Chapter 31
Meg spent the dark night trying not to think about the unlocked door, the open window, but every time she started drifting off, she woke with a jolt.
In the darkness, the room felt sinister, with strange shadows dancing on the ceiling.
She tossed and turned on the clammy mattress, the air thick and hot with the window closed, but she wasn’t game to open it.
She woke up craving home. Her own bed. Her bathtub. Her cosy sofa and her fluffy, red mohair blanket.
She got every red light on her way back into Sydney. The roads were full of people doing last-minute shopping or leaving town for Christmas in SUVs laden with surfboards and bikes.
When Meg arrived at Rosedale, Jenny was in bed.
‘They’ve taken our video, Meg!’ she said, sitting up, deep creases between her eyes. ‘They’ve stolen it!’
‘What video?’ Meg asked, but she knew Jenny was thinking of their old rental copy of The Princess Bride, which they’d never returned to Blockbuster before leaving whatever town that was. They must have watched it a hundred times, lying together in Jenny’s double bed.
‘It’s that young one with the dark hair,’ Jenny said. ‘She’s always coming in here and fussing with my things.’
‘Mum, the video’s at my house.’
Jenny frowned, eyeing Meg suspiciously. ‘It is?’
Meg nodded. ‘I’ll bring it in next time, so you can see it.’
Jenny slumped back against the pillows and closed her eyes.
By the time Meg reached her building it was late afternoon. The apartment was dark. Her eyes struggled to adjust as she stepped inside and banged her foot on something sitting in the middle of the hallway. ‘Bloody hell!’ she yelled, clutching her foot as a spasm of pain shot up through her big toe.
Once it subsided, she fumbled for the light switch and flicked it on.
A case of Carlton Draught had been thoughtfully placed in the middle of the hall.
She pushed it aside and looked around. The peace lily on the hall table drooped sadly.
Beside it was a stack of mail. She picked it up and flipped through it. Mostly junk.
A pungent smell intensified as she walked up the hall: a mixture of pot and cigarette smoke.
She stood at the entrance to the lounge room, staring at the state of it in disbelief.
The coffee table was covered in empty bottles.
A pizza box and an enormous black bong sat among the bottles next to a decorative bowl Meg had taken from her mum’s house when they’d packed up her flat. It was full of cigarette butts.
‘Are you kidding me?’ she whispered, rage building in her chest. ‘Hello?’
Silence. Gav’s bedroom door was ajar, his immaculate room empty.
Jay’s door was closed. She knocked and waited.
Nothing. She pushed it open and looked in disgust at the mess that filled the tiny space.
The carpet was hidden beneath clothes, shoes and bath towels.
The bedsheets hung off the side of the bed, the bare mattress exposed, and the bedside table was piled up with dirty plates and empty beer bottles.
Hot rage bubbled up inside her. He could afford an endless supply of pot and beer, but he hadn’t paid her a cent for almost two months!
She stormed down the hallway to the kitchen, ripped a page from a notebook and scribbled a note: CLEAN UP AND PAY ME YOUR RENT OR GET THE HELL OUT!
! Her hands were shaking as she stuck it on his door.
She took a long, slow breath and rang Pete’s number.
‘Hunter!’ he said. ‘I was just thinking about you. I’ve got intel.’
‘Are you at home?’
‘Yeah, why?’
‘I hope you don’t think this is weird,’ she said. ‘Any chance I can crash at your place?’
‘Sure, of course, but I’m painting the spare room, so you’ll have to sleep on the sofa. Hopefully you don’t mind sharing it with Maggie.’
‘Who’s Maggie?’
‘My kelpie.’
‘That’ll be fine. I could do with the cuddles, to be honest. Text me your address.’
She went into her bedroom, opened cupboards and drawers and chucked stuff into a blue Ikea bag.
Remembering the video, she pulled down the box of random stuff she’d taken from Jenny’s apartment and rummaged through until she saw a baby-faced Robin Wright staring back at her, a faded pink weekly rental sticker adorning the plastic cover.
She chucked it into the bag, then hauled it up over her shoulder and slammed the front door behind her.
Meg could smell the barbecue when she arrived at the open door of Pete’s old terrace, up the road in Newtown.
‘Hello!’ she called out as she let herself in.
A long-legged kelpie came bounding down the hallway. ‘Hey, girl,’ she said, crouching down to greet her. ‘You must be Maggie.’
Meg walked down the long hall with Maggie by her side, until she reached the kitchen and lounge room at the back.
She dropped the bag from her shoulder and looked around, admiring the modern, light-filled living space.
Pete had shown her photos when he’d bought the fixer-upper years ago—before real estate prices in the Inner West had gone through the roof—and talked of his plans to do most of the renovation work himself.
