Who Sings for Lu? (17 page)

Lu finished work one afternoon fully expecting the big cop to be waiting with his usual demand. Like: ‘Got something you’d like to ride, Lu honey.’ Men. Sending her sexually explicit texts, dozens of them in a day.

Instead it was Rocky. ‘Rocky!’ Released from jail.

She had so much to tell him. So much not to tell him.

He hadn’t changed at all. Took her to a venue only Rocky could have arranged the day he got out of jail — a nice apartment overlooking, uh-oh, Botanic Gardens, but just a ‘sliver’ as he put it, apologising for less than a full view. And Lu not for one moment about to tell him why being in proximity gave her the shudders. Later, maybe. If she could come up with a decent lie, or some credible explanation as to why she did it, set the girl up. ’Cause Rocky sure as hell wouldn’t countenance her being party to rape, let alone sodomy, assault and battery, robbery of a fellow female. Jeezuz no. Even if a just-out-of-jail convict. Rocky had morals.

Where would she start?
Just let him do the talking and find
somewhere
to slot in.
‘Oh, Rock, you don’t know how good it is to see you. Why didn’t you write and let me know?’

‘What’s a surprise for if it ain’t one, Lu baby?’

Away he went, talking not of himself, not of the jail experience,
but of his plans to go into business doing what he knew best, looking after rental properties, ‘Except I’ll employ a load of people, but start off small. You’re my first employee, Lu.’

‘I am?’
God, now I can never tell him what I am.
‘I like the job I got. But thanks all the same.’

‘You got no choice. Made up my mind you’d be the first. And — and,’ he said, trying to hold back that grin, ‘gonna give you a twenty per cent share from the off.’

‘Oh, Rock. Stop shittin’.’

‘Fair dinkum. You’ll owe for the shares, have to come out of your wages. You won’t be able to live high, have to stay disciplined and do such a good job landlords will be busting our door down to get our services.’

‘Jeezuz, Rock.’

On he went like an excited schoolboy, not a hard man just hours out of Sydney’s toughest jail. No recidivist he — a word some Woollo residents knew well being related to recidivists and seeing them go in and out of prison like boomerangs coming back.

‘Oh, I got plans all right, Lu.’

She thinking if he wanted a bit, if she was in his plans, well:
I’d give him one.
No skin off her nose, she might even enjoy it, least the giving her best friend pleasure and release after, what, eighteen months of going without, she knew nature’s rule even if a lifetime victim of it. Damn right she’d look after him, if that’s what he needed.
I’ll really turn one on for him, all the tricks and gladly. Since when am I supposed to enjoy it? Do it for him. If he wants.

Talked late into the night, 4 am before she couldn’t stay awake not even in her excitement. Where would they sleep? Damn it, why not ask.

‘Rock …? You needing, like, a woman?’

‘Sure.’ Same old smile. ‘But not you, babe.’

‘Okay.’ Meaning:
Oh? Something wrong with me?

‘We got things to talk about,’ he said.

‘More, you mean?’ since they’d talked, and without the loosening effect of alcohol, for over twelve hours, non-stop. Just flowed from both them.

‘On the subject, hon. My time’s only been spent thinking. Your room thisaway. You’ll get a nice view in the morning. I’ve been here before.’

He kissed her on the lips, a little linger there. ‘See you in the morning. You got work tomorrow?’

‘I can take the day off. I’m owed.’

‘Yeah. Do that. Then we can talk some more. G’night.’

‘This client bloke must like you.’

‘Guess he does. He’s got a whole lot of apartments I’m gonna ask can he contract out to us.’

‘Us?’ Didn’t have any ring. Heard pipe dreams her whole life.

‘Yeah, us. He likes me ’cause I deliver. Like you will.’

Will I?
‘I can deliver for you still, if you want?’ Said self-consciously, feeling like a slut — not just a mate being kind.

‘Who says you won’t? Sooner than you think too, yeah?’

Oh? What’s that supposed to mean?
Like there was a set date on it? ‘It’s there, any time you want,’ she said. For you it is. ‘Goodnight, Rock. So fuckin’ good to see you.’

Little Sniper the viper Hennessy in his scooting from one pub to the next along Glebe’s main drag went,
Fuck me, I know them and they’re working? At a job?

At two of several blokes in dusty worker clothes at this hour, meaning not long finished work and having a few thirsts end of the day in the sports bar, not the bars for the dressed-up folk. Remembered them from the runaway thousands who gravitated to one another, like junkies, like drunks, crooks, cops he guessed, everyone in their million different fields and areas of, well, expertise and lostness and sexual bent and all the other stuff.

Except he wasn’t in their category, came from a close-knit clan strong on family values, just a tradition of running close to the wind, closer than that at times in how they made their living. A Hennessy liked his dough in lumps, like several months of the average wage for a whole lot less hours worked. You couldn’t get that living a regular life.

