I also heard footsteps.
I glanced over my shoulder. A figure strolled a block behind, runners squeaking on the sidewalk.
My heart revved and I tried to calm myself down. Just a dude walking along a footpath, not a crime, no big deal, and besides, I’d been careful all day. No car, just an unpredictable mix of taxis and public transport. I’d kept looking over my shoulder the whole time. I was sure I hadn’t been followed.
I relaxed a little. God, I really had to stop being so nervous and rabbity. Not everybody was a crazed stalker, out to slit my throat. Just to reassure myself, I looked back one last time.
My heart didn’t so much rev as stop completely. The guy was only half a block away and something was very wrong with his face. As he picked up speed and closed the distance between us I finally figured out what it was. He was wearing a mask.
M
y legs, already weary and sporting a deep ache from the gym, nearly went out from under me. Then the guy started sprinting and I literally felt adrenaline spurt from the gland and didn’t have to tell myself to move, I was running, thongs slapping the pavement, arms pumping. My backpack slapped my shoulders and buildings blurred as I flew by.
I knew I couldn’t keep up the pace for too long; already my chest was tight and I could hear him gaining ground behind me. I glimpsed a crossroads ahead. Desperate to get off the deserted street I darted left, praying it led to St Kilda Road.
It finished in a dead end at the back of something called Arts Building B.
I stopped, planning to swivel and take a frantic swing at my pursuer, maybe catch him off guard, but he was too quick. Before I could turn he slammed into the back of me, we fell to the concrete, and for the second time in an hour my skin was scoured and I was gasping for breath.
I didn’t have enough oxygen in my lungs to scream, so I bucked and wriggled, frenzied as a vet-bound feline. He grabbed the hair at the base of my skull like I really was a spacked-out cat, lifted my head off the footpath and pressed something sharp into the side of my neck.
I stopped thrashing and stayed perfectly still except for a slight shudder as I breathed in footpath-f lavoured air. The guy was astride me, basically sitting on my butt. His fist was tight and my scalp burned where he was ripping out hairs. His scratchy breathing was amplified by the mask and he smelled of sweat, cigarettes and something sweet and boozy. Bourbon? Funny what you notice when you’re sure you’re going to die. I also observed an abandoned hair elastic on the pavement in front of me and was just debating whether it would be gross and unhygienic to wear something I’d found in the street when a vein throbbed, right near the point of what I assumed to be the knife. Or maybe it was pressing on an artery? Words like carotid and jugular sprang to mind and I finally focused on what was happening to me.
‘Fancy meetin’ you here,’ my assailant said. He had a whiny ocker accent and a raspy voice. I couldn’t remember hearing it before.
‘Who are you?’ I choked out.
‘Your worst nightmare.’
Corny, but it turned my spinal cord to ice.
‘No, really,’ I gasped and tried to swallow. Impossible with my head reefed back. ‘Who are you, what do you want?’
‘Who am I?’ His laugh was a wheezy staccato intake, like Mutley the cartoon dog. ‘Who do you reckon? I’m the king, baby, the fucken king.’
I thought he was truly unhinged, until he jerked my head to the side and bent down. The cheap plastic mask had a black painted quiff, pink sneering mouth, and dark brows above cut-out eyeholes. Elvis.
‘Be-bop-a-lula,’ he said, pushing my face back into the concrete and sitting up again. My lower back throbbed, my arse went numb and I decided not to mention that Gene Vincent had actually recorded the song first. He took his hand off my hair but kept the knife in place.
‘I like Elvis,’ I mumbled, partly because it was true, mainly because I’d read somewhere that if you could establish a personal connection with an attacker they were less inclined to gut you like a trout.
‘I fucken don’t.’ He was tugging at my backpack strap now, pulling it off my shoulder and sliding the bag down my arm. ‘Tunes for pooftas and old cunts. Acca Dacca’s the go, but the costume shop didn’t have Bon Scott.’
I willed someone to walk past the lane, but the College of Arts was shut up for the holidays. A car drove down the adjacent street, headlights pointing the wrong direction to illuminate the dead-end lane. Even if I screamed I doubted a driver would hear me over the engine, and it was likely to get me stabbed in the neck.
I heard Elvis Mask dump the contents of my bag onto the footpath, my notes sliding out of a cardboard folder, keys and change jangling. What did he want with my stuff?
