The Killing Hour (22 page)

Cyris pushes himself up from the bath and moves down the hallway. The TV in the lounge is going and his wife is sitting in front of it, like she always does at night. Sometimes she’s oblivious to life. He wonders how she would react if he were to take her into the basement and show her his investment. He wonders how both women would react. He moves past the lounge, his hand pressing against his stomach. He might have to go and get some more pain medication after all but he hates what great amounts of it do to him. He wishes he could go to the hospital.

‘Honey? While you’re up, can you grab me another coffee?’

He turns towards his wife and tells her that it won’t be a problem.

‘Don’t be too long. You’re missing our favourite programme.’

It’s
her
favourite programme, not
theirs
, but he says nothing. Even when he can think straight he can hardly distinguish between all the programmes on TV. He reaches the doorway to the basement. He’s light-headed and the walls and the door are spinning in time with his mind, but in the opposite direction. He reaches out and balances himself. The room starts to spin faster. He holds his breath and the need to vomit slowly fades.

He thinks of Charlie. He thinks of Charlie plunging the knife into him, and at the same time the pain in his stomach flares up as though the knife is back in there, twisting around and around. He doubles over and collapses to his knees. No amount of money is worth this. When he gets back to his feet he unlocks the basement door and heads downstairs. The woman looks up at him and he can see she’s been crying. He hates it when women cry. It’s their way of making men feel guilty. It’s a weapon they use to make men feel like crap. He doesn’t want to feel bad. In fact he doesn’t want to feel anything.

He hates Charlie Feldman for being such an arsehole.

From the bench nearby he picks up a knife and moves towards her.

39

The hissing remains for another second, then the phone goes dead. I stare at it, looking to take back the words I just said, wanting to reach through the dead air and pull them back but they’re no longer mine, they’re Cyris’s. They have slipped through the phone and into another part of this world where they have killed Jo.

The car windows are slightly fogged over from my heavy breathing. It feels like fifty degrees in here and the air tastes stale. I wipe a hand over the glass, smudging a path through the moisture and creating a gateway to the outside. Kathy and Luciana are standing only a few metres from my door.

I squeeze my eyes shut, hold them closed for a few seconds to give the two girls a chance to disappear, and when I open them back up and see them still there I start to doubt that they’re only in my mind. They look happier since I saw them last, as if somehow at peace. My skin tingles as my arms break out in goosebumps. A cold chill blasts its way down the back of my neck as if the air-conditioning in the Holden has just been cranked to some mystery arctic setting. I try to open the door but my arms won’t move. I can barely breathe. The world sways and I can hardly stay conscious.

Kathy is wearing a long white dress, shoulderless, the material thin and whispery. Luciana is wearing a summer frock covered in small red roses and yellow daffodils. She’s wearing a hat too. She looks tanned. They’re holding hands as they stand there smiling at me and for the moment the phone call from Cyris is forgotten. I get my arms moving jerkily and manage to wind down the window. Their mouths open and close but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Kathy takes a step forward. Her hair is blowing in some invisible breeze. Luciana follows. My eyes are starting to sting but I’m too frightened to blink, too frightened that in that split second they will disappear. Something is going on here that can’t be controlled by either my imagination or my conscience.

I tell them I’m sorry but they don’t seem to understand. They stop talking and again they smile. I try the door handle and just then the phone rings. I glance at it. In that instant Kathy is gone, Luciana has gone with her, and I’m alone in my car looking back at an empty street. My window is still wound up, the smear mark on the glass from my hand is still clear. My face is covered in a film of sweat and the lump on my forehead is throbbing. I don’t know what happened but if Kathy and Luciana were here then they’ve just left to go and get Jo.

As I scramble for the phone it slips in my fingers and bounces off the passenger seat onto the floor. I reach down, grab it and open it while I’m still hunched over the gear stick. ‘Cyris?’

‘Charlie, it’s me.’

‘Jo!’

‘I’m okay, Charlie.’

Thank God. Thank you, God. ‘Has he hurt you?’

‘I’m okay. He wants me to tell you he’ll see you tomorrow night.’

‘I know.’

‘He says don’t try anything, Charlie.’

‘I won’t.’

‘He’ll let us go.’

‘You don’t believe that, do you?’

She hesitates, and then, ‘I have to go. Be careful, Charlie. Promise me that.’

