Thrill City Read online

  PRAISE FOR PEEPSHOW

  ‘Peepshow is a triumph . . . Stripping with irony, all bundled up into a ripping crime novel! I can’t wait for more.’

  —Stiletto Magazine

  ‘With Peepshow, Redhead announces herself as the bright new kid on the crime block.’—Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘Witty, quite brilliant first novel.’—Weekend Australian

  ‘A wonderful debut.’—NW Magazine

  ‘Redhead has created a true original.’—Daily Examiner

  ‘Tarts with hearts are always winners.’—Sunday Times

  PRAISE FOR RUBDOWN

  ‘The best Australian crime novel this year has been Leigh Redhead’s Rubdown.’—Weekend Australian

  ‘Leigh Redhead offers a flute of refreshing bubbles in Rubdown.’—Spectrum

  ‘Rubdown is a criminally witty romp on the sexy side of the mean streets.’—Australian Book Review

  ‘Redhead announced herself as the bright new kid on the crime block, less shabby chic than tart noir.’

  —Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘Robust, good natured and enjoyable thriller. Who needs imports like Evanovich when there’s a Redhead in St Kilda?’—The Age Review

  PRAISE FOR CHERRY PIE

  ‘Like a literary striptease, the plot is revealed little by little, just enough to keep the reader engrossed.’—Sun Herald

  ‘Cherry Pie should come with a series of warnings. Do not read this book if you have led a sheltered life and plan to keep it that way . . . Do not, under any circumstances, read this book in public, while eating or drinking, as you may splutter with laughter and embarrass yourself.’—Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘Reckless and easily riled, full of sass and spirit, Simone has a sharp eye and smart mouth, and her wry world view infuses these books with a kind of wisecracking tone that will be welcome and familiar to readers of Sue Grafton or Janet Evanovich—although Redhead’s books can be a lot sexier.’—The Age

  ‘Cherry Pie unfolds an intriguing story, full of twists and turns you don’t see coming, all underpinned by a great sense of humour.’

  —Sisters in Crime

  LEIGH REDHEAD’s first novel, Peepshow, burst onto the crime scene introducing PI Simone Kirsch to readers. Simone made her next appearance in Rubdown, followed by Cherry Pie and now Thrill City, Leigh’s fourth crime novel.

  thrill city

  LEIGH REDHEAD

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First published in 2010

  Copyright © Leigh Redhead 2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74114 737 7

  Set in 11.5/14 pt Bembo by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Michael Lynch—A boy as beautiful as you

  shouldn’t be buying his own drinks

  Contents

  prologue

  chapter one

  chapter two

  chapter three

  chapter four

  chapter five

  chapter six

  chapter seven

  chapter eight

  chapter nine

  chapter ten

  chapter eleven

  chapter twelve

  chapter thirteen

  chapter fourteen

  chapter fifteen

  chapter sixteen

  chapter seventeen

  chapter eighteen

  chapter nineteen

  chapter twenty

  chapter twenty-one

  chapter twenty-two

  chapter twenty-three

  chapter twenty-four

  chapter twenty-five

  chapter twenty-six

  chapter twenty-seven

  chapter twenty-eight

  chapter twenty-nine

  chapter thirty

  chapter thirty-one

  chapter thirty-two

  chapter thirty-three

  chapter thirty-four

  chapter thirty-five

  chapter thirty-six

  chapter thirty-seven

  chapter thirty-eight

  chapter thirty-nine

  chapter forty

  chapter forty-one

  chapter forty-two

  chapter forty-three

  chapter forty-four

  chapter forty-five

  chapter forty-six

  chapter forty-seven

  chapter forty-eight

  chapter forty-nine

  chapter fifty

  chapter fifty-one

  chapter fifty-two

  chapter fifty-three

  chapter fifty-four

  chapter fifty-five

  chapter fifty-six

  chapter fifty-seven

  chapter fifty-eight

  chapter fifty-nine

  chapter sixty

  epilogue

  acknowledgements

  prologue

  ‘I need to pee.’ Kate crossed her legs and squirmed, pulling the bottom strap of her seatbelt away from her lower abdomen.

  Jeremy kept his eyes on the road and his hands tight on the steering wheel.

  They were on their way from Melbourne to Daylesford and the countryside had changed from parched fields to swelling hills dotted with giant boulders and small scrubby trees. Soon there would be forest. She couldn’t wait. It had been so long since they’d had a weekend away, and they wouldn’t even be here now if it hadn’t been for that horrible argument after Carl’s barbecue. At least something good had come out of it, because now they were headed for forests, lakes and country cottages, cherry-hued pinot noirs and exotic, washed rind, handcrafted cheeses. Proper forests, too. Birches and spruce and maple and pine.

  She felt vaguely unpatriotic preferring European trees, but the Australian bush was so coarse and prickly and such a washed-out khaki colour that it made her mouth dry just thinking about it. She wanted deep lush greens and rich mahoganies, and fields of grass as soft and verdant as billiard table felt. She wasn’t sure why. She’d only been to the UK and Europe once, as a backpacker, fifteen years ago. Perhaps it was a collective, Anglo-Saxon, unconscious thing?

