From the front of a car parked further down Pitt Street, someone else watched the Audi roar away.

He’d made some inquiries, found out where the woman worked, and waited. It had paid off. He fingered the camera strap at his neck. Something familiar about the woman still gnawed.

He studied the images he’d snapped. Up close, through the zoom, he recognised something almost Chinese about the shape of her eyes and in the bridge of her nose.

How had he missed it?

The vice squeezing his insides loosened, breath came easier, relief trickled.

He slipped the camera strap over his head, rested back in his seat. That must be the familiarity: she was Asian.

A thought crashed through his calm.

Perhaps she spoke Mandarin and had overheard a con­versation. Perhaps she knew these girls or one of his associates and had been told more than was safe.

He’d already had Wendy Chan killed to protect his business. He’d been surprised to discover that he hadn’t felt anything – no guilt, fear or regret. He’d issued an order and his team had carried it out – no fuss, no emotion.

It was like they’d done it before.

He loosened his collar, touched sweat as he brushed his thumb along the curve of his neck. The air hung thick. How well did he know the men he worked with? Were they more experienced than he thought?

He brought the camera close, switched his mind back to the woman, focused on solutions.

He could have her killed.

A sudden shiver, the tickle of a thrill…

Or perhaps he could put her to work.

With a slim fingertip he traced the line of the woman’s jaw, imagined how it would look in a bridle.

He punched a name into the dash, stared across the road at United English.

It made perfect sense. She was an English teacher and she taught at the school where the suicidal bitch made her last stand. He could watch her now.

‘Need to arrange a meeting,’ he said, when the call connected. ‘There’s some rubbish that needs dumping before it starts to smell.’

鬼

The lolly selection arrived late afternoon. Justin pushed back his chair. The baskets on the table contained a variety of cheap sweets, the type he used to find in twenty-cent bags as a boy. He selected some strawberries-and-creams and a couple of milk bottles. With two fingers he pulled the strawberry cap off a lolly and chewed it slowly. The sugar worked on his blood and his mood.

Justin took in the trading room filled with hard-faced men, heavy drinkers and gamblers full of confidence and cock. All except Salvo, the guy stockpiling pink musks by his hard drive. He’d eat them later, four at a time in sets of five. Twenty musks an afternoon seemed Salvo’s only vice. The guy was a serious weirdo, what with his lolly habit and love for pink shirts and jewellery. He also brought in his own salami and occasionally butterfly cupcakes, complete with cream and wings. Salvo insisted his wife made them, but Justin had met Salvo’s wife and she didn’t seem the baking type. He suspected Salvo liked to whip them up himself after work. Seriously strange. But genuine. And perhaps just a little too innocent for his age.

Justin had better things to do in his non-working hours. Last night, though, he’d been unable to sleep. The images he’d viewed on his day off had seared his mind like a torch. It had all seemed so real. The thought brought acid to his throat. He had a wife and a daughter and he absolutely loved them both. But love changes. In recent times, Justin’s lust for his wife had turned to platonic affection, which had since turned to mutual boredom and distance. It seemed they both agreed to tolerate their marriage for the sake of convenience and their daughter. It wasn’t difficult to play-act happy families; how many of the men in the trading room did the same thing? Justin watched Salvo head out into the corridor, his newspaper in his hand. Perhaps the only guy on the floor who didn’t pretend. The guy was heading to the bathroom to hang a dump. He’d taken the paper with him and he didn’t care who knew.

Salvo and Justin had very different relationships with toilet cubicles.

Justin recognised a familiar stab of jealousy. Salvo appeared so full of hope: new job, new wife, new goals. No kids. It would only go downhill from here. Soon enough, Salvo would find himself locked into the never-ending cycle of debt repayments, supermarket shopping, nappy changing, kick-to-kick in the park, sock folding, bed making and night after night of reality television. Suck the soul out of you, suck the life out of your marriage, suck the sex out of your bed. That is what happens.

That was why Justin needed another outlet. Why he’d found himself turning to movies. His wife was the mother of his child – he couldn’t ask her to fulfil his fantasies. How could he look at her the same way if she did? No. What he needed was unknown, unnamed bodies; canvases for his dark desires. He needed escape from the reality of this dull, dogged life and the chance to find some peace.

He had to get some more.