The Courier's New Bicycle (23 page)

‘Salisbury,' Gail says quietly. ‘Would you fetch the blanket from the office?'

Ferguson's big front doors have been dragged open, Anwar using the crowbar to break the rusty locks. Revealed outside is an impressive line-up of fetishistically accessorised custom rebuilds parked nose to tail.

The circle opens for the protection duo's nondescript van to reverse up to the entrance, then Doug's wrapped body is carried out and slid in the back while Marlene leans against a wall, sobbing inconsolably. Anyone would think she'd just lost her one true love. There's no sign now of where Doug met his demise, the clean-up executed with such clinical efficiency that I suspect the Red Quarter two have done this before.

We exit the factory blood-spattered and filthy, but it doesn't seem to bother Skinny. Growing up a gender transgressive in Melbourne's gangland 'burbs would have been a Lord of the Flies experience.

‘Pleasure doing business,' he says to Gail and Anwar, shaking their hands.

He comes over to me and murmurs, ‘Hot stuff, your boss. You should bring her to the Bend for a race meet. I'll show her some classier ways to get a thrill. As for you, Andy Pandy …' He eyes me in a fresh appraisal. ‘Got your place in Black Beauty reserved.'

He's an incorrigible flirt and a rock-solid ally. Small wonder Lola loves him to bits.

‘See you there,' I reply, and this time I mean it.

I thread my way between two handsome fenders and cross the factory car park to collect my bike. Closer, I see the gate has fallen on it. Closer still, I see the gate is
flattened
on it. When the cavalcade bulldozed their way in, they must have run over both. I stare in dismay at the mangled blue frame and wheel rims with their spokes popped out; once such a thing of beauty and grace, a thing of joy. Nearby, my helmet is just shattered pieces of shell and strap.

I prop up the gate, then drag the bike out and carry it back across the car park, bits dropping all the way.

A racer approaches me from the pack: Skinny's rival from the night Anwar and I handed over the racing fats.

‘That yours?' she says, consternated.

I nod.

‘I'm real sorry. The Purple Princess went over so easy — I never saw nothin but the gate.'

I look to her truck, the parade leader. My bike was crushed by a bruise-coloured six-wheeler twin cab.

‘That's okay,' I say, watching Gail help Anwar close the factory doors. ‘It's just a thing. Replaceable.'

I lay the bike in the back of Anwar's van. There'll be time later to grieve.

The racer crowd have moved en masse to the middle of the car park where Doug's eco-lite has been stripped of all its bits, the sad brown metal shell now getting enthusiastically doused with something flammable.

The first puffs of black smoke go up and the racers cheer.

‘We should leave before the bonfire celebration,' Gail suggests.

 

Dressed in a borrowed tee and trackpants while my clothes are being washed and dried, I'm sitting with Anwar in Gail's living room, ensconced in the cushiony depths of her comfy white couch. The light of early morning filters benignly through her French doors. I could almost believe the last several hours have been a trick of my imagination — except my raw skin smarts under the surgical dressings on one palm and hip, and my urbane boss is bruised and limping.

Barefoot in loose linen pants and shirt, she pours tea the colour of a Scottish burn into three pristine china cups. The sugar goes in, granules slid off a silver teaspoon. I don't know how she manages it, but everything with her is so effortlessly aesthetic.

She hands Anwar his, the chafe marks on her wrists showing against the pale fabric.

‘Something's been bothering me,' I say.

She glances up, teacup poised. ‘And what's that?'

‘Do I swagger?'

She sets the cup on its saucer. ‘Yes, you do. It's peculiarly endearing.' Her gaze is gently mocking.

Well, that's sorted then.

‘I'm sorry it took so long to find you,' I tell her.

I don't want to imagine what it must have been like, forty-eight hours in Ferguson's office, Doug as keeper.

‘I had the utmost faith in you and Anwar to come through,' she replies, lowering carefully into an armchair.

‘Thanks to Skinny, and no thanks to Marlene.'
Or me.
I try not to think about how many clues I'd missed in the lead-up. Not a natural sleuth.

‘We'll still honour our guarantee to her,' Anwar says.

I look at him beside me on the couch, freshly showered and wrapped in a borrowed dressing gown. Leaving the paint factory, Marlene had refused point-blank to ride with a dead body, so he'd driven her home in his van. Now she's going to be rewarded for her services with a regular supply of hormones, gratis. But how, exactly, did she help us? A single phone call to Doug made under guard at the Shangri-La.

