The Courier's New Bicycle (17 page)

I've been naive. Now I feel vulnerable. What if it's been her all along, steering the ship into the iceberg?

I picture her, flanked by Snarl and Crusher, explaining to
Gail's regulars the sudden change of supplier; the coldly persuasive nucleus of a company whose many tentacles are about to be inserted like cancer into the bones of the Red Quarter.

Meg brushes an errant speck of dust off her tailored lapel, and gets up. Her bodyguards follow suit.

‘Think about it,' she says again, and then I'm alone in the lumpy leather-and-horsehair booth, staring morosely at empty glasses on sodden cardboard coasters.

 

When I'm really anxious, or really angry, I get on my bike. Tonight I'm both, riding through the streets of Fitzroy and Abbotsford to my favourite circuit at Yarra Bend Park.

I've let off steam this way since I was six years old and given my first two-wheeler: a Dragstar with shiny pink tassels sticking out the ends of the handlebars. I took to the tassels immediately with scissors, much to my parents' dismay, that being another of their attempts to colonise me as a girl. I can remember feeling, even back then, if I didn't do something with my pent-up energy, I would explode from it. So I'd hop on my bicycle and ride as hard as my young body could manage. The revelation was discovering my strength, my capacity to go fast. I'd power up the hills then freewheel down, every corpuscle chorusing
YEEESSSS!
That bike — which I eventually stacked in a ditch at the bottom of a very big hill — was my joy, and my lifeline. But I made sure the next one wasn't pink.

I exit the street and judder across the warped boards of the footbridge over the river, then am leaning through the curves of the Yarra Park track, the lamplit edges of the parkland swishing by like a fast-forward movie.

I've never been someone who gets calm by being still. Riding is my meditation. Eventually, the motion unsticks my thoughts and they begin to flow like wind through a leaky building.

Meg's earlier observation of me as ‘charmingly incurious' flurries through. For me, couriering is about getting the deliveries to their destinations at speed and unnoticed. That's where the pleasure has always lain. In all the years I've worked for Gail I've never wanted to know who the addressees are or what the packages contain. Why would I?

After three-quarters of an hour, my hands and cheeks are prickly with cold while the rest of me sweats under the layers; but the ride has done its calming work. I swig from the bike's water bottle, and head for the hospital.

Food moved to the top of my needs list, I swing by the Tum-Tum Tree café for a bowl of congealed vegies and pasta. It's passable fare, but in truth I have no interest in it other than as fuel for my body, the mush bypassing my tastebuds en route to my stomach.

The lift is stifling and I strip off a few more layers. As I'm let through to the ICU, those on duty behind the desk glance up briefly. I make for the right-hand isolation door.

The sign is gone.

Wondering, I enter the anteroom. No biohazards bins, no personal protective equipment. I look through the porthole: an empty bed frame.

Panic hits. Terrified, I turn to exit and bump into the nurse coming in.

‘Sorry,' she says, seeing my agonised face. ‘We thought you knew. He's out of iso now.'

Albee pronounced non-contaminative at last, his room has been cleaned and all the bedding and disposables, even the mattress, sent to the incinerator.

As I follow the nurse around the central station to the other side of the ward, I wonder about the patient in the other isolation room, and how many others there've been. If this were the rash of poisonings we'd feared, Albee's room would already have a new occupant. EHg's scouts must be doing a good job of snatching the dirty kit from the streets as it lands.

I'm led to a section containing six beds, Ellie greeting me at the first. I look down at Albee's still form. ‘He's made good progress, right?'

‘You bet,' she replies. ‘They're going to start lightening up on the sedatives to see if he's ready to breathe on his own. If he shows the right signs, they'll take the tube out.'

I reach for the outline of an arm under the covers as together we watch our friend, neither of us verbalising the lurking fear:
what if he comes to consciousness and isn't the same old Albee?

My wristwatch says 10 pm. I'm sitting in a vinyl armchair procured by Sarah, the nurse I angered on my first visit, and holding Albee's hand as I talk low-tone to him, when I feel the muscles flicker in his fingers. It's a tiny twitch, his fingers closing slightly on mine, and could be some autonomic response — but I'm not so sure. Was it something I said? I've been telling him about Inez, and just described her storming out of the speakeasy.