Sniper knew a few things very well. Faces. Numbers to do with money. Opportunities, only if you kept an eye out and chased them down like wild game when they did come. Not that he’d hunted game; lost, missing and errant humans were right now his prey. Like these two, memories from way back that sat there like a shape waiting for another to fit right into it and make it whole. With this pair something was missing.

He told the barman, ‘Schooner please, mate. Hahn Light, and I like a head.’ A dag being an Aussie who had no objection to less quantity for more quality in his beer, and only light beer at that. Barmen got punched over for not filling to the brim. Friggin’ peasants, same who’d go for two overdone steaks than one cooked perfectly, medium rare, or rare. His dad loved a blue steak. Sniper was learning to like them bloodier and bloodier too.

Now, where did these two fit?

Settling into a corner just like a sniper ready to fire from his place of concealment, even in this busy bar full of workers.

Jay.

That was the good-looking one’s name: Jay.
Gotcha, son. Slotted
. Read a book about an autistic guy who did incredible number calculations which he saw in his mind as shapes and colours. Could recite from memory pi to twenty-four thousand decimal points. Maybe I’m a mild autistic. Tell Uncle Red that and he’d say, ‘Talk that rubbish with me and I’ll give you unc’s au-fistic.’ One of the heads of the family was Uncle Red, with a fast wit.

The other one had brown skin, flatter features, might be Polynesian, maybe part-Tongan, Samoan, noble-looking bloke if he wasn’t so common with his loud Strine bellow. Probably trying to make up for not being a fair dinkum Ocker.
Come to Sniper, brown boy. I’ll put the shapes together to get a whole.
Big brown laughing eyes.
Happy, are ya? Enjoy while it lasts.

These two had that look of shit childhood, kid runaways surprised to grow into men. Caught by what they weren’t ready for, adulthood, since the boyhood didn’t get lived out.

But something was missing. Had another mouthful of froth and no-effect ale.
Ah. There’s a guy gone from the picture.
Sounds like? Sounds like?

Eee. As in D for Deano. E as in sounds like … sounds like. Trio. Tree-oh.
He was one of the trio. The males. Latecomer to join up. Word around the same lot got bashed up by some Lebs recently. No reason, didn’t have to be. Young men who didn’t grow up would always get beat up.

One more missing, they were a quartet, not a trio.
That’s right, the curly-haired one took Rocky’s place, they mightn’t even know each other.
He’s Deano.
The other, he could see the face … a woman’s. Lu. That was it.

Lu, she’s the fourth and, to my peculiar way of looking at things, the main one. Not the leader of the pack so much as things end up revolving around her. Good and bad. Lu. You get people like that. Magnets for the big events. Yeah. Lu.

Come in, spinner! You’re on a roll, Snipey me boy. They should bottle your blood. Pickle your prick. Preserve your brain in a jar of vinegar.
All these sayings picked up from three generations of close-knit Hennessys.

Sniper had the face in his mind like she was a sister. Real pretty thing, even if she didn’t know it, no confidence, real good body, taut, perfect tits needing nothing but free air to bounce in, an almost
see-through
top, a certain raw presence. Lu O’Brien.

Yeah, real pretty but life scrawled all over the same face like graffiti. A Woollo girl. Knew her brothers, fuckin’ cockroaches, who’d only end up with cell walls to crawl over. The sister was a pathetic junkie. That line of O’Briens used to be a proud criminal family, never broke the code, staunch, till her grandfather came along when God was out of the room. Drank himself to an early death, Lu’s grandfather, and her father trying to do the same. She could’ve been a cracker. Some shit must’ve happened along the way.
Not my problem. Now I’ve got the four. Just haven’t slotted them yet. Once I do then I’ll line ’em up and pick ’em off. Or maybe I’ll let someone else do the shooting.

Claire had put the man in the never-see-again box, along with his business card stating his most un-Australian name, Randolph Huddlestone — sounded like a one-man English law firm, a two hundred-year-old shoe brand.

He looked like a Pom too. Beautiful hair, Hugh Grant-style, except he was more muscular and — if not as handsome as the actor — did have a certain appeal. Clearly spent time out in the sun, probably swam a lot. And while the clear enunciation suggested private schooling, he was Aussie through and through in his tanned and confident ruggedness.

‘Private investigator, ma’am. Embarrassed as I am to say so, no other job description. That’s what we do.’

That was when she went right off him.

His news that her husband had engaged his services at least explained why he’d been parked outside the front gate in his car when she pulled up from visiting Sue. Appeared right there as she punched in the new security number that gave her access only to the house, a ridiculous measure installed by Sandy Tulloch, when from the house they had full access to the paddocks and therefore the precious equine residents. She expected one day to see a fence being erected around the agreed house boundaries.

