LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

allowing them to go out to nightclubs!' My voice rose in frustration. `I don't want Chastity becoming a victim.'

      `I think you're the victim here. You worry too much. Your view of society is so hopeless.'

      `Oh really! I'm the one out of touch with no street sense? I don't think so.'

      `You lack faith,' she said gently.

      `This isn't about religion.'

      `Those young women will turn up.'

      I gritted my teeth and counted to ten, but too fast to defuse the surge of anger.

      `Yes, they'll probably turn up, but in what state? Alive or dead? I admire your laissez-faire attitude, Mum. Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of a cloistered, sheltered life. I know what scum are out there and what they can do to their victims.'

      `Have faith, my child.'

      At that moment, I envied her. It was a thin, pure shaft that penetrated to the very core of my soul.

      She had faith. Simple. Effective. Empowering.

      I'd battled it, and for it, all my life. Faith to me was always just out of reach, a will-o-wisp defying capture but it tempted me all the same. But I couldn't embrace it. I had to have hard facts and proof. I needed evidence.

      Sister Immaculata sat there, a fine example of a Chaucerian nun with her sinful, colourful background, and announced once again, with concrete authority, that those girls would reappear.

      `I know they will, Eve,' she said. `Trust me.'

      Hah! I'd be crazy to trust anything she said. And our discussion was getting nowhere. I sighed deeply, feeling depressed and defeated as well as frustrated.

      `I've got to go, Mum. I've got a job to do. Look after Chastity. Keep her safe.'

      My next stop was the bottle shop. I bought a few essentials, like red wine to unwind and brandy for pre-menstrual days. I should also have gone to the supermarket for food staples, but I decided to leave that treat for another day. I returned home and packed the bottles away in my sparse pantry. I then headed off to the surveillance pit to watch the Paradise Nightclub.

      It was one doozy way to spend a Friday night, but at least there might be some arrestable action, which was more than I would get at home sitting in front of the television, draining a bottle of red and smoking too many cigars.

      The stakeout hole was festering nicely. There were a few more empty pizza boxes, chicken takeaway containers and scrunched up milkshake cartons. Carbs and cholesterol were well catered for in this dump.

      Burton and Ely were already there. Burton was watching the street through the binoculars.

      `Are you going in there tonight, boss?' asked Ely.

      `No. I'll watch from here. I sunk enough orange juice last night to OD on vitamin C,' I said. `I don't think my digestive system can take too much of that junk.'

      `I'll deal you in, then,' said Ely shuffling a pack of cards.

      We did a few hands, gambling for matches, before Burton motioned me over. I squinted through the lens and spotted Anne and Ken Fellows, Bobbie's parents, outside the club. They were walking up and down the pavement, handing out sheets of paper. I guessed those sheets were posters sporting Bobbie's photograph and appealing for witnesses of Bobbie's abduction to come forward.

      Even from this distance, their anguish was palpable. The droop of their shoulders and desperate appeals to passers-by gave them away. I wished I could go down there and say something that would ease their grief, but I would be grappling to find the right words.

      The other three families had also placed posters and adverts around the western suburbs. They'd made public appeals on television and been interviewed by the media circus. Mind you, they had fallen silent on the whole deal. There hadn't been a peep out of them for a good two weeks.

      I had interviewed Anne and Ken Fellows but I hadn't talked to the other three sets of parents. Sodbury had done that before I'd joined the investigative team. I wondered if I should go and see them.We weren't getting very far anyway, so it'd be worth a shot.

      The Fellows couple remained outside the club until midnight before the bouncers and then Zefferelli himself asked them to move on. They gave him a poster. He appeared to thank them and then scrunched it into a ball and dropped it on the pavement as he returned inside to his Paradise pit. That man was all heart.

      My shift was over by three a.m. The club cleared out and the pavements were free of punters. I was on again at eight. I went home for some brief shuteye but was too wired from gallons of caffeine and double-cheese burgers. I hooked out a bottle of wine from the fridge and turned on the television. It was a big mistake. I finished the wine and ended up sleeping on the couch, unwashed, fully clothed and totally unfit to start the new day.

      Chapter Four

      `Yoo-hoo! Anyone home?' Margot, my next-door neighbour, tripped into the kitchen without so much as a by your leave.

      It was seven-thirty the next morning and she was wearing her trademark stiletto sandals, a white denim mini skirt and a plunging fringed silver top more suited for nightclubbing than early visits to your neighbour. You'd be forgiven for thinking she was on the game or some wannabe country and western singer. In fact, she was a model who'd fallen on hard times due to her age and society's obsession with pubescent stick insects. But hey, she was usually upbeat about it.

      Ten years older than me, but a lot less ragged about the edges, Margot sported long jet-black hair piled up in a high topknot, long fingernails to rival Fu Manchu and long Tina Turner legs to die for. She could happily pass as Ab-Fab Patsy's dark-haired twin sister. Not only that, she shared the same appetite for pretty younger men.

      Margot had the biggest heart in the Southern Hemisphere. She was the best neighbour a girl could have, except early on a Saturday morning when my head was pounding from an overindulgence of rough red. I was out of painkillers, food and ironed clothes, and the weather was already hot enough to fry an egg on the footpath. I was not a happy bunny and it was made worse because it was all self-inflicted. I should have forfeited last night's wine.

      Make that the week's wine.

      And I should have shopped and ironed when I'd had the opportunity instead of slothfully snuggling in bed.

      `You look jaded,' said Margot and laughed. I winced because her laugh sounded like a hysterical hyena.

      `Don't mince your words. Tell me how you really see it.' I slammed shut the fridge door after a futile search for anything without extra culture, and I don't mean the Beethoven variety. I filled the kettle. At least I had an on-going supply of water and didn't have to shop for it.

      `Hard night?' She clicked her tongue sympathetically and leaned a narrow hip against my kitchen counter.

      `Self imposed,' I admitted.

      `Another night solo?'

      `Not completely. I was working for most of it.'

      `Poor substitute. We'll have to do something about your social life, honey.' She snapped her fingers decisively which made her lashings of bracelets jingle and jangle. Margot dripped enough gold jewellery to re-finance South America and still have change for the poker machines.

      `I've got a brilliant idea,' she said.

      It was too early in the day for brilliance.

      `Tell me later,' I pleaded. `I need painkillers and coffee and then I have to go to work. You want a coffee?'

      She waved her hand dismissively, causing another bout of clashing metal, and carried on with her spiel. `But this will suit you down to the ground, Evie. Swift, sure and satisfying. No messing around. No wasted time. Just straight in there and down to brass tacks.'

      `Go on then,' I said, spooning instant coffee into a mug and impatiently waiting for the kettle to boil. I was already running late and Margot's ill-timed visit would delay me a heap more.

      `I'll

Скачать книгу