‘You’re the guy who sent me the letter, right? Slashed my tyres, ran my car off the road?’ Although I was acting casual and conversational, I felt stupid as self-pitying tears glazed my eyes.
‘Clever girl. You work that out all by yourself?’
‘How’d you find me?’ I asked, still attempting the personal connection thing with a bit of ego-appeal thrown in. ‘I was looking over my shoulder all day. You must be good.’
‘I am,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Plus I got a knack for being in the right place at the right time.’
‘Huh?’
‘Thought the evenin’ was a write-off when the slut showed up with them Claytons cops. Couldn’t believe it when you run up and the fat one knocks you arse over tit. Fucken bonus.’
It took me a second to pick up on the ramifications of what he’d said and I wondered if I’d heard him right. He’d been threatening me two seconds after I’d started investigating for Liz
and
he was the guy Nick had warned Desiree about? I didn’t get it. What was the connection? Despite the danger I couldn’t help but ask.
‘Why are you after Desiree? What did Nick and Isabella do? And JJ?’
He didn’t reply, just shuffled through my files.
‘Okay then, what have you got against
me
?’ I asked.
Still nothing, just the sound of papers being stuffed into a bag.
I searched my memory, desperately trying to find a link, and remembered Desiree telling me to stay out of it unless I wanted to end up like Isabella. Shit, I’d found her body, it had been in the news . . .
‘Did you . . . ?’ I had a hard time getting it out. ‘Are you the one who . . . ?’
Another zipping sound, then he shifted his weight, grabbed the scruff of my neck, and once more I caught a whiff of the fags and chemical-smelling sweat as he leaned forward. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed his gloved hand holding a huge hunting knife with a black rubber grip and a blade of shiny stainless steel. Every cell in my body seemed to dissolve.
‘Did I what?’ he cooed softly into my ear, an Aussie thug’s version of coy.
‘Is—Isabella.’ Her name stuck in my throat. ‘Is it because I found her body? I swear, I didn’t see who did it. I didn’t find any clues. I just, I just spewed my guts out and ran.’
‘I know. Saw you piss-bolt down the street,’ he said.
He had to be Isabella’s killer. I was dead. I let out an involuntary whimper.
‘Awww.’ He released my hair, clumsily patted my head and put on a goo-goo voice, as though talking to a toddler. ‘You scared? Don’t worry, I’m not gonna kill ya—well, not today. I don’t have the, whatchamacallit? Facilities. I don’t have the right facilities.’
Facilities? What the hell was he talking about? He was crazy, had to be. The mask, the different voices.
‘Why do you want to kill me at all?’ I croaked, hoarse with fear.
‘That’s for me to know and you to find out. Tell you what though, it’s going to be a hell of a show.’
Show?
His palm thumped my head again, an evil child tormenting a pet.
‘You know what I like about you, Simone? You don’t run whingeing to the snouts, even though you’re rooting one of the filthy fucks. Now, I reckon you’re probably so scared you’re about to piss your little panties, but I’d stick with that policy, yeah? Make things hard for me and there’ll be penalties, yeah? Know all about your friend Chloe, the banged-up slapper. And your mum in Sydney with that faggot brother of yours. Oh, hang on, they’re not in Sydney, they’re up north with the ferals for New Year’s. Then there’s your boyfriend. Don’t think we can’t get to him just ’cause he’s a dog cop. I could waste him easy. One bullet.’ He made a shooting noise in the back of his throat and coughed his abrasive laugh.
Anger at him threatening my friends and family caused a familiar red mist to cloud my vision, but it was tempered by paralysing fear and all I could do was lie there inhaling concrete dust and shaking, thinking about how he’d said ‘we’. Was it a slip of the tongue? If not, who was ‘we’? And were my mum and Jasper really up north? I’d thought they were in Sydney.
He finally got off me. My lower back tingled as the blood flowed back in.
‘Be seeing ya,’ he said.
T
he freak in the mask walked off and I lay on the roadway shivering, astonished to find myself alive. After a few minutes I sat up and checked my bag. My wallet had been opened and appeared as though it had been riff led through, and the Nick Austin file was gone.
I tried to remember what I’d had in there. Printouts of articles I’d found on the web. Notes I’d scrawled about my conversations with Jenny and Rod, diagrams connecting people, question marks, circled names. Near impossible for anyone else to decipher.
