Vigil: Verity Fassbinder Book 1 (21 page)

Everything about her looked muscular, and her white long-sleeved shirt and navy trousers had creases that were obviously
meant
to be there, as if no fabric would dare wrinkle on such a hard body. Her straw-pale hair was pulled into a tight bun, and
the lines around her eyes and mouth made me reassess her age upwards; she was more thirties than twenties, and maybe even
a passably preserved forty. I spotted a Taser that I was pretty sure shouldn’t have been hanging from the belt of a private
citizen – Ziggi owned one too, and he
wasn’t meant to have it either. Maybe she was a cop making a bit extra on the side, just using departmental equipment to make
her life easier. Of course, that immediately raised the question of
why
Anders Baker might need extra security.

Ziggi craned his neck to exchange glances with me. ‘Wish me luck,’ I mumbled, and opened the door. Climbing out, I pasted
on a smile that felt like quick-setting plaster.

‘Can I help you?’ She stood too close – we were roughly the same height, but I was glad of the inch or so I had on her – and
breathed spearmint gum-scent into my face. There was neither warmth nor friendliness in her voice, but I decided to give her
the benefit of the doubt; I might be decently dressed for a change, but I couldn’t deny Ziggi and his car did look pretty
rag-tag.

‘I’m Verity Fassbinder. I’ve got an appointment with Mr Baker,’ I said, searching for a flicker of recognition and was vaguely
miffed to find none.

Blondie stared back, then walked past me and inspected the taxi, leaning down to peer in the windows. Ziggi gave her a two-fingered
salute, the affable kind, but it didn’t expedite matters at all. I waited for as long as I could, which wasn’t very long,
then said, ‘So, you going to call up to the big house? Let the boss know I’m here?’

A ripple went through well-trained jaw and cheek muscles as she clenched down on a retort. With that kind of strength I reckoned
she could spit and cause an injury. I gave in and said, ‘Please.’

She might not have moved any faster, but she did at least amble over to her hobbit hole and pick up the phone. I could hear
muttered queries, then pauses while answers were given. She didn’t bother to step out again, but the gate swung open. I got
in the car and Ziggi hit the accelerator.

Baker’s cash was new, barely out of the wrapping, and his home
was proof, if ever it was needed, that money couldn’t buy taste. Misplaced orange faux adobe met and mated unwillingly with
white wrought iron and a butt-load of thick tinted glass in someone’s nightmare idea of Mediterranean-style architecture,
with some extra attitude thrown in. The rolling gardens weren’t much better: a manicured mix of Australian natives with imports
like foxgloves looking horribly out of place, all surrounded by a legion of palm trees growing along the fence line, leaning
a little drunkenly over the top. A six-foot-tall bronze of Poseidon, complete with trident, bulging budgie smugglers and leer,
stood manfully in a massive fountain, eternally drenched by multiple water jets. A circular drive of stamped black concrete
curled around it.

The whole set-up was eye-achingly frightful.

The bright blue front door had panels of green and red tile down its middle, for no reason that I could discern. It opened
before I was even out of the vehicle. Baker sported a grey linen suit that any star of
Miami Vice
, circa 1984, would have been proud to wear. Mindful of my promise to Bela, I loaded my ‘Miss Manners’ software program, took
his outstretched hand and managed a smile.

‘Ms Fassbinder. I’m so pleased you’re able to give my son some of your valuable time.’

Though it sounded suspiciously like sarcasm, I let it go. Baker was little more than a thug with a lot of coin; I doubted
his manners had yet been finely tuned. I’d cut him some slack, at least until I was proven wrong.

‘Let’s talk inside, shall we, Mr Baker?’ I used his handshake to pivot him around, then pressed the small of his back to steer
him through the entrance, smirking to myself when he looked startled. Rich people are so used to being deferred to that they
get quite a shock when someone else takes charge. You usually only
get away with it once or twice before their sense of self-importance reasserts itself, but sometimes you just need the upper
hand for a little while.

The enormous hall had a chessboard pattern of black and white marble tiles underfoot. In the centre was another fountain,
this one an oversized bronze mermaid, though not quite as big as the god of the sea. She held a hairbrush poised over her
flowing locks and a mirror in front of her face, so she could admire her own beauty with the bluest of glass eyes.

