Silent Kill

by Peter Corris

  Marinos was small, wedged between a Lebanese take-out and a posh Chinese restaurant. It was half full and already noisy, the way Greek places often are where the cheerful atmosphere and good food tend to promote hilarity. The one waitress was busy and she waved me to a table for two, had a water bottle, tumbler and wine glass in front of me within a second or two and then vanished into the kitchen. She came out almost immediately, served a table of four, took an order at another table and vanished again. Megan, who’d done a fair bit of it, had told me that waiting was the wrong name for the job.

  ‘It should be called foot-fucking,’ she’d said and I could see what she meant.

  When the waitress got to me I ordered grilled calamari for an entrée and sautéed liver for a main. The little place filled up. I paced myself with the wine and enjoyed the food. My target was obvious—a woman seated behind the cash register, handling the money and credit-card payments with grace and style. She was no black-clad widow; she wore an olive green silk blouse, muted but effective makeup, silver hoop earrings and her ash blonde hair was expensively cut and styled. She exuded warmth and I’d have bet more than a few of the restaurant’s patrons were there just to have dealings with her.

  I ordered coffee and wrote on the back of my business card that I was a friend of Penelope’s and wanted to see her. I handed the card to the woman as I passed her desk on the way to the toilet. She nodded to me when I came back. The bill was on the table and I took it and my credit card to the desk.

  ‘You say you are a friend,’ she said as she processed the payment. Her English was very correct; her accent was heavy.

  ‘That was an exaggeration, I admit. We . . . worked together briefly before problems arose. Those problems still exist and I hope she can help me.’

  She returned my card. ‘My daughter badly needs a friend and she needs help herself.’

  It was the first indication I’d had that Penelope wasn’t on top of things all the time.

  ‘I don’t mean her any harm,’ I said.

  I stepped aside while she dealt with another customer.

  ‘I watched you eat and drink,’ she said. ‘I watch everybody.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I . . .’

  ‘You can tell a lot from the way people eat and drink. I would say you were efficient.’

  ‘Thank you. How about trustworthy?’

  She smiled. ‘That is harder to judge, but I think yes. Go back and take the stairs on the right. Be gentle with her.’

  Her fingers flicked over the buttons on her mobile as she texted. I went up the stairs and found myself in a sitting room. A door to a kitchen was open; two other doors were closed.

  ‘Pen?’

  ‘In here.’

  The voice, reedy, thin and muffled, came from behind one of the doors. I opened it and stepped inside the small bedroom. Penelope Milton-Smith was sitting in a chair by the single bed. The room was lit only by a low-voltage lamp and she was partly in shadow. She was wearing a faded dressing gown and even in the gloom I could see that her face was bruised and misshapen. There was a bandage around her neck and she held her left arm, with a cast on the wrist, awkwardly on a cushion. With her right hand she tossed a mobile phone onto the bed.

  ‘Hello, Cliff.’

  The voice was like a parody of her former confident modulated delivery.

  ‘Jesus, Pen, what’s happened?’

  ‘He raped me,’ she said. ‘He bashed me and he raped me.’

  15

  Penelope broke down and cried. I put my arm around her and she pressed her face against me so I could feel her tears wetting my shirt. After a while she pulled a tissue from her dressing-gown pocket and wiped her eyes. Then she reached down to the floor and brought up first a bottle of vodka and then a glass. She poured a solid measure, the bottle tapping against the rim of the glass. She took a big swig and looked at me.

  ‘I’m a mess,’ she said.

  ‘Not permanently,’ I said.

  She forced a smile. ‘That’s the only nice thing I’ve heard since . . .’

  I sat on the bed. ‘I went to Darwin. I saw Rory and he told me you’d left with Bright. Do you feel up to telling me what happened then?’

  ‘Why?’

  I explained that I was working for Melanie Kim’s brother. Suddenly she seemed less interested in the vodka.

  ‘You’re going after him?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What will you do if you catch him?’

