18

BEN’S MAZDA was still parked in the train station’s carpark, so there was that to be thankful for. He drove us down Roxburgh Street and parked near the pine tree.

‘Look,’ he said, with sudden alarm.

I followed his pointed finger to the top floor of my building, where a light flickered in my lounge room window. The light swept the windows and moved to my bedroom; I had left the curtains open and I could see shadows creeping up the walls.

I was out of the car, and sprinting across the road into my building. Ben was shouting at me to stop. I ignored him and took the stairs two at a time. I reached the top landing before I realised that my front door was shut and my key was in my bag, which was still in the car with Ben. Adrenalin had hiked up my heart rate. I was shaking with rage and pounded on the door, screaming words that made no sense. Brown Cardigan’s front door opened. ‘Call the police,’ I shouted. His door slammed shut. I turned back. My door had opened, but I couldn’t see anyone.

I stepped in to hit the light switch — and my head snapped back, white hot pain searing the side of my face. I staggered, and a dark figure came forward and shoved me backwards; I landed hard on my arse and both elbows. Shockwaves reverberated to my shoulders. At least my head didn’t hit the deck. The figure leapt over my writhing body, and I heard feet galloping down the stairs.

Brown Cardigan opened his door. ‘I called them. They said they’d be a while.’

For an answer, I held my face and rolled around in pain.

‘I’ll get you a bag of peas,’ he said, and left me again.

There were more footsteps on the stairs. Ben crouched down beside me. ‘Bloody hell, Stella. You okay?’

He tried to lift my arm but I flinched and shrugged him off. ‘Never better.’ I rolled onto my knees and sat on my haunches. ‘Did you see who it was?’

‘No,’ Ben said. ‘I tried to take a photo with your phone but —’

‘But what?’

Brown came back and thwacked an icy plastic bag on my face. ‘Hold that there.’

I did as ordered, and realised I was still shaking.

‘The fucker saw me. He reached right in the window and pulled the phone out of my hand.’

‘Ben,’ I said, ‘where’s my phone?’

‘I’m trying to tell you. He chucked it somewhere.’

‘Where?’

‘It was dark. I didn’t see.’

I drew breath. ‘Go. And. Get. It.’

He fled downstairs.

Brown Cardigan made a tut-tut sound that I found intensely irritating. ‘You don’t think it will happen here,’ he was saying. ‘Not on the third floor.’

I was sitting up now — and everything hurt: my elbows, my arse, my face. Then Brown raised a finger to his lips and nodded towards Tania’s.

‘In there,’ he whispered, and he dashed inside his flat.

I braced myself. The door opened and Ben walked out carrying a bottle of Glenfiddich.

‘What do you think you are doing?’

‘It’s an emergency,’ Ben said. ‘Medicinal. I’m sure Tania won’t mind.’ A good point, and I felt especially entitled to the whisky, since I had tried for the entire day to get my hands on some. The fact that Ben stole it from Tania was the least of my concerns. In the landing light, I saw the blood drip from his nose.

‘Let’s get you inside,’ I said, and dropped the packet of peas on Brown’s doormat.

The place had been trashed. Every shelf cleared, every cupboard door opened. Books were strewn over the floor, papers tossed in every direction. In the middle of the lounge room was a pile of DVD covers — all opened, and every disc smashed and broken. I went into the bedroom. My mattress had been upended. I went back to the kitchen, where Ben was pouring three fingers into two jars. I leaned against a wall.

‘Get this down. It’ll help.’

I drank half the jar and rubbed my sore bottom, fearing it may never be fit for sitting on again.

‘I’ll look for your phone in the morning. You can’t see a thing now. It’s probably in someone’s garden. He kind of frisbeed it.’

A loud knocking scared the living Buddha out of both of us. Ben opened the door, with the chain on. ‘Only me,’ Phuong said. He let her in. She was in uniform.

‘Jesus, look at you.’ She came over for a closer look at my face.

‘I disturbed him. He gave me a whack and took off.’

‘Take anything?’

‘I can’t tell yet. Turned it over pretty good.’

She looked at the destruction on the floor. ‘Looks like he wanted to break things.’

Ben had been inspecting the doorframe. ‘Lock’s intact, wood’s not splintered.’ He stepped over the debris and started picking up bits of broken plastic.

‘You should go to Casualty,’ Phuong said.

‘Nah.’

‘On the safe —’

‘Nope.’

Phuong looked at Ben, exasperated. ‘And what happened to you?’

‘Same guy,’ he said.

‘Go wash your face.’

Immediately impelled by some impulse to obey Phuong, he shuffled along the wall to the bathroom. Phuong took out her phone and started taking photos. ‘You should make a report, when you feel up to it.’

