The Courier's New Bicycle (14 page)

I grip the phone. Someone did this to my friend and then abandoned him.

I hear her acknowledge a muffled voice.

‘I'm at the warehouse with Anwar,' she expains. ‘He's been speaking to the technicians in the lab. They suggest conducting a more detailed assay of the sample, in case any impurities deposited during the distillation process help to pinpoint the farm's location.'

‘They can do that?'

‘Not at their facility, but they know a private forensic soil-science lab that can. They'll feed the results into the National Soil Conservation database to see if any of the elements find a geographical match. It won't help Albee's current situation, but it might bring us one step closer to the source.'

I ask about the surveillance at Ferguson's.

‘Nothing yet,' she answers.

I tell her about my two warning notes, adding, ‘I didn't realise they were aimed at me personally until tonight.'

She's silent a moment. ‘Save yourself from what, exactly? If they know you're a transgressive, they believe you're already lost. I'll organise a team to watch your flat. And
you
need to watch your back.'

I rub tired eyes, every fibre in me stressed. ‘It'd be better for you if I were working for Meg right now,' I say quietly.

‘We'll cross that bridge if we have to,' is her noncommittal reply.

We ring off. I pad barefoot into my pocket-sized kitchen
and lean my hands on the sink, staring out at the shadowed pebble path winding through the dunes. Right now Albee needs me; but so help me, I will search for the people who did this to him, and when I find them I will hand them to Gail and her fixers on a platter.

I haven't been able to reach Inez all morning. Normally we'd have texted each other a couple of times by now. I've sent her two more messages since the one about Albee, but there's been no response. It's making me antsy.

Home from my vigil at the hospital, I walk distractedly around the flat opening and closing things, not sure why I opened them in the first place. Several times I try to make a cup of tea, boiling the water then forgetting to fill the pot. Even the cat catches my air of anxiety, scratching at the back door to go out, before changing his mind.

Close to 11 am I remember Nitro's twelve-thirty vet appointment, and hurriedly organise a van with Gail. On my way out I meet the house-watching team she promised. It relieves my worry about Nitro being left alone, but still I ride a paranoiac route to Cute'n'Cuddly. When I get there, I'm told to take my time with the van and a couple of days off.

Back home, I load Nitro into his cat carrier and strap him in the front seat beside me, then we're on our way to Max's.

I chat to him, an uncomplaining passenger, as I drive — but it's more for my reassurance than his. He's done this trip many times and doesn't mind his little portable home, lined ever so comfortably with a kitty futon. Of course, there's a risk in taking Nitro anywhere, and I always drive the route across the river afraid of being stopped by traffic cops or an emissions patrol for some petty misdemeanour. Today it's worse than usual, every person happening to glance my way a potential threat.

Max's place is two blocks behind the select boutique shopfronts and cafés that make up Toorak village. I swing off Toorak Road into his street and glance up at an impressive canopy of dappled limbs, the plane trees reaching from both sides to the middle. Below their mid-green benevolence the verges are so lush that I suspect an illegal supping of the city mains.

As with every other property in the suburb, the Toorak Vet Surgery has a grand entranceway and electric gates. I press on the intercom and, after an initial reticence, they rattle open, the result of too many visitors and no time for home maintenance.

A wide, sweeping drive leads to a verandahed Federation cottage with wooden fretwork and gable ends. There's parking for half a dozen cars out front — no inner-city bolthole run on a shoestring, this. The practice takes up the
front section of the house; the rest of it — and there's plenty more — is where Max lives with Penny, his partner of twenty-five years. She's a qualified vet nurse and his full-time assistant now their kids have flown the coop and have lives of their own. Max could take on other workers, but he and Penny prefer it this way. Like those doctors still with licences to practice (in greatly reduced numbers since the ‘blitzkrieg' on reproductive technology) his services are in demand, but his books are closed.

I survey the surgery's neatly stacked shelves as Max palpates my cat's ample belly on the treatment table.

‘Got a bit of a tum there, matey.'

Nitro weighs in at half a kilo more than last time. Max looks at me disapprovingly over his half-glasses.

‘I'd stop with the treats if I were you. From now on I think we'll go for the low-cal kitty bites.'