  ‘That’ll depend on what he does. But I’ll need help, Pen. I need to know everything about the material you have on the politicians and the people behind them.’

  ‘Had,’ she said. ‘I kept thinking I could play him along and get away from him somehow but I couldn’t. He threatened to scar me unless I gave him the files. He had this knife . . .’

  Her hand shook and she spilled some of the vodka. I took the glass from her.

  ‘Easy,’ I said. ‘He didn’t scar you. You’ll be beautiful again.’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘I’m not beautiful.’

  ‘If you ain’t, you’ll do till beautiful gets here.’

  ‘That’s from No Country for Old Men.’

  ‘Right.’

  She laughed and winced as the movement hurt her battered face.

  ‘See?’ I said. ‘You’re on the way back.’

  ‘Christ, I think you’re right. I’ve got to pull myself together. Help you? I’ll do anything to get even with that bastard.’

  She downed her drink, tossed the bottle onto the bed where it clicked against the mobile and stood up. She swayed but regained her balance and gave a triumphant grunt. Mrs Marinos came into the room.

  ‘Darling, you’re on your feet. That’s much better.’

  ‘Thank him, he’s a good man.’

  ‘It’s about time you found one.’

  ‘Don’t start, Mama.’

  They had a rapid-fire conversation in Greek.

  ‘I’ve told her you’re going to protect me. Are you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Pen went to the bathroom and tidied herself. She came back and I studied the books on the shelf while she got dressed. Moving slowly and carefully, it took time for her to work her way into a shirt, loose pants and a jacket. I helped her pull on a pair of dusty ankle boots.

  ‘Haven’t worn this gear in years,’ she said. ‘The stuff I arrived here in I never want to see again. He only let me bring my shoulder bag. Anyway, there were no other clothes to bring.’

  ‘What happened to them? There was nothing left in Darwin, O’Hara said. Just some shoes.’

  She put the dressing gown on a hook on the back of the door and leaned against the door for support. ‘He . . . cut it all up with his knife to show me how sharp it was. Specially the bras. He was a gentleman, though; he used a condom for the real fun.’

  ‘Don’t think about it.’

  ‘I have to think about it. It keeps me angry.’

  ‘Where do you want to go? Have you got a flat or something?’

  ‘Sublet it when Rory and I took off.’

  ‘Better come to my place.’

  ‘No wife?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘No partner?’

  ‘Currently in LA and likely to stay there.’

  ‘Let’s go then.’

  ‘How will your mother feel about that?’

  ‘I’m thirty-six years old.’

  ‘What did you tell her about your injuries?’

  ‘What I told them at Casualty—that I fell down some stairs.’

  ‘Did she believe you?’

  ‘She pretended to. It’s a relationship based on pretence. She lives in the old world.’

  ‘She seems to be doing pretty well in the new one.’

  ‘Men and money are her gods. She wanted a son.’

  I helped her down the stairs. She spoke briefly to her mother in Greek. They kissed and we left the restaurant.

  Responding to her questions, I initially did most of the talking
on the drive to Glebe. I explained how seeing Kelly had led me to Darwin and how, under pressure, Jack Buchanan had helped me to find her. She wanted to know how O’Hara had been and I told her he was unsure whether she’d been involved in some sort of conspiracy from the start.

  ‘Were you unsure?’ she said.

  ‘I had an open mind.’

  ‘Poor Rory. He was all at sea and Bright terrified him. He tried to drink it all away. I can’t talk, I wasn’t much better. We made a great pair and Bright treated us like shit, which we deserved.’

  ‘No you didn’t.’

  ‘We did. Rory lost his grip a while ago and I played along with him. He’d hooked those politicians and he planned to use them any way he could, but he was out of his league. I told him not to go public but all he had to work with was his charm and style by that stage. No money. He was scared.’

  ‘Did you know he approached the people behind the politicians and tried to get money from them?’

  ‘The stupid bugger. I told him not to do that. I didn’t think he would. Shit, that could have set this whole thing off. Did he give you the names?’

