A Dark Place to Die (7 page)

Koop knows enough to stop his first instinct which is to grab Thommo by the back of his stupid dreadlocks and break his sun-blistered nose across the bar. Instead he walks away and sits down. Only amateurs react. Thommo's toast. He just doesn't know it yet.

Thommo and his oppo are creased up. Koop's retreat has signalled open season and attracted the attention of the barman who shrugs apologetically. Koop makes a 'what-can-you-do' gesture before leaving, the sounds of the two drinkers ringing in his ears. Whipped.

'Didn't think so,' says Thommo as he passes. 'Bye bye, you fucken pussy.'

Koop doesn't reply. He wants Thommo to think it's
over. Wants the barman to think it's over. In case what's going to happen ends badly.

Outside, the car park deserted, Koop gets into his truck and backs it into a shaded patch behind the pub dumpster and waits, checking the delivery manifest to pass the time.

He doesn't have to wait long. Fifteen minutes later, Thommo stumbles into the car park and fumbles for his keys next to a dilapidated ute. Koop winds down his window and calls him over, making sure they have the place to themselves.

Thommo looks around.

'What the fuck?' he says. 'What do you want?'

Koop holds his palm up in a conciliatory gesture and opens up the passenger side door.

'Mate, we just got off on the wrong foot, OK?' Koop says, putting a wheedling tone into his voice. He leans over, hand out. 'No hard feelings, right?'

Thommo is positively swaggering now. He leans into the cab of Koop's truck. 'So your missus does knock off that Jap bitch? I fucken knew it! I saw them swimming in the creek once. I'll say this, she's got a body on her. For an old bird.'

Koop forces a tight smile onto his face and looks down at his outstretched hand. An invitation. Thommo takes it and, as he does so, Koop jerks him sharply forward, headbutting him square in the nose. Blood spurts out and Thommo grunts, disbelieving, as Koop grabs his dreads and smashes his face down onto his knee. Koop drags the unconscious Thommo into the cab and pushes him into the passenger footwell.

Koop checks the windscreen has no splashes of blood visible and drives slowly out of the pub car park. The
remaining two deliveries on Koop's manifest for that afternoon will have to wait.

He's got plans for Thommo.

The morning has passed quickly for Zoe.

She always enjoys this stage of a project, when the arguing has been done, the arm-twisting is over, and the final designs are being tweaked and polished. All the components for the BritArt project are arranged around her, both physically and onscreen. Zoe surveys her handiwork and tries to see the potential flaws, the areas that the client will find difficult, but she sees nothing that shouldn't be there. It's good work, an elegant and clever solution. She and the guys in the Brisbane office will do the final presentation at GOMA on Tuesday and Zoe knows it will be received well.

She opens up a chat link with the Brisbane office and the face of Suze, one of her designers, appears. Zoe methodically goes over the details of what they're going to need for the Tuesday presentation. Behind Suze, Tom, the second of her team, flits backwards and forwards in front of a table piled with design printouts.

'You staying overnight on Monday, Zoe?' Suze asks.

'Probably. Depends on how organised I am, Suze. But, yes, most likely.'

Zoe glances up and out through the window as something catches her peripheral vision. A car turns into the property and Zoe tenses.

A police car.

'Suze, I have to go. Talk to you later.'

Suze waves. 'Speak soon.'

Zoe closes the chat window, instinctively saves the work onscreen and stands up, her hands smoothing the front of her blouse.

Years of life with a cop means she knows that the police arriving unannounced at your door is seldom something that turns out well. She breathes deeply and tries not to think about what they want, but in her head is one word, repeating over and over.

Koop. Koop. Koop.

The roads around the shire are noted for accidents, and she has a sudden image of her husband dead or dying, surrounded by grim-faced paramedics. She picks up her mobile, her hands trembling, and dials her husband.

'Shit.'

Koop looks at Thommo who is crying. At least, Koop thinks he's crying. It's hard to tell. Thommo has his hand cupped over his nose and his face is a streaky mess of snot, blood, matted hair and tears. He is crouched on the grass in a paddock hidden from view off Friday Hut Road. He is naked.

'You broke my fuggen dose, man!'

Koop leans across and pats Thommo on the shoulder. Thommo flinches like a whipped dog, any fight in him long gone.

'You got lucky,' says Koop.

