I slept badly. I fancied I could hear burglars and arsonists and graffitists working their way through the house. I woke up a lot and had a few drinks. I finally got some sleep around dawn and felt like hell when I woke up at ten. The milk was sour and the bread was stale. I drank black coffee and scribbled notes in my notebook. Most of the notes ended in question marks. I went into the bathroom and looked at the beard. Not too bad, I thought, Bit of grey. Distinguished, intellectual even. Maybe if I kept it, I’d have some good ideas. I had a shower and began to feel better.
I drove in to Darlinghurst; the evidence I’d kept under the car seat and then under my bed I locked away in the office safe before I phoned Athena Security. The personnel manager was interested to hear from me. Yes, they were still recruiting. Yes, they valued experience. He only stopped saying yes when I said I’d need to talk to Eleni Marinos in person before I could consider joining the firm. He said he’d have to get back to me on that.
Call number two was to Michael Hickie. I asked him to find out all he could about Athena Security and its links, if any, to Riley’s outfit.
‘That’s your line of territory,’ he said.
‘I’ll be working on it, too. I’ll look into people and you can look into money.’
‘I’m interested in people too, you know.’
‘Don’t be,’ I said. ‘Most aren’t worth the trouble.’
‘You’re low. Having trouble with Felicia?’
I grunted.
‘Barnes said she was trouble, but worth it.’
I grunted again and hung up. I’d had to quote the number on my operator’s licence to the Athena bloke and, in the process of locating it, I had strewn the contents of my wallet across the desk. I looked at the credit cards and the meagre amount of cash and the creased driver’s licence and suddenly felt small and isolated. My only backup in the office was an answering machine; my only means of transport was the Falcon; I had an illegal Colt. 45 and a properly licensed Smith amp; Wesson. 38 for firepower. No helicopters, no armoured vans, no shotguns. Who was I kidding? This was too big for me.
It was midday and I was dry. Well, that’s what a cask of red wine is for. I poured a small one, swallowed it along with some pride, and phoned Detective-Inspector Frank Parker of the New South Wales Police, a body whose motto is, ‘Punishment swiftly follows the crime’. Two years ago Parker had married Hilde Stoner, who had been a lodger in my house. They now had a son whom they had named after me.
‘Parker.’
‘Hardy.’
‘Gidday, Cliff. How many favours can I do you? Just ask.’
‘Christ, what’s got into you? Did your shares goup?’
‘What shares? No, your namesake took his first steps last night.’
‘Bit slow off the mark, isn’t he?’
‘Piss off. Twelve months. Bit above average.’
‘That’d be right. Hilde okay? Good. Look, Frank, I’ve got a bit of a problem.’ I kept it vague, but intimated that I might have evidence connected with a major crime or possibly a series of crimes. I don’t why I said that, probably because cops say it.
‘I hear you went bail for O’Fear,’ Frank said. ‘Is there a connection?’
‘Could be. Are your people still interested in fingerprints and microscopic fibres and that sort of thing? Or do you just wait for the crims to blow each other away these days?’
‘Spare me the mordant wit, Cliff. What do you want?’
‘A talk. After work today, in the bar at Central Railway?’
‘Are you catching a train somewhere?’
‘No, I like the atmosphere.’
‘Are you okay, Cliff?’
‘Is anyone? See you around six, Frank.’
I had some more wine, which I sipped slowly while I looked out at the blue sky through the grey-brown window. I plucked at my near-beard but didn’t feel any brighter. I poured another glass of wine, and when the phone rang I reached for it, lazily, thinking it would be the man from Athena. I lifted the receiver and two men walked into the office without knocking. One of them was big and one was small. The small one held a gun that looked like a. 357 Magnum Colt, the one with the short barrel. It made him seem a lot bigger than he was. He gestured with the Colt for me to hand the phone to the big man. I didn’t do it, so the big man punched me in the face. I dropped the phone as I rocked back in my chair. He picked it up from the desk.
‘Right,’ he said into the receiver. ‘We’re here.’ He replaced the receiver and sat down in the hard, unpadded client’s chair. The lack of comfort didn’t seem to bother him. The small man leaned against the wall beside the half-open door; he held the gun in such a way that a ten-centimetre movement would train it on my chest.
‘I think it’s time we stopped pissing around, Hardy,’ the big man said. ‘I’m Stanley Riley.’
I rubbed my cheekbone where the punch had landed. He had pulled it so that the skin hadn’t split and I’d been more surprised than hurt. Expert stuff. He was well over six feet tall and beefy with it, although his well-cut grey suit concealed the flab. His face had that plain, fleshy, stamped-out-of-the-mould look you see on prison guards and ex-footballers. He had heavy eyebrows and a deep dimple in his chin that wasn’t cute. His mouth was a thin, hard split in the lower end of his face and his eyes were wide apart, bland and innocent.
