Darkness for Light Read online

  ‘Something wrong?’ Caleb asked.

  ‘Yeah, I got sick of you nagging me.’

  ‘Alberto, what’s happened?’ He realised he’d accidentally spoken out loud, and stopped.

  Alberto’s lip-reading skills were as proudly non-existent as his speech, but he’d obviously got the gist from Caleb’s expression. ‘You worry too much.’ He patted Caleb’s hand.

  Leave it. Alberto obviously didn’t want to tell him, and mixing friendship with business was always a mistake – another lesson learned since Frankie.

  Caleb checked the street and slung the bag of food over his shoulder. ‘I’ll get on to the installer first thing.’

  He received another hug and escaped outside with his ribs intact.

  An empty laneway; no hiding spots or lurking attackers. He headed for the street. Dusk had slipped into night, bringing with it the scent of cool earth. Dinner, a few precious hours with Kat, then home; sleep the sleep of the almost content.

  A darting shape ahead, the black sedan pulling across the alley, blocking his exit. The driver’s door flung open.

  He dropped the bag and ran. Back towards Alberto’s – no, couldn’t risk everyone’s safety. Past the kitchen and down the laneway. The glare of headlights behind him, coming closer. Fuck. Wouldn’t make it. A walkway just ahead, too narrow for a car. Sprinting towards it, his shadow racing before him, breath rasping. Headlights bright, the car nearly on him.

  And around the corner. Dark. Overhanging trees and sheer fences, concrete path just visible as he ran.

  Smack.

  Reeling backwards, clutching his face.

  A wire safety fence across the path, construction site beyond it. Fuck, have to climb. He hauled himself up, feet slipping as the fence swayed. Too slow, childhood meningitis stripping some balance along with his hearing.

  Quick check behind him. A dim shape, someone running. Seven, eight metres away, something in their hand.

  A weapon.

  A gun.

  Clawing up the fence, fingers gripping, pulling at the wire. Nearly at the top. Hands on the –

  Slamming pain.

  Skin, lungs, marrow fusing.

  Down.

  4.

  Minutes, years, for his brain to unscramble. Lying on his back, the hard blow of the concrete still pounding through him, arms and legs half-numb. Panic spiked before he made sense of it. Not dying, not shot – tasered.

  Light flared to the right as someone set a bright torch on the ground, the kind people kept in car boots and sheds. A waft of floral perfume as a woman came to stand in front of him. Oh fuck – Jasmine. At least, that’s what he called her. She’d never given him her real name, never shown ID to prove she was the federal cop she claimed to be.

  He sat up, ignoring the spasm of pain in his back, and Jasmine knelt in front of him. Mid-thirties with drab brown hair and forgettable features, a tight mouth. The stun gun in her hand was designed to look like a phone. Probably the same illegal weapon she’d used while interrogating him four months ago. She’d half-drowned him in a bathtub and repeatedly stunned him, claiming it was to keep her cover. No idea what her excuse was this time, but she’d been after Frankie then, and she’d be after Frankie now.

  She checked to make sure he was looking and launched into speech.

  Silence.

  Shit, his hearing aids were still in his pocket. They weren’t exactly news to Jasmine, but he wasn’t going to fumble around with numb fingers trying to put them on in front of her – like peeling back his skin to reveal his inner workings. Except she’d be impossible to lip-read without them; no faint tone, just her fast stream of words and the hard line of her mouth. A mouth that had grown even harder at his lack of response to the question she’d obviously just repeated.

  Fuck it.

  He reached for his aids and she thrust the taser towards him.

  He froze.

  ‘I’m getting my hearing aids,’ he said quickly. ‘Can’t understand you.’

  She glanced down the laneway and gestured for him to go ahead, impatience on her face as it took him a few attempts to hook them over his ears and insert the receivers. He brushed his hair over them and faced her.

  ‘… you … stand … now?’ A thin thread of a voice.

  He filled in the gaps: ‘Can you understand me now?’ He’d probably only catch every second or so word, but it’d be enough to guess the rest.