‘My mistake,' Gail says quietly, ‘was not seeing beyond Marlene's narcissistic baby obsession to her involvement in the bigger game. Jilted, she's a spiteful creature, and once Doug's plan was under way, she couldn't resist feeding me the story about a new player at Fishermans Bend, even if
it risked them being discovered. She wanted to see me rattled — but even more, she wanted to do the rattling.'

‘Why did you believe her?'

‘There was no reason not to. She gets to hear a lot of things at the Glory Hole. This one had the ring of truth.'

So Gail's ‘little birdie' informant was actually a big glittery bird. Who hadn't Marlene betrayed? I wonder how much was intended retaliation, her going to the Neighbourly Arms and hooking up with Doug, and how much was simply the compulsion to salve rejection with more sex.

My thoughts swing to someone else whose motives I haven't entirely got a handle on. ‘Mojo Meg sided with us at the speakeasy when she didn't have to. If she was prepared to do that, I don't get why she hung you out to dry till then.'

‘Meg has no respect for those she thinks show weakness in their business dealings,' Gail answers. ‘That I would let EHg and my own company be compromised like that was a sign of weakness to her. Her move to try and get C&C's buyers list first, through you, was a pragmatic one — but everything changed once she realised it was Doug, an
outsider
, trying to muscle in on the Ethical network.'

‘I would never have given away anyone on the list,' I say, dismayed.

‘I know that,' Gail responds. ‘I
counted
on it. Don't blame Meg for the recruitment drive; you're too good a courier not to try to steal.'

Another thing occurs to me. ‘Marlene said Doug was going to “sort” his farm contact, but now we'll never know who that was.'

She looks at me. ‘He did sort the guy; and then told me in some detail how …' She rubs her wrists. ‘Remember the Rohypnol incident logged with Drugs Watch? It turns out that dairy worker was Doug's supplier.'

An alarm starts in my head.

‘He was the caretaker of the dairy, and had access to all areas,' she continues. ‘Apparently, when he realised he'd been drugged by on APV cell, he saw a way to get his revenge. The farm does a sideline in growth-hormone extracts got from the foals they send to the knackery. He'd been siphoning off some of the stuff and delivering it to Doug at Fishermans Bend for a cash dividend from Gateway Enterprises. The batch he'd put aside for his usual Sunday delivery was in the distillery room. He knew the EHg brand name was being used as the Trojan horse, and in his mind it's people like those in the APV who buy that non-animal-cruelty stuff. He thought by spiking the batch he was poisoning his enemies.'

The alarm has cut out, replaced by a sickening realisation.
We'd
Rohypnoled Doug's inside man. Our last horse rescue had set the wheels in motion for an angry act of retaliation, and subsequently caused Albee's brush with death. He — and unknown others — had gone through what they had because of us.

I feel completely winded. I put my head in my hands.

‘Salisbury?' Gail's voice is sharp with concern.

I can't drag my eyes from the floorboards. ‘That was our raid,' I say weakly. ‘A joint operation with another cell.'

‘I know,' she replies sympathetically. ‘Don't beat yourself up over this. You couldn't have foreseen Doug's scheme colliding with an APV rescue, or that Greengate's caretaker would exact retribution in the way he did.'

Kind words, but I don't feel any better. Our actions have rippled into a widening pool of disastrous consequences.

Belatedly, I realise why the snoop trips to Fishermans Bend and surveillance at Ferguson's had been a failure. Sundays were delivery day. That first Sunday, I'd seen the marker but mistaken the clues; the next — just after the horse rustling — Geeta had been attacked and Anwar lost his tyres, neither of us anywhere near the paint factory when Doug would have been heat-stamping the polystyrene shells containing the OP-spiked kit. Two nights later, Marlene would have told him she'd accidentally poisoned Albee: end of Plan A.

I groan. The bitter irony is if I'd let Lydia loose in the distillery to do the damage she'd so wanted to, Doug's guy wouldn't have had the opportunity to spike anything.

‘Salisbury.' Gail commands my attention, and I obey.

She leans forward. ‘I know what you're thinking, but the alternative is inaction. For fighters like you, that isn't a choice. It's why the people around you trust you and look out for you' — she throws a glance at Anwar — ‘even if you don't know it most of the time. It's why you're here
now, sitting on that couch drinking tea. Never doubt that. I don't.'