  ‘No. Did Bright ask for them?’

  ‘No, he didn’t seem interested. Maybe he knew already. All he wanted was the files, the evidence. He told us nothing.’

  ‘Do you know who ran Rory down?’

  She looked out the window and didn’t answer. ‘Where are we headed, Cliff?’

  ‘Glebe.’

  ‘Good, I like Glebe. Bright told us he did it to scare Rory off. At the time Rory thought it was an accident but he made a big thing of it as a warning to Buchanan and for publicity and all. That’s where you came in.’

  I turned into Glebe Point Road. ‘There’s an all-night chemist along here. D’you need anything?’

  She patted the pockets of her jacket and yawned. ‘I’ve got everything I need. A bath’d be good. Have you got a bath?’

  ‘Yeah, and towels and a spare bed.’

  ‘Heaven. Tomorrow I’ll tell you everything I can.’

  part two

  16

  I was in the kitchen making coffee when Pen came down the stairs. She was wearing a sweater Marisha had left behind with a few other things that I’d stowed away in the spare room.

  ‘Nice sweater,’ she said, ‘and some other good stuff. Are you sure she isn’t coming back for it any day now?’

  ‘She was planning to outfit herself on Rodeo Drive. Coffee?’

  ‘Please, and I’m starved.’

  ‘I can do toast and poached eggs.’

  She nodded and looked around the room. ‘Not much of a woman’s touch.’

  I got the bread and eggs from the fridge. The bread was old but would be okay toasted. ‘We were live-apart,’ I said. ‘Mostly.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘How’s the wrist?’

  ‘Throbbing, but I’ve taken a couple of bombs. Who’re the woman and the kid in the photo in the living room?’

  ‘My daughter and grandson.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  After we ate we took second mugs of coffee out into the bricked courtyard. There was a decent patch of winter sunlight that would last for a while. The garden furniture had seen better days but was still holding together.

  Pen said that O’Hara, after resisting shakily for a short time, finally told Bright that she had what he wanted and that he didn’t know where she’d hidden it. Under the threat of the knife, Pen told Bright where it was—in her car, which was in a lock-up garage in Bondi.

  ‘He injected me with something that made me woozy but still able to function. He drove us back to Darwin and we got a flight to Sydney. I had my return ticket and he had one under another name.’

  I said. ‘What name?’

  ‘I was doped. I’d have to think. We drove to Bondi. He had that bloody knife. My flat’s in Bondi and I rent the garage a block away. I opened it and got the memory stick and a disk; the voice messages are on the disk and the emails and texts and all that are on the memory stick. They’re encrypted but I had a laptop in the car and he made me give him the passwords so he could read the data.’

  She was staring at the weeds forcing themselves through the brickwork. She’d finished her coffee and her hands, holding the still-warm mug, were shaking. She was living it again.

  ‘He started to hit me and . . . handle me. He asked me if I had copies of the stuff. I said I didn’t but he kept hitting me anyway. Then he opened the back door and held me down and almost suffocated me. Then he raped me . . . both ways. And he put the condom . . . in my mouth.’

  I thought she was going to break down again and leaned towards her but she held me back and got control.

  ‘He just left. Along the way he’d broken my wrist but I couldn’t have driven anyway. I managed to get a cab to Casualty at the Prince of Wales. Then I went to Mama’s.’

  She put her mug down and plucked up a weed from between the bricks.

  ‘Now you want to know about the people Rory dealt with.’

  ‘When you’re ready.’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘First off, who did all the digital work?’

  ‘I did. Most of it. Glassop revised it and helped me with tricky bits. Back then I’d have done pretty much anything Rory asked me to do. It was playing dirty but I thought it was justified then.’

