‘Yes, the sun—they sent us there to play. It was wintertime here. Cold.’
Stevie stared blankly at the old lady. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’
Mrs Hardegan’s pursed her lips. Flexing her fingers she took on an impatient tone. ‘They sent us to that place that has the animals with long noses, very sunny, and we went on a car with wings.’
Leaving the tapestry for a moment, she riffled through her picture cards, withdrawing a child-like picture of an aeroplane. ‘A car with wings,’ she explained as she pointed to several cross shapes hanging upon her tapestry sky.
‘You went on a plane?’
Mrs Hardegan briefly turned her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Yes, clever boy,’ she said as if talking to her parrot. ‘They put us on the car. Paid for us to go here...’ The picture card she reached for now depicted a holiday scene: sea, sand, buckets and spades.
Ah, of course, the sun. ‘They paid for you to go on holiday—where did you go?’
She pointed to a circular tangle of grey wool situated on the brown exes of earth. The grey blob had something long and thin sticking out from its top. ‘We went to the land of the long noses where the snoodle pinkerds live.’ Christ, sounded like something Dr Seuss might have dreamed up. Stevie massaged her brow and tried to think.
Long noses, elephants, Thailand—they sent her to Thailand! Oh God, now she understood. Jon and Ralph had used Lilly as an unknowing escort for their girls, generously paying for her holidays to Thailand. What immigration official would question the papers of a young girl who couldn’t speak English, escorted by an innocent old lady? They’d used her as their mule, in the same way dealers planted their drugs in the luggage of innocent passengers to move them from A to B.
‘We were told they were coming here to work in those zoos belonging to the boy,’ Mrs Hardegan said.
Stevie stared at her hands as she puzzled this out: a zoo, a place where a variety of creatures live. ‘You were told they were going to work at Jon Pavel’s nightclub?’ That was an easy one.
The old lady nodded. Maybe Stevie was getting the hang of this after all. Much of Mrs Hardegan’s language, she realised, did contain a strange kind of logic.
‘And food places,’ Mrs Hardegan said. ‘He makes long-nose food too.’
‘A Thai restaurant?’
‘Indeed. And the boy with the small boy was bringing him over for them to adopt.’
‘So, you escorted several girls over here. But when it came to the girl, Mai, you thought she was bringing the baby over on behalf of the adoption agency?’
‘That is correct.’ Lilly sniffed and pulled a tissue from her sleeve. ‘And then I thought he stayed on to help as a maid person. We did not know he was a prisoner. And then he left and the small boy stayed. We are a stupid, ignorant old boy—all those poor snoodle pinkerds. The boy told us what we’d done and then we had the brain thing. We had to help that snoodle pinkerd and his small one—so very small. He came to see us and asked for our help and when we tried, no one would believe us.’ Mrs Hardegan closed her eyes for a moment. They flew open again as an electrical sound clattered through a speaker in the wall near the chair. The doorbell.
‘Food,’ Mrs Hardegan said in response to Stevie’s raised eyebrow. ‘We have an order—every week we like to have long-nose food.’
She lifted her tapestry and opened the sewing basket underneath, peeled some notes from a rolled up wad of cash and attempted to press them into Stevie’s hand.
Stevie patted the wallet in her jeans pocket and said, ‘No, Lilly, this is on me.’ Paying for the old lady’s takeaway was the least she could do. ‘I’ll get it.’
The old lady accepted the offer, settled back in her chair and closed her eyes again.
Long-nose food. Stevie shook her head, smiling, and made her way down the passageway towards the silhouette on the other side of the frosted glass door. (Image 29.1)
Image 29.1
CHAPTER THIRTY
Stevie opened the deadbolt and smiled at the face under the porch light. The woman from the deli smiled back and held up a plastic bag of takeaway.
‘Great service—Eva, isn’t it?’ Stevie asked.
‘That’s right, love. And this is pad thai, the old dear’s favourite. I’ll bring it in, like to say hello if you don’t mind. Haven’t seen her for a while.’
Stevie reached out to relieve Eva of the food. Stopped. Her hand hung in the air and she looked at the woman through the sepulchral light.
Shit. She knew that face.
When she’d first met the woman, the gapped front teeth made her think Madonna. Now she saw it as the sign of Venus, the goddess of love. Of all the surgical changes, this would be the one original feature someone in her profession would choose to retain.
Stevie took a quick step forward to bar the woman’s entrance. Hooking her foot around the door she attempted to close it, hoping the deadbolt would buy Lilly some time.
A blow like a bag of wet cement to her shoulder cut off her warning cry. She fell back into the hallway and cracked her head on the corner of the bookcase. Barely clinging to consciousness, she heard a loud crash. The door was kicked fully open, books toppled to the ground. A tall man stepped through the doorway and turned on the light. Stevie moaned and attempted to move. A kick to the stomach drove the wind from her. Curled into a ball on the musty hall carpet she closed her eyes and fought for breath. Oh God, we’re going to die.
When she opened her eyes again she was looking at a pair of grey-booted feet and grey dress pants. Looked like expensive material—Zegna? Monty had always fancied a Zegna suit. She never understood why, he’d have wrecked it within a few days, spilled sauce or red wine down the front—Jesus, the things that go through the mind when you’re about to die.
Rough hands pulled her to her feet. She felt the stitches in her shoulder stretch then snap. A tide of warm blood rushed down her back. The hallway spun. She found herself half pushed, half carried down the passageway to Mrs Hardegan’s backroom.
The old woman looked up and let out a startled cry. The man hurled Stevie to the ground at her feet.
‘Bloody Japs! Bloody Japs!’ the parrot screamed.
The blast of a shotgun tore the cage apart, shattering the air around them. Stevie held her breath and waited for the second blast that never came. With her ears still ringing, she attempted to pull herself up from the floor and failed.
A cloud of smoke filled the room, sucking at the air. Stevie struggled for breath thinking she must have been hit. The pain in her shoulder was excruciating and felt far worse than the original injury. Bolts of light streaked across her eyes.
She sagged against the side of Mrs Hardegan’s armchair. Everything had happened so quickly, she was having trouble grasping quite what was going on. She became aware of a bony hand pressing at her undamaged shoulder—Lilly throwing her a lifeline, warning her to stay put.
The smoke cleared, Stevie finally found her focus. The man was tall and very good looking, which was a ridiculous thing to think under the circumstances. He wore a finely striped business shirt with no tie, sleeves rolled to the elbows revealing muscles thick as twisted rope. The shotgun held casually at his hip was pointed towards the middle of Stevie’s chest.
The Crow.
Jennifer Granger, aka the Mamasan, stood by his side. Stevie leaned against the chair, only a metre away from the woman’s shapely legs, small feet pressed into stilettos.