by Peter Corris
I said the time was convenient and got back to Glebe with half an hour to spare. I tidied the kitchen and then untidied it by making coffee and eating some rice cakes with French mustard and cheese. I’d skipped lunch and Harry’s beer had woken an appetite. From the sound of her, Constable Carter wouldn’t be all business and wouldn’t care if I had dishes in the sink. The doorbell sounded when my coffee was half drunk.
She was small and would barely have met the height requirement for police back when that still operated and wasn’t considered discriminatory. I tried not to loom over her as I escorted her through the house. She had a soft briefcase under her arm that seemed to have a bit of bulk to it. I offered her coffee and she refused. She put the briefcase down on the kitchen bench with a clunk.
‘Okay, let’s have a look.’
I opened the cupboard and showed her the boxes. I’d memorised the combination and opened them.
‘Should help the resale value,’ I said.
‘That’s a joke, is it?’
I closed everything up. She was opening the briefcase and putting documents on the kitchen bench. I noticed then that her shoulders sagged, either with tiredness or something else. In someone so small to start with it sparked sympathy in me.
‘Sorry for the lousy joke. I know it’s a serious matter and I’m happy to comply with the regulations. If I have.’
She sighed. ‘You have, Mr Hardy. To tell you the truth I think it’s anachronistic for PIAs to be licensed to own weapons at all, but that’s for others to decide.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you.’
She gave me a surprised look. ‘If you’ll just sign these papers I’ll return the pistol and ammunition and I’ll trust you to lock them away.’
I reached for my coffee mug on the bench, pushed away an insert from a magazine and a ballpoint pen rolled towards where she’d put the papers. She picked it up to hand it to me; her hand shook, and she dropped the pen. It rolled and fell to the floor. I reached down for it but she was closer and snatched it up. She stepped away and showed me the engraving on the barrel. I squinted to read the faded gold script: Runner-up, Single Sculls, 2009.
‘This is Colin’s pen,’ she said. ‘How the hell did it get here?’
10
I thought about lying, telling her Hawes must have left it when he was here with McLean, but her distress stopped me. She slumped down onto the seat and looked up at me with troubled eyes.
‘I knew he was going to do something,’ she said. ‘He’s talked to you, hasn’t he?’
She was pale and the hand holding the pen was shaking.
I nodded. ‘You’d better have some coffee.’ I poured some into a mug and put it in the microwave. When I took it out I held up the whisky bottle. She nodded and I added a solid slug. She put the pen down gently on the bench, wrapped both hands around the mug and took a sip.
‘He was here,’ I said. ‘In fact he stayed the night. He told me a few things and left me a note.’
I had the note in my wallet. I fetched it from my jacket, unfolded it and gave it to her.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ she said. ‘They’ll . . .’
‘Drink your coffee. Who’ll do what?’
She shook her head and had a drink. ‘I need to think.’
My coffee was cold. I heated it up and spiked it. I sat down opposite her. I didn’t say anything. It gave me a chance to examine her more closely. At a guess she was in her late twenties; she had good skin and features, a combination that somehow didn’t make her either pretty or plain. I remembered her pause before referring to Hawes on the phone and from her behaviour now it wasn’t hard to guess at their relationship. Big, homely, freckled Hawes and stocky little Cathy. Good pair.
She drank the coffee and collected herself. When she looked at me her face was flushed, either from embarrassment or the whisky or both. ‘He spoke about you,’ she said. ‘He said you were a smartarse but there was something else about you he liked.’
‘I can live with that. I found him impressive in a quiet way.’
‘Yes, Colin’s quiet. That’s one of the things I love about him. I suppose you’ve guessed about us.’
‘Hard not to.’
‘Mmm. We met at the Academy and were friendly. Then we were posted to different places and didn’t meet again until the GCU was being . . . reconfigured.’
‘A new lot of detectives, uniforms and civilians.’
‘Did Colin tell you that?’
‘Might have. Are we in an information exchange here, Constable?’