She sits back. In the ensuing silence the images of my life reel like film: twenty-nine years, and a catalogue of struggle. Under Nation First, things will only get worse for transgressives, but this is about the animals in the hormone farms, and turning a blind eye to the atrocities means abandoning them to an unbearable fate.

I check sideways at Anwar, and remember him wielding the crowbar in Gail's defence, no doubt in my mind as to whether he would use it. Doug underestimated all of us, not just Marlene.

My thoughts return to Ferguson's and the two NVB lackeys left to sleep off their sedative jabs. They'll be waking soon with sore bones and gaps in their memories. The factory space devoid of clues, they'll try to put the pieces together with the others who escaped, but they'll never find their self-serving captain. I can't help thinking one day there'll be a reckoning: the five secretly nursing their injured pride until it rises into retaliatory action like a gas bubble bursting from a bog. I just hope we'll be ready when that happens.

Gail tips back the dregs of her tea. ‘Come see the garden,' she says.

Walking isn't so bad, especially on a day like this, the city washed with a sudden shower then swept through by an invigorating southerly. Sun slices down between the clouds, steam rising off the pavement. It makes me feel restless and excited, as if this small part of the world has been imbued with fresh hope, the possibility of change.

Rosie greets me at the speakeasy's door with a broad grin. ‘Mate — that was a wicked night. You come out of it okay?' She stands back to inspect me.

‘Yeah, I'm fine,' I tell her, hoping she won't ask about Doug. ‘Gail's back with us.'

She punches her fist in the air. ‘You can't keep a good transgressive down,' she says, all fired up.

No, you can't.
But some people can do a damn good job of trying.

I glance into the unattended cloakroom: Gabe's day off and no replacement for Marlene yet. As if there ever could
be. Her dislike of me made plain, I'm wondering if I'll be haunted by her sequinned spectre from now on. Doug may have been the mastermind of their scheme, but out of the two of them I think of her as the more devious. And now Doug is dead, while she's who-knows-where …

I descend the stairs. The lunchtime crowd is in and upbeat, a din emanating from the bar area. I glance to where Sandy and Merlyn are maintaining their usual vigil outside Meg's alcove, the boss's curtains open behind them.

Meg nods to me from her table then speaks to Merlyn, who leaves her post and comes towards me. Instinctively, I step back, but she's holding out the jacket hauled off me in the Rob Roy. I take it gratefully. It's my favourite.

Sandy joins us. I brace for the backslap, delivered today with extra enthusiasm.

‘You still on the lemonade wagon?' she asks. ‘Whaddya say to a soft drink sometime with me and Merl? Your shout.'

She laughs, and I get a reprise image of her downing schooners of ale like water. I make some noises of agreement then watch them trek back to their stations. If my stint at Prestige Couriers has shown me nothing else, it's that there's hope yet for Meg's universally disliked minders.

Something sparkles in the air. Trin is flipping glasses for a row of worshippers at the bar. Who could resist those well-toned arms in their muscle shirt?

My mobile burrs in my hand. It's Max. ‘Welcome back,' he says. ‘We missed you.'

News travels fast. At least this time it's good news.

‘By the way,' he adds, ‘I've saved you a place in the chicken rescue van.'

‘Glad to hear it. I'll swing by for my instructions.'

I pocket the mobile and scan for Tallis.

The call from SANE's emergency coordinator had come while I was in Gail's garden, Gail relaying her request to see me. I'd leapt at the opportunity to visit her again in her peaceful enclave, but she'd suggested a change of scenery.

I see her standing by an alcove and go over.

She shepherds me in. ‘Savannah and I were just comparing notes on a mutual acquaintance,' she says, one hand on my arm, the other signalling to the bar staff for coffee.

Her companion rises with a catlike grace. She's clad in slim-fit jeans and a sky-blue chambray shirt. Why is it I always feel so awed by her presence? Here are two of the most impressive — and contrasting — women I know. Add Gail to the mix and you have a formidable team.

All of us seated, Tallis starts proceedings by saying, ‘Roshani's café friend was no SADA worker.'

Even here, Geeta gets to keep her work alias.

‘The name she gave, Angela Morgan, didn't correspond to any of our workers, past or present,' Tallis continues, ‘so Savannah suggested we use the brokers' lists to look at the
applicants
for the Ovum Recipient Program across the last couple of years. That's when we noticed something odd. Several who'd been rejected pre-interview as emotionally unsuitable to enter into an embryo-transfer agreement, had
all requested precisely the same attributes for their desired ovum donor. No prizes for guessing whose.'

