CHAPTER 1
"Listen, you moron, man-made global warming's complete garbage. It's a con-job that pointy-headed scientists invented to get more funding."
Gary Maddox sat in the back of his battered van, staring through a one-way glass panel at a street lined with dilapidated houses, broken fences and cracked pavements. A factory nearby pumped out a shitty odour. Even the weather seemed worse than anywhere else in Sydney.
His main focus was a rundown bungalow about thirty metres away. Nine-thirty. Burke usually left home about now.
Gary sipped coffee from a thermos and listened, on his transistor radio, to a shock-jock trade insults with the inane and insane. All the callers were angry, spoke in the same nasty accent and were never wrong.
"Of course the Polar Ice Cap's melting, you drongo. It's made of ice. Ice melts. Nothing weird about that. Look in your whiskey glass the next time you get drunk. You'll work it out."
The caller got feisty: "You know nothing about global warming - you're just a blow-hard."
"How dare you. If you can't be civil, I'm going to cut you off. Goodbye and good riddance."
The shock-jock ditched the caller and started spruiking a toilet cleanser. Gary loved the show's energy and liked to see what was floating in the sewers beneath society.
Burke opened his front door and shuffled down a cracked pebble-crete pathway. Gary noted the time on a pad.
Burke was in his mid-thirties, slab-faced, with big shoulders and ropey arms. He claimed he hurt his back on a building site and was permanently disabled. The insurance company didn't believe him. Its solicitor employed Gary to perform "covert optical surveillance". So far, Burke's most strenuous activity was opening his mailbox.
Burke stepped through his missing front gate onto the pavement and turned left. Gary picked up a gym bag with a concealed digital camera, stepped from the van and followed at a discreet distance.
Burke followed his usual routine. First, he bought a tabloid newspaper at a kiosk and read it on a park bench. Then he drifted into a pub and downed half-a-dozen beers while vacantly staring at sport on the TV, talking to no-one. Mid-afternoon, he bought some sausages at a butcher's shop and trudged home.
A shit life - if it was a life at all! The only time Burke looked animated was when he saw a sexy woman. His eyes slithered all over her.
After a week of surveillance, Gary felt a familiar paranoia. Maybe Burke's solicitor had warned him to expect surveillance. Or maybe he noticed Gary lurking about. Had Gary been careless? Did he use the same van too often? Had he gone from watcher to watched? Burke looked too dumb to smell a rat. Or maybe that was a ruse and he was laughing up his sleeve. Shit.
Gary told himself to calm down. Such jitters were normal about now. He hadn't been spotted. If he was patient, Burke would make a mistake. Guaranteed.
Gary lived in a three-storey apartment block about two hundred metres from Bondi Beach. It was a red-brick eye-sore marooned in the middle of a bitumen car park. Looked like a factory with balconies. Yet the owner had the balls to call it "Belgravia Mews".
The furniture in his living room looked like the left-overs at a jumble sale: a red Naugahyde sofa, green-laminate dining table and rickety sideboard all sat on a diseased yellow carpet. The cathode-ray TV looked prehistoric.
He'd just thrown his jacket onto the sofa when his doorbell rang. Outside stood a tall, slender woman wearing a sloppy-joe and jeans.
Robyn Parsons moved into the apartment below about six months ago and announced her presence with a series of orgasmic screams that woke him with a hard-on. Too bad they were in separate apartments.
He soon discovered she was in a tempestuous relationship with an Italian real estate agent called Rocky. Most evenings they yelled at each other for about an hour before making high-decibel love. It sounded more like torture than sex.
A month ago, she knocked on Gary's door, crying bitterly, and announced that Rocky had dumped her for another woman. He took her down to a local pub and listened with frozen sincerity while she unburdened her soul. Because he didn't nod off, she kept saying he was the nicest man she'd ever met.
After that, she kept knocking on his door for a chat. Usually, they watched TV and downed a bottle of white. He was obviously in her cross-hairs. The next move was up to him.
He hadn't been in a serious relationship for a long time. When he worked undercover, he had no chance, and all his dates after that were disasters. If the women weren't crazy when he met them, they flipped soon afterwards. He also got tired of having to explain all his jokes. Better to watch TV or read a book.
Then Robyn jolted his complacency. She was seriously good-looking and quite amusing, in a quirky way. But he had doubts. Her relationship with Rocky was dark and volatile, and she seemed insecure and demanding. True, she'd calmed down and seemed much happier. But he hadn't adjusted to the new Robyn and wasn't sure she would stay.
Standing on his doorstep, holding a plastic bag, she said: "Hi Gary, I was hoping you'd turn up. Going to invite me in for a drink?"
He was tired and just wanted to lie on his sofa and watch crap TV. But he couldn't refuse her. "Of course. You'll find some beers in the fridge."
"Great."
She strolled into his kitchen, returned with two beers and handed one to him. They sat on the sofa.
He said: "How's your job hunting going?"
Robyn had worked as a bookkeeper until the real estate business that employed her went bust. "Not good. If things don't improve, I'll have to sell my body."
"If you do, let me know."
She raised an eyebrow. "I will. How was your day?"
She knew he was a private investigator and thought that very glamorous, though he often tried to persuade her it wasn't.
He smiled: "Well, let me see: I rescued a woman in distress, located some lost treasure and shot a couple of guys. Apart from that, it was pretty boring."
She giggled. "You shot some guys? I hope they deserved it."
"Of course they did. They were low-life scum - a waste of good bullets."
"Good. And what else did you do?"
"You mean, bread-and-butter work?"
"Yes."
Gary told her about his surveillance of Burke.
She said: "Maybe he's really got a bad back."
"If he has, you can cut off my legs and call me 'Shorty'."
"How come you're so sure?"
"I used to be a cop: I know when people are lying or faking. It's a sixth sense you develop."
She leaned forward eagerly. "Maybe, one day, you'll let me go to work with you. I won't get in the way, I promise. I might even be able to help. Please, I need some adventure."
Her offer planted a vague idea in his mind that refused to blossom. "Maybe you can. I'll think about it."
Her eyes gleamed. "Good. So, you want to watch some TV?"
"Sure."
She picked up the remote control and turned on the television. A commercial appeared on the screen.
She glanced back at Gary. "You know, you've never told me why you stopped being a cop."
"I haven't, have I?"
She hesitated. "No. You want to tell me now?"
Gary frowned. "No."
"Why not?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
A shrug. "Fair enough. Now, what are we going to watch? You decide."
He seized the remote and started channel surfing.
She reached into her plastic bag. "I hope you don't mind; I've got some crocheting to do."
He suppressed a sigh. While he was dithering, they seemed to have skipped sex and gone straight to marriage. That made him feel very, very old.