A large man in a dark suit sat in a chair in the corner of the sitting area, with his back to the wall.
Mr Hand
, Simon thought. The floor lamp seemed to cast dim light across everything except the man’s face, and Simon could not yet make out his features. After the overlit hotel corridor, it was taking a while for Simon’s eyes to adjust, and it made him feel even more disadvantaged in this awkward situation.
Great. I can’t see him properly, I don’t know the plan and I don’t know what the fuck I am doing here…
‘You must be Mr Hand,’ Simon said stupidly to the dark figure in the corner.
The man simply said, ‘Simon Ricards Aston.’ Again his voice was low and in a monotone, as it had been through the door.
‘Um, yes.’ Simon didn’t think a lot of people knew his middle name. Where had Mr Hand learned it?
‘Sit. You have something for me?’
‘Um, yeah. Instructions, and money.’ Simon crossed the floor with reluctance, not wanting to be close to the man. He bent at the edge of the coffee table and placed the unopened briefcase carefully on it, and slid the envelope across the glass top towards him. Despite the offer to sit, he continued standing awkwardly for a minute before doing so. He kept trying to think of a line or a gesture he could use to make the best of the situation, but could come up with none.
‘Open it,’ Mr Hand said, gesturing to the briefcase.
Open it?
‘But I was not given the combination number,’ Simon protested, panicking.
Mr Hand fixed him with an imperturbable gaze that Simon felt more than saw. Finally Mr Hand leaned forwards to get the envelope and his face came into the light for a moment, illuminating disharmonious features.
Holy shit…
Mr Hand was a very ugly man. Most obvious was the scarring across his face that left it uneven and pulpy-looking. His face didn’t
look right
, and Simon also noticed that one of his ears was an odd shape, like the top part of it was missing.
Alarmingly, Mr Hand pulled a small glinting blade out of his breast pocket to slit the top of the envelope open. Normally such a diminutive knife would not be cause for concern, but the
sight of it in this man’s hand sent a shiver through Simon. He wanted to get away from the room as soon as possible.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! You are in over your head.
‘You noticed my ear,’ said the man, shrouded again in darkness.
‘Um…what?’ Simon said, busted. He swallowed hard. ‘What do you mean?’
It’s not polite to stare, dear…
‘A man cut part of it off. The doctors can’t fix it right.’
‘Oh…Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed,’ Simon lied, trying not to shake.
Mr Hand ignored him. He pulled the sheets of paper out of the envelope and held the instructions under the light to read them. The combination to the briefcase lock must have been there, because he pulled the case over, set the combination and opened it. Simon stared out of the corner of his eye at the incredible stack of cash. This was supposedly only a small slice of the deal—playmoney in local currency. The advance had been paid into a bank account before Mr Hand had even left for Sydney, and the rest of it was to be paid upon completion. This man would be paid millions for whatever he was to do.
Mr Hand closed and relocked the case and went back to reading the instructions. Simon took the opportunity to familiarise himself with the room and try to covertly study this man
whose odd features were now becoming more clear as Simon’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. Who was this guy? Where and how had they found him? And what would happen next? What exactly did The American mean when he said this man was going to ‘take care of the situation’? And what precisely would Mr Hand do for his hefty fee?
Simon noticed there was another briefcase directly next to the man on the floor beside his chair. He wondered what was in it.
After yesterday’s crisis meeting, Simon had thought Jack Cavanagh and his military-like security adviser formidable, but Mr Hand looked to be an altogether more overt menace. Where The American was quiet and precise, Mr Hand had a discomfiting, brute physicality that Simon did not see in his own privileged social circles. Even seated, it was clear that Mr Hand was built like a gladiator, with wide shoulders and a muscular neck visible atop his business shirt and slick dark suit, and those battle scars across his face and hands would give anyone pause. If someone could give
him
those scars, Simon shuddered to think what grief they had been dealt by Mr Hand in return. And, even apart from the scars, Simon suspected that there really was something else wrong with Mr Hand’s face. He’d spent a lot of time around those for whom plastic surgery was a form of maintenance, like getting a manicure or doing sit-ups, and he
thought he recognised in Mr Hand a botched face job of some kind. Perhaps he had gone under the knife to correct a broken nose or jaw; it was hard to tell, but whatever it was, the end result was not pretty. His face was meaty and shapeless, his eyes small.
