The Courier's New Bicycle (9 page)

‘Perfect,' I say.

‘The appointments either side will be clear,' he adds. ‘No pesky waiting-room conversations.'

‘Thanks.'

I watch his solid frame depart. I can always trust him to think of everything.

When everyone else has left, Inez pulls the back door to. We emerge together onto the busy street and detour via the gelato counter. Inez decides on vanilla while I choose caramel swirl, my favourite.

‘All the perverts are going for that one,' Phyllis, the owner, says, and winks.

I make a face at her, privileged with the information that when Phyllis goes home at night, it's to a tank full of glow-in-the dark seahorses and a five-watt orange ferret.

It's Anwar's and my final shift together at Fishermans Bend and the coldest night so far. The van heater keeps the windscreen from icing up and us from freezing, but outside, everything is growing white dendritic fronds. This time, at least, I've come prepared with a thermos of hot chocolate and a bag of raspberry muffins.

We munch hungrily. Having finished our round of the streets to check the flow of traffic and activity in factory yards, we're holding off for now on another stint at the Ponds. But it's funereally quiet: no mean machines rumbling by Enzo's, and the wraith-like figures of the cruisers and bruisers few and far between. It could be that the onshore southerly shivering in from the sea has kept everyone away, or maybe it's just that the denizens of the Bend need a night off occasionally.

‘How did you persuade the racers to give back the van's tyres?' I ask.

‘By appealing to their finer sensibilities.'

I look at him.

‘I promised to deliver them something they want much more.'

‘And that would be?'

‘A set of racing fats off a stock car.'

I laugh. ‘Can you?'

‘They're in the back. We'll drive down after this and hand them over.'

I love the thought of my neatly attired co-worker making deals with a bunch of leather-and metal-clad street racers. Trust him to come up with a bargaining chip so coveted by the latter.

 

At midnight we make our delivery. There are only three vehicles on the roundabout, and no spectators. Clearly, tonight's affair is a private one. I should have predicted it would be Skinny and a rival lounging nonchalantly against their street machines, waiting to receive the goods. The pair in the third vehicle stare at us, but don't bother to get out. There's no sign of Lola or her friends.

Skinny turns his best cheeky smile on us. ‘The offer of a ride still stands, Andy Pandy. Mr Suit can sit in the back if he wants.'

I have to laugh. His good-natured bantering is hard not to like. His rival, however, seems to think differently.

I help Anwar unload the tyres, rolling them onto the traffic island.

‘So who gets the set?' I whisper.

‘I believe they're going to duel it out.'

Skinny's competitor gets in her car. The third vehicle leaves down the racetrack, presumably to adjudicate at the finish line.

‘Care to do the honours?' Skinny hands me a red-spotted kerchief.

Obediently I stand at the head of Wolf Road as they start their engines and proceed to rev the hell out of them. I raise the signal and wait a count of three, then let it drop. The roar is ear-splitting; I'm enveloped in a blast of exhaust. I bend to retrieve the kerchief and cough pure carbon monoxide.

As brakes screech down the road, Anwar shepherds me off the verge. ‘Let's not wait for the result,' he says.

I suggest to him that he might like to take Skinny up on his offer sometime. He swings me an inscrutable look, then says, ‘Show me the paint factory.'

 

The van left outside the gates, we scan the factory's front windows with our torches, then walk quickly down the side, hands stuffed in pockets and collars up against the chill, boots crunching on icy ground. At the rear of the building, I slide my fingers in the gap between the window and the sill and push up. Scraping through first, I turn to help Anwar, but he's already half in.

Ferguson's paint-making machinery sits in gloom and fust at the end of the corridor. I point out the office with
my torch, but Anwar just nods and makes his way across the space to the far wall.

He stares up at the mixer tanks on the gantry. ‘You looked in those?'

I say no, and feel remiss.

The metal stairs by the front entrance look worse than the office set, but are actually more securely attached. I climb, then work my way along the gantry to the first giant mixing bowl. I grip the handle on the lid. It's heavy but levers up, and I poke the torch beam inside the tub. The interior is thickly crusted and the colour hard to pick, but ‘scurvy yellow' would be close.

‘Paint,' I say down to Anwar, then try each along the row. Same result, different colours.

