Snapshot

63

Vyner had got there around 4 p.m., the appointed hour, a little curious, a little wary, but with a buzz on, too, looking forward to this next job, and getting his $ 15,000. Curious because Lottie was normally super cautious, avoiding face-to-face contact, and wary because she was mad and dangerous, and he didn’t want to get on the wrong side of her.

A huge house with trees, deep hedges and a gravelled driveway, the tyres of his stolen Magna crunching down it with a sound that spelt status, seclusion and success. The Brisbane house, where she’d been living when he was pruning her roses, on day release from her husband’s jail-rehabilitation through gardenings-had been a lot humbler. She was ambitious, old Lottie. Charlie Mead might never have been promoted from deputy manager of the prison if the manager hadn’t encountered an armed ‘burglar’ one night. Vyner had got five grand from Lottie for that one. Then no word from her for three years, and suddenly she’d needed him again.

He parked the Magna and knocked on the heavy front door, a door weighted with significance, like the fresh, clean, crisp gravel of the driveway. Lottie answered, he offered her an old-time’s-sake grin, but she wasn’t having it. ‘You’re late.’

‘It’s a long way down here. Plus the traffic’

She peered past him at the Magna, opened her mouth, thought better of it and ushered him inside. ‘It can’t be traced to me,’ he assured her.

‘Trevor, it’s bright yellow.’

He followed her through to a sitting room, where vast leather sofas faced off across a busy Turkish rug on polished boards. A fire crackled, faintly smoky. There were African masks, shields, spears and art on all of the walls. Vyner had lived most of his life confined, personal gear at a minimum, and hated the room at first sight. ‘Who’s the target this time?’ he asked.

‘My husband.’

He was shocked. ‘Charlie?’

Uh oh, he’d set her off. Her face transformed itself in an eyeblink, from timid mouse to feral cat, and she began to pace and snarl, little fists tight. ‘After all I’ve done for him.’

‘I know,’ said Vyner commiseratively, but without a clue.

She whirled on him. ‘He’d be nothing without me, and how does he repay me? Says he’s going to dump me for someone else.’

Things made sense now. ‘Janine McQuarrie?’ Vyner asked, double-checking.

‘Who do you think?’ said Lottie. ‘And she wasn’t even a good therapist.’

‘Charlie needed therapy?’ Vyner asked. The idea amazed him.

‘Don’t be stupid. I was checking her out.’

‘Ah. So how did Charlie-’

‘He met her at the detention centre a couple of months ago. She was relieving for another therapist who had the flu.’

Vyner nodded. Why a bunch of ragheads and sand niggers should need therapy, he didn’t know.

‘I’ve been with him twenty years, and he wants to leave me for someone he’s known only a few weeks!’ Lottie said. She paused. ‘Five minutes with her and I knew she was incompetent, but love is blind, right, Trevor?’

‘Right,’ said Vyner stoutly. He looked around, locating all of the potential weapons in the room: poker, spears, vases, lamp, a wooden chair at a writing desk.

‘He actually grieved for her, as if he didn’t care I’d be hurt by that.’

Charlie had betrayed Lottie, Vyner understood that. ‘Didn’t he suspect you?’

‘Never.’

And right in front of his eyes, she reverted again to the little brown wispy mouse. ‘Right,’ he said. Then, treading carefully, he went on, ‘You could have divorced him, left him, got a good lawyer and screwed him for everything he’s got.’

‘But he would have her, and I couldn’t allow that. I had to act fast.’

‘Right.’ He watched her while she paced again. ‘How do you want to play this?’ he asked eventually. ‘Accident? Home invasion? What?’

She turned on him lashingly. ‘Accident? Like you did with Tessa Kane?’

She subsided, muttering.

Vyner had to know. ‘Kane asked me all these questions,’ he began cautiously. ‘Like, “Was it something I published?” and “Who are you working for?’”

‘Nosy bitch.’

Vyner waited. He felt restless. A drink would be nice.

‘She was getting too close,’ Lottie said, coming right up to him and shouting in his face, spraying him.

‘Right.’

‘I get a phone call from Johannesburg,’ yelled Lottie. ‘Middle of the night.’

She turned inwards darkly, her face mottled and fists tight. ‘Uh-huh,’ said Vyner encouragingly.

Lottie blinked. ‘Someone I used to work with. He’s a private investigator now.’

Vyner nodded to keep her going.

‘He wanted to warn me. Tessa Kane had hired him to dig around in my past, mine and Charlie’s. I couldn’t allow that.’

And a lot of dark stuff in your past, too, Vyner thought, gazing at Lottie. ‘Getting back to Charlie: how about half of the fifteen grand you owe me up front?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Lottie, and somehow she had a little automatic pistol in her hand, no bigger than a.25, pretty quiet, unlikely to be heard next door, given the thickness of the walls and the intervening blanket of trees outside, and she shot him in the face with it.

Vyner reeled for a bit, clutching his blasted jaw and frothing. At one point she shot him again, a punching sensation between his shoulder blades. He went down gratefully, curling up on the rug, which had been Scotchguarded recently, unless his senses were deceiving him. She fired another shot into the wall.

Time passed and he bled and his heart and lungs laboured. He was dimly aware of someone-had to be Lottie-digging around in his parka and finding his new gun, which had cost him $650 in an alley behind a pub in Collingwood.

Then later, as he bled out, there were voices. Vyner recognised Charlie Mead’s, in argument with Lottie, who sounded deranged. Who shot who, then? There was more than one shot. He dreamed. By the time he’d regained consciousness again, and was on his hands and knees, his gun was in his right hand. How had that happened? He swung his poor head and saw Charlie Mead on his back, one finger caught in the trigger-guard of Lottie’s little pistol. There was no sign of her.

Vyner crawled out to his car, uttering frightful sounds from his ravaged mouth, thinking about gunshot residue.