I wait for another message. That there's nothing more doesn't dampen my hopes. He's shucked the OP residues from his body, and now he's as good as squeezed my hand. Well, nearly.

Slouched sideways in the chair, one leg over the armrest, I doze, entering a disturbed half-dream. Images play on the screen of my sleep: Helen looking out at me through the barred windows of her house; the street seller shaking bloody hands over the Shangri-La's sink; Geeta being pelted with rocks by an angry prayer group. I come back to awareness with a start, Mojo Meg's last words,
Think about it
, ringing ominously in my head.

Paul arrives from his chef's shift to take up vigil. I lean over Albee and kiss him softly on the cheek.

I've decided I need to let Gail know Meg is convinced it's sabotage from the inside, and that I'm being pressured for the details of her buyers list. It means breaking the pact of no contact, but I have to go see her tonight.

At Checkpoint Charlie something is badly wrong: my ID won't verify, but the SOS guard waves me distractedly through anyway. I ride into Gail's cul-de-sac and pass police cars leaving. Her gates are wide open.

Dread settles on me like a lead weight. I lean the bike inside the hedge and walk slowly along the driveway between terracotta urns, up the steps to the unlatched entrance.

‘And you are?'

Coated and casual, the speaker blocks the threshold. Something about him is vaguely familiar.

‘Sal Forth.' I reach out my right hand.

‘Sal …' He looks me up and down. ‘That short for Salvatore or Sally?'

‘Salisbury, actually. After the cathedral.'

He blinks once, thrown briefly. A hand emerges like an eel from his shirtsleeve. Shaking it is like squeezing a bladder of air.

‘Doug Smeg, Neighbourly Watch. The good detectives were kind enough to give me a tingle and bring me in as community observer. You know how the Local Incident Committee likes to have its
t
's dotted and
i
's crossed.'

He waits for me to appreciate his wit. I don't.

I peer past him through Gail's glass-enclosed portico and open front door into the living area. These days Neighbourly Watch gives everyone permission to stick their noses in other people's business.

‘I live nearby,' I say, and wave my hand non-directionally, although I'm sure this won't wash with Doug, who probably has the NW dossiers on everyone and their aunts and uncles for blocks around. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?'

‘Overdose.'

His words register like a slap.

‘Seems the kit was laced with something else. The ambos could do nothing for her. Damn shame — fine-looking woman. Morgue's admiring her now.' His nuggety eyes are fixed on mine.

No!
Pain slams into me like a wrecking ball. My eyes burn, the shock stoppered in my chest.
I will not cry out.
Not with this smug bastard watching.

I set my foot on the next step to get past, but he moves swiftly to prevent me.

‘LIC investigation scene. Sorry,' he says, slick and mean.

Still blocking my way, he reaches past a potted cycad to slide open a drawer in the roll-top bureau beside it, and calmly picks through the contents.

This can't be happening.

Everything in me wants to pummel him aside to find out for myself that it isn't true, but I see the regulation-issue taser at his belt and know he has the power to make an arrest for any violation he cares to think up.

‘They confiscated a dispenser and some contraband, but not enough to constitute dealing, as such …'

He lifts out a blister strip of Courier's Friend — its telltale electric blue a brief flash before it disappears into his pocket — then assumes a disinterested air, as if his mind has already turned to other things.

I hold down the stab of rage. No way would Gail keep kit or equipment at her house. Someone must have planted it.

I force my expression blank. I want to rip his throat out.

‘Where did they take her?'

‘You'll have to ask the constabulary that, I'm afraid.' His lips stretch into a smile. The cops are gone. ‘How coincidental,' he says mildly, ‘you turning up like this in the unfriendly hours. I'm assuming we're both on the same page,
Ms…ter
Forth?'

I look at the menace in his flat, pasty face and know exactly which page. The one that, if all Doug Smeg's clothes were to be removed, would reveal the injection marks of a long-time steroids user.

Call me Ms or Mister, I don't care, but keep your evil hands off Gail's things.

‘I have no idea what page you're on, Doug,' I say, low and even, ‘but I doubt it'll ever be the same one as me.'

Then I take my leave down Gail's neat drive, the blood drumming a fearsome tattoo in my head, his eyes like leeches on my back.

