Chapter 2

 

Perth

Present-day.

 

 

Ewen walked into the kitchenette. “Morning, B. Watcha got?”

Without taking her gaze off the jug, Bernadette rolled her wrist and handed over a group photo.

Ewen recognised Francis Hogmyre but not all of the ten Asian men and women who stood on either side of the Caucasian elder. Francis, the stock-investing powerhouse. Mr Recluse, one of the wealthiest people in Australia. Wealth. The word reminded Ewen to check his Golden Windlass shares when back at his desk. “What’s with Hogmyre? Has he enough money now to form another United Nations?”

The jug clicked. While pouring, two drops landed on Bernadette’s hand. “Frig!” She flicked her fingers. “You realise a newspaper is owned by tight-arses when the broken Nespresso doesn’t get replaced.”

She wiped her hand on his shirt sleeve. She had a strange effect on him, her extroverted personality so honest he found it refreshing. The stout farm girl, whose rounded face, sandy hair and rural smile perfectly matched her country and western twang…country enough for her as a teenager to land a gig in a television ad for sheep drench.

“UN all right.” She snatched back the picture. “The ultimate bleeding heart liberal trying to fix the world’s woes.”

“Doing what?” Everybody knew Francis Hogmyre titbits. Winding Bernadette up; a first-rate start to the day.

“Jesus, what do you do at your desk all day, sleep?”

“Enlighten me, B.”

“I assumed you were. Not practising yoga these days? Just howling at the moon like the rest of us, huh.” His bemused smile and lack of bite made her sigh. “Of all the other charity events he’s ever sponsored, decades ago he took disadvantaged kids in. Orphans from Asian countries. Kids who, supposedly, didn’t have a chance. Brought them back to Perth. Educated them and returned them to their birth country. Bright sparks. Most found their way into politics, law, or finance. And, might I add, are kicking goals for their countries. Hogmyre was an orphan, and you can’t knock him for helping the poor souls. But I can knock the prick for not giving interviews. No comment being his favourite comment. The guy’s a blockbuster movie but all the public ever sees is the trailer. When you’re a billionaire, you’re public property as far as I’m concerned.”

She slurped her coffee. “Anyway, what’ya working on?”

“The coup in Thailand.”

“That’s not work, Shrivel Dick. That’s a primary school assignment. You have to travel to Thailand to report on Thailand.”

“Pay for my airfares and I’ll go. No, wait. I’ll stay here and annoy you.”

“You’re welcome. But stay too close to me and you might actually snag a girlfriend.”

Ewen couldn’t help taking the bait. “I have a girlfriend, as you know.”

“Girlfriend. How could a good-looking blond like yourself possibly bed that sergeant of the fun police? She’s so angry her face looks like a stop sign with teeth.” She handed over the photo and rolled her eyes as she strolled out. “Keep it. It’ll remind you that people actually do achieve success in life.”

He squeezed his chamomile tea bag and dropped it in the bin. Chamomile tea smelt like a distant swamp, so it wasn’t his first choice for a morning pick-me-up, but he’d persevered because a colleague kept insisting the herb’s calming effect would do him good.

He smiled to himself. Good on them.

His smile held as he crossed the foyer, pushed open the newsroom door and walked into the clatter of a successful tabloid. The Western Times newspaper prided itself as an independent. So independent, it nearly didn’t exist. Luckily, three elderly businessmen noticed the declining trend in e-book sales, followed Warren Buffet’s lead on newspapers and rescued the Western Times at a basement price. From there, similar to giving CPR, they watched the paper cough and splutter until it finally started breathing. More than breathing, their newspaper turned a reasonable profit.