  ‘Why the hell did you tase me?’ he said.

  ‘I told you not to run.’

  ‘Yeah, very helpful. If you’re after Frankie, I don’t know where she is. Ask her criminal mates – start with her sister, Maggie.’

  Jasmine scanned the path behind them. ‘They’re not in contact, but … you … her.’

  ‘Slower.’

  ‘You. Know. Her. Better than anyone.’

  He’d thought he’d known Frankie, thought they were friends as well as business partners. ‘Frankie fucked up my life and nearly got my wife killed. Even if I could find her, I wouldn’t.’

  Jasmine leaned closer. Chapped lips, the remnants of dark lipstick clinging to the corners, skin stretched tight across her cheekbones. ‘I’m not asking you, I’m telling you – find her. She’s got documents I need. Get me them or Frankie, I don’t care which. You’ve got two days.’

  He knew something about those files, but he wasn’t about to tell Jasmine.

  She was scanning the tops of the high wooden fences, braced as though about to run. His muscles tensed in response. What would it take to scare a cop who’d chased a man down an unlit alley?

  Sudden clarity in his fogged brain: she’d claimed she was a fed.

  ‘Is this connected to Martin Amon?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. I need –’

  ‘Show me your ID.’

  She darted another look down the laneway then withdrew a thin leather wallet from her back pocket and threw it to him. Inside was an official-looking seal bearing a crown and the words Australian Federal Police, her unsmiling photo beside it. Senior Constable Imogen Blain. Imogen – a name he’d seen written, but never said.

  He noted her badge number and returned it. ‘What’s Frankie got to do with Amon?’

  ‘I told you, she’s got documents we need. That’s why Martin contacted you. I told him – ’ She faltered. ‘I told him you’d be able to find her.’

  ‘Wait. You mean Amon’s a cop? A federal cop?’

  Her jaw worked. ‘Yes.’

  An oil slick of fear in his stomach: a murdered fed. Whatever Imogen was involved in, he needed to be very far from it, very quickly. There was no way she was investigating this officially – not with her furtive approach and lack of partner, the fact no one else had mentioned Frankie. Imogen was either on the outer, or not a cop at all.

  ‘I can’t help.’ He went to stand.

  ‘If you don’t, I’ll make your life unbearable.’

  He knew unbearable, knew its rank and sweating weight. Nothing she could do could come close. ‘Do your worst.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll arrest you for murder.’

  Cold seeped through him. How could she know?

  ‘Did you really think we didn’t know, Caleb? You shot Michael Petronin and left him to rot on the beach. A falling-out among thieves. That’s what we’ll tell the jury. And they’ll believe it. Particularly when they find out the victim was Frankie’s thug brother-in-law.’

  Petronin’s mangled neck and blank eyes, the warmth of his spraying blood, the salt taste of it.

  Get it the fuck together and think. She couldn’t know, not for sure; there’d been no evidence, no witnesses.

  He tried to keep his voice even. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Really? Because someone does.’ Imogen pulled a sheet of paper from her coat pocket and shoved it at hi
m: a photocopy of a handwritten letter with yesterday’s date. No police letterhead, but set out like an official statement, with the author’s name and signature blacked out. Words of varying sizes sloped across the page.

  I saw C A L E B Z E L I C kill that man on the beech last year they were aguing and C A L E B Z EL I C had a gun and shot the man dead. I know C A L E B Z E L I C becose I seen him round and he is deaf.

  Imogen’s dry lips were moving. ‘… find Frankie or do twenty years for murder.’ She stood and flipped a business card onto his lap. ‘Your two days start now.’

  She walked away, the darkness swallowing her.

  5.

  Early the next morning Caleb went for a run along the Yarra. A need to clear his head so he could think. Once, he would have thrown himself headlong into finding Frankie, but he was trying to be smarter these days. A steep learning curve. He ran over the pedestrian bridge and up the dirt track that hugged the river, bruised muscles gradually loosening. The smells of warming earth and lemon-scented gums, the sky a smudged grey above the trees.

