Prohibited Zone (26 page)

It was a twenty-minute drive from the Ed to Stirling in Shovel's panel van.

‘One thing in our fava is the time of year,' he said. ‘People are on their summer hols and there's not much happ'nin' in a place like Stirling. Not that much ever happens there anyway, borin' fucken place.'

The main street of Stirling was indeed quiet. We pulled into a parking bay about fifty metres from the Benstead Neale office and surveyed the scene, which was dim in the streetlights. Ours was the only parked car. Shovel went for a stroll and was back in ten minutes.

‘Standard alarm,' he said. ‘Nuthin' complicated. No sensors inside, as far as I can see. We'll park out back.' He started the van, drove past the office and turned into a lane that led to a car park behind the office; it could accommodate about thirty cars but now was empty. He sidled into one of the parking bays and turned the engine off. Then he decommissioned the cabin light and opened the door.

‘Wait 'ere,' he said. He fetched what looked like a small vanity case from the back of the van, returned to the cabin and closed the door quietly.

‘Going to powder your nose?' I asked. ‘I
thought
it was a bit too shiny.'

‘Just some tools of the trade,' he replied in a low voice. He opened the case and pulled out a box of disposable gloves and offered it to me. ‘Put on two pairs, just in case. These are made of special rubber 'cos I'm allergic to latex.'

‘Is that right?'

‘Yeah. My dick would fall off if I ever wore a condom.' Next he produced two black balaclavas, inspected them both and handed one to me. ‘I usually work on me own, but I always have spares of everythin'. Don't put this on yet.'

‘Is it necessary?'

‘You betcha. Fucken surveillance cameras, you can't be too careful. Don't think there are any in this car park – I looked – and probably won't be inside, either. But takin' precautions is what's keepin' me out of the system.'

‘Except for that three-month holiday you had.'

‘Yeah, when I was young and stupid. The other thing the balaclavas do is stop you leavin' strands of hair at the scene of the croime. Me hair's fallin' out by the fucken bushel. Yer gotta play it smart these days. Turn off your phone, will ya? Back in a tick.'

He returned the vanity case to the back of the van and came back with a cordless drill, which he wrapped in what looked like black rubber.

‘To deaden the noise,' he said. ‘I never leave it wrapped up in case I get pulled over by the cops. A cordless drill is one thing, a cordless drill with a silencer is another.'

‘Don't suppose black balaclavas would be easy to explain, either.'

He handed me a small black torch and put a second one in his trouser pocket. Finally he seemed ready. ‘Wait for me signal,' he said, and got out of the car. He stood there silently for several minutes, then put on his balaclava and motioned to me. I donned my own balaclava and joined him.

‘No small talk,' he whispered. He grabbed a last item from the van, a collapsible ladder wrapped in what looked like black electrical tape. I wondered how he would explain
that
to the cops. He extended it to its full length – about four metres – and leant it against the roof gutter of the real-estate office, shielded from the empty car park by a couple of shrubs.

‘Wait for me signal,' he said again. ‘If anyone comes, pull the ladder down, hide in the bushes an' turn yer head away.' He climbed the ladder and disappeared silently onto the iron roof. Nothing happened for a few minutes. I heard a car drive past slowly on the main road. From the roof came the muffled sound of the drill and a few muted metallic noises. A balaclava appeared over the edge of the roof, black against a black sky.

‘Come on, we're in,' whispered Shovel. He waited for me to ascend the ladder. I stumbled onto the tin roof.

‘Jesus, whaddaya think this is,
Fiddler on the Fucken Roof
? Keep it quiet, yer clumsy bastard.' He pulled the ladder up. ‘We'll need this. I'll go first. Try not to break yer fucken neck.'

He had created a hole in the roof by removing a sheet of iron, which was now lying to one side with the cordless drill resting on top of it. He collapsed the ladder, switched on his torch and made his way quietly inside the roof space, taking the ladder with him. I followed him in, shining my torch around at the insulating wool and cobwebs.

‘Sometimes there're motion sensors in the fucken ceiling,' he whispered. ‘This place is clean.'

