The Killing Hour

Cyris told me he was busy tonight. I know from experience he’s been busy the last few nights so I’m picking if there’s a pay-off to take place there’s a chance it’s tonight. That must be what Kathy and Luciana were trying to tell me. Why else would they have appeared?

I think back to when I first met Jo nearly eight years ago, at a house-warming party. It was one of those fantastic moments when you get introduced to somebody and the chemistry is immediate. The personality and the humour and the interests all line up. I took Jo out to dinner the next night and eventually that led to her being kidnapped twice within the week, the first by a madman that was me, the second by a madman she believed me to be.

I stare out the window as the minutes pass. The night gets darker. The number of people walking by thins out and then there are none. Lights are turned on as people settle in for the evening. An hour passes. Two hours. Lights start to turn off. People are going to bed. I have nothing to do but run my theory over and over in my head. The problem is it looks bad. Looks worse every time I glance at my watch and see another block of time has gone by. I was wrong to think the payment would be tonight and the passing minutes prove this to me. Wrong to think the husband is involved.

Wrong about everything.

I reach towards the ignition. I’m going to have to pay Cyris and hope for the best. Resort to Plan B, which I’m still working on. I hear a car start before I start my own. I let go of the keys and lean forward. Could this be it? I wait and watch as the Mercedes reverses down the driveway and onto the street. Frank. Frank the cheating husband. The car straightens and heads away from me.

I start the Holden and begin following. I don’t turn my headlights on. When he turns the corner I keep fifty metres behind him. The full moon and streetlights provide more than enough light to drive by, turning the roads pale blue except for the road markings which glow white. Stars twinkle in the sky, their light coming from millions of miles away and centuries ago. I wonder if people like Cyris lived on those long lost worlds. A few people coming towards me flash their lights but Frank the cheating husband can’t see that, not from fifty metres ahead.



The theory I’ve been playing with is once again starting to look good. Casting Frank as the guilty party explains the unforced entry into the houses. It explains why he didn’t want the body found at home. It explains why there are two victims rather than one. I wonder how much money exchanged hands to end two women’s lives. In a fair world I should be getting a cut of those funds. Was money the motive? I’ve seen Frank’s house. I’ve seen his car. He was cheating on his wife. He wanted a divorce and didn’t want to give her half of everything. Instead he took everything she ever had.



We turn right at a set of lights and my fear that he’s meeting Cyris outside the city is quashed when Frank’s brake lights come on and he indicates before pulling into a dead-end side street next to a shopping mall. I continue ahead and park on the road opposite. I kill the engine and pull up the handbrake. I pull the lens caps off the binoculars and watch him eight times bigger than normal life as he pulls into the entrance to the carpark to his left. He pulls into it and kills his lights but keeps on driving, making it difficult to follow him through my narrow field of vision. He turns right, goes straight for a bit, then turns left and out of sight. I pull the binoculars away and tuck them back into my pocket. I know this mall: he can’t have gone far.

The dashboard clock reads eleven-fifty. If Frank is making a pay-off it makes sense it’s going to happen at midnight. That gives me ten minutes to wait. Ten minutes to consider where things can go wrong. Ten minutes to figure what I can do about it.

I suck in a deep breath and, checking there’s no other traffic, I leave my car and run across the road. Spur-of-the-moment decisions haven’t been working out for me well this week but I figure one has to go right. It’s like continually doubling-down on red at the roulette table, chasing your losses and knowing it can’t keep on coming up black. Statistically it’s impossible that you can roll the wheel for the next fifty years and never get it to land on red.