Blindside Read online

  He gave it some thought. ‘What about children?’

  ‘We have two teenaged sons, and they’re both at boarding school. Wealth does bestow certain privileges.’

  ‘So I’ve been led to believe.’

  ‘It’s a fair transaction, don’t you think—a free ride for a free bed? And . . . whatever, on the side.’

  ‘“Whatever”?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He concentrated on negotiating a series of tight curves in the road, but all the while his mind was elsewhere.

  ‘Nice offer’, he said. ‘But I wouldn’t want to crowd you.’ His mind flashed and ricocheted in all directions.

  ‘You wouldn’t be crowding me.’ She slid a hand along his thigh. ‘Not unless you wanted to, anyway.’

  Christ, he thought. She only has to touch me anywhere and I bar up like a randy dog.

  ‘Deal?’ she said. Now her hand was right on his groin, the hard muscle striving upwards beneath her fingers.

  ‘Deal,’ he said.

  ‘And stay as long as you like.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks.’

  ‘You’re not a very . . . effusive person, are you?’

  Smiling at her he said:‘I can be effusive. And I will be soon if you keep doing that.’

  Driving on,cruising through leafy Marysville,she unclipped her seatbelt and without a word snuggled down comfortably across his legs while he played with her hair. In less than a minute she was sleeping soundly. Astonishing. Glancing down at her serene face he experienced a moment of pure happiness—what the prison chaplain, Father O’Gorman, would have called ‘an epiphany,when you thank God you’re alive’.Not a bad day’s work for an ex-con: got what I came for, survived Bernie Walsh, hooked up with a hot woman, and now . . . a safe house. How easy is this?

  Not exactly what the priest had in mind.

  4

  The ‘townhouse’ was in fact a classic, two-storey Victorian terrace in high-priced Powlett Street. After he’d driven past it she directed him around the corner to a rear lane, where there was access via a steel garage door which she raised using a remote. Immediately they were inside,a sensor spotlight flooded the entire back yard. The garage was big enough to house three vehicles. Parked in it were a recent model maroon Honda Prelude and a Land Rover Discovery, in British racing green.

  ‘Don’t worry, the Honda’s mine,’ Jo said, noticing his interest. ‘Tractor’s Raydon’s. Mind you, it’s never been driven in anger—and I’d say all it’s ever discovered is the Australia Club.’

  It was a lavish residence. Somehow ‘townhouse’ did not cut it. Large, expensively furnished and carpeted rooms, chandeliers, magnificent curved staircase. Upstairs were four or maybe five bedrooms. Jo flung her rucksack into the main one, which had an en suite jacuzzi, and opened a window onto the wrought-iron balcony.

  ‘Put your bag anywhere,’ she instructed.

  He dropped it on the floor and joined her on the balcony. From here you could see the MCG, the gleaming white superstructure of the tennis centre complex and suburbs sprawling far and wide.

  Jo said: ‘Governor Landy used to live a few houses from here before he moved to a slightly more prestigious address. We were on vaguely nodding terms. I said hello to him when he passed by once.’

  ‘My experience of the governor is a bit different from yours,’ Shaun said with a raised brow. ‘Come in here.’

  ‘Why?’ she said, mouth opened slightly, face upturned, as his arm curled around her waist. ‘What’s on your mind, you vicious rampant animal?’

  He drew her inside and roughly stripped her off where she stood, arms held out slightly. Even while he was unclipping her bra and pulling down her fancy knickers with a pink rose on the front, she just watched him, head tilted to one side with an insouciant fuck-you expression on her face that made his blood race. But when he nuzzled into her beaver and gave her the point of his tongue she sighed and pushed his face roughly against her with both hands.

  They made mad love twice on the luxurious king-sized bed. On the second occasion she sucked his cock for half an hour, but was unable to produce the goods.

  ‘I hope you realise that’s the longest I’ve ever gone down,’ she said, rising for air—and a nice long open-mouthed kiss.

  ‘Let me help,’ he said. He turned her over onto her back, put it deep in her mouth, cupped the back of her head and delivered in next to no time.

  When they were lazing around on the satin sheets afterwards, she studied his face and said, ‘Have you noticed how we look alike?’

