Roll With It (29 page)

She seemed resigned, and exhausted, as she asked if he’d like a cup of tea.

‘Why not?’ he said, thinking it would give her time to regain her poise. Once she left the room, he sat watching stirred dust swirl in the sunlight through the window, idly wondering if she ever actually clutched her pearl necklace, like the cliché. If anybody did.

She came back with a tray, handed him his tea and placed hers carefully on the coffee table before finally perching on the very edge of her armchair, hands folded one on top of the other in her lap. Looking like the queen on a day off.

Laver nursed his cup of tea, wondering how much the china was worth, and said, ‘I want to reassure you that as far as I know, nothing bad has happened to Eloise.’

She looked surprised. ‘Oh. I thought you were here because I killed that private detective.’

That had Laver staring. And pulling out a notebook and pen.

‘We’d better start again, Ms … I’m sorry, what is your name?’

‘Pamela,’ she said. One hand moving over the other in her lap. Too many lines on her face.

‘Thanks, Pamela. Now, you’d better talk me through what you just said. About killing the detective.’

‘Well, that’s how it feels. I hired him and then I read in
The Age
– not even in that tabloid the
Herald-Sun
, but in
The Age
! – that his body has been found. You can imagine. I haven’t dared go outside.’

‘You think he died because of the job you hired him for?’

Pamela shrugged, a picture of misery. ‘I don’t know what to think.’ One hand crept to her chin. So close to the pearls.

‘Why would somebody connected to you want to kill this man, Thirsk?’

She looked at him sharply. ‘Nobody who knows me. Somebody who knows Eloise is what I was thinking.’

‘Ms Stanek – I mean, Pamela – I met Thirsk a few days ago. Our paths crossed professionally. He told me he was following leads to do with Eloise’s circle of friends. Is that why you hired him?’

‘I was worried about the sort of company she keeps. Oh, I lost track of her a long time ago. She moved out the moment she turned sixteen and was legally able. Still went to school, and a very good school too, but chose to live at her friend Erica’s house. It was an unusual situation, but I knew she was safe with them, and Erica’s parents didn’t seem to mind. My husband paid them for her board after a while.’

‘Pamela—’

‘Do not ask what you’re about to ask,’ she said, with steel in her voice. ‘Why Eloise felt she needed to move out is no longer relevant, and any grubby theories you might be contemplating would be disrespectful to my late husband. The point is that once she finished her schooling, she moved to the other side of the river and became involved in a crowd I did not like at all. In fact, I told her that I’d brook no truck with the clothes she was wearing, the haircuts she wore. It was embarrassing.’

The hand had moved from her chin to actually stroking her throat.

‘The youth of today, hey?’ he said, deadpan.

Pamela snorted. The hand moved back to her lap. Damn.

‘Exactly. They have no idea. She claimed she was passionate about saving the world. All I could think was, no Brighton Grammar boy is ever going to go near you looking like that, young lady.’

‘So she stopped coming home for visits?’

‘Yes, after about a year of us fighting, not to mention Len – that’s my husband – having his say. She would only call every now and then. We were in despair. On the TV news once, we saw her at a rally outside Parliament House, for goodness sake, fighting police officers. Actually slapping a policeman.’ She suddenly gasped and her hand involuntarily reached up to clutch her pearls. ‘Oh, you’re not going to charge her for that, are you, now I’ve told you?’

Laver only just won a brief but immense internal battle not to cheer and said, ‘No, I think we can keep that one between us.’

‘Well, thank you. I can assure you that we were mortified. Len tried to talk to her and found she was seeing a very unsavoury young man, somebody who also was involved with the shopfront she frequented in Collingwood.’

‘She works in a shop?’ Laver asked.

‘I’m sad to say that the answer is yes. Some ridiculous shopfront run by unwashed greenies.’

Laver blinked. ‘Do you mean the Friends of the Planet?’

‘That’s the one. Bunch of criminals and dole-bludgers. I can’t believe Len and I put so much work into trying to create a young lady, only to see her turn, well, turn feral.’

