12.
He kept his appointment at Alberto’s, arriving gritty-eyed and shivering before dawn, regretting his choice of a light cotton jacket and jeans. Sleep had been slow to come despite the long run he’d done after leaving Frankie. He’d gone for another this morning. Slipping into old habits – have to watch that.
He grabbed the box of CCTV cameras from the back seat and headed through the grey light to the kitchen. He’d put his restless night to good use by looking through everything Alberto had sent about the sabotage: four misdelivered catering orders and the cancelled electricity account. Small acts that had packed a hefty financial punch, all done in the past month via Alberto’s security-free computer system. As far as suspects went, it was anyone in the world with internet.
The kitchen was ablaze with light. Alberto and his grandson, Nick, were hard at work cooking arancini. A matched pair with their lean builds and darting movements, the only difference Nick’s full head of wavy brown hair instead of Alberto’s gleaming scalp. They signed as they dropped rice balls into the oil, eighteen-year-old Nick holding forth on his footy playing and likely promotion to the A-team, Alberto offering encouragement.
Caleb shifted the box under one arm and went in. The room was warm and smelled like deep-fried happiness. Nick gave him the usual smile and wave, but Alberto’s genial expression dropped to reveal relief. Caleb dumped the box on the counter to free his hands. ‘Another bad delivery?’ Hard to see how: Sammi had already emailed to say she’d locked the system up tight.
‘Nothing like that – the café. Go and see. My cousin’s going to fix it today, but I can’t bear looking it.’
That explained the closed kitchen hatch. The catering side of the business brought in the money, but the café was Alberto’s pride and joy: a hub for the Deaf community and a place for friends and family to gather. An attack on it would be a blow to his heart.
Caleb went down the short corridor and switched on the lights. Age-softened bricks and a high arched ceiling, a casual array of armchairs, sofas and tables. The two large windows facing the street were a cobweb of crystals, their panes sagging into the room. Laminated glass. Breaking that had taken some force, smashing at it over and over until the film gave way and the glass split and fractured. Unease lapped his spine. Alberto was right, this was nothing like the previous events – this was an act of violence. The first act was rarely the last, rarely the worst.
He smoothed his expression and returned to the kitchen. Nick and Alberto were scooping arancini from the oil and laying them on wire coolers.
‘Anyone see anything?’ Caleb asked.
Alberto set down his ladle. ‘No. The alarm went off around midnight, but no one was here when I arrived. The cops say they’ll do a doorknock today, so maybe they’re taking the sabotage seriously now.’ His face showed no hope.
‘You got that list for me?’ Caleb asked. ‘People with a possible grudge?’
‘There’s no one.’
Nick’s head lifted sharply.
Caleb kept his eyes on Alberto. ‘Keep thinking. I’ll need to talk to your staff, too. When are they in?’
‘Soon, but it won’t be any of them.’
‘Just to rule them out.’
‘I’m not kidding myself. This place goes under, everyone’s out of work. You know how hard it is for us in the job market.’
Not just the market, but often the jobs themselves. Caleb had hated every minute working at the insurance companies where he’d begun his investigative career. Constant battles about phones and group meetings, co-workers’ irritated sighs. Agreeing to go into business with Frankie had been one of the easiest decisions of his life.
‘Keep thinking,’ he told Alberto, and went to set up the CCTV.
It was reasonably quick work, even stopping along the way to talk to the non-family staff members as they arrived. All three looked stunned at the vandalism. They gave alibis he’d be checking, but he couldn’t see any of them being behind the incidents.
By the time he’d finished, the kitchen was busy with cooking and outraged conversation, Alberto making a good show of looking unconcerned. Nick was on clean-up duty, emptying the bins. Caleb said his goodbyes and gratefully took the bag of arancini Alberto handed him. He devoured them in the alley while he waited for Nick to appear with the rubbish. There was an earnestness to the teenager that reminded him of Ant – or what Ant used to be like.
