River of Salt Read online

  ‘I’m so scared, Doreen.’

  ‘You’re going to be fine.’ Kitty was wearing a kind of car coat. Her hands were trembling. ‘You got your bikinis on under that?’

  Kitty nodded, spat out words. ‘He’s here. Todd’s here.’

  ‘That’s what you wanted, right?’

  Doreen had no time to linger, she had to push back into the main room. Kitty was a limpet.

  ‘But what if I’m hopeless? Then he’ll never be interested in me, ever.’

  Doreen said, ‘Kitty, sooner or later you have to take that risk.’ The guitar and drums were building to a crescendo. ‘You need to get backstage, now. You’re on in ten.’

  Kitty managed to nod unconvincingly. She turned to start back. Doreen grabbed her hand. ‘And you’re not going to be hopeless. You’re going to cook, right?’

  This time Kitty managed a thin smile before moving off. She was quickly swallowed by the crowd which erupted as Duck crashed a final cymbal. The screams and applause gradually settled. The three musicians took a bow. Duck, who fancied himself as the Shack MC, grabbed the microphone.

  ‘Not long now before the watusi comp, but in the meantime hot-dogs and kitty-kats, the one, the only … Beat-comber.’

  Wearing what had once been white tennis pants and shirt, and topped by a panama, Crane shuffled on halfway through a deep drag on his cigarette. There was a smattering of applause. At first Doreen had hated Crane’s abstract poetry but he’d grown on her. He could be hit-and-miss but there was something about his couldn’t-give-a-fuck-attitude she admired, like he’d been in a deeper hell than anybody in his audience could imagine so he didn’t need your kind words or admiration, like he knew how to separate artifice from truth in himself and offered only the latter.

  On stage Crane regarded the microphone like it was an alien spaceship. He started in sudden and sharp like a knife thrust:

  Please, pretty please, give me these, to be the bees’ knees

  I need things, rings, not words or ideas,

  Even a bum can have those, but clothes

  Give me those, not a rose, not a plant, not a moon …

  Anyone can have a moon over their head, or a star, but a car!

  Shows who I are what I’ve got, what you’re not,

  So please, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme these …

  Doreen felt a sharp pinch on her arse. She turned to find a group of young guys smiling up at her. The offender, a clean-cut kid from the Heights, probably just finished high school, licked his lips and said, ‘Choice,’ with a shit-eating grin. Doreen took the Bic biro from where it always sat work nights, behind her ear, and jammed the point into the kid’s thigh. He yelped.

  ‘Just remember, handsome. The pen is mightier than the sword.’ His friends hooted in delight.

  Blake was back of the stage, carefully wiping down his guitar. He’d given over the dressing-room to the dance hopefuls but he didn’t mind. He would have come out anyway to hear Crane who was rolling through his verse even though the dance floor was long empty. Doreen loomed out of swamp smoke. In those heels she was like a skyline.

  ‘You good to go in five?’

  ‘Panza and me are cool. Duck’s somewhere out the back.’

  Almost certainly smoking the funny stuff. He’d been good tonight, right on the beat.

  ‘He’s supposed to be our MC.’

  ‘He’ll be cool.’ Blake put more certainty into that than he felt.

  ‘You know the format?’

  Of course he knew the format. She’d drilled it into him for what seemed like an hour straight.

  ‘Duck introduces the contestants. Five-minute song while they dance. The judges eliminate four girls. We go again. Three more girls eliminated. Ten-minute break, then back for the finale. And here he is.’

  Duck was coming in from the back door. Blake smelt the acrid, sweet smoke follow him in.

  ‘How many we got in the Conga Drum?’

  ‘About a dozen, and birthday party of six.’

  ‘How are they handling it?’

  ‘Fine. I offered them all a complimentary drink.’

  ‘Good thinking.’ She’d looked prepared for a different reaction.

  ‘I better get back there. Make sure he knows what he’s doing.’

  Blake watched Doreen head back out to sea. He turned to his drummer.

  ‘You know what you’re doing?’

  ‘Shit yeah.’

  For just a shard of a second, Blake thought of Jimmy. Trust me.

