Read Draw the Brisbane Line Online
Authors: P.A. Fenton
Draw the Brisbane Line
Also by P.A. Fenton
Punchline
Cellar Door
Natural Deselection
The Spanner: A Novella
Draw the Brisbane Line
P.A Fenton
Draw the Brisbane Line
First Kindle Edition August 2015
Copyright © 2015 by P.A. Fenton
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form, without the written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organisations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Contents
A body sailed past the harbour view, no more than a desperate reach beyond the balcony rail. It was far too big to be a bird. It could have been window cleaning equipment, or debris from a plane, but Dave had no interest in fighting probability. It was a body.
He pushed himself out of the sweat-polished leather club chair with one hand, and kept a tight grip on the neck of the beer with the other. The chair was one of the few pieces of furniture left in the apartment not boxed or strapped or wrapped-and-ready to go. The TV was packed away, so he spent his time in the chair, aimed at the view through the picture window where the telly used to be: the glittering sweep of the harbour; the constantly shifting tones of the Opera House’s sails; storms approaching and retreating over the Hills district to the north.
And the falling bodies.
There had been three in the last week, always at dawn.
He found his feet as he imagined a muffled, distant thump. He walked to the window, the polished concrete floor cold on his bare feet. He pressed a button on the window frame and the window became a door, sliding into a recess in the wall with a mechanical purr to expose the full length of the balcony. A powerful gust hit him and pushed him back on his heels. If it had happened a few beers later, he’d have been on his arse. This high up, on the forty-second floor of the tallest building in the city, the winds could sometimes move boulders. The glass wind-breakers on the balcony were just high enough to stop any accidental tumbles, but enough of those miniature cyclones thundered over the top of the rim to quell any thoughts of hosting a barbecue out there. They missed that one from the sales pitch:
fantastic entertaining area, but if your guests are a little on the slight side, they might want to strap on a parachute
. That kind of design never would have made it past the many safety regulations so entwined in the construction industry a few years ago. It was amazing how a dose of recession could loosen and slice even the thickest tangles of red tape, if the price was right.
Some of the jumpers landed two or three blocks away when those gusts hit. It made walking the streets in the neighbourhood immediately surrounding the building more of an extreme sport than a cheap alternative to a taxi or city parking.
The rising sun was now bright on the water, reflections bouncing off ripples and cars and windows in a chain reaction of light. Dawn used to be the time of new beginnings, new promise, but he couldn’t think of it like that anymore. Dawn brought the jumping hour.
He inhaled the morning, the sea air and the pollution, and was about to return to his recliner when another gust of wind hurled a body over the balcony rail.
‘Jesusfuck!’ He dropped the beer and it landed with a wet pop.
The body, the man, wore a fine wool pinstripe suit, and when he tried to get to his feet he screamed and fell back down.
‘Ow, shit, my leg,’ he groaned.
‘Your
leg
?’ Dave said. ‘You’re worried about your leg?’
‘It’s my knee,’ Pinstripe said. ‘I’ve had problems with it for years, medial ligament. It’s well and truly fucked now.’
‘Didn’t you … Didn’t you just jump?’
‘No, no. I was admiring the view from my balcony and I slipped and fell over the chest-high barrier.’
Dave stared at him. He wasn’t sure what to say, what to do. Should he call someone? Should he help him up? Offer him a drink? His breathing seemed steady and slow, which was completely at odds with all the adrenaline which must have been pumping through his system. Dave had gone bungee jumping a few times, and the buzz it gave him was incredible, like someone flicked a switch in his central nervous system and sent crazy electricity bouncing through his blood. This guy had just climbed over a glass wind-breaker on his own balcony, balanced on the thin strip of concrete as he dipped the toes of his shoes into the turbulent void between safety and Sydney Harbour, and then let go of that sheet of tempered glass. His heart, it should have been
vibrating
, but the only evidence of what he’d just attempted was his hair. His suit remained buttoned, his tie held in place with a gold tie clip, and he calmly poked at his injured knee with the troubled wince of the weekend sportsman — but that hair, it was a tornado of black and grey cotton.
