1 BODY COUNT
Midnight.
The beach-house is lit up like a cruise ship.
The snooty guests are pissed as farts. I doubt anyone's doing lines because
the scene's too straight but a whiff of pot drifts from somewhere.
The worst of the male gropers, a drop-kick with a beer gut, comes onto me.
'Hi, Jen. How're you tracking?'
I flash him a
back-off-creep smile. 'Need some air. See ya.'
I waltz my
drink onto the terrace. The sea breeze is colder than a backyard dunny. I
follow my twinkling party shoes down the rough path that leads to the lookout.
The track, hard to see in this thin moon, winds through the low coastal
scrub. I hear breakers smashing against the cliff face and should have reached
the railed boardwalk by now so must have strayed off the path - clever bunny
me.
I reach a clearing where the house lights on the hill
gold-fleck the tops of the bushes and almost walk into the back of a woman
wearing a black evening dress.
I know that starved
racehorse frame. It's Bev Sheehan - matriarch of the clan.
She sways, hand to throat, half turns and throws up. It does zilch for her
aristocratic profile but probably adds nitrates to the soil.
She moans - I don't get why - then stumbles up the slope and out of eyeshot.
And, because she lives here and knows the turf, I do a bunk in the same
direction. Until my foot snags something soft and sends me face-first into a
mouthful of bush.
I stare back along the ground.
I've tripped on a leg.
A leg bare except for a sock.
A leg minus a body.
Hacked off like a Christmas ham.
I straighten up, gagging, and spot more bits. A man's bloodied head with
shocked ping-pong ball eyes and a twisted mouth baring expensively capped
teeth.
It's Adam Sheehan - one of the two founding brothers
who own Sheehan Funerals - the enormous franchised cash-cow I'm about to spend
my life writing ads for.
Beneath his swish sports shirt, his
gut ends in a sticky pool. His other leg and the remains of his crutch are two
metres further off with the pants still caught around the ankle. Sic transit
gloria. Sic with a 'k'.
One thing's sure. He's been fatally
killed to death.
It could only have been done with a machete
or axe. Or a close encounter with a shark, except we're thirty metres above
high water mark. Or a Claymore. Except you could count the landmines in rural
Victoria on the stump of one hand.
Besides, whoever did this
was after the guy's cods - has hacked his ***** **** so savagely the rest of
the chop-fest looks incidental.
'******** hell!
I swallow bile.
I don't want to know.
Wasn't here.
I never saw this.
Ever!
2. WASH-UP
I bush-bash toward the
lights, trying to put as much space as I can between me and the butchered
billionaire. Then...
Jumping Jesus!
More
bodies.
This time, alive.
They don't see or
spot me because they're in the spin-cycle of a ********. And because the crump
of waves against the nearby cliff is as loud as a two-stroke mower. And
because she's ******** ***** **** ****** ************. And because *** ***
*** *** *** her hair's fallen over her face.
I can tell from
his fast-curl biceps and grommet-like buns that it's Andy, the steroid-tragic
who's been perving down my scoop-top all night.
As for her -
she's hot arse. Long smooth legs. Anti-gravity breasts. No baby belly or
stretchmarks. Bitch. And her Gucci Roman sandals would leave no change from a
grand. I've drooled over those sandals all night. They tag her like registered
mail.
She's Penelope Sheehan - wife of Harry.
And she's being bonked by Harry's younger brother.
One way
to keep it in the family!
Not that value judgments help.
Every pressure cooker needs a safety valve and marriage has adultery. Besides,
these rich dudes are my clients. I write their ads but that's where I get off.
You can lose accounts by knowing too much - and who's up who isn't my
business.
After a ******** ******* **** ********* *******
******.
I back away and - luck of the shickered - find the
track back to the house.
The first thing I do when I get
there is order a stiffener.
Next, I check my watch. Three
past midnight.
Most of the middle managers and their wives
have left. But the top brass are still determined to shimmy till they collapse
in their own shit. Because they're booked into a local motel and have a
shuttle-bus to take them home.
The place is first beach shack
I've struck with two stories, three wings and a ballroom. But I move in pretty
limited circles for someone who fornicates in triangles.
No,
Bev Sheehan isn't screaming the place down. Far too reserved for that. She's
at the end of the patio in a huddle with the rest of the Sheehan clan, and
their body language tells me they're in damage control.
Bev's
bending the ear of her husband, Crandall Sheehan, who everyone calls CD. He's
the brother of the butchered Adam and now the surviving head of the firm.
Bev's daughter by her first marriage, Kim, and her stepson, Harry, listen in.
