JAMIE WANTS TO MEET up later.
We have to pick our moment.
Mike checks in with the CIB men. They’re a slathering mess, draped across a set of leather couches in one of the living rooms. Two of them are asleep, the coffee table in front of them is covered in half-eaten party food, empty bottles and album sleeves. ‘Rio’ by Duran Duran blares out of a nearby stereo. Mike deposits his leftover powder in one of their shirt pockets and bids them goodnight.
From there, he circulates.
He finds a heated pool and a bar outside. Plenty of people are around. A bain-marie of food. He talks politics with two old men as they watch the steam come off the pool water. Some finance guys stand on the other side and Mike slides in, hearing about football, fine dining, as well as a stream of complaints about some dickhead in the banking sector. He keeps moving. He schmoozes the staff. He eavesdrops and gets his arse pinched by a sixty-year-old woman. Mike stands in the corner and thinks about his kids and Sonya and pushes down the immediate urge to leave, to go home, to beg.
Instead, he takes a smoke break in the rear garden, down the lawn from the throng. He’s standing there for a few minutes when a man appears out of the crowd and wanders over. Mike feels he should recognise the guy, but he can’t place him.
‘Chris,’ says the man, giving him the nod and firing up a joint.
‘This is some shindig,’ says Mike.
‘Is it?’
Chris is built solid, but he’s tall to balance it out. He has a dark brown Tom Selleck moustache and is well put-together, like everyone here, but there’s something else about him.
‘How do you fit into all this?’ says Mike.
‘I work with some of them.’
A cop. Mike can see it now.
Chris takes another drag. ‘How about you?’
‘Politics, but, you know, behind the scenes.’
Chris is close now. ‘You like guys, Mike?’
‘What?’
Chris steps around and looks at him, head on. He places his hands on Mike’s biceps and blocks the light. ‘I don’t know. I can usually spot it a mile off.’ Chris peers into Mike’s face, his own face in the shadows. ‘Maybe you’re not supposed to be here.’
Mike tries to step back, but the man has a hold of him.
‘You sure you don’t fuck men?’ says Chris.
‘What are you—’
Chris grabs him by the balls.
‘Stop. Stop!’
‘Steady,’ says Chris. He lets out a slow, deep breath. ‘Steady on. I’m a policeman. You don’t want to make a scene down here, buddy. It’s all good. It’s all …’ Chris explores, moving his hand around. He still has Mike’s bicep. It’s gripped so tight it hurts.
Mike pushes him back, but it makes it worse.
Chris squeezes with his lower hand. ‘Uh, uh.’
Mike starts to panic. He flails a punch.
The grip on his balls unlocks and Mike crumples, kneels in the grass about to hurl.
‘Definitely not a poof, then,’ says Chris, standing over him. ‘Hard to know sometimes. Sorry about that. No harm done.’
Mike finds his breath.
The night feels immensely still.
Up at the house, the music cuts mid-song. A droning version of ‘Happy Birthday’ drifts down.
‘I think they’re about to cut the cake,’ Chris says, walking away.
An hour later, Mike is still collecting himself. He’s fucking loaded now, slipping into blackout drunkenness, and can’t seem to right himself. He keeps to the edges of the house, almost scared to go out into the yard again.
Jamie finds him pressed against a wall beside a large indoor house plant. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t know. I think it’s time to get out of here.’
‘You still want to see something?’
‘What is it?’
‘The room,’ says Jamie.
Jamie has some speed he’s scored from another guest, and on Jamie’s advice, Mike does a little to wake himself up. He doesn’t like the sound of this room Jamie mentioned, but as they walk around the house and through the gardens, the guy renegotiates the offer, asking for more money.
‘I can pay,’ slurs Mike, feeling like it’s a positive sign. But in truth, he wants it to be over. Only the feeling that he’s come too far to turn back keeps him moving.
‘Down here,’ says Jamie.
They cut around manicured hedges and through a rose garden. No one is out this way. Tall lights appear up overhead. Jamie’s taking him to the tennis courts. They walk down a set of concrete steps, along and around the courts to a small, covered shed built under the tiered seating. There’s a door cut into the corrugated steel wall and Jamie pulls a set of keys from his pocket and tries one in the door’s lock.
No luck.
He tries another.
‘Fuck.’
‘Where’d you get these?’ says Mike.
‘These,’ Jamie says, ‘are what you’re paying for.’ He holds them up to the moonlight and separates one out before slotting it into the lock and popping it open. ‘Here we go.’
The inside of the shed smells like lawn clippings and mildew. There’s a steel-frame shelving unit on castor wheels and Jamie unlocks the wheels and moves it aside, revealing the inner doorway. He reaches into the darkness beyond and hits a light switch.
Soft light pours out.
A carpeted stairwell, a timber-lined interior with wall lamps.