She’d found his optimism endearing, but inwardly thought it would take more than a DIY job to rescue the dark, rundown dump she saw in the photos.
How wrong she was, she thought now, looking towards the glass doors that opened onto a tiny courtyard.
She wandered outside to see a table set for two beneath a frangipani tree adorned with coloured Christmas lights. Pete was wearing a butcher’s apron, tongs in hand, intently inspecting the lamb cutlets that sizzled on the barbecue.
‘You haven’t gone to all this effort for me, have you?’ Meg asked.
He glanced up, his summer-tanned face breaking into a wide grin. ‘Hunter! I didn’t hear you.’
She gestured to the house. ‘This is gorgeous, Pete.’
‘It’s getting there.’ He shrugged, but a slight smile revealed that he appreciated the compliment. ‘Drink?’
‘I’ll have one of those, thanks,’ she said, pointing to the Corona in his hand.
He took one from the bar fridge and popped the top.
‘Thanks for letting me crash at the last minute,’ she said.
‘Everything okay?’
She sighed. ‘Just flatmate problems.’
Pete frowned. ‘I thought you got on well. Haven’t you been living together for years?’
‘Not Gav, he’s fine.’ She sat down at the table and took a sip.
‘I rented out the third bedroom when I lost my job. Turns out the quality of applicants for a room the size of a shoebox is not high, so now we have an pothead gamer living in our midst. The place was such a filthy mess when I got back there that I couldn’t stay. And he doesn’t even pay his rent!’
‘Might be time to kick him out,’ Pete said, pressing one of the lamb cutlets to test it.
‘I can’t believe I’m almost thirty and I’m still dealing with this crap.’ She sighed, weary at the prospect of confronting Jay then going through the whole process of finding someone new.
‘How’s your mum?’ Pete asked, transferring the lamb to a plate.
‘Not great.’ She blew out heavily. ‘She thinks the nurses are stealing from her.’
Pete shook his head. ‘It must be awful, don’t you think? Being confused all the time. Not knowing who people are and whether she can trust them.’
Meg nodded and swallowed a lump in her throat. ‘You said you have intel?’ she said, keen to change the subject. ‘I’m intrigued.’
His face lit up. ‘Yeah, so all of the properties on Barton Drive, seven at last count, have been bought in trusts, rather than by individual people.’
‘What does that mean?’ Meg asked, taking a crouton from the salad bowl and feeding it to Maggie.
‘It’s what people do when they don’t want the media or the public finding out they own a particular asset.
’ He put the plate on the table. ‘The trust company is in a different name with no official link to the owner of the asset. They’ll have a contract that sits behind that, which legally identifies the asset as belonging to the owner, but that part isn’t subject to the Freedom of Information Act. ’
‘So how do we find out?’
‘I already have.’
Meg laughed. ‘Of course you have.’
‘Three of the trust companies—Goodwin Investments, Greenhill Family Trust and Apollo Ventures—link back to a law firm called Purcell Partners. Goodwin Investments is also listed as the owner of a derelict hotel in the Blue Mountains, which was sold a few years ago and is now in development by Ashworth Property.’ Pete sat down and reached for his phone, finding something to show her. ‘Check this out.’
It was a photo of a group of men on a yacht, the white sails of the Sydney Opera House in the background.
‘What am I looking at?’ Meg asked. It was a long shot, the shadows dark from the bright sun directly overhead, and most of the men wore caps, obscuring their faces. She leaned in closer. ‘Is that Hugh Thorburn?’
‘It sure is, with his arm around the shoulder of Evan Purcell, the Managing Partner of Purcell Partners. See anyone else there you recognise?’
Pete waited while she studied the photo.
‘Spencer Ashworth,’ she said, slowly.
‘Yep.’
She tapped on the photo to see if they were tagged, but nothing came up. ‘How’d you find this?’
‘That’s the Instagram profile of a guy I used to play rugby with. The boat belonged to a friend of his.’
‘Interesting. It doesn’t definitively prove anything, though, does it?’
‘No, but there are too many touch points for it to be random. The likelihood that this isn’t linked to the Ashworths is slim to none. This story could be big, Meg.’
‘What do you reckon they’re planning?’
‘I haven’t worked that out yet.’ He poured the wine, then lifted his glass. ‘What shall we drink to?’
She looked around at the little paradise Pete had created at the back of his tiny terrace in the middle of the city.
The coloured lights reflected red and gold off the glasses on the table.
Overhead, the sky was an inky blue. The festive sounds of a nearby Christmas party travelled over the fence.
The rise and fall of voices. Laughter. The clinking of glasses.
The beat of a song. The air was warm on her bare arms.
‘Impromptu barbecues on summer nights,’ she said, clinking her glass against his. ‘Let’s not talk about Mum or flatmates or the bloody Ashworths. I need a night off.’