Black Ice Read online

  'What is this?' she asked Kasem, who, somewhat disconcertingly, watched her as she ate.

  'Tahina. Ground sesame paste, some other spices. My mum made it.'

  Go figure. The mamma's boy gangster. Jill grinned, and went back for just a little more. A stuffed capsicum; a scrape of tabouleh. She scooped the food up with bread as everyone else was doing.

  Jill surreptitiously observed her surroundings as she ate. The music was chilled and the sweet odour of marijuana began to fill the air. No one looked to be doing drugs of any other description, at least not out here in the open.

  Kasem spoke to the others, but he did not leave the room. Jill was aware of him watching her, and each time she caught his eye he smiled. She observed the body language of the players: everyone deferred to Kasem, even the two men he introduced to her as his brothers.

  Eight more guests arrived, and she was no longer the only woman in the room. There were now three other females, and, undercover in a criminal's house or not, Jill felt under-dressed. A blonde, wearing spray-on jeans and a one-shouldered, draping silver top, fired blistering looks in Jill's direction each time Kasem spoke to her.

  Which was a lot, she couldn't help but notice.

  'Krystal!' Jelly waved at her from the buffet table. 'Dessert! Come on!'

  And then the impossible happened.

  Of every person she could possibly imagine walking into this house in Merrylands, the very last would have been the newest entrant to this party.

  As happened whenever she walked into a room, every head whipped around to stare at her little sister. Cassie. In Kasem Nader's lounge room. With his brothers, with Jelly, with Jill/Krystal, and the gun at her ankle.

  Oh, fuck.

  21

  Saturday 6 April, 7 pm

  Seren, Marco and Angel sat picnic-style on a blanket on the floor of Seren's unit. Three boxes sat open in front of them. The pizza frenzy had died down, and only Angel was still eating, taking small bites now. Marco picked at some cheese on a slice and Seren frowned at him.

  'Let me have a sip,' he asked again.

  'You won't like it.' Seren handed her son the cup of red wine she held. She didn't even like it much, although it wasn't too bad for Chateau du Cardboard.

  'Ew!' His little face wrinked. 'How disgusting.'

  'And I told you what?' she asked him, smiling.

  Hell, she thought, I just sounded like Maria Thomasetti. The name wiped her smile.

  'Hey,' she said, turning to Angel, 'who'd you get for probation and parole?'

  'Oooh, this lovely young bloke, looks like he's fresh out of school,' said Angel. 'What about you?'

  'Ah, not him,' said Seren.

  She leaned back against the couch, trying to relax. She was so relieved that Angel was out. Now it felt as though there was at least one other adult on the face of the earth who would watch her back. And a friendship tested in gaol had more weight than friendship forged with someone out here.

  But while Seren wanted Angel as a friend, she needed her to help in a small way with her plans. Seren had to get to Christian, but she also had to keep her day job to meet her parole conditions. And that meant that she would have to find Christian at night. She could trust Angel to look after her boy while she was out.

  Gaol had taught Seren patience. With all the time she'd had in there, she had come to see that killing him was a stupid idea. Running through the possible methods of murdering her former lover, Seren finally saw for certain that: a) she couldn't do it; and b) killing him wouldn't do her any good anyway. No, no. There were other ways to exact revenge, and Seren had had another twelve months with nothing else to do than to craft the perfect plan.

  After a few weeks inside, she'd come to understand that Christian Worthington was not her only enemy. The more time she spent with her fellow prisoners, the more she came to realise that she had fallen foul of a much more powerful predator: destiny, fate – call it what you will.

  For some reason, Seren and the women locked up with her had been cursed by fate. She realised that, sure, one day they'd all get out of there, but most of them would return to violent neighbourhoods and incomes below the poverty line. They could try to get out of their suburbs, get better jobs. But most of them had kids, and their children's lives were just beginning; they needed time too.

  Seren had seen it before. Mrs Telomere, her neighbour growing up, had kicked her bludging husband out of the house and gone back to finish Year 12 at the same high school that her two sons attended. She'd worked nightshifts at 7-Eleven, and when she'd achieved her Higher School Certificate had enrolled at uni to study welfare. Then one day, about six months into her first year, word had spread around the neighbourhood in an hour: Mrs Telomere had been raped putting her garbage out, dragged down the alleyway next to her house. Seren hardly ever saw her come outside after that. The housing commission people found her a new place twelve months later.