She visibly tightened up. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m working on a case that keeps crossing lines with the GCU. You can see from Hawes’s note that he knows of a connection. I need to know more about the . . . let’s say outfall, from that unit.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like names.’
She laughed. ‘No way.’
I shrugged. ‘I won’t be leaving it alone.’
‘You probably should.’
‘I can’t.’
She put Hawes’s pen in her bag, pulled out another one and had me sign two documents to do with the return of my gun. The .38 and the ammunition were in two separate plastic bags in her briefcase. She put them on the bench.
‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but getting a weapon back isn’t usually as easy as this. I think you may be in serious trouble. I can’t say any more until I find Colin.’
‘Maybe I could help.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Look, Colin’s told you things. I don’t know how much. He’s exposed now, I reckon, but perhaps you’re not—or not as much. What about the Police Integrity Commission? Could you go to them?’
‘With what?’
‘Your concerns.’
‘I’m a constable. My concerns, as you put it, are about much higher-ups.’
‘Like who?’
‘Nice try. Thanks for the coffee and the grog, Mr Hardy.’
‘Cliff.’
‘Cliff, then. My advice to you is to be careful and do something else. Serve some subpoenas, catch some welfare cheats.’
Her scorn set my mind racing. Kate Greenhall suspected her brother was murdered for some reason; Timothy Greenhall had dodgy police contacts and Colin Hawes hadn’t used the words Precision Instruments for no reason.
‘If your colleagues are somehow involved in the death of my client’s son—have murdered my client’s son, possibly—I’m going to find out who and do something about it.’
‘Good luck and goodnight.’
She scooped up her papers, stuffed them in her briefcase and was halfway to the front door before I could move. I sat where I was and listened to the door slam. I followed her and checked the deadlock on the door and set the alarm. Then I did the same with the back door. The windows were barred, as most windows in Glebe are.
I spilled the bullets from the plastic bag and loaded the .38. I grabbed the shoulder holster from a drawer in the kitchen, slipped the gun into it, took it upstairs and hung it on one of the hooks on the back of the bedroom door. I rewrapped the spare bullets in their plastic bag, put them in a pocket of my leather jacket and hung that on another hook. I’d never put a gun under my pillow and wasn’t about to start now, but there was no harm in taking a few precautions.
I knew I had to talk to Greenhall and that it’d be a very tricky interview. I wanted to talk to Frank Parker first but when I rang in the morning Hilde told me he’d gone to a two-day voluntary euthanasia workshop in Bowral. That alarmed me.
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘What’s wrong with him is what’s wrong with us all, Cliff, including you. He’s getting older and he just wants to be prepared. You should think about it.’
‘Not yet. What about you?’
She laughed. ‘I’m twelve years younger than Frank and both my parents lived into their nineties. I’ll tell him you called when he gets back. You could ring him on his mobile but I wouldn’t advise
it.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘He’s serious about this. He’s done a lot of reading on it and he’s going to ask a lot of questions and want real answers. He doesn’t need any distractions. You know what he’s like.’
‘Yeah. Are you sure he’s not . . .’
‘Keeping something from me? No, I’m not, but I trust him, Cliff.’
I finished the call and sat thinking about trust for a few minutes. I couldn’t have said that it was an outstanding feature of the relationships I’d had. Maybe I’d never deserved it. I decided to visit Megan and the boys. It was school holiday time and Ben would be at home with his hard question. I’d find trust there.
Thinking I might go to the gym after visiting Megan I drove to Newtown rather than walk and began the tedious process of looking for a parking space reasonably close to her place. As usual, the area was parked solid; even a bikie looking for a spot was having trouble. Eventually a car pulled out of one of the bays in Federation Street west of Camperdown Park and I slid into it. I was locking the car when I heard a roar of motorcycle exhausts and within seconds I was hemmed in by six or seven bikies, all but one of whom wore the Bravados insignia—the head of a Texas longhorn bull with glaring red eyes. One didn’t—the Harley rider who’d tracked me there and pretended to be looking for a parking space.
