13

ROCK WITH You had been easy to find. It was the first two floors of an apartment tower, billed as luxury, modern, serviced. The climbing wall was tall, mostly straight except for random scary slants and was dotted with faux-rock-like objects, onto which mad Saturday-morning urban adventurers were grabbing hold. The wall faced a vast window onto the street, affording witnesses in the building across the road an uninterrupted view of folks plummeting to their death. I’d had a hard time explaining to the woman at the counter that I didn’t want to climb. She wanted me up there, panicking, holding a signed public-liability waiver.

‘Sick view out the windows when you’re at the top.’

Sick indeed.

I whiled away the minutes waiting for Velvet Stone to drop, thinking about what Loretta had said when she came home last night. She’d taken one look at the phone and pronounced it a dual SIM.

‘Some companies offer free texts, some have free calls. If you use a dual SIM, you get both deals. Save heaps, like thirty bucks a month. If you’re on the dole, it all helps.’

‘How do you switch between SIMs?’

Lightning-thumbs tapped, and she’d handed it back to me. ‘Second SIM.’

It was another phone entirely. I’d checked the phone-call log and messages, but found nothing. It had some apps, though. Tradie tools, mostly, like a spirit level and a laser measure, as well as a weather app, cricket scores, a voice recorder, a clock, notes.

‘If you’re not using it, can I have it?’ she’d asked. ‘Better than my shit phone.’

I thought about it. Her phone was more cracks than screen. I had the Best Bits contact, that was the windfall. ‘We’ll see.’

She hugged me hard with her bony arms, her protruding belly pressing on my hip.

‘Ben says hi.’

Her face lit up. ‘Did he? What did he say?’

‘He asked how you are, and how the baby was. He was very concerned.’

Loretta beamed, teared up a bit. ‘He’s a keeper,’ she said, heading for my bedroom.

‘Where were you tonight?’ I called after her.

She closed the door.

Velvet Stone was swinging across the fake rock face like a chimpanzee. As discussed, I knew it was her from the masses of tattoos, the shaved head, and the small grey thing that scampered from her head to her arm. She glanced down and must have seen me wave, because she immediately began to rappel to ground level.

‘Samantha Stevens.’

She looked at me without blinking. ‘Let’s go, Samantha,’ she said. ‘My place is just around the corner.’

A surprise move. A change of location was not part of the arrangement, but I went along with it, grateful Phuong hadn’t shown up. Hopefully no crazy accomplice was waiting there with a baseball bat. We walked around the corner, away from the buzz of the main city street and into a quiet lane behind the centre. We were walking along a row of red-brick warehouses, possibly the only un-renovated buildings in the city and no doubt marked for demolition. We reached a door at the end of the lane with a faded sign that said, Bell Please Ring, with an arrow pointing to nothing.

Velvet undid a padlock and moved the door back, the rat sitting still on her shoulder.

Inside was a squat with a mattress on the floor, a makeshift sink, and a camp stove. A table was spread with monitors and keyboards. Dozens of cables led away from them, no doubt filching power from elsewhere. The windows were painted over, a small lamp the only light source.

Her unblinking stare remained fixed on me, though her manner was weirdly detached, as if I was a specimen in a jar.

‘Nice place,’ I said.

‘It’s only temporary. Until I get my money.’ She dropped her gaze to my handbag. I held the strap a little tighter.

She lit the stove and her aloofness gave way to charm. ‘Tea, Samantha?’

‘Thanks.’ A choice between an old tyre, a milk crate, or the mattress. I sat on the tyre.

She produced a small teapot, spooned in something from a tin. ‘What’s your story, then?’

‘I don’t —’

Impatient sigh. ‘Who are you, and how did you get the phone?’

‘My brother’s in Athol Goldwater. Ben. Did Joe ever mention him?’

She shrugged. ‘Never.’ Her tattoos were a tangle of vines along both arms with large rat-like creatures in them. The rat on her shoulder adjusted whenever she moved, and kept its perch.

‘Joe’s death was suspicious.’

She remained impassive and fed the rat a piece of biscuit. ‘How did you get the phone?’

I hesitated.

‘Not telling?’ She tickled the rat under its chin.

‘What’s the rat’s name?’

‘Gnawer Barnacle. Gnawer with a “g”.’

She brought it closer to me. I patted its head.

‘Was it your brother?’ she asked. ‘He found the phone somewhere?’

‘I’m the one with the money, you give me information.’

Her eyes moved to mine. She could outstare the Eye of Sauron. ‘Hand it over.’

The money sat in an envelope in my bag. I’d come via a detour to the storage facility. It was a wildly inflated price for information, but I was bad at this sort of thing. I hadn’t even haggled, and, consequently, I’d reduced the fund by ten thousand dollars. The moment had been a difficult one. My inner dragon had spread a leathery wing over the loot and wanted to guard it jealously. Dipping in at times was going be necessary, but it hurt my dragon feelings.

