“Be careful what you wish for…”
Excerpt from chapter 22 (© 1999)
This
excerpt introduces the Monaro Driver and tells how he sets about luring
MacCauley’s thirteen-year-old sister, Melissa, into his trap.
Friday afternoon:
the last bell had just sounded, and already kids streamed out the school gates
in their hundreds. Boys shot out into the road on what seemed like
jet-propelled bicycles, so anxious were their riders to make their getaway.
Groups of both sexes milled on the footpath outside, surreptitiously holding
hands. Eager; restive; all-out to escape from the constraints of the classroom
and into their real lives for the weekend.
A hundred metres down the road, two cars waited at the nearest
cross street, one on either side of the intersection. The one on the left, a
blue Ford, had a cluster of kids gathered around it. Little bags of what looked
like dried herbs exchanged hands for fifty dollar notes, or you could buy a
foil with about a third as much in it for a twenty.
There weren’t as many kids clustered around the red
Monaro—
But what he had to sell came at a higher price.
The driver smiled with satisfaction when he saw the girl
come through the gates on her own. He’d had his eye on this little bitch for a
couple of months now, ever since she’d become a regular customer of his mate,
Billy, the bloke who drove the blue ford.
The first time he’d seen her hand over a twenty he’d
known he had to have her.
Just look at her: that shining blue-black hair that fell
down to her waist. Those dark sapphire eyes framed by long, thick lashes—eyes
that had that true Irish look about them, like they’d been put in with a sooty
finger; not to mention the best pair of legs he’d ever seen. Nice tits and
arse, too, from what he could see, even in that bloody awful-looking school
uniform.
Billy owed him a few favours, so it hadn’t been too hard
to convince him to lace what he sold this chick.
Heroin. Supplied free-of-charge, of course—
The payoff would come later.
The driver of the Monaro was nineteen years old, tall,
blond and as handsome as they come. He might have been one of Hitler’s
wunderkind if he’d been born half a century earlier, his immigrant German
grandfather had told him. Not that he knew much about Hitler, except that he’d
been an out and out nutter; some bloke who wanted to exterminate the Jews.
His own ideas were more realistic. He just wanted to get
somewhere before he died. Be someone. Make the kids back in high
school sorry they ever called him the K-mart kid. He was well on the way, too,
thanks to the impression he made on people when they first met him. That
wholesome, clean-cut look came in handy in his dealings with them, he’d found.
Gave them confidence in him.
Lucky for him they couldn’t see what lay beneath that
charming exterior he cultivated: which made it easy—almost too easy—to get what
he wanted. And there were only two things he wanted. Needed, really, though it
was hard to say which of the two he needed more.
Money…or hurting people. Paying them back for all those
times they’d hurt him.
The line of work he was in now gave him plenty of
opportunity to achieve his second objective. He’d barely started on his way to
his first, but he’d get there all right. Already, he owned the property in the
Valley, his place of business, you might call it, and a house at Clayfield. Of
course he didn’t intend to settle for that. One day he’d be a millionaire. No,
stuff that—a multimillionaire—whatever it took.
His lip curled in a sneer.
“Honesty is the
best policy.” That’s what his parents had tried to drum into him. Did them a
fat lot of good, though, didn’t it? They’d never had a bean to bless themselves
with, the fucking losers. They’d owned their own home, and that was about
all…until it caught fire, that is. Burnt to the ground, and them along with it.
Shame about that.
“You’re right…people should be more careful with
electric heaters in winter,” he’d agreed with some stupid jerk of a fireman;
let the tears run down his face; heard one of the cops say, “For Christ’s sake,
shut up. His mother and father are inside that bloody mess somewhere…”
* * *
The fire would
have to start in their bedroom. A cotton chenille dressing gown carelessly
discarded over a chair too close to an electric radiator.
He’d done his research. The dressing gown would ignite
easily, being cotton, and eventually set fire to the chair…though that would
burn more slowly: smoulder for a while; fill the room with noxious fumes before
it burst into flame.
His parents would be dead before the flames ever reached
them: not that he cared, one way or the other. Still, he couldn’t afford to
take a chance that their screams might wake someone, or worse, that they might
get out alive. So they had to die in their sleep. Unaware of what was happening
to them. A couple of sleeping tablets each in the cup of bedtime Milo he’d made
them ought to take care of that.
