‘Why did you want this particular house?’
‘Not your business,’ he said.
He unlocked the door, switched on the inside light, and they walked into an old-fashioned kitchen. There were jerry cans of petrol on the table.
‘What are they doing here?’ she asked.
‘I’m cleaning this house away. But first I have some things to get.’
‘You’re going to burn this place down?’
‘Not me. Some people will do it for me later on tonight. By then we’ll all be long gone.’
‘The house is for sale.’
‘It’s already been sold by private treaty. I have the money. I have another house for sale. As soon as I sell that, it’ll go up as well.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s what I’ve done all my life. Clean away shit. Turn it into something useful instead. When this goes up in flames, that’ll be the last of it wiped out. I’ll have got what I wanted from it. It’ll be money in the bank instead.’
Still keeping a distance behind him, she followed him while he switched on the lights first in a dining room and then the hallway. They passed a bedroom. Grace looked at the disordered sheets. She had a perception of bodies wrestling with brutal movements. You couldn’t tell whether it was love or a beating. A small pile of women’s clothes, including underwear, had been placed on the end of the unmade bed. She glanced at them, then jerked her head back. Who were they waiting for? Not Sara.
‘Why didn’t you wait for us inside the house?’ she asked. ‘Then you could have got what you wanted and we could just have got in the car and gone.’
‘People might have seen the lights and realised someone was here. Only do what you have to do when you have to do it. I don’t want anyone knowing I’m here.’
He walked past a bathroom to a door at the end of the hallway. He pushed it open onto a small white-tiled room. This one smelled of bleach and the wooden floor was stained.
‘Let’s not waste any time,’ Grace said. ‘It’s time to go.’
‘I won’t be long,’ Griffin replied.
He knelt, levered up a floorboard and reached down into the cavity below. Grace stepped back and took out her gun.
‘They’re gone.’ He sat up straight on his knees. ‘That’s not possible.’
‘What’s missing?’ she asked.
‘Everything. I put them there just two days ago.’
‘Put what there?’
‘My business records. Money. I have to have those records. I can’t leave without them.’
He stood up and turned around on this last question, saw her gun and stared.
‘Lie down on the floor,’ she said. ‘If you try to do anything else, I’ll kill you.’
He shook his head. His friendly expression was back. ‘You’re not the type to kill. I can tell.’
‘I’m counting to three. One, two-’
She would have fired at him if someone hadn’t taken hold of her from behind. She fired anyway but the bullet went wild, burying itself in the door frame. The man who was pushing her to the floor was too strong for her. He twisted her gun out of her hand, almost breaking her wrist. Then he ripped her phone out of the pocket of her jacket. All she could see were Griffin’s feet, the open cavity and the stained wooden floor.
‘You wouldn’t have killed me,’ Griffin said.
‘Give me that,’ he said to whoever was holding her. ‘It’s a powerful gun. Standard Orion issue, I suppose. Better than mine. Yes, I’ll use this. You can stand up.’
She did, and looked at who was behind her. A man she didn’t know, probably a Ponticelli goon. Griffin was holding her gun. The man who’d tackled her had his own.
‘Where was he?’ Grace asked.
‘He’s been waiting here for hours. In the dark. I always take precautions.’
‘What do you want to do?’ the muscle man asked Griffin.
‘Someone came here and took some things I own,’ Griffin said to Grace. ‘Computers. Portable hard drives. Do you know where they are?’
‘I’ve never heard about any of those things before. Don’t you have backup records somewhere else?’
‘I’d have to go and get them, which complicates things. You and I have somewhere else to be and we’re already late.’ He looked past her to the man holding her. ‘Who’s been here? Do you know?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t get here till late this arvo. I just dumped the petrol on the table and waited.’
Griffin looked around the white-tiled room, searching for something invisible.
‘Would Sara do this? She can be so bitchy when she’s angry with me-’ He stopped. ‘Something like this happened at my other house in Blackheath. Is someone stalking me or is-’ Again he stopped.
‘Doesn’t Sara want to leave with you?’ Grace asked.
‘We both want the same things. We always have,’ he said with the strange and apparently candid look.
He stood there silent in the hallway, thinking.
‘Mate,’ the muscle man said, ‘she drew a gun on you. I reckon she’d have used it. You say she’s from Orion. She’s got to be wired.’ ‘Are you?’ Griffin asked.
Grace’s wire, a sophisticated piece of miniature wireless technology, was neatly twisted in the underwiring of her bra and finished in the decoration set in lace between the cups.
‘I came here to get paid,’ she said. ‘That’s all. Then you double-crossed me. That’s why I drew my gun. Your money’s gone. Maybe it was never there in the first place. It’s time to go. Let’s just do that. Forget all this.’
‘It’ll be in her clothes.’ The muscle man giggled. ‘We can get her to take them off.’
To Grace’s surprise, a look of powerful distaste crossed Griffin’s face.
‘I’ve already got some clothes I want her to wear,’ he said. ‘Sara bought them the other day. They’re in the bedroom.’
Soon he was back, offering her the compact bundle. ‘Put these on. You can dress the way
‘What for?’
‘It’s the way I want to remember you. I told you, you have beautiful hair.’
‘I’m not changing in front of this ape.’
‘You can change in there.’ Griffin nodded to the white-tiled room. Then he was staring at her with a total lack of expression. ‘If you won’t change, I’ll kill you now. Your brains will be all over those tiles. I don’t want to have to do that but I will. It’s up to you. I’ll be waiting in the kitchen.’
‘Get going,’ the ape said, pushing her inside. ‘Take everything off and give it to me.’
‘Get out,’ she said.
He grinned and pulled the door not quite closed. She felt his eye on the crack. There was nothing she could do. Shaking, she changed, keeping her back to the door. The dress was blue, waisted, coming to the knee, a glittering little-girl thing. Nothing like her taste. At least the clothes were new and clean. He had chosen her size well; he’d looked her over carefully every time they’d met, the way lovers do, not murderers. It was an odd look, as if he’d tried to make her a child.
She’d just finished when the door opened and the ape was there. He motioned to her to come out. When she did, he tossed her own clothes back inside the room and shut the door. Her wire was sensitive, but left in that room it wasn’t going to pick up anything.
In the kitchen, Griffin looked her over. He was still holding her gun.
‘Take your shoes off,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘You don’t need shoes for this.’
She kicked them off.
‘Hands,’ he said, and the ape tied her arms behind her with plastic rope.
