Halfway across the street, Spider stopped abruptly and bent to the driver’s window of a black Saab. As I caught him up, he reached inside and snatched a car phone from the ear of the driver and began punching in numbers. The chinless wonder behind the wheel couldn’t believe it. Spluttering, he tried to open his door, demanding his toy back. Spider held the car door shut with his foot and clamped the phone to one of his auricular protuberances. ‘C’mon, c’mon,’ he urged. Then, quickly, ‘He’s headed for Lambert’s place. Get there fast. He’s finally flipped.’
He tossed the mobile back into the Saab driver’s lap and sprinted for the trams. The lights went green, air-brakes hissed and the front tram lurched forward. Spider swung himself aboard just as the door began to glide shut.
I wasn’t so fast. I raced alongside and swung myself up onto the running board. The tram was crowded. Standing room only. It crossed the intersection, gaining momentum, headed for Princes Bridge. Faces peered out at me, some amused, some alarmed. The door slid open and a rough hand hauled me aboard.
‘You in a hurry?’ the conductor scowled. She had a nose ring and was wearing acid-proof work boots with her green uniform skirt and blouse. ‘Ta!’ I said and began shouldering my way into the press of hot bodies, pursuing Spider towards the front of the carriage.
My fellow passengers parted before me like the Red Sea. And with good reason. My grime-streaked shirt-tails were hanging out. I was clutching my throbbing right shoulder with a swollen red hand. My half-healed ear had started bleeding again. I was panting heavily. And an aromatic wet patch extended down my trouser leg from crotch to knee. Apart from everything else that had happened in the preceding twenty minutes, I had evidently contrived to piss myself.
Spider had got as far as the front window. He was squeezed between a couple of strap-hanging white-collar types, doing his best to pretend he didn’t know me. ‘Piss off,’ he hissed, squaring his glasses on the bridge of his nose, smoothing his hair and twiddling his jewellery. I pushed myself right up against him. The salary-men cringed back and averted their eyes. ‘Persistent bastard, aren’t you?’ Spider muttered, craning over the heads of the seated passengers, monitoring the passing cars on the road outside.
‘You’d better believe it,’ I warned. ‘And until I get some answers, I’m sticking to you like shit to a blanket.’
Spider shrank back, but he started talking. ‘Eastlake’s been tickling the till,’ he said. ‘He syphoned Obelisk Trust funds into his own account and used them to play the stock market. It worked okay for a while. But when the crash happened in October ’87 he lost the lot. Ever since then, he’s been running a round-robin, paying Obelisk depositors their dividends out of their own capital. Karlcraft Developments was his only hope for a big win, a way to cover his losses. He lent the project every penny he could raise. As long as Karlin stayed afloat, he had a chance of survival. Now that Karlin’s folded, the whole Obelisk house of cards will fall over. Eastlake’s looking not only at personal financial ruin but prison time for fraud.’
‘He’s also been selling forged art,’ I said, not to be entirely outdone. ‘He’s been using a front called Austral Fine Art.’ The guy had just tried to kill me, so I was keen to sink the boot in.
Spider pushed my head aside, tracking a stream of passing cars. ‘We know all about Austral,’ he said. ‘That’s why we suspect he killed Taylor.’
Spider’s metamorphosis was happening a bit fast for me. ‘What do you mean “we”? Who’s “we”?’
The tram was hurtling down St Kilda Road at a steady clip, approaching the war memorial. The greenery of the parkland raced along beside us. It wasn’t the only thing. As we slowed to disgorge passengers one stop short of the turn into Domain Road, a blue Mercedes sped by, a grim-faced Lloyd Eastlake at the wheel. Spider began elbowing his way to the door, me right behind him. The conductor blocked our way. ‘Fez please.’
I fumbled in my pocket. Spider pulled out a wallet and flipped it in her face. She was looking at it sceptically when I reached past and dumped a fistful of change in her palm. ‘Two all-day travel cards, please,’ I said. The tram rounded the corner and accelerated up the slight incline of Domain Road. As the connie punched our tickets, I reached up and jerked the communication cord. The tram’s clicketty-clack crescendo reached its peak and it began to decelerate. The door slid open.
Eastlake’s Mercedes was pulled up on the park side of the road. It was empty, its boot open. Spider hit the bitumen running. Me too.
I ran around the back of the tram and narrowly beat a stream of oncoming traffic to the footpath in front of Lambert’s block of flats. When I looked back, Spider was still on the far side of the road. He’d thrown open the Merc’s driver-side door and was reaching across to the glove compartment.
Fiona Lambert was not a nice person. But if Eastlake did anything violent to her, it would be because of what I’d told him. I turned and started into the flats, almost colliding with the old chook with the schnauzer. ‘Well I never!’ she exclaimed, clutching the hapless pooch to her bosom.
‘Me neither,’ I said, and started running up the stairs.
The door of Fiona Lambert’s flat sat carelessly half-open. Behind it, bananas were being gone in no uncertain terms. The sound was coming from the direction of the bedroom. ‘Bitch!’ Eastlake’s voice was shrill with indignation. ‘To think that I killed for you.’
The spare key was in the lock. Fiona Lambert’s security consciousness was appalling. ‘You’re crazy,’ she was saying, over and over, sounding very convincing.
I was all ears, panting, imagining the scenario, figuring the options. Shivers were running up and down my spine. Eastlake had a lead of, what, five minutes. Time enough to burst in, launch into a truth and consequences confrontation, maybe get rough. A glass container shattered. Definitely get rough.
He was having a busy few days with the rough stuff, Chairman Lloyd. Getting quite a taste for it. The targets were easy. Marcus Taylor, drunk and emotional. Giles Aubrey, frail and disposable. And me. I’d gone to him like a lamb to the slaughter. He’d been showing me some public art and I’d gone too close to the edge. Dangerous places, building sites.
But the motive here was different. With Taylor and Aubrey and me, it had been about money and staying out of prison. This was personal. He’d called me a liar back there at the construction site, but he’d been quick to believe. The seeds of doubt must already have been there, waiting to flower. Deep-seated doubts about his true worth, perhaps. A self-esteem problem. Something to do with the business that transpires between rich men and expensive women.
Money, reputation, ego, sex. If he couldn’t have it any more, nobody would. No premeditation here, no calculating the odds. Now it was all just cataclysmic rage. ‘Take it, take it,’ Fiona was crying. ‘It’s yours. Take it.’
She’d folded, shown him the money. Bad move, sister. It wouldn’t satisfy him, only prove the point that the whole world was against him. The deck stacked. The game over.
A shoe box of petty cash wouldn’t fix anything. The raw sound of a slap came through the door.
Spider’s running footsteps echoed up the stairs towards me. Time for the Coalition Against Domestic Violence to start getting pro-active. I pushed the door open and entered the flat. An ornamental candlestick sat on the hall table, a drooping blob of burnished silver. I snatched it up and began down the hall. ‘Don’t. Please don’t,’ Fiona Lambert was begging.
I stepped into the bedroom doorway. What I saw is fixed forever in my mind.
Eastlake had his back to me. He was bending slightly at the waist, one arm thrust out rigidly in front of him. Fiona Lambert was beside the bed, one knee on the floor as if genuflecting. She’d been showering. Again. A very hygienic girl. Her hair was half-dried and she had a pale yellow towel wrapped around her body. One hand was clutching it closed. The other was raised to her cheek, touching a blazing red welt. Her eyes were as big as dinner plates and she was doing her effortless best to look tremendously contrite. A shattered jar oozed moisturising cream onto the carpet.