Black Ice Page 14

  Damien swung his legs over the side of his bed and put his head in his hands.

  He decided he wanted out.

  26

  Monday 8 April, 1 pm

  The gutting supervisor signed on at twelve, and Seren knew that he was her best chance. She held herself together through the morning shift, somehow sickened that she actually was starting to get used to the killing. She had to get out of here. At eight this morning she'd almost thrown the job in again when two young blokes on the line had used as a handball an oversized tumour they'd found inside one of the birds.

  She did not want to become accustomed to this.

  She'd never melt her own supervisor, Maryanne. When the neck-snapping equipment failed or missed for some reason, and the line operator was struggling with a mutilated, terrified bird, Maryanne would approach and without a word kill the chicken with her bare hands, before moving on again.

  But Zeko Slavonic, the gutting supervisor, was another matter entirely. Seren had seen the girls he presided over on his morning supervision shift; in the main younger than average, long, painted fingernails, dangly earrings. She'd seen the way Zeko watched her when she walked through his section on the way to the lunchroom. She knew men like him. Too easy.

  It had at first seemed incredible to Seren that she would consider that pulling the innards from a dead chicken would be a great step up in the world, but after a week at the front line, with the live creatures, she couldn't wait to join Zeko's team.

  There was not a lot she could do with the uniform – shapeless paper overalls – but she'd applied mascara this morning, and she slicked on a deep-berry lip tint in the washrooms before slinking through Zeko's turf on the way to lunch. This time when he tracked her sashaying across the floor, she waited until she reached the lunchroom entry and peeked back at him over her shoulder. Small smile.

  He put his gloves down immediately and crossed the floor behind her. Hooked.

  She reeled him in and, by two pm, she was learning the intricacies of disembowelling a fowl. Not the most pleasant way to spend an afternoon, but at least none of these chickens shrieked or begged.

  Seren knew she'd made a new friend and a whole lot of enemies today. Zeko watched her with lust, his girls with hate, and when she walked into the locker room at knock-off time, she was unsurprised when the buzz of conversation ceased. The gift left in her locker was unexpected, though – the tumour-handball from this morning, wrapped up in her clothes.

  A little parting pressie from Maryanne's team.

  Standing barefoot in her bathroom that night, Seren smeared charcoal shadow across her eyelids, also smudging the smoky pigment under her lower lashes. Her clear blue eyes mocked her. In her mind, her face was always a contradiction: innocent, slut.

  She planned her next move. Her job was bearable now. Just. But that was all right, she wasn't planning on building up a lot of superannuation benefits in that place. Moving forward with the plan was the only thing to do; she would worry about the computer later. Last week's pay had covered rent, shopping, and the small loan repayment back to the department; she had pretty much nothing left.

  At least she had the outfit.

  'You're going to go see him, aren't you?' Marco's voice came from behind her.

  Seren spoke to her son's reflection in the mirror. 'Who, darling?'

  'Why do you treat me like I'm stupid?' said Marco. 'I think you're going to see Christian. You told me they were his drugs that got you into trouble. Why would you go see him?'

  Seren turned around. What could she tell her beautiful boy? Should she tell him the truth? He knew too much about the world already. She should just stick with the story.

  'Marco, I told you,' she said. 'I'm going to be working most nights so that we can try to get ahead. Waitressing. Remember?'

  'Yeah, Mum. I remember. Waitressing. Dressed like that.'

  'It's a big hotel –'

  'In the city, I know. You said that before.'

  'Come on, darling. I'm sorry I have to go out, but Angel should be here any minute. She'll look after you. I'll get you ready for school when I see you in the morning.' She squatted down to his height, trying to get him to meet her eyes. 'I'm doing this for you, Marco.'

  'Whatever,' he said.

  There was a knock at the door and she moved to open it, relieved when she saw Angel standing there, carrying . . .

  'What's that?' Seren asked.

  'My laptop,' said Angel. 'Well, actually, it was Danny's. He won it in a card game. I don't know the first thing about how to use it, but I was hoping – ' she peered around Seren into the room, ' – that Marco could teach me some stuff. There are supposed to be some games on here.'

  Huh.

  'I thought,' continued Angel, 'that I could leave it here for a while, and Marco could practise and show me what he learned when I come over to babysit.'

  Marco stood transfixed, still wearing his frown, but he hadn't taken his eyes off the computer.

  'We've got them at school,' he said. Seren smiled – Marco used this careful nonchalance when he was at his most excited. 'I can show you a few things.' He kept his hands by his side, spoke again, 'But I'm not a baby. I don't need babysitting.'

