How are we going to get in?
Key, I hope, Leah said.
She ran her hand along the top of the door surround, finding dust. She glanced around. There was a wrought-iron potplant stand nearby. The key was under a white stone at the base of a dying fern. She opened the door and they slipped inside.
There was no one home but the place felt lived in. Then she saw a movement in the corner. It was a cat, stretching awake in a basket on the floor.
They let themselves out quickly and walked down the stairs and along to a single-storey block of four flats in the next street. These Leah rejected immediately. According to a sign by the driveway entrance, the building was let to elderly parishioners of the Uniting Church, who were more likely than not to be at home.
Their luck improved at the next block of flats. The letterbox for Flat 4 was crammed with junk mail. Leah led the way up to the second landing and tried the door. When no one answered her knock, she searched for the key, finding it on top of a fuse box in the hallway. She opened the door and they went in. This time there were no pets or signs that people had been there recently. The place felt as if it had been empty for several days. The rooms were tidy. The refrigerator had been switched off and the door left ajar. The kitchen tidy was empty and clean.
She examined the bedroom and the bathroom. The clothing, jewelery and cosmetics indicated that a youngish man and woman lived there.
Good. My pack was burnt up in the car. All Ive got is my mobile phone and the clothes I’m wearing. She also had her $5000, but wasn’t about to tell Tess that.
Ive got spare undies and T-shirts if you need them, Tess said, dropping her weekender bag to the carpet but continuing to clutch her leather daypack in one hand. Were about the same size.
Thanks.
Excuse me, Tess said, pushing past Leah to the bathroom. She looked weepy, agitated, her face streaked with misery, her jeans grimy.
Leah made a second sweep of the flat, concentrating on the kitchen. There was a calendar pinned to a cabinet door above the sink. Notes had been scribbled in the blank spaces under some of the dates. Leave for Noosa had been written under a date at the beginning of the month and a bold red line cancelled the next two weeks. At the end were the words arrive home.
Tess reappeared, calmer now, visibly making an effort. She was faintly water-splashed and had combed her hair. How long are we staying?
Leah showed her the calendar. We’ve got the place for a week if we want it. She hoped that a spare key hadn’t been given to friends or relatives. She hoped the weather was fine in Queensland. But we have to be super quiet and unobtrusive, and ready to quit the place at a moments notice. We don’t want curious neighbours knocking on the door. If they do, we act as if we belong here; were friends looking after the place for a few days. Okay?
You’re the boss.
Leah wanted Tess to be more alert than that, but let it go. You can have the bed. Ill sleep on the sofa.
Can we eat? I’m starving.
This is weird, Leah thought. Mitch has just been murdered, killers are after us, and Tess is starving. I feel as if I could jump out of my skin, and this girl has made a remarkable recovery. Clearly her bond with Mitch hadn’t been that strong, but still…
First things first, Leah said.
There was a radio next to the toaster on the kitchen bench. She tuned it to a regional station of the ABC, the volume low, and they listened to the news. Mitch was on last, just before sport and weather, and the item took less than ten seconds: a young man killed in a single-vehicle accident when his car had run off the road near Prospect and caught fire. Police were appealing for witnesses.
Leah glanced keenly at Tess, who stared at the floor. You okay?
Tess nodded.
Its none of my business but
Youre right, its not.
Fair enough, Leah said, searching the cupboards for something to eat.
She opened a tin of spaghetti, spooned it onto two plates and ate hers cold with a spoon. It had the consistency of glue. Tess gave her an appalled look and wrinkled her nose. If we heat anything, Leah explained, well release cooking smells that might alert the neighbours, and we don’t want that.
Yeah, well Ill just have toast.
Toast smells. Theres no bread, anyway.
Okay, how about fruit.
No fruit, either.
Tess yanked open the cupboard. God.
She brought out an open packet of sultanas and tipped some into the palm of her hand. I don’t know if I can put up with much of this.
Go, then. Its me they’re after.
No its not.
Okay, what have you done?
Its not me, its Mitch, but I was with him, right? I’m a witness.
Go to the police.
I cant.
You mean that you and Mitch were in it together, whatever it was. What was it? Did you rip off somebody?
Tess glanced away. Not really.
So, what did you do?
Stole a car. What about you?
Leah thought about it as she placed her empty tin in a plastic bag, which she would dispose of later, in a public bin. I’m stuck with a person I hardly know, she told herself. What does it matter if I tell her? It might even forge a bit of a bond between us, and God knows we need to help each other out now. She took a deep breath. It would be a relief to talk to someone. Suddenly Leah was overwhelmed by her own loneliness.
Three years ago shed been a police officer, a rookie, just graduated and top of her class. An only child, her elderly parents had retired to the Gold Coast and so this was all she had, a new career, one she could be proud of. After a year in a divisional van shed been fast-tracked into some specialist short courses and plainclothes detective work, posing once as a sex worker and once as a junkie. And then, at the end of an extensive undercover sting operation involving fifteen uniformed police and CIB detectives, shed been sexually assaulted.
Theyd all gone to a guesthouse in the hills to celebrate, reserving the dining-room and all of the bedrooms and cabins, the whole place, for an overnight stay. That evening Leah had got drunk—they’d all got drunk. Well, that was the point, to celebrate, have fun, let off steam, wash some of the grime away.
Except that at two o’clock in the morning she and two other women had been unwinding in the communal spa bath when someone stole every stitch of fabric from the room: towels, bathrobes, floor mats, their clothing. Leah had crept to the door, poked her steamy head out and seen ten of her male colleagues lined along the corridor.
Hey, girlie, said the one closest to the door.
She hated being called girlie.
What? she demanded.
Hows tricks?
Come on, give us back our clothes, or at least our towels.
He glanced comically at his mates, then back at her, and said with mock regret, No can do, sorry.
Its late, we want to go to bed.
So do we, sweetheart, so do we.
And they all looked hot, oily and porcine to her, open-mouthed, their faces distorted with an ugly kind of hunger.
Come on, guys, give us a break, Leah said, hoping to remind them that they worked together, were colleagues, even friends.
A little fun first, one man said. All you have to do is run the gauntlet.
And?
And nothing.
Nothing.
Thats right. Cross my heart and hope to die.
You wont touch us?
Thats right.
Then one of the two women huddled in the doorway with Leah said, Come on, Leah, be a sport. They’re just having a laugh.
Yeah, come on, said the second woman. They’re all too drunk to do anything.