Black Ice (15 page)

'This is new,' she said.

'Gotta do something exciting,' he said. 'It's boring around here without you.'

'Should be fun,' she said. 'How long will you be gone?'

'Andreessen wouldn't let us stay the whole semester, so we're just doing a two-week course. Ethics in Practice. Can you believe it?'

Jill had a sudden premonition. 'Us?' she said.

'Yeah, me and Emma Gibson.'

'Well, isn't she industrious?'

Emma Gibson. Long raven hair, clear grey eyes. A man killer. And she'd wanted this man for as long as Jill had known him.

'Are you jealous?' he said.

'Are you crazy?' she replied.

'It's going to be like camp down there, you know.'

'And?'

'Well, you know, you get really close to your bunk buddies, that sort of thing.'

'Well, you have fun with your bunk buddy, Hutchinson. I've gotta go.'

'Wait! Jill. Don't hang up. I'm just teasing. I like it when you worry about other girls.'

'Emma Gibson is not another girl, Scotty. She's . . . oh, don't worry.' Jill felt stupid; she didn't know what she wanted to say.

'Don't
you
worry, Jackson. I'm gonna come home and we're going back to that beach.'

The beach where she'd tried to kiss him a couple of months ago. He'd stopped her, worried she would freeze him out the next day, blame her actions on the two glasses of wine she'd had that night.

'We'll see,' she said, 'and now I really do have to go.' She'd spotted the targets walking into the pub. She rang off.

Well, well. Jill pulled the map book up to her face and peered over the top. There, shaking hands with her suspects, was a new contestant in tonight's festivities.

Kasem Nader.

Monday 8 April, 9 pm

'Hey baby,' a whisper, 'got any blow?'

Seren had gone over a thousand possible ways to approach Christian and finally she'd gone with this. She figured that an addict like Christian would know that anything could be forgiven when you have to score. It was the only opening he would understand. He'd figure she was desperate, that she'd picked up some bad habits in gaol. He'd have control.

It worked beautifully.

Well, it was either that or the shirt.

'Close your mouth, sweetie.' She touched his face. 'People are staring.'

He drew her close and nuzzled her neck. 'Now, when are you going to get used to people staring at you, Seren?' he said, his lips barely touching her ear.

'I really thought you'd never talk to me again,' said Christian, an hour later.

The music was more mellow in the dining area of the club. Deep, velvet armchairs and retro lamps suspended just above the low tables aimed for the illusion that you were eating in a friend's lounge room. The table was spread with tapas, and a silver ice bucket at the side held a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.

'Well, you know that I do despise you, darling, and if I were you, I wouldn't turn my back while I'm holding any cutlery,' Seren said, 'but I figure, how long is a girl supposed to hold a grudge?'

'I'm so sorry, Seren. I just panicked at the last minute. The advice I got is that if I represented you and got caught, I would have lost my job. I wouldn't have been able to practise law again.'

'And it's not as if you could have got me off the hook, anyway, Christian. There's a mandatory sentence for that much ice.'

'Exactly, so we would both have gone down.'

'And what would have been the point of that?' she said. Fluttered her eyelids.

'I'm so pleased you're being reasonable about this, darling.' Christian covered her hand with his own. He turned on his megawatt smile.

She gave him hers. 'Oh, I'll be reasonable, darling,' she said, 'but we'll be taking up where we left off. Starting with dinner, at Altitude I think it was.'

He leaned back into the cushions and laughed.

'And next time, sweetie,' she continued, 'when you have a little gift like that for me,' she leaned forwards across the table, giving him something to think about when she left him tonight, 'do make certain that you tell me first.'

Monday 8 April, 9 pm

Damien typed a couple of words into his essay, highlighted them and hit delete. Fuck – he had to spend more time on this shit. You couldn't just fake your way through a paper titled
Synthesis of Biologically Active Cyclic Peptides
. He saved the document, closed the file and opened another Free Cell card game. With two fingers, he searched mindlessly for an easy game; his other hand raked through his blond hair. He exhaled noisily. The place stank of cat piss, an after-effect of the last meth cook.

He could just pack up and leave here any time; God knew he had the money now to rent somewhere else. When he'd told Byron earlier that he was having trouble burning through all the cash, he hadn't been joking. He had more than a hundred grand right now sitting in a safe deposit box in Martin Place. What the hell could you
do
with that sort of money? Plenty if it was legal. It would be a good deposit on a house.

But unlaundered drug money? Good luck with that. Damien wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to create any kind of goods or paper trail that could link him to this enterprise should it all go south. And that meant no cars, boats or Rolex watches. He could spend it on holidays – yeah, when? Between the drug shop and uni, he didn't have time to shit unless he took the trip with a textbook and a highlighter pen.

Whitey was churning through a bit on hotels and whores, but Damien couldn't get into it. A couple of times he'd been to Whitey's favourite massage parlour, but on both occasions he'd found himself speaking to the girls about how they'd ended up doing work like that. He couldn't force a girl to have sex with him, and, paid or not, it didn't seem like the staff at Sultan's Court had really had a lot of choice in how they ended up in their so-called chosen profession.

No doubt about it, life was becoming seedier by the day, and he was over it. What had started as an experiment to make some high quality happy pills had become nothing more than an immoral way to make too much money. Damien was a scientist. This wasn't the way he saw the rest of his life going.

His mouth twisted. It felt as though a hand had grown inside his gut and was squeezing it periodically; he just knew – this thing was going to end badly.