  The morning news had brought the unwelcome confirmation that Martin Amon was a federal police officer. Everything hinged on the information Caleb’s detective mate, Tedesco, was hunting down for him. If Imogen wasn’t a cop, he’d ignore her threats. If she was, he was in deep shit – even if he could find Frankie, she’d never choose his wellbeing over hers.

  Frankie. Former-Sergeant Francesca Reynolds, fifty-eight years old and a mind like a serrated knife. Thinking about her only brought confusion. They’d been partners for five years, friends for longer, and the entire time she’d been secretly working for crims to fund her addictions. She’d endangered Kat, lied and betrayed him. And then she’d turned around and risked her life to save them both.

  It would have been easier just to hate her.

  He rounded the bend to where the river cut a broad swathe through the eucalypts. The water was shallow here, a quicksilver glint as it skimmed the rocks just beneath the surface.

  ‘… twenty years for murder.’

  It had been self-defence. After four months of intense therapy, he could finally believe those words. Petronin had hunted him down and tried to kill him, very nearly succeeded. But no jury would believe it. Not when he’d covered up the killing, not when it involved Frankie and her family.

  He slowed and stopped. Barely sweating yet, but it was time to head back. He could do it, he could hold everything together. Start by taking the most important step.

  ***

  Kat was wielding a chainsaw in the large metal garage that served as her workshop. Wearing goggles and ear protectors, a bandana in the red, yellow and black of the Aboriginal flag. A bird was emerging from the large block of red gum she was carving. Powerful wings and sharp talons: a white-bellied sea eagle, Kat’s totem animal. She’d done a lot of eagles this year, the first of them a sleeve tattoo that ran down her left arm with lacy feathers of ochre and brown. The ridge of the wing was a long, pale scar, a legacy of Frankie’s betrayal.

  Kat lowered the chainsaw and stepped back to examine her progress. He called her name, then flipped the lights when she didn’t respond. A bright smile as she turned. He’d been seventeen when he’d first fallen for that smile, but a grown man could appreciate being on its receiving end and possibly grin inanely, wondering what he’d done in a previous life to deserve it.

  She shoved the goggles onto her forehead and pulled off a glove with her teeth so she could sign. ‘What are you grinning at?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Good answer – you can stay.’ Seamlessly choosing one-handed signs so she could keep her grip on the chainsaw – an impressive achievement, given it was still running. She gave him a searching stare, but there was a looseness to her body, as though she’d had a good morning and was looking forward to the rest of the day.

  He couldn’t foul her workspace with more bad news. ‘How about I take you out for coffee?’

  ‘I can’t, sorry. Jarrah’s coming over to talk about a project. You’ll see him if he’s not on Koori time.’

  Jarrah was a fellow Aboriginal artist from their hometown of Resurrection Bay. Generous, funny, smart, with easy good looks that made him a pin-up boy for the art world. Caleb would have liked him if he hadn’t hated him so much.

  He attempted a smile. ‘Great.’

  ‘Thought you’d be pleased.’ Not many hearies could pull off irony in sign language, but Kat definitely could. She lifted the chainsaw. ‘Put the kettle on. I’ll finish up.’

  The makeshift kitchen in the corner was piled with off-cuts of timber and iron, lumps of wrapped clay. He found the kettle next to a tin marked Poison; moved the tin, filled the kettle. A few minutes to choose the right tea. Six loose-leaf blends on offer, including Earl Grey, Kat’s post-sex beverage. Although she was flexible about most things in life, she had firm opinions about the correct occasion for any given tea. They were in a strictly non-Earl Grey period at the moment. Hopefully a short hiatus while they navigated the rocky path between brink-of-divorce and coupledom. A smart plan, mutually agreed-upon, but he had some tugging regrets. He eyed the Earl Grey, went for the oolong: difficult conversations.

  His phone vibrated while he was decontaminating the cups: Tedesco getting back to him about Imogen.