He must have mistaken Dave’s silent stare for a look of annoyance, because he said, ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to be short with you. I just …
fuck
. Could this be any more screwed up? How can everything have broken down to the point where not even suicide works?’
‘Is suicide supposed to work’ Dave muttered.
‘Hey. Aren’t you Dave Holden?’
‘Um. Yeah.’
‘Oh, wow. You live here?’
‘Yeah, kind of.’
‘I had no idea. James Cain, I live on the sixty-second.’
He held out his hand, and Dave could have no less shaken it than he could have prevented a sneeze. If you played professional sport for even a short time, shaking hands with strangers becomes a reflex. He was retired now, but he had three majors and one Davis Cup, which even he had to admit made him something of a national sporting icon.
James Cain. The name was familiar.
Cain released Dave’s hand. ‘You still playing?’
‘Not really. Occasional charity matches, but my better playing days are behind me. Look, can I get you anything? Do you want me to call an ambulance?’
He knew this guy from somewhere, but he couldn’t place him. The knowing-not-knowing started to irritate the inside of his head.
‘No, thanks mate. I’ll be on my way in a minute.’
He turned to look out at the harbour, through the salt-scaled glass of the balcony fence. Dave looked down at the broken beer bottle on the floor, its contents trickling slowly towards the edge.
‘I should clean that up,’ Dave said.
He wished he’d never opened that beer. It just seemed like the kind of thing he should do, now that he was alone and sad. All it gave him was a sour taste in his mouth and acid reflux. A failed experiment then.
‘Look,’ Cain said. ‘Could I … could I ask you a favour?’
‘Sure.’
‘Could you give me a hand up?’
‘Of course, no problem, no problem.’
He stepped over to Cain and supported him under his arm as he got to his feet. Cain grimaced, and Dave felt his pain — he’d suffered the same injury three times in his playing days. Cain tested his leg and sucked air through his teeth. He was a big guy, overweight by at least twenty kilos, and Dave couldn’t see him getting around anywhere without crutches.
‘I have some crutches inside,’ Dave said. ‘Leftovers from the last hamstring injury. You want me to get them?’
‘No, no point, really. Could you just give me a boost?’
Dave let go of his arm. He took half a step back and waited for the laughter.
‘Did you say
boost
?’
‘I just need to get over the rail, but it’s too high up. What is it, five feet? In my younger days I could have pulled myself up, but now …’ He patted his belly. ‘Gravity is not on my side. And now this fucking knee, you know?’
‘Mate, I’m
not
giving you a boost over my balcony.’
‘Oh, come on mate. I’d do the same for you.’
‘I don’t
want
you to do the same for me. I don’t want to jump.’
‘Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just that …’
‘Just that what?’
‘I thought you were, you know,
building up to it
.’
‘Building up to it?’ Jesus Christ mate, I’m not planning on jumping.’
Cain shook his head, and a pained smile flashed Dave his too-perfect teeth. ‘No, no, neither was I. Why would I? I’ve done pretty well for myself, in general. I’m separated from my wife now, but we raised a couple of girls now in their teens, they do well at school, they’re popular. So why would I jump? You tell me.
Why would I jump
?’
Dave knew the answer. He’d have preferred not to answer it, but the man had asked him. Dave had never been able to ignore a question asked of him — he was a sports journalist’s dream interview.
‘Because everything has gone to shit,’ Dave said. He rubbed his eyes, tried not to think about Jenny, about the empty void his life was threatening to become.
