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Where is Amy Camilleri? On holiday? At her mother’s?

For the past thirty minutes Makedde had been having an internal dialogue of her own, quite apart from the company she was in. She wondered what she could do to draw Amy out, and what pretext she could use to talk with her if and when she finally found her. What was the best approach? She would have to figure out pretty quickly whether Amy was just absent, or purposely hiding—the answer would make a vast difference to how Mak was received, and how she should proceed with her. But how long should she waste on trying to find her? She didn’t have much experience with these things. Admittedly, Mak’s trip to Melbourne had been half motivated by the opportunity to visit Loulou. But how much of her client’s money should she spend trying to track the girl down? And if she was still unable to find her by noon the next day, should she return to Sydney empty-handed?

‘Get you another glass, sweetie?’

Mak looked up, startled.

Loulou had asked the question, having momentarily detached herself from her boyfriend’s ear to offer Mak a freshly opened bottle of pinot noir. She held the bottle at a precarious angle in one hand; the wine was nearly spilling from the top.

‘Sure,’ Mak answered.

Loulou passed the bottle down the table, and when it reached the shy Elvis man he took it and gallantly poured a glass for her. Mak wondered if the real men of the fifties had been so polite, or had known how to cook such delicious curried fish and vegetables. She suspected not.

Bogey passed the bottle back around and ran a hand through his Brylcreamed hair before taking a sip from his own glass.

‘Cheers,’ Mak said, raising her glass.

‘Cheers. Next time you visit you should stay with us,’ Drayson said, smiling sleepily. His comment prompted Loulou to kiss him on the cheek. Come to think of it, everything he did seemed to prompt her to kiss him.

The group paused their various conversations momentarily to clink glasses over their empty plates. The white cloth napkins scattered around the table were now stained with curry, the plates and some of the wooden table underneath decorated with leftover rice and the occasional near-translucent fishbone. The meal had been
excellent, and the banter at the table was energising, if erratic. Mak wondered if she was finding the company of these lively strangers particularly refreshing after the claustrophobic feelings she was beginning to suffer because of her routine with Andy. Perhaps the three-month break would not be such a bad thing.

Mak checked her watch. It was ten o’clock.

It’s too early.

Although she was obviously not going to get much quality time with Loulou, she still had an hour or so to kill before she could get back to work.

Makedde took a sip from her glass and looked to the end of the table, at her friend draped around her man of the moment, laughing. They looked cute together. Mak hoped for Loulou’s sake that it lasted more than the weekend. The only problem was that it would mean that her closest friend would be spending all her time interstate. Apart from Andy and Karen Mahoney, with whom she was becoming good friends, Loulou was her closest companion. Mak had been living in Australia for one year. Perhaps she should have more friends by now?

You do not trust the way everyone else does.

Her friend Catherine had been murdered, her mother had died, and her father and sister were thousands of miles away, so one could hardly blame her for being a little less open than the average girl. But Mak was lonely at times,
especially with Andy’s long work hours. She envied people who lived their lives enveloped by a comforting circle of close and trusted long-term friends. It just hadn’t worked out that way for her. She wanted Loulou to find happiness, but she would be sad to lose her to Melbourne.

Just try to be social.

Mak turned to the Elvis man. Someone had to start the talk flowing between them, so it might as well be her. ‘So, um, were you born in Melbourne?’ she asked.

He looked up from his glass with a ready smile. ‘No. I moved here a few years ago. I was born near Darwin. You’re from Canada, right?’

Mak nodded. ‘Gee, you’re good. I can’t tell you how many Australians think I sound American.’

‘You’re married to an Australian, then?’ Bogey asked.

Mak felt her throat tighten. ‘Well, no…’ She raised her left hand. ‘See, no rings. I am in a relationship, but not married. Or engaged.’
Next subject, please.
‘You’re from Darwin? I’ve never been.’

The Elvis man nodded casually. ‘It’s beautiful, but isolated. How long have you been in Oz?’

‘A year or so. So, are you in the band with Drayson?’ she asked, wanting to keep the subject off herself and her relationship with Andy.

‘I used to be in Possum,’ Bogey said. ‘But not any more. I make furniture now. I have a little shop down in St Kilda.’