Baker led me into a sunken sitting room that overlooked a lap pool. The place was a symphony in creams and browns that might
just have worked, if only someone hadn’t installed a naked-brickwork bar at one end, allowing the Seventies to live and breathe
again. The carpet was thick silk shag and I felt self-conscious about letting my boots touch it. A fireplace with a mammoth
hunk of camphor laurel as a mantelpiece took up half a wall. I chose a single butter-coloured leather armchair to ensure there
was no chance he’d try to sit next to me for a cosy chat.

‘Drink?’ he called from behind the bar, waving a bottle of something amber.

I stared at the label. ‘Err, no thanks. A little early for me.’

‘The sun’s past the yardarm somewhere in the world,’ he said cheerfully, and splashed himself a good five inches from the
forty-year-old bottle of The Macallan. It occurred to me then that he might be more nervous than clueless – or perhaps as
nervous as he was clueless. He sat across from me in the middle of the three-seater couch, leaning forward, elbows on knees,
crystal tumbler cradled between thick fingers. Under his spray tan his nose had an unhealthy pink bloom, which made me wonder
how long he’d been pouring his own drinks; I suspected the intake had increased recently.

When he spoke again, the tone was a little petulant. ‘I’m glad you came to your senses.’

I stiffened, tamping down the urge to make a
very
rude gesture, and said, as politely as I could, ‘Mr Baker, I am looking into a number of matters at the moment, including
several missing persons, not one of them less important than your son, although they may not be as rich. They deserve my attention
as much as Donovan does.’

He held up his hands as if backing off and said hastily, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply . . . Verity, I just want to say
how grateful I am for your help.‘

We eyed each other for long moments before I gave in. ‘Mr Baker, I’ll do what I can, but I need to be honest with you: I think
your son’s missing of his own free will. He’s young and a bit aimless, and I gather he’s financially independent?’

‘Trust fund from his mother,’ he answered curtly.

‘Right. So, what makes you think he’s not just gone off to “find himself”?’

His mouth puckered as if he were sucking on a lemon and the false bonhomie dropped away, leaving the truth of him exposed.
The man was all hard desire to have his own way and punish those who denied him. At first I thought the bitterness was directed
at me, until he said, ‘Because the boy’s too gutless to do anything for himself.’

The contempt hung in the air. I considered then that it might be less about concern for his son and more about irritation
at being defied, about having something he owned taken away from his influence. The boy had left under his own steam, or been
removed, and both were equally unacceptable to Anders Baker.

I cleared my throat. ‘Maybe you should tell me about Donovan. What was he doing with himself?’

‘He was doing as little as possible at Bond University. Doing nothing seems to take up all his time.’

‘What was he studying?’ I asked.

He shrugged, all fatherly despair. ‘He started a business degree, but kept changing – I’ve paid more withdrawal fees than
I care to think about. I believe he finally settled on leisure management – what the hell does that even mean?’

‘Beats me. What about friends, from school or uni, maybe?’

‘No friends. The losers from high school who let him tag along because he paid for everything finally dropped him. At uni
even the leeches stayed away.’

‘A girlfriend, then?’

‘What did I just say about leeches?’
Ouch
. ‘Apparently my son’s spinelessness, coupled with my money, still wasn’t enough to attract even the most determined gold-digger.’

He took another swig of his drink and I noticed the whisky was almost gone. There was a good chance his mask would slip further
and his level of aggression would rise. I didn’t fancy being around for that, although not because I couldn’t handle him.
Mindful of his reputation, I just preferred not to.

‘How about any enemies, either yours or his? People who might try getting to you through your son? Any disgruntled employees?’
He shook his head. It occurred to me that any enemies Baker had probably didn’t last, and ex-employees wouldn’t stick around
for fear of being kitted out in a fetching new concrete bathing suit. ‘Do you have a housekeeper, or other domestic staff?’

‘No. I like my privacy. I eat out mostly. An agency sends cleaners once a week.’

I pursed my lips. ‘The guard on your gate – how long has she worked for you?’

‘Almost fifteen years; don’t worry about her.’