I descend the stairs and join him by the equipment. Here, the detritus makes sad piles on the concrete, the dust bunnies grown big enough to become dust hares. I scuff at a pile with the toe of my boot and something separates from the formless grey. I pick it up: innocuous, but recognisable anywhere. A piece of blue wax from an anti-tamper seal. I scuff again. More bits show up, all blue. I grab Anwar's arm.

He inspects the piece in my hand. ‘It may have nothing to do with the current situation,' he says.

I look at him doubtfully. ‘But so many?'

‘Someone — your office lovebirds, for instance — might have been breaking open their personal stash here for years. And blue wax isn't used exclusively by EHg.'

I have to admit he has a point.

The polystyrene eggs are just one shape of a variety, the shells bought as blanks by distributors then filled with the manufacturer's products and sealed, the wax medallion at their join stamped with the maker's unique logo. Now we no longer live in a throwaway world, the distributors have a re-use system going. Buyers can return the old shells to receive a discount on their next expenditure, or they can be handed in for money, like bottles or cans — which is why you never see the whole thing lying around, just the remains of the tamper-proof seals.

Fingering a piece of wax, I watch Anwar inspect along the production line towards the conveyor belt and pallets at the loading dock. Suddenly he hauls on a handle and a piece of equipment rolls out.

‘This is more convincing,' he remarks across the space.

I drop my find and go over.

It's a drill press, but the part that normally holds the drill bit has been converted to take a metal die. Beside it on the portable stand is a small camping stove and wax pot.

It's ridiculously simple. The polyshell sits in the concavity on the drill table, hot wax is poured from the pot into its indented seam, and then the swing arm brings the die down into the wax. With one piece of equipment and a few key ingredients, a small-time operation can do big damage to a company like EHg.

‘Gail said it'd be on Barrow Road,' is all I can manage.

Anwar shrugs. Misinformation can happen to the best.

He fiddles with the drill chuck while I frown up at the office and wonder what the lovebirds thought when the others moved in below.

Anwar stops fiddling and holds up the die. It's imprinted with EHg's trademark. ‘Sloppy of them, leaving this,' he says, and pockets it. ‘Now let's see the office.'

We climb the stairs to the landing and I go for the door handle. It doesn't budge. Surprised, I train the torch beam below it, and find a shiny lock where the rusty one used to be. I stand there foolishly as a bad thought dawns. What if the orange flag in the window was never a signal for romance, but Gail's new player all along and I mistook the vital clue?

I glance at Anwar.

‘I think we have a return date here,' he says solemnly, and my throat goes dry. I'm a wuss when it comes to confrontation. That's why I have runners' legs and a racing bike.

 

We're buzzed into Cute'n'Cuddly's delivery yard. Anwar parks the van beside a polished relative and we walk into the warehouse, Gail calling us to where, inventory in hand, she's sorting through a set of boxes stacked for delivery.

‘It goes through phases,' she says, bending back the flaps of a box and brandishing a fluffy grey creature. ‘Bilbies are the current favourites, but six months ago the market couldn't get enough of hairy-nosed wombats and growling koalas.' She puts the bilby back in the box and closes the
flaps. ‘In marketing parlance it's called “macro-charisma”. Big furry animals will always win hearts and wallets over the tiny ones, such as insects, even if the latter are the true miracles of nature. Nobody wants to snuggle up to a weta or a dung beetle.'

I try to picture a Cute'n'Cuddly dung beetle. I fail.

We walk past production-line sorting tables and a forklift bay, back to Gail's unmarked office at the rear of the building. She heads for the roller chair behind her desk while Anwar and I both find something uncomfortable to lean against.

‘I'm buying us some chairs for your birthday,' he informs her.

She smirks and makes a show of settling in her seat. ‘Tell me what you found.'

Anwar produces the die and she sheds her easygoing air.

‘I'll get the surveillance equipment installed as soon as it's light,' he says.

‘We can monitor activity from here,' Gail replies. ‘I'm not planning on jumping them, just getting the footage to identify them for others to deal with.'

I breathe a small sigh of relief.
Others.
Not me and Anwar.

Gail leans forward, intent. ‘If we can catch them at it and expose them, things will begin to settle down.'

