by Peter Corris
Dunlop ripped a sheet from his notepad. 'Here's the names. You can run them through. The client reckons they're okay, but it wouldn't hurt to check. I'll be at the place in Sans Souci.'
The safe house was at the end of a spit of land running into the Georges River. Two cottages had been joined and extensively renovated to provide a complex of apartments where WPU clients could be housed along with their minders, providing security and a measure of privacy. The half-acre block was surrounded by an electrified fence which a closed-circuit television system monitored inside the building. Tall gums and casuarinas planted around the periphery provided an effective screen from the other houses in the vicinity. At the end of a grassy stretch running from the back of the house to the water was a boat dock where a small motor launch was kept moored.
Dunlop left his car in the street and used a key to unlock a door in what looked like an ordinary brushwood fence. The accent was on unobtrusiveness, suburban normality. In fact the fence was heavily reinforced and the key defused a sophisticated alarm system and identified its user to the computer that controlled the security functions. He avoided the sprinkler playing in the small front garden and opened a side door with a similar electronic key. The TV cameras would have relayed his picture inside to be checked against his key code in the computer's data bank. Dunlop distrusted the high-tech apparatus, believing that it made the personnel lazy and was likely to fail. He had been told that it was necessary for 'credibility' and had been unable to think of an appropriate rejoinder.
The woman who met him in the narrow hallway was, like him, in her late thirties. Again, like Dunlop, she was of average height and compactly built. Her dark hair was cut in a spiky style; she had slightly heavy features with brown eyes and a wide, generous mouth. She wore a white shirt and tight black ski pants with medium heels.
'Hello, Luke.'
'Maddy.'
She gave a small, throaty laugh. 'Thoroughbred.'
'I thought you'd get it.'
'I wore the pants. Same ones.' She made a slow full turn, mock-coquettish.
'You look great,' Dunlop said. During their brief affair he had admitted to finding ski pants with a strap running under the foot worn with high heels erotic. Madeline Hardy had been amused.
'You look pretty good yourself. A bit greyer.'
Dunlop touched the hair he wore short and carelessly brushed back. He felt awkward seeing Maddy again after almost three years. He'd thought of her often and wondered how far they could take things. From what he remembered they were very alike, but he didn't know whether that was a plus or not.
'You must have a bit of clout these days,' Maddy said. 'Get your own way with things, do you? I was told I was wanted on this and that was it.'
'It's a big one. I guess they'll let me handle it until I cock it up. I wanted you because I know you're good.'
It didn't come out the way he intended. Maddy frowned and turned away. 'You'd better come and meet them, then.'
Dunlop moved forward quickly and put his hand on her shoulder. 'I wanted to see you again as well.'
'Let's see how it goes. First things first. You look a bit worn. Are you drinking these days?'
Dunlop grinned, remembering that Maddy was an enthusiastic and knowledgeable wine drinker. 'D'you call light beer drinking?'
'I call it palate death and a waste of throat muscles. But come on, I'll give you one. You need to relax. You'll freak them, looking all intense like that.'
Bossy as ever, Dunlop thought. But he quite liked it. He followed her down the passage, past several doors, and into a kitchenette, where she opened a bar fridge and took out a can of Tooheys Blue Label and a half-full bottle of white wine. She handed him the can and poured a small amount of wine into a glass.
'Well, what d'you make of them?' Dunlop said.
'The woman's a little kittenish thing. Tough as a brick underneath, I'd say. What've they got in mind for her?'
'Her hubby wants to live the quiet life.'
Maddy sipped her wine and shook her head. 'I can't see it.'
'What about the girl?'
'Stroppy. More open than her mother. Hormone-driven, if you know what I mean.'
'Sounds more like her dad.'
'She's not a bad kid,' Maddy said. 'Wants us to bring her dog over.'
4
Thomas Kippax placed his pale, hairless hands on his desk and leaned slightly forward, lizard-like. It was a mannerism of his to swallow after he began speaking. 'So,' he said and swallowed, 'what've we got?'
With the magazine proprietor was Edgar Georges, who held the rank of Chief Inspector in the New South Wales police force, and Detective Sergeant Patricia Tillotson. Georges had often been passed over for promotion to higher rank on account of his addiction to gambling and too-close association with notorious Sydney criminals. However, his connections in the force built up over twenty-five years' service, his involvement in a complex network of favours done and obligations incurred, made it impossible for reformers to displace him. Trish Tillotson was a dark, angular woman in her forties. When she was a junior constable a woman she arrested suggested that Tillotson's darkness was due to Aboriginal ancestry. The report on the arrest Constable Tillotson submitted did not mention this, deposing only that the suspect had become 'violent and abusive' and that it was as a result of the action taken to subdue her that she had lost an eye. Trish Tillotson was feared by male and female police officers and criminals alike.
'Not much, Thomas,' Georges said. He was florid and grossly overweight, filling a commodious chair in Kippax's office suite, and with jowls sitting over his shirt collar. 'They've kept this fucking thing as tight as a transsexual's twat. Excuse me, Trish.'
'I bet you talk about it more than you do it, Edgar,' Tillotson said. 'Don't mind me.'
'I keep hearing rumours.' Kippax said, 'that there's a mystery police witness. Everyone knows about the bastards who used to work here and are going to rat on me. I'm working to minimise the damage there. I think I can contain it, more or less. I was hoping you could tell me something about this colleague of yours.'
Tillotson shrugged. The easy way her square shoulders lifted and dropped suggested that she was fit. 'I've got no proof, but I think it could be Keith Krabbe. He's as pissed off at being put out to graze as Edgar here is about being stuck on the level he's on.'
'Jesus, Trish,' Georges growled, 'you're a hard-nosed bitch. On those grounds it could just as well be me.'
