Gunshine State Page 13

  She retraced her route through the house. Costello’s wife appeared in the doorway to the lounge room. ‘Going already, dear,’ she said wiping her hands on a tea towel. ‘I was going to ask if you wanted tea.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Costello’s wife smiled, made to go in the direction of the back porch.

  ‘I think your husband will be okay for now. He’s sleeping.’

  ‘Right then, I won’t disturb him. You okay to let yourself out?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  THIRTEEN

  Tavener sat in the back with the unconscious cop and two shovels, while Chance drove. They hadn’t exchanged a word since leaving Long’s house an hour earlier. Chance hoped it was a test, that at some point Tavener would tell him to pull over, open the door, throw the South African onto the side of the road, laugh as they drove off. Instead, the American sat calmly, gazed at his own reflection in the darkened window.

  ‘Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?’ Chance tried to make eye contact in the rearview mirror, but the American’s face was in shadow.

  ‘In my previous line of work, I’d sometimes get a phone call in the middle of the night, a guy sounds like he’s gargled Drano, tells you there’s a problem. Occasionally it’d end in a bit of spade work.’

  ‘And what exactly was your previous line of work?’

  ‘This and that.’

  ‘How’d you come to work with Gao?’

  ‘I’ve got two ex-wives, three college-age children, a motherload of bills to pay and my finances were shot to shit during the global financial crisis. I’ll work for anyone.’

  Chance realised now wasn’t the time to push for more information, kept his eyes on the road.

  ‘That Dormer fella you pulled the job with back in Surfers, he sure did stitch you up good, didn’t he?’

  Chance sensed the American smiling in the darkness.

  ‘Don’t take it personally, he knew what he was doing.’ Tavener leaned forward in his seat. ‘That’s the turn-off the old man suggested.’

  Long had given them detailed directions, obviously knew the area well. Chance speculated it was not the first time a body had been buried out here.

  Chance pulled into a picnic spot screened off from the road by a row of gum trees. He killed the engine, sat in the car.

  ‘Don’t just sit there,’ growled Tavener as he walked to the rear of the car. He opened the boot, emerged holding a halogen lantern. A soft circle of light illuminated the area around the car.

  Chance got out, saw a treated pine picnic table and bench, the long dead remains of a campfire, scorched and twisted beer cans in the ashes.

  Tavener placed the lantern on the car’s roof, reached into the back seat, handed Chance the shovels, one at a time. He helped Viljoen out. The South African stood uncertainly, still groggy from being pistol-whipped. Tavener picked up the lantern, withdraw the gun from his nylon money pouch, jabbed the barrel into the small of Viljoen’s back and pushed him forward

  They walked into a thick glade of trees. Viljoen led the way, followed by Tavener; Chance brought up the rear. The night sky was cloudy and the only light came from the lantern. Chance could smell eucalyptus. The noise of cicadas surrounded them, like the roar of a restless crowd.

  As if coming out a trance, Viljoen started begging, half in English, half whatever language he spoke back in South Africa.

  ‘This is as good as any place,’ said Tavener. ‘Stop here.’ Viljoen halted, turned to face them. The South African blinked, struggled to focus. Tears ran down his cheeks, a dark stain appeared around his crotch, spread down his trouser leg.

  Tavener took one step forward, raised his pistol, shot Viljoen in the forehead mid-plea.

  ‘Let’s get digging,’ he said.

  When Tavener said ‘Deep enough,’ Chance was smeared in dirt, slicked with sweat and the area where he’d fractured his ribs throbbed. He climbed out of the hole, picked up Viljoen by the arms. Tavener took the legs. Holding the body, they waddled to the side of the hole, slung it in.

  Viljoen gazed lifelessly up at them. Chance started shovelling dirt onto the body, face first, covering it as quickly as his aching arms would allow.

  ‘Powerful feeling, killing a man. Watching him die.’ Tavener leaned on his shovel and gazed at something in the dark only he could see. ‘You feel horror but also a sense of relief it’s over and there’s no going back.’