  Pain spiked up her urethra like hot wire. She pressed her thighs together. ‘Jeremy, I really need to pee.’

  He glanced at her, irritated. It seemed to be his default setting these days. When had he changed? They’d been together for seven years, married for three. Was it after the wedding? Or since they’d bought the house? She’d been so excited to own a home at first, but now it loomed ov
er them like a money sucking monster, an insatiable demon demanding to be fed. No holidays away, no bottles of French champagne, definitely no all-night benders like they used to go on—lots of booze, the occasional pill or line of coke if they were feeling particularly naughty. Definitely no crazy sex in hotel rooms till way past dawn. They only had sex about once a month now anyway. He was fixated on having a baby, not that they could afford it, and only wanted to do it when she was ovulating. How the hell was she supposed to know when she was ovulating? It wasn’t like you could feel the egg pop out of the fallopian tube.

  ‘Jeremy.’

  ‘We’re almost there.’ His receding brown hair fluttered in the air-conditioner’s updraft. ‘Twenty, thirty minutes, tops. Just hang on.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, it’s not even a two hour drive. Didn’t you go before we left?’

  ‘Of course. But I’ve drunk a litre and a half of water since then.’ She kicked at the empty plastic bottle rolling around in the foot-well.

  ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘They say you have to drink at least four litres a day. Not counting coffee and alcohol.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘I don’t know. Experts.’

  ‘I thought it was six glasses.’

  ‘That was in the eighties. It keeps going up. It was two litres in the nineties and now it’s four.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Look.’ She pointed as they whizzed past a green metal road sign. ‘Turnoff for Castlemaine. Eight kilometres. There’s a sign for a public toilet.’

  ‘I am not going sixteen k’s out of our way.’

  ‘Then I’ll wee on the seat.’

  Jeremy abruptly hit the brakes and jerked the steering wheel so that the hatchback swerved onto the shoulder, crunching gravel and spitting up dust. The sudden inertia woke their labrador, Charlie, who gave a whiny yawn, stretched, and stuck his head in the gap between the seats. Kate smelled his hot, meaty breath and felt his tongue slobber affectionately over her ear. She reached back, hooked her fingers under his collar and rubbed his thick fur. Jeremy stared at her.

  ‘Well, you going?’

  ‘Not here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘People driving by will see me.’

  ‘You’ll be sheltered by the car, and the open door.’

  ‘Not sheltered enough. Anyone driving south will be able to see my bum sticking out from underneath.’

  ‘They won’t know it’s your bum.’

  She crossed her arms and looked straight ahead.

  ‘Fuck.’ Jeremy slapped the indicator, pulled out and turned off at the next laneway, driving fifty metres until they were out of sight of the main road. The landscape had become more densely forested and he stopped the car beside a sagging wire fence, beyond which there was a patch of grassland, then a plantation of mature pines. Charlie was agitated, whining and scrabbling about in the back seat.

  ‘Don’t let the dog out,’ Jeremy warned, so Kate held the door open just a fraction of a second too long and Charlie slithered through even as Jeremy was making a grab for his collar. He ran straight through a gap in the wire and bounded off, floppy eared and delighted. Kate suppressed a smile, shrugged and followed the dog into the grove.

  It was hot outside the car but not humid, and the air was sweet and smelled like pine needles and earth. A soft breeze ruffled the knee-high grass and she felt like she was actually living in one of those tourism ads on the TV, the forties-style black and white ones that made rural Victoria look like the Umbrian countryside: chock-full of lavender fields, vineyards and stone trattorias. All she needed now was for the hatchback to morph into an old Jag, and Jeremy into a spunky Italian guy with dark eyes and thick hair named Giorgio—no, wait, Paolo.

  She ducked behind the first tree she came to, bunched her skirt around her hips, wiggled her knickers down to her knees and squatted, resting one hand on the rough bark to steady herself. Charlie trotted over and sniffed around her bum for a bit until she shooed him away and finally she could let go. A small fart escaped and then a fierce stream of sweet relief, shooting down on the pine needles. The force of the cascade made a small pond which quickly broke its banks and splintered into tiny, fast-moving tributaries that all seemed hell-bent on flooding her sandals so she inched her feet further apart, feeling the burn in her thighs, the hot urine scent reminding her of horses, and stables and hay. Then another odour hit her nostrils, a vaguely rotten smell, like someone had been dumping rubbish, or maybe a dead roo was lying belly-up at the side of the road. Craning her neck, she saw Charlie rooting around in a pile of old sticks and branches and she hoped he wouldn’t roll in anything nasty and stink out the Corolla. Christ, Jeremy would hit the roof.

  ‘Charlie. Here, boy. Come on,’ she called as she forced out the last of the pee and started bouncing on her haunches to dislodge the final drips. ‘Charlie!’