About ten metres away was a small pile of what looked like cardboard boxes. We made our way across the rafters towards them and found that they marked the location of a manhole. Shovel lifted the cover, placed it carefully to one side, and stuck his head into the room below. He took his time, looking in all directions, then he did the same thing again, this time aided by his torch. Satisfied there was no security equipment likely to cause trouble, he lowered the ladder through the manhole, extending it in stages. When it was all the way down he tested and then descended it and I followed. We were in the main office, the same one Baz and I had visited earlier in the day.

‘Don't shine your torch towards the window,' whispered Shovel. ‘Keep it covered as much as possible.' I was still getting used to the idea of being in a place illegally. It felt indecent. The counter and settee were in the same position as they had been this afternoon. Behind the counter, the laptop had been closed but was still there, next to an empty coffee mug.

‘Got an idea of how to get what you need?' hissed Shovel. ‘Or are we going to wait until fucken mornin' so we can be shown around?'

I walked over to the small bank of filing cabinets.

‘I'm hoping it's in here.' No doubt Benstead Neale kept many of its records on computer, but I reasoned that leases and other contracts would still be done on paper because they needed signatures. I pulled on the handle of a drawer in the first filing cabinet but it didn't open.

‘It's locked,' I said.

Shovel, who had been studying the laptop, came over and shone the beam of his torch onto the cabinet. He pulled a small case from his pocket and extracted from it a thin piece of metal with a hook on the end. It looked like something a dentist would use to mine detritus from a patient's teeth. He looked again into the case and pulled out a very thin screwdriver. Using the two implements in unison he had the cabinet unlocked in about ten seconds.

‘Simple pin-and-tumbler,' he said. ‘I trained on them things.'

I opened all four drawers of the cabinet, one at a time, but found they contained only employee and financial records.

‘Some of this would probably make interesting reading,' I said. ‘Especially how much money the bastards make.'

Shovel re-locked the cabinet. ‘Yeah, bunch of fucken thieves.'

I found what I was looking for in the next cabinet, which wasn't even locked: all the company's rental properties, filed in alphabetical order by the owner's name. The Groskreutz family apparently owned three, one of them on Muller Road. I pulled the file and leafed through it quickly.

‘This is it,' I said.

I photocopied the entire file using the agent's photocopier, while Shovel hunted through drawers for beer money. Then we got the hell out of there.

Half an hour later he was dropping me back at the Edinburgh. I toyed with the idea of buying him another drink at the bar but it was nearly midnight and I wanted to get back to Port Willunga and Kara. Instead, I directed him to the Ed's drive-in bottle shop and bought him a case of beer.

‘I've got to get going, Shovel,' I said. ‘If there's ever anything I can do for you, find you a good lawyer or something, just let me know.'

‘No worries. And hey, Westie, this was a good job. No one will ever know we were there. Didn't even nick the laptop, even though it was
beggin'
for it.'

‘You
are
an artist, mate. See you.'

‘Yeah, see ya, Westie.'

21

I
TURNED MY PHONE BACK ON
and it rang immediately. Kara had left a voice message but I didn't call her back; I would be seeing her soon anyway. I wasn't far from Port Willunga when the phone rang again.

‘Steve West?'

‘Yes.'

‘You're a fucken cunt.'

‘Who is this?'

‘Your girlfriend's pretty, I'll give you that, cunt.'

‘Janeway?'

‘You're good with voices, I'll give you that, cunt. Does your girlfriend scream when you screw her?'

‘Janeway, haven't you got anything better to do than make obscene phone calls?'

‘Actually, I have, cunt. Fucken your girlfriend, for one. Lucy, in case you're not sure which one I'm talking about. Would you like to have a chat with her, cunt?'

‘Janeway, what the fuck . . .'

‘Steve?' It was Lucy.

‘Lucy? Are you alright?'

‘No.'

Mobile-phone technology is pretty good these days, but we could have been using two tin cans and a piece of string and I still would have heard the fear and horror in her voice.

‘Where are you?'

I had one hand on the steering wheel and the other was clutching the phone, hard. I must have unconsciously pressed the accelerator because I entered Port Willunga at about one twenty, double the speed limit. I hit the brake. Janeway came on again.

