White Throat Read online

  ‘Tell him you’ve got a family emergency. Your mum’s sick or something.’

  It wasn’t the real reason she couldn’t go. Helen was the reason. People can’t go round pushing other people off cliffs, good people, loving people who shelter little children with broken hearts and scared, empty eyes; worthy people who live decent lives, making a contribution, sharing their wisdom, caring for their neighbours and their planet and…and everything Helen was. Especially those in authority—men elected to represent an entire region of good people—their misdeeds should be doubly punished. And even if Fullerton wasn’t responsible for Helen’s death, he was like a seagull perched on the mast of a ship, shitting on the deck below, defecating on democracy. He had to be taken down, not run away from. And Clem was the only person who cared enough to shake the mast.

  Torrens downed the last of his tea. Times gone by he would have taken more of an interest, begged her to head to safe harbours. Their relationship had been tainted by her lie. But he sat there, regarding her, turning something over in his head. What was he thinking? Could he be considering helping? Did he have an idea? A tiny seed of hope began to form.

  The breeze had died. A green frog in the downpipe on the far end of the deck gave a series of honking croaks, then fell silent.

  ‘If I help you out,’ said Torrens, ‘will you come back and coach the Cats?’

  It was relief and heartache in one sentence. She groped around inside her head for a moment, searching for an exit. There was none. She knew, as deeply as she knew she must fight for Helen, that she could not lie to Torrens this time. She must never lie to him again.

  It was eleven at night when the motion sensor woke him.

  The door on the Chrysler down the street was open, a dark form stepping out onto the grassy verge, standing there for a moment.

  Short, maybe about the same height as him at five foot six. Not enough light to make out the features.

  His fingers tensed around the wheel as he watched the man walk over to a tree, further from the glow of the single street light into the darkness, unzip his pants and adopt the stance.

  He needed to know who this other watcher was, why he was watching and whether it could be to his advantage. Maybe this bloke would even do his job for him, who knew? It had been known to happen: two hits hired for the same target.

  He opened his door, making sure the latch didn’t snap, and stepped out, keeping his feet to the grassy patches.

  It was still hot. Not a breath of air, just the scratchy crackle of crickets. His shirt was wet under the armpits, stuck to his back.

  Fucking Queensland.

  He waited for the man to turn and go back to his car so the street light would light up his face. He had one of those bright lens cameras that would function okay without the flash—just needed to be fifty metres closer.

  He crept to the edge of the banksias, moving quickly, hoping the man’s bladder was full. For as long as Chrysler-guy’s back was towards him, he would not be detected.

  He took up a position behind another shrub where he had a fairly clear view.

  Full all right—chock-a-block. Like him, Chrysler guy had been sitting there all afternoon and all night, watching. It was another fifteen seconds before he zipped up. As he swung back towards the car, his pale face under the light, the watcher squeezed the silent shutter.

  CHAPTER 17

  It was just gone eleven when Torrens said goodnight. Clementine watched him through the window, worried he might drive off or do something stupid. He walked down the steps from the front verandah and ignored the path to the shed, heading towards the fence.

  He wasn’t getting in his car. That was good. But why was he jumping the fence? She followed his path as he picked his way through the bush in the vacant block next door. He seemed to be taking care to conceal himself from the street. Then he stopped behind a tree and looked up towards Parks Avenue, the street that came down the hill to a T-intersection with The Esplanade near the shanty. She couldn’t see what he was looking at: the shed obscured her vision. She hurried down to the spare bedroom at the far end of the house to get a better angle. A street light, the street, the fig trees on the corner of Parks Avenue, no movement, nothing. There might be a parked car somewhere up behind the fig trees—something metallic—yes, probably a car.

  She looked back towards the vacant block. Torrens had disappeared.

  She checked her phone when she heard the shed door bang shut. Seven-thirty in the morning. A magpie started up, close and loud, perhaps sitting on the guttering above her window. It paused, then began another riff before flapping away. In the quiet she counted the urgent break of tiny waves on the foreshore.