  Tavener took his fishing hat off, ran a hand through his snow-white hair. ‘Thing like that makes a man put a name to his fear, come out the other side stronger.’

  Chance stared at the American, unsure what to say, realised Tavener didn’t expect a reply, resumed shovelling dirt onto the corpse.

  When they’d filled in the grave, Chance levelled it off as best he could, covered it with leaves and brush.

  ‘That’ll do.’ Tavener slung the shovel over his shoulder and without another word started to walk back in the direction of the car.

  LAND OF SMILES

  ONE

  Chance sipped his soda water, glanced around the nightclub, the cheap chrome finishing, grimy black and white floor tiles, an assortment of leather couches and armchairs, ripped and scarred by countless fumbled cigarettes.

  On a small stage to his right, an overweight man in a tight-fitting T-shirt crooned a Thai pop song. Eyes closed, microphone clasped in both hands, the singer ignored the reverb and distortion from the old speakers. ‘Happy New Year’ in gold tinsel letters was strung on a piece of string across the wall behind him.

  A revolving glitter ball in the middle of the ceiling sent shards of light marching languidly around the room. Chance looked at the way the shapes played on the soft brown skin of the woman next to him, the reflection on the sequins of her polyester halter-top. She had a lean, hard body, probably gained from a previous life working in a rice paddy or hauling nets on a trawler on the Gulf of Thailand. She gave him the occasional bored grin, her slightly crooked teeth a white slash across her dark features, otherwise stared into the space in front of her.

  Tavener sat opposite, dressed in a black polo shirt, baggy shorts with a floral pattern, the fishing cap he’d worn the night he’d first appeared back in Yass. Three women sat around him, topped up his whisky, fussed and pawed as they vied for his attention.

  Chance played in the circles of moisture on the glass-topped table, tried to quell the urge for alcohol and cigarettes. Both were on Doctor Wirapol’s long list of no-nos that could hamper the healing process for his face, lead to infection.

  Not that Chance could see how the result could be anything worse than it was.

  After touching down at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Chance, Tavener and Kate were whisked away in a waiting mini-bus. The three-hour trip south to Pattaya was one continuous stretch of concrete and brick, houses, machine shops and factories, interspersed with only the occasional patch of green, as though Bangkok never ended.

  The mini-bus dropped his companions at a hotel, drove Chance another half hour to a large white building on the edge of Pattaya with gleaming windows and manicured lawns. A Thai nurse in a spotless white uniform met him at the entrance, led him to a waiting area.

  ‘What are you in for?’

  Chance looked around, saw the question came from a fiftysomething Caucasian male in a stylish white linen suit, sitting in a seat opposite him.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What are you here to have done? Hold on, let me guess, your nose is too big, yeah?’

  ‘You got it,’ Chance replied hesitantly. He’d never thought of his nose as particularly excessive. ‘Yourself?’

  ‘A nip and a tuck, mainly reducing the bags under my eyes.’ The man looked proud. ‘Whatever gives you an edge, know what I mean?’

  The nurse re-appeared, told Chance that Doctor Wirapol would see him.

  Wirapol was a thin, nervous man with a head of sharply parted black hair and wire-framed glasses. ‘I believe you want more than
aesthetic plastic surgery,’ he said without introducing himself. His English had no hint of an accent. ‘You’re after full facial reconstruction.

  ‘Let’s see, nose, chin, eyelid correction, rhinoplasty, some of the bones on your face will need to be cut and moved.’ The nurse briskly jotted down notes on a clipboard as he spoke. ‘As for the missing stub of your little finger.’ He lifted up the digit in question, ‘we should be able to fix that by grafting part of the toe on it.’

  ‘Whose toe?’

  ‘Yours.’ The doctor looked at him, deadpan. ‘We’ll harvest part of one of your toes, graft it onto your damaged finger. Take off your shoes, please.’

  ‘You’re bullshitting me?’

  ‘Let me assure you, Mister Chance, toe-to-hand surgery is very much a reality,’ said Wirapol, his professional ability impugned. ‘It’s been a routine procedure for dealing with severe hand injuries for some years now.’