That sounded like a fair while for a private security guard to hang around. Maybe Baker offered really good benefits. ‘What
was Donovan doing last time you saw him?’

He hesitated, and that immediately confirmed my suspicion that he didn’t take much notice of his child. It told me he hadn’t
seen Donovan for a few days before he realised the boy had disappeared.

‘I . . . I think I saw him one night a few days before . . .’

I didn’t make him go on. ‘Did he have any hobbies or special interests? Talents?’

‘Wasting money? Taking everything as if it’s his right? He’s as spoilt and useless as his mother.’ The hostility rose a couple
of notches and I followed his gaze to a portrait hanging over the fireplace. A slender blonde stared out from the canvas.
‘Haughty’ just about covered it.

I knew a little bit of the gossip from Bela, a lot more from Ziggi. For ten years or more, Anders Baker had been half of one
of those mismatched power couples you saw all the time in the social pages: Dusana Nadasy, the elegant Weyrd beauty, alongside
a man whose only recommendation was the size of his wallet and his willingness to open it. They’d played together nicely for
a while, long enough to have a child, at least, then things had gone south as battle lines were drawn and the fights started
escalating: she would change the locks on the house, he’d cut up her credit cards; they’d make up for a bit, then it would
all start over again: Dusana sliced the crotches out of his Armani suits; Anders made a bonfire of her Ferragamo shoe collection
. . .

Despite that, Anders Baker remained relatively tolerant, by all accounts – until the year (or even the month) of the pool
boy, the gardener and the tennis instructor, when his patience was finally
exhausted. There was an explosion at their Bridgman Downs mansion, which not only took out the missus, but also said pool
boy, gardener and tennis instructor. It was a messy business, but according to Ziggi, everything was soon settled by a liberal
application of funds in the right places. An inquest verdict of ‘death by misadventure’ was handed down and the newly widowed
Anders Baker took his young son to live at the new family home on the Gold Coast. Since then he’d kept a string of increasingly
young, blonde and not-very-bright mistresses, each of whom was replaced the moment they mentioned marriage or put on weight.

On the drive there Ziggi told me the boy, Donovan, had no power to speak of, and I knew personally how that must have hurt
– when you’re a mixed child, the best thing you can hope for is some kind of ability so the Weyrd will at least pay attention
to you, not write you off completely.

‘Kid seems like a bit of a vacant space, V. Gotta feel sorry for him.’

And I did. I’d lived long enough straddling two worlds; I knew how easy it was to fall between. Donovan Baker had had no one
to offer him a hand, to pull him back up when he fell. And my sympathies didn’t lessen, hearing his father talk about him.
It was becoming clearer and clearer that Baker Senior didn’t know much at all about his son, and it was getting harder and
harder for me to repress my dislike for the man.

‘Can you think of anyone –
anyone
– your son might go to if he was in trouble?’

Baker’s head moved from side to side and his eyes drifted away from the portrait and back to the bar. If I didn’t distract
him he was going to be chugging down another five inches of boozy peaty goodness and that would be my interview done.

‘Relatives?’ I asked loudly.

‘What?’ He looked at me, confused.

‘Are there any relatives Donovan might have gone to see?’ I enunciated.

‘I’m an only child and my family was wiped out in the Second World War. Donovan didn’t have siblings or cousins to grow up
with, no uncles, no aunts, no grandparents.’

‘What about the other side? The Nadasys?’

He snorted. ‘Old families – old and dignified Weyrd in particular – don’t like to acknowledge anyone who marries out of the
fold. They sure as hell don’t like the children of such marriages.’

I couldn’t disagree with that, but I managed to refrain from saying that not too many Normal families were delighted by it
either.

‘My wife was disowned and neither of her parents ever came to visit our son. No one came to his christening; no Christmas
or birthday presents ever mysteriously appeared on the doorstep.’ He stood and paced. The Weyrd weren’t too keen on either
christenings or Christmas, but again, I kept my trap shut. I was doing so well.

‘My son is without anchor, Ms Fassbinder. He’s found no place to belong. Perhaps if his mother had . . .’ He broke off.

I said softly, ‘And what did you do, Mr Baker? To help him?’