Good Friends Read online

  Liz took a breath. Something in his voice had her scared.

  “Jesus, what have you done?”

  “I need you to bring your boat to Rawai jetty right now. You know it?”

  “Sure I know it. What the fuck is going on?”

  “I’ll explain everything when you get here. I’m waiting.”

  He was gone.

  Liz stared out into the night. Furious. Terrified.

  21

  Caroline stood on the deck outside the living room, feeling the hot breath of the breeze coming off the ocean.

  She heard a motorboat start and saw a light on the water.

  Liz’s boat left its mooring and puttered out to sea.

  Michael joined Caroline.

  He carried two longnecks, handing her one.

  “Is that our neighbor?” Michael said.

  “Must be.”

  Caroline sipped her beer.

  “Now where would she be going alone in the dark?” Michael asked.

  “How do you know she’s alone?”

  “True. Maybe there’s a Herr Keller on the scene.”

  Caroline shook her head.

  “Nope. He’s dead.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Uh huh. In a boating accident, oddly enough.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I bumped into her on the beach this morning.”

  “And she unloaded on you about the dead husband?”

  “Yeah, just blurted it out.”

  “Jesus,” he said.

  Caroline took one more sip of her beer.

  It tasted bitter and she put the bottle down on the table.

  “Actually, I ended up spending the day with her.”

  Michael squinted. “You did?”

  “Yes. We went to Central.”

  “You hate Central.”

  “I know. But I was a bored, I guess, and a little curious about her.”

  “And how was it?”

  “Exhausting. The poor shopgirls. She blew in and out of stores like a freaking tornado, tried on piles of clothes but bought nothing.”

  “A credit to her race and her sex.”

  Caroline laughed.

  “And did she unload anything else?” Michael asked.

  “Just that the late husband used to fool around.”

  “Okay.”

  Caroline looked at him. “And she asked if you did.”

  “If I fooled around?”

  “Yes.”

  Michael stared at her. “And what did you say?”

  “What do you think I said, Michael?” Caroline pushed away from the railing and walked inside, speaking over her shoulder. “I said no, of course.”

  22

  Liz gave a barreling longtail boat a wide berth, and cruised slowly past a pair of anchored yachts toward the pier at Rawai, a long concrete finger jutting into the ocean, the walkway aglow with colored lights.

  It was high tide, and the pillars of the pier were almost submerged.

  As she powered down and allowed the boat to bump up against the steps that led into the water, she saw a shape moving toward her.

  Charlie Hepworth, carrying a backpack, jumped into the speedboat, and it rocked under his weight.

  “Set course around the headland,” he said, sitting beside her, “and then bear north.”

  “I’m not moving until you tell me what the fuck’s going on,” Liz said.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Della,” he said.

  “Don’t call me that you brainless little asswipe.”

  “Apologies, Liz.”

  “Now speak.”

  He told her his sorry little story.

  “Jesus, Charlie,” Liz said, staring at him, shaking her head.

  She nudged the throttle and moved away from the pier.

  “I know,” Charlie said, “I’m sorry. Muldoon was like a bloody pitbull. I couldn’t risk him jeopardizing everything.”

  “And what about what you did? Didn’t that jeopardize everything?”

  “I had to kill him. There was no other way.”

  “I’m not talking about that Australian sack of turds. I’m talking about the little love fest you’ve got going with Caroline Tate.”

  “You’re pissed off because I spoke to her?”

  “Jesus, Charlie, we fucking agreed that all you’d do was track her. Observe her. Learn her patterns, her movements.”

  “It was a judgment call.”

  “I see no judgment in it.”

  They were in open water now and the hull of the boat bumped waves.

  “By chatting to her I opened another flank of attack.”

  “Sweet Jesus, Charlie. You can’t sell me that crap. You just wanted to charm her. Get her to like you. You just can’t resist it, can you? It’s fucking pathological.” He said nothing. “What if she’d made us today at Central, Charlie? Realized that we knew each other?”

  “How?”

  Liz shook her head and accelerated and water splashed into the boat.

  “Slow down,” he said, “I need to get my bearings.”

  She shoved the thriller lever flat and the bow lifted and the speedboat surged through the water.

  23

  Michael carried dirty dishes from the table on the deck through to the kitchen. They’d eaten outside. He’d barbecued steaks and cooked potatoes on the fire. Caroline had made one the intricate, bitter salads she so enjoyed.

  Caroline wasn’t a vegetarian, but she seemed to be less fond of meat than she had once been. When they’d first met she’d wolfed down a rib eye with an almost carnal relish. He’d found the sight of the patrician blonde with blood on her teeth arousing.

  Tonight she’d barely touched the meat, and had toyed with her salad, spearing small shreds of arugula and chewing them slowly.

  Michael had lit mosquito coils and surrounded their table with the repellent lamps that came with the house, but still Caroline had smacked at her arms and complained about being bitten.

  He’d remained untouched.

  “They don’t like the way you smell,” she’d said, as if this were her opinion rather than that of the insects.