“Here, Ma, I’ve made you a nice hot drink to help you
sleep.”
“You’re a good boy, son.”
His mother pulled his head down to kiss him. Shit, he
could hardly stop himself laughing out loud when she took the cup from his
hands.
Now to sit with them for a while. Talk to them. Make
sure they drank it right to the last drop. After all it would be his last
chance to be together with them like this. Might as well make the most of
it—and they weren’t such a bad old pair, he supposed. Especially Ma: though
they’d both done their best by him in their own pathetic way. A pity, really,
that he had to kill them, but there was no room for sentiment in life if you
wanted to get ahead.
Okay. First wash up the cups—make sure they held no
traces of their previous contents. Then sit and watch television for a few
hours until his Olds went to sleep. Once they had, tiptoe into their bedroom.
Pick up his mother’s dressing gown from the end of the bed and drop it over the
chair. Make sure one end trailed across the floor…
Right next to the heater.
Just so everything went according to plan, he’d have to
hold the cord of her dressing gown against the red-hot element for a minute.
Stand there and watch until the tassel on the end caught fire.
Easy.
Now to shut the door, and sit back and wait for the fire
to take hold. Hope for that element of luck he needed, that none of their
neighbours noticed the flames too early and rang the fire brigade. At two a.m.
he should be safe enough—he’d spent three weeks checking on the nearby
residents’ habits before he’d planned this: made sure there were no bloody
nosy-parker shift workers or insomniacs about. But it was always dark and
quiet. Everyone tucked up safe in their beds and sound asleep.
Once the living room was too full of smoke to breathe
he’d go to his bedroom at the opposite end of the house. Shut the door. Block
up the bottom with a towel…
Must remember to move that before he made his escape.
* * *
He waited patiently
until he could feel the heat through his own walls. Then the son of the house—a
loving, devoted son, just ask the neighbours—picked up the towel and put it
into his laundry bag. He threw open the door; blistered his hands on the hot
metal. Painful, but unavoidable: a corroborating detail to back up the story
he’d worked out to cover himself. Next he smashed a chair through the window, jumped out
and ran to the nearest house. Pounded on the door in well-rehearsed panic. He
even managed to squeeze out a tear or two as he watched the firemen break
through his own front door.
Too late to do any good, of course. Too late to save the
house, let alone save his parents. The
roof fell in seconds later: just the way he’d planned.
“I tried to rescue them, but there were flames
everywhere!” he sobbed to the neighbours who’d gathered on the footpath. The
cops. The ambulance-man who sat him down gently and started to treat his hands.
Second-degree
burns: enough to be convincing, but not enough to do any lasting damage. He’d
had to spend a few days in hospital, the first two on a drip, but within a
couple of weeks, his hands were as good as new. And it had been worth it, the
Monaro driver thought with a grin.
“Teenager injured in courageous efforts to save parents.”
That’s what the next day’s newspaper headlines had read. Shit, he’d laughed.
And he’d even been on television: a fucking hero!
The insurance investigator hadn’t found anything to
arouse his suspicions. Fires like this were all too commonplace in winter, and
he’d played the role of the grief-stricken son to the hilt. Easy. A shit-load easier than all those
years of pretending he cared about his parents.
Love. What the fuck was that supposed to be? He’d never
understood what they were on about except maybe once. Once, when he’d been
thirteen, there’d been a girl in his class at school. He’d followed her around
for six months until the end-of-term social; finally got up the nerve to ask
her for a dance.
“What? Get up in
front of all my friends with the k-mart kid? I don’t think so.”
It had taken him two fucking years to live that down; cured him once and for all
about any notions about love. Still, even as a kid he’d been smart enough to
work one thing out: acting like you cared could get you anything you wanted.
Anything but some
stuck up bitch with dark hair and green eyes.
—Still, it had
netted him the insurance money from the house: money that had helped him get a
start in his chosen profession. Naturally it had come to him. As sole heir to
the few miserable possessions his parents owned, he’d known it would; why else
would he have staged the fire?
