LITMIR.BIZ

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revived, tidied up and taken himself off to a doctor. Or, even better, have had no ill-effects at all. He was probably at Arthouse right now wondering where she was.

      Of course he wasn't dead. Dead men don't clean houses! Neither do living ones, she conceded, but that was hardly the point. There was every possibility that he was not dead. She was off the hook... well almost... the fact that he wasn't dead was a big plus. If she had to explain her behaviour last night to anyone, at least it wouldn't be as a suspect in a murder investigation. She sighed. It was going to be okay. If she never saw him again it would be too soon but at least he was 'undead'. For the first time that day she felt like eating.

      But she still had to find the necklace. There was no point in searching the bed as it was newly made, with fresh, plain brown linen. Perhaps he had found it and put it away somewhere. She opened one of the drawers. Empty. She opened another, then another. All empty. The wardrobe too was bare, except for the ubiquitous tangle of wire coathangers. Had the room been stripped or were the drawers and cupboard empty to start with?

      She recalled that Lawrence wore a reasonably large range of clothes, but there was no evidence of it in this room at all.

      She lay on her stomach so that she was eye-level with the floorboards, and looked in all directions, including under the bed. No sign of a necklace. No suitcases or storage boxes. No dust either. The room was spotless.

      Someone had done a professional job on this place and done it in the hour it took her to travel home, shower, change and come back again. Lawrence could certainly afford a cleaner on the salary Dexter was paying him and that made much more sense than the idea of the same man who lived in the pigsty she had visited last night bouncing up this morning after a spot of concussion and whizzing round the house with a vacuum cleaner. What about the blood in the hallway? That would take some explaining, wouldn't it? Well, not if he was alive.

      All the same there was something not quite right about this theory. The cleaning job was too perfect. Clinical, even. On the other hand, what did she know about cleaners, other than wishing she had one? Maybe this was how her house would look if it were done properly instead of the rush job she threw at it every ten days or so. Maybe this was standard?

      Lawrence or his cleaner must have found her necklace then. Either way, she concluded, she would get it back. Confident that further inspection of the rest of the house would bear out her theory, she closed the door on a room she hoped never to see again.

      Back in the hallway she was aware once again of the faint hum. Now that it could no longer be a posse of blood-crazed blowflies, and with Boyd's handkerchief stowed in her pocket, she headed in the direction from which the noise seemed to be coming.

      Into the kitchen, which was, as she had anticipated, gleaming. The bin was empty and relined with a new bag. The hum emanated from a large airconditioning unit on the wall; hence the slight chill she had felt on re-entering the house, the icing on the perfect cleaning job.

      She started to laugh.

      She laughed at her stupidity, her panic and her wild imagination. The same imagination, she realised, that had dreamed up the whole crush on Lawrence in the first place, the same imagination that made her such a talented designer. On the wrong day, at the wrong time, that imagination was a liability. She laughed long and hard as relief flooded through her, then walked back up the hallway to the bathroom. This time she would use the toilet, without fear of encountering Lawrence, or anyone else who might walk in. She no longer had anything to fear or anything to explain.

      Having a pee, however, was an excruciating experience. White-hot, it brought a wave of nausea and no sense of release. I just need to eat something, she thought.

      In the lounge room she realised that the difference she had noted earlier was a slight rearrangement of the furniture, and that the videos in the milk-crate had been returned to Blockbuster.

      She saw the cat again in the laneway, sleeping on its side, its tail idly flicking away flies. It stirred at the sound of the gate and bounded over to her like a long-lost friend. She bent to stroke it but it flicked its head, sunk its fangs into her wrist and took off with a yowl. Ronnie pulled back her hand as blood oozed from the scratch and she felt her stomach tense up all over again. 'Relax,' she said, steadying herself. Then, wrapping the handkerchief around it, she carved her way through the heat to the sanctuary of her air-conditioned car.

      Each time they hit a bump, his body thumped and rolled around the boot. Even so, Lawrence Konitz felt that the car was travelling at a modest speed: no point in attracting unwelcome police attention, particularly during the holiday speed blitz.

      It was dark and suffocating and his back ached from the trussing which bound his hands to his feet behind him, the rope cutting deeper into his wrists with each jolt. He suppressed waves of nausea, not wanting to choke to death behind his taped mouth. The gorge reflex was something he'd learned to control at an early age.

      He should never have come back. He knew the risks, knew she'd find him, but he hadn't counted on it being this easy.

      The last thing he remembered was going downstairs to take a piss, leaving Ronnie Collins alone in his bed. As he walked towards the bathroom, a noise behind him made him turn and cop a blow with a heavy object to the right side of his head which laid him out cold.

      Lawrence regained consciousness but not vision, as four rough arms silently bound his limbs and carried him outside. He heard the sound of a car boot being opened and, just as he was being turfed into its cramped interior, the evil-smelling cloth that covered his head shifted just enough to catch sight of a huge head with a baseball cap, aviator sunglasses and a gold-capped grin.

      'It's your lucky day, cunt,' it rasped. 'You got a date with a lady.'

      CHAPTER FIVE

      WHAT was it about Lawrence that had caused Ronnie to go off the rails in the first place? Was it something to do with his eyes? Not so much their colour or shape, or their distance apart, but how they made her feel when they made contact with hers. What? Just eye contact? It can't have been just that. Lordy! How many times a week did people make eye contact with people they found attractive? How many of those end up in bed together?

      'Freshly squeezed orange juice. Poached eggs and bacon on toast with some hash browns on the side. Thanks.' She gave the order to a young man, who clearly had far more important things to be doing with his time and his hair. Ronnie checked her watch. Eleven-thirty. The Take Two Cafe was a block away from Arthouse. If she called this brunch she should make it into work by one and put in a full afternoon. Maybe stay back for a while and make up for this morning.

      'Any coffee with that?' the waiter asked in a flat sing-song tone, implying that nothing could be less interesting than her reply and that he had a very important sculpture to finish back at his warehouse conversion.

      'Yeah, white, thanks.'

      'Flat white or caffe latte?' he demanded. 'There's a difference, you know.'

      'Yeah,' she said. 'Whichever is the strongest.'

      'They're the same strength.' He stared out into the street. 'One of them comes in a glass.'

      What was this? 'Mastermind'?

      'And, it's bigger.'

      'I'll have that one then.' By now Ronnie would have accepted an instant coffee with aeroplane milk just to get him off her case.

      'Do you want the coffee now, or after the' - he flipped slowly back through the pages of his pad - 'eggs?'

      'Afterwards, thanks. I'll have the juice now.' And wipe that look off your face or I'll smack it off, she thought as she beamed at him.

      He let out another long-suffering sigh and flounced off to the kitchen.

      Whatever it was with Lawrence and his eyes it didn't happen at first sight. In late November, when Dexter hired him as the big expert on Asian retail and manufacturing, she was only interested in why.

      'This guy's lived in Thailand for the last ten years, Ronnie. He's a bloody goldmine of information!' Dexter exclaimed.

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