17

A PARKING bay in the centre of Queen Street had twenty minutes left on the meter. I topped it up with a gold coin and ran up Lonsdale Street to Velvet Stone’s laneway. The padlock was missing, and the door gave little resistance to my shove. The place was in darkness except for the light from the monitors.

‘Who’s there?’ A woman’s voice from the recesses of the squat.

‘A friend of Velvet’s.’

She came into the light. Young, tattoos, dreadlocks. ‘The new girlfriend?’ she asked.

‘Just a friend.’

She sniffed. ‘I’m taking custody of Gnawer Barnacle. She’s my rat really.’

‘Good for you.’ I went to Velvet’s desk and shone my phone into the top drawer.

‘Don’t do that.’

I ignored her. ‘Where’s Velvet?’

‘She left with some bloke.’

The envelope was there. I slipped it into my handbag. ‘What did he look like?’

‘Dunno. I was crawling in the back there, looking for Gnawer.’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘He said for her to come with him and he’d drop her back in half an hour. I’ve been waiting around here all day, but she hasn’t come back.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Very weird for Velvet to go with some guy, just because he asked her to. Why would she do that?’

I had an idea. ‘What did he sound like?’

‘There you are, Gnawer.’ The rat ran up her arm. She fed it a piece of cracker.

‘Hey!’ I yelled. ‘This is important. Did he have an accent?’

‘Yeah. Like on the EastEnders. You know that show?’

‘I was never here,’ I said and staggered away, backwards, retracing my steps. I was in shock, but also aware that this, too, was now a crime scene, and my hair had a tendency to shed.

I wandered down Swanston Street, looking over my shoulder, into the milling Wednesday-night crowds. Students, office workers, throngs of young men and women ready for a night on the tiles. I saw a bar and went in. It was dark, with upholstered chairs and fringed lampshades. I ordered a plum Giddy Aunt from a pink-haired woman in a blue wife-beater and Warner Bros. cartoon tatts. I took it to a table in the darkest corner. From there, like a bird of prey, I fixed my gaze on the entrance. A short man with a handlebar moustache in a leather hoodie came in, ordered a beer, and drank it at the bar. I watched him with increasing paranoia. His friend with a Ned Kelly beard showed up, and they embraced. Phew. Next, three middle-aged women entered, one bought a jug of something, another took three glasses, and they repaired to a booth by the window, the impression of habit in every gesture. They were only concerned with themselves. At last, I exhaled. My heartbeat slowed. I consumed the cocktail in two swallows and signalled to the bar for another.

I got out my phone and started to check media sites for news of Velvet. When it rang in my hand, I nearly had a fit. Kylie again, and again, stupidly, I answered.

‘Stella! That was quick! How are you?’

‘Great.’

‘Just wanted to let you know the good news.’

Oh merciful goddess, good news at last. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Live cattle exports are up twenty-two per cent on last year.’

Until now, I hadn’t made the connection. Kylie intended to join in the horror of the live cattle export. Beef cattle was one thing, but herding frightened cattle onto a ship was quite another. At their destination, depending on the abattoir, they could expect, among other possibilities, to be bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer. It was barbaric. And I had helped her.

‘Asian demand. That’s the key. Boosted the total value to one point two billion.’

‘Awesome.’

‘I did the maths — number of cattle against the value. Guess what? That’s around a thousand dollars for each cow.’

My second Giddy Aunt was taking too long. ‘Per head, not “each cow”. And I’m not sure that’s how —’

‘Just think what we stand to make here! Once their weight is up —’

‘Terrific. Listen, Kylie, I have to go, my toast just popped.’

I put my empty glass on the bar in front of the pink-haired bartender. ‘Another, please.’

‘Is that what you wanted? I thought you were telling me to turn the music up.’

‘Oh, come on! Has anyone ever asked you to turn the music up?’

‘No.’ She put a scoop of ice in a large wine glass, added one part plum schnapps, one part plum brandy, a splash of champagne, garnished with a red plum segment on a toothpick.

I gave her a lobster for the cocktail.

‘Are you okay, sweetie?’

The kindness undid me. Tears escaped. ‘I’m fine,’ I whispered and fled to the darkness.

I sipped my drink and tried to think. They wanted the phone. They had the phone. No, only half a phone. One SIM of a dual-SIM phone. They knew something else was on it — the recording of Pugh. The thug had asked Loretta and I if we knew what was on it. Velvet didn’t know about that, she didn’t know the recording existed. They killed her because she knew one small fact, that they wanted the phone. They. They killed Joe, and they killed Velvet.

I rang Loretta, terrified she’d be wandering the streets instead of where I needed her to be, vigilantly checking the street for violent men.

‘Mate, where are ya? Been waiting here all day. I’m starving.’

‘Thank God you’re at home. Listen, can you do me a favour? Check the street — don’t go out, do it from the window — and see if that bloke from the other night is waiting around. He might be in a car, one of those four cab things, like a ute but bigger.’

A pause. ‘Yep. There’s a car like that out the front. Want me to check if it’s him?’

‘No. Just wait there, Loretta, while I think of something. I’ll call you back.’

I put down the phone and twirled my plum. What to do? I had an idea. No, it was crazy. But I was desperate. I picked up my phone and rang the only person I knew could help.

After a short conversation I ran to my car and drove to Ascot Vale in a gear-grinding, lane-swapping frenzy. A few streets from home, I turned, went up to Mount Alexander Road, and came down Roxburgh Street from the east. I parked on a hill about a block from Pine View.

I checked my phone and waited. At nine o’clock I rang triple zero on Joe’s phone, and told the operator that a man had collapsed outside my building. She put me through to the ambos. I fibbed to them at length about a person on the nature strip, suffering from severe chest pains, must be a possible heart attack. ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘He’s stopped breathing!’