Mak watched him speak, struck by the fact that Bogey was actually very attractive, in an artistic sort of a way. Beneath those big, black-rimmed glasses he had long, dark lashes and sympathetic brows. He had roughed up his even features with the light stubble along his jaw and the spiked-up hair, Mak noticed, but it didn’t change the fact that he was classically handsome. His mouth had a pleasing shape, with a plump cupid’s bow in the centre that she tried not to stare at.

Slow down on the wine, girl. You are going to need to be sharp later…

‘How nice,’ Mak said. ‘What kind of stuff do you make?’

‘Custom furniture,’ Bogey answered. ‘Cabinets, chairs, tables—that sort of thing. I work with a variety of materials.’

‘Ha!’ Donkey blurted from across the table quite unexpectedly, intruding on their conversation. ‘He also works with
pine.
’

‘I’m sorry. Please ignore him,’ Bogey said softly, not meeting the other man’s eyes. ‘You’re in Melbourne for work?’ he asked, attentively directing his focus to Mak.

Mak was about to answer him when Drayson piped up from the end of the table. ‘Go ahead, tell her your trade.’ He leaned forwards and grinned with a tannin-stained mouth while Loulou clung lovingly to him. She’d abandoned her chair to perch in her lover’s lap.

Mak waited for Bogey to respond but he tried to deflect the interest in himself by raising the bottle of pinot noir and asking if anyone wanted another top-up.

‘Come on, Booooogey Man!’ Donkey called obnoxiously. He was obviously stirring the pot about something, and it seemed to be a little annoying to Bogey, who heard the nickname and rolled his eyes.

‘I make
furniture
,’ he repeated, looking down at his plate. He doesn’t seem to like talking about himself, Mak noticed.

‘Come on. Your
trade
,’ Drayson said, not letting up.

This is beginning to sound like a good story
, Mak thought, intrigued when the teasing wouldn’t stop. What was it about his trade?

Bogey took a breath. ‘Technically,’ he said softly, ‘my trade is coffin maker.’

Mak’s jaw fell open. Now he had her complete, undivided attention. ‘A coffin-maker? I haven’t met a coffin-maker before. How interesting.’

‘I haven’t done it for a while,’ he said dismissively into his glass. ‘I don’t know why they want to bring it up.’

Here he had been shy all evening and he was quite possibly the most interesting person at the table. She wished she’d got him talking earlier. She wanted to hear more. ‘How long did you do that for?’

Bogey shifted in his chair. ‘I worked full-time as a coffin-maker for about five years before starting with furniture. The work was fine, but I prefer to make furniture for the living.’

Coffins. Furniture for the dead.
Mak had never thought of it that way.

‘He’s the Booooogey Man!’ Donkey yelled with glee, clearly thinking himself very clever. Mak was starting to see that the man was, quite literally, rather asinine. Perhaps he had done too many steroids to get that physique, or snorted one too many protein powders? She wondered if he was one of the reasons Bogey was no longer with the band.

‘Come on, Bogey, tell us more!’ Loulou said enthusiastically. ‘Her dad’s a cop and she loves the gruesome stuff!’

Oh right, I love the gruesome stuff. Thanks, Loulou.

‘Your father’s a cop?’ Bogey asked, catching her eye.

Mak nodded.
And my boyfriend, but I don’t want to think about him right now…

‘Well, it was before I moved to Melbourne from a town near Darwin,’ Bogey explained. He did not seem entirely comfortable in the role of resident curiosity, but he continued nonetheless. ‘I was a teenager. I studied as a coffin-maker and worked for the local funeral parlour. It was no big deal. I lived in a small town, so everyone had to multi-task. I would pick up the bodies in my van, bring them back to the freezer, measure them up,
build a coffin and then drive them out to the funerals. For a while there the funeral van had P-plates on it.’

Probationary driver’s plates on a hearse—that would have been a sight to behold.

‘He had to do everything,’ Loulou said, chin in hand and long-lashed eyes so wide that the tips curled right over her arched pencilled eyebrows. ‘Imagine…’ She was clearly mesmerised by her own maudlin thoughts. She blinked her eyelids and they looked to Mak like two black butterflies taking flight.

‘Did you do any embalming?’ Makedde asked him matter-of-factly. If he had to multi-task, it was a good possibility.

‘No,’ Bogey said, ‘I didn’t learn embalming. I don’t think it would have been my thing. I don’t know that I could…’ He trailed off thoughtfully.