‘Jo,’ I say, but I’m already talking into a broken connection.

Jo is alive and so is my hope and I know why the two ghosts were looking happy. I’m on the right track to saving Jo and on the right track to finding them justice. I will either die in hope or live in despair.

I drop the phone onto the seat and get back to the very business I came here to do, which is waiting. Waiting to see what Kathy’s husband does.

Cyris told me he was busy tonight. I know from experience he’s been busy the last few nights so I’m picking if there’s a pay-off to take place there’s a chance it’s tonight. That must be what Kathy and Luciana were trying to tell me. Why else would they have appeared?

I think back to when I first met Jo nearly eight years ago, at a house-warming party. It was one of those fantastic moments when you get introduced to somebody and the chemistry is immediate. The personality and the humour and the interests all line up. I took Jo out to dinner the next night and eventually that led to her being kidnapped twice within the week, the first by a madman that was me, the second by a madman she believed me to be.

I stare out the window as the minutes pass. The night gets darker. The number of people walking by thins out and then there are none. Lights are turned on as people settle in for the evening. An hour passes. Two hours. Lights start to turn off. People are going to bed. I have nothing to do but run my theory over and over in my head. The problem is it looks bad. Looks worse every time I glance at my watch and see another block of time has gone by. I was wrong to think the payment would be tonight and the passing minutes prove this to me. Wrong to think the husband is involved.

Wrong about everything.

I reach towards the ignition. I’m going to have to pay Cyris and hope for the best. Resort to Plan B, which I’m still working on. I hear a car start before I start my own. I let go of the keys and lean forward. Could this be it? I wait and watch as the Mercedes reverses down the driveway and onto the street. Frank. Frank the cheating husband. The car straightens and heads away from me.

I start the Holden and begin following. I don’t turn my headlights on. When he turns the corner I keep fifty metres behind him. The full moon and streetlights provide more than enough light to drive by, turning the roads pale blue except for the road markings which glow white. Stars twinkle in the sky, their light coming from millions of miles away and centuries ago. I wonder if people like Cyris lived on those long lost worlds. A few people coming towards me flash their lights but Frank the cheating husband can’t see that, not from fifty metres ahead.

The theory I’ve been playing with is once again starting to look good. Casting Frank as the guilty party explains the unforced entry into the houses. It explains why he didn’t want the body found at home. It explains why there are two victims rather than one. I wonder how much money exchanged hands to end two women’s lives. In a fair world I should be getting a cut of those funds. Was money the motive? I’ve seen Frank’s house. I’ve seen his car. He was cheating on his wife. He wanted a divorce and didn’t want to give her half of everything. Instead he took everything she ever had.

We turn right at a set of lights and my fear that he’s meeting Cyris outside the city is quashed when Frank’s brake lights come on and he indicates before pulling into a dead-end side street next to a shopping mall. I continue ahead and park on the road opposite. I kill the engine and pull up the handbrake. I pull the lens caps off the binoculars and watch him eight times bigger than normal life as he pulls into the entrance to the carpark to his left. He pulls into it and kills his lights but keeps on driving, making it difficult to follow him through my narrow field of vision. He turns right, goes straight for a bit, then turns left and out of sight. I pull the binoculars away and tuck them back into my pocket. I know this mall: he can’t have gone far.

The dashboard clock reads eleven-fifty. If Frank is making a pay-off it makes sense it’s going to happen at midnight. That gives me ten minutes to wait. Ten minutes to consider where things can go wrong. Ten minutes to figure what I can do about it.

I suck in a deep breath and, checking there’s no other traffic, I leave my car and run across the road. Spur-of-the-moment decisions haven’t been working out for me well this week but I figure one has to go right. It’s like continually doubling-down on red at the roulette table, chasing your losses and knowing it can’t keep on coming up black. Statistically it’s impossible that you can roll the wheel for the next fifty years and never get it to land on red.

Only at the end of the day the house always wins.

