Free Opportunity by Charlotte Grimshaw

sat smoking in the summerhouse.
The days were lengthening, the light was bright, the winter
chill had gone. The garden was full of flowers. Above the
house the sky was delicately striped with cloud. I remembered
my father standing by the dropping buds of the camellia bush,
cupping his hand around his brown cigarette. I remembered
my dead mother. One memory: she was sitting on the couch,
it was raining, a man had just come to the door and gone, and
she was crying. I looked out at the liquid world and listened to
a story record while I waited for her to stop crying, and when
I moved my head the ripples in the windowpane made
trenches in the lawn. I remembered the man who came at me
out of the fog that time, down on the wharf. He said to
me . . . what did he say? They took my. Please. I need your. I
need your . . .
    A car was nosing down the drive. It was Mr Long, in his
black Mercedes. Rania came out of the house. She walked
with him, talking. He nodded. Soon we would head across
town, to The Land. The girls would be waiting — the battered
merchandise, their use-by dates near expired. And the men,
the clients — they reminded me of something. They reminded
me of myself. Long ago, in all those back yards, the empty
houses in the drifting afternoons. The breaking and entering.
The searching, the rummaging. And then the emptiness of a
white courtyard, ribbons of light glancing off a pool, the
strewn pile of knick-knacks and trinkets. A kind of daze
afterwards, a confusion in the lull. What did the men want?
What did I want? What I stole I threw away. I didn't want it.
Not really. What was the thing we looked for, and couldn't
find?
    I crossed the lawn. We were wearing black that day, Rania
and I. A sentimental acknowledgement (to placate the girls)
of Darlene's death the day before. Her substance issues (her
smorgasbord drug habit) had finally finished her off. All
evening I would be boredly soothing deluded clients: 'She
understood me,' they would say. 'She listened.' 'She was the
only one who cared.' I wouldn't set them straight. I wouldn't
tell them: she barely noticed you. She was out of her mind.
And if you did swim into focus, she was out of her mind with
fear.
    Now I stepped up to the black car. Mr Long opened the
door. I sank into the plush seat. In the front Rania lit a goldtipped
cigarette. She angled the mirror at me and raised her
eyebrows. I smiled. Mr Long drove up the drive. The iron
gates closed with a heavy clunk on the high walls. Soft music
played. We cruised across town. At The Land of Opportunity
we got out. The three of us, Rania, Mr Long and I. In our black
sunglasses. In our mourning weeds.

him
    There are some unsolved murders in this city, and I think
three of them are connected.
    I think they were done by the same man. The first was a
woman found murdered in a city office block. In the second,
a woman walking downtown went missing and turned up
dead behind a suburban building. The third was a man found
dead at the bottom of another office block. The killer is
operating in a small area. He lives somewhere central. How
do I know this? It's instinct. I just know I'm on the right track.
    I used to have lunch with my husband, Max, in the city.
We'd go to a café in the mall and there was a security guard
stationed at the entrance. He had cold blue eyes and an intent
expression. When I passed him I always had the strange fancy
that he was making a noise, a sort of low, avid exhalation, like
a beast. I thought of the noise as ravening . My husband didn't
have any fancies about noises, and when I described this
impression he smiled tolerantly and glazed over as usual. But
I thought, that man is a killer.
    When the woman was found dead in the very same building
the man worked in as a guard, I didn't have any trouble
figuring out who was responsible. The next time we went to
the mall for lunch the place was full of cops. I don't remember
seeing the guard there again. But I did see him soon after, in
Remuera,