I gesture remorse while Nitro lies on the hard metal bench and purrs, unperturbed. My cat is an alien.

We've been making these visits since he was a six-week-old fluffball glowing in the palm of my hand. Back then, eight years ago, his kind were no longer flavour of the month, but he was still a
legal
alien. Max, at great risk to himself, kept us and others like us on as clients after the Unnatural Practices Act was forced through parliament by Nation First and the pet exterminators were given their orders to go forth and round up all abominations of nature not handed in by their tardy owners across the amnesty period. According to Nation First, these weren't God's
creatures but monsters made by science, and they were to be got rid of. But what loving pet owner would willingly give their phosphorescent bird or bunny to the Animal Patrol, knowing what was going to happen to it?

Animal lovers everywhere responded by building more secure boundaries and secret enclosures. Now low-wattage creatures of all kinds lurk behind the barred façades of the inner city's apartments and terraces and creep inside the protective fences of suburban gardens. The authorities, however, aren't stupid. They suspect the community of subterfuge, which is why the pet exterminators still patrol the streets in their vans, trying to catch us out.

Max squeezes up a furry roll and sticks in the vaccination needle, then inspects eyes, ears, teeth. All this Nitro submits to with good grace. I wish I could say the same for my own medical appointments.

All done, Max finds a treat from the shelf behind him and palms it over to the cat. ‘Just one,' he warns us both. ‘Special for today. I shouldn't need to see him again for six months. You okay for other supplies?'

‘Yes, thanks.'

I buy everything I need here: food and worm tablets, supplements and accessories, even bedding. All check-ups and vaccinations are taken care of without a single thing being written down, no paper trail or computer files for the tax auditors or animal inspectors to find. According to the meticulously kept records of the Toorak Vet Surgery, I am not a client and Nitro doesn't exist.

Max walks me to the front door, scrutinising me before opening it. ‘How are you bearing up?'

I've given him the annotated version of Albee's accident.

‘I'm okay.'

He nods. ‘Albee's as strong as an ox. He'll pull through.'

 

Our next port of call is five minutes up the road, and Nitro's favourite place after Max's. It's where my cat gets to prowl a real garden with something other than desert tussocks to piss on.

I ease the van to a stop in front of Checkpoint Charlie. Today's SOS guard stares impassively through the reinforced glass. Another day, no precious cargo, I'll ask how they keep from getting cabin fever in their little booth.

When Gail isn't home, the request re-routes to her mobile. I lean out to punch in the code and look in the lens. The permission lights green and I hear the lock mechanism disengage. Then the van is gliding around tree-lined curves, heading for the turn into Salmon Close.

The second keypad attended to, we roll through slowly opening gates onto gravel. I press the manual release on the other side. The gates swing together, meeting with a decisive clang, and my relaxation response comes, Pavlovian.

The house ahead is all shutters closed. I stop beneath the oaks that straddle the driveway, their branches intermingling. Gail calls one ‘Grace' and the other ‘Majesty'. Acorns crunch underfoot as I heft the carrier beneath
Grace and set it down, Nitro shifting restlessly inside, pushing against the little plastic door for me to unlatch it.

The moment of seeing my cat step delicately out onto cool green grass is always a joy. He sniffs, saucer-eyed, ears twitching, before dropping cheek first and rolling ecstatically onto his back. I clip the extend-a-leash to his collar while he's pedalling air, eyes gone to slits, in cat pleasureland.

He begins to stalk the terrain, slinking through the undergrowth as if he's a jungle cat, not an electric purple exotic bred for city life. Our slow perambulation takes us to where a bank of rhododendrons forms a protective horseshoe about a herb garden, a sundial on a pedestal in the middle. The herb varieties are planted in a wheel shape, separated by brick inlay spokes. Nitro creeps onto the camomile and bats with slothful imprecision at a cabbage moth, while I sit on a bench positioned to take advantage of the view through the horseshoe down to the bottom of the garden, where hydrangeas hang their heavy heads in damp, peaty shade and spiky thickets of japonica harbour a multitude of wrens. I smile at their busy chatter, the return of the birds to suburbia a special joy. For a while it seemed like they never would.

We move on through a grove of stripling birches, their light-refracting leaves ashimmer, then along the shelter of retaining walls where the camellias are budding up for autumn and the dogwoods turning shades of magenta. Back at the oaks, our circuit made, Nitro sharpens his claws on hoary bark.

