Rory

The things Rory loved about his job: the guaranteed weekly wage, the physical aspect (a desk job was his definition of hell), and the fact that a difficult customer only lasted as long as the particular job. If the air-con unit was defective on installation, it was the boss’s problem to chase it up with the manufacturer. Rory used to run his own business. He knew all about defective goods, squeezed profit margins and, very unfortunately, bankruptcy.

The boss was already waiting outside the house, sitting in his van, scrolling through his phone. Simon was five years younger than Rory, still in his thirties. That was one thing Rory didn’t like about his job: being ordered around by someone younger and less experienced.

‘It’s a fact of life,’ Rachel said, rather annoyingly, whenever he complained. ‘Part of getting older is putting up with younger people telling us what to do.’

Rory didn’t like to think of them ‘getting older’; he liked to think of them as they were in their twenties. Rachel and Rory. R & R. Those early years had been fun, free of responsibility, free of fear.

He parked his ute behind the boss’s van, leaving an appropriate space to navigate the equipment. Today’s installation involved a particularly large and expensive unit. To be fair, the house it would service was large, too, as were the neighbouring properties. According to the quote Rory had open on his phone, there were six bedrooms, three living areas and a study.

The van door slammed as Simon got out. He greeted Rory with a curt nod: he saved his people skills for customers. They walked down the slight incline towards the front door. Simon rang the bell and Rory positioned himself a few steps behind, so that the woman who opened the door – it was almost always a woman, occasionally a child – would know straight away who was in charge. He and Simon wore black polo shirts with the company name and logo printed in
red.

‘Oh.’ It was a woman. A frowning woman who clearly wasn’t expecting them. She was in her early thirties, blonde hair in a messy ponytail, wearing black jeans and a green loose-knit jumper. ‘Oh, shit! You’re the air-con crowd, right? I forgot you were coming today. Shit!’

The muscles on the back of Simon’s neck tensed. ‘Sorry, Mrs Cabrera. Didn’t you receive a reminder text last night?’

Mel, Simon’s wife, ran the office. Rory liked Mel a lot more than he liked Simon. She would undoubtedly get the icy treatment if she’d forgotten to send the text.

The woman sighed, then glanced uneasily over her shoulder. ‘There was a text, you’re right. But last night was a long time ago.’

‘If you need to go out, we can lock up the house when we’re done,’ Simon offered.

‘It’s not that. I’m here on my own, Matias has gone for a run. The baby is in her highchair. We’re smack in the middle of breakfast.’ She glanced over her shoulder again, towards the open door at the end of the cavernous hall, presumably leading to the kitchen and the unsupervised baby.

‘You don’t need to worry about us, Mrs Cabrera,’ Simon said, in a slightly condescending tone. ‘Do what you need to do with the baby. Rory can get started upstairs, if that’s okay with you. I’ll be mainly working outside.’

Typical Simon. Downplaying the woman’s concerns, and making sure that he avoided the shitty parts of the job. ‘Upstairs’ was shorthand for the attic, with its guaranteed dust and trapped air. Given that this job was an upgrade, it involved both the removal of the old ducting and the installation of the new stuff. The house wasn’t even that old – maybe fifteen or twenty years? The truth was the old ducting probably didn’t need to be replaced at all. That was another thing he didn’t like about Simon. The upselling. The dishonesty.

The woman stepped back from the door. ‘Call me Ariana. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me. The attic hatch is in the walk-in robe off the master bedroom.’

Rory slipped off his work boots and padded upstairs in his socks to scope the place out. The master bedroom was easy to find, an enormous room at the front of the house. He tried not to look too closely at the unmade king-size bed, or the night clothes that were spooled on the floor. The walk-in robe was bigger than his own master bedroom; Mrs Cabrera – Ariana – was the owner of an astonishing collection of shoes. Some loose jewellery – a diamond ring, a gold bangle, large feathery earrings – were resting on one of the sets of drawers and he automatically averted his eyes. It made him uncomfortable to see people’s valuables exposed like that. It made him afraid: if anything were to go missing, he would get the blame.

