This is chapter 1 of the novel Cobblestone Secrets, praised by bestselling novelist Doug Johnstone as the work of a “talented writer with a knack for dialogue.”
You can read the prologue here.
Luke Breton can’t sit still. He paces the dark living room of his mansion overlooking the Prinsengracht. Where is Joachim, he wonders. The man should’ve been back here an hour ago.
Shivering in the cold of the air conditioning, Luke puts on a jumper. His hip is tired. He should sit down or use his cane, but he’s too nervous waiting for Joachim to return to pay the pain any mind. Instead, he wonders how it went with Ariadne. This is a nasty business, but what choice did he have? She brought it on herself.
He hobbles to the window and looks out into the night. The street lamps wash the street in a yellow haze. The canal buzzes with activity. The prolonged heatwave has driven residents from their homes. Houseboat roofs double as outdoor beds. Some people have even dragged out sofas to the street to sleep on – anything to escape the inferno of their brick apartments. A few adventurous Amsterdammers are even taking a moonlight dip in the canal, always a questionable activity to Luke. A Sydneysider to his core, he would never swim in such murky water.
Luke shuts the curtains and retreats to the kitchen to make himself another Campari on the rocks. As he takes the tray of ice blocks out of the freezer, he sees some frozen spinach. Has he eaten today? He can’t seem to remember. Surely, he had something; he just can’t recall what. Though his stomach aches for food, the thought of eating nauseates him.
He goes to the back garden. Outside, the night smells of jasmine and marijuana. He sits at the table and opens his computer to check the news back in Australia. There’s speculation that Celeste Vu-Breton, his mother and the current Prime Minister, will call the election within a few days. She’s only been PM for a year after winning a nasty internal Labor spill. But she’s never been given a chance, either by the media or the country. She needs her own mandate to govern. Though Luke suspects she just wants to prove to everyone that she can win alone.
He opens Celeste’s socials. As usual, it’s a cesspool. For every innocuous policy announcement she’s posted, there are dozens of racist or misogynistic replies. As the first Asian and only second female Prime Minister of Australia, she’s a lightning rod. He admires how Celeste doesn’t let it get her down. At times, it seems she’s made of steel. She’s built of far stronger stuff than her son is, that’s for sure.
Next, he checks Ariadne’s Twitter feed. She hasn’t posted anything since this morning – just a tweet complaining about the price of croissants in the city. Idiot, he thinks. She probably doesn’t believe money should exist at all. In her utopia, everyone should line up at a government centre each day for their ration of bread. He scrolls through her timeline. Yesterday she wrote,
got a big story coming on the famous designer – abusive at work, over-billing clients, pssbl criminal activity!
The tweet was liked several times and retweeted three times by two journalists for a conservative Sydney newspaper. Fuck, he thinks. At least this mess should all be over by now, thanks to Joachim.
In the past few weeks, he tried everything to get Ariadne to leave him alone and get over her obsession with him and his firm’s finances. The story was gaining traction in Australia – Celeste’s PR minion called him freaking out that it was a drag on the poll numbers, which they couldn’t afford this close to an election. He promised it was nothing and that he would take care of it.
After their first interview, he called Ariadne’s boss, the managing editor of Perspectief, and complained. The editor apologised and assured Luke that he would call Ariadne off.
It didn’t work.
A few days later, Luke learned Ariadne continued digging around, even finding Sander from whatever rock he’d crawled under. Then, a poorly written article accusing him of all the ridiculous shit under the sun appeared on Perspectief’s website. Luke only found out after Celeste called him, swearing about what her pollster said the story was doing to her ratings.
This time the editor sacked Ari, but it only encouraged her. She turned to her own social media channels and blog teasing, “major developments about a corrupt multinational corp, a prominent pol & her dirty son.”
Celeste told Luke to sue and get an injunction. Luke didn’t want to do that. He knew Ariadne well enough by now to know that she would revel in a court case. Who knows what more she could dig up on him in the process? No, that wouldn’t do. Luke had another solution in mind that had proved effective in the past.
“Just make it go away,” Celeste told him five days ago. “I’ve got a bloody election coming.”
“Consider it done, Celeste,” he said.
Amsterdam is as far away from Canberra as he could get, yet his mother’s gravitational pull still retains its hold on him.
Joachim, though unpredictable, was reliable. When another designer sued Luke for stealing his ideas, Joachim quieted him down. A broken arm and burnt-out car were convincing enough negotiating tactics that the designer took the settlement and signed away his rights to the design or further litigation.
To distract himself from thinking about Ariadne, Luke reviews his team’s latest round of designs for a luxury apartment building in Amsterdam Noord. This is Breton & Partners’ most important project. It will catapult them into the lucrative luxury real estate market. Yet, he still isn’t satisfied with what he sees, even after six rounds of revisions. He starts annotating the file with comments. The bench is still an issue (how many different types of marble have they gone through?), and there’s no proper flow from the marble in the kitchen to the dining room. He’s lost count of how many revisions have been made. The sketches are several weeks late because Luke hasn’t been satisfied with the work his team has produced.