  She lay there in bed, her mind swelling with last night. The final argument with Torrens. He didn’t understand about Helen—that her life counted. All he could think about was the team, the boys, the town. He’d begged her to give it away. She’d refused to ‘sweep Helen under the carpet like something dirty’. He’d insisted she leave it to the police.

  If only they would lift a finger, she would gladly have let them pursue this. But they weren’t interested. The cops out here in Hicksville had no concept of what was at stake for men like Stanton-Green—the making of his career as an executive, set up for life if he pulled the development off, job of his choice in mining… infrastructure…Not to mention his supersized bonus. And the mayor? Well, they hadn’t seen the violence and the cunning in that man’s eyes like she had. Then there was Hamish Doncaster. What was up there? Had he been screwing Helen? His wife’s earning the big money, she’s his honey pot—she gets wind of an affair… he gets rid of Helen. Or Helen didn’t want the secrecy anymore, threatened to tell his wife? Or maybe Helen had simply become one of Constable Griffin’s intimate-partner violence stats…?

  She got up, looked out the bedroom window in her singlet. It was a wind-blown, overcast kind of a morning. The tide was making its way in but the Great Sandy Straits were washed of colour. Gulls tooled about on the gusts above. She watched them soar and drift, cut and rise again.

  There was no noise from the front yard but she imagined Torrens would be leaving any moment. She felt as grey as the sky.

  He hadn’t suggested she was wrong about any of these men, just told her it wasn’t her job, she should leave it to the cops.

  No one seemed to get it. A woman had died, violently, and no one seemed to want to know. The conversation had ended badly, ‘I’m not going to just let it slide,’ she’d shouted at Torrens. ‘Helen took it up to the bastards and so will I.’

  She needed air, crashed out through the sliding door, stood on the back deck, leaning on the railing. The wind blustered across the Straits, the water agitated and wary, a grey-green slurry of sand in the curve of the waves as they peaked and toppled, spreading white froth right up to the backyard.

  She wanted Torrens to go. It was her job to fight for Helen, not his. And she didn’t want to hurt him again. In fact the best thing that could happen now would be to shut her friends, good people like Rowan and Torrens, out of her life. Stop hurting them. Cut them loose, push them out if necessary, before things got worse. They would never understand that her life was simply worth less since that split-second two years ago when she took someone else’s.

  She could no longer hear the waves, the wind, just a fierce silence closing her in tight, and the creeping, relentless heat sending its tentacles into the day.

  Clem was barely out of the shower when she heard the knock on the door. Pocket rushed through the dog door, yelping his high-pitched welcome bark. She threw on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts, padding up the hall with wet hair. She could see Torrens’ form in the frosted glass. As she opened the door he burst in, waving his mobile phone around, striding past her, yelling, ‘It’s him! It’s him!’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘That motherfucker Membrey!’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Here,’ he said thrusting the phone at her, pacing across the lounge
room, shoulders tensed in a knot.

  It was a photograph—the dark of night, a streetlight, a man, shortish, pot belly, his face turned side on. He was opening the door of a late model sedan—big with a huge front grille—a fig tree off to the side. Parks Avenue.

  ‘I can’t believe it, I cannot believe it! Fucking Membrey.’ Torrens was pacing across the lounge room.

  A tingling panic began in her hands as she gripped his phone. ‘This looks like the grey car I saw the other day coming back from Barnforth. Am I being followed?’

  ‘Oh yeah, you’re being followed all right. But not by this bloke, he’s following me. The guy coming after you is worse.’

  ‘Okay, now I’m really confused,’ she said, handing him the phone back. ‘Here, Torrens. Sit down. Tell me what’s going on.’

  He kept pacing, gripping his hair, running his hand over the back of his neck. ‘Fuck. Fuck. The bastard. He’s fucking not getting any of it. Not a cent.’

  ‘Okay, this Membrey guy’s after your money?’

  ‘Yes! The fucking parasite!’

  ‘So he knows about Sinbin’s stash?’