  ‘I have noticed that, yes.’

  She ran a finger down his nose and over his lips to his chin. ‘Same green eyes. Not contacts, are they?’

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘Nope. Same nose. Same shaped mouth . . . same profile.’ She touched each feature as she mentioned it. ‘Slight gap between front teeth, chin cleft, even a crease in the same place—here.’ She traced a fingertip down one cheek, which was creased from his habit of smiling on one side of his face. ‘Bizarre, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. What does it mean?’

  She shrugged. ‘We must be related. There’s a common gene pool somewhere in the dim distant past. What’s it called? Six degrees of separation.’

  ‘You can explain it to me one day,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t they show movies in prison?’

  That made him grin on the creased side of his face. ‘Certainly not in mine. It’s no fucking summer camp, baby.’

  Pause, then she said: ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Forty-two. You?’

  She said, ‘Thirty-nine. And I’m not bullshitting—I really am thirty-nine.’

  ‘You are also evil,’ he said, holding her.

  ‘Better watch out then. I might fast-track you to hell.’

  ‘If you did I probably wouldn’t care. Anyhow I’ve seen hell. It doesn’t do anything for me.’

  In a little bit she said, ‘When I saw you in the hotel yesterday, I was instantly attracted. Bang, I thought. That’s for me. I want a big piece of what he’s got.’

  ‘I was watching you, and then . . . I thought you’d gone. But you came up behind me, on my blind side . . .’ Someone does that inside, it usually means they’ve got a knife . . .

  ‘I didn’t want you to slip away.’

  She touched the whiskers on his face and said, ‘I love this two-day growth. Promise me you’ll always have it.’

  ‘You’re on.’

  ‘How do you maintain a two-day growth? I mean . . . how do you stop it becoming a three-day growth?’

  ‘I’ll have to work on that one. But I’m sure there’s a little man in South Yarra who’ll arrange it for me.’

  ‘Oh, without a doubt. And I know just the little man.’

  Another string of kisses, then she said, breathing the words into his mouth: ‘Do you think we’re just going to screw each other stupid all the time?’

  ‘Believe it,’ he said, hovering over her. She gripped his erection, spread her thighs wide and slid it in. Then he felt her legs cross behind his back as she rocked evenly up and down, up and down. Even though she was slick his cock felt chafed and sore, but he didn’t care. In fact the pain made it all the more real and exciting somehow. The more it hurt,the more he loved it.My God,he thought,if this is the road to hell,here I come . . .

  While she was having a shower in the en suite, Shaun stretched out on the spacious bed with his fingers interlocked behind his head. Shit, it was a long way from his narrow little steel number in the Barwon Correctional Facility. Turning his head sideways he appraised himself in the mirrored wardrobe. He didn’t look bad, considering. Weathered, creases etched deeper into the skin, but nothing too radical. Earlier they had watched themselves fucking in the mirror, which seemed to have been put there for that purpose. She sure had some serious anger directed at Raydon Steer, distinguished QC, to work out of her system. Anger and passion seemed to live together in her, side by side. Well, if she wanted to deal with it with the he
lp of Shaun’s cock he had no objection.

  There were, however, more pressing matters that needed sorting out—mainly the chest, which was still in the securely locked Land Cruiser downstairs. It couldn’t stay there, and in any case the car had to be returned soon. Tomorrow, maybe. He heard the taps go off in the bathroom, and his thoughts returned to their starting point. What about Joanna Steer?

  Well, what about her indeed?

  Funny how she didn’t mind at all that he was an ex-con— in fact that seemed to turn her on. Maybe he was simply in the right place at the right time following her marriage bust-up. Or—a real possibility—maybe she was one of those apparently respectable women who got off screwing men who came from the edge. There was a particular breed of female that went in for that—he had seen them on visiting days, weeping and carrying on for the lowlife loser on the other side of the mesh screen as if he were a holy martyr. But Jo hit on him before knowing what he was—unless she was psychic. Maybe she was.

