by Andres Kabel
Mick reached over to force the trembling hand onto the table. “I’ve told you before—it’s natural to be scared.”
The mobile trilled on the table and Peter jumped. Mick grabbed the phone and replied curtly.
“Fuck me,” Mick said. “That was Willy. Pleading Bella’s innocence and good nature. Sounded pissed.”
“Natural to be scared,” Peter echoed glumly.
“I’m always shit-scared,” Mick said. “It’s just that I’ve learned the hard way how to act despite the fear. In fact I’ve gone too far the other way. Christ, you saw me with Marcantonio. Would you rather be fight-happy like me?”
“No, I guess not. But look, I don’t like violence. Maybe I’m even a closet pacifist.”
Mick slapped a hand on the table. Coffee sloshed into Peter’s saucer.
“Horseshit,” Mick said. “Gentle, you were the one to turn me around on Friday and you said it all. Remember? This isn’t about war versus pacifism, it’s about justice.”
“Justice.” Peter shivered. “But I just can’t. Can’t you get it into your skull that I’m scared? S-C-A-R-E-D.”
“Be scared. But keep going. And I promise they’ll never put you in a position like that again.”
Peter looked at the set of Mick’s mouth. Something had altered in Mick’s demeanor overnight, and Peter thought he recognized it. “You’ll kill them, right? For you, it’s justice all right, justice from the barrel of a gun.”
He knew at once that he’d gone too far. “Look, I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did.” Mick leaned forward. “And you’re not way wrong. I hate those scumbags, and I’m not going to let them get away with this. But no more Marcantonios.”
“What about your deadline?” Peter said. “You said you’d only work till the end of today.”
“Maybe things will crack open today. Friedman might confess.”
Peter snorted. “And he might not. The one thing I’ve learned about this line of work is that nothing goes as planned. I thought we’d be signed, sealed, and delivered by now, and I’ve got no idea who did what.”
The pale blue eyes were intense. “You know we can solve this.”
Peter felt like crying. What would his Skulk Club friends say when they heard he’d quit? He inhaled the bitter aroma of the black coffee. “And if we don’t miraculously solve it all by the end of today, tomorrow it’s bye-bye Peter? Justice is a fine word, I like it too, big guy, but come tomorrow I face those monsters alone?”
Mick hesitated. Around them the din of Draconi’s played on. They stared into each other’s eyes.
Then Mick nodded. “You’ve got me.” His voice was hoarse. “Forget the five days.”
Peter couldn’t believe it. “What about Dana?”
“I’ll handle that.”
Peter slumped back in his seat. Nothing seemed clear, either in his heart or his mind.
“But all this still doesn’t get ’round the fact that I’m terrified,” he said. “Look, I wish I wasn’t. I wish I could just rise to the occasion and say jolly well, let’s tally ho. But my body says no.”
A man came around the bar toward them. Peter flinched and Mick reached into his jacket.
It was Bishop. Even on Sunday he wore a suit. And behind him, Hector had sidled up to listen.
“Your dad guessed you’d be here, Gentle,” the super-lawyer said in his clipped voice.
“Sit down,” Peter said, his mind whirling. He noticed how Mick deferred, settling back in his chair.
“No thank you,” Bishop said. “I’ve an unpleasant duty to perform, although perhaps some would question the use of the term unpleasant. Mrs. Keppel just rang me. She instructed me to ensure that all investigations cease.”
Peter was speechless. He felt an inexplicable sadness. For Imogen, for Straw, for Kantor.
“Mrs. Keppel asked me to convey her appreciation for all you’ve done, but she now considers her actions foolish. She’s convinced the police can solve her husband’s death.”
“Bugger me,” Mick said.
“She asked me to give you these.” Bishop fanned out two envelopes. “Substantial sums of money. Not the original prize, but more than you could rightfully expect.”
“What do you think of this, Bishop?” Peter asked.
The lawyer grimaced. “Not my preference, to abandon ship so easily.”
“Then persuade her to change her mind.”
“I tried, my sweeties. I told her the egghead and the beefcake were making remarkable progress. But she chose to disagree. And she’s the client.”