I placed the envelope on my lap. ‘What’s your business with Joe?’

A flick of her arm and the rat jumped away into the dark. ‘Couple of months ago, I received an email about my services. Substantial payment on offer, all on the quiet.’

‘Who was it?’

‘Anonymous. Untraceable.’ She went quiet.

‘What services, exactly, Velvet?’

The kettle boiled. She poured water in the pot. ‘Patience, sweetie. I’m getting to that.’

This didn’t feel right. First she was icy, now warm. And this exchange was taking too long, it felt like she was stalling for time. I scanned the squat for exits. It was too dark to see. ‘What did the email say?’

‘The time and place for the first meeting with Joe,’ she said. ‘We met every month at the Talbot farmers’ market. The prisoners have a regular stall selling herbs there.’

‘Are you a foodie? A gardener?’

She stirred the pot, a slow mingling with a teaspoon, taking her time to answer. ‘I can’t grow shit.’ She laughed. ‘The herbs were a way to talk to Joe without drawing suspicion. The orders were code in case the phone was ever found.’ She handed me a small ceramic cup. ‘Got the phone?’

‘It’s safe.’

She nodded. ‘At your place?’

My face did nothing, but she nodded again. ‘Yeah. Who else knows you have it?’

‘No one.’ Except Loretta.

I sipped the tea, pleasant enough. But Velvet was clearly stalling now, and I didn’t like that.

‘What services did Joe want? Tell me or I leave. With the money.’

In one easy sweep, she leapt up into the air. I flinched. But she’d grabbed hold of two hoops suspended from the ceiling that I hadn’t seen in the dimness and was pulling herself up with her arms. ‘Last year, I hacked an ankle bracelet and put the demo online.’ She hung upside-down like a bat.

‘A home-detention bracelet? Like prisoners wear?’

‘Yep. Look it up on YouTube. It’s under my internet name: Foxy Meow.’

I tried to memorise the name, repeating it silently to myself. ‘How hard is a detention bracelet to hack?’

‘Easy,’ she said. ‘Just put foil over the bracelet and spoof the network.’

‘Spoof?’

‘Copy the bracelet signal on a laptop. You need software and a transmitter. Super easy. Not expensive, five hundred bucks for the transmitter.’ Her laughter was cool and restrained.

To my confusion, I found myself laughing with her. I dimly registered a lift in my mood and a decline in the clarity of my thinking.

‘Corrections think their prisoner is at home. Meanwhile, he’s roaming free.’

‘Joe didn’t have an ankle bracelet. Whose ankle bracelet did he want you to hack?’

She dropped to the ground, dragged a crate over, and sat opposite me. ‘Not who. What.’

‘Sorry, I’m not following.’ I was struggling to maintain focus; my mind was becoming murky.

Velvet checked her watch. ‘GPS tags. The kind they use on cattle.’

‘Cattle?’ Again with the cattle. This was getting me nowhere. ‘Velvet, tell me, did Joe ever say he was afraid someone might kill him? Did he name anyone?’

She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter if I tell you the whole thing, I suppose. So, the approach email offered me money to meet Joe at the market and to bring a mobile phone for him to communicate with. I had an old android I wasn’t using.’

‘The dual SIM?’

She smiled. ‘Clever. Yes. If you’re poor, they’re great ’cause you can switch deals …’

‘I know. What happened with Joe?’

‘Things went okay first few meetings — but no money. I get pissed off. He goes, “Don’t worry, with this scheme, we’ll rake in a shitload.” He asks me about tags, then asks if I can hack a tag system. It’s getting stranger, but okay. I can hack anything. Of course, that system doesn’t use phone networks, so it’s a lot harder to get in.’

I was feeling sick and wishing she’d get to the point. ‘Velvet! What happened to Joe?’

‘Wait, I’m getting to that. Then his texting code changed. It’s a warning. I meet him for the last time. He wants me to take back the phone, take it to the cops. I say no.

‘I’m on the train coming back from Talbot and thinking, this is fucked. I send the last text and cancel next month’s meeting. Then, out of the blue, on the damn train, this guy approaches me. Big military type. He offers money, up front, for information on what Joe is doing. I get cash, over a grand. I tell him about the phone.’

Suddenly, I slid sideways and fell off the tyre. I couldn’t move fast enough to catch myself, landed hard on my side, and rolled onto my back. The envelope of money skittered across the floor. Waves of giddiness and nausea exploded through me.

Without pausing, Velvet continued with her story. ‘Few days later the same bloke turns up here, says, “Get back in touch with Joe and say yes. Get the phone for us.”’

I was on the floor, staring up at her, aghast. What the hell was this?

