Читать книгу Blood Guilt - Lindy Cameron - Страница 6

'Bourke Street, Monday night. 11 p.m. to be exact. 26 degrees and no breeze.' Kit switched the walkperson's record button off while she argued with the top of the esky which was sitting on the passenger seat beside her. 'For God's sake I just want a drink, let me in.' She thumped the lid with one hand at the same time as her jiggling of the handle with the other released the catch. The lid leapt out the open window and landed in the gutter. 'Oh fine, if that's the way you feel,' she said getting out of the car to retrieve it.

'Right now, where was I?' she said, settling back in the driver's seat. She twisted the top off a bottle of mineral water and switched the record button back on.

'Monday night, 11.05. Still no breeze. Geoffrey Robinson, the portly Miles Denning and Mr Zaber Ink himself were the first to arrive for what appears to be a purely social evening. They were joined over the next 15 minutes, by Marjorie Finlay - the power-dressed marketing director desperately in need of sensible shoes; Greg, the blimp, Fulton - desperately enamoured of Marjorie Finlay; a tall, elegantly-dressed, grey-eyed woman who was obviously desperately interested in everything that went on around her, despite her detached manner; and a petite blonde who, although obviously desperate about her life in general, made only a few half-hearted attempts to distract Fulton's attention from the impressive Marjorie F, who in actual fact was directing all her attention towards Geoffrey. Here they come. End transmission!'

Kit turned her attention to the doorway across the street. The Stone Garden was one of those first floor city restaurants accessed by a long flight of stairs from an inconspicuous door at street level. Staking out such an establishment was next to impossible unless all you wanted to do was record the comings and goings and not the goings on. So Kit had reserved a table for two and, after convincing her brother Michael that getting a free meal would be worth the effort of finding a clean shirt, she had arrived a good fifteen minutes before the group from OHP.

While Michael had pushed sushi around his plate and discussed his ideas of light, colour and the cosmic inspiration of his latest painting, Kit had kept her eyes and half her mind focussed on the Robinson entourage. Apart from giving her a chance to see the public, or rather socially acceptable, side of Geoffrey it had also made it easier to know who to photograph leaving the restaurant. Which was what they were doing now, a good hour after Kit had sent Michael home in a taxi.

The first to leave was the grey-eyed woman who strolled up the street alone and climbed into a Stag. Next to emerge was Greg Fulton and the little blonde, followed shortly after by the rest of the group. There was a lot of laughing and shaking of hands in the street before Marjorie Finlay and William Zaber set off in one direction and Geoffrey and Miles Denning the other.

Kit started her car but waited till they had walked round the corner before making a U-turn to follow Geoffrey. Denning was standing beside the Bentley waiting for Geoffrey to unlock the doors. Next stop, The Patrician. The alley Kit had used on Saturday was occupied by a beat up old Holden so she had to park down the street a little in a No Standing Zone.

Half an hour later Kit grabbed her camera to get a shot of one of the city's new breed of boy wonders leaving one of the city's oldest boys' clubs. Kit recognised Ian Dalkeith from two photographs she'd seen in the weekend papers. One had shown him hobnobbing with all the right people at a recent polo match, obviously trying to polish off a few of his rough edges. The other had accompanied a short article describing in typically vague terms the re-development plans for Dalkeith's latest acquisition. Several hectares of disused docklands would eventually be transformed into 'a state of the art integrated business and residential district worthy of Melbourne's position in the international market place' - whatever the hell that meant.

It appeared the young property developer was cultivating a public persona. Two years ago the press would have said 'Ian Who?' But now there were two things about the boy-from-Nowhere, that mythical place not found on any map, that the social pages at least could not ignore: he was very, very rich and very, very handsome. For the life of her Kit couldn't work out how a 40-year-old parvenu from the world of real estate had become friends with a 54-year-old wanker from the publishing industry. Unless of course they had first met in the front seat of Geoffrey's Bentley! But that would be too weird.

Kit was beginning to wonder just what went on amongst the Patricians that prompted Geoffrey to follow a couple of hours at his club with a few quick thrills in St Kilda. For there he was again, cruising along the gutter, checking out the local merchandise. The punk from Saturday night, or at least it looked like the same guy, stuck his head through the open window of the Bentley but was obviously not the desired flavour for the night. He stepped back from the car and pointed down the street, whereon Geoffrey pulled out into the traffic and then parked one block further down.

