A Dark Place to Die

by Ed Chatterton

  Jimmy Gelagotis stands and looks at the boy, weighing the business decision before him. After a couple of seconds, he places a finger against his own lips and raises his eyebrows. The boy nods, his entire body shaking violently.

  He understands. Say nothing.

  Jimmy seriously doubts the boy will ever talk again. Even if he does, runs Jimmy's logic, his evidence will never stand up. It just doesn't seem to work that way. And killing the boy would be a mistake. A dead villain is one thing, a murdered schoolboy quite another, and the last thing Jimmy Gelagotis would want in the coming weeks is the full attention of the law. It would be bad for business.

  He places the Sig Sauer back inside his jacket and, leaving the boy standing uncertainly next to The Russian's body, starts walking across the sports field towards the black-shadowed trees on the far side, and beyond them, the car. Behind him, the footballers are silent, many of them not noticing what has happened, and those who have, not computing the information – their brains unwilling to interpret what they have seen as a murder. They gather round Max and the boy like confused puppies, unclear about what to do. Not one of them would remember Jimmy Gelagotis's face if asked. Not that Jimmy cares. He knows that if it came to questions being asked he will have been at a dinner at a restaurant in Broadbeach. In court, at least.

  An overweight man wearing a tracksuit runs towards the boys from the direction of the soccer clubhouse.

  'Hey!'

  Jimmy hears him shout. His accent is English. A Londoner. Jimmy glances back and sees the man start moving his way. A hero.

  'You! Hey, you, stop!'

  Jimmy sighs and comes to a halt. He turns and lifts the Sig Sauer from under his jacket. The hero is now about forty metres away. Jimmy knows that, from the other man's point of view, he will appear as no more than a black silhouette against the lights from the road. Jimmy waves the gun in the air and starts moving towards the hero. As he expects, the man begins to back off. Jimmy Gelagotis waits until the hero is sprinting away before turning around again.

  It's time to go. The cops have already been called by some of the kids.

  Jimmy gets to the car, moving quickly now, slides into the seat and turns the ignition. A look back shows the sports field illuminated as clearly as a stage. Several more adult figures are running in the direction of Max's body, around which his players have congregated.

  Jimmy Gelagotis drives carefully away from the soccer fields, his blood fizzing, his breathing coming hard. He doesn't have to do this dirty work – he could have detailed Stefan Meeks or Tony Link to do it – but over the years he's found that doing it yourself pays big dividends. For one thing, anyone who even remotely suspected that Jimmy Gelagotis was capable of such extreme violence on a personal level would most certainly adjust their attitude accordingly. The kicker for Jimmy is that flying solo means there is no messy trail, no accomplice ready to blab when an arrest is made. Keep the story simple. That's the thing that fucks people – getting too complicated. He's been out for a meal with friends – ask them. At a restaurant he owns – check with the manager. No story, no elaborate cover-up. I was here, not there. I'm not guilty. Jimmy has seen too many hard boys take the fall due to delegating, or talking too much, or both.

  Eight minutes after leaving the soccer fields he parks the stolen car at the end of a darkened, deserted industrial development on a road that leads nowhere, and gets out. He lights a match and applies it to the rag that's sticking out of a can of petrol in the back seat. As the car begins burning, he jams a black cap low on his head and jogs towards the car park of a wholesale paint warehouse in the occupied portion of the industrial complex where he's left his own vehicle; an unremarkable Commodore with no tricked-out spoilers or wheels, or any of the other shit you see every day up and down the Goldie. Jimmy has even muddied the rego plate in the unlikely event of being on CCTV. The same reason he wears the cap. He already knows there were no cameras at the soccer ground; he'd checked. Homework. Details.

  After a last look to make sure the stolen car is well alight, Jimmy Gelagotis drives carefully homewards, obeying the speed signs and lights, pausing only to throw the gun over a wire fence into a deep pile of refuse at the Broadbeach council tip. The gloves he gets rid of by wrapping them round a rock and dropping them over a bridge into the river.

  Free of any evidence, he punches a speed-dial number on his phone.

  Tony,' says Jimmy.