‘Bingo. Everything has gone to shit. Anyone who had their future tied to my company is now facing an old age propped up by the thinnest of government support.’ He laughed. ‘You know, when the property market started to crash, my brilliant daughters thought it would be an ideal time to exploit those less fortunate. You know what they wanted me to do? They wanted me to buy them a holiday house in Noosa. They didn’t quite understand that it wasn’t just a case of property prices taking a nosedive. They didn’t
get
that property was taking the banks with it. When I tried to explain this to them, you know what they said to me? They called me a fucking loser. A
fucking loser
! I’m just glad they said it to me over the phone. If they’d been here, I don’t know. They were probably just parroting their mother, so I shouldn’t hate them for it. I don’t need to explain the economics of the situation to you though, do I? Your brother’s been predicting all this for years.’
Dave’s brother. He was probably floating six inches off the ground right now, Dave thought, supported by the lift of his own self-satisfaction. Where precisely he might be, Dave could only guess — perhaps sensing a great deal of anger focused in his direction and wielded like a club by those who might mistakenly think he had some hand in bringing this down on the collective head of the country, Tom Holden had apparently gone into hiding. Dave had no idea why Tom would decide to disappear when he was already ensconced within the safety of Manhattan and the UN Security Council. Maybe he’d gone to ground so no-one would see him coming as he made his surprise-attack bid for party leadership, and the number one job that came with it.
Everyone had been asking Dave where Tom had gone. TV reporters, journalists, bloggers, gossip hounds, friends and distant relatives — they all seemed to think that twins were supposed to
sense
these things, as though Dave could close his eyes and lead them right to him, like a human divining rod.
‘And as if this economic collapse wasn’t enough, now there’s
this
. This bloody
invasion
talk. Yanks are gearing up for something up north, and if you believe the crazies, we’re about to be invaded by Indonesia.’
Dave snorted a laugh. ‘Maybe a bit of media scaremongering to pressure the government to throw more in the defence budget.’
‘Throw
what
in the defence budget? And from
where
? Have you seen where Australia’s debt rating is currently sitting? We’re alongside Greece right now.
Greece
.’
‘So why the big arrival of US forces? We’ve got enough of our own.’
Cain twirled his hands, as though looping news down from the air and wrapping it around his fingers. ‘They’re saying it’s all part of Force Posture. Military coordination and cooperation, some shit like that. But the bigger rumours and fear-mongers are pointing shaking fingers in the direction of China and North Korea. Haven’t you been watching the news?’
‘Nah, TV’s been packed away for days. I’m moving out at the end of the week.’
‘Yeah, where are you going?’
Dave laughed. ‘Noosa, actually. Initially. I’ve got a place up there by the beach. Thought it might do me some good for a while, you know? Hole myself up there and just try to clear the shit out of my head. Now I’m thinking I might try to sell that place too. You know anyone looking to buy?’
‘Yeah, a couple of over-privileged tweens who are about to be very disappointed to learn their father’s life insurance policy won’t pay out on suicide.’
They both laughed and looked out over the balcony’s edge as a distant siren came warbling up to them. A bird dived past the glass barrier, a sea eagle, and both men turned to watch it level off and drift down towards the harbour, heaved up every so often by an updraft, and the way the bird moved with the gusts it seemed to be almost surfing the random currents.
‘So are you going to give me a boost or what?’
‘What if I don’t?’
Cain looked around the balcony space. ‘I could always drag over one of those outdoor chairs you have there. Looks heavy — what is it, iron? I’ll probably cause myself more pain doing it, but eventually I’ll get it up to the glass. Quicker and quieter if you just help me.’
‘You know, as ways to go out go,’ Dave said. ‘This is pretty selfish. You might kill someone on the ground.’
‘Unlikely at this hour. And yeah, I thought of pills, hanging, the razor. You know why I settled on the jump? I was up one morning, kind of like you are now, and a jumper went straight past me.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I was out on the balcony, having an early coffee, and this guy whips past me in a flapping bathrobe and nothing else. It took me by surprise, I can tell you. But you know what? I swear the guy was whooping as he went past. He was having
fun
. And I thought to myself, if I’m going to go out, that’s how I want to go.’