  Chance unlaced his runners as the doctor talked.

  ‘The surgery is lengthy and complicated, and the results are not always perfect.’ The doctor leaned down, inspected Chance’s naked feet. ‘Yes, we’ll take a bit from the long toe, second from your big one.’

  Wirapol went over to a basin, washed his hands. ‘The first two weeks after surgery will be difficult,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Once the pain medication wears off the nerves start to wake up. You should make a full recovery in about twelve to fourteen weeks.’

  Chance was operated on the next day.

  He remembered when the bandages came off. Wirapol hovered over him. Kate and Tavener had come along for moral support.

  Kate gasped, realised her reaction and assumed a neutral expression.

  A crooked smile spread across Tavener’s face. ‘Suits you, son.’

  Chance had peered hard at the mirror, tried to make out the contours of his new face under the spiderweb of scar tissue and swelling. The features were fine individually but combined made him look like one of those identikit composites he’d seen on the front page of his hometown tabloid. His jaw was hardened, mouth larger, nose flatter. His eyes looked expressionless and slightly askew. Chance had gone from being an anonymous everyman to having a face people would cross the road to avoid.

  He turned to the doctor. ‘What did you do the surgery with, a hammer?’

  The doctor uttered a high-pitched, nervous laugh.

  ‘As the body recovers there will be lumps, bumps, unevenness, bruises and ooze.’ The doctor avoided Chance’s gaze, looked instead at Tavener and Kate. ‘There may also be—’ the doctor searched for the right words, ‘—a brief period of post-operative depression.’

  Wirapol pointed to the bandage around Chance’s new finger. ‘We shall have to wait a little longer before we can see how the new finger is coming along.’

  When his condition was deemed good enough to leave the hospital, the minibus re-appeared, took him and his companions to a hotel in Sri Racha, a small fishing town two hundred kilometres south of Bangkok.

  His skin too tender to shave at first, he decided to let the hair keep growing. The mass of wiry dark strands offered a partial disguise for his new features. As Wirapol had promised, the toe-to-hand surgery had been successful. His new digit looked somewhat bent and stunted compared to his other fingers, but nothing that wouldn’t pass casual inspection.

  Chance hardly left the hotel room for the first week. Even after his face had healed up, he could only bring himself to lurk around the environs of the hotel and relented to Tavener’s repeated requests to accompany him on his nightly soirees when it was clear the American wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  While Chance had spent the better part of two months cooling his heels as his face mended, his companions acclimatised to Thailand in their own ways.

  Tavener had spent his time drinking and whoring, most of it in the establishment they were in tonight. The dwarf doorman greeted the American like a long lost brother, the octogenarian mamasan cackled at his jokes in bad Thai. All the women who worked there knew him by name and responded to his antics with a mixture of steely business sense and fascination, like children relieved by the presence of an eccentric uncle at a boring family gathering.

  As if in a direct inverse response, Kate adopted an air of cultural inquisitiveness. She’d hung around the hotel staff, got a Thai teacher. From what Chance could tell, her attempts to learn the language progressed quickly. She’d also taken to exploring the area around Sri Racha by herself on a rented motorcycle.

  Chance was pulled from his reverie by the shrieks of the three Thai women on the other side of the couch. The overweight man had finished his song, bowed slightly, hands held together in front of his face.

  The women egged Tavener on to sing. After feigning reluctance, Tavener drained his whisky, put both hands up in mock surrender, shimmied across the floor, and mounted the stage. The room erupted in applause at the opening chords of the song, an old stadium rock number Chance could remember dancing to when he was younger.

  As the audience hooted and clapped, Chance felt a presence next to him, smelled a metallic tang of aftershave. He looked up. Milo’s face leered down at him.

  ‘Alright, mate?’ he said in his cockney drawl. Without waiting for a response, Milo sat down on an unoccupied section of the leather couch, barked in Thai at the woman next to Chance. She hastily mixed a highball from the bottle of whisky on the table, passed it to Milo without meeting his eyes.

