Cherry Pie (18 page)

If Andi was anything like me, I thought, it wouldn’t have mattered what he’d said.

Ferguson glanced at the clock above the bar, slid his form guide from his back pocket and tapped it on the table. ‘Gotta get a bet in on the second at Rosehill. Anything else you want to know?’

‘Sam Doyle. People reckon he’s a real badass. Ever met him?’

Ferguson scratched his beard and the hair rasped against his fingers. ‘I’ve only heard stuff secondhand and I don’t know how much is real and how much is folklore. He used to work for Don Davison, heard of him?’

‘The name rings a bell …’

‘He was a Mr. Big who used to own half the Cross, moved to the Gold Coast and became a property developer before all the royal commissions went down. Anyway, I know Sam used to crack some heads for him back then, he was an ex-boxer, but he’d have to be pretty straight now, living in his Balmain mansion, running with the yacht club crowd. You still see him around the Cross sometimes, checking out the old haunts. This place has that effect on you, addictive, I reckon. I tried to move down the south coast once, couldn’t handle it. The silence was deafening.’ He checked the clock again and smoothed down the newspaper in front of him.

‘Think he’d kill someone, or have them killed?’ I asked.

He looked at me, green eyes like marbles. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past anyone.’

Ferguson went off to the sports bar down the road to put a bet on and I sat there finishing my Virgin Mary and crunching on celery, briefly wondering if it was true you burned more calories eating the stuff than you received ingesting it. It was a relief to finally know what Andi had been working on, even though it didn’t help me find her. I was pretty confused about where Trip fitted in though, and why Andi had gone back to his place when she was investigating Doyle. Hell, maybe I’d been reading too much into it, maybe she was just drug-fucked and horny. Bit of a coincidence though, that Trip had been the last one to see her …

I rang the detective sergeant who’d interviewed me at Homicide, Duval, and left a message on his phone telling him that although I was no longer investigating the case I’d come up with some new information. I gave him a rundown and Ferguson’s phone number, then sat there tapping my fingernails on the stainless steel table top considering my options. I could go back to my mum’s and spend a fun filled day staring at the lampshade trying not to worry about Andi, or I could continue on with my ‘concerned citizen’ shtick and possibly come up with some more useful information for the police.

It wasn’t a difficult choice. I drained my drink, slipped on my sunnies and stepped out the door onto Darlinghurst Road, heading into the heart of the Cross.

Sun glimmered off the freshly hosed footpath and the windows of passing cars. Playbirds International and Porky’s were closed, the neon hushed and unblinking, but McDonald’s was open and a shop assistant was rolling up the shutters of an adult bookstore. I hadn’t been to the Cross in years. The last time it was three in the morning and I’d been off my face on a cocktail of speed, ecstasy and booze. I hadn’t realised there were so many trees. Solid old oaks and smaller, more delicate plants with fluttering yellow-green leaves grew from the pavement and clustered in the square near the famous fountain that looked like a dandelion bursting into seed.

Another thing I’d never noticed was the architecture.

Above their sleazy, street level facades the buildings were old and ornate. Flats down winding alleyways sported leadlight windows and wrought iron balconies, and ivy climbed up the walls. The place reminded me a bit of St Kilda: the back streets corralled by the Esplanade, Fitzroy and Barkly. I started humming a Paul Kelly song: ‘From St Kilda to Kings Cross’.

I saw an internet café and ducked inside to look up the national missing persons website. Andi wasn’t listed—maybe it took a while—but I found Melita’s name and clicked on it.

‘Have you seen this person?’ The question was typed in bold at the top of the page and a head and shoulders shot sat underneath. Melita was pretty, with a heart shaped face, thin eyebrows and a bleached blonde, slightly poodle-esque perm.

Her boobs looked too big for her slight frame, and too round and upstanding to be real. Did they have tit jobs back in the olden days? Must have done. Her vital statistics told me she was one hundred and sixty centimetres tall, had brown eyes and was twenty-four when she disappeared. It shocked me to realise she’d be my mum’s age, if she happened to still be alive.

At the bottom of the page a paragraph explained the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, but didn’t tell me much at all: ‘Melita aka Melody was last seen leaving work at Kings Cross in the early morning of 28 May 1980. She did not return home and her bank account has not been accessed since.

