She desperately wants to confide in Martin. It was so liberating when she’d told him about helping Tarquin, memorising the alpha-numeric codes, the information he’d used to embezzle a small fortune. But that information only ever had the potential to harm herself, no one else. The sex tapes are different. They’re nothing to be ashamed of, she knows that. She hadn’t been doing anything wrong; Martin would understand. But she can’t bear the thought of Liam one day seeing them, hearing the stories of his mother being screwed and discarded by a corrupt cop, a disposable tool as he planned to steal his millions. She can imagine her son, sitting on his own school bus, subject to his own ridicule, carrying the scandal of his own mother. She needs to protect him; she needs to keep the secret.
And it comes to her, a sullen revelation. It’s not just the Turtle she’s done a deal with, it’s the past. The past, that she was so determined to confront. It’s hunted her down, cornered her, and she’s compromised, agreeing to keep it secret, compartmentalised away. But what choice does she have? She lowers her hands; she sees her reflection in the window, her face distorted by some flaw in the glass, a twisted version, lit by the flickering green light of the carriage. She stares at herself, her own empty eyes. She needs to keep the past in the past.
The train slows, pulls in at Strathfield, wheels screeching, not fully aligned to the tracks, tracks not fully aligned with each other. People pile off, a few get on, no one speaks, seemingly possessed by their smartphones. The platform is lined with billboards, placards of allure, promising, always promising: the casino, off-the-plan apartments, payday lenders. And models. Glorious in their beauty, young and carefree, with airbrushed skin and photoshopped teeth, eyes luminous with confidence. Her gaze drifts downwards to the old men asleep on the benches beneath the hoardings, huddled against the cold. The real Sydney. The train eases out; the old men don’t look up.
Fifteen minutes later the train squeals into Parramatta, wheels wailing like an animal in extremis. The train breathes; more passengers flow in and out into the humming night. A woman gets on, smart in her business suit, phone clamped to her ear. A successful woman, a career woman. It makes Mandy think of Pam. Pam with her career. And her self-respect, her empathy, her principles. Mandy had pitied her once, back in the day, when the world was golden, illuminated by Tarquin’s promises, when she shone out from her own imagined billboard and Pam was just a member of her audience, another commuter on the platform beneath. How is it possible that she felt sorry for Pam? Pam, who’d been to university, earned a degree, had won her position at Mollisons on merit, her promotions through ability and hard work. Who had been so kind and so caring. And yet Mandy had felt superior, courtesy of Tarquin, her high-flying fiancé. But none of it had been earned; it was airbrushing and photoshopping, her existence a vacuity. Before Tarquin, she’d been down and out, a borderline junkie, hopeless and helpless, floating on the Sydney pond with Billy the bass player. And then Tarquin had pulled her up, a latter-day Pygmalion, arranging her job, arranging her life. But it was a play: Tarquin was an actor, a professional imposter. God, how could she have sneered at Pam?
‘Are you all right?’ It’s the corporate woman, standing above her.
‘What?’ asks Mandy, even as she touches her face, feeling the wetness.
‘Is there someone I can call?’
‘No. It’s fine.’
‘Are you sure? You have somewhere to stay?’
Mandy smiles. ‘It’s okay. I have money. I have a hotel. I’m just upset, that’s all.’
The woman smiles back. ‘All right then.’ She looks up, the train is slowing. ‘This is my stop. Take care.’
Mandy watches the woman disembark. Then, at the last moment, she scrambles off herself. Time to cross the tracks, to return, to re-engage. She thinks of the woman, the woman who cared. She thinks of Pam. It’s time to push back, to respect herself.
Walking. He walks through the emptying streets, the air still and taut, the streetlights losing their struggle against the encroaching night. He passes through Hyde Park, the fairy lights sparkling in the trees, bequeathing a wonderland glow to the ice addicts yabbering incoherently beneath them. He’s making progress, real progress. Clarence O’Toole has gifted him a mighty story, of murder and corruption and conspiracy. He can’t sit on it, he can’t avoid it, he has to write it. The judge has provided so much information it’s difficult to assimilate it all. But at its heart, he has connected the two murders: the murders of Max and Elizabeth are linked to their investigation of the Mess, and the Mess is connected to Mollisons and the execution of Tarquin Molloy. And to Large Sky, to George Giopolis and, most of all, to Harry Sweetwater. The story: he can feel it, almost smell it. But there is no sense of excitement, no thrill. Not this time.
Max. Not dead for some great journalistic scoop. Not Watergate, not the Panama Papers, not the Moonlight State. No. Played. Played by Elizabeth Torbett, used as a pawn in her attempts to outmanoeuvre Harry Sweetwater. The internecine squabbles of an entitled elite, corrupt and careless.
Part of him doesn’t want to return to the hotel, doesn’t want to face Mandy, doesn’t want to explain how the man he had so idolised, the man who had made him, who had been like a second father, had been so humiliated. And part of him does. Part of him wants to run to her, to cry in her arms, to let her comfort him. What is wrong with that, after all? Aren’t they in this together, the two of them? Not just this investigation, this