Jamie goes first. ‘This is where the really fucked-up stuff happens.’
‘You’ve been down here before?’
He nods.
Down in the basement, Mike counts off three rooms connected by a short hall.
Jamie goes straight to door number two.
It’s a small cinema room. A screen and projector with seating. On the far side of the cinema, behind a wall-length velvet curtain, Jamie finds another door and unlocks it. This is a storeroom. There are shelves full of film canisters beside five grey filing cabinets.
‘If you’re looking for something, this is probably where it is,’ says Jamie. ‘There’s a lot of trouble in here. You better be good for that money.’
The films have names on them.
Dates.
Locations.
Brisbane, late seventies, early eighties.
They’re all men’s names.
Mike tries the filing cabinets and finds paper files. He pulls one out at random and finds a collection of forms.
He looks through.
Official complaints lodged on official police stationery.
Internal Investigations memos and paperwork.
He spots names he recognises.
Magistrates.
Cops.
Politicians.
Priests.
Mike opens another drawer.
More of the same.
There must be thousands of them. This must be—
A loud scraping sound rumbles through the room.
The door above.
‘Oh god,’ says Jamie.
Mike sweeps the room, looking for anything he can grab. He spots a piece of foolscap paper taped to the wall. Names and dates and numbers. While Jamie’s back is turned, Mike grabs the sheet and stuffs it in his pocket.
‘What was that?’ Jamie has his arm. ‘Fuck.’ He drags Mike out of the storeroom and pushes him into a corner of the cinema. ‘Stay there.’ Jamie drags the velvet curtain across Mike, hiding him from view. ‘Don’t move until I come get you.’
The lights go out.
Voices echo.
People enter the room, loud and reeking of booze. Mike can feel their footsteps through the floor. Someone murmurs a hello to Jamie and Jamie says a quiet hello back.
‘Find your seats, find your seats,’ says a voice.
It takes a minute to settle the room, but Mike is lost to his own void-like fear. He’s still in the corner, covered. But someone is close. Someone is going to move the curtain. I’m in a coffin standing up. I’ll never see my kids again. All the drugs and alcohol in his system are scratching under his skin, like bugs crawling.
Music comes on. Soft funk.
Dialogue, awkward and brittle.
Mike can’t breathe. His face is burning up.
He delicately pulls back the curtain and looks.
A white screen.
A woman in an office, unbuttoning a green skirt.
All the seats are full.
Mike slips out and, as his eyes adjust, he notices another five or so men standing along the rear of the cinema, not four feet away.
No one looks his way. No one notices his sudden appearance.
Where is the fucking door?
He waits.
As the fucking starts onscreen and the moaning soundtrack gets louder in the room, he notices a brief slice of vertical yellow light across the way.
A figure slips through the doorway.
Without thinking, Mike follows.
Across the line of men, through the beam of the projector and to the door.
Into the hall, gently pulling the door shut behind him.
Along the hall to the stair.
‘Hey,’ says a voice.
Mike turns.
Chris stands at the terminus of the hall in a doorway. He has paper towelling in his hands.
Mike walks faster.
‘Hey.’
Up the stairs, through the shed and out into the open air. As soon as he’s outside, he runs.
No direction.
No thinking.
Just sprints for it.
He hears the clang of the shed door opening behind him.
‘HEY!’
Mike runs to the cover of the thick gardens adjoining the tennis court. Shrubbery and branches whipping his face and shoulders. A minute later, he breaks out the other side of the garden into an undulating orchard on the side of a hill.
He doesn’t stop running.
Gunfire behind him now, an echoing retort.
Shouting. Male voices. Heavy footfall.
He comes out of the orchard into a long sloping field and sprints into the night.
More gunfire in the distance.
His legs give out and he falls.
Gets up, keeps going. In pain, chest barely working.
There’s something ahead. Two hundred metres out. Lights in a line. A road dotted with garden lamps.
A car is driving along it.
Mike sprints down to the road and, by some miracle, the car slows a little. He runs alongside it, screaming, ‘Help, help!’
The driver brakes.
The passenger door snaps open.
Mike gets in, terrified.
Another gunshot across the night sky. The rear window of the car caves, spraying glass across the back seat. The driver screams and the car shunts forward, speeding up. It’s a dark sedan, hotted up, fast.
‘Hurry,’ says Mike, hiding below the window line.
More shots.
Gravel spraying.
A world-tilting slide sideways and then nothing, just the engine at full throttle and the wind blasting in through the broken window.
A minute passes. ‘You can come out now,’ says the driver.
Mike looks over.
It’s Jamie behind the wheel.
‘Thanks.’
Jamie looks over, dazed, in shock. ‘You’ve gotta pay for that window,’ he says. ‘You’ve gotta put that on the tab.’