The paper occupied the two top floors of the Hitchcliff, a five-storey renovator’s delight, a heritage-listed Federation brick and iron building muscled by skyscrapers on either side and rear-ended by a multistorey car park. The poor old Hitchcliff was always in shadow except in December when the sun cooked it for one hour each side of noon. The workroom consisted of open-plan desks and no privacy. Windows formed three walls. The southern view took in the CBD’s Adelaide Terrace, while east and west stared into skyscraper bellies. At the southern window, overlooking the Terrace, stood the editor’s glass-fronted office. No privacy there either, because even though the blinds worked the editor rarely closed them. Much to the reporters’ disgust.

Ewen sat at his desk, central to the room, opened his laptop, brought up a photo his contact had sent from Bangkok and started knocking the article together.

Thailand. He’d loved the place ever since his first visit fifteen years ago and often wished he were back there. And not just to catch up with friends or contacts. This military coup was comparable to no other, and the country had suffered through a few. Different reasons had sparked different coups, and this time Buddhist monks raged alongside the protesters. He studied the image his contact had sent. Central to a jostling Thai crowd carrying placards and bamboo sticks, stood a monk, a red cowboy scarf pulled over his mouth and nose. The reason for the monk’s anonymity: a handgun alongside his thigh. What a picture, he thought. What a nuthouse our northern neighbours are sometimes.

Thoughts of Asia turned his attention to the photo Bernadette had given him. Out of the ten Asian faces, one was Thai, but which? Their ages? Anywhere between early twenties and early forties. He recognised Zeya from Burma. And only because Fortune, the Australian bank, had collapsed. This lack of private and limited public details showed Bernadette was right: the Hogmyre family had always managed to dodge the limelight. Francis Hogmyre. How old? Roughly seventy? Rugged in a sense: thick, grey hair, strong jaw, heavy brow, no glasses, sunny eyes and confident mouth.

That confidence triggered the opposite in Ewen—the stock market had just opened and he needed to check the damage on the Tradewin’s platform. One glance at his Golden Windlass shares clamped his mind and drifted his attention to the blue tape stuck over the laptop’s camera lens. He stared blankly at it for thirty seconds.

Even after he’d turned off his computer, he still had to deal with his face reflected on the black screen and the criticism set deep inside the eyes. Criticism he shut off by folding the laptop and going for coffee.

 

*

 

When Ewen left the Silver Arms Hotel the sun sat low in the west, and although skyscrapers shadowed the CBD, the city’s cement retained the day’s heat like a crockpot.

Friday night, and even though suits and skirts had crowded into every watering hole along the Terrace—the unseasonal weather herding the city’s inhabitants towards aircon and ale—Ewen could only sink two middies with his work crew; his hot share tip had derailed his day. He’d headed home.

On his walk towards the mall, he couldn’t help noticing the smell. The city reeked like a backpackers’ dorm, the pong so human it seemed as if every drop of sweat, every drop of homeless peoples’ urine and every drop of spilt beer had scented the doorways, side alleys and bus stops, scents that thickened as the unseasonal hot spell dragged on. Perth needed rain he concluded, water to flush away what the council workers couldn’t.

Upon entering the packed Hay Street Mall, he stared up at the web of Christmas decorations. They didn’t generate any joy because he couldn’t stop inwardly berating himself about Golden Windlass.

What a bastard. Receivership. Delisted. I brought four grands worth two weeks ago at two cents. They’d jumped to three cents. At three cents, I should’ve sold and pocketed two grand. But I didn’t. I got greedy hoping they’d fly to ten cents and I’d make a killing. Idiot. I’m down ten grand for the year and it’s a bull market.

Two teenage girls exiting David Jones bumped into him. No scent, no perfume, nothing to hide; flawless. They excused themselves, laughing and swinging their designer shopping bags as they glided away. He loved their strut, or more to the point their black skirts and arses, the waves in their long blonde hair, the way they were beautifully lost in adolescence.

When the girls turned off into an arcade, his misery returned.

Golden Windlass.

On his way past the bronze Percy Button handstand sculpture, he rubbed it affectionately. “Yeah, you and me both upended.”