  In any case Shaun didn’t consider himself a bona fide violent criminal, not by comparison with the real hardcore inmates, the ones who regarded that status as a badge of honour. In the slams he never really connected with the mainstream of prison life. He didn’t adopt its culture or code of conduct, which was basically the ‘us-and-them’ mentality. He didn’t make alliances—or enemies—with anyone. His simple philosophy was: the fewer people you deal with, the fewer problems you have. He didn’t try to curry favour with screws either. In effect he shut himself down for the duration, as a way of boilerplating himself against the brain-numbing boredom, moronic attitudes, power plays and the ever-present potential for serious aggravation. All around him men responded to their situation in different ways: they built up their bodies in the gym, studied obsessively, became jailhouse philosophers or lawyers, slowly lost their minds down the drainpipes and sewers of the prison system—or discovered God, in one of his many guises. Shaun’s attitude was, I’m in here for a long time, and there’s nothing I can do about that. I survive by not letting it touch me, not buying into any prison bullshit, and above all by staying clean. Nothing about it made him feel as if he belonged among the deadheads and self-mutilators, the poor innocent victims of a corrupt criminal justice system, the ones who ‘didn’t do it’, and the drug-crazed, delusional lifers with their big talk and big plans. He wasn’t scared or intimidated; he felt . . . nothing. He was dead, or dormant, inside. In a way, he wasn’t even there. Someone spoke to him, he rarely answered or even acknowledged them. In eleven years he was never involved in a fight or any serious misdemeanour. You had to be ‘standup’, to be sure, even hostile at times, but that didn’t mean you had to swing a fist at anyone who came near you. Surprisingly, few prisoners ever gave him grief, even though he’d been a cop. In a way he was almost invisible. And he was never going to be anyone’s bitch. The only time he was approached for sex he looked the guy over, then told him he had herpes, and that was the end of it. Word spread inside.

  Shaun didn’t believe he looked like an ex-con either. He didn’t have that combative, haunted convict’s face. He lacked the empty yard stare, the ugly web of tattoos, the don’t-fuck-with-me legs-apart stance or the pumped-up upper body and biceps from marathon sessions lifting weights in the prison gym. He did not feel mentally stunted, as he had a right to be after such a long period of incarceration and the sensory deprivation that went with it. Nor did he possess the edginess and paranoia that could tip over into explosive violence. At a pinch he could pass for a rock star of the jaded, brooding variety—except that he lacked the ego and drug habit.

  Another thing about Joanna—she hadn’t asked what he’d done to score an eleven-year stretch. People always wanted to know what you did—it was the first thing anyone asked you inside. You told them, or you told them to mind their own fucking business. Maybe she was being tactful, but she didn’t strike him as a tactful person. Quite the opposite, in fact. It didn’t have to mean anything, but it was slightly . . . odd. She would know it had to be a bit more than shoplifting or passing a dud cheque.

  Then there was Bernie Walsh, the treacherous, murderous bastard. Shaun might not have considered himself a violent criminal, but there was no escaping the fact that he’d smashed in a man’s skull with a shovel that very morning—less than a day after getting out. What choice did he have? Desperate measures were called for. Bernie was going to fill him with bullets and bury him, leave him there for the worms to eat, and Shaun had simply outplayed him. He felt little or no remorse for killing Bernie, although occasionally images of that shattered skull flashed in his brain while he was fucking Jo. And what about that voice at the other end of Bernie’s phone? Shaun couldn’t place it, but he had a niggling idea it was someone he’d known a long time ago. He had the number—all he had to do was trace it somehow. For the time being he decided to leave the phone switched off.

  She came into the room naked, rubbing a white towel in her hair. Some drops of water glistened on her neatly trimmed black beaver.

  ‘What are you thinking, Shaun?’ she said.

  ‘I’m thinking this is a dandy little townhouse, Jo. But is Raydon likely to turn up? I don’t imagine he’d appreciate catching his wife fucking out of school under his own roof. He might whack me over the head with one of his heavy law books.’

  She sat on the edge of the bed,still riffling the towel through her hair.‘Absolutely not. Raydon would never come here.’