  ‘Oh, he knows. Wouldn’t have known where to look, but he’s probably guessed I’ve got it,’ he stopped pacing, eyes flashing, pointed his finger at Clem. ‘Over my dead fucking body is he getting one single cent. That’s what I promised Sinbin and that’s how it’s gonna be.’

  ‘So who is this guy?’

  ‘Just the crookedest cop you’d ever meet. He’s so bent he could be the S-bend in your crapper. Detective Declan Membrey. The Snout. He was on the take from Sinbin for bloody years, then the day he gets the sniff of a promotion he sells us out. Twenty SOGgies surrounding the house, automatics, the lot. Turned the place fucking upside down. It was only bloody lucky we didn’t all go down that day.’

  ‘So he’s a cop?’

  ‘Was. Sinbin should’ve let me break the fucker’s neck when I had the chance.’ He shook his head as if in disbelief, then pulled up short in the middle of the room. ‘I wanted to squeeze his throat so hard I squished the living breath out of him while he watched me.’

  And there it was—that question again. But this time she knew the answer: Matthew Torrens, her friend, her big-hearted friend, had killed. She swallowed, blinked. A shiver ran across the back of her neck, she shook it out.

  Torrens glanced at her. ‘Oh Jesus. I didn’t mean to say that,’ he said, his arms waving up then slapping down onto his thighs. ‘I’m sorry. It’s, it’s just…you know, the past…this prick is bringing it all back,’ he slumped into the couch, his head in his hands. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Hey,’ she said, sitting down next to him. ‘We’ve all got our pasts, right? All of us.’

  He let out a dry moan, the air getting caught in his throat. They sat for a bit.

  ‘Jonesy,’ he said, voice raspy, ‘I need to tell you about the other guy.’

  ‘What other guy?’

  He swallowed, his jaw hardening, ‘Warwick Jackson.’

  ‘Okay. Who’s Warwick Jackson?’

  ‘He’s your tail.’

  ‘What?’

  After she lost sight of him last night, Torrens explained, he’d gone along the beach and cut back up the hill. He’d seen a car parked in Parks Avenue—looked like it had been there all afternoon—and after Clem’s brush with the mayor, he’d gone to check it out. When he’d got to a high-enough point he’d walked along Juniper Street towards Parks. There was another car parked there: a black BMW.

  ‘Right, so this is the guy I saw coming back from Barnforth?’

  ‘Dunno. Might have been. Got a copper mate to check the rego. Fake number, but the name’s an alias that Jackson’s used before.’

  ‘And this Jackson, you said he’s worse than Membrey?’

  Torrens was on his feet again, pacing and she didn’t like the length of this pause. The light was streaming in through the window, the sun having broken through the cloud and edged around the corner of the house. A thousand dust motes ducked and dived.

  He turned and looked her in the eye. ‘He’s a hitman, Jonesy. A hired killer.’

  It felt like a wall—concrete blocks coming at her, smacking her in the face, laying her flat. Her head was thumping and she couldn’t speak.

  This is the person who killed Helen.

  This man is after me now.

  I am being pursued by a hitman.

  She was staring at the flying dust motes, her eyes picking one, following it up and around then down out of the light beam.

  ‘It’s all right Jonesy. He’s not gonna get ya. I’m here.’

  She’d heard Torrens but the words hadn’t registered. The mayor or the Hyphen—or both—or Hamish had used a hitman to kill Helen.

  ‘I reckon we should…’

  Torrens was sitting down again, making a plan. He was going to help her. Something about setting Membrey up. She couldn’t think, couldn’t follow.

  He sat down next to her and she felt his hand on her shoulder, as big as a baseball mitt, heavy yet gentle. She’d felt the comfort of having this giant as her protector before. But again, she was drawing him into criminal circles, away from his promise to Sinbin and all the hard work he’d done.

  She sat there on the dirty old couch with him, her eyes searching the sunlight. And she knew.

  Helen would have agreed.

  She could not accept Torrens’ help.

  It was after eight o’clock. She followed him into the kitchen. He was stooped over, searching through the meagre offerings in the fridge. She gently pushed the door closed. ‘No you don’t,’ she said.