And it seemed like this was the beginning of the end. He didn't want Kasem Nader to have any idea who he was. And now this guy wanted to go into some sort of business with them? Nope, not going to happen. Damien would speak to Whitey tonight about shutting up shop. And if Whitey didn't like it, fine. He had plenty of cash, knew the recipes; he could get a new cook and move on with his life. Just not in this house.

Damien closed the card game and tried to get back into his essay.

Tuesday 9 April, 12 pm

Having the car was great, except that Jill woke up to find that everyone in the houso block suddenly needed a ride; had an errand they had to do today that couldn't wait. She needn't have worried about them not buying her story that her ex had given it to her, trying to win her back; apparently crap cars were an acceptable make-up present around here. Frankly, she didn't think they gave a toss where she got the car – a car was a car. She fobbed off half of the requests, but was happy to pick Jelly up from his unit in Merrylands and then drop him, Ingrid and Mrs Dang off at Westfield Parramatta, promising to pick them all up again in an hour.

She needed fresh air. She headed over to Parramatta Park, pulled in under a tree and hit the bike track. She ran for thirty minutes and got back to the car, winded. As she bent over the bonnet, she felt as though she was going to heave. You're out of condition, she told herself. The late nights and smoke-choked rooms were taking a toll. At two this morning, sitting on the side of her bed, waiting for it to stop moving, she'd looked down and found a roll of fat creased above her underpants. That had never been there before. But then, she'd never drunk sugar-soaked cask wine every night before either.

At least with the car it would be easier to get away to exercise, she thought. In this world, that was another behaviour that could put a target over your head. Exercise wasn't a high priority for most people around here, although Jill thought it should have been for most of her neighbours.

She took her mobile from the glove box and re-locked the car. She spotted a seat in the sun and made her way over. Although her body still thrummed with heat from the run, the days were shortening, and the shadows held their chill around the clock.

She scrolled through her stored numbers, wondered whether he'd answer. She hit the call button and waited to find out.

'Yep.' He picked up on the first ring.

'Gabriel?'

'Jill?'

'Hi, Gabe. Ah, how've you been?'

'Is that why you called?' Gabriel. Straight to the point.

'No, not really,' she said. 'Are you busy?'

'Designing a website,' he said.

'Is that for work?'

'Nope. I'm between assignments.'

'So what's the website for?' she asked.

A pause. 'Well, I don't know. Just thought I should see whether I could do it.'

As you do. 'Oh, okay,' she said. 'Listen, Gabriel, I wondered whether I could maybe get a little help with something I'm working on now. I wanted to get some advice.'

'Cool. I just put the lamb on. It will be ready about seven-thirty.'

What? She wasn't asking to come to dinner. 'Gabriel, it's twelve o'clock. How long are you going to cook the meat?'

'Seven hours.'

'What?'

'Seven hours. It's seven-hour lamb.'

Jill had forgotten their conversations had mostly been like this. She smiled and shook her head. 'Well, I guess I could come over if that's all right with you. It's probably better than talking over the phone. Thanks,' she said. A thought occurred to her. 'Actually, Gabe, that would be great. I know you've got access to a lot of databases. Would it be all right if I use your computers?'

'You can stay the night.'

Jill took the phone away from her ear, held it in front of her face. Stared at it. Hard. She brought the phone back to her ear.

'No. That's okay.' She spoke slowly, as though communicating with a lunatic.

'You're undercover,' he said. 'It'll be easier.'

Okay, first, how does that follow? And second, 'How do you know that?'

'We shouldn't talk about it over the phone,' said Gabriel, a little sternly, as if
she
had brought it up. 'So, I'll see you at seven.'

I give up, Jill thought. 'Great,' she told Gabriel. 'That would be great.'

'Don't forget your toothbrush,' he said. 'I've only got the one.'

Seren rinsed her hair a third time. Even though they wore paper caps, her hair always smelled like iron after work, the stench of blood and shit permeating everything, even her cropped locks. She towelled it off and stepped out of the shower.

Pay day. Rent day tomorrow.

She stepped into knickers and a bra and then kneeled at the side of her bed. She stretched a hand underneath. Further. Her heart shot to her throat. Where . . . Her fingers finally found the edge of the box and she dragged it towards her.

Just a box. Well, it was the Louboutin shoebox; the nicest box she'd ever seen, and in addition to that, it held her wages. She'd been told that the boss paid cash until you'd been there six months; eighty per cent of people didn't last that long, and that was all good to him.

Seren counted the cash. One more item of clothing was all she'd need to buy for herself, then she figured she could get the rest of her clothes free. After dinner with Christian at Altitude, she planned to hit him up for pressies. After all, he knew he owed her. He just had no idea how much.

Although it was only a Tuesday night, this was going to be tricky. Seren took eighty dollars from the box. That left just the rent. She prayed that Marco wouldn't need money for sport or an excursion this week. She mentally itemised the food she had for the week: potatoes and lettuce, flour, pasta, bread, cheese, eggs, butter, garlic, milk and Vegemite. That was it. So, sandwiches, omelettes, potato bake, pancakes, macaroni and cheese. Breakfast, lunch and dinner until next Tuesday. It would have to do.

She gnawed her lip. Was she seriously going to go and spend this eighty dollars on herself – on new
clothes
for godsakes – when she didn't otherwise have a cent to live on?

And what would eighty dollars get her anyway? Eighty dollars wasn't enough for a haircut in Christian's world; it was definitely nowhere near enough for a whole outfit.

Seren stood, and thought she caught another whiff of chicken blood. Maybe the stuff can soak into your skin, she thought, like a curse, a permanent reminder of the way she made a living – the slaughtered chickens' last revenge.

She made her way back to the shower. She had to come up with something.