Blood Work (17 page)

“Yes we are.
Is he home?”

“What business
is it of yours?” She looked them both over, her lips pursing as she
read Ivan’s T-shirt. “Matthew doesn’t have friends like you.” This
was directed at Ivan.

Hands on hips,
Ivan asked, “But he does have friends like her?” He jerked his head
in Erin’s direction.

“Of course.
Proper professional folk. Well, at least one. Young man always in a
suit. Very decent. He’s very respectful too.” She sniffed.
“Wouldn’t be impertinent to a stranger at all.”

Erin put a
hand on Ivan’s arm before he could respond. “Let it go,” she
whispered to him. Turning to the woman, she smiled gently. “Please
excuse my associate, it’s his laundry day. Ma’am, my name’s Erin
McRea and I’m with Sol Investigations.” Producing a card from her
pocket she held it out to the woman. “Please feel free to check up
on my credentials at any time. I used to be a police officer in
Brisbane CBD for nine years.”

The old lady
examined the card every which way as if it might have a secret
compartment. She squinted at the printing. “I’ll have get my
glasses. Stay there.”

The door
banged shut behind her. Ivan huffed out an irritated sigh.

“Don’t start,”
Erin warned him.

“It’s not fair
that I’m prejudiced against just because of what –”

“Ivan.” Erin
glared at him. “Forget it.”

He grumbled
and crossed his arms. “What was all that stuff about checking
credentials and telling her you used to be a cop? You don’t always
do that.”

“It helps some
people feel more confident in talking to me. They like to know that
I’m responsible and that they have a means of making sure I’m
legit.”

Nose wrinkled,
he mumbled, “Suspicious old biddy. Bet she doesn’t know about
Hawkins. Wouldn’t think so highly of him then, I reckon.”

About to
caution him again, Erin clamped her mouth shut as the door opened.
The old woman had a pair of half-moon glasses perched on the very
end of her nose, head tilted back as she peered at the card.

“Well, it
looks official, I suppose. Why are you looking for Matthew?”

“I’m afraid
that’s confidential, ma’am,” Erin said. “Do you know when he’ll be
home?”

She looked the
card over again, adjusting her glasses. “He’s out of state on
business. Young man works very hard. Hardly ever home these days. I
take care of his mail.”

Erin took a
deep breath. Just when she’d started to think Hawkins might not be
so bad, she finds out he’s been lying to his neighbour. Away on
business? But being beaten half to death in Redcliffe at the same
time? She let the breath out in a long, even flow.

“When did he
leave?” she asked, years of practice keeping her tone neutral.

“I last saw
him was four weeks ago. Just got in from Japan I think he said,
then he was gone again two days later.”

“Do you know
what sort of business he’s in?”

“Oh, I don’t
know. Something to do with computers or calculators, I think. All
that sort of talk goes right over my head. But he’s very
professional. Perfect gentleman.” She cut a pointed look at
Ivan.

Ivan rolled
his eyes and stalked back to the car.

“Mrs…?” Erin
began.

“Browne, and
it’s Miss.”

Erin smiled.
“Miss Browne, you like Mr Hawkins. He’s a good neighbour when he’s
home?”

“Oh yes. Used
to have two girls living in there.” She pursed her lips and shook
her head. “Loud music every weekend. Well, I suppose they call it
music. And the boys. My, those girls were…” Miss Browne screwed up
her face, thinking.

“Popular?”
Erin suggested.

“Sluts. But
Matthew is such a sweet boy. Always brings me flowers or
butterscotch fudge when he comes home, to thank me for the
mail.”

“He’s very
considerate. Do you know when he’ll be back from interstate?”

“He’s rarely
gone for more than a month, so it shouldn’t be long now. They work
him very hard, you know.”

“So I
understand. You mentioned a friend of his, in the suit.”

Miss Browne
beamed. “Even more polite than Matthew. Very gallant fellow.”

“Do you know
his name?”

She tilted her
head slightly. “You know, I don’t think I do. He’ll usually come by
one night while Matthew is at home. If I’m out, he always says
hello and helps me with my bags or holds the door for me. Very
charming.”

Erin
considered not asking, but she had to. “Do you think this man and
Mr Hawkins are involved?”

“In business?
Yes, I do.”