There are grave fears for her welfare.’ The Missing Persons Unit urged anyone with any information, no matter how trivial, to call their hotline. It made me think of Chloe putting her own phone number on Andi’s posters and I shook my head and almost chuckled fondly until I remembered I didn’t like her anymore.

I printed out the page, folded it and stuck it in my notebook and sat for a bit, wondering how exactly this story had fallen into Andi’s lap. I reckoned it had to have happened in the June holidays when she was staying in Sydney, and I wondered if Joy knew anything about it. I rang and left a message on her mobile asking her to call me. Who else had Andi seen in Sydney who might know something? Maybe Daisy, her old school friend. I still had Andi’s address book so called her, got another darned answering machine and left another message.

I walked out of the internet café and strolled down Darlinghurst Road, looking for the Hot Rock Karaoke Bar where Andi’s credit card had been used, and found it wedged between a kebab shop and a bureau de change. The place was closed but I peered through the glass door and saw a set of stairs leading up to a black curtain. Was it just a karaoke joint or a front for something more sinister? And what the hell had Andi been doing there, if she’d been there at all?

I straightened up and that’s when I noticed something reflected in the glass. A figure across the road was facing me, holding an object that glinted in the sun. I whirled around, pulse suddenly racing, but it was only a tourist, a guy in khaki shorts and a shirt with big red flowers, taking pictures of the strip. I told myself to get a grip. No one knew I was in town, I was just another anonymous chick who hadn’t updated her wardrobe in ten years.

I watched the starburst fountain across the road, waiting for my heart to slow down. The Kings Cross police station was in the same paved square and I decided I might as well flash my license, tell them I was working for the family and ask if Andi had been spotted. Surely the Melbourne police would have faxed through a picture after her credit card had been used?

The station was a sixties building trimmed in yellow and blue with the chequered police symbol above the automatic doors. I climbed a set of stairs, passing a straggly palm tree, approached the desk and showed the young uniform my license, explaining why I was there. I took a seat while he picked up the phone, and a couple of minutes later an older male detective came out and looked me up and down.

Hopefully he was a Breeders fan.

‘Working for the family, are you?’

‘That’s right. We’ve had word her credit card was used in the area. I was wondering if she’d been sighted at all?’

‘No. I’ve canvassed the Hot Rock and businesses in the local area but no one recognised the photo. Just this morning someone was picked up using the card in a local bottle shop when the signatures didn’t add up. Renee McPherson. She’s known to police.’

‘Have you got her here?’

‘No, she’s been taken to the police centre in Surry Hills for charging.’

‘Did she say where she got the card?’

‘Refused to talk to us.’

‘If I fronted up at the centre would they let me speak with her?’

He laughed. ‘Not unless you wanted to bail her out.’

I left the police station and sat at the side of the fountain, smelling chlorine and feeling a fine spray of water trickle down my cheek. It was stupid, it was dumb, and I wouldn’t be able to pretend I was just a concerned citizen anymore, but I couldn’t help myself. I walked to Darlinghurst Road and hailed a cab.

A bleached blonde with two inches of black roots staggered into the reception area of the police centre. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

I took in her pasty complexion and overplucked brows and figured she could have been anything from a ravaged twenty-five to a drug-preserved late forties. Her off the shoulder broderie anglaise blouse showed the rose tattoo on her right breast and a slice of white belly wobbled out over the waistband of her denim mini.

‘My name’s Simone Kirsch.’ I stuck out my hand but she ignored it. ‘I’m a private investigator and I’d like to talk to you.’

‘I don’t fuckin’ think so.’

‘I need to know how you … found the credit card.’

‘See ya.’ She reeled out the door and the desk guy laughed and shook his head.

I ran after her, overtaking her on the steps and blocking her way. ‘Come on, Renee, I just bailed you out.’

‘So?’

I tried another tactic. Begging. ‘Please. I’m looking for a missing girl and her mum’s really worried. I just want to know where you came across it.’

‘An alley.’ She sidestepped me and staggered off on white, spike heeled ankle boots, her pantyhose sagging so I could see the cotton gusset drooping out below her tiny skirt.

‘Which alley?’