Peter stood up, propelled by emotions he couldn’t at first decipher. He walked over to the window of the restaurant and gazed out at the strolling passersby. A solitary diner at the window bench eyed him curiously. He pushed hair out of his eyes.
He walked back. “Mick, what do we do?”
He didn’t need a verbal response, he divined it all from one look into the seaside blue eyes.
Mick growled. “Tell him to stick it.”
Bishop looked from Mick to Peter.
“You heard Mick.” Peter trembled. He recognized his emotion: anger.
Bishop’s almond eyes glowed. “She’s my client. So I’m going to tell her I sacked you. I’ll keep this money. Come and get it whenever you want it. You are officially no longer on the payroll.”
Then the lawyer cackled. “I knew I’d enjoy this. Unofficially, and I deny any knowledge of this, you’re on the same terms and conditions as applied originally, but to me personally. Understand? The prize is the same, but you have no client.”
A bizarre joy flooded Peter. It was Mick he looked at, the infuriating, stuffed-up lump that watched him with what anyone else would have described as a minor twitch on his mouth.
“Bishop,” Peter said, squaring his shoulders. “Wait till you see what we can do.”
Hector was grinning.
The carrot-top nodded once. “Report daily,” Bishop tossed back over his shoulders as he rushed off.
CHAPTER 37
The crunching chords of AC/DC were powering Mick Tusk. Not the new incarnation of the group—the old AC/DC, fronted by Bon Scott screeching like a banshee.
Robert Friedman scowled when he opened his front door.
“You,” he said.
“Just a few questions,” Tusk said.
Fatigue or plain stress had creased Friedman’s sun-tanned forehead even more than Tusk recalled. The developer wore old jeans and a tee-shirt. His slitted eyes regarded Tusk and Gentle with suspicion. He jerked his head, led them down the corridor.
Tusk had parked the Peugeot half up on the nature strip, behind Friedman’s Range Rover, in a narrow semi-circular street off the railway line, just a stone’s throw from the Camberwell shops and cafes. Friedman lived in a stately old double brick with arches of white filigree over a narrow veranda and painted patterns on the bricks. Proof that property development had its rewards.
In a cramped living room, two teenage boys slouched over a television. While Friedman told them to go for a walk, Tusk checked out the piles of CDs: some good stuff—Bad Company, Mott The Hoople, Springsteen—plus plenty of crap.
Time check—1:05. Tusk glanced at Gentle. Still a bundle of nerves, face pale, hands in motion, but voluble enough on the drive out.
Friedman led them outside to a veranda shaded by a pergola. A large plastic table, strewn with plans and documents. Cricket stumps and ball next to a drooping willow tree.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t come.” Friedman rubbed the pouches under his eyes. “Let’s get this over with, Jenny will be back from church in half an hour.”
Tusk’s rancor at Friedman’s deceit had been replaced with a determination to settle the truth. He sucked in his stomach muscles, breathed in the fresh air. Relished the filtered sunshine on his cheeks, the clacking of a train over the back fence, the distant sound of announcements at Camberwell Station.
“You snuck back in after seeing the company lawyer, did
n’t you?” Gentle said.
Tusk looked at Gentle. How did he figure that?
Friedman peered at Gentle. “Come again?”
Gentle had clasped his hands behind his back, but Tusk could still see his fingers wriggling with energy. “Someone saw you. Your hair. And you must have left the building, otherwise your guest pass would have only registered going in, not out.”
Friedman took a deep breath.
“Let me tell it then,” he said. “After I finished with lawyer Morrison, when I left the building, I saw a bunch of young guys heading in. I joined them, got off on the third floor, went into the stairwell. Climbed past the top floor. The stairs go on to a locked door, I guess onto the roof. I sat down there until after the office emptied.”
“Why?” Tusk asked.
“Hard to say.” Friedman stuck his hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders down. “Just an impulse. I was pissed off that every time I tried to see Kantor, I was palmed off to someone else. I guess I’d come to realize I’d never pin Stan’s murder on him, but I hadn’t seen him personally for yonks. Just wanted to tell him what a crook he is… was.”
“Why not just barge into his office in daylight?”
“Don’t know. I felt mad, know what I mean? I wanted to really tell him my mind, instead of worrying about upsetting people in the office.”