At a lunch bar, he bought the smallest bottle of water possible, guzzled half and kept legging it west up Hay Street towards home. A busker played electric guitar. Ewen enjoyed the buzz it produced. He dropped a two-dollar coin into the case. Twenty steps on his buzz faded and the crowded footpath closed in.

Near His Majesty’s Theatre, he eyed the shops across the road: Apple, Oroton, Prada. A woman, no more than thirty, sunglasses on, strutted from Gucci into the backseat of a double-parked silver limousine. Money. He slammed the empty water bottle into a rubbish bin and kept marching, told himself once again to walk away from his feelings, to distance himself before flash anger morphed into a mood. He lacked the will though; a yearning existed, a compulsion to flog along the footpath like a skinhead barging right on through.

At the Kosciusko adventure shop, he slowed to read a closing down sign painted across the street window. “A closing down sale within a city of Christmas decorations. The whole town’s closing down,” he mumbled.

Along the street’s gentle incline, towards what he affectionately called the bogan end of the street, he stepped into the newsagency, greeted Chen the owner and paid for a slikpik and a birthday card. Inner-city living; at least he wasn’t far from home.

On the Mitchell Freeway overpass, he peered over the handrail and paused for a moment. Cars disappeared beneath his feet, their road noise sucked into silence, one after the other, four lanes of continuous mayhem, muted. The bushfire plume still dominated the South Perth skyline. Although most Perth residents now ignored the fire—it raged one hundred kilometres away, moving west towards the sea—Ewen still watched on in fascination. The grey plume’s ability to block out blue sky and dwarf any South Perth high-rise, tree or tower reminded him of the Himalayas—too big and too beautiful to be true. He gazed back from where he’d walked, to the tallest skyscrapers, the setting sun gilding their crowns. Beyond the CBD, the Darling Ranges dominated the eastern horizon, a blue-green smudge in the hot evening light, the Blob advancing towards the city.

In West Perth, he turned left and crossed the road into his street, Government Avenue, noting how the closer he walked to the parkland across from his apartment, the louder global warming sounded—cicadas singing into the night. He knew European tourists found the insects a novelty, but now they’d become novel for Aussies—on the increasingly hot nights in a few brightly lit suburbs the shrill echoed as constant as tinnitus. The cicada species responsible for the noise, the males’ mating call, was most probably Cyclochila australasiae, commonly known as the green grocer. He knew this technical jargon because he’d done his research and concurred with the scientific community; it is one of the loudest fucking insects in the world.

Jacarandas lined both footpaths, their seasonal purple flowers long gone, burnt by the heat. Grasstrees, like crowned bollards, grew along the median strip. His side of Government Avenue housed modern office complexes and medium rise apartments, and only three old buildings similar to his remained. Opposite, the grassy park sloped up to the heritage-listed Hale House, an impressive red brick building built in 1925 as a school manor. It now housed the premier and cabinet room, the electoral education centre and the Western Australian constitutional centre.

As always, before Ewen opened his street-front gate, he turned to the three flag poles in the park. Each pole flew one flag: the Australian, the West Australian and the Indigenous Australian.

He saluted them all.

He pushed on his gate and felt it pull away from its hinge. As ritual demanded, he lifted it back onto the lock to close it. He eyed his front door, took two steps towards it, and bowled an imaginary full toss across the tiny paved courtyard. “The share market. Hit for bloody six.”

At least his unit remained profitable.

During Australia’s greatest mining boom, his small, West Perth Victorian residence housed a gold exploration company. After the boom crashed, real estate investors organised a full inside reno for the aged building, splitting it into two apartments while still retaining the heritage façade. Luck staying on the building’s side found the refurbishment completed before the bank moved in and the residence became another foreclosure statistic of the Chinese credit crunch, GFC2. At that time in Perth’s history, Ewen boasted spare cash and work, the apartment’s price was manageable and the bank wanted to offload. Time to grow up—he’d pounced.