‘When exactly did she “turn feral”, Pamela?’

‘Oh, at least two years ago. Maybe three.’

‘But you only recently hired the private detective, Thirsk …’

‘It was stupid, I suppose. Len died last year and Eloise is my only family, ridiculous hairstyle or not. I suppose I wanted to just quietly see if she was all right, who she was spending her time with, whether she’d started to grow up in the last few years.’ She shrugged wearily. ‘A mother can hope.’

‘When did you hire this man, Pamela?’

‘A couple of weeks ago. I gave him some school photos of Eloise and details of her known addresses, and that shopfront. He was due to report back soon. But then …’ Her voice suddenly choked.

‘Pamela, please listen to me. Mr Thirsk’s death is being investigated. At this stage, there is absolutely no reason to think that you, or Eloise, are involved in any way. I give you my word.’

The woman looked at him, her eyes swimming.

‘It’s true, Pamela. Thirsk was murdered but not in any way that puts Eloise in the frame.’

‘Do you promise me that, officer?’

Laver shook his head. ‘Not promise. The investigation has only just begun. The killers haven’t been caught. But as it stands, there are no paths back to you. The homicide squad might want to talk to you, as I have today, but that’s just them being thorough.’

She looked confused. ‘If you’re not with the homicide squad, who are you?’

‘I’ll be honest. I’m actually investigating an entirely different matter, but I wanted to check Thirsk’s employment as part of my case. Which is why I wanted to ask you about the Eloise connection. Speaking of which, would you have any photos of your daughter?’

‘Speaking of
whom
,’ she said, standing up. ‘Not speaking of which, speaking of
whom
.’

‘My mistake,’ he said. ‘Clearly not brought up around here. I apologise.’

‘It’s not where you come from. It’s where you’re going that matters,’ she said, handing him a royal-blue photo album. ‘That’s what worries me about my daughter.’

The photos were all school shots, apart from a few from family weddings or maybe an eighteenth birthday. None of them looked recent. But the birthday shots were what he needed. By then, she’d put black streaks through her blonde hair and had thick black liner under her eyes.

Pamela Stanek called her daughter Eloise. Jake had told Laver her name was Lou.

‘One last question, Pamela, and I’ll leave you alone. You mentioned she was seeing a young man from the Friends of the Planet. When Len dropped around.’

Pamela was back in her chair, back stiff as a board, her mouth thin with displeasure. ‘A particularly cocky and nasty young man, from Yarraville, would you believe. Over near Footscray. You know the sort of people over there.’

‘I barely know where to start. Do you remember his name?’

‘Of course, because that was ridiculous as well. Do you know what he called himself? Stig! Isn’t that the most ludicrous name you’ve ever heard in your life? I’ll never forget it. Stig Anderson.’

Jake could feel the sweat stains forming under his arms.
He looked at his hands: still trembling. He used his hankie to wipe his face and wished he could blame the office’s dodgy air conditioning for his perspiration. On the CCTV, he watched Barry walk along aisle 6, talking to Kevin, one of the shelf-stackers.

Peering at the grainy black-and-white image wasn’t good enough. Jake thought he may as well face the music in person now Barry was on the shop floor: the moment Jake had dreaded the entire day. He got up and wondered if he should put his things in a cardboard box, ready to go, but then just put on his suit jacket to hide the ballooning wet patches under his arms and headed downstairs.

Barry was standing in Home & Gardens, arms folded, discussing something with Kevin, as Jake entered the aisle. Right next to Barry’s head, on the front of a can of insect spray, was a red-and-black sticker reading: ‘You want to kill a fly? Shit, why not poison the whole planet?’

‘Ah Jake,’ Barry said as he saw Jake approach. ‘Just the man I was looking for.’

Jake’s bowels almost releasing. ‘Yeah, boss?’

‘We’ve got a bit of a problem.’

‘We do?’

‘Yes. Eggs. Kevin here has a good idea about eggs. If we evenly distribute eggs from expired punnets into fresher punnets, we could move the older stock without anybody wising up. One or two bad eggs in a dozen isn’t worth coming back to complain about.’

