Dead Heat, page 5
‘You hitched yet?’ asked some guy in his fifties, wearing an ill-fitting suit and an aggressive expression.
She’d said, ‘You seen that boat in the harbour?’
‘It belongs to some gangster,’ the man said in an authoritative tone, knowing exactly which boat she meant.
‘A triad,’ another man added firmly, as though he’d met the triad personally.
Then Bridie piped up, almost breathless with excitement, ‘I’ve heard it’s got gold fittings in the bathrooms and bidets in every one!’
Considering some folk in Nulgarra didn’t even have an inside toilet, just the dunny out the back of the house, Georgia had bet Bridie’s rose-dotted knickers that the bidets on the boat would be the only ones in town.
As Mrs Scutchings rocketed past the Shipshape Chandlery, Georgia gazed at the gleaming white monster dwarfing its neighbours. Who owned the thing? How much had it cost? Squillions, no doubt. Just filling the fuel tanks had to cost over five thousand bucks and she guessed the mooring fees were three times her annual rent.
She studied the large saloon window shaped like an almond and reckoned she could probably fit her whole house inside the one room. No doubt it would be equipped with all mod cons, full air-conditioning, a bridge with an array of dials and dozens of satellite phones. Global Positioning System, radar, compass, depth monitor, perimeter monitor, and probably a video to oversee the engines. It was seriously over the top, and seriously out of place.
‘Unreal,’ murmured Georgia.
Mrs Scutchings swung her head round. ‘Oh, that. Hideous. Just hideous. The sooner we get rid of it the better. Word going round town says it belongs to some Chinese gangster, but nobody really knows as such and it’s racking up mooring costs like you wouldn’t believe. The harbour master, Pete Dunning – he’ll be new to you – has his lip well and truly buttoned, believe you me.’
‘Surely somebody must have seen it being moored and the crew disembark?’
‘It turned up during the night a couple of days back, before the storm hit. Whole town was asleep.’
With a little lurch Georgia recalled India Kane and her questions about the man whose body had been found on nearby Kee Beach, with a bullet in the back of his head, who should have been on the plane. What was his name? Chen. Ronnie Chen.
‘What’s with the police boats?’ she asked. ‘Are they anything to do with it?’
‘Oh, no. They’ll be dealing with illegal immigrants trying to sneak in by boat. The police are trying to intercept them before they land but they’re having the very devil of a job. They’ve missed two lots this month, boats heaving with Afghans, Iraqis, the whole Middle East from the sound of it. How they managed to miss the last lot is anyone’s guess, but believe you me, our boys in blue are not happy bunnies. There’s talk of someone tipping the immigrants off. If I could get my hands on whoever it is . . .’ Mrs Scutchings gave a gusting sigh. ‘You’d think they’d learn they’re not wanted, wouldn’t you, but no, they just keep on coming. Greedy bunch of freeloaders, the lot of them.’
Georgia studied the side of Mrs Scutchings’s face. The woman had a mole the size of a dung beetle on her chin and Georgia wondered why she’d never had it removed. ‘But you’re an immigrant.’
‘I didn’t turn up expecting red-carpet treatment, free food and lodging.’
‘Er, with all due respect,’ Georgia said, casual tone belying the tiny prickles of defensiveness brushing over her skin, ‘you weren’t a refugee.’
‘They shouldn’t come here.’ Mrs Scutchings’s nostrils flared wide. ‘Most of them don’t even speak English, for goodness’ sake. I’ll have you know I’m behind the government one hundred per cent. Three billion dollars to keep out asylum seekers? Good on them. We don’t want any more. The instant they plant their grubby little feet on our land they should be sent packing to where they came from.’
Bloody hell, was the woman rabid or what? If she went on like that in Sydney she’d be lynched. Just about everyone Georgia knew lived in fear of being sexist or ageist, and after their ancestors’ appalling treatment of the Aborigines, the average Australian’s greatest horror was being racist.
Aside from Mrs Scutchings, obviously.
‘But what about the Mighty Chopstick?’ Georgia flapped a feeble hand behind her. She didn’t have the energy for a full-blown argument, but she couldn’t not defend half the population of Australia. ‘Without Timothy Wu, we wouldn’t have a Chinese restaurant anywhere in the area, and I’ll bet a hundred bucks Dr Ophir at the hospital is an immigrant too. This country is built by immigrants.’