  —I’ve got some interesting information. I’ll be at Cooper Reserve between 2:30 and 3:00.

  Possibly the only person in the world under eighty who texted in full sentences, the sign of a man who took great care with everything he did. ‘Interesting’ could be good. Maybe Imogen Blain was a disgraced ex-cop or a con artist with no follow-through. Or maybe she was exactly what she appeared to be: a terrified woman willing to smash his life in order to save hers. The only accurate thing in that statement she’d shown him was his name; she’d either bribed a real witness or found someone happy to lie for a quick buck. If she was comfortable manufacturing evidence, what else was she willing to do?

  He shoved the phone in his pocket as Kat came to the table. A sheen of sweat along her hairline and in the dips of her collarbones, eyes bright blue against the dusk of her skin. She’d stripped to jeans and a sleeveless black T-shirt, both loose enough to disguise the small swell of her stomach. She’d do that long after people began to speculate.

  A soft kiss to his lips; the honeyed scent of her warm skin. He lingered for a few seconds, then moved away. ‘You look great.’

  She flopped onto a chair and used her headscarf to wipe her forehead, letting her dark curls spring free. ‘Like the hot, bedraggled look, do you?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Shit no, terrible response. Give it another go. ‘I always think you’re hot.’

  ‘Seamless save, well done.’ Her smile dimmed a little as she tried the tea. ‘Everything OK?’

  He wavered. His days of keeping things from Kat were over, had to be over if he had any hope of salvaging their relationship. She knew all his secrets now and seemed to have accepted the worst of them, even Petronin’s death. But burdening her with Imogen’s threats still felt like a bad idea.

  She was drinking her tea, her eyes on him. She wouldn’t push, but she’d remember that he’d kept important information from her.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘But something happened last night. Connected to Martin Amon.’ He went through his run-in with Imogen as quickly and clinically as possible, leaving out any mention of stun guns and Imogen’s fear.

  Kat sat very still until he’d finished, then touched his hand, running her thumb across the back of it. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah, fine. She’s probably not even a cop. I just wanted to let you know. Tedesco’s checking now.’

  ‘But can you find Frankie? I mean, if you have to.’ Her usually fluid hands were stiff as she signed.

  ‘Yeah, her sister’ll know where she is.’

  ‘Maggie? Do you really think she’d help?’<
br />
  Maggie Reynolds was more likely to put a bullet in his brain, but she’d probably know where Frankie was. Despite a fraught relationship, the sisters seemed bound by something. History maybe, or Maggie’s daughter, Maggie’s money.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Frankie’s been gone for months. If these documents are so important, why is everyone after them now?’

  An excellent question, but definitely not one Kat should worry about.

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

  She managed a weak smile. ‘Exactly how I like my men – ignorant and apathetic.’ She looked at the door, and her smile bloomed.

  Jarrah was coming towards them, a large bakery bag tucked under one arm. Tousle-haired and bright-eyed, a swagger to his step. He kissed Kat’s cheek, his hand lingering on her bare arm as he said something incomprehensible. She laughed.

  A flame of pure, burning jealousy. Take it like a grown-up. Do not, under any circumstances, tackle the nice man to the ground and dribble spit in his eyes. Kat didn’t show any sign of reciprocating Jarrah’s obvious feelings for her, and she wouldn’t act on them if she did. Not while she and Caleb were trying to save their marriage.

  Jarrah turned to him, flinched slightly at his expression. ‘Cal, mate.’

  ‘Jarrah.’ He stood to shake hands. Just politeness, nothing to do with the fact he topped the artist by a couple of inches.

  There were almond croissants in Jarrah’s bag, Kat’s current favourites. A deflating realisation last night’s surprise picnic was lying in an alleyway somewhere near Alberto’s Place.

  Jarrah caught his gaze. ‘… loads … join us?’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ve got to go.’

  Kat walked him to the door, but didn’t say goodbye.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ he said.

  She nodded, but didn’t quite meet his eyes. ‘I know. Next week – you’re OK to do the new time?’