‘What if there's a bigger player pulling their strings?' I ask.

‘I'm looking into that.'

Gail has spies niched in the workings of Neighbourly Watch and Nation First. Anything she doesn't hear from
them is usually picked up by the many eyes and ears of the underground network, which makes it all the more surprising she doesn't know who these people are yet.

She throws a glance at Anwar, deciding something.

‘The vultures are beginning to circle,' she tells me. ‘Yesterday I had an offer on the business. An anonymous party is willing to pay a minuscule cash sum for Cute'n'Cuddly before, as their go-between so charmingly put it, “the wheels fall off the gravy train”. He put up some very persuasive arguments, but I declined.' She leans back. ‘I'm not discounting the possibility he's part of whatever's causing our problem. Your discovery might help us with that.'

I don't want to spoil the best news we've had, but there's no getting out of what I have to tell her, so I launch straight in.

‘I had a visit from Mojo Meg at the speakeasy on Sunday, and a direct offer to work for her. I'm sorry I didn't mention it yesterday morning. The attack on Roshani pushed it out of my mind —'

I stop in surprise. She's smiling broadly at me. Not the response I was expecting.

She laughs. ‘I knew Meg was headhunting you even before she came to our table to tell me the market news.'

I must look shocked, because she laughs again. ‘Salisbury, why are you always the last to know these things?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Meg's had her beady eye on you for a while. Last week wasn't the first time she'd put out signals.'

‘I thought it was just to get at you. To rub it in that there's someone trying to damage the business.'

‘She wishes. Her entrepreneurial streak and her mean streak are one and the same. A flailing competitor makes her hungry as a shark. She's been looking for an opportunity to poach you and there'd be no better time than this.'

‘Why me? There are plenty of other couriers available.'

Gail looks at me as if I'm stupid. ‘Because you're a
first-rate
courier. And you should know in our game that's a valuable commodity.'

I shift uncomfortably, not looking at her. ‘I didn't tell her no outright. I said I'd think about it.'

It's Gail's turn to look surprised.

I rush to explain. ‘I'd never actually
do
it, but it seemed like she knew something we didn't, and I thought I might get her to divulge more.'

‘That's a dangerous game.'

I'm downcast. ‘It was an off-the-cuff thing — which I now have to weasel my way out of.'

I wait for her to castigate me for being so foolish, but instead she looks thoughtful. ‘You know,' she says, ‘it might actually be a good idea.'

‘No!' I can't help the outburst. The thought of working for Meg for even a day is unbearable.

Gail picks up the die and weighs it in her hand. ‘This proves they
were
at the paint factory, but not necessarily that they're coming back. In this business it doesn't take much to
spook the customer into a mistrust of the product, and the pond scum we're dealing with have already done that. What if they have no more need of this?' She places the die on the desk. ‘It puts us back at square one.'

I make a pathetic noise halfway between a groan and a whimper.

‘Look, Salisbury, I don't think Meg is behind this, but your instincts were right: if anyone has any information worth knowing, it'll be her. She owns the compendium on other people's business. Can you keep her thinking you're interested for a few days?'

‘I suppose …' It'll be like playing cat and mouse with a tiger.

‘And if it came to it, would you be willing to work for her for a while? Business here will be on a downturn.'

It hurts me to even hear her say that.

‘It'll look like I've deserted you.'

‘Yes, it will.'

‘Who'll know the truth?'

‘The three people in this room — and only the three.' She eagle-eyes me. ‘Not best friends or girlfriends. Not even the cat.'

I'm so transparent. My thoughts had leapt instantly to Inez.

In my heart, I know Gail's right. If Meg smelled a rat, who knows how she'd retaliate? She'd have no qualms about leaning on Inez if she suspected me of anything, and I can't let that happen.

Anwar, silent all this while, nods at me: a small gesture telling me I can count on him in this, no matter where it goes. I'd like to say it makes me feel better, but it doesn't.

My boss ignores my dismay and carries on. ‘In tough financial times, people have to find any means they can to keep their heads above water, and with demand for EHg's products in a tailspin, everyone'll see it as a move of necessity on your part.'

I grimace at her using the same drowning allusion as Meg.