Rory went back downstairs to fetch the stepladder, his tools and some drop sheets to catch the dust and debris that would inevitably come out along with the old ducting. He put his boots back on at the front door. The baby’s chatter echoing from the kitchen prompted a wave of nostalgia.

Outside, Simon’s voice carried down the side of the house, where he was decommissioning the existing unit and talking on the phone at the same time. Simon spent half the day on the phone, answering every time it rang instead of having it forwarded to Mel in the office. On a personal level, Rory found it irritating when tradies engaged in extended phone calls while he was paying for their time.

The ladder required careful manoeuvring, especially on the turn of the stairs. He arranged the drop sheets to protect the plush carpet in the bedroom and stairwell. Finally, he ascended the ladder, pushed in the hatch and used his torch to check the attic space. Rolls of foam insulation, as expected. The torchlight glinted off the silver foil of the existing ducting and illuminated millions of dust mites. It was a shallow space, barely enough room to crawl on all fours. The floor was not reinforced, which meant he would have to balance his weight on the joists. Nothing new there.

Holding the torch with his teeth, he hoisted himself upwards, into the dark, airless cavity. He’d begin on the side of the house where the external unit was located. That would give him a good idea of the current layout, and whether they should follow it or devise something new.

Tucked behind the first loop of ducting was a white plastic container with a blue lid. Hidden from view from the hatch, yet relatively close at hand. A storage box, probably containing Christmas decorations or old documents. He’d have to move it. At best it would get in the way. At worst it presented a hazard: if nudged off the joist, it might end up going clean through the plasterboard. Rory reached over the ducting to test how heavy it was. The answer was very; all the more reason to move it somewhere safer. He placed the torch back between his teeth, grunting as he strained to negotiate the weight of the box and the tight space. In the process, the lid glanced off one of the overhead battens and slid off, landing soundlessly on the insulation foam.

‘Fuck me.’

Rory found himself staring at the contents of the box, at the neat bundles of banknotes. Wads and wads of hundred-dollar and fifty-dollar bills. Fuck! What kind of person kept vast amounts of cash in the attic? Did Ariana and her husband have an aversion to banks? What kind of business was Matias in?

Rory became aware of voices, muffled but with an unmistakeable urgency. The husband had presumably returned from his morning run. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Acting on a self-preservation instinct he felt deep in his gut, he hefted the box back over the ducting, to approximately the position he’d found it in. The action strained the muscles in his chest and arms. More sounds, footsteps thumping up the stairs. He managed to get the lid on, clicked it into place. He was shimmying backwards, his breath thundering in his ears, when he heard someone addressing him from below.

‘Hey? Hello? Can you come out a minute? I need a word.’

Rory was out before he’d finished speaking. The man was wearing a grey running shirt with sweat marks under the arms. Tanned skin, flushed from exertion. Matias Cabrera.

‘Hi, mate,’ Rory said, aiming for a carefree, amiable tone. His own sweat trickled down his back, making a jagged trail between his shoulder blades. He felt both very present within and very distant from his surroundings. Act normal. He had not seen a box full of cash. He was not in the middle of a scene from Breaking Bad. For want of something to do with his hands, he reached down to flick some dust from his jeans.

‘Look, this is awkward, but we’re not ready for this just yet,’ Matias Cabrera said in a firm tone. ‘I need a shower and to get ready for work. All my clothes are in here. Can you and your mate go somewhere for an hour? Get a coffee or some breakfast? That’s all I need to get my shit together.’

An hour to have a shower, get dressed, and find somewhere else to hide all that cash. Maybe it was takings from a business, being kept from the taxman. The alternative – drug money or crime proceeds – brought a rush of blood to his head.

‘No problem, mate.’ He went heavy on his Irish accent. If there was ever a time to fall back on that hated, inaccurate stereotype – the gormless Irishman – this was it. ‘Haven’t even started up there. Not much space from the little I saw. A cup of coffee should help with the claustrophobia.’