I vault the low railing that separates the carpark from the footpath and land without the embarrassment of tripping. I break into a jog. Like the mall I was at this afternoon there are diggers and cranes and other building equipment lying around. Skeletons of more carparks and more shops to come look like macabre playground equipment. Mounds of shingle and dirt form small hills. It takes me half a minute to reach the turn where the car disappeared. I crouch down and peer around the corner. I can see Frank’s car but no Frank. Has something happened? The car has its headlights facing me but they’re not on. I keep watching and a few moments later Frank appears from behind his car. He climbs into his seat, pulls the door shut and, keeping the lights off, begins rolling forward. With nowhere to run I lie flat against the ground and watch the car arc around at least fifteen metres away from me so I’m out of sight. It passes and accelerates away. The headlights flick on. He leaves the carpark and pulls out onto the street.

I count to twenty, eager to rush out there but not stupid enough. After spotting no movement I count out another twenty seconds, then make my way to where the car was parked. There is nothing to see and I know I can’t afford to spend much time here. Ahead the neon letters of the supermarket have been switched off to save power. To my left the wall of the mall has been freshly painted, covering up a recent attack by graffiti artists – if you can call somebody who scrawls capital letters across a wall with spray-paint an artist. To my right at the end of the carpark is a neighbouring fence. The supermarket runs almost the entire distance from the mall wall to that fence, except for a service alley at the far end. None of this inlet can be seen from the road. I walk up to the large glass doors of the supermarket. Hundreds of trolleys are parked inside, boxes and bags, the sort of stuff you should see when you look through supermarket windows. Frank got out of his car, moved behind it and came over here. Somewhere.

It only takes me a minute to find the briefcase. It’s sitting in a rubbish bin that’s bolted to the ground a few metres to the left of the supermarket doors. I don’t bother opening it but run back to my rented Holden and spill the contents onto the passenger seat, creating a pile of cash in different denominations. Fresh brand-new bills. A lot of money looks great. It makes you feel rich, like you’ve achieved something. Even if you haven’t. So that’s how I’m feeling. I’m feeling rich for achieving little. I’m feeling rich for achieving a lot of fuck-ups over the last few days. I’m also feeling smarter than Cyris and maybe that’s dangerous. Maybe for once the house isn’t going to win.

But I’m also feeling angry, more at Frank than at Cyris right now. Frank is the reason the two girls died, and therefore the reason that Jo has been kidnapped. It all stems from him squirrelling away this pile of cash and saving it up so his wife could be sliced up and killed. I feel like driving after Frank and running him off the road. Feel like punching and kicking and even stabbing him, over and over and over till he’s dead, at the same time asking him how it feels. What a bastard. What a piece of trash. I can feel myself burning up.

Does it bother me?

Not in the least. The killing hour doesn’t allow for it.

I pop the glovebox and grab hold of the pen the car rental agency guy gave me. Withdrawing a single hundred-dollar note from the pile of cash, I write on it, having to go over the same lines a few times to make the letters dark enough, then place it inside the briefcase. I close the lid and click the latches. It’s much lighter now.

Still no traffic so I run over the road and this time, instead of vaulting the barrier, I hurdle it. I land running, pumping my legs hard, holding the briefcase in front of me. I round the corner, reach the rubbish bin and put the briefcase back where I found it. Before I can head back, tyres shriek into the parking lot and headlights wash across the neighbouring fence, sweeping towards me. My only chance is the service alley. I dive just as the light behind me comes into view. I hit the ground hard and come to a stop against a chain-link gate that rattles but not loudly enough for Cyris to have heard. I twist around and, staying low, peer around the corner.

Instead of turning the car around as Frank had, Cyris keeps Jo’s Mazda pointing directly at the rubbish bin. He climbs out of the car and doesn’t look in my direction. He looks exactly the same as last night from the scruffy facial hair to the black clothes. The only difference is a pair of sunglasses over his eyes. He walks to the bin, reaches in and grabs the briefcase. He rests it over the edges of the bin, tilts it towards him and pops it open with his thumbs. The angle is wrong for me to study his expression but not wrong enough to watch him stand there for a full minute, still and silent. He closes the case, turns it around in his hands, sets it back down and opens it again, as if he’s the victim of a parlour trick. Then he turns from the rubbish bin and carries the hundred-dollar note to the front of the car. Carefully he examines it under the headlights, turning it over so he can read the note I wrote for him. In the end he screws the bill into his jeans and walks back to the briefcase. He picks it up and swings it hard into the bin. The impact clangs out into the night. After two more blows the briefcase starts cracking and the bin begins to fold inwards. The headlights isolate him from the darkness as though he’s on a stage.