  'How was it?' Tony Link's voice is urgent. Jimmy can hear the sounds of glasses clinking and the chatter of a restaurant in the background. 'Hold on, mate, let me get somewhere quiet.'

  Jimmy waits slightly impatiently for a few seconds until Link comes back on, his voice clearer. 'That's better.'

  'You finished fucking about?'

  Jimmy doesn't wait for Tony Link to answer. 'It's done,' he says.

  'Both of them?'

  'You don't need details, Tony. Have the big cats arrived?'

  'Stefan's got them safe and sound, Jimmy. No problem.'

  'I don't want any problems. I want them watched twenty-four seven until we're good to go, got it?'

  'Like I said, Jimmy, Stefan's got three of his boys on it. They're safe as.'

  'They fucking better be, friend.'

  Jimmy clicks the conversation closed and concentrates on his driving. The last thing he needs is a speeding ticket.

  Less than half an hour after putting the bullets into Maksym Kolomiets on the soccer field, Jimmy Gelagotis turns the nose of the Commodore into the driveway of his five-bedroom, pin-neat suburban home. He flicks the garage open with the remote, rolls the car inside and closes it behind him. He gets out and sniffs his hands, which smell faintly of petrol and rubber. In the house he turns into the small bathroom situated close by the garage door and washes his hands twice. He dries them thoroughly before going into the kitchen where his wife, Eva, is talking on the phone. She waves her fingers at him and he kisses her neck and then wanders over to where his eldest daughter, Anna, is doing her homework at the kitchen table.

  'Good girl,' he says, and ruffles her hair.

  'Dad!' She pushes him away, smiling.

  Jimmy hangs his jacket over the edge of the pool table, goes into the TV room and sits down. His teenage son, Luke, is playing some sort of computer game with a friend. Neither boy looks up as Jimmy comes in.

  He picks up the Gold Coast Bulletin and settles into his chair.

  Job done.

  Now all he has to do is wait and see how Stevie is doing in Liverpool.

  12

  Eight hundred years old, and carrying its bloody history lightly, Liverpool has been freshly spruced up in the last couple of years, with billions of euros of European Community grants and serious private investment pouring into the city. Shiny new postmodern buildings have sprung up along the waterfront, and those that have been around for a while are being forcibly scrubbed up like an old man at Christmas.

  Liverpool is looking better than she has done since her heyday. The newly gleaming white 'Three Graces' – the Liver Building, the Cunard, and the Port of Liverpool Building – dominate the waterfront approach, their size and grandeur facing west, to America, speaking of a time when Liverpool was the global hub. It's a city built on the sea, its history salt-caked, and best approached from the water.

  Stevie White doesn't arrive in Liverpool by sea. Very few people, other than those who work on the merchant ships, or who come in on the cruise ships beginning to use the port in increasing numbers, did. Stevie arrives in the city of his birth by rail.

  He isn't impressed.

  He'd left Liverpool as a baby and hasn't, until this week, set foot outside Australia again. As the train clanks its way through the arse end of Liverpool, Stevie's beginning to wish he'd never let Jimmy know that he'd been born here. Apart from ending up running this errand – something that Stevie guesses could turn out to be unpleasant – Jimmy and the guys have begun calling him 'Pommy'. It rankles with Stevie, a St Kilda boy to the core, especiall
y coming from Stefan Meeks, who'd also been born in the UK but seems to have escaped the jibes. Stevie hadn't given the man listed as his father a second's thought. As far as he was concerned his real father had been Australian. This Koopman meant less than nothing.

  Stevie stayed overnight near Heathrow after arriving late the previous night and caught the train north around lunchtime after battling his way through the filthy, overcrowded underground system. The ride up to Liverpool hasn't been all bad. Some of the countryside looks pretty nice. Small, and all sort of squished together, but pleasant enough.

