Draw the Brisbane Line Read online

  Also by P.A. Fenton

  Punchline

  Cellar Door

  Natural Deselection

  The Spanner: A Novella

  Draw the Brisbane Line

  P.A Fenton

  Draw the Brisbane Line

  First Kindle Edition August 2015

  Copyright © 2015 by P.A. Fenton

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form, without the written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organisations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  # Twitter Board

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  #Twitter Board

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  #Twitter Board

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  #Twitter Board

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  #Twitter Board

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  #Twitter Board

  Chapter 33

  #Twitter Board

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  #Twitter Board

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  #Twitter Board

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 1

  A body sailed past the harbour view, no more than a desperate reach beyond the balcony rail. It was far too big to be a bird. It could have been window cleaning equipment, or debris from a plane, but Dave had no interest in fighting probability. It was a body.

  He pushed himself out of the sweat-polished leather club chair with one hand, and kept a tight grip on the neck of the beer with the other. The chair was one of the few pieces of furniture left in the apartment not boxed or strapped or wrapped-and-ready to go. The TV was packed away, so he spent his time in the chair, aimed at the view through the picture window where the telly used to be: the glittering sweep of the harbour; the constantly shifting tones of the Opera House’s sails; storms approaching and retreating over the Hills district to the north.

  And the falling bodies.

  There had been three in the last week, always at dawn.

  He found his feet as he imagined a muffled, distant thump. He walked to the window, the polished concrete floor cold on his bare feet. He pressed a button on the window frame and the window became a door, sliding into a recess in the wall with a mechanical purr to expose the full length of the balcony. A powerful gust hit him and pushed him back on his heels. If it had happened a few beers later, he’d have been on his arse. This high up, on the forty-second floor of the tallest building in the city, the winds could sometimes move boulders. The glass wind-breakers on the balcony were just high enough to stop any accidental tumbles, but enough of those miniature cyclones thundered over the top of the rim to quell any thoughts of hosting a barbecue out there. They missed that one from the sales pitch: fantastic entertaining area, but if your guests are a little on the slight side, they might want to strap on a parachute. That kind of design never would have made it past the many safety regulations so entwined in the construction industry a few years ago. It was amazing how a dose of recession could loosen and slice even the thickest tangles of red tape, if the price was right.

  Some of the jumpers landed two or three blocks away when those gusts hit. It made walking the streets in the neighbourhood immediately surrounding the building more of an extreme sport than a cheap alternative to a taxi or city parking.

  The rising sun was now bright on the water, reflections bouncing off ripples and cars and windows in a chain reaction of light. Dawn used to be the time of new beginnings, new promise, but he couldn’t think of it like that anymore. Dawn brought the jumping hour.

  He inhaled the morning, the sea air and the pollution, and was about to return to his recliner when another gust of wind hurled a body over the balcony rail.

  ‘Jesusfuck!’ He dropped the beer and it landed with a wet pop.

  The body, the man, wore a fine wool pinstripe suit, and when he tried to get to his feet he screamed and fell back down.

  ‘Ow, shit, my leg,’ he groaned.

  ‘Your leg?’ Dave said. ‘You’re worried about your leg?’

  ‘It’s my knee,’ Pinstripe said. ‘I’ve had problems with it for years, medial ligament. It’s well and truly fucked now.’

  ‘Didn’t you … Didn’t you just jump?’

  ‘No, no. I was admiring the view from my balcony and I slipped and fell over the chest-high barrier.’

  Dave stared at him. He wasn’t sure what to say, what to do. Should he call someone? Should he help him up? Offer him a drink? His breathing seemed steady and slow, which was completely at odds with all the adrenaline which must have been pumping through his system. Dave had gone bungee jumping a few times, and the buzz it gave him was incredible, like someone flicked a switch in his central nervous system and sent crazy electricity bouncing through his blood. This guy had just climbed over a glass wind-breaker on his own balcony, balanced on the thin strip of concrete as he dipped the toes of his shoes into the turbulent void between safety and Sydney Harbour, and then let go of that sheet of tempered glass. His heart, it should have been vibrating, but the only evidence of what he’d just attempted was his hair. His suit remained buttoned, his tie held in place with a gold tie clip, and he calmly poked at his injured knee with the troubled wince of the weekend sportsman — but that hair, it was a tornado of black and grey cotton.

  He must have mistaken Dave’s silent stare for a look of annoyance, because he said, ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to be short with you. I just … fuck. Could this be any more screwed up? How can everything have broken down to the point where not even suicide works?’

  ‘Is suicide supposed to work’ Dave muttered.

  ‘Hey. Aren’t you Dave Holden?’

  ‘Um. Yeah.’

  ‘Oh, wow. You live here?’

  ‘Yeah, kind of.’

  ‘I had no idea. James Cain, I live on the sixty-second.’