A black, longhaired burmilla shot out the opened doorway. Ewen waited, holding the door ajar as the cat patrolled the courtyard. A car horn blared. The animal froze, eyes peeling. The warm, heavy air added bass to a passing vehicle exhaust. Ewen stepped from under the porch eave and stared at a ten-storey apartment block that dominated his neighbourhood. Air conditioners hummed like drones. He clicked his fingers. “Moggsie.”

Quick as a kitten, the cat arrowed inside towards the fridge; undoubtedly an inner-city cat.

Ewen switched on the reverse cycle and showered off his sweat. As soon as he slotted himself into the white leather couch, Moggsie jumped on his lap and took control. The animal’s purrs vibrated through his hand. Ewen clicked the wall TV’s remote. News 24. He churned through the channels, and did a complete lap back to 24. The Thai coup headlined. The Royal Thai Army, having dissolved parliament and declared martial law, had banned all political activities, suppressed protesters and censored media. Some politicians were missing, presumably under house arrest. For a country that had experienced nineteen coups in the last eighty-odd years, it appeared stock standard except for the gun-toting monk. Monks periodically performed protective ceremonies for demonstrators, thus their involvement in the protest. They themselves demonstrated sometimes, but mostly in non-violent ways. He asked himself, why the gun? Just too surreal. The news anchor went on to describe the Thailand Stock Exchange’s dramatic free fall. At least he didn’t have any shares there.

Moggsie’s engine throttled back. Sure enough, the courtyard gate creaked open, prompting the animal to jump off Ewen’s lap, pad across the tiles to the front door and arch its back in readiness as the lock clicked and the wooden door opened a touch.

A slender foot in a black high-heeled shoe inched through the gap. A girl’s voice flirted with the cat, “Hi, Moggsie. Don’t dart out.” Janet slipped through the doorway, hugging an arch file to her black shirt.

Everything always black, mused Ewen. Black pants, black shoes, short black hair.

“You haven’t fixed the gate yet,” she quickly mentioned. “What a crap day. I don’t know what’s worse; representing arseholes in court or losing their trial. Have you fed the beast?”

She untangled the cat from her ankles and dropped him on Ewen’s lap. “You have. Well, he’s hanging around me, hinting he wants something.”

“He adores you.”

“I reckon he adores food more.”

“Here.” Ewen offered her an envelope. “Happy birthday.”

She dropped her folder on the breakfast bar. “Ta.” She pecked him on the cheek, took the present and opened it.

“Ewen. Let me tell you, a foil, a Lotto ticket and a card doesn’t equate to love.”

“You enjoy a smoke.”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“You still enjoy a smoke, though.”

“And a slikpik?”

“You might win.”

“The odds are roughly eight million to one. Is that what our winning relationship has grown to? An eight million to one longshot?”

While she eyed him, Ewen acknowledged that Bernadette’s comparison came close; a stop sign with teeth.

“Want to go for a birthday meal?” he asked.

“Where? Hungry Jacks? Have you booked?”

“If you don’t, just say so. No need to act the bitch.”

Moggsie kneaded Ewen’s shorts.

“Bbbbitch!”

The cat stopped.

“Well, I’ll show you bitch.” She grabbed the foil off the kitchen table, strutted to the door, opened it and turned back. “Smoke all right. I’m off to Joan’s for one.” Her eyes twigged. She strutted back to the table, snatched the Lotto ticket and steamed out the door.

The cat resumed its kneading.

“You don’t look surprised, Moggsie. Only took two minutes. All too common now, hey.”

Far from feeling uncomfortable, a quiet solitude settled, a contentment that floats to the surface after resignation had been reached. He cupped both hands over the animal’s spine. The cat idled its engine. Janet’s perfume dominated the room. For some strange reason, the smell reminded him of napalm in his favourite movie, Apocalypse Now.

Instead of spending another Friday night alone, he phoned his best friend, opened the front door and stepped into night air as balmy as a Bali evening.