  It's as the train gets closer to Liverpool that things begin changing. They rattle over a bridge that gives Stevie a view of a seemingly endless industrial landscape hugging the banks of a grey waterway that disappears into the smoggy hinterland. Even through the train's air-filtering system he can smell a chemical tang that hits the back of his throat like the aftertaste of mouthwash. And then the train dips down towards the city, Stevie's windows filling with a rushing succession of drab industrial complexes that give way to row after row of grimy red-brick houses, their backyards filled with rickety white plastic chairs, overflowing bins, lines of washing, bicycles, motorbikes, a woman smoking a cigarette, stacks of wood, the carcass of a fridge. Across the tops of the houses he sees the city getting closer and he relaxes a little as he begins spotting things he's familiar with: taller buildings glinting against the grey sky, car dealerships, shinier things, signs of affluence.

  The train lurches into a series of short tunnels cut into the red stone that Liverpool is built on, its surface blackened with centuries of soot and smoke and exhaust. Here and there in this subterranean labyrinth, illuminated by shafts of unexplained light, are the tags of adventurous graffiti kids. Stevie has to admire their persistence but wonders how bad life on the surface has to be to make the hellish trek underground worthwhile.

  The train slows and Stevie notices those who must travel the route regularly begin to collect themselves and their belongings. The tunnels give way to a cavernous open space and the train pulls into Lime Street under a scrubbed-up Victorian steel arch roof.

  It's a myth that all Australians find England cold. Still, Stevie pulls on his thick puffa jacket around his already bulked-out frame and zips it high as he steps onto the platform. He holds his bag lightly. It's a small one. He doesn't expect to be in Liverpool, or England, any longer than is strictly necessary.

  13

  'Why are you telling me?' Koop asks Sullivan. 'Why not Sharon? There must be a Mr White somewhere.'

  Sullivan takes a swig of coffee and wipes his mouth with the back of a finger before replying.

  'You were listed on the birth certificate as father. It's mandatory in the UK to list the biological. Mrs White died three years ago. Cancer. I thought you must have known.'

  Koop shakes his head. Cancer? Fuck.

  For him, Sharon has remained the frightened sixteen year old he last saw on Stanley Road a day or two before she and her family left for Australia. He knows that she married and moved on with her life without him, with Stevie, and then a new man, but it's still a reach to start thinking of her as dead.

  'We hadn't spoken in a very long time.'

  Zoe came and stood behind Koop, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder.

  There was a pause.

  'So . . .' said Koop. 'I still don't know why you're here. I mean, it's a shock, if this body does turn out to be Stevie but, well, as I say, it's been a long time. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do. It's Sharon's business, or her husband's now. He's Stevie's dad, right? And Stevie has a brother. A half-brother.'

  'Mr White died too, Mr Koopman. A couple of years before his wife, before Sharon. Heroin took the brother. He overdosed in 2007. That's why we're here.'

  Koop feels stupid. He looks at Sullivan. There's something he isn't getting. Something he should be getting.

  'You're Stevie White's next of kin, Mr Koopman,' Sullivan says, his voice quiet. 'There's no-one else.'

  Keane gets the call from Australia on the third day of the investigation during the morning team briefing. They're gathered in a loose group in front of the portion of the crime wall devoted to the burning man case. The empty space has been filling up rapidly after the discovery of the container and has begun to spread outwards onto the adjoining walls. The team has gone over the container in their usual thorough manner, but other than the lens cap – and of course the blood – the scene has produced little else. What they have, though, is plenty for the forensics to be getting on with.

  Keane looks round at his team. They're sitting on the edges of desks, or standing. It always feels staged to him, this situation. Like something from a cop series. But how else to do it? Memos?

  'What have we got? DC Corner? Anything from the Coastguard?'

  'The fire was noted,' says Corner in his usual deliberate manner, checking his notebook for the details. It's a running joke at MIT that Corner, whose wedding is next month, would consult his notebook when asked to say 'I do' at the altar. 'A call came in from a householder on Marine Crescent. A Mrs O'Rourke. 11.47 pm. No action taken. Apparently there are so many beach fires that the Coastguard has stopped doing anything and the fire service only gets involved if there's a threat to life or property. And taking the engine onto the beach . . .' Corner lets the sentence trail off and closes his notebook.

  'The householder had nothing to add,' says Wills. 'Old lady. She saw the fire, reported it and then closed her curtains and went straight to bed like the law-abiding citizen she is. Saw no-one, noticed nothing.'