  She was upstairs now, showering. For the first weeks after the accident she’d been unable to shower and had to wash by hand. Once she’d been allowed to shower again she’d taken to spending an inordinate time under the jets. It had become some kind of a cleansing ritual.

  He left the dirty dishes in the sink for Noey to take care of in the morning and locked up. He’d had half a bottle of red wine. Caroline had merely sipped at one glass. It stood beside the sink, almost full, the imprint of her lips on the rim. Michael lifted the glass and drank it dry.

  It brought back an illicit memory of being a small boy, sneaking downstairs early in the morning after one of his parents’ parties and emptying the dregs of the smeared cocktail glasses that stood amongst overflowing ashtrays.

  He’d become spectacularly ill. His mother had kneeled beside him, mopping his face as he’d puked in the toilet.

  He could still hear her whispering in her soft voice, “Michael, please don’t become like him. Please, please. Oh God, please.”

  Repeating it like a litany.

  It said a lot about his childhood that this was a happy memory.

  Michael doused the lights and went upstairs.

  Caroline emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, tongues of steam following her into the bedroom. Water dripped from her damp hair.

  That last glass of wine had emboldened Michael and he walked up to her and took her into his arms, kissing her, an erection unfurling as he pressed against her.

  She placed her palms on his chest, the way she used to long ago. Then she pushed him away and turned her head so that his stubble grazed her cheek.

  “No, Michael,” she said.

  He felt a surge of anger and held her tighter, and tried to find her mouth with his.

  “No!” she said. “You’re hurting me.”

 
He released her and she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. Her eyes were empty.

  She crossed to the vanity and sat on the stool with her back to him. She opened a jar of white ooze and started to smear it on her face as if he were not in the room.

  He felt an urge to smash the mirrors.

  “How long?” he said. Her reflected eyes found his. “How long, Caroline?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just not ready.”

  “And will you ever be ready?”

  “Michael, please,” she said, as if the whole thing bored her.

  He heard his breath, hot and ragged. He was sweating, despite the aircon. His shirt stuck to his body. He wanted to rip it off but knew this would make him appear even more ridiculous, like a character from a telenovella.

  He crossed to the old teak dresser that was Caroline’s exclusive domain. He crouched and pulled open the bottom drawer his fingers knowing exactly where to go to seize the bottle of pills.

  He stood, holding the vial between thumb and index finger, like he was about to deliver a pharmaceutical testimonial.

  At last he had her attention.

  ***

  Caroline wanted to close her eyes and carry on massaging the cool moisturizer into her skin. Wanted to do anything but turn and confront him.

  God, she would rather kiss him.

  Too late for that now.

  She swiveled to face Michael, her left hand gripping the rim of the vanity, the other the wood of the stool. Her knees were pressed together, her heels raised from the tiles, her toes clenched, as if she were about to take flight.

  She forced herself to relax.

  “I thought you were done with this shit?” Michael said. His voice was thick with wine and spite.

  “I am,” she said.

  “And yet,” he said, shaking the pills like he were in a bossa nova band, “and yet, here they are. Caroline’s little helpers.”

  “They’re sealed, Michael. Surely you can see that?”

  “Are there others?”

  “No, there aren’t.”

  “Why do you have them?”

  She shrugged. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  He laughed and shook his head. His hair fell across his forehead in a sweaty noose and his face looked florid and fleshy. She had a glimpse of him in ten years. Life would not be tender.

  “Try me,” he said.

  “Why did you go through my things, Michael? What gives you the right?”

  He tossed the pills onto the bed.

  “You know what?” he said. “I’m tired. Too tired for this fucking dance.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’ll sleep in the spare room.”

  He walked out.

  She said, “Mike.”

  He didn’t reply and she didn’t go after him.

  24

  Charlie Hepworth sat beside the woman who had once been Della Hunt as she steered the speedboat into the night, her hair blowing in the wind, seemingly impervious to the spray that drenched her every time the hull ramped a wave.

  How long had he known her? Fifteen years? Sixteen?

  He couldn’t even remember the name he’d been using when he spotted her in a village on Crete, stealing credit cards from a trio of drunken American frat boys who’d been competing with one another to shag her.

  Well, two had. The third, though outwardly as crude and horny as his mates, had a little secret. Charlie took one look at him and knew that the only blond this poor fool wanted to screw was the beefiest of his anthropoid buddies.

  And this meant that he wasn’t in thrall to Della, and saw when she lifted the cards from his friend’s wallet.

  When closet boy called her on it she denied it, and he challenged her to empty her purse. She refused and the bar owners got involved, and then a couple of Greek cops.

  Charlie had always had a way with languages—they stuck to him like lint—and he intervened, speaking Greek to the cops, saying Della was his niece and it was all just a prank. You know like Punk’d? Aston Kutcher? That she was just fooling with the boys.

  “Isn’t that right?” he said to her.

  She was smart enough to recognize a savior when she saw one and she said, “Sure. Just a prank, man.”