I have to think. ‘Marlene, under various aliases, was trying to engineer a “perfect match” with Gail?'

‘Right,' Tallis replies. ‘Egg donors can use more than one broker if they choose. Miss Bott, not being privileged with that information, applied to them all.'

‘Rejection doesn't faze her then,' I say, and Tallis concurs wryly.

Our attention is momentarily diverted by three coffees arriving on a tray. I sip. The brew is good — but not as good as Frank's.

Savannah takes up the thread. ‘Brokers don't usually compare rejections, so it took a bit of digging to put the pieces together. None of those failed candidates checked out as being real. As for Marlene, she may have created a new identity on paper each time, but she couldn't pass the psych evaluations. She began to woo Gail directly, and somehow figured out her arrangement was with me and the fertility centre in Cutters Lane. That's when things got dangerous.'

It occurs to me that Marlene might have been behind the prayer group's midnight attack in the Red Quarter if she was desperate enough for what was in my courier's bag.

‘In the course of applying for and being rejected from the OR Program, Marlene befriended Roshani,' Tallis inserts. ‘She must have marked the poor girl soon after she moved into the sponsored accommodation. She told her she worked for SADA and suggested they meet regularly.
Roshani didn't have any reason to disbelieve her, but apparently “Angela” got spooky and intense at their café tête-è-têtes.'

‘What was she after?' I ask.

‘Insider information … a vicarious experience of pregnancy … We don't really know. Eventually Roshani said she couldn't meet her any more and that's when we think Marlene, miffed, did what she does best. She retaliated by setting the dogs on her new friend. Probably an anonymous tip to one of the vigilante squads who go about the city doing “God's work”.' Tallis rubs a hand across her temple. ‘Roshani was attacked and lost the baby because of Marlene's spite.'

I glance at Savannah, who looks grim, and silently apologise to the Nancarrows at the Tea House for thinking they might have had anything to do with this. It's far too easy in a climate of restriction and fear to suspect everyone and their aunty of being a potential NF card-carrier or Neighbourly Watch stooge. They're probably just your run-of-the-mill busybodies.

My thoughts turn to Helen. If she were ever to find out who was responsible for the miscarriage, it wouldn't be just Michael after Doug, it'd be her after Marlene. Those two in confrontation is not a happy thought.

‘So Marlene didn't know whose baby Roshani was carrying?' I'm careful not to divulge names.

‘She couldn't have,' Tallis responds. ‘She knew enough about the donor and surrogacy system to fool Roshani, but
she never got inside SADA, and Roshani couldn't have told her who her recipients were because she didn't know.'

I finish the dregs of my coffee. ‘How's Roshani now?'

‘Contemplating a rosy future. She's been rehoused and is working as an admin assistant for us at SANE. Weekends, she's with Braheem at the markets.'

‘I was thinking of dropping in there sometime,' I say, too embarrassed to add that being in their company last Friday gave me back some hope for sibling relationships everywhere. As for mine with Helen, I don't know. To keep her world order from tipping into chaos, she'd provided me with the means to rescue Gail, but will that change anything between us?

‘I'm sure they'd both love to see you.' Tallis rises from her seat, and I follow suit.

She hugs me warmly. ‘And that's the end of it, as far as Marlene goes. We hope.'

 

My heart is singing hallelujah choruses. Albee's out of his coma and about to be discharged, and Gail has escaped Doug's ministrations at Ferguson's unharmed. I've been home and told the cat; now, scrubbed and combed and in fresh clothes, I'm too impatient for the hospital lifts. I take the fire stairs in exultant pairs and triples, then push on the door to the medical wards.

I stride the corridor and launch into Albee's room — and stop. Inez is sitting in the armchair on the far side of his bed.

My heart rams into my throat and cuts off my breath. Someone get me the oxygen mask.

Ellie enters the room behind me, a takeaway coffee in each hand.

‘At last!' she exclaims, and kisses my cheek. ‘We'd decided Meg had kidnapped you, and were planning to send in a Red Quarter protection team to get you back.'

Not as far from the truth as she might think. My eyes go to Inez then Albee propped up on pillows.

‘Salisbury,' he says, his face one big smile.

‘By the way,' Ellie whispers in my ear, ‘Albee and I decided it was time Inez came for a visit. Then, of course, you made yourself scarce. You're a hard one to keep tabs on.' She gives me a little nudge forward then hands Inez her coffee.