Now he had to make his own way in the world, and he had
his own ideas about that. He’d be stuffed if he’d be just another loser: an
object of derision because he didn’t have a designer label on his jeans and the
right sort of sneakers. Worse still, a fucking wage earner struggling all his
life to make ends meet like his dad. No, he wanted to be rich, and soon—and
this was as good a way to get the stake he needed as any.
“Sometimes better than good,” he murmured when the girl
reached the blue Holden and kept on walking his way. He ran the tip of his
tongue around his lips; thought about what he wanted to do to her: what he’d
done with the money from his parents’ house. Started a nice little business
with it, hadn’t he? A very nice little business. There were the perks to
consider, for one thing. Five girls,
all young and beautiful, working for him from the house in the Valley—a
profitable sideline to his drug dealing, even after he’d paid off the vice
squad cops. And he’d broken all his girls in himself, just the way he
meant to break in this one. A pity none of them had green eyes…
A sudden tap at his window made him start. Some nerd on
a bike—a guy who wanted some special stuff for a party. He got rid of the prick
as fast as he could, hoping his quarry hadn’t been scared off. Saw her
hesitate; start to turn back; swore violently under his breath.
“Don’t stop, angelface. Don’t turn around.”
He smiled with satisfaction: she was headed this way
again. But he hadn’t really thought she’d chicken out after the way they’d set
her up.
They’d laced the weed she’d been smoking for four weeks
in a row. Then they’d stopped. For the last week, she’d had nothing but
straight pot, and she missed that extra something she hadn’t even known she’d
been getting. Starting to feel jittery, she was, exactly according to plan; and
the Monaro driver liked it when things worked out the way he wanted.
What was that old nursery rhyme? Won’t you come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly? This luscious little bitch came
closer to the web he’d spun for her by the day.
Yesterday she’d complained to Billy she wasn’t getting
what she needed from the last lot of weed she’d bought. Good man, Billy. He’d
answered her just the way he’d been told to:
“You build up a tolerance for this stuff after a while,
you know. You’ll never feel that first-time high again with just weed. For the
sort of buzz you’re looking for, you need to see my mate over there in the
Monaro. He’s the one with the real good shit.”
And here she was, right where he wanted her. Worth every
minute of the trouble he’d gone to. Yeah, he’d help himself to a piece of that,
but he’d have to be patient a bit longer. Give her what she was craving. Get
her to the point where she couldn’t do without it…and then…
“Hello, angelface. What can I do for you?”
Melissa couldn’t
meet the Monaro driver’s eyes. She had a terrible feeling she’d waded in out of
her depth here; that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. That she should turn
around and get out of here: run as far and as fast as she could…except that she
needed something to make her feel better. Sort of warm and loved and happy all
at once, the way her grandmother used to make her feel.
Just like the stuff she’d been using since Gran died—
Except that it wasn’t working anymore.
She pointed a shaking finger towards the blue Ford. “He
told me to come over and see you. I can’t seem to get a buzz from smoking weed
anymore. I don’t know why, but I’ve felt really bad for the past few days.”
The Monaro driver knew why, but he wasn’t about to share
that piece of information with her. He smiled at her, a charming smile, and
tremulously she smiled back at him.
“Hop in, cupcake, so we can discuss this in private.” He
leant across and opened the passenger door for her, and without a murmur of
protest she slid in beside him.
She’s making this
easy. Too easy, the stupid little bitch.
“That’s better. The windows are tinted, so no one can
see what we’re up to. My mate over the road steered you right; I’ve got
something that will make you feel on top of the world. And I’ll tell you what.
Because you’ve got such beautiful blue eyes, I’ll let you have it for half
price. Fifty bucks, how does that sound?”
Melissa looked relieved. Fifty bucks—that was all she’d
been paying for the other stuff. This wasn’t so bad after all, and this guy
seemed pretty cool. He was good-looking, too, with that blonde hair and dark
brown eyes, and he had the sexiest smile she’d ever seen. He didn’t look very
old, either: only a few years older than her.
I wonder if he’s got a
girlfriend? she thought idly; envisaged how green the other girls would be
if she started going with a guy like this. What if he asked her out? Came by to
pick her up at her house?
What if she asked him inside to meet her parents?
Her mother would have a fit!
End of excerpt)