AMY WANDERS THROUGH THE bar area, barely in control of herself. After last night—the visit to her father’s street—the rest is like a time-lapse image, a bright swirling vortex of breakfast beers and mid-morning shots, and whatever Eddie behind the bar gave her in the bathroom, on top of a hundred cigarettes and two hundred terrible conversations, all piled into one body and yet, it’s not enough.
Not nearly.
Off the wagon and into the fire.
The pub stands a full storey above the road and it’s like a fish tank in the sun. It’s so white and light. Glare beaming in, illuminating the dust in the air. The god-awful Commonwealth Games droning on the TV, broadcasting scrambled voices, creating more movement.
More, more, more.
Amy necks a beer from a stray table.
Show me everything then.
Let the light in.
All the fast-tracked boozy detail is burying the rest, pushing it further and further away. She couldn’t go inside her father’s place after Webber left. All she could do was sit there in the dark and watch the house and think.
Think and remember.
Amy stumbles and capsizes a table. A cacophony of male laughter follows.
‘The fuck, Amy!’
‘What?’ she screams, spinning and dazed, her clothes wet now.
‘Have a counter meal or I’m cutting you off,’ says the barman.
‘Cut this off, fuckhead,’ she screams, lobbing a beer jug across the room. It lands with a splash on the top-shelf liquor behind the bar, spraying glass and booze across the punters.
Hands are on her then.
World rolling.
Stairs slap the soles of her shoes as she’s dragged out.
‘The hell?’ she screams. ‘What the hell?’ But they don’t listen.
‘This crazy bitch,’ someone says.
It’s about right.
She’s a block away when she remembers how she ended up in Currumbin. Bill Webber’s house is a short walk, and Amy’s coming off an all-nighter in the car, parked in his street, waiting for him to leave. It was the waiting that did her in. All the willpower and good intentions couldn’t tamp down the eerie visions of Webber winding his way through the streets of her childhood. It couldn’t blot out the destination. The memories located there. Even now, she can see her father’s house every time she closes her eyes. ‘And now here we are,’ she says to herself. Turfed out in the suburbs without a drink.
It takes half an hour, but she finds her way back to the car. She manages to get in and wind the windows down. On the back seat, she shakes in the heat haze and passes out.
Amy snaps awake sometime around three o’clock in the afternoon.
Sits up. Scans the outside world, convinced she’s been made, somehow lucid enough to be scared.
But the surrounding street is empty.
A lawnmower in the distance.
Smoke in the air.
Amy looks down the street.
His car is missing.
Webber’s out.
She weaves across his lawn and into the alcove of his front door. Knocks. The booze helps this time: no fear, no hesitation. No answer at the door so she takes her fake bible lock kit with her around back where the lock will be easier to work on. She makes a hash of it but it eventually turns. She steps inside thinking, Either I’m a genius or this thing has been unlocked the whole time.
The first thing she does is check the fridge for booze.
No dice.
The second is a piss in his toilet.
Back downstairs to the garage and Webber’s safe. She has the combination.
She turns the mechanism. Twenty.
Fifteen.
Eighteen.
Fourteen.
Five.
Twenty-five.
The door opens.
Empty.
‘Who are you?’
The voice startles her. But she knows it, knows before she sees.
Amy slowly takes a look.
Bill Webber stands in the doorway with a rifle aimed at her.
‘I’m … I’m a private investigator.’
He takes a step closer. ‘Name.’
‘Amy Owens.’
For a nanosecond, his eyes lose their focus, a fleeting thought. ‘What do you want?’
‘The police files. Whatever you took that you weren’t supposed to take.’
Webber tightens his hands around the rifle. The man is breathing heavy. Stressed.
‘Easy now. I have photos of what you’ve been doing. I know who Wally Stewart is. I watched you beat him to death.’ Amy squeezes her eyes shut, flinching uncontrollably. ‘Anything happens to me and all my boss needs to do is develop the film I’ve already given her and then you’re in a world of hurt.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘Colleen Vinton.’
She waits for what comes next. The click. The big nothing.
She’s scared, but not as scared as she should be.
He says, ‘What the fuck does Colleen want with all this?’
‘I don’t know.’
He moves a little.
The sound of footsteps on exposed concrete. The barrel of the gun announces itself on her chest.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
‘Hey, hey,’ whispers Amy, eyes still closed. ‘It’s your lot, the cops. Colleen has me on loan to Ray Blintiff up in Brisbane.’
The barrel comes away.
Amy forces herself to look. Bill is still there, still holding the gun, but he nods and takes another step back.
Then another.
Then another.
Then he’s gone.
Amy stands there for a whole minute, listening to him leave the house.
A strange tear rolls across her cheek.
It was nearly over.