'Lucky? How the fug is dis lucky, you fuggen loony! You're goin' down, you crazy fug! The fuggen pigs'll be round once I . . .'

Koop puts a finger to his lips and holds his gaze on Thommo. He leans in close and Thommo flinches. Thommo stops talking, his eyes wide.

'No, that's not going to happen, sunshine,' says Koop. 'Two reasons. First, as you'll have noticed, you are bollock naked and ten kilometres from home. You've got more chance of being arrested for lewd behaviour than ratting out any story about me. Second, and this is where I want you to pay attention, you little ball of pus, if I get any heat from anyone over this little . . . etiquette lesson, I may have to let the police in on your little secret.'

'Secret? What fuggen secret?'

Koop jabs his finger into Thommo's chest. 'Don't act stupid,
Thommo
. I worked drugs for twenty-five years. I chewed up and spat out grubs like you quicker than I could find 'em. The amount of hydroponic supplies you've got knocking about your place means you're either an overenthusiastic cucumber grower, or you're farming a nice batch of weed in that slum you call home. It's a miracle you haven't been busted already. But, being a reasonable man, I'm willing to let things drop at this point if you are. OK? Now nod.'

Thommo nods and Koop straightens up. He gets back into the truck leaving Thommo staring up at him through a tangle of dirty hair.

'Wait!' says Thommo, scrambling to his feet, realisation dawning, his fear-shrivelled dick bouncing pathetically in a tangle of pubic hair. 'You can't leave me here like this, mate! Mate!'

Koop guns the engine and pulls away. He leans through the window and waves. 'I think you'll find I just have,
mate.'

As Thommo fades into the distance in Koop's rear-view mirror, his mobile phone blurts into life.

'Oh thank God,' says Zoe as he picks up on the second ring.

'Zoe?' says Koop. 'What is it?' Her voice has a panicky quality that he hasn't heard before, and following so closely on the heels of his run-in with Thommo, it rattles him.

'It's alright, Koop. It's just that the police are here and I . . .'

'The police? What do they want?'

'I don't know. They haven't come in yet. I was working and then I saw them and I, well I just thought the worst. Gave me a shock. You know what I mean.'

Koop knows what it could mean, what it often did mean. He's thought before about what it must be like to be on the receiving end of the news they brought into people's houses, like plague carriers. Dead fathers, brothers, mothers, daughters. The victims more often men than women. And the messenger frequently met with anger or bitterness, a couple of times with actual physical assault.

'I've got to go,' says Zoe. 'They're at the door.'

She hangs up and Koop speaks into dead air.

'I'm on my way.'

Ten minutes later Koop pulls sharply into the gravel driveway and revs the ute up the sharp incline. He parks next to the police car and hurries into the house, his face set.

'In the kitchen,' shouts Zoe. Koop relaxes fractionally. Her voice, while containing something he can't yet place, doesn't contain enough to panic him.

Koop walks through to the large open kitchen that is the de facto centre of the Koopman house. Two uniformed policemen sit on stools drinking coffee, their hats upside down on the counter. They're in the process of standing up when Koop comes in. He exchanges glances with Zoe but finds he can't read her expression.

'Mr Koopman?' says the taller of the two, a beefy, red-faced man in his late thirties. He holds out a hand which Koop shakes. 'Sergeant Sullivan, Northern Rivers Police, as you can see. Good to meet you. This is Constable Wheater.'

Koop leans across and shakes Wheater's hand.

'Now what's this all about? Is anyone hurt?'

Sullivan hesitates and glances at Zoe. 'No, no-one's hurt, Mr Koopman,' he says. 'Well, no, that's not quite accurate.'

'For God's sake,' says Koop. 'What is it?'

Zoe steps forward and puts a hand on Koop's arm.

'It's Stevie.'

8

Stevie is such a very long time ago, and so far away, that the story has acquired the air of a fairy tale that happened to someone else. Except it wasn't a fairy tale. It had happened, and it had happened to him, and is still the most painful thing Menno Koopman has ever experienced.

The music of the period sometimes jolts him backwards in a vertiginous flush of synaptic connections. Something like the snap drum intro to Bowie's 'Young Americans' can take Koopman right back to 1975 and to Sharon and Stevie.