‘I once met an ex-model who was a part-time make-up artist, part-time embalmer,’ Mak offered. The model had been a stunning young woman, and unique thanks to her unusual trade. Like Bogey, she had needed some encouragement to talk about it, and most of the clients she worked with in the fashion industry had no idea of her day job. ‘She did the faces of both the living and the departed,’ Mak said. ‘She was a very interesting girl. Very level-headed. Someone has to do it, after all.’

Bogey nodded. ‘Not me, though. I still remember some of those people as it is.’ His eyes
stared into space as he recalled something of his former career. ‘The toughest one…the one who always gets me was this Aboriginal guy. He’d hanged himself in one of the overnight cells and the police called me to pick him up. When I came in he was still hanging there. I didn’t like that. It wasn’t my job—I just picked them up. I didn’t…you know, take them down or prepare them. I could see this guy’s face as he hung there from a noose he had made of his clothing, and it really disturbed me. The anguish on his face was terrible. He had not died peacefully. The pain in that cell was…palpable.’ Bogey swallowed and took a breath. ‘I did what I had to do, but that image really stuck with me. The next day—
and I swear this is true
—I was in the line-up for the welfare cheque for my mum, and this guy at the front of the queue starts screaming his head off. I looked up to see what was happening and it was
him.
It was the same guy I had taken down from his home-made noose and put in the freezer. I freaked out completely. I ran up to him and embraced him, and said, “Oh my God, you’re alive! How can you be alive?”’

Mak was stunned. She was stuck on Bogey’s every word, right along with the entire table, although presumably they had heard the story before.

But…?

‘The man in the queue was the identical twin brother of the man who had hanged himself in
the cell,’ Bogey explained. ‘
Identical.
He needed his cheque early so he could afford to get to the funeral. But they refused him.’

Mak didn’t know what to say. ‘That’s very sad,’ she managed. She could see it was not just some spooky party tale to him. To Bogey, that memory hit a real chord.

After a brief, eerie silence, Donkey, with all the sensitivity of a sledgehammer, broke into another of his hecklings. ‘Tell her about the bikie gang! Go on, tell her! This is a
great
story. You’ll love this.’ He chuckled to himself in anticipation of the story.

Bogey now appeared a little less awkward about telling the tales of his past, but it didn’t stop his hesitations. ‘I am sure Mak is bored with all this. It was such a long time ago.’

‘No. I find it interesting…if you don’t mind telling me?’ she said.

‘Sure.’ He took a sip of his wine before continuing. ‘Well, I got to be known for making good coffins—remember, this was a small town, so there wasn’t much competition. There is a gang in Australia called the Coffin Cheaters. You may have heard of them, I’m not sure. The Coffin Cheaters are a big bikie gang, and they swung through our little town and asked me to make some coffins for their clubhouse—you know, Eskies, tables, that sort of thing.’

Everyone else at the table had clearly heard the punchline of this story before, and they were
grinning while they watched Mak for her response. She simply nodded for him to go on.

‘I did it for them,’ Bogey said, ‘and in exchange for furnishing their clubhouse with coffins, they tattooed me and gave me more drugs in that week than I have seen in my life since.’ Bogey looked to the table. ‘That’s all. That’s the story. Okay, someone else tell a story now…come on, guys.’

Mak was mesmerised. She wondered about the tattoos he might have. What would a gang like that brand someone with? A great big coffin, maybe? A skull and crossbones? Was Bogey a ‘MUM’ tattoo kind of a guy with a nice, big fat heart inked onto his bicep under those black T-shirt sleeves?

‘How long ago did all that happen?’ Mak asked him.

‘Oh, about ten years ago. Ages.’ Mak began the mental calculation and Bogey confirmed her guess. ‘I was about eighteen at the time,’ he said.

So Bogey was twenty-eight, only a year younger than her. For some reason he looked younger to Mak—perhaps compared to Andy’s hardened gaze. Drayson and Donkey were probably in their mid-twenties, and Maroon was the youngest at the table, Mak guessed. It was always impossible to guess Loulou’s age. She had the energy of a child, and her skin was always hidden under layers of carefully applied make-up. But Mak knew she was older than she let on—
Loulou had even rubbed out the birth date on her passport.