Then I got out and walked down towards my building. The monster ute was there. The same one he’d driven from Velvet Stone’s squat. Inside it, someone lit a cigarette.

I walked up to the driver’s window and knocked. ‘Looking for me?’

Startled, but pretending not to be, he lowered the window and flicked the smoke into the darkness. He took an object from the centre console, raised it to the window for me to see. A handgun. ‘Where’s the phone?’

‘I gave it to you.’

‘I don’t think you did. Not all of it, the rest of it, whatever.’

I shrugged.

‘It’s been a long day,’ he sighed. ‘Go get the fucking phone.’

‘I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘After I do, you’ll kill me. You killed Velvet Stone today, didn’t you?’

‘I won’t hurt you. I had the chance, and I didn’t. Doesn’t that tell you something?’

I hesitated. He glanced down the street. I turned to look. Quick as lightning, his hand darted out the window, wrapped around my neck, and pulled me in towards him in a headlock, lifting me almost off the ground. With his other hand, he pressed the gun hard against my cheek.

‘Okay,’ I said, through gritted teeth. ‘The rest of it is upstairs, in a safe place.’

He released me. ‘Wait there. I’m coming with you.’

Movement in my peripheral vision, a shadow crossed the lawn in front of my building. I walked slowly around the car, then sprinted up the path to my building. He sprang from the car and sprinted after me. I was nearly at the door to the foyer. His hand caught a piece of my shirt, and I was yanked back. I heard a rip. ‘Hurry up!’ I yelled.

From behind the Norfolk pine, Percy Brash stepped out and nonchalantly connected a taser to the man’s neck. The man grunted in pain and shock, but was immobile, till Brash stopped the charge — then his legs gave way and he dropped. Brash bent, pried the handgun from his fingers, and said in his ear. ‘Stay put, mate, or the next one goes into your balls.’

Sirens, beautiful deafening sirens. A long woooo and some short wah wah wahs came up from Union Road.

Brash and I ran up the street to my car. ‘Took your time,’ I said. ‘Nearly died back there.’

He ignored me. Blue and red lights strobing, the ambulance flew up Roxburgh Street and parked in the Pine View driveway. Two people in uniform ran up the path. Brash pulled out a small tin and shook a mint into his hand. We watched the ambos take a gurney from the back of the ambulance.

‘Been busy, Hardy. That’s good. If the SAS come for you, you’re on the right track.’

‘SAS?’

‘He had the tatt — sword and wings. That’s SAS.’

‘Shop and save?’

‘Special Air Service. He’s British army. Very tough. Trained killers.’

I thought of BlackTack, an organisation comprised of ex-army intelligence operatives, ready to solve your business challenges. Maybe they employed some ex-SAS guns-for-hire, too. ‘That means —’

‘That’s serious. Means you’ve upset them. Give me a full report.’

I told him that I’d found Joe’s phone, and it had two SIM cards, one of which led me to Velvet Stone. That a meeting had been set up with Velvet and Joe at the market to discuss hacking cattle tags.

‘Who set up the meeting?’

‘To be honest, I thought it was you.’

Brash shook his head, frowning. ‘Go on.’

I said that I’d made contact with Velvet, and when I’d gone to see her, she’d told me that Joe had suddenly changed the plan and had asked her to take his phone to the cops. And when Velvet reached that part, that was when the SAS guy had turned up. He’d taken me home, and then Loretta, my lodger, had handed him a phone with only one of Joe’s SIMs, the one with text messages to Velvet.

‘He let you live after you gave him the phone?’

I nodded. ‘I’m as flummoxed as you are.’

‘No one is flummoxed, Hardy. Go on.’

I said after that I’d checked the other SIM and found a recording of Marcus Pugh talking about an auction and Vincent and someone named Al. That, I presumed, was what Joe had wanted the cops to have, and that was what the SAS guy had really wanted.

Brash chewed his mint. ‘Interesting.’

Lastly, I told him that the SAS guy he’d just tasered had — I suspected — murdered Velvet. And that was everything, save some irrelevant details, like Gnawer Barnacle. He didn’t need to know about the pet rat.

‘You’ve exceeded my expectations, I’ll tell you that much.’

‘What’d you expect?’

‘Dunno. That you’d get yourself killed or something.’

‘Happy to disappoint you.’

‘Yeah, you’re in deep. Got a good sniff of the bastards.’

We were silent for a moment. ‘Where’d you get the taser?’

‘Mate gave it to me.’

‘Can I see it?’

A yellow, hard-plastic gun-like thing came out of his jacket pocket. It reminded me of a kid’s toy or a starting pistol. ‘Got two shots. Or you can arc the current with this button.’ He demonstrated, and a blue electric charge crackled across the points. ‘Sometimes that’s enough to get cooperation, just show them the arc.’

My shoulders did an involuntary shudder.

‘Keep going, mate,’ Brash said. ‘You’re a good little worker.’

It was the only praise I’d had for a while, and I enjoyed a warm inner glow. Sometimes a person needed a boost. Too bad it was patronising, and came from a murderous bogan thug.

‘The recording is why they killed Joe,’ I said.

‘I daresay you’re right. That’s the why. Now give me the who — the exact who.’

I nodded. Here I was, discussing a possible hit with a member of an organised crime gang. Former, current, it didn’t matter. It was a new low for me.

‘They’ll come at you again, Hardy. They want that phone back, so stay alert. And hold onto it tight — it must be fucking important.’

‘Right.’

He jumped out, paused, and came back. ‘Here, you might as well have this.’ He threw the taser in the window, and it landed on my lap. ‘Carry on. Time’s running out, Hardy.’

He sauntered up the road in a confident, unhurried way and disappeared into the darkness.