Now told the man she did not appreciate his style of introduction, to just come up on someone like that.

‘My profuse apologies. Gaining access was easy but you would have been really annoyed if I’d strolled up to your living room and said hi.’ When hi didn’t suit him. And yes, she would have been very annoyed at such an approach.

Curious at what Riley was up to, Claire worded a careful invitation to the man to come in for a cup of tea. Could make the visit as short as twenty minutes. Turned out over an hour, and included two glasses of wine for the visitor, one for herself, the first fifteen minutes circling with polite chitchat.

He’d served in the SAS. For Special Air Service, as if Claire was remotely interested. And when he added, ‘I do have a weakness for a good scrap,’ she was definitely off the man, reassessed his self-assurance to mean a bit on the thick side and rather full of himself. Clearly the SAS did not address its members’ maturity issues.

Then he saw the photograph of Anna playing her cello and claimed to have learned the instrument himself, mentioned works only someone in the know would have heard.

Next with a swift change of subject came the bombshell: that Riley had tried to hire the services of a hit man —

‘A hit man?’

‘Yes, the exact phrase he rather loosely and carelessly put out he was prepared to hire for top dollar.’

‘He told you this? He was going to —’ Could be talking of a complete stranger. ‘That’s when he met you? And …?’ Could not possibly have continued in his aim, to get these people
killed
?

‘Soon after, yes.’ He was assessing her but she was ready, kind of knew the look, and gave away nothing.

‘I told him I don’t mind being paid to hurt someone over some moral issue, or a blatant rip-off.’

Irritated at this stage, perhaps by the pseudo-wisdom, Claire asked, ‘Did he ask you to kill someone?’ Needed to know, to see where Riley’s head was at. He might need help, psychological help. An ex-wife’s help? Why not? He was still the father of her children.

‘No. He asked me to show him how I could track down the people involved in your daughter’s attack.’

Claire glad he didn’t say rape, mention the sodomy. ‘And how did you manage that?’ she wanted to know. ‘Or is that why you’re here, to explain why you failed?’

His face changed then, she thought at the notion of failing.

‘Mrs Chadwick —’

‘It’s Claire.’

‘Claire. I doubt any PI could track those people down. They’ll say they can, like lawyers say they’ll win your case. But only with a huge budget and no time limit. Your husband’s anger excluded the latter, if not the former. I recall he said he’d pay whatever it cost to get these men.’

‘And a woman,’ Claire said. ‘They had a woman accomplice.’

‘I said I could go out into society’s underbelly and see what I might come up with. I might get lucky and hear of some indiscreet boasting, as this type are wont to do. That’s why they commit such crimes — because they’re inadequate. He said to go ahead.’

And? And then what happened?

‘Which I did,’ Randolph said. ‘On a handshake. Between gentlemen.’

‘He keeps his word.’ Felt like qualifying that but of course didn’t.

‘Except he disappeared.’

Back rushed Claire’s irritation, except this time it came with dislike. ‘So you’re here chasing a bill? With me?’

‘Not at all. I hoped he might be here. But arriving a couple of days ago and staying at a local pub, I found out to my astonishment that you have parted.’

‘Why astonishment? You don’t know us.’

‘The timing, I meant.’

She sighed. ‘So the town knows already?’

‘Towns, villages, big cities, all the same. We know because we’re all together in the game called life. I’m sorry to hear you’ve parted at this juncture of your lives.’ Juncture an old-fashioned word she’d not heard in a long time.

‘So why are you here?’

‘I might have something to report,’ he said too casually. ‘To my client. If and when he brings my account up to date.’

‘Oh?’ She tried to act as if not rattled. ‘And if not you’ll withhold the information until you’re paid?’

‘It’s my living, I’m afraid.’

Now she was thinking hard. ‘I would be happy to pay …’
But
…

‘I’d not contemplate charging you.’
How gallant of the man.
‘But if he keeps up his disappearance act …’

He would accept her payment on behalf, so Claire interpreted. ‘And if I was happy to pay for it right now?’

‘It’s not that vital, Claire. Just a couple of names of possible suspects.’

‘The police would be pleased —’

‘Let them do their own job. We do ours.’ He stood up. ‘If I thought I had anything that could nail these chaps — and chapette — I’d not hold it back, I promise you. Thank you for your time, Claire. It’s been a pleasure.’

And hers too, she realised to her surprise. Rather an interesting fellow as it turned out. Age? Late thirties. Pity about the lowly profession. Thought she remembered someone saying private eyes did debt collecting as a means of subsidising their poor PI earnings. As for Riley trying to hire a professional killer, how did she feel about that? After all that had been done to Anna? One sees these things portrayed on television, in a movie, asking the big what-if-it-happened-to-me question.

She knew one thing: if Riley did find and dispatch these people and then came to her confiding, she would not tell a soul.