It’s twilight by the time I email the draft report to Neil and Bigfoot, and shutdown my laptop. I would have finished earlier except I went for a walk around the city blocks while I stewed over Graham Griffiths and his connection to the Batt brothers and my incarcerated nemesis. It can’t be a coincidence that someone doing time for supply of methamphetamine is on flag-waving terms with Duncan and his partners-in-fraud. Not when Duncan is also waging a war against drug addicts in public housing. But I can’t make the two pieces fit. If Graham is a supplier and he’s buddies with Duncan, which I am sure he is, you’d think he’d be leaning on him to keep his buyers where he can find them. But Duncan is turfing Graham’s customers out of their homes.
I catch the bus, order takeaway online from my phone, and stew some more as I ride past the park. The missing piece is there somewhere but keeps slipping just beyond my grasp. My annoyance finds other things to latch onto. A previous passenger has spilled coffee and it has created a sticky river flowing under my seat. Someone has scratched the word fuck into the glass, in tiny letters just above the window ledge. Somehow, the size of the script and the obvious care taken to avoid being caught is more irritating than the super-sized scrawl of the usual graffiti tags. Another commuter boards and, although every other seat is free, he sits facing me and sticks a chewing gum in his mouth. I feel my own jaw tighten as he masticates.
When we reach my building and its avenue of pines, the same blue sedan – a Mercedes, no less – is parked in the universal parking bay out the front. I resist the urge to kick its tyres, but there are people in the street, so I leave it. If it’s still there after I’ve collected my noodles, maybe I can trip on some loose paving and spill a tub of sticky honey soy sauce from my takeaway on the bonnet.
There’s an unusual number of people about. The after-work gym members stride up and down, sculling from CamelBaks. Lights from the gym’s full-height windows spill onto the footpath. A row of treadmills and stationary bikes are lined up facing the street, all occupied by people sweating out their day. The Merc driver better not be on one of those, I think, or it will be more than the bonnet of his car that gets the honey soy treatment. The corner supermarket is lit up as well, and a small crowd spills onto the footpath, which has been decorated with a red carpet and wine barrels sprouting black flags. Black-clad waiters carry silver trays of tiny plastic tasting cups. The cashier at the Thai takeaway recognises me and passes my order through the servery.
‘Promotion?’ I ask him.
‘Inaugural street party, apparently,’ he replies with a grin. ‘Sponsored by a winery. I heard the local member of parliament is giving a speech. We weren’t invited but it’s good for business. We’ve already had customers ordering takeaway after too many of those plastic cups.’
I take another look at the black flags. They unfurl in the westerly to reveal a rippling and familiar image of Zaglossus hacketti, the stylised emblem of Zaglossus Estate, owned by Jana’s husband. It seems he’s taken his own advice to wine and dine the minister.
‘I might have a few of them myself.’
‘Enjoy.’ The kitchen passes him another order and he checks the name on the ticket before calling it out into the street.
I wave my thanks and wander toward the supermarket, scanning the crowd for Mike. They are a mix of sweaty shoppers in tracksuit pants and crumpled office workers clutching cups of wine with relief. I’ve almost reached a young woman balancing a tray, when the traffic lights change and the unmistakable figure of the Hon. Simon Tallent jogs through the intersection. He’s looking straight at me and speaking on the phone. When he sees that I’ve clocked him, he breaks into a wide smile, pockets the mobile and raises his hand in greeting. It’s the same self-assurance, the same belief that he speaks for the majority, that he carried when he looked down the camera from the steps of Parliament House. But even from here I can see that the smile doesn’t reach his eyes, that it is the smile of the Cabinet minister, not the local member. He beckons me over, but I point to my takeaway, and shrug my apologies. He nods, full of ministerial understanding, then returns his attention to his phone, tapping furiously in good imitation of his incarcerated underling. I turn around. I have my own wine at home.
On my floor, the fire door is chocked open, even though the lift is working again. It creates a soft whistle that I can only just hear underneath my tinnitus. I contemplate closing the door, shuffling aside the brick paver wedged into the gap, but figure someone has left it open for a reason and pad down the otherwise silent corridor. I’ve got my door key out this time, so I don’t need to juggle my bag and the sweating plastic box. The yellow stain on the carpet outside my door is still there. I’m surprised building management haven’t emailed me a please explain and decide it would be prudent to put stain remover on it before I eat and forget again. I drop the takeaway on the kitchen bench and search the cupboards under the sink for the pink-and-white spray bottle. I’m head down and bum up when I hear my front door click.
I try to leap to a less vulnerable position but fail and bang my head against the U-bend, so I sit on the kitchen floor instead, aiming the stain-remover bottle with one hand and rubbing my skull with the other.
‘Hello?’
No-one replies and I contemplate whether that is a good or a bad thing. I can’t remember if I let the front door swing shut behind me or left it open. Maybe I left it open and the draught from the fire door has made it swing shut. I strain, but now I can’t hear the whistle of the draught at all. It occurs to me this would make sense if my front door is shut. The problem is, I don’t know if there is someone on this side of it with me, or whether the click was the sound of them making their escape.
I get to my feet, holding the spray bottle in front of me with my fingers curled around the plastic trigger, and step through the kitchen toward the front door. As I pass the hallway that leads to my bedroom, I pause. Through the open door, the doona hanging over the foot of my bed is smooth and undisturbed. The striped shirt I’d put on this morning and discarded in favour of the white one I’m wearing now is still draped over the chair because I was too lazy to hang it up again. If someone is in there, I can’t hear them.
I turn my head to look back over the living room. I’m holding my breath and exhale through my mouth as silently as I can, suspecting I am being overly dramatic. I still have my trigger finger on the spray bottle. The coffee table is a mess, I notice. Newspapers, a wine glass, a dirty plate, my landscape book and my computer. If someone had been in here, they weren’t inclined to do any cleaning or steal my laptop. The tension drains out of me in a rush. I let my gun-arm fall, deflated, and check the front door. It’s locked.
I put the spray bottle on the kitchen bench, retrieve my dirty dishes from the coffee table and put them in the sink. I open a rosé and fork noodles onto a clean plate. If the intruder – if there ever was one – is still here, they can accost me over dinner. My overfilled glass sloshes as I dump it on the table, and I remember the yellow stain on the carpet. I take the spray bottle to the front door, get down on my hands and knees, and make a white fluffy circle of foam over the mark. I’m sitting back on my heels, pre-occupied with watching the bubbles burst and pop when I sense a shadow behind me. I try to swing around but the sudden movement and the proximity of a tall figure makes the corridor lurch and, before they can speak, I’m on the floor, my eyes squeezed shut and my fingers digging into the deep carpet pile.