AMY MAKES HER WAY to a nondescript building back from the foreshore. Five storeys and decrepit, a place not long for this earth. On the top floor, there’s a brothel called The White Light. It’s one of Colleen Vinton’s daytime haunts. Say what you might about Colleen, she’s not above slumming it with the girls. She likes to show her face.
Today, Colleen is in the lunchroom, seated at the table with a sandwich, her bare feet up on an adjoining chair. Everyone else has cleared out. It’s just her and The Mike Walsh Show on a black-and-white TV. Taking in Amy, she says, ‘I’m hungover to buggery. You want this? I can’t eat it.’
Amy ignores the food. ‘I saw Blintiff. He wants me to find some copper.’
‘Oh yeah. Which one?’
‘Bill Webber. You know him?’
Colleen shakes her head. ‘What’s he done, darl?’
‘Stole some files, apparently. Blintiff was cagey. You okay with it?’
‘As long as he paid you up-front?’
‘He did.’
‘The Licensing boys can be tight pricks. If they give you any trouble, let me know. You do the other thing?’
The copper at the beach, the photos under his windscreen wipers.
‘Yeah, he got ’em.’
On the TV, Dame Edna Everage swans onstage, waving and smiling. A cacophony of clapping blasts out. Colleen stares at the screen.
Amy asks, ‘Is there anything else?’
Colleen twitches as if caught out. ‘Ah yeah. Yeah, there is.’ She takes her feet down and sits up a little. ‘What do you know about Fantasyland? It’s that new theme park out at Nerang.’
‘Nothing much.’
‘All the big boys have a piece of it, but the whole thing is going to hell. There’s a bloke involved called Allan Watts. Local businessman. You know him?’
‘Sure. I know who Allan is.’
‘Well, take a look at him for me.’
‘Anything in particular?’
‘A little bird told me he’s having money trouble, but he’s also everywhere I bloody go at the moment. He’s making some sort of move and I want to know what it is.’
‘Okay, I’ll see what I can turn up.’
‘Do that.’ Colleen settles back in. She drags her sandwich closer, turns back to the telly. ‘He is right up the chain, so go easy.’
Amy nods, makes to leave.
‘Allan used to pal around with your father. I wonder if that might be a way in.’
‘My dad?’
A wave of dread washes through Amy.
Colleen isn’t looking at her. ‘Yeah, Victor. You know, the guy who knocked up your mum.’
Down the foyer of The White Light.
Into the empty stairwell.
Grimy walls revolving, her own echoing footfall on the timber stair.
Down, down, down.
Amy’s clenched fists are the only outward sign of the torment brewing inside her. She needs to keep it bottled up. Colleen will have cameras in here, watching. Because Colleen Vinton may look harmless—some broad watching daytime TV—but there’s no one in this world with a better antenna for human suffering. Colleen lives off it.
It’s her currency.
A total fucking vampire.
Amy feels pale.