‘He’s standing right here, waiting for me to do it. I get out my phone to text Joe again, say I’ll meet him. But then the guy gets a call. It’s too late. Joe was dead.’

I’d lost the ability to get up, to stand. My brain spoke to me in short sentences: Tea, dodgy. Life, risked. Stella, fucked.

The sound of a car engine came from outside in the alley. Velvet snatched up the envelope with my ten grand in it and shoved it in a desk drawer. She took a roll of tape, pulled out a long strip, and tore it off with her teeth. She came over to me, looked me in the eye, and held up her wrists together in front of her. I followed her example, and she wrapped the tape around my wrists. Pulled more tape and bound my ankles. I stayed on the concrete, unable to lift my head.

‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ she whispered into my ear.

Then she dragged open the door. I heard pieces of conversation. A man’s voice. I rolled onto my side with the last of my energy. By the look of him, my guess was a divorced personal trainer. Late forties, grey crew cut, fake tan, air of resentment that seemed permanent. Giant biceps and quads flexed out of his shorts and singlet. Military tatts: a sword with wings on one forearm, a Roman helmet on the other.

‘She’s got Joe’s phone,’ she said. ‘At her place.’

‘Brilliant,’ he said to Velvet in a faintly British accent. ‘Well done.’

‘Don’t patronise me. I was told to call if anyone used the phone. She did, so I called.’

‘Can’t a man express his gratitude?’

‘I don’t want your gratitude. I want to get paid.’

He sighed and walked around me. ‘I don’t get young women. They’re angry all the time. Can’t make an innocent joke.’

‘I never want to hear from you people again,’ Velvet was saying.

‘I’m sorry you feel that way. Did she say if she found anything on the phone?’

‘The texts.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Like what?’

He sniffed. ‘Very good.’

‘Fine, whatever. Where’s my money?’

‘Not long now.’ He glanced at me. ‘Name?’

‘Samantha Stevens.’

He snorted. ‘And I’m Doctor-fucking-Bombay. Licence on her?’

Velvet opened my handbag and gave him my wallet. He went through my cards. ‘Stella Hardy. Social worker.’ He sneered at me. ‘Big fucking wazzock, more like it.’

‘Stella Hardy, you tricked me,’ Velvet said, disgusted.

The man laughed. ‘You never watched TV in the seventies?’

‘I wasn’t fucking born.’

‘Foxy Meow,’ I said.

He looked quizzically at Velvet.

‘Quaalude cocktail. So she doesn’t give you any trouble.’

‘Look at her. Now look at me. Think she’d give me trouble?’

Velvet scowled. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘Can she understand me in her condition?’

She shrugged. ‘Sort of.’

‘Stella?’ He waved a hand in my face. ‘Wakey-wakey.’

I was awake. ‘Foxy Meow,’ I said. Comprehension functional, language not so much.

He pulled out his phone, turned his back. ‘I have a positive,’ he said in a low voice. Pause. ‘Not here.’ Pause. ‘Bloody social worker.’ Pause. ‘Yes, Hardy.’ Pause. ‘No? You sure?’ Pause. ‘You’re the boss.’ He put his phone in his pocket and frowned at me. ‘Let’s go.’

The muscle threw my slack body over his shoulder like a sack of spuds and carried me to a monster vehicle that took up most of the alley — four doors, a tray in the back. He opened the rear door, and I fell across the back seat. He threw in my handbag, and it landed on the car floor, next to a discarded McDonald’s McNuggets package. He reversed out of the alley.

‘What do you know about that phone, Hardy?’ he said.

I didn’t know what to say. ‘Text exchange … Velvet Stone.’

‘That’s it?’

‘What else …?’

‘Lucky for you.’ He spoke no more until we stopped twenty minutes later. ‘Out you get.’

‘Can’t.’

He came around and opened the back door. I was on my back like an upended turtle. He pulled a small object from his sock and unfolded a blade. He cut the tape on my ankles, then cut my wrists free. He snapped the blade into its Swiss Army case and tossed it on the floor of the car. My legs stretched. He grabbed a hand and a foot and dragged me from the car. I landed with a thud on the nature strip.

Ascot Vale, Roxburgh Street. The fresh air cleared my head. I had words. ‘Fuck you.’

‘And that’s the thanks I get.’

I struggled upright. Walking was another matter. He supported me up the stairs. At the top, he opened my handbag, and held up my keyring. ‘Which one?’

I pointed to my flat key. He unlocked the door, and immediately Nigel started to bark. That beautiful Alaskan Malamute could be a watchdog when he wanted to.

‘Tell the dog to shut it, or I’ll kick the fucking thing.’

‘HiyaNigel,’ I whispered. ‘Shushup.’

The dog sniffed me and then continued barking.

‘Get the phone,’ he said.