  'Oh, of course not,' said Angel. 'Just a figure of speech. We'll be hanging out while Mum's working. Is that better?'

  Marco grinned, eyes on the computer.

  Well, well. Seren's shoulders dropped a little. She watched her son closely; she always felt a rare sense of worth when she saw any indication of his happiness. Today hadn't been such a bad day. Maybe she was finally living up to her name a little.

  She walked into her bedroom to finish dressing. Well, actually just to dab perfume at the base of her spine and to slip on The Shoes.

  'Oh my God,' said Angel, when Seren came back to the living room. 'Are you sure you're going to be okay walking out of here like that?'

  'I'll be fine,' said Seren. Tready would be in hospital for at least another couple of nights, surely. Her brow wrinkled and she turned around.

  'What'dya forget?' said Angel.

  Seren returned carrying a bigger handbag and standing a little shorter. 'You're right,' she said. 'I'll carry the shoes. A girl's gotta be able to run around here.'

  Monday night happy hour at System. Christian hadn't missed one Monday at this club in the six months Seren had been with him. The idea was that you needed Mondays here to get over the first day of the working week, or to extend the weekend just a little more. A lot of Christian's friends considered that the weekend began on Wednesday night. Seren had discovered that although they still showed up at work Thursday and Friday, for these people, play nights began mid-week.

  Christian had never pressured her to try anything, and he'd never used around her, but she'd been aware that he liked cocaine. He'd told her she could join him any time, but she had declined. She figured that if she'd gone almost ten years without a taste of anything, she'd be stupid to start again now. If she'd been honest with herself, she would have admitted that she found this part of Christian's life childish. She associated drug use with adolescent rebellion, and to see these affluent, educated adults out taking drugs every night seemed pretty pathetic to her. But Christian had been so great in every other way, and he never seemed to be terribly affected. In fact, she'd never really been certain when he'd taken anything.

  After their first few dates, she had tended to avoid going to these clubs with him. She'd never grown used to the people who attached themselves to him, particularly the girls. And it was a lot easier to love him, to think of him as a father for Marco, when she didn't have to watch him dipping again and again into his jacket pocket.

  'Look, it's no big thing,' he'd told her in the beginning. 'I have access to a safe source, and my friends know that. We're not the kind of people who are desperate enough to just hang out on a street corner trying to score. Everyone knows that I can get the best and I'd rather they came through me than get caught up in any trouble out there.'
r />   Seren realised that she might not find him tonight. She was not particularly concerned. The best thing about her godawful job was the early starts – it gave her the afternoons before Marco got home to track Christian's movements; she would find him eventually. In the meantime, she would try his old haunts and see what she came up with.

  She had her opening line down pat. He would not want to see her. Obviously. She imagined that he would have expected her to sink back into the quagmire in which he'd found her, too humiliated to re-enter his world. Or that if she did show up, she'd be hostile, aggressive, and he could pass her off as a jilted ex.

  When she'd called him from the police station, hysterical, on her twenty-third birthday, he'd been there in twenty minutes. Told her he was so sorry, that it was all his fault, that it had just been a little extra birthday gift he had thought they could enjoy together. It will be fine, he'd told her. There won't be a problem. I'll be at court, and we'll sort it all out. She had believed him, every word. Of course, he would make it all better. That's what he did every day. He was Christian Worthington, after all.

  The social worker in the gaol had been called in when Seren had been told that Christian would not accept her calls. The social worker had called the psychiatrist, who had ordered intravenous sedation.

  27

  Monday 8 April, 4 pm

  Best thing she could do, Jill had decided after the disaster at her sister's the day before, would be to go back to work.

  And she had. As soon as she'd arrived back at her apartment.

  She had let herself in, dumped her handbag, added a few rings to her fingers, and left again. She went straight over to Ingrid's – who, thank God, had been at home. Jill had not wanted to be alone in her unit with nothing to do after the scene at Cassie's.

  Ingrid had some mates over, as usual, and Jill had been quietly excited. She had wanted to grill these two for information for some time. Skye and CK were lovers, local meth smokers and small-time dealers. She'd never sent them up for dealing because they sold only to make enough money to use themselves. But word was that they had contact with some heavy suppliers and it was these men she wanted.

  She'd gone easy on the wine, sipping very slowly, doing the refills for everyone and skipping her own glass whenever possible. People like these noticed when you took more than your share of anything, but under-serve yourself and that was sweet. As long as you drank something. Jill remembered an Aboriginal mother connected to a past case, trying to get her kids out of care, who'd been told that it would never happen unless she stopped drinking altogether. She'd told Jill that once her neighbours knew that she had quit, they'd shown up every day, free beer on offer, pressuring her to drink with them.

