‘Wayne was there?’
‘No. He just took us, came up in the lift and went down. The other bloke too, the one who met us.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, it went on for a while, The big guy’s lifting Katelyn up like a doll, his hands can meet around her waist. Then he wants an act, y’know.’
‘Act?’
‘He wants an act. I said no, that’s not in the deal. I mean, if he wanted an act he should have ordered one. I didn’t do acts, wanted to do acts for fuckheads I’d’ve stayed at the club. Anyway, he gets really pissed off, red face, pulls out money, like hundreds, throws it on the floor. The spunky guy calmed him down. So the prick does some more C, he vacuums it up, and he takes Katelyn off. I thought, shit, girl, sooner you than me.’
‘What happened to you?’
She gave me a direct look. ‘You want to know this stuff?’
‘Yes.’
She shrugged. ‘The spunky guy went off somewhere and I’m dancing with the nerd and the woman comes up close behind me and she lifts up my dress, so I reckon it’s a threeway. That’s okay, not the end of the world, and we go to the other bedroom and she wants to know my name, she’s really friendly. Anyway, it turns out they both like to watch, so it’s first her and then it’s him. She’s like a movie director, when she’s watching, she gives orders — do this, do that.’
It was warm in the room, sunlight on the carpet, outside, the exotic birds feeding. Janene put a hand under her T-shirt and scratched her stomach while she drew on the cigarette. She didn’t mind talking about sexual matters.
‘Also she liked the stick,’ she said. ‘She’s on me, he’s giving it to her. Christ, she made a noise. Then there’s a knock on the door, I thought it was someone to say turn it down. He goes to the door and there’s a bit of whispering. Then he comes back and he tells me to get dressed in the bathroom. So I get my stuff and go in and when I come out, they’re gone and the fucking door’s locked.’
Janene got up and sent out another cigarette end. The birds thought it was food and rushed.
‘Christ,’ she said, ‘I’ll have to run the air-conditioning for an hour.’
She lit another cigarette, leaned against the bar. ‘I knock and I wait, knock again, after a while I’m a bit panicky and I give the door a fucking good hammering. I’m thinking about ringing reception, only it’s going to be a bit hard to explain. Anyway, the door opens and there’s this guy, he’s very calm, he says there’s been a bit of a problem, nothing to worry about, Wayne’s on his way to pick me up. I calmed down. It was a few minutes, the door opens and it’s Wayne. Let’s go, he says.’
‘What about Katelyn?’ I said.
‘That’s what I asked. He said there’s been an accident. Then he grabs me and we’re out of there, no one to be seen. He took me back to my place. I was really fucking shaken up, I can tell you. I wasn’t tough, I’d never been on the streets, just clubs and escort, upmarket escort, nothing ever happened to me. Then he says, you’ve got to go somewhere safe for a while, these people are dangerous. I said, fuck, the cops, that’s where I’m going. He says, listen to me girl, you talk to the cops, we will both have to go and live down a hole in the fucking desert for the rest of our lives. You can’t help Katelyn, you’ve got to help yourself, help me.’
There was a faint sheen of sweat on Janene’s face. She hadn’t thought about the night for a while, had presumably never spoken about it.
‘Then he says, we’re sitting in the car, he won’t look at me, he says, they want me to kill you. Give you a hot shot. That or they kill both of us. I knew he was telling the truth. I knew we were in bad trouble. I said, Jesus Christ, who are these people? He says, they’re rich people, they’re powerful people, we’re fucking bugs.’
She sighed, closed her eyes, shook her head. ‘I said, Wayne, did you tell them you’d kill me? He says, yes, so for fuck’s sake, just do what I tell you or I will. I went upstairs and threw some stuff in a bag. We went to an ATM, I took out what I could and I gave Wayne the card and the PIN. That’s the last time I was Janene Ballich.’
She got up, left the room, came back, slid open the glass door. The birds backed off but they knew what was coming. She threw a handful of seeds onto the paving, closed the door.
I watched the birds pecking, waited for her to sit down.
‘How did you get here?’ I said.
‘We drove to Adelaide. I got on a plane.’
‘In what name?’
‘Jean Quinlan. Wayne got a Queensland licence for me in that name. He sent it with the rest of my money.’
‘That night, the date?’
‘December the third, 1994.’
‘So you flew from Adelaide on December 4?’
‘That’s right, yeah. Tried to ring my mum from the airport, got some pissed dickhead.’
‘And at this end, what happened?’
‘I waited at the airport for Teresa.’
‘What did she know?’
‘Wayne said I was his fiancee and my family were nutters, my brother wanted to kill me.’
‘She knows the truth now?’
Janene nodded. ‘When they killed Wayne, I told her. I thought she’d tell me to piss off but I had to tell her. She’s a good person, she didn’t owe me a fucking thing, but she just gave me a hug. She’s my friend. Lots in common now, both married to arsehole Milders, except she’s got the kids and I’m the infertile bitch.’
‘And your husbands, they know?’
‘Jesus, no. No.’
‘How old were you then?’
‘Nineteen. And a half.’
‘Katelyn?’
A shrug. ‘Looked fifteen, I don’t know.’
‘Someone must have tried to find out what happened to her.’
‘She said all she had was a half-brother but she hadn’t seen him since she was little, ten, something like that. These foster people had her, they ran a roadhouse in the back of buggery, then the man left and another one came on the scene, he was on her like a rash. She was thirteen. The mum kicked her out. That’s all I know. She told me that once.’
Katelyn Feehan, looking fifteen, dead in a five-star hotel, next-of-kin someone she hadn’t seen since she was ten. I looked at the birds, the pickings were slimmer now, they were jostling like footballers, a lot of use of the body.
‘Being scared, it’s always there, every day,’ said Janene. ‘They killed Wayne, he was fucking right about them, they’ll kill me.’
‘You can only stop being scared,’ I said, ‘when they can’t touch you.’
‘Who?’ she said, her right hand sprang out, fingers spread, sharp gesture. ‘Fucking who?’
‘If it came to it,’ I said, ‘could you identify the people you saw that night?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘The big one, I’d know him, I would definitely positively know him. And the nerd, probably. I don’t know, I’d have to see him.’
‘The spunk and the woman?’
‘Yeah, him. I’d know him. If she looked the same, I’d say yes. But if she’d changed her hair and stuff, well, maybe.’
‘The man who came to the bedroom door. Would you recognise him?’
‘Don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Janene,’ I said. ‘I’ll need your help. Will you look at some pictures?’
She raised both hands, automatic, ran middle fingers outwards along the tops of her eye sockets, under the unplucked brows. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘What kind of pictures?’
‘Just people in the street, ordinary pictures.’
‘Yeah, okay.’ She fetched another cigarette, sat down.
I opened the folder and took out the photographs of Mickey Franklin. ‘Just say if you recognise anyone and
