26

Teddy cried all the way back home: silent, endless tears, sliding down her face as she stared out of the window as grassland turned to industrial estate turned to suburbia. She did not want to talk about it; Alice just did what she was good at and drove.

They went back to Alice’s house. Teddy washed her face, and slapped her cheeks like in the movies, in case it helped. Alice had tea and a blanket for her when she was done, and together, they did a little data entry and didn’t talk about anything until three o’clock, when Alice said, ‘We shouldn’t have gone.’

‘Choker told us not to,’ Teddy said. ‘And we didn’t listen.’

‘No,’ Alice agreed, then added, ‘I better get you home.’

It was cold and bleak outside, the clouds lying heavy in the sky. Alice started the car and said, ‘I love you.’

‘I know,’ Teddy said.

They were almost all the way to her apartment before Teddy said, ‘How’s Jun doing without me around?’

It had been a lot for him to hear that Alice’s colleague had died of a gunshot wound, and that Teddy had been injured. Jun had never seen a gun in person, and he didn’t understand what had happened. As far as he knew, Teddy was in something about publicity and the government; it was why sometimes she went along on Alice’s chauffeuring jobs with people they couldn’t talk about. Teddy told Jun what she told the cops: it was a robbery gone wrong, she had thought she could take the gun off him, but clearly she couldn’t. Her grief was real enough, and he believed that.

He was relieved that Teddy was no longer living on their couch – partly, Alice knew, because he was worried that Teddy was still a target for whoever killed Art – but he would never say so. When he’d embraced Teddy on her last night there, he had thanked her genuinely for looking after his Alice. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to support her through the pain of losing Art alone,’ he told her.

‘He says your gin and tonics have a better ratio,’ Alice said now. ‘But he’s mad you didn’t start your own profile on the Netflix account and used his instead. His algorithm is all fucked up now.’

‘It was much funnier than having my own,’ Teddy said, and smiled, just a bit. Alice had missed that expression of Teddy’s. She felt helpless before Teddy’s guilt and grief.

Teddy was thinking about Art, and she was also thinking about what Nina had said, about Art owing money. She got out her phone, and called the last person Art mentioned when he was alive: Dan Tang, apparent Olympic hopeful worth thirty thousand dollars of Art’s money, son of Dutch, and, somebody Teddy had known more intimately than she really intended to, one or ten times. She rang him now, tapping the dashboard anxiously, and he answered with enthusiasm, ‘Teddy! It’s a weekday. Is this a booty call?’

‘Fuck off,’ she said. ‘It’s a serious call.’

‘Well, I’m busy anyway,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have been free. I can’t just come on your whims, you know. Though, actually …’

He wasn’t on speakerphone, but Alice could hear enough to roll her eyes.

‘Dan,’ Teddy said, desperately, ‘please.’

He paused. ‘Sorry. You go.’

‘It’s about Art. I’m sure you heard that he died.’

‘I did. My father sent flowers to Choker.’

‘Jesus, he did what?’

‘It’s polite! Choker’s done it when we’ve lost one of our men.’

‘He wasn’t just “one of our men”, all right? He was my friend. And do you want to guess who we were talking about right before he died?’

‘You flatter me.’

‘Well, he said he owed you money, and do you know what? His sister had some unsavoury visitors who were knocking at her door, saying he wasn’t really dead, and if he was, she owed them now instead.’

‘And you think I did that?’

Teddy was silent.

‘I find that very offensive, Teddy. I know he’s dead for sure, Dad checked. And come on, you know me. I’m not going to hit up his sister for money.’

‘How much did he owe you?’

He sighed. ‘It started at thirty, there was interest, he’s paid a lot off, we’re still at around ten.’

The ‘friends’ at Nina’s had said it was sixty thousand dollars; both Dan and Art had said thirty for the number he owed. Dan was also right: she didn’t really think he would hit up Nina.

‘Where were you the day he died?’ she asked.

‘Are you kidding me? We’re friends.’

‘Listen, just tell me where you were, so I don’t have to think about it being you.’

‘Fucking hell. Let me check my phone calendar.’ He paused. ‘It says I was with Charlie – oh, I remember. Well, Art died over near where you live, right? I was actually very far away from there, at Werribee Zoo.’

‘That sounds like bullshit.’

‘You hurt my feelings when you say things like this.’

‘Do you have proof?’

‘Is my word not enough?’

‘Would mine be?’

‘Of course,’ he said, then he laughed. ‘No, you’re right. I don’t have the tickets, okay? I was taking somebody on a little Melbourne highlights tour.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Are you jealous?’

Teddy hung up. She didn’t have it in her to push back against Dan and his perpetual disarming of everybody around him.

‘Do you believe him?’ Alice asked.

‘Maybe,’ Teddy said. ‘I’m going to ask Rusty to check this up, anyway.’

She hadn’t even finished typing up her text to Rusty when she received a picture: a receipt from Dan, with a $78.99 purchase at the Werribee Zoo gift shop, half an hour before Art had died. Told you, he wrote. I bought her a giraffe. It was overpriced, but it worked. I also claimed it on tax.

