Rubdown (7 page)

I wound it halfway down. I was fucked anyway. The glass wouldn’t stop a bullet. Craig quit circling, sat on the bonnet and the car dipped with his weight. I looked at Neville and in my heightened state of awareness noticed red capillaries on his cheeks, black nasal hair and that his front teeth were false.

‘This your car?’

‘Yeah,’ my voice was strangled.

‘Want to sell it?’

The words didn’t get through to my brain. ‘What?’

He pulled his hand out of his jacket and gave me a card. My hand trembled as I took it.

‘My mate collects classic cars. Does them up.’

I just stared at him.

‘You having trouble starting her? Pop the bonnet.’

Was this a trick? I popped it. Craig jumped off and propped it open. Neville had a look-see. ‘Got a crowbar?’

I shook my head. Neville ambled over to the Subaru and grabbed a crowbar from the back. He was going to bash me to death? Seemed a bit messy. He poked his head under the bonnet and I heard five loud metallic clanks. What was he smashing my engine for? This was too weird, bad guys didn’t do this shit in the movies. Neville’s face appeared at the window. ‘See if she’ll turn over now.’

I twisted the key and The Beast responded with a throaty roar.

Craig slammed down the bonnet and headed for the Ute.

Neville said, ‘Sometimes helps with these old cars if you smack the alternator a couple of times. Give me a call if you want to sell.’

When they’d left I lay down on the bench seat and gave in to the shakes. No more bodyslamming for me today. I couldn’t even get the guts up to check out the units. What I really needed was a drink.

Since I’d been using my old non-digital camera I had the photos developed at a one hour place, then called Alex. He was at the MCG watching a football match, no Suzy, and was keen to meet for a drink at the Hilton at five. I didn’t tell him I wanted more information and thought he’d assume I wanted to take up where we’d left off the night before. I didn’t know when I’d become such a vixen. Perhaps PI work brought it out in me.

I made myself up, dressed in faded jeans and an off-the-shoulder jumper and caught the 246 bus to East Melbourne, seeing as how alcohol was involved whenever Alex and I got together. Feeling lazy I jumped on a tram at Wellington Parade, one of those new space-age ones with seats moulded out of bright green plastic, and got off two stops later at the Hilton.

A porter in a navy jacket opened the glass door and I smiled like a visiting dignitary and turned left at the lobby. The Park Lounge was a typical hotel bar full of overstuffed furniture, bronze fabric and dark wood. Over in the corner a guy in a tuxedo played ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ on a baby grand. The crowd was mostly middle aged blokes in town for the footy, a few with wives of the big hair and gold jewellery variety.

Alex had saved me a seat by a picture window overlooking a courtyard of small conifers and neatly raked gravel. He’d even dressed up to watch the football—black pants, charcoal sweater, and a long wool coat draped over the back of his chair. A double whisky and a glass of champagne waited on the table.

He smiled and I noticed he had sexy teeth. ‘I didn’t know what you’d like, so I got both.’

‘Good call.’ I sat down and took a hefty gulp of champagne.

‘How was the game?’

‘We lost.’

I grimaced for him, not that I gave a shit about football. I just hoped he wasn’t one of those guys who went into deep depression over a bad result. Scientific studies had shown a footy fan’s testosterone levels could plummet when their team bombed out, and although we were friends first, Alex’s testosterone was the real reason he was meeting with me now.

‘Who do you support?’ he asked. It was what everyone wanted to know in Melbourne, sometimes even before your name.

‘I don’t have a team.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I’m from Sydney originally. I never got around—’

‘Ah, the Swans then.’

As I sipped my champagne Alex gave me The Look. And a sort of half smile. I pulled my photos out and spread them on the table.

He picked up the one outside the flats and the smile disappeared.

‘Shit, Simone. That’s Neville and Craig Annis, and Neville’s girlfriend Wu Chan.’

‘What about this other chick?’ I pointed to the woman from the motel.

‘No idea. Thought I told you to stay away from this bullshit.’

‘I didn’t do it on purpose. I was following Neville, like, from afar, and he met up with them.’ I didn’t tell him about my close encounter. ‘What do you reckon they’re up to? Dodgy real estate deal?’