‘I need to show you something.’ I took Adut’s exercise book from my handbag and handed it to her.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s a list of drug deals. Adut Chol kept a record of his customers — my guess is, to satisfy Cesarelli’s paranoia. Make sure he wasn’t keeping a stash of his own.’

‘Stella, this is evidence, part of a major murder investigation. Do you have any idea how many laws you’ve broken by knowingly holding on to this?’

‘I know. But just hear me out. I’m involved in this. Look.’ I rolled back the curling cardboard cover and revealed the last page. ‘My address.’

Phuong looked at it and frowned. ‘That’s not your number. That’s a two, not a zero. It’s flat twelve.’

‘Wait, what? No, that’s not possible.’ I inspected it closely. The zero vanished, the two was real: a half loop, the circle never joined, the little tail at the bottom. It was obvious now, like perceiving a Magic Eye image. It was impossible now to un-see it. ‘It’s Tania’s address.’

Sweet relief sent me into a convulsion of laughter. I’d lost sleep, and countless waking hours imagining hypothetical scenarios in which I was led handcuffed to a waiting police car. But Adut hadn’t found me out — the address he had written down was Tania’s. I stopped laughing. If I hadn’t been so paranoid, so self-obsessed, I would have read that address correctly. I would have handed the stupid book straight to the cops.

Phuong took the book and started flicking the pages. ‘We have to talk to Cesarelli,’ she was saying. ‘Bring him in tonight.’

‘You think Adut was selling drugs to Tania?’

She scratched her part, and smoothed the hair back down. ‘Not drugs. This is about money.’ She had her phone out, her thumb flicking across the screen. ‘Maybe he’s gone beyond drug dealing, diversified, expanded his operation.’ The phone at her ear: ‘Bruce? Yes. There’s a development with Brodtmann.’ She walked outside onto the landing, speaking rapidly into the phone.

Expanded beyond drug dealing to what, kidnapping? Adut was a silly delinquent, not a kidnapper. It seemed wildly unlikely. Phuong came back and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Pack a bag, okay?’

There was a pause. I realised Ben was in the room; he was going around with a garbage bag, picking up DVDs.

‘They might come back, maybe even tonight. They’ve searched your place for something. Who knows, maybe it’s this book they’re after.’ She waved it in my face like she was scolding a puppy. ‘Who knows you have it?’

Mabor? Mrs Chol? ‘No one.’

‘Well, you’re not safe here,’ Phuong said.

‘I’m not leaving.’

‘Ben, talk sense into her.’

Ben frowned at Phuong, like an Aztec virgin might look at a priest holding a knife. ‘Yes, I suppose. We … we can go to Woolburn.’

‘Out of the question.’ I folded my arms.

Phuong walked through the mess. ‘Stella, you should listen to Ben.’

‘I don’t believe anyone has ever uttered that sentence before.’

‘Take some advice for once and stay with your mother. At least for the long weekend. Get some pampering?’

I laughed. ‘If by pampering you mean scorn, then my mother’s it is.’ The adrenalin was waning, leaving me teary-eyed. It was a violation, the flat, the damage — not just the smack on the face.

Phuong took my arm. ‘I’ll help you pack.’

‘Fine. I’ll go. But it’s not pampering. Just saying.’

We went to my room, and together we pushed the mattress back on the frame. The doona was in a heap on the floor. I found the corners, ready to fling it out over the bed, when my laptop dropped to the floor. It had been hidden among the bedclothes. A little luck at last. Phuong pulled a sports bag down from the wardrobe and I threw some clothes in it. I put the laptop in a satchel and put the overnight bag on my shoulder. Ben was already packed. The whisky bottle stuck out of his backpack.

We walked out together, and Ben pulled the door shut behind us.

At street level, Phuong held me by the shoulders. ‘Go and be safe,’ she said. ‘And when you get back and things settle down, you are going to tell me everything — why you held on to that evidence. And whatever possessed you to think this was in any way about you.’

‘Yes, of course, we’ll have a long talk about things,’ I lied. And I followed Ben, who had walked up the street to where the Mazda was parked. My legs, all of a sudden, were unfit for the task of coordinated movement. He reached the car ahead of me and threw his backpack in the boot. He put the bottle on the passenger seat. I dumped the satchel and bag in the car.

Out the back window, the street was dark and still.

‘You all right?’

‘You owe me a phone,’ I said, and tipped some whisky into my mouth, felt the burn, its cleansing goodness. Ben gunned it, and we fishtailed up Roxburgh Street. For a while I watched the sleeping suburbs go by. I wondered if I’d ever see Tania alive again.