‘Stella? Is that you?’ Loretta came out of the bedroom in a pair of my pyjamas.

‘Go back to sleep, hon,’ I slurred.

‘Who is this bloke?’

‘Shut the dog up,’ the muscle growled.

‘Nigel!’ Loretta raised a flat palm. Nigel sat and licked her hand.

‘Stella, I need you to focus,’ the man said. ‘Think carefully. Where is Joe’s phone?’

I shrugged. He went to the kitchen, looked on the table, started opening drawers.

‘What did you do to her?’ Loretta demanded. ‘I’ve never seen her this weird.’

‘You are?’ he demanded.

‘Stella’s sister-in-law.’

He frowned. ‘Right. Go to bed, like Stella told you.’

Loretta planted her feet. ‘I’ll get you the stupid phone.’

‘No, Loretta. I’ll get it.’ I crawled around, then stopped. ‘What am I looking for again?’

‘Joe’s phone,’ he said, exasperated.

Loretta pushed aside a pile of rubbish on the coffee table, picked up a phone. ‘Here.’

He held Loretta’s mobile with the smashed screen, near my face. ‘This it?’

‘Yes. Joe’s phone. Yes,’ said Loretta.

He gave her a long appraising look. ‘You know what’s on it?’

Nigel watched us like a tennis fan, his head moving from the man to Loretta and back. No teeth, no hackles, but at the ready. If she said ‘Kill’, I had no doubt he’d go for the man’s throat.

‘No,’ Loretta said. ‘Don’t care, either. Not interested.’

He seemed relieved. And then, incredibly, he turned and left. I was alive, and he was gone. It seemed a kind of miracle.

The show over, Nigel went to bed. I crawled to the bathroom, pulled myself up to the sink, and splashed water on my face. I was staring at my reflection when I realised the miracle was only temporary. I came back and sat on the coffee table. ‘That was your phone,’ I said. ‘When he realises that, he’ll come straight back.’

Loretta threw herself on the sofa, laughing. ‘Nope. I swapped the SIMs.’

‘What?’

‘I told you I needed a phone that worked. So I took out one of the other phone’s SIMs and put my SIM in instead — into Joe’s phone? — and it works!’

‘Um … okay.’ Suddenly, I felt extremely tired. I got down on the carpet; I felt more secure lying on the floor.

‘One of Joe’s SIMs is in my old phone. So they’ll definitely think it’s Joe’s phone. Get it?’

‘Yep!’ I said. But I didn’t really.

‘But — like I told you — Joe’s phone is a dual SIM. So your guy has a phone that he will think is Joe’s, but it’s actually mine with one of Joe’s SIMs. But you still get to keep his other SIM in his real phone.’

‘The one you are using now?’

‘Yes. It worked out great, right? I kept the good SIM with all the apps. But to have Joe’s phone, that’s important to you for some reason, right?’

‘Yep!’ Was it? Perhaps it was. I’d gone over the first one and found only the texts to Velvet. The second SIM, the one with the apps, had no call or text history. Either way, Loretta had indeed saved my arse — even if it had purely been an act of self-interest to get herself a better phone. Whatever her motives, I didn’t care. Hopefully that man, whoever he was, would now leave me alone.

I rolled onto my back, closed my eyes, and tuned her out. I drifted, weightless, not bothered by anything. On and on, I would have gone, drifting forever, if she hadn’t been repeating my name. ‘What?’

‘Who was that man?’

‘Velvet called him. And she never wants to hear from him again.’

She took that in without question. ‘You okay?’

‘Never better.’

She took a blanket from the sofa and tucked me in on the floor, put the pillow under my head. ‘Night, Stella.’

For the first time in a long time, I was lying down, and yet I wasn’t ruminating on my list of fears. Nor was I reliving my worst mistakes and mulling over the fact that each one was a turning point that led to this ludicrous moment. There was no angst at all, only a dull lower-back ache and a pleasant floating sensation. This rare halt in my constant worrying gave me pause. Was it possible to live without constant mental torment? Did people actually live like this, more-or-less content? When was the last time I was carefree? Clearly, I had become accustomed to an extreme level of tension. Perhaps I was not living my best life.

I rolled over as new disturbing thought bubbles rippled my mental waters. For one thing, Velvet Stone had drugged me, taken my money, and brought in a thug to assault me. I had to be more careful.

For another, what the heck was up with everyone’s interest in cattle tags these days?

And one more thing: Joe had wanted the cops to have the phone. Why? Maybe he’d got scared, was in over his head and panicked. So what exactly was the crucial thing on it? So far, I’d only found the texts with Velvet that, by themselves, didn’t amount to anything. Unless … unless Joe Phelan had something much more important on the second SIM — the one with no calls and no text history on it. Something that had gotten him killed.

‘That’s curious,’ I said to the carpet. ‘Isn’t it?’