Kit watched as Geoffrey just sat there, waving off the approaches of a couple of perfectly acceptable sex workers, until a tall redhead sashayed passed his car - expertly ignoring him. 'Hooked you, you jerk-off,' Kit said with a laugh, as she saw Geoffrey lean across the passenger seat.

The woman, dressed in very long black stockings and what was probably a skirt but looked more like a crimson leather belt topped off, literally, with an almost-but-not-quite transparent black singlet, turned on her professional heels with a casual 'what, who me?' look. She approached the car and with one finely muscled arm resting on the roof she bent, from the hips with a perfectly straight back, to find out how she could possibly help the gentleman.

Whatever it was he needed was apparently within her field of expertise. Kit followed the car down a couple of backstreets, then photographed the woman escorting Geoffrey towards the wide concrete steps of a nondescript two-storey house. St Kilda was full of these once grand old buildings, many of which had been divided up into self-contained apartments. Kit grabbed her leather jacket, chucked a blanket over her camera gear, leapt out of and locked her car and sprinted across the street. She struggled into her jacket, zipped it up to throat and pulled a black baseball cap from the pocket. She slowed down to a brisk walk but was level with the gate before she realised Geoffrey was still standing in the building's well-lit lobby. Pulling the hat down over her eyes she kept on walking till she gained the cover of a large tangled bush on the other side of the front garden, then vaulted the low fence and made a dash for the wide veranda, directly in front of which was a bed of hydrangeas. She pulled herself up and from a crouching position peered through the tall, narrow window beside the front door in time to see Geoffrey and the crimson tart ascend the carpeted stairs.

Kit tried the door before she noticed the numbered key pad recessed into the wall.

Pretty posh for a cathouse, she thought. Now what?

The only access to the rear of the house was a narrow garden down the right hand side of the building, overgrown but not exactly unkempt. Kit noticed a light go on above her on the first floor but could only assume it was Geoffrey. She pushed her way through the bushes till she found the bottom of the fire escape. It was unlikely, however, that the rickety wooden stairs would provide a safe escape in the event of fire and absolutely no way was Kit going to test their ability to carry anything heavier than a woodworm.

She figured the building, in its hey day, had been one of those charming seaside guest houses specialising in a touch of gracious living for middle class holiday makers. Or perhaps it had been an annual retreat for a collection of crusty old bachelors and spinsters - à la Deborah Kerr and David Niven in Separate Tables. Whatever it had been before the veneer of seediness had taken root in this part of the city, before drugs and prostitution had taken over from Luna Park and the beach as the main tourist attractions, it was now only the stuff of memory. The muffled sound of grunting and groaning followed by a clearly audible 'Oh yes! Yes Mr Bond. Give me both barrels,' escaped from the window just above Kit's head to confirm the fact.

Kit climbed the fence, under where she'd seen the light go on, to see if there was higher ground on the other side. Next door was a derelict building, similar to the one in which Geoffrey was ensconced but missing most of its windows on this side. Derelict did not necessarily mean empty so she gave up on the idea of trying to get a better view and went back to her car.

An hour later Kit was having serious problems with a dead body. She had just watched it fall forty feet from a South Melbourne warehouse roof into a conveniently-placed dump bin. Too convenient! It needed to be found fairly soon. She dragged it out of the bin and back up to the roof. This time it landed on the roof of a car. Now, that should attract some attention!

She saved the file, closed it, and opened a new one. A new, empty one. She got up and walked away from the very blank screen, then wandered into the kitchen, removed the cotton scarf she'd tied around her neck, soaked it under the cold tap again and put it back on.

How could she be creative when even the weather was against her? She was sure the heat was turning her brain to mush.

Excuses, excuses, O'Malley! Kit knew she was doing everything she could think of to avoid the issue at hand. Which was...what?

'Come on, you know,' she said to herself.

'OK. It's love. Or is it romance?' herself answered.

'Either one O'Malley. Just get on with it.'

'All right already!' She went back to her desk and flopped into her chair a safe distance from the unhelpful keyboard. Everything was ripe, the set-up was perfect, it had to happen sooner or later.

'Later,' she said. 'I'll think about it tomorrow.'

I've heard that one before, Scarlett, a little voice from nowhere said. She eyed the blinking cursor suspiciously, as if it had been going through her garbage or reading her personal diary.

'You've forgotten what it's like O'Malley, that's your problem,' Kit said dismally, as she downed the last of the iced coffee in her mug and escaped to the kitchen to pour some more from the jug.