Gentle was jiggling his feet. Tusk kicked him.
“I must have fallen asleep,” Friedman said. “Woke at ten.”
“Exactly?” Tusk said.
“9:57. I remember, I looked at my watch. I headed down one floor. It was bloody quiet. I’d expected to find his office empty—”
“You knew where his office was?”
“Yeah, went there several times last year. I yelled at Kantor. You know, the things you’d expect me to say. Told him he’d gotten away with murder. He called me a lunatic and threatened to ring the police. By then all my anger was flushed and I felt bad about what I was doing. So I left.”
“Anyone else hear you two shouting?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“What time did you leave?”
“Don’t know, maybe 10:15. You know what the bastard’s last words to me were?”
“What?”
Friedman’s voice quivered. “He said, ‘Your brother was a fine man.’ The bastard!”
“How did you leave, Mr. Friedman?” Gentle asked.
“This is the terrible bit.” Friedman shook his head and shoulders like a dog coming out of the sea. “I took the stairs again. Walked all the way down to the basement. That’s when I heard it.”
“Heard what?” Tusk said.
“A shout, something like ‘no.’ Then a scream and a thump.” Friedman’s eyes grew wide. “I got the fright of my life. Ran out the fire exit. Didn’t know what it was then, but when I heard about the murder, I knew.”
Friedman hugged himself hard. “I heard it. The killing.”
“You heard it,” Tusk said, “or did you do it?”
“No.”
“You said it yourself, you hated him. The man murders your brother, you’re after him for years. So you hide a poker in your jacket, follow him into the stairwell, and thump him.”
“No way!” A single sob. “God, I thought of it, I even dreamt it.”
Tusk heard a wattle bird gurgling in the wisteria above them. Just like home, he thought.
Gentle was gnawing at a finger in his excitement. “Were you wearing gloves, Mr. Friedman?”
Friedman nodded. “How—?”
“Why gloves?”
“It was a cold night. No heating in the stairwell.”
“No fingerprints, you see,” Gentle said to Tusk.
Tusk nodded. For the first time since they’d begun this crazy partnership, it was working well. Damn well.
“You see why I told no one?” Friedman shouted. “Who’s going to believe me? I wanted the bastard dead. I did!”
Friedman smashed a fist against the pergola. A flash of color as the wattle bird fled.
“You know something?” Friedman said. “I keep hearing that scream. Ironic, eh? I’m sorry for the mongrel!”
Tusk took a decision. “I believe you.”
Friedman stared. Gentle’s mouth dropped.
“For what it’s worth,” Tusk said. “But this is fucking murder, Friedman. You’re going to have to talk to the police, okay? Go to them now, we’ll keep mum about this meeting. It’ll look good on your account, volunteering. If you don’t go, we’ll have to fill them in, you’re in even deeper shit. Your wife know?”
Friedman shook his head. “She knows something is up.”
“Did you hear anything of the killer?” Gentle asked.
“I’ve been racking my brain. No. Nothing. Just the shout and the scream.”
“Would you say Kantor knew the killer?”
“Maybe. Just the way he shouted.”
And then a weird question from Gentle. “Mr. Friedman, did your brother Stan talk much about Kantor’s family—Imogen or Straw?”
“Jesus mate, that’s stretching the memory.” Friedman was breathing hard. “I recall he said the girl was nice but nutty. And the wife stuck-up. Here’s a question for you. Either of you checked back on Stan’s murder?”
“I have,” Gentle said.
“Well?” Friedman’s face was intent.
Christ, Tusk thought, I’ve felt the scorch of the cross of obsession, feel it right now. But nothing like this man.
Gentle sighed. A shrug, meaning yes, maybe Kantor had been a killer.
They left Friedman staring at the back fence, fists bunched. Tusk felt ready for anything. His head teemed with songs, a sure sign he was full on. He checked out the street. Nothing.
“Why did you say you believed him?” Gentle asked as Tusk drove off.
Greenery everywhere in Camberwell. Trees lining the streets, shrubbery exploding from houses. Every few blocks a park. “Because I do.”
“But you’re always lecturing me about people’s capacity to lie, how people never stop lying.”
Camberwell even smelled good. The tang of freshly mown grass. Flowers. “Sometimes you just know they’ve said it all.”