Nearly two hours have passed since Joachim was supposed to be back. Luke takes out the burner phone and calls the only number in it. No answer. What if he’s been arrested, Luke wonders. No, he puts the thought out of his mind. Joachim’s done this before. He’s a professional. That’s why Luke hired him. The guy is probably just letting off some steam, getting pissed at a pub.
Luke lies down on the sofa and closes his eyes. He’s almost asleep when the front doorbell buzzes. He checks the intercom. Joachim’s face glows on the security camera like a Halloween jack-o’-lantern – eyes demonically large, mouth a gaping shadow.
Joachim is smoking a cigarette. He’s sweating, and he has scratches on his face.
“Jesus, you’re bleeding. Get in here,” says Luke, motioning him in without forcing him to put out his cigarette. “What happened to your face? What did she say?” he asks, closing the door behind them.
Luke goes to the kitchen and fetches a tea towel. He hands it to Joachim. Joachim takes it and dabs his face.
“Say? Brother, she didn’t say anything,” says Joachim in his Dutch-accented English, the words rounded, the consonants less angular. The “the” in brother is more a “d”.
He puffs on the cigarette and flicks ash onto the marble floor. Luke stares at the black smudges.
“This floor was imported from Tuscany,” Luke says.
“Oh?” says Joachim with sarcastic interest.
“She agreed to stop with the story? Including all that slander on social media?” asks Luke, more a declaration than a question.
“One hundred per cent,” says Joachim and then laughs as if he’s just told a joke. He puts the tea towel back on his wound.
“Did she do that to you? You were supposed to keep your helmet closed. Did she see you? She could identify you.”
“Bro,” Joachim starts. “She won’t trouble you or me. Snap je?” he asks, switching to Dutch.
He hands Luke a small plastic bag wrapped several times over. “Christmas in July,” he says, laughing. He stubs out the cigarette on the floor with his shoe.
Luke opens the bag. In it is a small cell phone covered in what looks like blood. Luke feels dizzy and leans against the wall for support.
“What is this? Is this her—”
“Yeah. Like I said, she won’t be bothering anyone. Not anymore,” Joachim smiled. “Price has gone up. You owe me an extra fifteen.”
“What did you do?” Luke asks.
Joachim gives a small laugh as if he’s heard a familiar joke. “I took care of it. Now you owe me an extra fifteen. Hit jobs are double.”
Hit jobs. For a second, Luke thinks he must’ve heard blowjobs. He didn’t kill her, Luke tells himself. She’s not dead.
“Are you sure she isn’t just hurt?” Luke asks. “Scared was the assignment.”
“Hmm, good point. Could be,” Joachim says.
“Just how roughed up is she?” Luke asks. His hand is sticky with blood.
“Rough,” Joachim says, taking out the gun.
“You shot her?”
Joachim nods.
“Is she–?”
“I’m not sticking around to find out. You owe me thirty thousand euros.”
Shit, shit, shit.
“It’s downstairs in the cellar,” Luke says.
“I’ll come with you.”
Luke thinks he should stop Joachim and prevent him from seeing where the cash is hidden, but would that be wise, given what Joachim’s just done and his hyped-up state?
They head downstairs. Luke’s heart pounds in his ears. His mind turns over scenarios and possibilities. And his mind grasps scenarios. What will he do if she survives and identifies Joachim? Shit, the scratches. DNA. Her dying would be much, much better. And so, actually, would Joachim’s.
In the closet, he moves a fake wall to retrieve the cash and hands it to Joachim. From the corner of his eye, he sees a shovel leaning against a wall. His already elevated heart rate beats even faster. Does he have the strength and speed to fell the man? Joachim is now a liability. Luke closes his eyes and breathes through his nose, trying to calm himself.
Joachim takes the time to count it calmly. Then, he puts it into his bag.
“It’s been a pleasure,” he says with his gap-toothed grin.
“What now?” Luke asks.
“I’m getting the fuck out of Amsterdam.
“Where will you go?” Luke asks.
Joachim hesitates, looking as if he’d rather not divulge that information. But then the man realises, Luke thinks, that they’re both in this together. Whatever happens. Joachim’s fate is tied to Luke’s.
“Spain.”
Luke’s body shakes as soon as he’s closed the door. He thinks of his mother, Celeste. This all started because he was trying to protect her and her goddamn campaign, but, as always, he’s made it far worse. His first instinct is to call her, tell her everything that happened and ask her what to do. It’s already morning in Canberra. Celeste will have already had her first meetings by now. But he decides against it. Anything he says to her now could implicate her later.
What a shitshow.
Luke steadies himself, downing a small shot of bourbon. He goes upstairs to a spare closet and pulls a hammer from a small box of tools. Downstairs, he takes the phone, still wrapped in its bloody towel and puts it on the floor. Then, despite the crippling pain in his back, he kneels and smashes it into a thousand tiny pieces. He wraps the back over itself, puts it inside a backpack, grabs the keys and his cane and heads out into the hot summer night.