She checked: from the zoo to where Art died, one hour and twenty-three minutes.

‘Well, at least there’s someone we can strike out,’ Alice said, pulling up outside Teddy’s apartment.

Teddy got out of the car, stretched, and flinched as the muscles in her shoulder screamed back at her. Alice leaned across the passenger seat and called out, ‘You take it easy, okay? Rest up.’

‘No problem,’ Teddy said, and yawned. ‘Consider it done.’

~

Alice picked her girl up from kinder, went home, and made curry for dinner. Cherry told her she wasn’t allowed to use ginger or pepper because they were too spicy, and Alice lied and told her she would never, and then gave her a job: to watch the rice cooker until the switch flipped. Jun came home just as dinner was ready, and marvelled afresh that Alice always timed dinner so well, and she hugged him and again did not tell him that she watched him come home from work on her phone, worried that he might meet a bad time on his way home, maybe from somebody just like her.

While he was washing the dishes, Alice came in and said, ‘I have to go out for a bit for work. Just a short drive. I’ll be back in about ninety minutes, maybe less.’

‘Now?’ Jun said.

She hugged him, kissed Cherry on her soft little head and drove away to Nick’s house.

~

Rusty had already given her the address in Brunswick a week ago. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I hate the fucking Chronicle. The whole paper is full of the types of pricks who would deadname me if I ever got in the news. Go tear him to pieces.’

‘There will be no tearing,’ Alice said sweetly. ‘A single conversation.’

‘Don’t make me send you all his articles. You’ll want his head by the end of it. Nick’s fucking awful.’

Alice had read up on him anyway after that. He mostly ran profiles of businesspeople, finance dickswingers, crypto losers. He savaged some and extolled others. There was, to Alice’s surprise, a piece on Darwin, for which they had eaten luxurious food and nothing of any substance had been written. Rusty had been correct; by two o’clock in the morning, blinking into her phone, she liked Nick even less than she already had.

The traffic was thin this time of night, and Alice stopped by a McDonald’s on the way to get an extra-large coffee before arriving on Nick’s street, which dead-ended onto the train line. There was no white Subaru in the driveway, but there was a dull grey sedan that sure looked like an insurance rental. Alice knew he had a wife, no kids. She also knew the wife worked night shifts this week. She sat for a few minutes on the other side of the road, then took her coffee, walked up the drive and leaned hard against his car.

The car alarm wailed, and Nick was out almost instantly, barefoot and angry, turning it off. ‘How the fuck do you know where I live?’

‘That’s a bit rich coming from somebody who tailed me three separate times,’ Alice said, looking wounded. ‘When you cornered me on the clifftop, there was nobody for miles. Here, all your neighbours are around. I can assure you that whatever you’re scared of is not going to happen.’

‘What, like you pulling a gun on me and getting some drunk fuck to run me off the road?’

‘That drunk fuck probably saved your life,’ Alice said. ‘A witness worked in your favour, not mine.’

‘You can’t just come here and threaten me.’

‘I don’t think you’re listening,’ Alice said. ‘Anyway, now it’s time to talk. Do you want to go inside?’

‘No way.’

Alice shrugged. ‘All right. We can talk out here.’

It was cold, but Nick was sweating. ‘I don’t have anything to say to you.’

‘I think we could talk about what you know,’ Alice said. ‘You knew something, otherwise you wouldn’t have come after me.’

‘I didn’t know anything. It was a job I was sent on. Clearly it was a bust. A waste of time and fucking money.’

‘You seemed pretty confident at the time.’

‘That’s part of my job too.’

‘So what changed? Why haven’t I seen you since?’

‘What changed is that there is no story.’

‘And so I was driving nobody around? Despite your insistence that I was driving somebody extremely well known?’

‘I guess you were. After all, I didn’t get any pictures, and you broke my camera as well as my car. Where should I send the invoice, by the way?’

‘Right up your ass?’

‘Oh, so I don’t get your details even though you found mine?’

‘Respectfully,’ she said, with all the disrespect she could muster, ‘you started it.’

‘You should leave before I call the police.’

‘So you don’t know anything?’

‘Does it look like I do?’ he said, spreading his arms out. ‘Have I printed anything? Has anyone?’

‘They have not,’ Alice admitted.

‘There you go,’ he said. ‘There’s no story. Now leave me the fuck alone.’

He went back inside. Alice considered keying his car, but instead just placed her half-empty coffee cup on the roof of the rental, tipped it over, went to her own car, and drove away.

A few streets further along, she pulled over and messaged Rusty: I know I shot it all those weeks ago, but is there a way for you to get back into Nick’s phone if you already did once? Can you find out if he called anyone in the last few minutes?

She drove home. By the time she arrived, there was a reply: In the time between him making his first phone call and me getting the number he rang, it has been delisted, and I can’t find out who owned it in the first place.

And Alice thought: Interesting.