I stop at the foot of the bed, feeling gawky and shy. The past week has been a nightmare of fast-emerging fears: some realised — Marlene and Doug's collusion to bring Gail down; and some vanquished — the news of Gail's OD, and Albee's near-death experience; but I truly thought I'd lost Inez, and now I very badly want the chance to change the ending.

I lift my gaze to her and she smiles crookedly.

‘Hey,' she says.

The touchpaper of hope. A flame flickers in my hurting heart and the awkwardness eases a little.

As I move around the bed, Inez reaches out her hand. Tentatively I take it, and feel that warm, capable grip, so missed and so longed for, again in mine.

Albee grins at us like a naughty schoolboy.

‘You …' I say to him. ‘You're a bucket-load of trouble, matey.' But
acceptance
is what I'm really thinking: the gift of loving friends.

 

Inez drives me to a park east of the city grid, and arm in arm we walk the shadowed paths below moulting elms, the sparrows clustered in the bunya pines noisily chirruping in the dusk. The Fidelity Gardens conservatory is one of her favourite places. She has a whole bunch of them she likes to visit — secret nooks in various inner-city locations discovered over the short time she's lived here — and I want to be the only one she shows them to.

The building is Spanish Mission style, its pillars and archways flanked all sides by bleached brownlands that used to be grass. At the northern entrance, a magpie is jackhammering for worms under a giant date palm. With so little beneath the surface of such dry ground, even the battle-hardened ruffians of suburbia are doing it tough.

We open the glass door, its loose panes rattling, and are immediately enveloped by a thick humidity of light-suffused green. We follow the walkway over a bridge to a bench seat set amid a profusion of broad, rubbery leaves. Above us delicately beaded stems trail flowers; beside, a channel trickles water into a pond, the ferns in the rock crevices unfurling pristine new fronds and the bromeliads displaying their exotic wet interiors.

‘No one comes in here mid-week,' Inez whispers, her breath tickling my ear.

Our bodies move close and we kiss standing, mouth hungrily on mouth, the scents that slough off our skin mingling with the lush perfume of the plants.

I lower onto the seat, drawing her down to face me, her knees astride my lap. A trickle of sweat glistens on her neck. It reaches her collarbone and is held there, glittering in the scoop of bone, a perfect teardrop. I watch, fascinated; I want to press my lips to her hot brown skin and lap like a kitten.

The glass door rattles and three people enter. Inez laughs softly and rolls off my lap. Today we don't care that we are perverts and miscreants and could be arrested for our public display. They move through the greenhouse, not really looking, and exit via the door at the opposite end. They must have picked up the transgressor vibe.

Cuddled together on the bench, we talk awhile, filling in the gaps of the last few days for each other. No one else arrives through the door, the building's subtropical interior a private wonderland kept just for us.

My unhappy girlfriend had buried herself in work, one of her jobs being for Savannah, who'd quickly winkled out the cause of her barriers-up demeanour. Savannah knows Ellie, and Ellie talked to Albee when he woke … Inez smiles and shrugs, the rest known.

‘Sal.' She faces me, all levity aside. ‘I'm sorry about my behaviour in the speakeasy, but the last person I committed to, heart and soul, cheated on me with her Pilates teacher. The affair went on for months until I found out: a sex text
from her to him, sent to me by accident. I was shattered. It's the main reason I relocated to Melbourne. I felt so betrayed, I couldn't stay in the same city as her.'

She looks away. I reach for her hand and enclose it in mine.

‘So when you said you were ditching Gail to go work for Meg — the
enemy
, in my book — I overreacted, as if it was happening all over again: someone I thought I knew, and was beginning to trust, doing something that revealed them to be the opposite. Then, when I realised it was Gail putting you at risk, I felt really angry. I was afraid of what you were getting yourself into, and what all that secrecy and subterfuge would do to us.' She pauses. ‘It was Savannah who put me right — not by giving away any confidences, but by giving me
context
. She made me realise I should trust you, and hang in there like you wanted me to. It was hard not seeing you after the news of Gail's OD, but Savannah asked me to sit tight while things played out. She had her eye on the bigger picture.' A smile emerges. ‘I wish I'd seen her flexing her professional muscles on Marlene.'

‘It was an experience to treasure,' I reply.

I bring my arm around her and she gets a pained expression. ‘What?' I draw back, worried I've done something.

She laughs. ‘I was imagining Savannah giving Marlene a
real
lashing, and I bit the inside of my lip.'