Oh dear. Erin
pulled in another soothing breath. “No, I mean romantically.”

Miss Browne’s
eyes popped open wide and her jaw dropped. “No! No, of course not.
They’re both respectable young men.” She glanced toward Ivan.
“Matthew has a girlfriend.”

“Do you know
her name?”

“Well, no.
I’ve only seen her a few times. Matthew always brings her in late
at night. Pretty little thing. Dark hair, pale skin.” She frowned.
“She dresses like the girls who used to live there, though. I’ve
told Matthew that he should encourage her to wear more or she’ll
catch a cold. He agrees with me but says she’s very strong willed.
Now, is that all you wanted to know? My stories are about to
start.”

“Please, Miss
Browne, I only have a couple more questions.”

“Come on then,
make them snappy.”

“How long has
Mr Hawkins’ rented this property?”

Miss Browne
spent a moment thinking and counting silently on her fingers. “Two
years, next October.”

“Okay.” Erin
steeled herself. “Did you know he has a past conviction and that he
spent time in prison?”

Obviously not,
by the stunned stammer and desperate hold on the door frame. Erin
rushed forward to offer her hand to the elderly lady, but Miss
Browne waved it away.

“Surely not.
He’s such a nice young man.”

“I’m sorry,
ma’am, but it’s true.”

Miss Browne’s
face crumpled. “But…”

Erin took her
hand and rubbed it gently. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago and
not for anything major.” What was a little white lie to sooth the
old duck? “I do think he is repentant and shouldn’t be persecuted
for his crime anymore. Please don’t think any worse of him for it.
He’s always been kind to you, hasn’t he.”

She nodded,
though her eyes seemed unfocused. Erin just hoped she hadn’t upset
Miss Browne too much. But knowing Hawkins hadn’t come clean about
his past was important. As was the fact that he kept a decoy house.
He wasn’t away on business. He didn’t really ‘live’ here. He was
hiding something, and going to great lengths to do so.

“Thank you,
Miss Browne, you’ve been very helpful. You have my card. Don’t
hesitate to call me for any reason. I’ll let you get back to your
stories.”

Miss Browne
nodded and wandered back inside. Erin bit her lip, wondering if she
should talk to one of the other neighbours and ask them to keep an
eye on her. Decided to do that, she headed toward the highblocked
house next door. A dirty white van chugged up the steep incline of
the street, passed her car, and Ivan who slouched sulkily on the
boot, turned around at the cul de sac and belched its way back
toward them.

Erin glanced
at the driver, then looked again. He stared out the window at her,
not looking where he was going. His face was deathly pale, long and
narrow, almost too long, with a sharply pointed chin. The nose
looked like it had been flattened with a mallet, flaring wide, and
expanding as the driver took in a deep sniff of air. His ears were
huge, lobe-less and upswept so they ended in points just over the
top of his bald head. He grinned and his mouth was full of fine,
pointed teeth.

What…?

“Ivan,” she
called, not daring to take her eyes off the strange person.

The driver
lifted a very real and very deadly submachine gun and pointed it
through the window.

“Down!” Erin
threw herself to the ground.

The machine
gun exploded into action, a deafening, rattling roar. Erin
scrambled on her belly toward the cover of the garden bed in the
neighbouring yard. Clods of dirt flung themselves out of the ground
around her. A bullet, fast and scorchingly hot, whizzed over her
back. Another scored her left shoulder. The hibiscus she pulled in
behind shook as if suffering a fit. Leaves were torn from the
plant, a whirlwind of green localised right around her.

Screams
pierced the din of the machine gun. Erin lifted her head, but
pulled it back down as the top half of the bush collapsed under the
damage and crashed down over her. Sharp branches dug into her
back.

And then, in a
squeal of tyres and smoke, the van raced away down the hill.

Erin stayed
where she was for several moments more. Someone was still
screaming, a high-pitched, female wail of terror.

That was when
Erin remembered the kids playing in the yards.

I cruised across the river and
negotiated my way through the mad, afternoon traffic to get to the
Dutton Park Cemetery. It’s the second oldest cemetery in Queensland
and believed to be haunted. But then, what cemetery isn’t, eh? I’ve
not seen a ghost at all… yet. I’m not sure I believed in them but
if they were going to be anywhere, it would be in a cemetery,
right? And if there were going to be malevolent ghosts anywhere, it
would be in Dutton Park. Talk about your dark histories. And Kermit
lived in the darkest of them all.

