The Sudden Dark

Nine

I looked at the news when I got home. It wasn't a front page headline, but it was printed loud in a thick column on page three: a shooting at a Darlinghurst pub the day before. The victim was Frank Ian Sumner, 43, manager of a Kings Cross gentleman's club.

Otherwise, there was a collision of conflicting information from the spread of witnesses. He might've been drunk and belligerent, but the autopsy reported no alcohol in his system. He was violent toward patrons, causing a ruckus that the owner of the pub, Wayne Markwell, 31, tried to calm—par for the course in that neighbourhood.

Nobody really knew what happened next. 

There was a shot from somewhere across the room. The belligerent man slumped to the floor. The patrons scattered. Police were called, called Sumner deceased, cordoned-off the area but found no further evidence in the vicinity. He had four nine-millimetre slugs in his body, but no gun found on-site or anywhere nearby.

Security cam footage wasn't any more help—Markwell only had two, and they were criss-crossed across the barroom floor at an angle that didn't show the shooter. 

Markwell didn't know the dead man, didn't catch a glimpse of the perpetrator, did nothing but his best to corral the situation as he was used to in his profession.

At least, that was what he told the reporters.

I'd been in the field of enough homicide investigations in my time on the force to know that if there was no reason to pursue an interest in a case, it wouldn't be done. The story told itself clean and simple: a loud dickhead was shot by an angry drunk in an inner-city pub. If they didn't know the story of a kid named Kit Markwell running around somewhere with nine thousand dollars of stolen money and a smoking gun, it didn't exist. At least, until he'd kill someone else.

Kit was free from blame but on the run from a murder now, and I guessed would be hiding himself even deeper down a rabbit hole than he would've been before. It would be harder to locate him, even if I did manage to find Maddie. He kept gnawing on me as I threw the paper across the table and tried to find a way to stop myself from pacifying my itching nerves with a down of vodka. 

I went to my living room cabinet and found an ancient White Pages dusted amongst a fold of paper clutter. I flipped around and found a Frank I. Sumner listed at a residential address in Redfern.

I shut the book. I don't know what I expected from his address—the police would have it taped off and would've combed through already. And I'd have no right to be there anyway. I was nothing more than just a citizen.

I did end up making a vodka, and had half of it down my throat, by the time I had my phone out just to make sure I was stupid enough to go through with what I was thinking. I called the house of Frank Sumner.

The phone rang long; I didn't know what to expect, other than nothing. Maybe a homicide investigator that I could quickly hang up on.

Eventually, the phone did pick up. There was a silence that I didn't break, until the voice on the other end did it for me.

He said, with a gentle rise of suspicion, 'That you, Clive?'

My throat caught. There was another silence, followed by the thump of a sudden hang-up. That was it.

I looked at my glass, sitting warm in the afternoon light, no ice, no ripples.

I went out the door and started my car.