  The headache this morning had been worth it. Jill had the names of two men she believed were up several levels on the meth supply ladder. Agassi and Urgill.

  She had called Superintendent Last, and they had arranged to meet.

  North Parramatta. McDonald's carpark. Four pm.

  Jill caught a taxi from the station and now she sat, waiting, on the McDonald's car park railing, the wooden barrier hard on her backside, putting her legs to sleep. She stood and stretched.

  'Krystal!'

  At the sound of her undercover name, Jill glanced around. A man in a car just ahead in the car park. Oh my God! Is that . . . What the hell is he driving?

  Grinning, she sauntered over to the 1990 Magna sedan; once red, the paintwork had washed out to an almost salmon pink, blasted by close to two decades of Australian sun and wind. She hooked an elbow over the driver's side door, facing the occupant, and kicked the hubcap-free front tyre. 'Sweet ride, boss,' she said.

  Lawrence Last stooped over the steering wheel, his expression more morose than ever.

  'Detective Jackson,' he greeted her. 'Should you not get in, Jill? I don't think I'd be recognised in this vehicle, but nevertheless . . .'

  She strolled around to the passenger side, trailing a fingertip over the bonnet, eyes full of mock admiration, as though she surveyed a Ferrari. She yanked the door open and took a seat. As distinctive as the new car smell, the Magna reeked like a taxi close to retirement – cigarette-ash, sweat, farts and unwashed arses.

  'Perhaps you will not be as amused, Jill,' said Last, 'when you learn that this is your new company car.' The corners of his mouth rose a little when Jill's face fell. 'Yes, as you can see, you have been richly rewarded for your service with the New South Wales police.'

  'You're serious,' she said.

  Last produced an A4-sized, yellow envelope, handed it over. 'Always,' he said.

  Jill sniffed and grimaced. First thing she'd do would be empty a can of Glen 20 into this thing. She opened the envelope and flicked through its contents. Last had run the names and provided her with A4 photos of Agassi and Urgill, their sheets, names of known associates and last known addresses.

  'So what's with the car?' she said. 'Why am I so lucky?'

  'You told me that these men frequent a hotel in this neighbourhood. Now that your area of operation is expanding, I would prefer that you have some form of transportation other than trains and taxis,' he said. 'You may also find it useful for surveillance.'

  'Thank you, sir,' said Jill. 'I promise I will ensure that no harm comes to it. You will get it back in the same pristine condition.' She glanced over at the back seat, its yellow rubber innards bursting forth in places, pushing through several splits in its velour skin.

  'So what now?' she asked. 'Can I drop you somewhere, sir?'

  'No need.' He peered through the windscreen and nodded his head. She followed the direction of his gaze and spotted a vehicle parked in a side street close by, recognising an unmarked police car. 'I'll just make my way over there.' He paused, and then searched her face. 'Is there anything else you need, Jill?'

  'No thanks, Commander,' she said. 'This is great.'

  'And you will call me at any time if you need anything at all.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'You are doing a great job, Jill. But it's far more important to me that you are safe and you're coping emotionally.'

  'Thank you, sir. I'm fine.' Well, she believed his words were true, anyway.

  The engine turned over perfectly. That was the thing with a Department car. It might look like a junker, but mechanically the car would be sound. She knew that the Department would consider this car a 'paddock basher', at their disposal from the impound lot. When you had Lawrence Last's rank, the impound lot was a supermarket, although it did have its limitations. Full of confiscated goods that were the proceeds of crime, there was not always a use for much of the merchandise. There wasn't, for instance, a lot that a serving officer could do with a jet ski or a speedboat, undercover operative or not. Jill would have preferred one of the beamers she'd seen impounded, but 'Krystal Peters' couldn't exactly roll around Fairfield in a BMW.

  She steered the car carefully out of the car park. As she drove down the side street adjacent to the restaurant, she noticed that Superintendent Last had waited to make sure she got away okay. Passing his vehicle, she shook her head and laughed. Adam Clarkson, the uniformed cop who'd 'arrested' her the other night in Fairfield, was Last's driver. He grinned at her through his windscreen, his thumb and forefinger forming a circle, indicating that her car was spot-on, perfect. Jill felt inclined to offer him a different finger gesture, but didn't consider it appropriate to direct that kind of message to a car containing her commanding officer.

  She pulled out into the traffic on Church Street, and made her way to the other side of the suburb. I am definitely going to have to get this car detailed, she thought, when she pulled over adjacent to the Station Hotel. She cracked open the window. There was no way she was going to sit in this thing for hours on end when it smelled this way.