What can I say
about Dutton Park Cemetery? I could say, you seen one cemetery, you
kinda seen the vast majority of them. Rows of headstones, some far
more gratuitously ornate than others, shade trees in wild
abundance, caretaker’s hut in the middle. But that doesn’t account
for the atmosphere of the place.

Dutton Park
Cemetery was old, in terms of Australian history. It cascaded down
the side of a hill overlooking the Brisbane River, ranks of
crumbling graves separated by cracked and sunken paths. Trees grew
crooked and slender from the bare dirt of some graves, the time
eroded and broken headstones lying by their roots. Most days, a
cool breeze drifted in off the water and the sounds of traffic were
muted by the plant life.

When you walk
through the gates, you first notice the quiet, then you get a
little tickle down your spine. The old
someone-stepped-on-your-grave sensation. As you move further into
the burial grounds, it grows up onto your neck, bristling all the
little hairs there. By the time you reach the little, secluded
grove marked by a single headstone, the sense of dread and
unnaturalness is in your limbs and throat, making the former shiver
and the later close up.

Or maybe it’s
just me.

I stopped by
the headstone and crouched down, left leg stretched out to the
side. It was a simple stone cross, marking the grave of Patrick
Kenniff, the last of the bushrangers, and by proxy, the unmarked
graves of forty other criminals who died by hanging at the Boggo
Road Gaol. Patrick Kenniff’s fellow gallows alumni included Ellen
Thompson, the only woman hanged in Queensland for murdering her
abusive husband (her lover and conspirator in the crime was also
hanged. Nothing like spending quality time together) and Ernest
Austin, the last man hanged in the state in 1913. He was a child
killer. She had been eleven years old. They say that as the noose
was placed around his neck, he said, ‘Send a wire to my mother and
tell her I died happy.’

Oh yeah, I was
quite ready to see a ghost. I just didn’t want to see any here.

Letting out a
long breath, I placed my hand on the stone and concentrated. I
gathered up all the creepiness I was feeling and forced it out
through my mouth in a ritual summoning, steeped in tradition and
arcane lore.

“Yo,
Kermit!”

A low moan
vibrated through the grove. Just in front of me the ground began to
shift. The grass rippled outward from a centre point, small clods
broke off and rolled away. A depression formed in the middle,
widened until it was about a foot wide. Another moan sounded,
louder and more irritable. Four long, slender greyish-green
protuberances emerged from the hole. They scrambled at the air and
clawed out further, followed by a narrow hand, arm, shoulder and so
forth until Kermit hauled his scrawny arse out of the earth.

“What time is
it?” Kermit demanded as he sat on the disturbed ground, knocking
dirt out of his big ears.

Kermit was a
ghoul. He was all long, gangly limbs, thin, cadaverous face, flat
nose, wide mouth and ears Dumbo woulda been proud of. None too
worried about propriety, he usually wore scraps of clothes stolen
from the graves. Today, he had on an old morning coat of 1920s
vintage, the tattered remains of a ruffled cravat and nothing else.
Ugh. His frank and peas were out there for all to see. To top it
off, he came complete with a handy reek of putrescence and stale
rot. I shifted up wind.

To listen to
him talk, he was thousands of years old and had fled the deserts of
the Middle East to escape the social revolution that was
Christianity. His real name was Afzal, but I’d first met him on the
banks of the Brisbane River, crouched on a rock, gulping down
rotting fish. He’d looked so much like a frog—albeit a frog with a
set of knives for teeth that would put any self-respecting shark to
shame—that I’d dubbed him Kermit. And you know, there was the whole
green tinge to his leathery skin as well. Kermit didn’t appreciate
the comparison, but I wasn’t out to humour him.

“It’s about
four in the afternoon,” I told him. “Time for all good little
ghouls to be waking up so they can get ready for graveyard
stalking.”

Kermit moaned.
“Ah, man, I had a rough time last night. I was just out minding my
own business, you know, as I always do.”

“Scavenging
from the dead, yeah. What happened?”