This outing is always a pleasure, but today it's marred by worry. It's not just Albee's situation. The anonymous warnings rankle, and the attack on Roshani still haunts me. I don't want to think about Meg's job offer complicating everything, but it's impossible to keep her sharp-eyed unpleasantness out of my mind.

I remember Inez angry in the speakeasy, and can't believe I let the whole charade happen. That Gail didn't scotch the idea of me working for her rival is a measure of how bad things have got; meantime, instead of telling Meg I'm not interested and putting an end to it, I have to keep her hanging on my answer — something Mojo Meg does for no one.

I make a call to the ICU and am told ‘no change'. Nothing else to do, I settle myself at the base of Majesty while Nitro sniffs a dandelion at full stretch of the lead. Clicking the release on the recoil mechanism, I let it reel him in, then lean down and nuzzle into fur that's caught with bits of twig and leaf. He begins to knead himself a place beside me, purring rhythmically. Silently, I apologise to him in advance: while I'm working for Meg, both of us will be barred from the sensate pleasures of Gail's private grounds.

I lean my back to the bark and gaze up. In my perfect world, I'd have a place like this. And I wouldn't have to sneak in and out of it, terrified of the long arm and enquiring eyes of Neighbourly Watch. There'd be no more scary prayer groups monopolising street corners and writing threatening messages, and no government-employed pet exterminators gunning for my cat.

Cool grass tickles my bare feet as scents rise from the loamy earth. Exhaustion drags on my limbs. I close my eyes … then jolt upright. Even here, I can't allow sleep. Displaced from his cosy nest, my cat stretches, bum up, tail wafting. Reluctantly, I stand too.

 

My afternoon gets progressively pulled more out of shape, like a woollen jumper in the spin dry. The flat, normally a retreat from the world, feels cluttered and oppressive. Not rostered to be with Albee again for another few hours, I decide on a sitz bath — filling it unthinkable these days — and turn on the hot tap. Nothing comes out. I swear profusely. Somehow I've used up the day's metered allocation, and it's only 4 pm.

When my mobile finally beeps, I'm sure it's Inez; but it's Gail to say two members of the Red Quarter militia have caught a street hawker at the Shangri-La and can I go over. Glad for the distraction, I hop on the bike and pedal more ferociously than necessary through the traffic, getting sworn at by pedal taxis and trams alike.

As I ride, I wonder how a little blip like this in my relationship can throw me so badly. There could be any number of reasons why Inez hasn't replied: misplaced her phone, called out on an emergency job …

It was the look she gave me in the speakeasy after Crusher left the envelope. One she's never directed my way before. A look of
doubt
, rising disappointment riddled through it.

The day waning but dusk not arrived, Madams Row is unlit as yet, its buildings imbued with an air of closed expectancy. I lock the bike below a geranium box then rap on the Shangri-La's crimson door, and am surprised when Savannah herself opens it. In a high-collared cheongsam the colours of a coral reef, she's breath-stoppingly attractive. She welcomes me in with a slightly distracted air, her mind on something else.

That something is in her kitchen.

The street hawker is lurching about, mumbling and gesticulating peculiarly. He has that pelvis-forward-shoulders-back walk I associate with madness, as if his internal gyro has been knocked out of whack. What he was trying to offload is sitting innocuously on the kitchen table.

He's watched by two people: one at the door and one leaning against the sink. Both are dressed in black, and could be scenery movers for a theatre company but for the subtle energy compressed in the workings of their bodies.

The guard positioned by the door glances at us both as we walk in, but addresses Savannah. ‘We can't get any sense out of him. He's not just off his face, he's off his rocker. It'll take a month in detox to bring him down — if ever.'

‘Where did you pick him up?' I ask her.

‘Outside La Petite Mort, shouting at the top of his lungs. Not hard to miss, and even easier to catch.'

‘Great sales technique.'

‘More like giving it away,' she says. ‘But most people here have heard the news and would be too wary to buy. We think he was paid in pills first then set loose with his wares.'

It makes no sense. ‘Why would they do that?'

‘You tell us.'