I pointed to the gunman. ‘And what’s his name?’
‘He doesn’t matter.’
‘Hear that?’ I said. ‘You don’t matter.’
The gunman had a dark wispy beard, a wall eye and a scarred, puckered left cheek. He looked through me towards the window but it was hard to tell where he was really looking. He reached out and put the Colt on top of my filing cabinet. Then he reached into the pocket of his windbreaker and took out a single cigarette. He lit it with a disposable lighter, blew smoke and reclaimed his gun. He didn’t speak.
I picked up my Vegemite glass and drank some wine.
‘A cheap private investigator,’ Riley said. ‘Drinking cheap plonk.’
‘Cask wine and French brandy,’ I said. ‘The effect’s the same. What’s on your mind, Stan?’
‘You are. I’m wondering how to stop you causing me any trouble.’
‘Now how could I cause you trouble? A cheap…’
‘You’ve been phoning around. Trying to set up a meeting with Marinos, poking into my business affairs and talking to the police. I’m worried.’
‘You’ve been listening in. That’s illegal.’
‘Everything’s illegal these days, Hardy. A while ago I could’ve just neutralised you-got your licence cancelled, got you a few months on remand, bored it up you. But with this new mob coming into government… it takes time to make the right contacts.’
‘Psychic, are you? The election’s a week away.’
‘It’s in the bag.’
‘I must get a bet on,’ I said. I had the Vegemite glass and could reach the telephone. Not very potent weapons. The. 357 Colt would make a lot of noise but there weren’t many people in the building to hear it, and probably none who would care.
‘You’ve really been poking around, Hardy. You mentioned fingerprints and fibres. I reckon you’ve got the bits of the shotguns.’
I didn’t say anything, tried to keep my face neutral.
‘Gary here got careless,’ Riley said. ‘That’s why I brought him along. He’s itching for a chance to make up for his mistake.’
‘You’ve made a lot of mistakes, Stan.’
‘Well, I’ll just have to set things right, won’t I? Starting with you. The shotguns’re ashes and lumps of metal now, all except for the bits you’ve got.’
‘There’s some photographs too. I don’t know how many copies.’
Riley plucked at the hole in his big chin. He must have found it hard to shave there and a couple of bristles were annoying him. ‘I’m not too worried about photographs. I might do a deal on the negatives if you’ve got them.’
‘Deal?’
‘You don’t think I want to strong-arm you, do you? I’m a businessman. I find all this stuff very distasteful, and I want to put an end to it. That’s why I’m here.’
Gary sniffed. He dropped his butt on the floor and stepped on it. Then he used his free hand to scratch his crotch. Talk evidently bored him. He saw me watching him and turned his head slightly to bring me into his strange field of vision. He was small, but not as small as the man who had followed me and run up against O’Fear. That one had excelled at evasion; this one looked as if he liked to see blood flowing. Riley reached into his pocket and took out a cheque book.
‘What’re you being paid on this job?’
‘Ten thousand dollars.’
He nodded, reached out and picked up a ballpoint pen from my desk. He blew on it to get rid of the dust and made a few trial scratches on the cover of the chequebook. On the fourth scratch the pen worked. ‘I’ll double it.’
‘No sale,’ I said.
He sighed. ‘I thought it might be like that. A man of integrity, eh? Too bad.’
‘And curiosity,’ I said. ‘Tell me a bit about it. We might be able to reach an arrangement.’
Riley examined my face for what seemed like five minutes but was probably thirty seconds. Time frames change when the pressure comes on. I stared back at him and tried to guess his age and background. About fifty, I decided. School of hard knocks, with an overlay of sophistication picked up late. Possibly from a woman. He fiddled with the pen, flexed it between his thick fingers and snapped it like a matchstick. He seemed like a man who had followed his instincts for most of his life but had recently got smarter and learned to use his brains. Under stress, though, it was a struggle between the two approaches. Gary yawned and lit another cigarette.
‘Okay,’ Riley said. ‘I’ll put you in the picture. Todd was doing pretty well, competing with me for hauling and storing. He had better people working for him.’
‘He was a leader of men,’ I said. ‘Were you ever in the army?’
Riley flushed. ‘No. I tried to buy him out and he wouldn’t agree. Then he got shitty about security. Started to look into that end of the business.’
This was quite a lot of talk. I thought if I could keep it going, Gary might nod off. ‘There’s a whole set of photographs,’ I said. ‘They show security fuck-ups-guards asleep, patrols not checking gates, boozing on the job. Like that.’