Jake blinked. Barry hadn’t noticed the stickers? He took a moment before responding, ‘Are we allowed to do that?’

‘Of course we’re not, you dickhead. But we’d need to be caught to get in trouble. If only the three of us know about it, she’ll be apples.’

‘What if somebody gets sick off one of the old eggs?’

Barry looked at Kevin, shaking his head. ‘Sounds like a problem at the distributor end, don’t you think, Kev?’

‘Definitely,’ said Kevin, his grin baring a mouth of crooked and occasionally black teeth. ‘Who have they got packing these eggs at the farm? Retards?’

‘Well, it’s got merit,’ Jake said, in the mood to agree with putting broken glass in the cereal if the stickers would remain unnoticed. ‘Everything good down here otherwise, Barry?’

His boss gave him a look. ‘Yeah, Jake. Shouldn’t it be?’

‘Yeah, of course not; I mean, of course. No. I’ll be upstairs … Paperwork.’

‘Good on you.’

Jake could feel their eyes boring into his back as he walked away, or maybe he was just imagining it. He strode down aisle 9 and watched a mother reach over the toddler in her pusher to grab two packs of a coffee brand that Lou’s sticker clearly identified as connected with an environmentally damaging cola brand. Another aisle over, a woman in her thirties didn’t hesitate as she selected a toothbrush from a brand that Lou’s sticker, plastered clearly to the shelf, suggested was almost single-handedly responsible for wiping out the world’s rainforests. In Medical Needs, a husband and wife loaded up on at least four products from a multi-national drug chain that was clearly stickered as boycott worthy.

No wonder Barry hadn’t noticed. Nobody noticed. Or if they did, nobody seemed to care. Jake was very glad Lou wasn’t there to see the indifference to their campaign, how so many bright, in-your-face stickers could be invisible in the face of ingrained grocery habits.

He wandered outside to see if a breeze would calm his nerves and stop him sweating. He had barely walked out the door when he saw a white Ford pull into the car park. As Jake stared, the two men opened their doors and got out. One in a suit, one in a bomber jacket. Jake spun on his heel, went back inside and up the stairs two at a time into his office.

He shuffled through spreadsheet printouts and other debris on his desk and found his mobile. He searched through his recent contacts, found Laver’s number, and dialled.

As it rang, he could hear Barry coming up the stairs outside his office, hissing: ‘What are you doing here? We can’t be seen here.’

Laver finally answering, a miracle, and saying: ‘Spooky. I’m on my way to see you.’

Jake overlooking the weirdness of a cop saying ‘spooky’ in his surprise and relief. ‘Where are you?’

‘A few blocks away. A couple of minutes.’

‘I’ll meet you in the car park,’ Jake said, and darted down the hall past Barry’s closed door.

In the car park, Jake saw the white Ford was empty now.

Watching Laver appear a few minutes later. The cop out of uniform, driving a beat-up-looking silver Pajero and parking near the giant bins.

Getting out of his car just as Jake saw a green Jeep pull into the car park, the driver shaved bald, except for a strip of orange hair. The guy next to him, rangy in a singlet. Stig.

Jake saying, ‘Laver,’ and nodding his head in the Jeep’s direction so that the cop also watched as the two in the Jeep noticed them. A brief stare-off. After which Laver started walking straight at their car, Jake unable to believe the bravado of this guy, but then hearing the Jeep engine rev and watching the car start to move.

Laver watching them leave, fast, and walking back to Jake who was breathless and saying, ‘Wow, you scared them off. They’re terrified of you.’

‘For now,’ Laver said. ‘I was actually just being a cowboy, which is very dumb. What’s wrong with me?’

But then replaying the scene in his head and seeing Stig looking towards the Groc-o-Mart entrance in the moment before their car started, whacking his mate on the shoulder. Laver looking over there now and seeing two men talking to a man in a white business shirt and a grey tie.

‘Who’s that?’

‘My boss. Barry.’

‘And the two mystery men? Who apparently know your boss?’