  The stage seemed a long way up anyway but the platforms that rose either side were scary. Doreen had run them through it one more time just before they got called out. They were to line up across the stage in order of their numbers from one through ten. Kitty was number eight, Brenda number seven, which meant they were side-by-side. Doreen was going to stand side of stage and indicate when they were to move to the platforms. They would do that in pairs, one girl each side on the platform, the other eight keeping their position on the main stage. That meant she’d be up against Brenda on the platform as well. Each girl got one turn on each of the platforms so everybody could see them no matter what side of the room they were. The trip from the dressing-room up onto the stage had been like walking on a thick mattress, like Kitty wasn’t connected to anything solid and could have just blown away with a gust of wind. Her stomach was twitching too but all of these feelings were distant, baffled as if they belonged to somebody else imitating her. She tried to look for Todd in the crowd but with the lights in her eyes it wasn’t possible to make out anybody. And then everything just completely stopped except her pounding heart and, boom, she felt, rather than heard the drums and bass and the stage was vibrating and everybody around her was moving including herself. The routine she’d practised over and over again was somehow still there but so was the disconnect, the feeling she was a mere shadow. Then Doreen was gesturing it was her turn and she felt Brenda peel to the left and she went to the right and scaled the ladder and stepped onto the tiny platform so high that had she been wearing a high pony like Brenda she would have been worried about it hitting the ceiling.

  But suddenly up there it all went clear in her head again. The music was in her bones, fizzing her blood and she was filled with an urge to paint the whole room with what she knew: her limited, precious, prescribed, boring life of pogo sticks, and pretty pink frocks, dolly tea parties, of spread woollen picnic rugs and flies that had to be shooed, and a Goofy ball that rolled lopsided on a buffalo grass lawn that would always bring her out in red itchy blotches on summer nights when mosquito slaps sounded from distant corners of an ill-lit back-lawn barbecue, of shared bunks in a Christian camp where with an illicit pocketknife the girls cut initials into criss-cross beams that spoke of loves long forgotten or stillborn, of cold homemade swimming pools, and woollen pyjamas staving off the cold of cracker nights while a Guy Fawkes of some father’s socks burned with the slow progress of a piano lesson. This was the rhythm of her life, such as it had been so far, and her shoulders and thighs and arms beat it out like a confession. And it no longer mattered who was watching, or who knew because she was beating on life’s door and yelling, ‘Open up, open up!’

  It was like that great feeling you have walking across a frozen lake, everything white, snowy, and you’re feeling so good, and then right in front of you, you come across a pile of dogshit. Not that this had happened to Blake before, but that’s what he imagined it would be like. He was on a high. The dance comp was killing it, the band was smoking, everybody was having fun. And then he looks up, and there they are coming through the door, the would-be extortionists. Deep down he’d known they’d be back. He forced his way through the crowd, found them at the back of the main bar.

  Harry scanned, pushed out his bottom lip and said as if with real appreciation, ‘Well, this is really cooking, Blake.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry but I thought I made it clear, I didn’t need insurance.’

  ‘Actually mate,’ Harry gestured at t
he crowd, ‘I reckon with all these kids here you need it more than ever.’

  ‘Yeah. Imagine if a fire broke out or something?’ Steve shook his head as if already choking up at the tragic consequences.

  Blake could see Duck mounting the stage, getting back behind the kit, ready for the last set. He told himself to stay cool.

  ‘Gentlemen, I am sure there are other businesses that would really appreciate your services but as I said before, I’m good in that area.’

  ‘You’re making a big mistake, Blake. I feel trouble is just around the corner for you.’

  Blake said, ‘I have to go to work. Why don’t you enjoy a drink on the house?’ He caught Ken’s eye, ushered them towards the Conga Drum. ‘Ken will look after you.’

  Harry said softly, ‘You’re gonna be sorry.’

  Blake started back to the stage. If only Jimmy had been here.

  He found Doreen down by the dressing-room, hustling the three finalists out. He pulled her aside.