Simon found himself frightened to be sitting in the same room with Mr Hand. He even found himself wishing that The American was there to walk him through it.
Oh…get this over with and get out of here…
Mr Hand finished with the instructions and slid all but one of the pages back into the envelope, folded the envelope twice and lit the corner with a shiny silver lighter, watching the paper dispassionately as it smouldered in the coffee table ashtray. Simon still didn’t know what the instructions had said.
Mr Hand addressed him now. ‘Tell me everything you know about Warwick O’Connor.’
Simon shifted uncomfortably. ‘Um…He hasn’t called me back. He’s done some work for me before. Never like this, of course—’
Mr Hand cut him off. ‘Alias. Address. Photographs.’
‘Oh, of course.’ Simon thought about his answers. ‘I don’t think he has an alias. I only know him as Warwick, actually. I don’t have any photographs either.’ He felt pathetic.
Mr Hand passed the remaining piece of paper across. ‘Is this him?’
Simon was surprised to see that it was a photocopy of Warwick’s driver’s licence. ‘Um, yeah. That’s him.’ It had his address on it too. There was another driver’s licence copied below it, this time for Lee Lin Tan. ‘And that is the guy I get Damien’s girls through,’ Simon said, pointing at the second photo. ‘He was there when the chick freaked out and died. He was probably on the video.’
Lee was a pimp for Asian sex workers. Simon frequently contacted him to bring girls over for Damien’s special parties, and he always had a fresh batch of pretty faces. Damien liked Lee’s Asian girls because they were petite and pretty, and they didn’t speak English or question anything. There was none of the ‘I’ll do this, but I don’t do that’ or the ‘You can touch me here, but not there’ that they would get with the Australian girls. They never complained, even when Damien left them with burns, bruises or whip marks. And Lee could get them young.
Simon had called Lee straight over and complained when there had been a problem with the girl at the party.
Now that Simon had confirmed the identities of the two men on the photocopy, Mr Hand tucked the piece of paper away.
Simon swallowed hard. In the presence of this man, and in light of the recent turn of events with Warwick, he was finding it difficult to maintain his composure. It was clear that in the
situation he found himself in, he was the bottom of the food chain and should be grateful that he wasn’t just being eaten alive.
‘If you don’t need me for anything else…’ Simon began, eager to make his exit.
‘Get a towel from the bathroom and bring it here.’
Simon froze.
What?
‘Do it.’
Mechanically Simon rose, walked to the bathroom and took one of the fresh white towels off the rack. He returned and held it out to Mr Hand.
‘Now kneel.’
‘What?’ Simon’s veins stood out, panic coursing through him. He flinched to one side, but Mr Hand had already pounced. He pinned Simon to the floor, head against the soft white hotel towel. Mr Hand’s crushing body weight bore down, and in his panic Simon peed himself. He lost control, his jeans feeling wet and warm. He felt humiliated and scared, but that was not the worst of it. In one quick motion Mr Hand pushed Simon’s head down and whipped his small razor-sharp blade against Simon’s neck, cutting a painful but superficial wound down the length of it and right across his chin.
‘
Ahhhhhh!
’
Simon cried out with the white-hot pain, and balled himself up, crying.
Body in a foetal position, utterly humiliated and agonised, Simon felt Mr Hand move to get something. It was a bottle from the minibar. He opened it and poured something straight onto the wound, the alcohol splashing and dripping down his face and neck. The pain was agony, the like of which Simon had never before experienced.
Mr Hand had disfigured that pretty face.
He came right up to Simon’s ear and whispered words to him that Simon would never forget, and when he finished uttering his chilling warnings he pulled away, Simon’s face dripping with bourbon and blood.
Even once Simon was relieved of his crushing weight, he did not move a muscle. He was too shocked.
‘Go.’