  She returned the cards and he got her out of there and onto a late night ferry to Athens before the cops wised up to the other half-assed scams she’d undoubtedly pulled.

  On the nearly deserted boat he said to her, “Della’s your real name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Well, it’s the name in my fuckin passport. Gonna look real suspicious if I’m callin myself something different.”

  “We’ll fix that,” he said.

  “Oh yeah? How?”

  “We’ll get you a new passport in Athens. A few new passports.”

  “And who the fuck says I’m goin anywhere with you?”

  “What are your alternatives?”

  She crossed her arms and jutted her lower lip and said, “I ain’t gonna suck your dick, hear me?”

  He smiled. “You got that right.”

  She sneered at him. “You a fag?”

  Charlie slapped her hard enough to set her on her ass. He put a shoe on her throat and pinned her to the deck.

  “Listen and listen well. You have potential. I will allow you to achieve that potential. In return you will obey every fucking word I say. Is that clear?”

  She looked at him with something akin to respect and nodded. He lifted his foot and she stood, rubbing her throat.

  “What you want with me?” she said.

  “I think we can do well as a team. Pretty girls have a way of getting things out of straight men that even I can’t.”

  “You sayin I’m pretty?”

  “No, right now you look like shit warmed over. That hair. Jesus. And those fucking clothes.”

  “Well, screw you.”

  “And that voice.”

  “What about my voice?”

  “Like a mouth full of rocks, my darling. But we can fix it.”

  “And who the fuck are you? Doctor Doolittle?”

  He’d laughed. “I think you mean Professor Higgins.”

  On the speedboat Charlie spotted a landmark and snapped out of his reverie. He pointed across to the shore.

  “There. That’s the beach over there.”

  Liz slowed the boat and they both scanned the horizon. Only a few twinkling lights very far off.

  She changed course and slowly steered toward the shoreline.

  “Did you see any rocks earlier?” Liz said.

  “No, but my mind was on other things.”

  She lifted a hand-held spotlight from the deck and thrust it at him. “Use that. Scan the water.”

  “Christ, it’ll light us up like a Christmas tree.”

  “You want to sink us, Charlie? Huh?”

  He clicked on the spotlight and panned it over the water.

  No rocks.

  Liz took them into the shore and the hull scraped the sand without incident.

  “You stay here,” Charlie said.

  Taking his flashlight from his pack, he jumped down to the sand and found the path he’d used earlier and followed it.

  He moved carefully. The last thing he needed was to stumble over some couple in the throes of passion.

  He saw the body of Murray Muldoon in the beam of the flashlight. Pocketing the light he grabbed Muldoon by the ankles and hauled.

  Jesus, the bastard was heavy.

  Charlie was dripping with sweat by the time he got him to the beach. He knelt, open mouthed, panting, and waved Liz over. She left the boat and came to him.

  “I won’t be able to get him aboard alone,” Charlie said.

  The task was almost beyond them. Twice they got Muldoon’s body onto the gunwale, and twice it toppled back into the water.

  Liz was sobbing with exertion. Charlie pushed his wet bangs away from his face, crouched, grabbed the
dead man’s legs and somehow found the strength to roll him into the boat.

  Drenched, Liz dragged herself behind the wheel, pointing them toward open ocean.

  Charlie hunkered in the stern beside Muldoon’s body. After recovering his breath he held the flashlight in his mouth and fished a pair of tin snips from his pack. He set to work removing the Australian’s fingertips, tossing them over board one by one.

  Liz looked back at him from the cockpit.

  “Jesus, is that necessary?”

  “Just making him harder to identify. I don’t want to run any undue risks.”

  “Do you even fuckin hear yourself, man?” she said and her voice was the guttural growl of long ago. She breathed deeply and moderated her tone. “You murdered a man, Charlie. And now we’re throwing his body into the goddam Andaman Sea. No undue risks? Seriously?”

  25

  Michael, barefoot, shirtless, hurtled along the beach, pushing himself into oblivion.

  He’d woken in the spare room at dawn, his tongue thick, his head fogged, his blood sour. He wasn’t hungover. He hadn’t drunk enough for that.

  He was sick with anger and guilt.

  Barreling along the cool sand he pushed himself harder, until he was blind to the electric sheen of the sea as the lightening sky turned it from black to azure.

  But still he couldn’t outrun his guilt.

  His toxic, gut-sickening guilt.

  He almost tripped and slowed, coming to a halt.

  He stood with his hands on his knees, sucking air, staring down as a silver crab emerged from the ooze and scuttled sideways before disappearing into a hole.

  Michael sat on the sand, staring out to sea, still trying to slow his breath, trying to stop his heart from smashing its way through his ribcage.

  That’s when he saw the figure in the water.

  The tide was out and the water was low, covering Liz Keller only to her waist. She was naked.

  She waved at him and called, “Hi, Michael!”

  He waved back, getting to his feet.

  Liz was walking toward him, rising from the ocean, and he saw the water beaded on her belly and her pubes.