Had he taken my file in the hope it would lead him to Nick? No wonder Nick was running. Of course, that raised another question: if Elvis Mask really was the murderer, why hadn’t he killed Nick when he’d slaughtered Isabella? Nick had been out cold, would have been easy. Dead men couldn’t make pay-offs, but pay-offs to who, for what reason, and what the hell did it have to do with me?
I knew there were quite a few people who wouldn’t have minded catapulting me into the next life—relatives of bad guys who’d met worse ends, and the odd scumbag I’d had a hand in sending to jail—but I just couldn’t figure out the Nick Austin connection. Nothing about the whole damn mess made sense.
I grabbed my mobile from my bag and sent my brother a quick text asking if he and Mum were still in Sydney, then hauled myself to a standing position, a full-body ache leaching from my muscles right into my bones. Shuff ling derro-like out of the lane, I winched my shoulders to my ears in anticipation of mask-guy leaping out, gibbering old song lyrics and hackneyed threats. They didn’t relax until I finally shambled onto St Kilda Road and saw the police complex ahead.
For once, the office block full of uniforms and guns seemed a warm and kindly place and I instinctively made for it, ready to tell Sean and Detective Talbot everything. I pulled out my mobile to call Sean, see if he was still at work or waiting at the pub, but it beeped before I could dial. A message from Jasper:
Nah, sis, drinkin mango daiquiris @ Beach Hotel Byron. Wish u were here. When u gonna make up with ma?
My body pulsed like I’d just licked a live wire. Someone really was watching them, someone who knew more about their whereabouts than me. My phone chirped again—another text, from a private number:
Penalties.
I was at the steps that led to the lobby of the police complex and stopped short, whirled around and scanned St Kilda Road. Cars and trams hurtled past and the warm evening air was filled with beeping horns and ringing bells. Men and women in suits bumped into me as they brayed into cell phones, shiny shoes thwacking the pavement.
The guy could have been anywhere and I wouldn’t have recognised him; I didn’t have a clue what he looked like without the mask. All around me headlamps blazed and taillights flared, traffic signals flashed red, amber and green—so much light and movement it was dizzying. Much as I wanted to race to the cops and throw myself upon their mercy I just couldn’t, not until I came up with some sort of plan to guarantee nobody else got hurt.
I was walking away from the building slowly and carefully, hoping the guy could see I wasn’t trying to make things ‘hard’ for him, when I felt hands dig into my ribs from behind and I jumped, letting out a mouse-like squeak.
‘Whoa, babe, it’s just me.’ Sean was laughing until he saw my face. ‘Shit, sorry, hon. Is something wrong?’
I shook my head, no, before I felt warm tears stream down my cheeks.
‘What’s wrong?’ He held me at arm’s length, looking me up and down, and I followed his gaze, taking in my dirty singlet and ripped jeans, rust-stained around the knees from reanimated carpet-burn scabs.
I had no idea what I was going to say until the words were already out of my mouth: ‘I fell over!’ I laughed a little too hysterically through the tears.
‘What?’
‘Yeah, just now. I was getting off a tram and I fell down the steps onto the footpath.’
‘You’re not usually that unco. Are you pissed?’
‘No! I was just at the gym—’ I pulled one of my new trainers out of my backpack to prove it—‘and I went so hard on the squats and lunges that, like, my legs went all wobbly. Seriously, I can hardly walk.’ I thumped my quads with my fist for emphasis.
‘Are you really hurt?’ he asked.
I shook my head and forced another carefree laugh, just in case Elvis Mask was watching. ‘Nah, I think I started crying from the shock and embarrassment more than anything. Tell you what though, I could use a drink and a cigarette.’
He studied my face a few seconds longer, like he was deciding whether to believe me or not, then laughed and wiped the tears from my cheek with his thumb.
‘Yeah, me too.’ He hooked his arm through mine and we crossed St Kilda Road to the Amberoom, on the ground floor of the Royce Hotel. Outside tables catered for smokers and I hoped my attacker would be able to see me from the footpath, laughing and joking, and realise I wasn’t about to dob him in. I couldn’t live with myself if I got anyone else killed.
The bar had been renovated with lots of brown suede, amber lighting and a shimmering gold-beaded curtain that made me think of that seventies nightclub Studio 54. It was a little bit fancy and I figured that with my torn jeans and dirty singlet I’d better stay outside while Sean went in to buy drinks.