A clutch of big, mostly young, hairy men sitting astride their ticking machines is a scary thing, especially in a quiet, dead-end street. Three of the riders had pillion passengers. The cleanskin held up his mobile phone and grinned at me with gap-toothed satisfaction.
‘Teamwork,’ he said.
‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘Nice bikes.’
He nodded to one of the biggest of his comrades who pulled a flexible leather cosh from his saddlebag. Those things are lead-weighted, and they hurt. ‘You’re coming with us, Hardy. Will it be the soft way or the fuckin’ hard way?’
I was buying time for no good reason. ‘Depends on where we’re going.’
The spokesman gestured to another man, who took a black hood from his pocket. ‘That’s something you don’t need to know. Now hand over the fuckin’ keys, and get in the back.’
Three pillion passengers dismounted. This was obviously a planned operation and I had no plan at all. I decided not to risk the cosh. After boxing and some of the bashings I’ve endured I only have so many brain cells left.
I tossed the keys at the spokesman and he dropped the catch.
‘Fuck you,’ he said.
‘You too,’ I said. ‘What you have to do is unlock the driver’s-side door and reach in to unlock the back doors. Want me to show you how? You’re a bit young to know these things.’
He wasn’t provoked. He handed the keys to one of the non-riders to open the car. I got in the back and had a Bravado, smelling of tobacco and sweat, on either side of me. I let one of them drop the hood over my head. After that it was a matter of sound rather than sight—the engine starting, the backing out, and we were on our way. If they’d wanted to kill or harm me they could have done it on the spot. Evidently they had something else in mind, at least for now.
You read that people are able to sense the direction of travel when blindfolded and work out places and distances from the traffic noise, the turns, the ups and downs and such things. I couldn’t. All I had was a sense of time. It was hot under the hood.
After what felt like an hour and just to annoy them I said, ‘I’m going to need a piss soon. Prostate trouble.’
‘Cook it,’ the one on my left said.
‘Runs well, doesn’t it, the Falcon? And your bloke handles a manual pretty well, too. That’s unusual these days for anyone under forty. Rides the clutch a bit though.’
The one on the right dug an elbow hard into my ribs. ‘Shut the fuck up!’
I turned towards him. ‘Listen, shithead, someone evidently smarter than you wants me for some reason and I’m more likely to oblige him if I’m without bruises and in a good mood.’
‘I told you . . .’
‘Let him talk,’ the driver said. ‘Means he’s scared.’
‘You’ll be scared if I ever get you one on one.’
The driver didn’t respond, underlining his point, which wasn’t altogether wrong.
Traffic noise died away. The car stopped and they bundled me out. Both my arms were gripped and they steered me along a rough track and didn’t mind when I stumbled. They laughed when I swore. The driver was evidently leading the way; smoke from his joint drifted back towards me.
‘I need a piss,’ I said.
I felt a shove in my back, lurched forward, put my hands out instinctively and felt the trunk of a tree.
‘Make it quick,’ one of them said and I did.
We got moving again and I felt grass and then concrete underfoot. A door opened and I was propelled over a step and into a space that smelled of cigarette smoke, beer and dog. My feet were kicked out from under me and I collapsed into an armchair that creaked but held.
‘Get the hood off,’ a voice said.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been blindfolded and I knew better than to open my eyes at once. I lowered my head and opened them slowly, blinking carefully.
‘This bloke knows what he’s doing,’ the voice said. ‘He give you any trouble?’
‘Only with his fuckin’ mouth.’
I lifted my head and took in the scene. I was in the living room of what was probably a farmhouse to judge by the tongue-and-groove construction of the walls. There was a threadbare carpet, a fireplace and two windows, one of which was cracked and mended with sealing tape. Three men, all uniformed Bravados, all unfriendly.