They passed a rusting sign advertising fishing rods for hire. Just after the school’s pedestrian crossing, Mrs Scutchings swung the Honda right and accelerated along Jacaranda Road.
Georgia’s old headmistress said darkly, ‘We’re being overrun with the dregs of the world; you name it, they’re all turning up for a free feed. We don’t want spongers. Not here.’
*
Three blocks from the seafront, Mrs Scutchings’s red-brick house was on the corner of Julian and Church Streets, set in a half-acre of neat garden with the usual Hills hoist in the back yard. Each window had a fly screen. The trees still dripped water and the light was dull, shading everything with a coppery-grey sheen.
On the opposite side of the street was the cemetery. Georgia looked through the rain pattering on the windscreen, wishing Tom’s grave was there, and felt sad that he was a clump of grey ash in a jar instead of a sturdy corpse in an eco-aware cardboard box covered with a mound of freshly dug earth. That was Mum for you. Much more romantic to scatter ashes on a beach than imagine her father’s body decomposing underground.
‘Well, here we are!’ Mrs Scutchings announced. The instant she switched off the engine, several elderly citizens emerged from various houses in the street to gather round and gawp. As Georgia climbed out of the car, they sheltered her with their umbrellas, eyes bright with curiosity.
‘You remember Georgia Parish?’ Mrs Scutchings said. Georgia recognised Angie Jeffrey, whose husband ran the Road House café just out of town, and Liz Daniels, the local GP’s wife. Both had come to Tom’s funeral, but she didn’t know the others.
Mrs Scutchings ushered Georgia towards the house, still talking. ‘Bri Hutchison’s in a bad way, he’s been burned terribly badly, and some poor woman called Suzie Wilson didn’t make it. But here’s Georgia, and we’re grateful for that, at least.’
‘Becky’s already alerted the insurance company,’ someone said. ‘They’ll be sending a man up from Brizzy to sort it out.’
‘Wonder how much it was worth?’
‘About sixty grand.’
‘Sixty grand for one of Bri’s rattletraps? You’re joking.’
‘She’s closed the airfield. Matt’s well fed up. He was hoping he’d take Bri’s flights tomorrow, make some extra cash.’
‘I wouldn’t fly with him if you paid me a million bucks. All that beer he gets through. Aren’t pilots supposed not to drink?’
If India Kane worked up here she’d soon be out of a job, Georgia thought dimly. In Nulgarra, where word travelled at the speed of light, there wasn’t much point having a newspaper.
She felt so drained she had to concentrate on putting one foot after the other as she followed everyone up the concrete path. The conversation had turned to what they’d cook for Becky and her kids, and who would make the next lot of sandwiches and cake for the helicopter paramedics and the hospital staff.
Nulgarra may be claustrophobic, she thought, but at least it’s got community spirit.
*
Dressed in a thick towelling bathrobe she found hanging on the back of the bedroom door, Georgia did as she was told and gave Mrs Scutchings her clothes to be washed. Then she headed for the bathroom, which needed a major makeover. Tired, olive-coloured tiles were in need of regrouting and the paint was peeling in the corners. The carpet had lost its pile and was hard as hessian under her bare feet.
The shower looked as old as the rest of the room, and Georgia turned it on cautiously. A small clanking sound started up, and then a torrent of hot water gushed from the massive shower head. Normally she’d have revelled in the deluge, but having to wash one-handed in an attempt to keep her bandage dry was more difficult than she’d anticipated and she managed to get shampoo in her eyes. She hadn’t done that since she was a kid and had forgotten how much it hurt.
Using Mrs Scutchings’s phone in the hall, she called India and arranged for the reporter to collect her at nine the following morning. India agreed to take her back to the aerodrome, and when they were there, to decide whether to fly or not.
Still in the robe, Georgia crawled into bed. It was daylight, but she didn’t care. She turned on the bedside light, hoping to cheer up the room with its yellowing lace and faded dried flowers and a carpet the colour of porridge. The windows were tiny, barely any light leaked through, and the room smelled of mulch and damp. Georgia knew if she opened the cupboard in the corner that anything inside would be covered in mould.