  But all low-rent suburbs were the same. And staying inside didn't help. Seren had heard countless stories of home invasions – or run-throughs as most people called them. You could be sitting at home, just eating tea, and three or four masked bastards would kick your door down and take all your stuff. The latest craze for the thieves was to bring a doona cover, make you help them shove everything into it, kids' toys and all. 'Reverse Santa', some smartarses called it. If you were lucky, you'd just cop a quick flogging. Unlucky, and you'd lose teeth, an eye, your husband. Next day, you'd catch the bus with these blokes, or see them at your local chemist. Best to just nod and say hi, pretend not to know.

  Of course, you could get out of there; move into non-subsidised private rental. Unless, of course, you had a criminal record, or a bad credit history, or an income from an unskilled job. Check, check, check. Everyone bunking down in Silverwater corrections with Seren was counted out.

  So, Seren figured out that she had to do two things: pay Christian back, and get paid herself. Big time.

  In gaol her plan had begun to come together. Now, she thought to herself, it's time.

  Funnily enough, of the equipment that she would require, including a covert recording device and a laptop, what caused her the most consternation was her clothing. Seren had a few hot outfits put away in storage, but they had mainly been purchased by Christian; they were now a year out of date, and he had seen them all before. Seren knew that this would bar her entry back into the appearance-is-everything world he inhabited. She would need to gather a few things herself before she could make Christian contribute to his own undoing.

  Sunday morning saw her waiting at the public library for the doors to open. She used their internet service to source a tiny camera and the most basic laptop she could find: it was only for downloading the audio-visual recordings she would make.

  The hardware required a trip to the city, and as she bought her bus ticket she mentally calculated how much money she'd have left for the most essential purchases – the two items of clothing. In gaol, she'd gone over her first-meeting outfit options a hundred times. A glamour gown would be perfect, but impossible. She couldn't afford it.

  In the end, she based it all around the shoes. The night before she had bought them had been one of the best nights of her life. The day after, the worst.

  From the near-empty bus, Seren watched the suburbs dawdling past and her mind journeyed back to the first day Marco had ever seen the city; the day they'd met Christian Worthington. Marco's seventh birthday.

  An appointment for Marco with an ophthalmic specialist had necessitated the trip, but she couldn't believe she'd never brought him before when she witnessed his awe and delight at the harbour, ferries and massive buildings seen for the first time. Seren would have loved to take him to the zoo, the aquarium and the Powerhouse Museum – places she'd never been either – but there was no money for things like that. She needn't have worried: Marco was so overwhelmed by the size and speed of everything that they'd had to regularly find places to just sit and be still, his huge blue eyes blinking behin
d his glasses. At such times, she'd just held his hand and waited until he could find a question.

  The appointment had been for three-thirty at the Citibank building, forty storeys high. A concierge had pointed them to the correct bank of elevators. Heading in that direction, three lift doors had opened at once, and they'd stood, like rocks in the rapids, as a swell of office workers spewed forth. Seren remembered them both, her little boy in red, herself in blue jeans and a tee-shirt, surrounded by the grey froth of the city people. She'd suddenly wanted to go home.

  Instead, they'd ploughed forward and entered the lift and she'd given gave Marco a look. No touching.

  'Which floor?' The man asking had to look down at her, which didn't happen terribly often.

  'Ah, thirty-one,' she'd said, reading from the card again for the twentieth time. 'Thanks.'

  'Do you want to press the button?' The man had towered over Marco.

  Marco nodded. Mouth open.

  Before she had known what was happening, her little boy had been scooped up under the armpits, and set down again at her feet. Button thirty-one was lit up. Marco was smiling.

  Seren smiled too when they left the lift, meeting the stranger's eyes for the first time.

  The smile stayed until the snooty receptionist called their name half an hour later.

  She'd always felt terribly guilty about Marco's eyes.

  Although this specialist had also told Seren that Marco's eyesight problem was the result of a congenital abnormality that was likely passed down through her from one of her parents, she couldn't help but worry that her drug use during the earliest days of her pregnancy had caused the astigmatism.

  Seren had been stealing beer from her stepfather since she was eleven, smoking pot since the age of twelve, and had tried speed lots of times by the time she was thirteen. She liked it a lot. But probably most of all, Seren had liked her mum's worry pills, the little white tablets she got from the doctor for her nerves. She'd managed to steal a couple a week. They made everything soft and smooshy, and they definitely worked. On the nights she took one she slept so well that that she didn't have to worry about the dull thumps and sobs from the room next door.

  Seren believed she knew the moment that she got pregnant. She was fourteen and had just cut her hair off for the first time. Her girlfriend, Alexandra, had been horrified. Seren's sheet of ice-blonde hair was legendary at their school.

  'Don't even think about it!' Alexandra had said as Seren raised the scissors in front of the mirror.

