The Shadow House(47)

At the back door, Ollie spun around. ‘Mum, leave it. I’m fine.’ Giving me a hard stare, he disappeared into the sunshine.

Violet turned to follow, but at the last minute she turned back with an odd expression: a small smile, eyes flashing with something that looked like triumph. I couldn’t work out what it meant.

I was still staring after them when my phone rang.

Edging to the corner of the benchtop where I’d left it, I peered uneasily at the screen. An unknown number. I let the call ring out, then waited. A minute or two later, the phone pinged with a notification: a voicemail. I hit play.

‘Alex,’ said a familiar female voice. ‘It’s Susan Parker from across the road?’

I frowned. My old neighbour in Bondi.

‘Look, I haven’t seen you around for a while, and I’m pretty sure you’ve moved on – at least, I hope you have – but I just wanted to give you a heads up that there’s been some odd activity at your house, and … well, if you could call me back that would be great. It’s about Stuart. There’s just something I think you ought to know.’





ALEX





19


Stuart was missing.

When I called Susan back, she told me that four nights ago, sometime around midnight, she’d heard two motorbikes pull up in front of our old house.

Peeking through the window, Susan had seen two figures dismount the bikes and head around to the back of the house. A few minutes later, she’d heard what sounded like breaking glass, so she hurried to her guest bedroom, which overlooked our garden. She’d seen flashes of torchlight inside – and then watched as Stuart opened a window, climbed over the rail of the upstairs balcony, dropped onto the lawn and ran off across the yard. ‘He jumped the fence,’ she said. ‘Like a bloody racehorse.’

Assuming we were being robbed, she called the cops. But by the time they arrived, the thieves, or whoever they were, had gone. The attending officers told her they would investigate – but two days later, Stuart hadn’t returned home, so she went back to the police. They seemed oddly cagey, though, so she phoned a friend whose husband was in the force.

‘She told me,’ said Susan, ‘in confidence, of course, that Stuart is being investigated for money laundering. Apparently he’s been mixed up with bikies for years but they couldn’t get proof. And they probably won’t get any now, either. Looks like he’s ticked someone off and made a run for it. They’re trying to track him down but the latest is that he somehow boarded a flight to Indonesia. Have you heard from him, Alex? Do you know where he is? And where on earth are you?’

I hung up. Sat down. Stood up again. Poured a wine.

Jesus Christ. Money laundering. What the fuck? But that meant … Shit.

I took the wine to the laundry, opened the cupboard under the sink and took out the Tupperware container from behind the detergent. Popping the lid, I ran my fingers over the bundles of crisp notes inside. About four months into our relationship, I’d gone into Stuart’s study to find a stapler and found a huge hoard of cash in a drawer, stuffed inside a large envelope. Obviously I’d been surprised, but it also made a certain sense. Stuart was well off, his restaurants had done well, but for some reason I never could fathom he had a weird mistrust of banks. I don’t want the government knowing how much I have, he used to say. If they own your money, they own you.

I hadn’t mentioned the envelope to Stuart; I’d just put it back in the drawer and walked away. But I hadn’t forgotten it. And then when I’d decided to leave, I’d taken it. Not the whole lot, but over half. A snap decision. Payback. Hasta la vista, dickhead. I’d emptied the envelope, replaced two thirds of the cash with folded newspaper, then wedged a few of the bundles back in so it looked untouched. Only then did I realise that all the notes were one hundred dollar bills. I’d never seen so much money; I’d had trouble finding a container large enough to fit it all in. Driving away with it in my car had felt like the biggest win of my life. Except now it seemed like it hadn’t belonged to him. Had he been safeguarding it? Or stealing it?

I swallowed a mouthful of Chardonnay so big it actually hurt going down. Thank fuck I’d got the kids out of there when I had.

Okay, just breathe.

Stuart didn’t seem to know I’d taken the money. There was nothing in his messages to suggest he did, anyway. Maybe he hadn’t noticed; maybe he’d underestimated me. Either way, if he didn’t know then no one knew. There was no trail to lead anyone to me.

Wait.

Cogs turned slowly in my head and I felt a cold dread. If no one knew about the money, if Stuart was on the run and Ollie’s videos weren’t real, then what the fuck was happening at Pine Ridge? Where were the boxes coming from?

Gulping down more wine, I thought about the noises in the night, the grey-haired woman, the symbols in the woods and the little boy on the road – even the red smear on the wall. Only I had seen and heard those things. No one else could confirm they’d ever happened. I’d read stories about combat veterans so affected by PTSD that they became delusional; women whose minds were so ravaged after giving birth that they shattered like sheets of glass. What if I’d overheard some of the Pine Ridge kids talking and my sleep-deprived brain had cooked up a few hallucinations?

But …