'Oh no I haven't,' she argued. 'I know it's been a while but it's not something you forget. My problem is I don't have the faintest idea how to write about it.' She made a piece of toast and vegemite to put it off a little longer.

How do you make someone fall in love - on paper?

How do you do it in real life, for god's sake?

That one you can answer Katherine O'Malley.

No I can't, Kit argued silently. I've no idea how that happened. I just opened my eyes one day and I was right in the middle of it. These things are not planned, so how the hell do you put it on paper so that it doesn't look contrived?

'It is going to be contrived no matter what you do,' she shouted at the empty room.

The Cat, which was sensibly maintaining a safe distance, mewed loudly as if she agreed wholeheartedly.

'Oh be quiet Thistle. What the hell would you know? All you ever do with that handsome Mr Rufus next door is flirt.'

Kit returned to her computer to see if it had written a page or two of erotic fiction while she'd been in the kitchen. The cursor winked on, off, on, off - taunting her from the otherwise empty screen.

So far she had a fine cast of characters in a workable plot which actually had a beginning, a middle and an end - well at least the synopsis did. She had four and a bit chapters of a well-paced (she hoped) storyline, with carefully-placed victims, several viable suspects and one decidedly nasty piece of work who was motivated by lust - a lust for lust, a lust for power and a lust for money.

So, she thought, the bad guy is suitably motivated - or is that typically motivated? Whatever. The bad guy is not the centre of the piece though. He is merely the thing that makes the good guy... what? That makes the good guy, of course. There would be no need for a hero if there was no bad guy.

The thing here is that the bad guy doesn't even have to make it to the last page. The hero does, however. And what's more the reader has to care enough about the hero to want to make it to the last page with her.

'Oh my god. What have I taken on here? I must be mad. Am I mad Thistle honey?'

The Cat's meow was definitely in the affirmative.

So, where was I? Oh yes. The bad guy has to be suitably motivated but the hero has to have depth. So what motivates the good guy? Or in this case the good girl. Why on earth would anyone want to be a detective? There's nothing terribly glamorous in it, that's for sure. I should know. And it's certainly not the money. Clients like dear old Celia do not grow on trees. So what then?

Ask yourself Kit. As you say, you should know.

'Yes,' she said, 'but we know I'm only doing it for the purpose of research and for pocket money so I can afford to torture myself with this computer every other night.'

Kit got up and paced the lounge room floor several times just to waste time, and then did it again just to make sure. She ventured out onto the patio to see if the cool change was hiding out there. It wasn't.

Perhaps I should forget about in-depth characterisation and just shuffle a few more bodies and suspects around my hard disk, she thought. On the other hand I could rewrite this as a science fiction detective story then Flynn Carter could be an android and wouldn't need a past, or a life philosophy or any depth at all - just a prime directive to make sure that good always wins out over evil.

No. I suppose that's a cop out. In order for the reader, or even me the author, to believe in the notion of 'Flynn Carter to the rescue' she has to have hopes and dreams and flaws. It might seem like a great achievement to have her solve the case in hand, quite brilliantly, but she has to have another life. She can't exist solely to rescue Sweet Charlotte from the villain and push Dastardly Derek under the train thereby saving the townsfolk from a fate worse than aerobics. She's got to have a mother, or a dog, or some friends even if they're just waiting in the wings. She's got to eat, go shopping, get angry about something, or at least think about something other than the case - even if it's just about what she's going to eat, or buy or get angry about. She has got to be real.

'No dummy, not real. This is fiction O'Malley,' Kit corrected herself. 'She has to be believable.

'What the hell does that mean? Half my friends aren't believable. Start again.'

She returned to her computer and typed, tentatively, the words: Depth - asparagus, toilet paper, the ozone layer.

'Smart arse,' she said aloud and then added: Beliefs, dreams, wants, needs, desires; I need, I want, I ache...

'Whoa, Katherine. Who are we talking about here? This is getting personal.' She saved the tiny file and went into the kitchen. She filled the sink, unloaded the dishwasher and did three days worth of dishes by hand. Now she knew for sure that she would do anything to avoid the issue.

She felt that all she'd managed to do was set the scene, get the plot going, introduce the heroic Flynn Carter (she had a memorable name if nothing else) and the love interest. Now what? Flynn had managed to get from one side of a room or two to the other without it reading like it had taken Kit three hours to work out how to get her to walk. She knew 'depth' was not the issue here; love was. Flynn had a past, and a social life; she even had a dog and a passion for Italian food. But how did she feel about falling in love; how would she feel as she fell?