Ant had been just north of Sydney when he’d last made a withdrawal from his rapidly dwindling bank account. A faint possibility he was heading for Queensland, the place of their one interstate holiday as kids. A great couple of weeks. Ant had befriended a stray dog on the first day and smuggled it into their shared tent against their father’s orders; they’d spent the rest of the holiday denying everything as they clawed at their fleabites.
The kitchen door opened and Nick appeared, lugging three plastic bags. A little start as he saw Caleb, then he heaved rubbish into the bin and wiped his hands on his pants. ‘Hey. You need something?’
‘Information. Who are you worried about?’
‘What? No one.’
‘I’ll get it from the Deaf grapevine, so why don’t you get in first with your version? Who’s got a grudge against Alberto?’
Nick’s eyes lowered. ‘Dad.’
A man no one at Alberto’s had ever mentioned. Which was unusual enough he should have noticed. Most topics were enthusiastically discussed by staff and customers alike: divorce, bad dates, bad haircuts.
‘Why?’ Caleb asked.
‘Grandad thumped him in the cafe, told him to piss off.’
Caleb took that in. Despite Alberto’s boxing background, he’d never given any hint of underlying violence. Then again, people could show very different masks when it suited them.
‘What happened?’
‘Dad was – He hit Mum sometimes. Grandad found out.’
‘When was this?’
A shrug. ‘About a year ago, I guess.’ Affecting nonchalance, but the ache of the memory was held in his hunched shoulders.
‘You got an address or phone number?’
‘No.’
Which meant asking Alberto’s daughter, Ilaria, a painfully shy woman who’d only recently started making direct eye contact with Caleb. Confronting enough to have that kind of conversation in spoken language, but sign stripped you bare; every thought and emotion exposed, with no chance of a discreetly averted gaze.
‘Your mum’s here afternoons, isn’t she?’
‘Don’t talk to her about Dad!’
‘I’ll go easy. I promise.’
Nick gave him a look of undisguised misery and went quickly back inside, head bent.
Caleb headed for his car. Would a man wait a year to take revenge on someone? Revenge that would hurt his own family? People did far worse things to those they claimed to love, sometimes intentionally, sometimes out of sheer stupidity.
His phone buzzed as he was getting in the car: Imogen with her usual light touch.
—Flinders st station 11. DO NOT FUCK WTH ME
Three hours away. Frankie would be awake by now, probably scowling over her cereal while Tilda caught up on the latest financial news.
A strong impulse to go for another run to shake the heavy feeling in his chest. Possibly a cue to ring Henry Collins, his therapist. Definitely a cue. And one he would heed because he was a man who took responsibility for his mental wellbeing no matter how uncomfortable the process. Yep. Absolutely. No doubt about it at all.
He texted before he could reconsider.
—any chance of an extra session? Not urgent
The reply came almost immediately.
—Vic Market in 20
***
The high, arching sheds of the Queen Victoria Market weren’t too crowded yet – the restaurateurs finished with their shopping, tourists yet to come. Long rows of stalls were heaped with jewel-coloured fruit and vegetables; the mingled scents of pawpaw, mango, tomatoes. Henry Collins was sorting through a stack of rockmelons, lifting each one to his face and inhaling deeply before discarding it.
The Vic Market was a first, but he and Caleb had been meeting outdoors since their first stilted appointments in Henry’s office four months ago. It worked surprisingly well despite the choreography needed to keep the communication flowing.
A melon appeared to have passed the sniff test. Henry placed it in his wicker basket and looked at Caleb. ‘Tell me about the girl.’
‘Is this professional behaviour, groping fruit while I reveal my angst?’
‘As you’re paying me a great deal of money for my professional services, I’d say by definition, yes. Tell me about the girl.’
‘She’s nine, seems bright. But it’s got nothing to do with her, it’s Frankie I’m feeling bad about.’
Henry pressed his nose to another rockmelon. The man had clearly been a labrador in a previous life: the same floppy gold hair and outward geniality, same ability to grip his prey in unyielding jaws. Caleb usually went home from their sessions feeling like his brain had been gently shaken loose. They’d been at it twenty minutes now and he already had a low-grade headache.