Riley was sharp-witted and shrewd. ‘You’re guessing.’
I shrugged.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘He got interested in security and he got interested in Eleni. I didn’t like that.’
‘Which?’
‘Both.’
‘How does she fit into all this? Does she know about the hold-ups and all the rest of it?’
‘I think we’re getting off the point.’
‘Why did you kill Barnes?’
‘He was careless. He had something he shouldn’t have had, and he tried to use it against me.’
‘To what end?’
‘He wanted in on the operation.’
I shook my head. ‘That’s bullshit, Riley. Todd passed up a dozen opportunities for dirty money. It was the woman, wasn’t it?’
‘You didn’t know the bastard. He wanted her and the action. He thought I was just a dumb mick. He was wrong.’
‘Are you trying to tell me you protected Eleni Marinos from Todd?’
It was a crucial question but it really didn’t make any difference. Poor Felicia, I thought.
Riley was all bluster now. ‘I’ve said enough, and you’ve said fuck all. It’s time for you to give a bit, Hardy. What’ve you got to sell?’
Gary had disposed of his second butt in the same way and was looking more interested in the proceedings. Riley was an impatient and insecure man. My references to Eleni Marinos had touched him in a vulnerable place and tipped the scales against me. The door was standing half open. I wondered whether I had any chance of getting past Gary and out. Not much, certainly not from where I sat. I opened a drawer in the desk and looked up to see the Colt pointing at my Adam’s apple. I moved slowly and showed Riley the safe key. He nodded and I got up, moved around the desk and squatted in front of the safe. The open door was a metre and a half away, and Gary glided smoothly into place to block it off. Neat.
I opened the safe and lifted out the barrels and stocks, using the rubber gloves like pot-holders. Riley motioned for me to put them on the desk. He gave Gary a look that came from his past. ‘You fuckin’ idiot,’ he said.
‘Where’s the rest of them, cunt?’ Gary said.
I went back behind the desk and didn’t answer. Riley got up from his chair and felt around in the safe. There was only one other thing to find- the photographs. He took out the envelope and slopped them onto the desk. The glossy pictures sat on top of the scratched bits of wood and metal.
Riley looked at them, moved a couple aside for a better appraisal and shook his head slowly. ‘Fuckin’ Todd,’ he said. ‘Why couldn’t he be smart?’ The smoothness was gone from him now. It was almost as if the smell of the wharves or the trucks or the mines had settled back over him, expensive suit and all. He struggled for control, clicked his tongue and settled down in his chair. ‘Hardy, I want it all.’
‘Why don’t we have a drink?’ I reached for the cask. Two litres of rough red against a. 357 Colt.
‘Put it down,’ Gary said.
Maybe he didn’t mean to do it, maybe it was the old, instinctive Riley acting, but he took his cheque book from the desk and put it back in his pocket. I felt a chill run through me. Suddenly I was back in Malaya, feeling cold, although the temperature was in the nineties and I was sweating. The two Chinese soldiers were running at me, screaming their lungs out, and I didn’t know how many rounds I had left in the Sten gun…
Riley rubbed the back of his head; the carefully cut grey hair stood up at the crown. ‘We’re still talking. You’ve put the rest of the stuff somewhere.’
‘Somewhere,’ I said. ‘But you’ve put your money away, Stan. That wasn’t subtle. If I tell you what you want to know, I’m dead.’
‘You could be persuaded to tell. I didn’t want this to get messy, but I could give you to Gary.’
I shook my head. ‘If you give me to Gary he’d have to use his gun. I know a bit about guns. He’s got a good one there, but I might get to him. If I did, I’d put his eyes out.’
‘Try it,’ Gary said.
‘Wait on.’ Riley looked at me so hard I could feel the force of it on my face. I wanted to put my hand up, to block out his gaze, but I resisted the impulse. His thin, sharklike lips parted. ‘Mrs Todd,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s the key. D’you know anyone who lives in Chalmers Street, Redfern? Apart from Mrs Todd, I mean?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Pity,’ Riley said, ‘if you did, you could call ‘em up and ask if there’s one of my trucks in the street and an Athena van by the park.’
‘She doesn’t know a thing,’ I said.
‘I think she does. I think she knows all we need to know. I can see it in your fuckin’ face under that stupid beard.’ He swayed a little to the left, away from where the gunman stood. ‘Gary, we don’t need him any more.’
Gary’s hand moved and I started to move too, up and to one side, as if he was the conductor and I was a violinist in an orchestra. I knew I’d be way too slow but it was better than just sitting there waiting for the bullets. My eyes were closed: I felt the explosion bounce off the walls and floor and ceiling, and fill the room with echoing sound.