That was the trouble with living in the tropics. Everything got damp, then it went mouldy.
She turned off the light, longing to sleep, not to think. She wanted it all to be a bad dream. She could hear rain rattling against the window and women talking and the whirr of a kitchen mixer. She imagined cakes being baked, lemon sponge drizzled with syrup, carrot cake smothered in butter icing.
Her mother baked great cakes, but it didn’t always mean that children could eat them. Georgia remembered reaching for a slice of what she thought was a chocolate brownie and having the plate whipped from beneath her fingers at the last second.
‘Mum!’
‘Darling, sorry.’ She had looked genuinely regretful.
‘But I love brownies!’
‘They’re not brownies. They’re for adults.’
Georgia had looked at her mother, who sighed. ‘Sweet, it’s not the end of the world. If I promise you brownies tomorrow, will you promise to stop scowling at me?’
Burrowing deep into the narrow single bed, she pulled the towelling robe close around her neck. She heard the distinctive sound of an oven door banging shut and imagined a perfectly luscious banana cake emerging. It would have creamy icing, she decided, and walnuts in its centre.
Georgia slept restlessly, shivering a little against the damp bedclothes, sore and aching and aware of protecting her hand, her bruises. Despite her best efforts, her mind filled with flashbacks of the crash; the smell of smoke, the sound of tearing metal around them.
*
A crack of thunder woke her in an instant, heart pounding until she realised where she was. It was pitch-dark outside and rain lashed against the window. Her heart sank. The secondary storms after Cyclone Tania had set in. Great. It looked as though she and India might not leave tomorrow after all.
She rolled on to her back and gave an involuntary groan. She hurt about a thousand times more than she had before she fell asleep. What she needed was a handful of painkillers. Pushing the bedcovers back, Georgia turned to the door where Suzie’s bumbag hung on the hook. Then she thought she saw the door handle move.
Her breathing stopped as she stared. For a second she reckoned she must have imagined it, but then it shifted again, just half an inch or so, but it definitely moved.
Gut instinct told her it wouldn’t be Mrs Scutchings.
Eight
Georgia gazed rigidly at the door handle as she considered the alternatives: screaming for help at the top of her voice, or lying in bed, pretending to be asleep.
Click.
Christ, the door was going to open any second.
There was no room beneath the bed to hide. No wardrobe to scurry inside, no open window to flee through. The corner cupboard could have sheltered a family of white-tailed rats, but not much else.
She made a snap decision against playing doggo and pretending to be asleep – she’d be a sitting target – and slipped from under the covers. She tiptoed hastily across the room to hide behind the door. Back flat against the wall, she saw the door open a crack, then a little more. Her breathing was shallow, her heart galloping.
A dark shape stepped inside. A man. He was holding a pistol in his right hand. Holding her breath, she watched him approach the bed. He moved cautiously, gun in readiness.
She had to get out. She had to get out now.
Quietly as she could, she started to creep around the door, heading for the corridor, when he spun round and came for her.
She leaped backwards, opened her mouth and screamed, loud as she could, ‘Help!’
The man clamped his hand over her mouth and she wriggled, jerking to break free but he was too strong. Suddenly the light snapped on and a voice said, ‘Georgia, what in the world—’
The man twisted away from Georgia and rushed for Mrs Scutchings in the doorway, pushing her so hard she smacked into the opposite corridor wall.
‘Stop!’ Mrs Scutchings shouted. ‘Just stop right there!’
But the man wasn’t stopping for anyone, least of all Mrs Scutchings, resplendent in a cream robe of polyester that reached to her ankles, shouting loud as a foghorn.
Without stopping to think, Georgia ran after the man, but by the time she had flung back the front door fly screen and raced down the concrete path to the street, all she could see was rain slanting against a single orange streetlight and palms bowed low.
*
‘He was Chinese. Clean-shaven. Black hair, longish.’ Georgia took a gulp of her coffee and grimaced. Not only had she neglected to add sugar, but it was almost cold. ‘He wore jeans and a sweatshirt. Sneakers.’