Sharon had been a looker, not a doubt about that. Koop doesn't really remember the physical details of what she looked like, other than a vague recollection of blonde hair, flicked back Farrah Fawcett-style, but he remembers the feeling he got when he saw her. It could be summed up in one word.

Sex.

Sweet sixteen but Sharon had most definitely been kissed. Koop hadn't had any illusions that he was the first, but he was the first who'd managed to get Sharon Carroll pregnant. They'd been standing against the iron gates of
Hillside High up on Breeze Hill when she told him. He still had pimples.

'We'll get married,' he'd said, not knowing what else to say and not wanting to appear as he was: a scared-shitless teenager. 'I'm goin' in the police. It'll be alright.' It was an assertion, nothing more. Even as the words came out of his mouth Koop remembers thinking that things probably wouldn't be alright. Fucking pregnant! Jesus.

If Sharon noticed his hesitation she didn't say anything. She'd agreed. It had felt like a plan. Grown up. It would be alright.

'Alright,' she said. 'OK.'

Sharon's family had other ideas.

After a gut-churning scene between his and Sharon's parents one night in their cramped terraced house – an evening that still had the power to bring a blush to Koop's face – almost as soon as Stevie was born, the Carrolls had emigrated, seemingly overnight, to Australia; one of the last contingent of the ten-pound Poms.

Koop had formed half-baked heroic ideas about following Sharon over there, of becoming an Australian, of making his new life with his woman and his baby. He'd even got as far as turning up at the Cunard Buildings to find out about applications.

But he was seventeen. And at seventeen the pain had subsided shamefully quickly.

A year after Stevie's birth Koop heard through a school friend, who'd also made the move down under, that Sharon was pregnant again and had married a local. She discouraged Koop's attempts to contact Stevie as he grew older and, in all honesty, Koop had been glad. He hadn't the heart to interfere. He hoped Sharon and Stevie were making a go of things and, once he'd started work as a
cadet, had begun sending money to Australia. The envelopes came back, scrawled 'return to sender' and, year after year, little by little, Koop's will lessened. Doing the right thing was complicated, slippery, and he'd never been sure he'd managed it, or even come close.

It hadn't, in the end, been his to do. It was up to Sharon and Sharon's new family to decide, and what they'd decided was best was for Koop to fade from Stevie's life as if he'd never existed.

Koop had supposed that Stevie might, if told, eventually show some interest in following up the trail of his real father, but it had never happened. Years became decades, the details of Stevie's life being drip-fed in ever-decreasing snippets of hard-won information, and although Koop tried to conjure up the appropriate feelings it had always felt false, as if he were feigning interest. He thought of Stevie frequently, often in idealised terms. And, ever since moving to Australia himself, had once or twice entertained fanciful notions of tracing him (it would be easy) and entering his life, a late flowering of filial affection.

It had been Zoe who'd gently shown him how potentially destructive this could be, not just for Stevie but for Koop himself. Zoe who –

'Mr Koopman?'

It's Sullivan and Koop is back in his kitchen. He coughs and straightens his back.

'Stevie?' he says, looking Sullivan in the eye. 'What's happened? Why are you guys here?'

Sullivan licks his lips and flicks a glance in Zoe's direction. Koop knows what's coming isn't going to be any kind of good.

'They found a body,' says Zoe. 'In Liverpool.'

9

It's taken six weeks for the container ship
Scanda-Hap
, registered under an Indonesian flag, to make the trip from Liverpool via Hamburg and Singapore. Right now she's pushing south hard down the east coast of Australia and is less than three days from berthing in Brisbane. The ship rolls easily through a moderate swell, the bulk of her load automotive, almost all of it cars from the Jaguar and Ford factories in Liverpool. In Singapore they'd unloaded a third of the cargo and filled up with an assortment of other goods, all sealed in containers and only distinguishable by the coded tracking system.

Three particular containers, stowed by prior arrangement in the centre of a three-storeyed stack, are of special interest to the ship's cargo officer who is receiving a large sum of money to ensure that they're delivered to the right person without attracting the attention of customs officials.

The cargo officer, a jittery Pole who makes more from this trip than he makes in a year of regular work, had inspected the containers himself once the voyage was underway and had found them to contain exactly what they specified: three expensive, brand new Jaguars. No
doubt there is more to it than that but he knows enough to reseal the containers and think about it no more.