Mak looked up through the taxi window at a five-storey Gothic building. The evening sun washed the old stone in an orange glow, illuminating the arched windows. Menacing gargoyles perched on its corners, facing east and west, to fend off evil spirits. Across the front was carved the numerals ‘1902’. Even from within the taxi, the lively din of music and conversation floated down from the top floor of the building, where a glow of light illuminated a small balcony.
Mak looked down again at the note she had scribbled with Loulou’s garbled instructions.
This is it.
‘I’ll get out here,’ Mak said. ‘Thank you.’ She paid the driver and got out. The street was cold. She buttoned her coat and scanned the area.
The address Loulou had directed her to was one of the taller buildings in Elwood, a beachside suburb of Melbourne just beyond the area of St Kilda, where Mak was staying. Here the buildings were huddled together, each seeming to lean on
the next. Few were modern. There were a number of sixties- and seventies-style apartment blocks and some terrace homes. The shops in the area looked to be eclectic, much like the locals: a number of cafés, a corner store and a laundromat, a couple of bottle shops, a comic book shop, designer boutique and a cobbler. Mak was surprised to see geriatrics with walkers and punks with mohawks occupying the same footpaths in the evening.
Mak stepped up to the building. She pressed the bottom buzzer, MCGILL, and after a few seconds was met with a booming static which she assumed was the doorbell being answered. She responded to the static with ‘Hi, it’s Mak’.
There was a loud squeal on the other end, which she also heard from above. It couldn’t be anyone but Loulou—it seemed Mak had the right place. She was buzzed in, and made her way inside to discover that there was no elevator, just like her hotel. Step by step she hauled herself up five floors of creaky stairs, grimacing as the muscles in her quads and calves burned. When she’d been working in Manhattan as a fashion model she had lived in a five-floor walk-up like this, but she had obviously been younger and fitter then, because this felt like harder work than she had remembered.
By the third flight of stairs light moisture beaded her brow. She would have to sign up for some more kickboxing classes, she decided. And since she’d started working strange hours for
Marian, she had not stuck to her usual routine of running 50 kilometres a week, either. She would need to retain her fitness for her odd jobs as an investigator. Who knew when she might need to outrun someone? She’d heard plenty of war stories about investigators being confronted and even chased by tipped-off—and ticked-off—subjects.
After what seemed like twice as many flights of stairs as there actually were, Mak reached the top landing. Loulou burst out of the apartment door in a whirl of red-and-black stripes. Mak braced herself for the impact. The ensuing hug was fierce and heartfelt.
‘Oh, darling! It’s so good to see you!’
Loulou was, as always, a sight to behold. She was clothed in a striped top and fingerless glove ensemble, with black zippered jeans and what looked like Doc Martens. Ever the make-up artist, her visage was striking, though anything but natural. Dark extended eyelashes curled upwards to caress her eyebrows with their length, and multicoloured eyeshadow swept with a theatrical flair towards her temples. And since the last time Mak had seen her—although only yesterday—Loulou had dyed her mullet-cum-swept-up mohawk hairdo a raven black with dramatic red tips at the ends.
Where did she find the time
, Mak wondered.
Everything about Loulou was dramatic. Always. They embraced and Loulou dragged her inside excitedly.
‘You’re here! You’re here! Sweetie, this is so great! You
so
have to meet everyone!’
The apartment had walls covered in sketches hung with thumbtacks, and bright abstract paintings, save for one side of the room that was painted from floor to ceiling in a striking cherry red which Loulou seemed to have subconsciously colour-coordinated herself with. There was a drop cloth and easel in one corner of the living room, the canvas half painted in burgundy and black brushstrokes, awaiting further inspiration. Someone here was an artist.
In the centre of the room, a large wooden dining table was set for six people and covered in dripping red candles. Two young men with greasy hair and acres of tattoos greeted her, as did a young woman with hair as wildly coloured as Loulou’s. Mak recognised the shade of red: they had both matched themselves, obviously sharing the same dye kit. Who thought to do that?
Loulou introduced her boyfriend first. ‘Mak, this is Drayson McGill,’ she said with proud affection, squeezing the arm of one of the two young men. He was just a touch taller than Loulou, with dark generous features and sleepy bedroom eyes. He seemed in need of a wash, and perhaps a wake-up.