  ‘Eh? Man’s gotta eat,’ he grunted.

  ‘Eat on the road. You’re not staying,’ she said, her words sounding so much stronger than she felt inside.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not joking.’ Her stomach did a flip and left an emptiness as she thought of what it meant—facing it, whatever it was, on her own.

  ‘Ha! You’re hilarious when you’re trying to look mean,’ he laughed, opening the fridge again, brushing her arm aside.

  ‘I’m serious. I want you to leave, Torrens.’ She wasn’t getting through but she couldn’t seem to come up with anything. She knew why—it was fear. Not the adrenaline-filled rush of imminent danger but the drawn-out, spun-tight terror of what was to come.

  ‘Yeah? Well you know where you can shove that.’

  She pushed hard on the fridge door, her stomach churning. She knew what she was doing was right, she was absolutely positive, but it didn’t make it any easier.

  He slowly stood up, his full six foot six. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You need to get out of here. You can’t be involved in whatever’s coming.’

  He snorted. ‘Don’t make me laugh, Jonesy. You think you can handle these guys on your own?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake. Don’t be an idiot.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You can’t be here. You just said a few moments ago you wanted to kill this guy.’

  ‘Membrey? Pfft, who bloody wouldn’t?’

  ‘You were fucking serious. I heard you,’ she said. The wind was freshening outside and the wooden chimes had begun their clacking and jangling on the back verandah. She could hear the waves of the incoming tide—must be breaking onto the lawn almost.

  ‘Of course I was fucking serious, Jonesy! You think he’s gonna leave me standing after he gets his hands on the money?’

  ‘Matthew, listen to me,’ she said soberly. ‘I’ve never asked you about your past, why you were in prison, and I don’t expect you to ever tell me. In fact, I don’t want to know. But one thing I do know is you’re not going back there. Certainly not on my behalf.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Jonesy, this is the Snout we’re talking about! No one’s going to prison and there’ll be no one happier than the cops if he disappears and never shows his face on the planet again.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t care who he is. You can’t be killing people, Torr
ens. Oh God, I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.’

  ‘Oh get real, why do you think I’m hiding here? That guy’ll kill me as soon as look at me.’

  ‘Which is exactly why you have to leave. Get out of here, head to Darwin or…or Perth or something.’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake. This is fairyland. Come here, have a look for yourself.’ He stormed out to the lounge room, stood in front of the wall near the window, beckoning her over. She stood next to him hidden behind the curtain, moving across just far enough so she could see out.

  ‘Look up behind the trees in Parks Avenue,’ he said.

  She saw a glint behind a thicket of trees. She looked harder. Was it a car? She pulled back behind the wall, catching her breath. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  ‘See? There’s no leaving here for me—Membrey’s waiting for me to leave. Surprised he hasn’t made a move already. Sitting there waiting for the right opportunity, the bastard. And I’m gone if I don’t get him first. Simple as that.’

  She closed her eyes, one hand to her face. Her mind had gone to mush, nothing would line up. How they had arrived at this point seemed a blur and now Torrens was actually contemplating killing a man.

  She pushed away the thought and instantly, a wave of guilty reprieve flooded into its place, unbidden. He would have left today, walked away from her, possibly forever. He was staying. Maybe it wasn’t because of any concern for her—maybe it was because he had no option. But it didn’t matter. In that moment, she didn’t care if he thought of her as a liar, a coward, a traitor and everything else, all she felt was an unstoppable tide of relief.

  She would not be alone.

  Warwick Jackson hung up the phone. Finally, the go-ahead. Hanging around this dump was a kind of slow death in itself. And the risk in coming back here was borderline crazy, only weeks after the first job. Sure, he’d charged twice his usual, but no money could ever make it worth being caught.

  He’d had time to consider the lie of the land over the past days, plenty of time. She had no routine, though. That made it awkward. As much as he wanted to get the thing done and get out of here, it was all in the timing—he’d have to pick his moment and take the opportunity when it came.