‘I want the Afghan bitch, cunt. Tonight.'

‘You touch Lucy, Janeway, and I'll . . .'

‘What? What are you going to do about it? She won't tell me where you're hiding out, but she gave me your mobile number. You have twenty minutes to get the bitch to me.'

‘I don't have her,' I said.

‘Tough shit. Twenty minutes.'

‘Where?'

‘You know Flinders University? Take the ring road to the top of the campus. There's a car park, number three. Come to the back of it. We'll be waiting. No tricks, or I start playin' with your girlfriend.' The T-junction with the esplanade loomed ahead. I was still going way too fast. ‘And you'd better have the bitch with you, and no one else. Hear that, cunt? No one else.'

He disconnected. I dropped the phone to free my left hand and took the right-angle turn onto the esplanade at about seventy clicks, the back tyres skidding out but somehow staying on the road. I pulled into the driveway of Lucy's beach house and honked the horn in a few urgent jabs. Rolley had installed one of those horns that played a tune, not unlike Mr Whippy. It seemed to mock me, it seemed to mock Lucy. I scrambled out of the car and ran into the house. The living-room light was on and Kara and Ray Khoury were at the door when I entered.

‘What's the matter?' She was wearing a loose white singlet and shorts and her hair was tied back.

‘Janeway's got a friend of mine.'

‘What?'

‘He's threatening to rape her. Christ knows what he's already done to her.'

‘Oh my God!'

‘He wants Saira. Where is she? We have to be at Flinders in less than twenty minutes.'

‘You can't take Saira! He'll do the same thing to her that he'll do to your friend.'

‘I don't have a choice.'

‘Call the police.'

‘No, she's my friend. It's got to be me.'

‘Go alone then.'

‘No. I need something to bargain with.'

‘She's not a bargaining chip! Now who's treating her like a commodity?'

We were standing toe to toe. Her green eyes bored into me, anxious and disturbed and very intense. Her face was bright red.

‘I will go.' Saira appeared at the door. She was dressed in her chador and pants.

‘No, I won't let you,' said Kara, her face twisted in an almost ugly look of obstinacy. ‘It isn't safe.' She looked at Ray, who hadn't made up his mind what expression to wear. Mostly it was just shock. ‘This is craziness.'

‘Yes, it's crazy. But what else can we do? The man is a freak.'

‘Let's go,' said Saira. Kara tried to grab her arm but she evaded her and ran to the front door with me in her wake. We jumped into the car more or less at the same time and slammed our doors. As I reversed out of the driveway I thought I heard Kara yell but I had no time to look. My phone rang soon after but I needed both hands on the wheel.

I drove well. I was on an adrenaline high and in that zone where every movement is perfect. Ordinarily the trip from Port Willunga to the university would take thirty minutes but we did it in twelve, the accelerator pushed hard to the floor. Main South Road was almost empty and I saw no patrol cars as we sped across the bridge over Pedlar Creek and past turn-offs first to Maslins Beach and then Moana. The road was a black blur in the headlights. The fat moon sat above the horizon almost directly in our path, a monster, a smug white bastard. I snarled at it. As I drove I tried to think of a plan for dealing with Janeway. Not much came to mind.

It was after midnight. The Southern Expressway was closed for the changeover but we took it anyway. I drove over the median strip and bypassed the boomgate that was meant to stop traffic from entering. Rolley's car was not short of grunt and within seconds we were up to a hundred and eighty and carving our way north, through the southern reaches of the city. The road was supposedly monitored twenty-four hours a day by video surveillance, but I wasn't worried about being busted. At the speed we were travelling, the trip would only take a few minutes; if anyone was awake at Traffic Control Centre they might notice, but by the time they scrambled into action we'd be gone.

What I didn't count on, though, was the maintenance crew. We were taking a long bend around the flank of O'Halloran's Hill, descending to the Marion Road exit, when a set of headlights flashed into view. I was cutting the curve, which meant I was straddling the inner and middle lanes. The oncoming vehicle was in the middle lane, large and white with an orange flashing light on top.