She stepped to the sink and poured her coffee down the plughole before turning to face the cops. ‘That’s it, I’m afraid. I can’t really help any more. I only saw him for a second.’
Glancing at her wrist she realised for the first time that she had lost her watch. Not that she was going to have a spasm over it, it hadn’t been a swanky Tag Heuer chronograph, just a Swatch she’d been given by her housemate last Christmas. Annie would buy her another, she knew, and enjoy teasing her for losing the thing in such a spectacular fashion.
Looking around she saw a plastic green-and-gold clock above the door. It was 6 a.m. Pale grey light filtered through the windows and she doubted they’d see the sun rising. Heavy, black-bottomed clouds filled the sky.
‘Tell us a bit more about our hero,’ said the cop called Sergeant Riggs. He loaded the last word with sarcasm. ‘Where can we find him?’
‘I’ve already told you, I don’t know. The last time I saw him was at the hospital. And as I’ve said before, the intruder wasn’t Lee Denham.’
‘You didn’t see him leave the hospital?’
Sergeant Riggs’s voice was as hard and uncompromising as his appearance. Early thirties, large and raw-boned with a roll of fat spilling over his belt, he had buzz-cut red hair and a pair of small, watery blue eyes that never seemed to blink.
Riggs and his sidekick had turned up thirty minutes after Mrs Scutchings had called triple zero and had been grilling her for over an hour. Despite her exhaustion, Georgia held her chin up and tried to ignore the fact that not only did she have the remnants of blue nail polish on her toenails, which Sergeant Riggs seemed to find fascinating, but she looked a fright. To free her from the plane Lee had sawn her hair into varying lengths that hung limply from her scalp. To make things worse, her clothes were still damp from being washed and her T-shirt kept sticking to her skin. Riggs was torn between staring at her toes or her breasts.
She folded her arms across her chest. ‘No,’ she said.
‘You sure about that? The man saved your life, didn’t he? You sure you’re not feeling obligated, wanting to protect him?’
‘I told you, it wasn’t Lee.’
She tried not to show her apprehension at his interest in Lee. Did it have anything to do with Lee wanting to take Suzie’s bumbag, his frown after he had searched it?
Wanting to change the subject, she looked pointedly at the door. ‘Where’s Mrs Scutchings? The poor woman must be wondering what on earth’s going on with you interrogating me before she’s had her cornflakes.’
‘Watching breakfast TV,’ said Riggs.
Small pause.
‘So, Miz Parish,’ said Riggs heavily. ‘You’re saying quite definitely that you don’t know where Lee Denham is?’
‘Yes. Yes. I have no idea.’
‘So who was the intruder?’
‘It wasn’t Lee,’ she repeated. ‘He was too short, for a start. Lee must be six foot and this bloke was smaller than me, maybe five-six or so.’
How she wished she could walk outside and jump into a taxi and drive away. Riggs seemed to think if he asked the same questions over and over, she’d suddenly come up with a different answer. An overweight bully, that’s all he was, and she knew how to deal with bullies. If you couldn’t settle it with a fist fight, the only option was to ignore them and hold your head high until they tired of you.
‘I’m thinking there’s more going on here than you’re telling. You sure you’re being straight?’
Her body was pulsing with pain, but she didn’t sit down. She stood tall and kept her voice firm. ‘I cannot tell you something I don’t know. Now, please, I’ve helped you all I can. May I go now?’
She made for the door, but the sidekick sprang into position right in front, forcing her to spin round. Feeling like a sheep nipped at its heels by a keen collie, she paced back to the cooker. Mrs Scutchings’s kitchen was stale with age, with small windows, brown linoleum worn in its centre and an ancient Kelvinator fridge the size of a sedan car. Perhaps twenty years ago the walls and cupboards had been a cheerful green, but the colour was now flat and dull as pondweed.
‘Miz Parish.’ Riggs’s voice was a low growl. ‘Maybe we can start again. Do you know—’
The door thumped open. A whippet-lean man in black boots, black jeans and a T-shirt walked in. ‘Sorry I’m running so late, guys.’
She thought, I don’t believe it! It’s Daniel Carter. The boy I had a monumental crush on at school, the boy three years ahead of me who never knew I existed. It was surreal.