The smallest of them, sitting in a chair opposite me, was the one who’d given the order to take off the hood. He was medium-sized and wiry with bushy ginger hair drawn back in a ponytail. Hard to guess his age; maybe thirty. He was clean-shaven with long sideburns and had clear pale skin as if he’d never been out in the sun. He wore blue-tinted granny glasses. One of the others, whose voice identified him as the driver, was taller, younger and very dark, so that it was hard to tell whether he had just fashionable stubble or a beard; the other was fairer and best described in one word—fat.
‘I’m Paul,’ the redhead said. He jerked his thumb at the others, dark and fat in turn. ‘That’s Bruce and Ray.’
‘Paul who?’
‘Just Paul. Now you’ll agree that you haven’t been hurt, just a bit . . . inconvenienced. Right?’ He had an educated voice that seemed to have been deliberately roughened.
‘Bruce rode the clutch in my car. I could be up for a new one.’
Paul almost laughed but not quite.
‘That’s what he’s like,’ Bruce said. ‘A smartarse. He needs a good kicking.’
I looked at him. ‘I’ve told you, mate. I’ll take you on any time.’
‘This is all bullshit,’ Paul said. ‘What you’re going to do is help us find who killed our brother Dusty Miller in Katoomba.’
‘What would I know about that?’
‘You were there.’
‘Suppose I was, why would I help you?’
Paul leaned forward so that I got the full strength of his clove-scented breath. ‘Because if you don’t, you’re going to join Dusty.’
11
There was no mystery to how they knew I’d been at Miller’s place. Paul told me Miller had concealed miniature CCTV cameras installed inside and outside. Cameras as a defence against rival bikies and not discovered by the police.
‘How come they didn’t pick up the killers?’
‘They did. Three guys in balaclavas. They tortured Dusty and then beat him to death. The cops don’t give a shit,’ Paul said. ‘The only good bikie is a dead bikie.’
‘A lot of people feel like that,’ I said.
‘How about you?’
I shrugged. ‘People like dressing up. I had fun on a Honda when I was younger. Live and let live. I’m a libertarian when it comes to drugs so I don’t car
e what you do there.’
‘How about guns?’
‘I worry about the collateral damage.’
‘So do we. We try to minimise it. We’re getting off the point here. You . . .’
‘Don’t you want to know why I was in Katoomba?’
Paul laughed. ‘We know why you were there. The cops confiscated your fucking gun and you wanted a back-up.’
‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘that’s right about my gun but way off base about me wanting to buy one. I wanted to see Miller about something quite different. How did you know the police had taken my gun?’
‘Just a guess. I know a bit about you, Hardy. Happened to you once before, didn’t it?’
‘Twice, in fact.’
Bruce, who’d been smoking another joint and shifting from foot to foot, finally lost patience. ‘Fuck, Paul, who cares? Is the cunt going to be of any use or not?’
Paul was distracted, surprised at his authority being challenged, and Bruce was well on the way to being stoned. Continued passivity wasn’t an option in this situation. I’d been preparing myself, slowly moving my feet to get a good purchase on the ratty carpet and marking exactly where Bruce was by the sound of his voice rather than looking. I came out of the chair balanced and moving fast. Bruce was taking a big toke and was unprepared for the right jolt I gave him well below the belt. He yelped, dropped the joint and instinctively covered his groin as he bent over. I lifted a knee hard under his jaw and felt the bones click and his teeth clash together. He went down spitting blood.
‘That’s enough, Hardy!’
Quick as a cat, Paul was on his feet and had a pistol jabbed hard into my right ear. Very hard; I felt the skin split. I opened my hands in submission.
‘I warned him,’ I said.
‘Big deal. He’ll be more careful next time, if there is a next time for you. Sit the fuck down, Hardy. Ray, get us a couple of beers and clean that bugger up.’
I subsided into the chair as Ray got busy. Paul kept the pistol well beyond my reach but with his arm loose and nothing to stop him bringing it up to where it’d do some good. He sucked noisily and winced.