  He held out his hand, and Dave could have no less shaken it than he could have prevented a sneeze. If you played professional sport for even a short time, shaking hands with strangers becomes a reflex. He was retired now, but he had three majors and one Davis Cup, which even he had to admit made him something of a national sporting icon.

  Jame
s Cain. The name was familiar.

  Cain released Dave’s hand. ‘You still playing?’

  ‘Not really. Occasional charity matches, but my better playing days are behind me. Look, can I get you anything? Do you want me to call an ambulance?’

  He knew this guy from somewhere, but he couldn’t place him. The knowing-not-knowing started to irritate the inside of his head.

  ‘No, thanks mate. I’ll be on my way in a minute.’

  He turned to look out at the harbour, through the salt-scaled glass of the balcony fence. Dave looked down at the broken beer bottle on the floor, its contents trickling slowly towards the edge.

  ‘I should clean that up,’ Dave said.

  He wished he’d never opened that beer. It just seemed like the kind of thing he should do, now that he was alone and sad. All it gave him was a sour taste in his mouth and acid reflux. A failed experiment then.

  ‘Look,’ Cain said. ‘Could I … could I ask you a favour?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Could you give me a hand up?’

  ‘Of course, no problem, no problem.’

  He stepped over to Cain and supported him under his arm as he got to his feet. Cain grimaced, and Dave felt his pain — he’d suffered the same injury three times in his playing days. Cain tested his leg and sucked air through his teeth. He was a big guy, overweight by at least twenty kilos, and Dave couldn’t see him getting around anywhere without crutches.

  ‘I have some crutches inside,’ Dave said. ‘Leftovers from the last hamstring injury. You want me to get them?’

  ‘No, no point, really. Could you just give me a boost?’

  Dave let go of his arm. He took half a step back and waited for the laughter.

  ‘Did you say boost?’

  ‘I just need to get over the rail, but it’s too high up. What is it, five feet? In my younger days I could have pulled myself up, but now …’ He patted his belly. ‘Gravity is not on my side. And now this fucking knee, you know?’

  ‘Mate, I’m not giving you a boost over my balcony.’

  ‘Oh, come on mate. I’d do the same for you.’

  ‘I don’t want you to do the same for me. I don’t want to jump.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just that …’

  ‘Just that what?’

  ‘I thought you were, you know, building up to it.’

  ‘Building up to it?’ Jesus Christ mate, I’m not planning on jumping.’

  Cain shook his head, and a pained smile flashed Dave his too-perfect teeth. ‘No, no, neither was I. Why would I? I’ve done pretty well for myself, in general. I’m separated from my wife now, but we raised a couple of girls now in their teens, they do well at school, they’re popular. So why would I jump? You tell me. Why would I jump?’

  Dave knew the answer. He’d have preferred not to answer it, but the man had asked him. Dave had never been able to ignore a question asked of him — he was a sports journalist’s dream interview.

  ‘Because everything has gone to shit,’ Dave said. He rubbed his eyes, tried not to think about Jenny, about the empty void his life was threatening to become.

  ‘Bingo. Everything has gone to shit. Anyone who had their future tied to my company is now facing an old age propped up by the thinnest of government support.’ He laughed. ‘You know, when the property market started to crash, my brilliant daughters thought it would be an ideal time to exploit those less fortunate. You know what they wanted me to do? They wanted me to buy them a holiday house in Noosa. They didn’t quite understand that it wasn’t just a case of property prices taking a nosedive. They didn’t get that property was taking the banks with it. When I tried to explain this to them, you know what they said to me? They called me a fucking loser. A fucking loser! I’m just glad they said it to me over the phone. If they’d been here, I don’t know. They were probably just parroting their mother, so I shouldn’t hate them for it. I don’t need to explain the economics of the situation to you though, do I? Your brother’s been predicting all this for years.’

  Dave’s brother. He was probably floating six inches off the ground right now, Dave thought, supported by the lift of his own self-satisfaction. Where precisely he might be, Dave could only guess — perhaps sensing a great deal of anger focused in his direction and wielded like a club by those who might mistakenly think he had some hand in bringing this down on the collective head of the country, Tom Holden had apparently gone into hiding. Dave had no idea why Tom would decide to disappear when he was already ensconced within the safety of Manhattan and the UN Security Council. Maybe he’d gone to ground so no-one would see him coming as he made his surprise-attack bid for party leadership, and the number one job that came with it.

  Everyone had been asking Dave where Tom had gone. TV reporters, journalists, bloggers, gossip hounds, friends and distant relatives — they all seemed to think that twins were supposed to sense these things, as though Dave could close his eyes and lead them right to him, like a human divining rod.

  ‘And as if this economic collapse wasn’t enough, now there’s this. This bloody invasion talk. Yanks are gearing up for something up north, and if you believe the crazies, we’re about to be invaded by Indonesia.’