  ‘Something I want you to do for me. Those guys who turned up the other day trying to sell insurance, they’re in the Conga Drum. When they leave I want you to follow them, find out where they’re staying.’

  ‘What am I? Sam Spade now?’

  He ignored that. ‘And be careful. If they stop somewhere, drive on by.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Please.’

  Why couldn’t she refuse him when he looked at her like that?

  ‘You owe me.’

  He squeezed her arm tenderly. ‘I know.’

  She found a position halfway up the room where she could watch the stage and keep an eye on the bar at the same time. One look told you those blokes didn’t fit. She wondered what their game was. They were sitting on bar stools mumbling a few words to each other, ogling the waitresses. Then the band started and she swung back to the stage. Kitty, Brenda and one of the leotard girls, Vanessa, had made it to the final. Kitty was more confident each time, and in the previous heat Doreen had noticed her playing up to the audience, shaking her backside at a young man, the same young man Brenda had been pawing earlier. Odds on, this was Todd. He was good-looking and knew it. Doreen sighed. Kitty was a toddler playing with matches. Doreen shot a look at the Conga Drum. The blokes hadn’t moved.

  They were still there when the song was over and Duck finished conferring with his fellow judges: a couple of surfer regulars. The expectation in the room had been wound high, everybody had stopped what they were doing. Duck came to the mike.

  ‘Firstly we would like to say all the girls were amazing and our finalists were incredible. Vanessa, Brenda, Kitty you were all brilliant but there has to be a winner. And that winner is … Kitty!’

  Doreen’s gaze fell not on Kitty but Brenda, who, after an instant of blinking disbelief, knitted her brow in a good old-fashioned scowl. While the other runner-up, Vanessa, politely applauded, Brenda’s hands knotted into fists.

  ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

  Kitty bearhugged her. Out the corner of her eye Doreen caught Brenda gesticulating at Todd and storming off.

  ‘Don’t thank me. You earned that.’

  Doreen noticed the two blokes she was supposed to tail were climbing off their stools. Kitty was pouring excitement.

  ‘It’s unbelievable. The best thing … Todd asked for my number.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s such a good thing?’ The men were halfway to the door.

  Kitty was confused. ‘Of course. He’s a dream.’

  ‘But he’s asking for your number when he’s here with his girlfriend?’

  ‘He probably got sick of her. Who wouldn’t?’

  Doreen started moving. The men were at the door now.

  ‘I gotta go. Well done, Kitty. Keep dancing.’

  Doreen pushed out the back door. Crane was sitting on a low brick fence by the area where they stacked the empties, smoking. Her Falcon was parked there.

  ‘Don’t know what your poems are about, Crane, but I liked them.’

  ‘May the stars always shine upon your crown, Doreen.’

  Doreen opened her car door. It was dark out here but the Surf Shack sign threw enough light to catch the unmistakable shape of the two men heading for an FJ Holden. Doreen fired up, no choke needed on a night like this, almost balmy. She heard the car doors close, there was a beat then the headlights ignited. The car swung left in an arc. She waited a few seconds then dropped the car into first and followed, catching sight of the vehicle at the exit. It turned left, heading north up the coast road. She slid after it.

  ‘They started north up the coast. They stopped at Greycliff and went into the Toreador.’ Doreen sipped her gin and tonic, the room lit only by the fish tank and bar signage, bare like a carcass stripped by ants. It was after one now. Blake had finished the tidying up in here nearly an hour earlier. He’d even done the carpark, including a used condom. More than once while waiting for her, he’d cursed himself for allowing her to do something so dangerous. The sight of her headlights swinging into the carpark flooded him with relief.

  ‘How long did they stay at the Toreador?’ Blake had eaten there, a small steak restaurant with a decent bar.

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  Not long enough for a pitch to a new customer, sounded more like an existing client.

  Doreen continued, checking a small notebook. ‘They then drove straight to the Heads and called in at Chez Fifi and the Sandcastle. They ate a complimentary dinner at the Sandcastle …’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘They were inside twenty minutes. I went in and had a look.’

  He flashed, ‘I told you just to tail them.’

  ‘I needed to wee and my legs were cramped, okay?’