Henry rejected the rockmelon and headed for the tomatoes. A wash of warm colours from yellow to deep purple, each variety identified by a small wooden stake: Green Zebra, Black Krim, Shirley. That last one had to be named for somebody – ‘Happy birthday, Shirley, this reminded me of you.’
Shirley. He tested the shape in his mouth, pictured Maggie saying it. ‘No! Don’t tell anyone about Shirley. Please.’
Henry was waiting with the basket slung over his arm. He’d gone for the Black Krims.
‘Can you say “Shirley”?’ Caleb asked him.
‘Shirley.’
No, but maybe something like it. Shirner, Kirner, Turner?
‘Say, “Don’t tell anyone about Turner. Please.”’
Henry obliged without comment, then turned to pay for his shopping. Almost, but not quite. Not that it mattered: Caleb had made his choice.
Henry faced him, smiling amiably. ‘Finished with the intrigue? OK, tell me more about the girl.’
Not this again. ‘There’s nothing more to tell. I barely know her.’
‘And yet you’ve spent the past twenty minutes avoiding saying her name and reverted to the combative behaviour you displayed in our early sessions.’
‘So this is a session? Because it feels more like a grocery expedition.’
Henry stood with the loose-limbed patience of a teacher waiting for the Year Nine sex ed class to settle. Tedesco had promised the man was unshockable, and Henry had proved it by merely nodding when Caleb had finally revealed that he’d both killed a man and covered it up.
‘Her name’s Tilda,’ Caleb said, ‘I’ve been trying to pretend she doesn’t exist, but she does and she’s a sweet oddball. And seeing as her mother might be dying, I’m feeling like a bit of a prick for depriving her of her other parent.’
‘There’s a lot to un–’
‘Please don’t say unpack.’
‘– unpack in that statement. Do you blame Tilda for her father’s actions?’
‘Of course not. It’s not her fault he tried to kill me.’
‘But somehow it’s yours?’
So much pain because of him: brother lost, best mate murdered, Kat injured. A phrase slid into his head: ‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’ Maybe a quote, maybe his brain presenting him with an inconvenient truth-bomb.
Henry’s focus had shifted to something behind Caleb. ‘Is it possible someone’s following you?’
A few seconds to comprehend the words – fucking Imogen, she just couldn’t wait. He didn’t turn. ‘Woman, mid-thirties?’
‘No, a man. He’s hiding behind a stall, keeps glancing at you.’
‘Can you get a photo?’
Henry passed him the shopping basket and reached for his phone, lowered his hand. ‘He took off.’
‘Which way?’
‘Towards the lane.’
Good Decisions didn’t include following strange men down alleyways. People got hurt that way. Hit with iron bars and bundled into unmarked vans. An actual physical effort not to do it, leg muscles cramping.
‘What’d he look like?’ Caleb asked.
Henry beamed. ‘You’re not going to confront him?’
‘No. Can you describe him?’
‘He was wearing a blue cap. A baseball cap.’
‘Big man? Muscly?’
‘I didn’t really get a good look. He was behind the stall.’
‘Age?’
‘Thirty?’ A rising tone that instilled no confidence.
Possibly Frankie’s shooter, possibly not, but almost certainly following Caleb to get to her. But how had the man known he was here?
‘Did you tell anyone you were seeing me?’ he asked Henry.
‘No, Caleb, of course not.’
His phone. The bastard must have been tracking it. Listening to it, too – he’d run when Caleb had mentioned taking his photo. Which meant he’d heard the entire therapy session. For fuck’s sake. Frankie had been right to be paranoid about the damn thing.
Frankie.
He’d used the phone near the motel last night. It wouldn’t take long for the guy to check Caleb’s movements and work out why his phone had been offline last night, see where he’d turned it on again. Start doorknocking.
Caleb shoved the shopping basket at Henry and ran.