‘Wu Chan’s into illegal brothels, among other things.’ He rubbed his hands over his face and suddenly looked tired. For the first time I noticed fine lines radiating out from his eyes and right then he looked older than thirty-five. He sighed. ‘Here’s what we do. I’ve got a mate works in the Asian Squad. I want you to meet with him, informally, give him everything you’ve found, finish your report and tell your client there’s nothing to the case. I’m playing squash with Sean at the World Trade Centre gym tomorrow morning. Meet us there at one.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘You play squash?’

‘Just got back into it.’ He pointed to his shoulder. ‘It’s a bit stiff,’

‘Like last night?’

He grinned and didn’t look so tired anymore. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘And go where?’

‘We could get a room upstairs.’

‘Alex, you’ve got a girlfriend.’

‘She’s not exactly my girlfriend.’

I tipped the last of the champagne down my throat. ‘Try telling
her
that.’

‘She didn’t worry you last night.’

I felt my cheeks getting hot, reached for the whisky and looked away. Jesus. Emery Wade and one hit wonder Billy Chevelle were sitting at a table on the other side of the bar. I turned back quickly and put my hand up to hide my face.

‘Over there,’ I whispered, tilting my head. ‘Emery and Billy.’

‘So? Blaine’s just played, they were probably at the game.

Anyway, they’re getting up to leave.’

‘Let’s follow them!’

‘Christ’s sake.’

‘Please. It’ll be fun.’

He looked doubtful. ‘How much fun?’

‘A lot.’ The vixen was back. It worked.

Moments later we were out the door, into Alex’s car and following Emery’s metallic blue Audi down Wellington Parade towards Punt Road.

‘Tell me again why we’re doing this?’ Alex asked.

‘Billy Chevelle had a fight with a trannie named Lulu at Tamara’s funeral. I get a bad vibe about him.’

‘A bad vibe?’ He shook his head and slipped a CD into the player. Nina Simone, ‘Mood Indigo’.

‘Good chase music,’ I said.

‘I give good chase.’

We were on Punt Road now, heading south, and Alex sped up and overtook the Audi and a couple of other vehicles.

‘What are you doing?’ I twisted in my seat to check Wade’s car was still there.

‘Only amateurs tail someone from behind.’

I watched the Audi in my side mirror. They indicated left and turned onto High Street. ‘They’ve turned off!’

He smiled, took the next left, turned left again, then right on High. The Audi was right in front of us.

‘Now you’re showing off,’ I said.

Emery pulled over and Alex did the same, half a block behind him. We watched Emery and Billy enter a shopfront but couldn’t make out the sign on the door, so got out and crossed to the other side of the road. We strolled along for a bit and pretended to check out the display in a furniture shop. I glanced back once. The glass door they’d gone in read Bootcamp Personal Training and stairs led to a unit above.

‘What are they doing at a personal trainer’s this time of night?’

‘Maybe it’s Blaine’s trainer. Maybe he’s getting a post-game rubdown.’

‘No way. His team would have their own masseurs. Their own trainers too.’

The plate glass in front of us was like a mirror. I could see lights on in the upstairs unit, but nothing else through the thick blinds.

Alex came up from behind and wrapped his arms around me. It felt so nice and warm that I momentarily forgot myself and leaned back into him. He held me tighter and kissed my neck and I tilted my head and closed my eyes.

‘Shit, Alex. This is not right.’

‘It feels right.’

I drew in a sharp breath as his hand slid under my jumper, across my belly and onto my breast. My brain said no but my body had other ideas.

‘But Suzy.’

‘What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.’

Bullshit. I dragged his hand out of my top, turned to face him and changed the subject.

‘Any way you could find out about Bootcamp Personal Training and who owns it?’

He crossed his arms over his chest and gave me a cold cop stare. ‘Think you can flutter your eyelashes and I’ll go do your dirty work?’

‘No,’ I lied.

He shook his head and crossed the road back to the Commodore. I waited for a break in the traffic and followed. I hadn’t even shut the passenger door when he revved the engine and cut in front of a tram. The bell dinged and Alex shoved his arm out the window and gave the driver the finger, then gunned it south on Chapel Street just as the light was turning red.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘I’m taking you home.’

‘So I’ll see you tomorrow at the squash courts?’

Alex stared straight ahead as we shot across Dandenong Road, past the Astor Theatre. ‘I don’t want to see you until you’ve grown up a bit.’

