and holding a beach towel. ‘If I come back from the pool and you guys are a couple, it's going to be a real kick in the guts for my self-esteem.'

‘He's not my type,' Ben said, and I realised I had no clear idea what his type was. If it hadn't been for Eloise, I wouldn't be certain that he was sexual at all. He lived a neat finicky life, and I saw no room in it for anyone, no crack or gap anyone might fill.

‘Well, in that case, have a good interview.' She came towards me, took my hand and kissed me in an uncomplicated way. There was an old intimacy to it that I liked. We had known each other for less than a week.

‘Get a room,' Ben said, his hand up to his mouth, like a heckler. ‘Better still, get three for the price of two, and then don't use one.'

Hayley took a step towards the door, and then stopped. ‘Who says we haven't used them all? You weren't exactly quick in the shower this morning. Maybe we snuck into your room then.'

With that, she folded her towel over her arm and left for the pool.

‘You didn't . . .' Ben said, still not certain.

‘Allow me just a little mystery.'

The intercom buzzed. It was Aimee Duroux. I pressed the button to let her in and I waited for her by the door. Ben hovered nearby until I told him hovering was unbecoming. He walked out to the balcony and stared at the sea. I assumed he was rehearsing his story.

Aimee Duroux had long blonde hair and blue eyes and impractical shoes that might have been Jimmy Choos. They had high narrow teetering heels but she managed them well enough. She shook my hand and told me it had been years since she had been to the Gold Coast, this part of the Gold Coast anyway.

‘I've been to a couple of premieres at Movie World,' she said. ‘Which is . . . where? That way?' She pointed vaguely west. ‘I flew into Brisbane for those, though.'

She was wearing tinted contact lenses. That was where the blue of her eyes came from, why it was so vivid. She looked past me, through the living area to the bright sky and the sea, and to Ben on the balcony. He happened to turn then, and he smiled and waved, almost as if he knew her. He walked inside and crossed the room to shake her hand.

‘I thought I saw some whales out there,' he said. ‘But I think it's the wrong time of year.'

He took her onto the balcony to look for them. I watched him point to the southeast as Aimee held her hand up to her eyes to block the sun. I took the platter of grapes and cherries out, and set it on the table. Ben
was telling a story about swimming with dolphins. I had never heard it from him before. I wondered if it was someone else's, and he had seen it on TV or read it in a magazine.

‘That would have been amazing,' she was saying.

I asked if they would like drinks and Ben said, ‘A mineral water would be good.'

Aimee tucked some stray hair back into place. The breeze was strong on the balcony. ‘Yeah, that'd be lovely, thanks, Josh.' Her eyes hardly left Ben.

I went back into the kitchen, put ice into two glasses and filled them with mineral water. I could hear Aimee laughing at something Ben had said. As I took the drinks out to the balcony she was reaching into her bag for her recorder and checking with him that it was okay to use it.

I set their glasses down on the table next to the fruit and told them I would leave them to it. As I turned to go back inside, I glanced down over the edge of the balcony to the swimming pool far below. Hayley had it all to herself, and she was swimming with a casual freestyle stroke along one of its two black lines.

I went inside and out another door, and I watched her from a different part of the balcony, her bright pale body in her yellow bikini, rocking from side to side with the stroke and with her breathing, the V of the waves moving out from her and lapping against the sides of the pool. She stopped at the end, turned and looked up. She saw me and waved.

I could hear voices from around the corner, but not the words. Aimee laughed again. Ben's charm had arrived like an invasion, with sensitive-guy whale-and-dolphin
stories and me cast as his lumpen manservant. It was, I told myself, part of the job. It was the same as fetching cups of tea in Manchester or fruitcake in Nottingham, all of it breaking down the formality, making it more like a chat between two friends, less like a well-dressed interrogation. It was different only because it was Ben, different because his performance was so good.

Hayley pushed off on another lap, and I went back inside. I sat on a sofa within range of the interview, pretending to read a magazine.

Ben stumbled over something. They were talking about the siege. It sounded like a natural stumble, though, a tough part of a painful recollection. Rob Mueller had entered the building.

I went to the fridge for the bottle of mineral water, and took it out to the balcony. I wondered how crazy Rob Mueller had been, and who had heard his remarks about God.

‘So tell me,' Aimee was saying. ‘What made you move? What happened in that actual moment? Mueller was ready to kill Frank . . .'

I topped up her glass, then his.

‘Well . . .' He looked at the bottle as I poured.

‘I'm sorry. This can't be easy for you,' she said. She had a pen in her hand. She had been making notes as well as recording. She was leaning forward, trying to catch Ben's eye.

‘Yeah . . . I don't know precisely what happened. I just knew that was the moment. I had to go for him then, or Frank would be dead.' He was frowning. He put both hands up to his forehead and massaged it.

‘Are you having flashbacks right now?' It was honest
concern. She put her pen down. ‘I've interviewed people who have been through trauma before.'

‘Um, I don't know.' Ben picked up his glass of mineral water and took a mouthful. ‘So, I went for him, and we hit the far wall and . . .' He stopped. He looked inside, and then looked at me. ‘Is that my mobile? Could you go and check if that's my mobile?'

There was no sound, other than the breeze and the distant hum of life far below on the ground.

‘Okay. No problem.'

Aimee was watching the interaction. Ben was traumatised and I was helping him through. I was sure that was what she saw – a storybook wounded hero who would rather swim with dolphins but who had risen at the moment of greatest danger and risked his life to save others. And here he was, his head still full of damage, still ringing with it, literally.