  The sun had gone behind the flats next door. The shade is welcome in summer but not in winter. The temperature dropped suddenly and we went inside. Pen asked for paper and she made a list of the politicians O’Hara had some kind of undertakings with. She confirmed O’Hara’s statement that one National, one Liberal and one ALP member were in the pay of powerful business interests and handed me the list:

  Barry Cartwright—ALP

  Simon Featherstone—National

  Timothy Polkinghorn—Liberal

  ‘Alphabetical,’ I said. ‘I was hoping you would list them in the order of most likely.’

  She shrugged. ‘I simply don’t know. One thing I do know is that they dislike each other pretty intensely and none of them knows about the other. Rory was very amused by that.’

  ‘How about the business interests?’

  She took the paper back and added to it. Cartwight represented an inner-city electorate in Melbourne and had ties to developers; Featherstone’s rural electorate was in northern New South Wales and he was hand-in-glove with coal-seam gas companies; Polkinghorn had close ties with an internationally based merchant bank.

  ‘Is this stuff well known?’ I asked after I’d read the notes.

  ‘God, no. Rory paid a hell of a lot of money to find it out. That was one of the big drains on his resources.’

  ‘I can’t see what they’d have to gain by throwing in with O’Hara.’

  ‘Their seats are vulnerable, apparently. Rory was promising massive publicity for them as members of his party and he claimed to be able to use social media the way Barack Obama did and change the political landscape. If it worked they’d have got in to the new order of things on the bottom floor. You have to understand how persuasive he could be before he lost his mojo.’

  I’d seen that at work but I still wasn’t convinced. ‘Do you think he blackmailed them once he had the dirt on them?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but that’s not to say he wouldn’t have. There’d be no point now. There’s not a shred of proof now and all the background research into the connections Rory paid for has gone, too. The providers wouldn’t do it again.’

  The exercise had exhausted her and she went upstairs for a rest. I sat with the notes in front of me. Simple problem: find which of the business interests would be most worried about O’Hara’s intentions. Worried enough to hire someone like Bright to take drastic action. Problem simple, solution difficult.

  I left Pen a note and a key. I went to the gym for an overdue workout and felt the pain that comes from trying to do the exercises you used to do after a period of neglect. Wes Scott, the owner and trainer, watched me and
shook his head.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘Like I said once before, man, Rookwood’s full of busy guys not busy now.’

  I stopped on the way home for food and wine. When I got in I could hear computer keys being tapped in the spare room. I put the supplies away, thought about going up to see what she was doing but decided to leave her to it.

  I rang Neville Kim, told him I’d located Pen and was working towards finding a target.

  ‘A target would be a good thing,’ he said. ‘When you have one, let me know. I might be able to help.’

  Dave Burns rang to tell me that O’Hara had left Darwin. The owners of Happy Springs had complained that the lessee, Mr Marinos, had left the house and pool in a disgraceful state. The tourist office took note. Dave had a contact at the airport, who told him Roger Marinos had flown to Sydney the previous day. I thanked him and asked if he’d decided on the wedding date.

  ‘Working on it. How’s the investigation going?’

  ‘Trying to fix on a target.’

  ‘A target, I like it.’

  Everybody liked it; the job was to find it.

  I heard the printer clicking and after a while Pen came down with a sheaf of papers in her hand.

  ‘This is all I can remember of the background stuff. The three pollies and their corporate mates and their connections. I can’t remember the texts and emails exactly but this is the gist of it. I’m sure there are gaps. It’s been a while since I dealt with it all and . . . a lot’s happened.’

  ‘That’ll be a big help. How’re you feeling?’

  ‘A bit better and I’d like a drink. I drink too much as you’ve probably noticed.’

  ‘Who doesn’t? I’ve bought some wine and there’s some scotch. Nothing much else.’

  ‘Wine,’ she said. ‘Plenty of wine and you can go through this stuff with your experienced and analytical mind and prioritise the investigation.’

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’

  She shook her head. ‘Just feeling sorry for myself when I should’ve been feeling sorry for that poor girl. I’ve had a bad time but she . . . and I’ve scarcely given her a thought. What a shit I’ve been.’