  ‘How do you know it was complimentary?’

  ‘Put it this way, they didn’t offer to pay.’

  ‘After that?’

  ‘They turned around and drove back south, through here and then took the turn to Barraclough.’ Barraclough was a small logging town with not much more than a general store. ‘Eventually they turned off on Cockatoo Ridge Road. You know it?’

  ‘Winding climb, lot of trees?’

  ‘That’s the one. There’s a few old places up that way the workers used to live when the sawmill was bigger. The rest is farms. They took the third driveway on the right. I kept going in case they were watching me.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Then I parked and hiked up through the bush.’

  ‘What?’

  Jesus what had he been thinking asking her to do this?

  ‘You owe me a pair of fishnets.’ She pointed to where hers were torn.

  ‘That could have been dangerous.’

  ‘It was. I nearly got wee’d on by the short one. I was in the bushes. The place is surrounded by them. He came down the back steps, wooden, rickety things. I thought, oh hell he’s spotted me. To be honest, it was a good thing I’d gone to the ladies back at the Sandcastle. I didn’t know whether to run or stay. I was frozen. He came right to where I was hiding behind this tea tree but he was obviously drunk, weaving. And then, well, he pulled it out and started spraying. Then he stumbled back up the stairs and I got out of there.’

  ‘Was there anybody else there beside those two?’

  ‘Just them from what I saw, and only their FJ at the house. The back of the place has a window you can look right in.’

  He should have skipped his last set, done it himself. He told her he was sorry.

  ‘No need. I actually had fun.’ She finished her G&T.

  ‘The dance comp was great. That was a really good idea.’

  She made a dismissive sound. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Was there a problem?’

  ‘Kitty, the young girl.’ She looked at him like she was going to explain and then just shook her head. ‘Don’t worry. It’s just a girl thing.’

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have rigged her to win.’

  ‘Huh?’

  He liked it when she acted
dumb. He said, ‘She was very good. But you had three male judges. And the other one was blonde. How much did it cost you?’

  There was no point her lying. Duck would give it away soon enough. You could never get anything past Blake. She wondered what his background had been that he knew people so well. All he’d told her was that he’d worked in a factory where his brother was the foreman but his brother had died in a work accident and Blake needed to get out, find something new.

  ‘Less than six pounds all up.’ Six pounds she couldn’t really afford if she was going to buy herself a television set. But then again, it was worth it for the look on Brenda’s face. Blake reached into his pockets and pulled out ten pounds.

  ‘Petrol and hosiery,’ he said with that wicked smile of his.

  The transistor radio sat on her bedhead directly behind her. It was Japanese and had a little aerial you could pull out, and you needed it here because the signal was weak. Kitty levered herself up with her elbows to take one last look at it before dropping back down and trying to sleep. She didn’t dare turn it on because then her mum would want to know where it came from. What she would do was, she would hide it. Meanwhile she would start saying how she was going to save up to buy one from her pocket and babysitting money. It was the happiest night of Kitty’s life. Winning the competition and shoving it right up the nose of that bitch, Brenda, that was one thing, but then to have Todd actually ask for her phone number …

  She let out a little squeal and her legs kicked furiously under the sheets. Why would he want her number unless he was planning to ask her out? There was no way now she could sleep, she’d be lying awake the whole night because perhaps tomorrow, the phone would ring.

  4. Membership

  Blake drove south towards the meeting place, a picnic area five miles out of town. Sensibly, Nalder did not like anything open to public scrutiny and the picnic spot had always been deserted on their previous meets, which were traditionally set for around ten a.m. It was a fine clear day, the humidity not yet roused as Blake turned off the coast road and headed inland along a gravel road that ran to the river. He was surprised to see Nalder’s car pulled over to the side, well short of the picnic area. Through his windscreen he could make out Nalder about a hundred yards ahead in his sergeant’s uniform standing in calf-high grass looking down at something. Blake parked behind Nalder, got out of his car and advanced. Halfway there he saw Nalder was holding something flat against his leg … a tyre iron. Nalder looked back at him, waiting till he was almost level.