  The dog backed out of the woodpile and came running towards her at speed, ears flying back, eyes shining and something clamped between his jaws, a lump of mud and shoots by the looks of things. A nest? Before she had time to get to her feet and pull her knickers up he was there, scratching her bare bum with his find, and she got a stronger whiff of the decaying garbage smell. Disgusting. What on earth did he have in his mouth?

  ‘Get. Go on, get.’ She tried to shoo Charlie away once more but he dropped the filthy object in her lap before leaping sideways with glee. Her skirt was stretched tight between her knees so that the object nestled there like a baby in a bassinette, and even before she was completely aware of what it was she gasped in revulsion at the leathery brown and red centre and the yellow pointy-tipped twigs sticking out the edges. A claw, she thought, and then it hit her. It wasn’t a claw but a hand, a severed, decayed hand, bones spiking from withered fingertips of shredded flesh. She screamed as she tumbled backwards onto the damp, prickly ground.

  chapter one

  It was a hot November day when I first met Nick Austin. Venetian blinds slapped the glass as he pushed open my office door, strolled in and looked around the waiting room, taking in the blue Freedom Furniture couch, wilting rubber plant and faux-timber coffee table fanned with second-hand magazines. Sitting in the office proper, I saw him through the door and freaked. I’d forgotten to lock up when I came in from the shops, and clients never just fronted up. They called or emailed first, or texted if they were young and annoying.

  He wasn’t young, mid forties maybe, and he was handsome in a rugged, slightly asymmetrical way. His light brown hair, longer at the front than the back, was still thick and his height—nearly six feet—helped to disguise the beginnings of middle-aged spread. He wore an expensive grey shirt with rolled-up sleeves, a jacket slung over one shoulder, and could have passed for an ageing catalogue model—or a hitman, I thought, panic prickling my bare arms. There were any number of people who’d pay good money to have me bumped off, and there I was, idiot, leaving the office unlocked so they could waltz on in. If I couldn’t get to the back door and sprint to my car, I was dead.

  Then I came to my senses. Surely contract killers were only suave looking in the movies, or overseas, say Paris or Milan. The Australian version would probably show up in stubbies and a blue singlet, sporting jail tatts and supermarket thongs. Not strolling bare-faced past my security camera in the middle of the day.

  The guy wasn’t acting particularly hitmannishly, once I thought about it. In fact, he was looking around in almost wide-eyed wonder, as though my waiting room was the coolest thing he’d ever seen. I’d seen similar expressions on trippers late at night at the 7-Eleven, delighted the store stocked something so hilarious as canned tongue.

  ‘Can I help you?’ I leaned back on my desk and crossed my arms, trying to sound stern and professional because I sure didn’t look it. I was wearing cut-off denim shorts and a ‘Damn Right I’m a Cowgirl’ t-shirt, and my long dark hair was in a ponytail, wispy bits escaping and sticking to my lip-gloss. Normally I went for
a pantsuit-and-white-shirt combo at work—made me look like a plain-clothes copper and seemed to inspire respect and confidence in clients—but that day I wasn’t expecting anyone and had been washing my car out back with a bucket.

  My PI business was in a narrow street-level shop-front that had housed a shoe store before I took over and partitioned the space with a cheap plasterboard wall. Sunlight shafted through half-open venetians, brightening up the waiting room, but the office at the back was dim. He wandered over to the doorway and peered into the gloom.

  ‘I’m looking for Simone Kirsch.’ His voice was deep and he was well-spoken. Educated with just a hint of ocker.

  ‘And now you’re looking at her.’ I pushed off from the desk and walked over, switching on the overheads. His eyes adjusted, pupils pinning then enlarging as he spotted my outfit. He smiled as though it confirmed something, or amused him, I wasn’t sure which. In the fluorescent light I noticed his cheeks were marred with faint, pitted acne scars—although marred was probably the wrong word. The scars added character, gave him a Richard Burton kind of vibe, and without them he would have looked handsome but bland. He stuck out his hand and I shook it.

  ‘I’m Nick Austin,’ he announced, as though it meant something.

  It didn’t, so I just nodded. Up close my finely honed detective skills allowed me to notice something else. He held it well, but he’d been drinking. The glassy eyes and the faint reek of whiskey on his breath and in his sweat gave it away. Pretty hardcore for a summery weekday afternoon, but it explained the kind of bright-eyed way he’d been looking around.

  ‘I’m a writer,’ he continued when I didn’t respond. That got a reaction. I snatched my hand away.

  ‘Journalist?’ I’d had enough of them after all the crap I’d gone through. When would they get it into their heads I wasn’t going to do any interviews?

  ‘No. Crime.’

  ‘True crime?’ Just as bad. Journos with stamina.

  ‘False crime. I mean, crime fiction. I write the Zack Houston private detective books. They turned the first one into a telemovie. Aired last month? Cameron Davies played Zack.’