“But Mick, he’s the only one we can place at the spot, at the right time. He hated Kantor.”
“Yep. But you heard him, he couldn’t have killed. It’s not in him. Like you. You couldn’t kill anyone.”
Tusk stopped the Peugeot alongside a park full of gums and arranged flowerbeds. How nice to live here, he thought, as they walked to a bench next to a still pond. The most eastward of all the inner, old-money suburbs, yet only ten kilometers from the city. Tradition meets the upwardly mobile professionals moving in toward the big smoke. Great for jogging. Maybe one day…
“I don’t agree,” Gentle said. “Until we know for sure, we shouldn’t eliminate him as a suspect.”
Tusk shrugged, kept his eyes busy. No cruising cars. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a father walking his child in a pusher.
He dialed Marcia on the mobile. No answer. An odd message from Rollo, which they both listened to: “You know, Kantor was so bright, sometimes he couldn’t make a decision. He’d sit at his desk dreaming for hours. I had to prod him. Many times. That’s what brothers do. Ring me—we need to talk. Before six. Bella and I are dining in Southbank.”
“Look, here’s the logic.” Gentle rocked up and down. “Regardless of whether Friedman killed Kantor, we can take it for granted he must have been the one who triggered the fire exit record.”
Tusk pondered, nodded. Gentle grinned, lifted his hand up. Their palms slapped.
Gentle rushed on. “We know Yang the security guard was on the front desk at that time, because he spotted Dancer leaving, so that eliminates Willy.”
“Unless he borrowed Bella’s pass,” Tusk said. “Or she went with him. But yeah, he’s not on my radar screen.”
“And Imogen, though maybe she has a motive, is eliminated. Bella has no real motive—she c
ouldn’t care less who knows about her affair with Kantor. And if she killed him, Rollo must know about it.”
“She’s tricky. Still on my list.”
Gentle nodded frantically, inclined his palms to present his conclusion. “So I believe we’re left with Friedman, Bella, Rollo, and Brindle.”
“Your bet, Gentle?” From here on in, Tusk knew their campaign would need to escalate, they needed to take a punt.
“Friedman. If not him, then Marcia.”
Tusk watched a tram sweep down Camberwell Road. “I thought you admired her?”
“I do, but you said it, everyone can have a motive to murder, and there’s something at Scientific Money she’s trying to hide. And the weight of the evidence is on her. I just don’t believe Rollo could kill his brother. And if he was the murderer, why would Bella protect him? She clearly can’t stand him.”
Tusk picked up a stone, threw it in a curving arc through the blue sky. “Wrong. It’s Rollo all right. And Bella’s covering for him because she likes his money. That’s why she stuck with him so many years. And you’re ignoring Dancer’s murder. I’m sure that was Bertoli, and the one he connects with is Rollo, through Scaffidi.”
In the car Tusk slipped in exactly the right tape. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Run Through the Jungle.” The eerie ancient sounds matched his heartbeat.
“Same data, different conclusions, eh?” Gentle was smiling. “But you see how it works. Data, analysis, conclusions. A bit more data, and our analysis will lead us both to the same conclusion.”
The sheer pompousness of the lecture brought a laugh to Tusk’s lips. “No wonder you reckon you’re so smart.”
Gentle was also laughing. “Piss off. I need to spell it out for the remedial class.”
CHAPTER 38
The fleeting moment of levity rejuvenated Peter. At last, the minute tremors across his chest subsided. At last he could don his thinking cap.
Mick fell silent in the Peugeot, absorbed in his head-banging music, on the slow crawl northeast through Sunday afternoon traffic, which suited Peter fine. One more time, he thought. Four suspects remaining. One more time through the scenarios…
Crucial data was missing. Where on earth did Scaffidi fit in? Who was playing funny buggers at Scientific Money? Peter pictured Robert Friedman, fists knotted with rage, consumed by anger even after confessing he’d heard his nemesis being murdered. Could Friedman have murdered? How good a liar was he? In the end it all came down to that—whether he had lied well enough to fool them. In fact, Peter’s carefully assembled data was only as good as his judgment of its veracity. This insight, logical as it was, shocked him.