He wanted me gone, and he had managed it masterfully. I left to check his non-ringing phone. He would give her everything she needed about the moment on which his bravery pivoted, the instincts that drove him forward, the air-splitting crash of the gun, the shock of the blood, brain, bone, the tinnitus, the deafness. She would be completely convinced.

I went into his room, noted the silent phone on the bedside table and took my time going back out to the balcony. The story had reached the ambulance by then, and the crowding cameras of the TV news.

‘I've seen photos of that,' Aimee said. I was ashamed for Ben that her empathy was so real. ‘Josh sent me some and I've seen a few others as well.'

They both looked up as I got to the door.

‘It was just Frank,' I told Ben. ‘He wanted to check how you were going.'

If he was surprised, he didn't show it.

‘I didn't even hear it,' Aimee said. She seemed relieved that there had been a call. ‘Must be the wind out here. It blocks out a lot of noise. I hope we've been recording all right.' Her phone rang and she checked the number. ‘Photographer,' she said, taking the call.

Down below, Hayley was standing by the pool with her towel around her shoulders. She was shaking water out of her ears.

Aimee stood up and walked to the far end of the balcony, talking into the phone. She looked over the edge. ‘Yeah, I can see you from here. You're the white van, yeah?'

‘Just about finished, I reckon,' Ben said to me. ‘I could do with some more of that mineral water, though. Thirsty work out here.' He held up his empty glass.

‘Yeah, well, we can't have you running to the toilet in the middle of the photoshoot.' I didn't take the glass. ‘Got to watch that.'

Aimee closed her phone. ‘Josh, would it be okay if you went down and met Richard? He's got an assistant but they've got a lot of stuff. It could really help if they had someone to hold open lift doors, and things. Just to make sure they make it here intact. They could start setting up while Ben and I finish off.'

Ben put the glass down, as though it had never mattered. He was smiling, waiting for me to move. As long as I was somebody's slave, my place in the universe was right.

The photographer had backed his van up to the foyer
door, and he and his assistant were unloading when I got there. I found two luggage trolleys and we piled them high with lights and screens, and boxes that looked like guitar amps.

The assistant and I took the first lift up with one trolley. Her name was Abi and she was studying photography. This was work experience. She told me she would get credit for it as part of her course.

‘So, does Ben live here, or . . .?' she said as the lift passed the lower floors without stopping.

‘No. He lives in Brisbane. This is a holiday. Just a few days.' The lift shook and one of the lights on the trolley rocked forward. I instinctively put my hand on it, though it was going nowhere.

‘I saw him on the news on Monday. He's, what, Chinese? I wouldn't have brought the right make-up range if I hadn't seen the news. Ben Parkin, wasn't it? You're not thinking Chinese.'

‘Japanese. His mother.' I didn't correct the surname.

The door to the apartment was wedged open, and Hayley was in the living area talking to Aimee.

‘Josh has had us out testing the mini-golf options,' she was saying. She was still wrapped in her towel.

The living area was soon a mess of cables and boxes. Abi worked on Ben's make-up while Richard, Aimee and I talked through the plans. I showed them the medal pamphlet so there would be no doubt about how Ben's Star of Courage had to be treated. We could do medal shots and we could do mini-golf shots, but we wouldn't do medal-and-mini-golf shots.

Ben went to change into his suit, and Richard hooked a long roll of white paper onto a high stand and
pulled the end of it to the floor. He got down on his knees, pulled out another metre or two and laid it out across the carpet. He asked me to stand on it while Abi arranged lights around me, and silver umbrellas, and he set up his camera.

‘Instant studio,' he said. The paper met the floor in a curve and made the perfect blank backdrop. He took a picture and his flash popped. ‘Yep,' he said as he checked the image. ‘Looking good.'

Ben came out with his shoes in his hands and his Star of Courage on his jacket.

‘Great,' Richard said when he saw him. ‘This'll be great.'

Ben was looking at the stage that had been built for him while he had been out of the room. The white paper glowed under the lights. He stopped, as if he wasn't certain or needed to check something.

‘Right in the middle,' Richard said. ‘Abs?'

Abi moved him into position, tugged at his lapels, and made sure the star was sitting properly. She was arranging him like a shop-window dummy, and he didn't know how to take it. I wasn't sure how often people touched him, other than to shake his hand.

‘Hang on a second,' she said, and she flicked at his hair. It wouldn't stay where she wanted it to, so she came back with a blast of spray.

‘You look good, Ben,' Aimee said. ‘Really good.' She was sitting with her legs crossed, clicking her pen in and out.

‘Abs, if you could get the flekkie and put a bit more light on his left side . . .' Richard said as he looked through the camera.

Abi unzipped a bag, popped out a big silver disc and tried to catch the light with it.

Ben was stiff at first, but Richard loosened him up. He kept him talking, then got him laughing. He kept telling him how well he was doing, then asking for small changes. The flash popped and popped until Ben was more than used to it.

‘That's it, that's it,' Richard said. ‘That's beautiful. Okay, Ben, now smile. Give us that smile you were doing before. The . . . wistful one.'

‘Like this?' Ben had no recollection of wistful, and did what he could.

‘Yep, yep.' Richard's head was down over the camera, the flash was popping. ‘A little bit more wistful . . . Beautiful.' He stood up, stepped back. ‘Josh, is it okay if we lose the tie? Is that okay with the star protocol?'

‘I think we could lose the tie. People do suits without ties.'

The tie came off, and Richard took a dozen more shots.

‘Okay, those'll be great. Take a break. Step away from the lights. Cool down.' Richard was looking at his camera, scrolling through the images with his thumb. ‘Next up I think we'll do some with you holding the medals in the presentation case. Aimee? That's right, isn't it? You want some like that?'

‘Yeah.' Aimee watched Ben take his jacket off.