 

The speakeasy is aflutter with the news of Gail found dead in her home from a dose of tainted hormones. How I made it here from Toorak, I don't remember, but after ringing Anwar, I'd stumbled in and collapsed on Rosie's broad shoulder.

A full shot glass appears at my hand. It isn't the first. I surface from my stupor to concerned faces looming in and out of view, the speculation rife around me. But it wasn't me who told the news. It arrived before me. Doug Smeg, or someone in the constabulary, has a high-speed connection to the speakeasy grapevine.

‘… anaphylactic shock,' a voice says loudly. ‘Something toxic in the kit. So much for trusting Ethical Hormones.'

‘Fancy Gail of all people getting her own medicine wrong,' someone else chimes in.

‘Getting greedy, more like — or desperate,' another replies. ‘I always thought she looked too good to be true.'

‘Yeah, right,' I say to my empty glass, and the bar goes quiet around me.

The room is suddenly oppressive, the smell of alcohol and kit cloying. I start for the door, but a hand places itself on my arm. Merlyn steers me firmly over to Mojo Meg's alcove, its tasselled curtains secured to give a bird's-eye view of the bar. I wait unsteadily at the table as Meg drums
baubled fingers lightly on its surface, Merlyn and Sandy standing point duty.

‘My busy little courier.' The fingers drum.

‘Busy no more,' I say, unable to mask the bitterness. ‘I quit.'

‘I'll ignore that because you're upset. Sad news about Gail, but we all step over that mark sooner or later.'

‘This was premature.' Grief and drink have made me unwary.

The fingers still. Mojo Meg's eyes glitter in the lamplight. ‘I'll give you that. It's not like Gail to capitulate.'

I'm on the edge of an avalanche of sobs, but Meg is the last person I want to break down in front of.

‘You went there?' she probes.

‘Yes.'

‘And found her?'

‘No.'

‘So who did?'

I blink soddenly. Doug Smeg said the police had called him. But who called them?

‘I don't know.'

Meg is having her own thoughts, some of which might be about why I went there in the first place.

‘Who told you she was dead?'

‘The Neighbourly Watch guy who was rifling through her things.'

She says nothing to that.

‘Take the day and sleep off the booze,' she orders. ‘Be in my office Monday, 9 am.'

I linger, bleary-eyed, until I realise I've been dismissed. Lurching up the speakeasy stairs to the door, my second attempt to leave is stopped by Marlene. Knocked out of her usual superiority, she sniffs, eyes red-rimmed, and reminds me in a throaty lisp to collect my cycling gear.

Rosie puts an arm around my shoulders, turning me away from the storeroom where my bike is stashed. ‘You're not leaving here on that,' she rumbles in my ear. ‘I've called you a taxi. Want someone to see you home?'

I shake my head.

‘Chin up, mate,' she comforts. Then the door locks behind me and the spyhole closes over.

The taxi is already at the top of Wickerslack Alley. I make for it, the gossip at the bar replaying in my head.

‘Yeah, right,' I say again, to the stinking bins and stacks of cardboard boxes. I know better — two things better: Gail didn't do kit, and didn't need to, being one of the rare few who'd retained their full complement of hormones in the wake of the pandemic. My business-savvy employer was a walking, talking fertility factory, a modern-day wonder, so no way had she overdosed.

 

I'm on my couch, crying into Nitro's purple fur. Gail was my boss, but she was also the rock of dependability around which my fickle, unfocused life revolved. And she was family to me.

Reaching in my jacket for another tissue, I pull out a slip of paper. It's a number with a scribbled message:
We need to talk. Marlene.

Marlene never wants to talk to me. So why start now?

I flick the paper to the floor. She can go talk to the wall. Two weeks ago I was cracking jokes with Albee in his workshop and happily couriering for Gail. Now Albee is in a coma and Gail is dead.

The wail rises in my solar plexus, pressing up my windpipe into my throat. Nitro riding my lap, I launch back in the couch and let loose. Nitro leaps. I wail harder. It becomes a guttural scream, raw and primeval; I swing round on my knees and begin to pound at the back cushion.

When my arms have become too weak to punch another time, I slump into hiccupy sobs. Nitro returns to the couch and begins to knead himself a place beside me. I stroke him, feeling his warmth; the vital spark coursing through him the same one that runs through me and connects us all, including Albee in his deep sleep. But not Gail. Not Gail ever again.