  Dave snorted a laugh. ‘Maybe a bit of media scaremongering to pressure the government to throw more in the defence budget.’

  ‘Throw what in the defence budget? And from where? Have you seen where Australia’s debt rating is currently sitting? We’re alongside Greece right now. Greece.’

  ‘So why the big arrival of US forces? We’ve got enough of our own.’

  Cain twirled his hands, as though looping news down from the air and wrapping it around his fingers. ‘They’re saying it’s all part of Force Posture. Military coordination and cooperation, some shit like that. But the bigger rumours and fear-mongers are pointing shaking fingers in the direction of China and North Korea. Haven’t you been watching the news?’

  ‘Nah, TV’s been packed away for days. I’m moving out at the end of the week.’

  ‘Yeah, where are you going?’

  Dave laughed. ‘Noosa, actually. Initially. I’ve got a place up there by the beach. Thought it might do me some good for a while, you know? Hole myself up there and just try to clear the shit out of my head. Now I’m thinking I might try to sell that place too. You know anyone looking to buy?’

  ‘Yeah, a couple of over-privileged tweens who are about to be very disappointed to learn their father’s life insurance policy won’t pay out on suicide.’

  They both laughed and looked out over the balcony’s edge as a distant siren came warbling up to them. A bird dived past the glass barrier, a sea eagle, and both men turned to watch it level off and drift down towards the harbour, heaved up every so often by an updraft, and the way the bird moved with the gusts it seemed to be almost surfing the random currents.

  ‘So are you going to give me a boost or what?’

  ‘What if I don’t?’

  Cain looked around the balcony space. ‘I could always drag over one of those outdoor chairs you have there. Looks heavy — what is it, iron? I’ll probably cause myself more pain doing it, but eventually I’ll get it up to the glass. Quicker and quieter if you just help me.’

  ‘You know, as ways to go out go,’ Dave said. ‘This is pretty selfish. You might kill someone on the ground.’

  ‘Unlikely at this hour. And yeah, I thought of pills, hanging, the razor. You know why I settled on the jump? I was up one morning, kind of like you are now, and a jumper went straight past me.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I was out on the balcony, having an early coffee, and this guy whips past me in a flapping bathrobe and nothing else. It took me by surprise, I can tell you. But you know what? I swear the guy was whooping as he went past. He was having fun. And I thought to myself, if I’m going to go out, that’s how I want to go.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  God, the way he was looking at Dave with a half-smile
trying to challenge the watery crunch of his eyes, Dave felt that familiar urge to help. When someone asks for help, you give it, that’s what was drilled into him by parents, by teachers, by publicists. No reason to go back on that now, just because they were standing at the end of the world.

  Dave looked at Cain standing there in his suit, pressed shirt, Windsor-knotted tie and patent black shoes. He hadn’t dressed for a working day, he’d dressed for a coffin. There was no point trying to talk him around.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Dave said. ‘I’ll move the chair over by the glass. Maybe it had been there the whole time, you know?’

  Cain tried to wink, but the flutter of his eyelids cut loose a thin stream of tears Dave hadn’t realised he’d been holding back. ‘You’re a smart man, Dave Holden,’ he said. ‘And a good man.’

  Right, a good man. Dave lifted the heavy iron chair and carried it over to the glass edge of the balcony. The muscles of his lower back tightened and clenched, but only for a moment. With his face so close to the glass he could look down and see the rooftops of office blocks staring up at him. They used to be giants, some of those buildings; and his apartment building, Pinnacle, seemed to be looking down on them and saying, really, you call that sky-scraping? Pinnacle curved out beneath him as the lower floors spread out to occupy a base-level footprint the size of a full city block, and sometimes he imagined he could almost surf the curve of glass all the way to the street. He wondered if Cain shared his fantasy.

  With the chair in place, he took a few steps back.

  Dave didn’t know what he’d been expecting from Cain. Maybe a short speech, or a show of reluctance or procrastination. When he looked back at it over the next few days, he’d tell himself, I didn’t really think he’d do it. He’d convince himself he was playing the role of a parent calling his child’s bluff, showing some tough love. You want to smoke? Here, smoke the whole pack! He sure as hell hadn’t expected Cain to nod once, climb onto the chair while trying to keep off his injured knee, and then simply tip himself over the glass barrier without even a wave goodbye.

  But that’s what he did.

  Dave quickly retreated back into the apartment and closed the sliding door. His heart beat hard inside his chest, an enraged prisoner rattling the bars of his cage. He didn’t want to be out there to hear the thump or the cheers of the ghouls. He didn’t want to entertain any too-late second thoughts or doubts. He thought about getting another beer from the fridge, but not even the idea seemed appealing. What he wanted to do, right then, was get out of the city. Get on a plane and fly to Queensland. All he wanted to do was to see Jenny and tell her he was sorry.