  'Dog walkers?' says Harris. A dog owner herself, she has a feeling that this line might produce something.

  'Nothing,' says Corner. So much for feelings, thinks Harris. Stick to the police work.

  DS Caddick raises a hand. The gesture puts Harris in mind of an eager child in the classroom. Not altogether inaccurate when applied to Caddick, whose naked ladder-climbing simultaneously repels and amuses her, so clearly is it written on everything he does. Still, she thinks, who am I to judge his ambition?

  'I think we may have got something from down under, boss,' he says. The convention in these morning briefings is to keep everything all business all the time, but Caddick can't help a flicker of smugness creeping onto his face. 'Took a bit of digging . . .'

  'Get on with it,' says Keane.

  Caddick's partner, Steve Rose, stifles a smile. You could always depend on Roy to stop Phil dead in his tracks.

  'Right,' says Caddick. 'Sorry, boss. Anyway, we drew a blank with missing Aussies.'

  Keane nods impatiently and looks at his watch. His temper hasn't been improved by the latest in a long series of nights during which he's resumed his ongoing battle with his galloping insomnia. He picks up his mug of coffee and guzzles the last of it while Caddick speaks.

  'So Rosie and I looked at another angle. We asked the immigration control boys for a list of recent arrivals from Oz travelling this way on a UK passport.'

  'UK?' says Keane. 'This boy's Australian.'

  'With respect, sir,' chimes in Steve Rose, 'he could hold both passports.'

  'Which is what it turned out to be,' says Caddick. This time he can't keep the smile off his face. 'At least we think so. I asked the Aussies to contact us when they had anything for us. Someone's scheduled to call this morning with an update.'

  Keane gives Caddick and Rose a grudging nod. They've done well, and spotted something he should have been alert to.

  'Good,' he says crisply. 'Anything else?'

  Harris leans forward and Keane notes the men in the room flick eyes towards her curving chest. He has no doubt Em is fully aware of the effect she has, but outwardly at least she is all business.

  'I checked with the Organised Crime Squad and they are very interested. So much so they want access to our files.' She breaks off with a look in Keane's direction. Keane shrugs. It's only to be expected. 'They want to run a watching brief on the case,' continues Harris. 'If anything concret
e turns up linking any of their targets with this, they'll be all over us like scallies in a ram raid.'

  'Anything they can give us that might actually be useful?'

  'The short answer? No. There's nothing they can give up that wouldn't have the potential to spoil their ongoing investigations.'

  'They do know this is a murder, Em, right?' says Keane. He leans an elbow on the window and looks out towards the river.

  'Hey,' she says, holding up her hands. 'Don't shoot the messenger.'

  Something in Em's words reverberates with Keane and he pauses before shaking his head. It will come back to him if he lets it. He looks at Harris and raises his own hand in a placatory gesture. Both of them know the system and don't altogether blame OCS for keeping their distance. For now. Once they step across some line drawn by the OCS, things could become a lot stickier. He'd hoped for a steer towards one of the drug boys, a name, a tip.

  That doesn't look like it's going to be forthcoming and he knows he and Harris are in for a few days of tip-toeing between OCS and their own boss, DCI Perch. Keane makes it a personal mission to avoid contact with Perch as much as humanly possible.

  He and Harris move the briefing to the plans for the day's work and begin prioritising the other cases their MIT syndicate has active. It takes them more than forty minutes before they break. Just as members of the unit start drifting back to their desks, Australia calls.

  With a questioning nod to Keane, Caddick puts the phone on speaker.

  'DI Keane?' A deep, marginally distorted, Australian voice growls across the incident room, out of place against the grey city beyond the window, which can now be barely glimpsed through a curtain of rain. 'Detective Senior Sergeant Warren Eckhardt here, Queensland Police.'

  'Queensland?' says Keane. 'I thought our boy was a St Kilda nut. Aren't they Melbourne?'

  'Well, out here we have planes. Some buses too and one or two cars. Your bloke might have been from Melbourne but he's on my desk now.'

  'Sorry, DSS Eckhardt,' says Keane, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. 'We're all ears.'