I snorted, halfway between a laugh and a cough. ‘Grown up?

Yeah, cheating on your girlfriend’s real grown up.’

At the bottom of Chapel he indicated left and turned onto Brighton Road. ‘I don’t have time for prickteases,’ he said.

I twisted around in my seat and stared. ‘You think I’m a pricktease?’

He said nothing, just accelerated until he was doing ninety in a sixty zone.

I laughed at him. ‘Let me get this straight. You’ll only see me if I fuck you.’

He scowled. ‘That what you really think I’m about?’

‘I do, actually. And here I was thinking you wouldn’t mind doing me a favour after I helped you out last year.’

Now it was his turn to laugh. ‘Helped me out? You almost got me fucking killed.’

‘I thought we were friends.’

He braked hard at the intersection of Brighton and Glenhuntly Road. ‘Simone, we were never friends.’

That stung. I lifted the door handle but it was centrally locked.

‘Let me out of the car.’

‘I’m taking you home.’

‘Let me out of the fucking car!’ I started hitting buttons on the console, trying to unlock it. He got the shits and punched a switch on the driver’s side door. ‘Piss off then!’ he said.

I slammed the door and jumped onto the traffic island and when he got the green arrow he took off in a cloud of burning rubber. What was his problem? I was so goddamn sick of moody men. I ran across the road to the Elsternwick Hotel, ordered a double Jameson’s with a beer chaser and bought a packet of cigarettes. I wrote a few notes about Emery and Billy going to Bootcamp, but mostly smoked, drank and brooded. Alex was the one with the girlfriend. He had no right to get angry at me. That was it. I was through asking him for help. I could cultivate another source. Chloe had heaps of coppers twisted round her little finger.

Surely one of them would help me out.

After two more doubles I was pretty wasted and tottered across the highway to McDonald’s. Fuck the no-carbs thing. I stuffed salty fries in my mouth as my boots clip-clopped down Glenhuntly Road towards home. I was so intent on munching down my junk food that I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me until it was too late.

A massive arm gripped my waist from behind. A gloved hand clapped my mouth. The McDonald’s bag slapped the pavement and I was lifted like a child, legs kicking the air.

He carried me away from the main road, down a path that ran by the canal, and I struggled uselessly against a wall of muscle. My arms were pinned to my side. My heart felt like it would burst out of my chest.

There were no houses along this part of the canal, just Elwood Primary with its darkened playground and the deserted secondary college across the water. He slammed me down on the dirt beside the school fence. Air rushed from my lungs and I gasped for oxygen like an emphysemic old man.

Terror surged as I looked up. The body hunching over me was mountainous. Reptilian eyes glittered through slits in a black balaclava. I started to scream, but he smothered my mouth. I bit and tasted leather, kicked out my legs. He dropped onto me and subdued them with one powerful thigh.

His hand snaked up my top, grabbed my breast and squeezed.

Holy shit. I was going to get raped, two blocks from home. Every muscle strained as I tried to resist, but I couldn’t move, pinned like a butterfly to a board.

The expressionless head moved close and a long pink tongue flickered out of the mouth hole. It slid all over my face, chin to forehead, over my eyelids, nose and lips. The sticky saliva trail smelled metallic, like tooth decay, and I gagged. His tongue slithered in and out of my ear and he whispered, ‘Simone, should have stayed in the sex trade instead of poking your nose in other people’s business.’

He tugged my jeans so hard the button popped off and the zip came down. I couldn’t believe this was happening and writhed, in vain, when suddenly the weight lifted.

Incredibly, he stood up, laughed and strolled off around the corner of the school.

I jumped up and bolted back to Glenhuntly Road, then all the way home, lungs burning. I deadlocked the door and raced to the bathroom, my first thought to wash off the hideous, drying slag. After handfuls of foaming facial cleanser and hot water my hair was wet and my face tight and pink.

The phone rang. If it was Alex calling to apologise, I’d tell him what happened and he could come round. All was forgiven.

‘Hello?’

Goosebumps pricked my arms as I heard my attacker’s voice:

The World Trade Centre was a boxy grey building on Flinders Street, across the river from the Exhibition Centre and casino.

I wasn’t sure any trading went on but I did know Victoria Police had offices there, Ethical Standards included.