'Pretty bloody silly,' Kit said to the saucepan. With her hands in the sink, however, there were suddenly plenty of viable thoughts floating around with the bubbles. She started to get excited; wanted the chore to be over so she could write them down. She knew in her bones, though, that when the time came - even if she stopped right now to record them - that these perfect ideas, these pearls of wisdom, these unutterably romantic notions would disappear down the plug hole with the dirty dishwater.

She wondered what on earth it was that she was trying to achieve. This unavoidable, untameable urge to write was doing serious damage to her psyche. God, how many nights had she lain awake with the pure poetry of brilliant dialogue and unforgettable descriptions rattling around her brain. In the dark she would concoct a magic potion of verbs, nouns, adjectives and startling metaphors that would raise raw emotion and the pangs of love to new and incredible heights (E. B. Browning eat your heart out!) only to have it all evaporate the moment she turned the light on to find a pen. She often imagined there was a whole novel skulking around the ceiling or hiding in the back of her closet.

Perhaps she was only a literary genius in the dead of night when the lights were off. Unforgettable descriptions indeed! The cold light of day was all it ever took to turn those raw emotions and her beautifully-composed, nerve jangling, gut wrenching love pangs into mushy romantic fiction.

'So what's wrong with that O'Malley? Romantic fiction is what this is all about,' Kit said as she pulled the plug and watched her inspiration go down the gurgler with three peas and a sodden piece of cabbage.

She'd set out to write a romantic detective novel, or was it a detective novel with a romance. Perhaps she should forget the romance and just write a detective novel; after all it was the love business that was stretching the bounds of credibility.

'I think I'm depressed Thistle.' Kit wiped the bench down while The Cat flung her head around maniacally and tried to capture the cloth every time it swept past.

Kit returned to her computer and started typing: How do you develop a sexual attraction on paper, using a machine? How do you convey feeling of any sort with words?

OK, she thought, I might, just, be able to write how I feel using words that aren't vomitously sentimental but how do you convey someone else's feelings, especially when that someone is a figment of your imagination - a complete work of fiction. There has to be a tension, a tingling, a full orchestra in the background, a feeling of association like - 'Oh yes, woo, I've been there' or 'oh god wouldn't it be wonderful to feel like that'.

Kit read what she had just written and then abandoned the file, sending it into that parallel universe which accommodates randomly discarded pieces of information, left socks, lost biros and all those numbers with lots of zeros that governments the world over claim is the real money they have saved their taxpayers.

Kit was getting desperate. Maybe she had forgotten what it was like.

'How do you make love real?' Kit asked, scratching Thistle's head. Hadn't someone already asked that? No, that was 'How do you make love stay?' or something like that. It was Tom Robbins in Still Life With Woodpecker, that's right. Now if he could write a love story that took place inside a packet of Camel cigarettes surely Kit could write one that takes place in a detective novel. Kit remembered finding quite a few answers in that book - way back when she was barely a quarter-of-a-century old; backing her pack around the world; believing in the romance of pyramids and the certainty that real love once found would last forever. That, of course, was when she was still looking for herself, before she found love and then lost it again in a rain-soaked Italian village. If there was only one true love in every lifetime then Kit had had hers - and carelessly misplaced it.

She contemplated clearing the towels off the top shelf in the linen cupboard and crawling in there with the moth balls. Instead she went and stood in front of the stereo trying to decide what kind of music might quell the rising angst that was taking control of her reason. She was feeling quite seasick, which was pretty disconcerting considering she was standing in a well-anchored and totally landlocked lounge room. Taking several deep breaths she decided Beethoven's fifth piano concerto might just soothe the savage breast and help her locate her sense of proportion, which appeared to have gone into hiding to avoid being roughed up by the nasty seeds of doubt that were germinating in her mind.

Lillian always said Kit's irrational moods were the result of having been born in the eye of a hurricane; it made her calm in the centre and decidedly ragged around the edges. Kit, on the other hand, knew these moods were hereditary, the result of having a mother who'd spent too much time in high altitudes.

She went back to her computer and typed in 'Life's a Bitch - and then you bleed' before switching if off. She grabbed a tub of chocolate icecream from the freezer, a spoon from the drawer, The Cat from the bench and escaped to the lounge. Ludwig wasn't helping at all, so she switched him off too, turned the TV and VCR on, selected her favourite movie and threw her melting body into her armchair.

'That's better,' she said to Thistle, as the deep space salvage team began their rescue of Ripley and Jones the cat for the forty-third time.