The guy is tall as well as skinny. His arms dangle weirdly and his joints seem too loosely strung, as if on loan from someone else's body.

His mumbling gets louder. Biting dogs and ferocious angels have the monopoly of his mind — and someone with bleeding fingers. His jerky movements still momentarily. I check his hands. No blood.

A chime dings softly in the kitchen. Savannah excuses herself and steps out.

I sit at the table and reach for the polyshell. The wax medallion pressed into the midriff seam is unmistakeably EHg's. Closer inspection reveals it to be a patch job, same as the last.

The guy steers suddenly to the sink, shaking his hands over it vigorously, as if something's clinging to them. I'm
reminded of Lady Macbeth. If this is a guilty conscience, was it something he saw or something he did?

I look questioningly at the guard closest.

‘No friggin idea,' she answers.

She leans across the metal draining board, stopping his hands with the strength of hers, and tries to persuade him to the table. His arms go, but his body refuses to leave the sink. He shrieks as she twists an arm behind him.

Sat forcibly, he looks around, wild-eyed.

‘Feel free to ask,' she says to me.

I proffer a hand. ‘Salisbury Forth.'

The whites of his eyes are glazed, red as maraschino cherries, his pupils tiny black pits. His gaze wanders off me to the door.

His guard leans over and gives him a little shake. ‘Pay attention, mister.'

I hold up the egg. ‘Can you tell me who gave this to you?' I ask, and he recoils from the question as if it scalds him.

‘Bleeding fingers,' he mutters, rocking in his chair. Madness defeats the best interrogation techniques.

A woman's anguished wail rises suddenly from another part of the bordello, stopping us all momentarily. Something — someone — has broken through the perfectly veneered world that is the Shangri-La.

A door bangs. I force my attention back to the street seller and start again.

‘I'll pay you for more,' I say invitingly, but head tilted to his shoulder, he looks at me as if I'm the loony.

When Savannah steps back into the room, her expression tells us nothing — her manner as seamless as ever. She, on the other hand, can see by our faces that the situation hasn't changed.

‘I'll make the call to the psych unit,' she says to the guards. ‘As for this …' She picks up the polyshell. ‘I'll take it to Gail myself.'

She draws me with her out along the corridor. I start to say something, but am signalled to silence by a brief finger to the lips. We're passing the clients' parlour.

We enter the salon our first meeting was in. Savannah motions me to a chaise longue, then crosses to the cabinet of curiosities I'd tried not to stare at last time. Her being right by it, I do now.

She lifts the latch and opens a latticed door to adjust something fallen off its stand. My imagination is already firing up, picturing how the various devices might strap to a body — or inside it. She catches me looking and a smile crinkles the corners of her mouth. Not for the first time I think that here is a woman who loves her work.

‘A world of untapped potential,' she murmurs, and I get the feeling it's not the objects in the cabinet she's referring to.

I blush.

She closes the lattice and comes over to sit by me. ‘I'm worried for Gail's safety,' she confides.

Hastily I regather my wits. ‘I agree this isn't about selling; it's to show us the stuff is out there doing damage. But that
doesn't mean the threat is aimed at Gail personally — more likely at EHg, and her by association.'

Savannah shakes her head slowly. A bastion has been breached in the heart of transgressive territory. ‘That may be so,' she says softly, ‘but I need you to find out who these people are.'

She takes my hand in both of hers in a disconcertingly intimate gesture. I feel a strange mix of emotions as I look into hazel eyes flecked with gold, the fragments of colour being caught by the light.

As alluring and formidable as she is, I feel ill-equipped to do what's being asked. There's a certain focused simplicity to being a bike courier — not to mention a rather reassuring anonymity. You make the drop swiftly, often under cover of night, and leave. Right now I feel like an L-plater shoved onto a racetrack mid-event and told to drive for my life. Except it isn't my life. It's Gail's.

‘I want that too …' I start to detail my unsuitability, but Savannah interrupts.

‘I know you'll do whatever it takes.'

 

The crimson door closes. I click on my bike lights and cycle distractedly down the Row. Two blocks along, I pass a prayer-shawled figure crouched, weeping, in a doorway. I stop and look back, wondering if there's anything I can do; but they startle like a rabbit when I enquire, and are gone into the dark of a side alley before I can even turn my bike.