  Alexandra had screamed when the first snip hacked off the length of half of Seren's hair. The next cut evened it out, but she just kept going. Her mother's face was black and blue from the night before, and Seren figured if her mum didn't care about herself, why should she? She wanted to punish her mother, hurt her, wake her the fuck up. She wanted to punish herself. As the slivers of sunlight had rained from her head, Seren expected to soon resemble a monster – at least then her mother would notice her. But the more she cut, the more beautiful she looked, and Alexandra had watched her, transfixed.

  With her face naked, she appeared unclothed and vulnerable. Seren had had to close her eyes to stop the lie that stared back at her. She felt filthy and besmirched; but she looked pure, immaculate. When her blue eyes blinked open again in the mirror, she could see straight through to the five-year-old whose giggles used to sound like bells.

  Seren had left her bedroom with Alexandra right after, and gone driving with two guys they'd met the day before at the swimming pool. Seren had dived head first from the front seat to the back and fucked Todd, the boy back there, while her friend and the driver had pretended not to notice.

  A week before her periods were due, she knew. She could feel him in there, waiting. Marco.

  The next time Todd called, she told him to lose her number. She didn't even know his last name. She never saw him again.

  Seren remembered that after the meeting with the eye specialist, she and Marco had walked back to the lifts. Both of them were tired; she remembered thinking that it would be good to get home.

  The door had opened and he'd stood there.

  'Aha! Button boy!' he'd said.

  He must be a movie star, Seren thought when he smiled.

  They stepped into the lift. Seren smiled back.

  'This must be serendipity,' said the man.

  'What?' she exclaimed.

  'You know,' he said, 'serendipity – a lucky chance.'

  Shaking herself from her memories, Seren alighted at Town Hall and headed towards Centrepoint Tower. The small store specialising in surveillance electronics was located along the way. Although she'd seen pictures of the audio-video recorder on the store's internet site just this morning, she was still astounded that the device was so tiny – the size and shape of a cigarette lighter. She popped her two-hundred-dollar purchase into her bag and walked into Pitt Street Mall.

  She needed just two items of clothing – a white shirt and a bra.

  She owned a pair of man-style black trousers that sat flat on her hipbones and fell, soft and full, down to the ground. At might-as-well-be six foot tall, Seren often had difficulty finding pants that were long enough. These trousers were the ideal length, well cut, and the fabric was gorgeous.

  She searched through the major department stores, a few of the nicer chain stores, and then spotted the shirt she'd been dreaming of for a year, hanging in the window of a small boutique. Perfect. She knew she would find it. She could see herself in it right now; knew how it was going to look. She had to have it.

  Seren entered the store and went straight to the shirt. She flicked a fingernail under the fabric and plucked out the price tag.

  Double what she could afford. If she bought this shirt, she'd have no money left for the laptop.

  'That would look great on you.' The sales assistant stood at her side, a look of approval on her face.

  'I'll just try it on,' said Seren. Might as well torture myself, she thought. There's no way I can buy it.

  The shirt was white, the supple Italian fabric an alternating matt and gloss white pinstripe. The effect was of a male business shirt, the cuffs worn long, falling to Seren's knuckles. But the resemblance to a man's attire ended there. The cut was for a woman's body; it clung to Seren's ribs, fell snug across her flat stomach. She fastened the shirt, finding the top button almost too tight across her breasts. That wouldn't be a problem, she thought, it wouldn't remain closed for long. With a heart-attack bra, the outfit would have liquefied Christian Worthington. Pity.

  And that was without even considering the shoes. When she thought about the shoes, she sighed and carefully unbuttoned the shirt. She changed back into her own clothes and left the dressing room.

  She walked towards the expectant sales clerk, an expression of deep regret on her face.

  'I'll take it,' she said.

  Seren sat on a courtesy bench in the food hall, watching diners lunching in a small café. She held her shopping bags close. Way to go, Templeton, she told herself. First day of the plan and you've already stuffed up.

  A couple at a nearby table picked pasta and salad from each other's plates. Her stomach grumbled. Nothing for you, she told it. How am I going to get a laptop now?

  The clinking of the cutlery sent her mind back again, remembering the night of her twenty-third birthday, dining at Altitude, an intimate dining room balanced thirty-six floors above Sydney harbour, a black velvet jewellery box open and spotlit beneath them. Even though she had then been dating Christian for almost six months, she didn't think she'd ever grow used to the hushed opulence of such restaurants.

  She'd felt a flush in the hollow of her throat. Candlelight shimmered in Marco's eyes, reflected back from his glasses. He'd never seen anything like this. It seemed that every couple of minutes he stared down at his clothes in astonishment. She doubted he'd ever even seen a child dressed as he was. Christian had taken them both shopping that morning.