  ‘Nice to see you sampling the delights of Sri Racha’s night life, Gary.’ Milo crossed one leg over his other and took a long pull of his drink, smacked his lips. ‘You know what they say, all work and no play. Not exactly Soho, but a tart’s a tart, no matter where you are.’

  Milo had appeared on Chance’s doorstep his second day in Sri Racha, introduced himself as a representative of Khun Issarapong Boonchu, ‘under whose personal protection you and your friends are during your stay in the Kingdom of Thailand.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I have a butcher’s hook at your digs?’ Chance had stepped aside to let the man enter his hotel room. Milo noted the cheap furnishings, shrugged. ‘Well, at least you’ve got your privacy and fresh sea air will do wonders for your Chevy Chase.’

  The son of an English merchant seaman and a Thai woman, Milo was brought up and educated in London, where he worked as an investment banker. By his own account, he’d had the makings of a promising career until the global financial crisis resulted in his retrenching and having to resort to alternative means to make a living—drug dealing.

  Things had gone well until an episode involving a shipment of party drugs, a luxury flat belonging to a couple of criminally inclined web designers and a concierge who’d become suspicious of the comings and goings at all hours. Milo had fled London, berthed for a while in Cambodia, where he engaged in various schemes, including trying to buy and sell an island off the southern coast. When that went bad, he headed to Thailand.

  ‘Let’s just say I got into a spot of bother with Issarapong’s old man,’ Milo had said with a wink and a sly smile. ‘He wanted to kill me, but lucky for my scrawny hide, his son had slightly more vision, saw my skills could be useful in his quest to diversify the family business.’

  Chance didn’t trust Milo any further than he could comfortably spit out a house brick. It also struck him as weird that anyone, let alone a powerful Thai businessman, would employ a Cockney spiv as a public face.

  ‘How’s the Chevy Chase coming along?’ Milo leaned in close, his voice loud, to make himself heard above Tavener’s singing. ‘Looks almost completely healed to me.’

  ‘I’d say so,’ said Chance.

  ‘That’s the Dunkirk spirit. Now you’re all better, maybe you’d like a little trip.’ The mock playfulness faded from his face. ‘Khun Issarapong requests the pleasure of your company at his residence tomorrow. He’d like to meet the person who has been under his care all this time.’

  Chance’s eyes narrowed. The only reason he could think of that Milo’
s boss wanted to see him was there’d been word from Long in Australia.

  ‘Be outside your hotel at ten tomorrow morning. I’ll arrange for a motor to come and get you.’ Milo eyed Tavener finishing up his karaoke number. ‘And leave your China plate up there behind, okay?’

  Without another word, he stood up, left.

  Chance was vaguely aware of cheers and clapping as Tavener finished his song. The American sat in the spot Milo had occupied, eyes clear and sober. He smiled at Chance, as if already privy to the previous conversation, sipped his drink. ‘What did our little friend want?’ he asked.

  When Kate had questioned Chance about why he’d agreed to let Tavener accompany them to Thailand, Chance had recited an Arab proverb he’d heard from an Australian soldier who’d served in Iraq: “In the desert of life the wise person travels by caravan, while the fool prefers to travel alone.”

  ‘What does that even mean?’

  ‘Long didn’t give me much choice in the matter. Plus, it’s better to have him working with us than against us.’

  Despite having spent the better part of two months in Thailand with Tavener, Chance knew almost nothing of substance about the American, except that he had an unnerving ability to switch personas, as if moving in and out of character. One minute he was gregarious, the life of the party, the next, sober, calculating the angles.

  ‘He wants me to meet his boss tomorrow.’

  Tavener raised his eyebrows.

  ‘He said I was to come alone.’

  ‘What do you reckon Issarapong Boonchu wants to talk to you about?’

  ‘Long has been in contact with him. He’s found Dormer and it’s time to call in my debt. It’s the only reason I can think of.’

  ‘Well you can be damn sure it’s not a social call.’

  ‘Maybe you should come with me, rattle Milo’s cage a little?’