It's taken me a while to suss this Death-as-a-Commodity Dynasty. CD's first
wife died of cancer leaving him with two grown sons, Harry and Andy. Then he
married Bev who had two grown daughters, Kim and Chrissie. I guess, when you
tie the knot again in your late sixties, a trail of adult kids comes with the
territory.
CD's grim face shows he's got the message. The
bothered billionaire starts downloading in the ear of number one son Harry.
Harry listens, head inclined, appropriately serious. His bag is looking
appropriate because he's one of those Christian bores who can remain
appropriate with a chilli up his arse. Except I bet he'd throw a wobbly if he
knew his baby brother had just ****** his wife.
It looks like
CD's shifted the prob to Harry, who functions as the family fixer. I watch
Harry pull out his brain-burner and thumb in a number while his dad guides his
step-mum up the curved pose-value staircase. Bev's a tall, fit bushwalker but
he holds her by the upper-arm like she's eighty. But I guess she's at least as
old as he is and the shock's probably freaked her out.
There's no visible blood on her dress and she would have been soaked if she'd
filleted the guy. So there's no way she did it.
But she could
have seen who did!
I stare back at my double Scotch then
realize I had a glass when I went outside and must have dropped it near the
hack attack. A glass with my prints on it! Leaping shit!
'Where were you?' It's Bev's waistless younger daughter, Chrissie, holding a
plateful of Pav. 'I've been looking for you everywhere.'
I
duck the question. 'Still feeding face?'
She shrugs. 'I'm on
a seafood diet tonight. I see food and I eat it. Well it's almost the silly
season. Eat-your-bodyweight time.'
She's a pretty girl with
great boobs but more than a tad overweight. Eventually, she'll drown in
fat. But, at least, she'll be filthy rich.
I fret about the
glass.
She smiles. 'I'm mad for a cuddle.'
*****
****** ******* ******** **** ***** ****** ******* ***** ***** ****** ****
*** *** She's sweet. But short on serotonin.
Then came the
Great Ocean Walk promotion. It looked a straight client/agency deal until I
found out she worked at the Tourist Board. And was **** **** ****** as much
as my advertising smarts.
**** ***** ****** ****** *******
But I can't think about that now because I'm still getting my head around the
prime-cut Adam in the bush. And the glass with my prints on. God knows where I
dropped it. No way I could find it in the dark. I'll have to recce tomorrow
morning.
Harry puts his mobile away and passes us frowning.
'Where's Andy? Have you seen him?'
I shake my head, the
little innocent.
'He went outside,' Chrissie says.
He grunts and heads for the terrace.
I glance at Suko -
short for Ritsuko - sitting in a corner alone. She's a stunning, doll-like
Nipponese ice-queen. She's also the filleted Adam's partner so everyone's
afraid to dance with her. When I look at her, she kicks the splendid isolation
bit and walks over. 'What are you two up to?'
'We're
deciding *** **** *****,' Chrissie says.
Suko's face remains
the beautiful Asian death mask. 'Do you know where Adam went?'
We tell her no and she does a trippity-trip through the push apparently
heading for the downstairs toilet. Why do Jap birds do that apologetic hobble?
Haven't they heard of women's lib?
Headlights in the drive. A
vehicle pulling up.
The shuttle bus back?
An
ambulance?
Police?
No way.
The tires rearranging the gravel belong to a black windowless van with the
gold Sheehan crest on the side.
My blink-rate goes up.
Chrissie touches my hand again. 'I think it's time we crashed, don't you?'
I nod and follow her up the staircase to her room. Half way up, through the
long window, I see the two brothers, Harry and Andy, near the van. They're
yelling at each other. Your full-on robust exchange.
Chrissie
has a teddy bear on her pillow. One always travels with her. Her pad is lousy
with stuffed toys. As **** **** **** ***** ** ******* ****** *** all I can
think about is the chop-fest in the bush.
And the van.
Have the Sheehan's decided to send the murder up the chimney?
If so, why?
I mean, I'm not a total dummy. I know about the
euthanasia underground. All those guys with AIDS plus all the other poor
shits with terrible diseases, mercifully OD'd or smothered - then cremated
fast to protect their helpers from the coroner. Commendable. And I'd expect
the Sheehans to do their public duty there.
But disappearing
someone chopped into bits by a madman?
Even if you job is
handling dead bodies and you own the crematoriums, you don't mess with that
kind of scene. You call the filth.
Besides, the mess would be
tough to disappear. Unless they had a professional clean-up team and, of
course, a tame doctor to fudge the certificate.
Then I think
about Bev's daughter, Kim, who was part of the huddle. She's a doctor. Their
tame quack?
Would she risk getting struck off by signing away
the year's most gory, most reportable death?
And why in hell
would she do that?
Because, if someone attacks your family,
you don't do a cover up. You yell blue murder, form a posse.
It makes no sense.