‘I don’t fucking know the name of it,’ she muttered over her shoulder, then tried to hail a taxi coming down Goulburn Street. It didn’t even slow down.

‘Can you take me there? Please, Renee, stop.’

She slowly turned around, swaying slightly. Pink blusher striped her face in the general direction of her cheekbones and arcs of blue shadow decorated her lids. She narrowed her eyes and licked her bottom lip. ‘How much is it worth to ya?’

‘What?’

‘Look, I gotta fix before I get sick. So if you don’t have any money—’ she shrugged—‘I hafta go make some.’

‘How much?’

‘Hundred.’

I crossed my arms. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday. You can easily fix for a fifty.’

She shrugged and held out her hand. I shook my head.

‘No way. I’m coming with you.’

‘Dwayne doesn’t like strangers.’

‘Then we’ll tell him a stranger’s just a friend he hasn’t met.’ I pulled out my wallet, showed her the fifty then slipped it back in.

‘Whatever.’ She thrust her arm up, a taxi actually stopped and I jumped in after her.

Ten minutes later we pulled up in front of a block of ugly brick flats in Rushcutters Bay and I paid the driver. Renee talked into an intercom at the security door and we were buzzed inside. We climbed two flights of carpeted stairs, smelling cabbage and bacon, walked down a corridor and knocked on a door. A man with dark curly hair peered through the crack, unhooked the chain, looked up and down the passageway and let us in.

Dwayne wore a silky tracksuit and his hair was long at the back and short on top. His furniture was upholstered in squeaky black vinyl, his coffee table made from pine and the air was opaque with cigarette smoke. I handed Renee a fifty and she paid him and immediately started fixing up with a spoon, lighter and syringe he had thoughtfully provided. I wasn’t freaked out, I’d seen it all before. As far as I was concerned, junkies were far more frightening when they hadn’t shot up.

She found a vein, plunged in the spike, loosened the belt, slid out the needle, pressed the puncture with her finger and sank back on the couch.

Dwayne was offering me a deal, a small square envelope made from the page of a glossy magazine.

I shook my head. ‘No thanks, mate. Trying to cut down.’

‘How long you and Renee been friends?’ He leaned forward and the gold chain around his neck swayed.

‘Not long.’

‘You work?’ He didn’t mean nine to five.

‘Nah, up from Melbourne. Holiday.’

‘You should go to Darling Harbour. They’ve got an aquarium there. Or get a ferry to the zoo. Or Manly. Manly’s nice. How about a bridge climb? Did you know you can climb right to the top of the Harbour Bridge? Pretty expensive, but.’

I smiled politely. Renee had nodded off on the couch holding a lit cigarette in her hand and the ash was getting really long.

‘Renee,’ I nudged her. ‘We gotta go.’

‘What?’ She raised her thin brows but her lids remained half closed.

Smack. Such an unattractive look. I couldn’t believe it had been trendy back in the nineties.

‘We’re going to find that alleyway.’

‘Oh.’

Dwayne stuck his hand out. ‘Nice to meet you.

Remember, Darling Harbour. It’s ace.’

We walked back up to the Cross, stopping every now and then for Renee to light a cigarette. It was three o’clock now and more shops were opening up. I was so starving that even the chickpea curry would have looked good, but I wanted to get this business over and done with before I ate. We hit Darlinghurst Road and I pointed across the street to the karaoke bar.

‘You use the card at the Hot Rock?’ I asked.

‘Fuck no. I’m good at a lot of things, but singing ain’t one of them. Haven’t been in that joint since it was the Love Tunnel.’

‘The what?’ I stopped short outside an ice cream parlour.

‘The Love Tunnel. Used to be a strip joint but, you know, with extras going on out the back.’

Now it was making sense.

‘Can I have an ice cream?’ she whined, pointing to the waffle cones.

I bought her a double scoop boysenberry ripple with chocolate sprinkles on top and we continued on our way, passing the McDonald’s where a group of bikies leaned against their Harley Davidsons.

A fat one with bits of Chicken McNugget in his beard grabbed at me as I passed. ‘How much, sweetheart?’

I looked him up and down and wondered briefly if he was the one who’d chased me and Andi down Parramatta Road all those years ago. They all looked the same to me.