She grabbed the vegetables and set them next to the water on the bench, then stood for a moment, figuring he'd tell her where things were. When he didn't, she went looking for the glasses, a knife, a salad bowl and chopping board. She also found some warm, ripe tomatoes, a lemon and a Spanish onion in the fruit bowl, and set to tearing lettuce leaves. She stole glances at him as he worked. Without his cap, dark curls fell into his eyes. He kept wiping them away with his wrist, careful not to touch his hair with his fishy hands. She realised she had never seen him clean-shaven. He always had a dark stubble; she noticed for the first time that it was flecked with just one or two greys. His full lips moved unconsciously as he concentrated completely on the food.
She looked away and checked out his apartment instead, stamping firmly down upon the stupid thought that this felt more like a lunch date than a day at work. We gotta eat, she told herself. Might as well be here as anywhere else.
Actually, this is quite nice, if kind of weird, she thought, looking around the apartment. It felt more like a treehouse than a two-bedroom, third-floor unit in Sydney's northwest. A giant eucalyptus tree that danced literally at the edge of the balcony established the effect. Midway up the tree trunk, the view from the unit was of spinning lime-green leaves and gnarled branches, with just a few glimpses of the sky beyond. This apartment building felt as if it had been surgically inserted into one of the rare pockets of original Sydney bushland.
She drizzled olive oil onto the salad, and walked over towards the balcony to take a better look. Sliding open the glass door, she stepped into a greenhouse, took sips of the green, oxygen-soaked air. Had she dared, she could easily have climbed onto the balustrade and down the knobbly trunk of the huge tree. She could see no sign of other humans living anywhere nearby. She imagined strolling as far as she could see along the bush-gully floor, through fallen leaves and stands of stringybark and gum trees. Half-tempted to do just that, she suddenly noticed a smoke-like shape break away from the base of the tree and hurtle up towards her. She almost stepped back in fear until she recognised the lithe movements. She waited to see where the small cat would go. Within half a second, it sat staring at her from the branch closest to the balcony. Entranced, she froze, and they stared at one another until she had to blink.
The cat sprang silently from the branch to the balcony floor and rubbed its chubby grey cheeks around her ankles. She blinked down at it for a few moments more, hoping it would not run away, and then bent carefully to pat it. There was a rumble of purring, and then the little cat lifted high its tail and sauntered into Gabriel's apartment.
Jill followed it in, leaving the doors open. Inside, from this angle, the room was less remarkable. A couple of squashy lounge chairs and a coffee table, a TV, no dining table. The light in the apartment was a cool, flickering green – the effect of the tree outside, breathing through the room.
'Ten,' said Gabriel, matter-of-factly, from the kitchen.
'Pardon?' she said.
'That's Ten,' he pointed at the floor.
She looked down, lost.
'Oh, the cat!' She finally got it. 'Why do you call it Ten?'
'Her. She's a her,' he said, and then, 'Lunch is ready.'
They ate on the lounge chairs with their plates on their laps. Gabriel had coated thick fingers of the salmon in the most translucent tempura Jill had ever eaten. The fish had barely been cooked through, and when her fork caused the soft pieces to flake apart, she copied Gabriel and ate it with her hands. It was deep-fried, and the delicious sin of this made her lick her salty fingers with each bite.
'You ready to look at the tape?' he asked eventually, the first words either of them had spoken since they'd sat down.
'Huh? Oh, yeah.' She stood. 'That was just… great. Thanks.' She took the dishes to the sink, and tried to rise out of the strange mood that had enveloped her since she'd walked in here. She dropped her fork when she identified the feeling.
She was relaxed.
The knowledge made her hands shake.
23
'AW FUCK, MOUSE, now look what you've done!' Simon Esterhase threw his snooker cue into the rack in disgust. 'I sank the black, man. Why don't you stop bitching for a while? It's getting old.'
'Are you fucking serious?' Dang Huynh, known to most people as Mouse, chewed at his thumbnail. The skin around all of his fingernails was red-raw. 'I'm telling you I can't take anymore of this shit. He's a fucking psycho! What's to stop him from chopping one of us into pieces?'
Esterhase rubbed at his neck. He'd had diarrhoea every day since the Capitol Hill thing, and he just couldn't sleep right. But what was he going to do? Mouse and Tatts were losing it, and it was true that this could get them all killed. They'd all known Cutter was mental since they were kids, but he'd never done anything like this before. Now, though, Esterhase agreed with Mouse that it wouldn't take much for Cutter to turn his radar on them. He winced as images, sounds, flashed into his mind.
Esterhase sat down at his coffee table, chopped up some more pot. The ritual soothed him. He'd smoked twenty cones a day for the past fifteen years. Truth was, now when he had to be straight for some reason, he felt stoned.
Fuck, Mouse had paced the same circle fifty times.
'Man, can you sit down, Mouse? You're making my dick itch.'
'Why did he have to start with the killing? He's not going to stop,' said Mouse. 'How are we going to get out of this? He's going to get caught and we're all going up for fucking murder, man.'
Esterhase knew it. He packed a cone tightly and lit it, his lungs burning as he pulled the hit of marijuana, clean. They had always been scared of Cutter, but you just kind of ignored his sick shit back in the day. They'd all done so much time since then that none of them really knew how bad he'd become. Maybe Cutter didn't even know. The fucker was mad, that was for sure. Esterhase packed another cone.
'Here, Mouse, have this. You'll feel better,' he said, holding the bong out to his friend.
'I don't want it. I'm paranoid enough already!' Mouse wrung his hands. He had dark circles under his eyes and Esterhase noticed grey shot through his greasy dark hair. 'I keep thinking he's gonna break in my house and cut me up.' His voice cracked.
'Well, what do you want to do, Mouse? We go to the cops, we'll go down with him. They won't stop until they get the rest of us.' He lit the bong and had half the cone himself. He stared at Mouse through the smoke, red-eyed. 'We can kill him.'
Esterhase expected Mouse to freak at the suggestion. He, Tatts and Mouse had never done more than give a bloke a good flogging. The machetes were all for show. At least they had been.
Mouse said nothing.
'You wouldn't want to fuck a thing like that up though, now would ya, Mouse?'
'How would we do it?' Mouse's voice was tiny.
'You're fucking kidding me!' Esterhase gave a dead laugh. 'You've thought about it then?'
'What else are we gonna do?' Mouse pleaded. 'We've got to get out of this shit somehow.'
Esterhase looked around his rumpus room. He saw a luxurious, relaxing room to chill out in. In reality, the room was like the rest of the house, crammed with mismatched stolen property, half of it broken, all of it coated in a thin layer of grime. The walls were yellow with cigarette and marijuana smoke.
Esterhase was the pride of his family. The only child to have a job for more than six months straight, and to make it out of the housos. Shit, even his dad had only had a job once for about a year, back when Esterhase was a kid. Removalist too, just like him. But while his father had fucked his back up early, Esterhase had been smart. He'd always got others on the job to do the heavy lifting. The Maoris would work all day for smoko or some speed at knock-off time. And the job was perfect for finding places to do over.