  ‘You seem pretty sure of yourself.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘let me explain. You see, this is an investment property. A first-rate one, yes, but an investment property nonetheless. We actually leased it to this character, some highflying Indonesian bank executive, who turns out to be on a wanted list back in Jakarta. He was a bosom buddy of former President Suharto’s son Tommy, who has apparently scammed around half the GNP of Indonesia. This guy asked no questions and couldn’t move in fast enough. He peeled off a year’s lease in cash as if he was tipping a bellhop. Anyhow, he vanished a month ago, hours before the police arrived. Left everything— all the furniture and fittings are his, even the premium wine collection downstairs. Have you any cigarettes?’

  ‘Over there. In the pants pocket.’

  She dropped the towel on the floor and went over, showing him an appealing rear view—lovely curved back and buttocks which were damp and slightly reddened from sexual activity. When she found the cigarettes she lit one, took a deep draw and turned around, cupping her elbow in her hand as she smoked. She was so damn cool it made his chest bump.

  ‘Raydon would never come here because . . . it would be beneath him,’ she said. ‘He is a Toorak man, through and through. He would absolutely have to be dynamited out of Irving Road. Raydon comes from old Toorak stock: he is Toorak right down to his Savile Row chalkstripe suits and his Churchill cigars. Oh, and the royal tennis. Don’t forget the fucking royal tennis.’

  ‘But his Land Rover’s here.’

  That drew a half-hearted shrug.‘He must’ve come to check out the place after the guy—the banker—took off. Why it’s still here I don’t know. He probably took a taxi into town for a six-hour lunch with his cronies and forgot all about the Land Rover. Raydon owns lots of cars. He’s not exactly in the John Laws class, but he’s not too far behind. He buys cars the way other men buy shirts. I’d be willing to bet he’s completely forgotten where the Rover is. He wouldn’t give it a thought.’ She flicked ash into an empty vase. ‘So you don’t need to worry about him showing up. The only communications I’ll have with Raydon from now on will be through his lawyers.’

  ‘You’re definitely going to divorce him?’

  ‘Shit, yes. Soon as the twelve months are up.’ Again she flicked ash into the vase. She could even make a casual, careless gesture like that sexually provocative. ‘You said something before—last night—about not having had sex for a long time. Eleven years, I presume. I can’t match that, but I’d say I haven’t had sex with Raydon for a year or more. Even that would only hav
e been an alcohol-induced three-minute invasion of my sleep. Sex eventually . . . slipped off the agenda. He was either too pissed, too far away or too preoccupied rooting one of his little nymphets.’

  ‘He’s crazy.’

  She shrugged one shoulder. ‘He’s a man. Thinks, eats and works with his dick. The definitive, squalid, sex-obsessed, self-serving, ultra-privileged, venal, God-awful Toorak man, complete with carefully cultivated lisp. Rich filth.’

  ‘Rich filth. I like that,’ he said.

  ‘That’s exactly what he is. Christ, I can’t wait to throw him out of my life. The only snag will be the property settlement. He’ll pull every devious, nasty trick in the business to make sure I get screwed financially. But we’ll go all the way through the courts if necessary. I don’t care. If it costs me, it’s going to cost him twice as much. And I’ll see to it he cops plenty of adverse publicity, the low cunt.’

  The last part was spat out with a violence that surprised him. Christ, did she have it in for this man.

  ‘Why don’t you put that out and come here,’ he said.

  She dropped the cigarette into the vase, walked over and sat on the edge of the bed again, twisting her upper body towards him and putting a hand on her hip. Just the way she did that gave him a cracking horn.

  ‘What now?’

  He reached out and cupped a breast. It was lightly dimpled. He brushed his thumb across the nipple and watched her eyes flicker. ‘Something needs your attention here.’

  She could see his cock had risen sharply under the sheet. First she felt and rubbed it through the slinky material, getting him good and fired up, then slowly drew back the sheet. Maintaining eye contact with him all the way, she lowered her head, licked her lips and opened her mouth . . .

  Late next day, and Shaun ventured out for some air. The previous night had been a fractured mix of fitful sleep and sudden, wild bouts of sex. It was insane and sublime. He could never seem to get enough of her. After a breakfast of fresh-ground coffee and croissants from the gourmet bakery on the corner, he’d soaked for half an hour in the claw-footed bath while the melancholy strains of J. S. Bach floated on angel wings through the airy house. It was a far remove from the noxious rap noise and pounding techno shit from prison ghetto blasters.