Tillotson's thin mouth relaxed into the semblance of a smile. She turned slightly in her chair, but looked not at Georges but past him, out at the lights of the city visible from the fourth-storey window. 'Anything to say, Edgar?'
'Fuck you.'
'There you go again.'
Kippax was fifty years of age, tall with cropped grey hair and pinched features. His chin was receding and his neck long. Business-obsessed from his teens, he was an indoors man with a pale skin and an underdeveloped body. His washed-out blue eyes were weak and he wore heavy horn-rimmed spectacles with thick lenses. 'This isn't helpful,' he said. 'I can't see any particular problems with Krabbe.'
Georges chuckled emphysemically. 'Walter Loomis can. Keith was his boy from way back. There's quite a lot Keith could say about this and that.'
'Not without putting himself in the shit,' Tillotson said.
Georges took out a packet of cigarettes but put it away when he saw Kippax frown. 'Could've done some kind of immunity deal with him. You know how it works. You could be in the same boat yourself one day, Trish, with some of the creative policing you've done.'
'I'll be in any boat except one with you. When's your next medical, Edgar? Reckon you'll make it?'
'My dad weighed twenty-two stone, lived to eighty-five.'
'Your poor mother.'
'This is not amusing,' Kippax said severely. 'If Walter Loomis comes under attack, that could be a problem for me. He handled certain delicate tasks and handled them well. Got well rewarded, too. I didn't ask how he did his del
egating, of course.'
'If it was really heavy stuff, he would've used Keith for sure,' Georges said. 'If it was more in the way of persuasion, he probably used Ian McCausland. That could work out all right, all round.'
'How so?' Kippax asked.
'Ian's got the big C. Matter of weeks to go, they say. Won't see Christmas. If I was Walter, I'd do a deal with his missus and get Keith to load Ian up with every piece of shit I could. That's if it is Keith who's doing the talking.'
Kippax nodded. The jobs Walter Loomis had done for him were persuasive rather than coercive—blackmail of business rivals, charges laid against competitors and later dropped, the planting of false evidence. It would be convenient to blame a dying man, especially if he could be convinced to make certain admissions. He imagined that Walter Loomis would anticipate that angle, too. But he had summoned Georges and Tillotson to probe for another name. One he had heard whispered and which concerned him far more. He spun around in his chair, catching his knee on the edge of the desk—he was a clumsy man—and opened the drinks cabinet and bar fridge behind him. Something of a hypochondriac, Kippax did not normally drink after eight p.m., believing that alcohol in the system at night was damaging, but this was an exception.
'What'll you have?' he said, trying for a friendly, social tone but missing by a wide margin.
Edgar Georges couldn't recall ever being offered a drink by Kippax before. Bastard must want something, he thought. 'Bourbon and coke. Thanks, Thomas.'
'Trish?'
'What're you having, Thomas?'
'I thought a little white wine.'
'I'll have the same, thanks.'
Kippax prepared the drinks deftly enough. He had mastered certain skills necessary for business success, if not the manner to go with them. He opened a cigar box on his desk and slid it across towards Georges. 'It's the smell of cigarettes I can't take, Edgar. A good cigar's a different thing altogether.'
Georges took a swig of his drink, finding it satisfactorily strong, and leaned across to take a cigar. He unwrapped it, nipped the end with the attachment on the desk lighter and got it lit. Trish Tillotson sipped her wine and sneered slightly at the cloud of smoke being puffed from Georges' thick, liver-coloured lips. 'This is very nice, Thomas, but what's it in aid of?'
Kippax hesitated. He dealt in information and disliked releasing it for anything less than its market rate. But sometimes it was necessary. 'I've wondered for some time about another of your former colleagues—David Rodney Scanlon.'
Georges puffed smoke and shook his head. The flesh wobbled and Trish Tillotson looked away in disgust. 'Dave's finished. Resigned, took a pension. He was never what you'd call a big player anyway, not really.'
Tillotson waved smoke from her face. 'I wouldn't say that.'
Kippax lifted one sandy eyebrow. 'Would you care to comment further?'
'No. Not until I hear what you've got.'
'Suspicions, mostly. Scanlon's name has . . . come up, shall we say. There was an incident at his house tonight. He has a security guard, by the way.'
'Not surprised,' Georges said. 'House of his got fire-bombed a while back. People don't realise what the police go through. What happened?'
Kippax drank some wine. 'I don't have the details, but my information is that there was a considerable amount of activity afterwards. Some pictures were taken, and this man,' Kippax opened a drawer and took out some blown-up photographs, 'appeared to be in charge of operations. I wonder if either of you know him.'
He slid several of the prints across the desk and Georges and Tillotson reached forward to take them. Georges turned a photograph in his bloated fingers to allow more of the muted lighting in the room to fall on it. His eyesight was poor but, despite his porcine ugliness, he was too vain to wear glasses. He squinted at the face, paled-out by the night photography. 'Looks familiar,' he grunted. 'But I can't put a name to it.'
'I can,' Tillotson said sharply. 'That's Luke Dunlop, a.k.a. Frank Carter.'
'Carter,' Georges muttered. 'I remember him. D at the Cross. He got kicked out for corruption. Doesn't look much like him to me.'
'He's lost weight, Edgar. Like you should. Used to have a gut that hung over his belt and a moustache that hung over his mouth. He's scrubbed up pretty well, but I know him. The girls around the Cross had a lot of time for him.' Tillotson tossed the photograph back on the table and sipped some more of her drink. Her attitude was challenging.
'All right, Trish,' Kippax said. 'Why the revamp and name change? What do you know about him?'
Tillotson emptied her glass, put it on the desk and gave it a slight nudge towards Kippax. The magazine proprietor filled it and topped up his own glass. Georges' glass was empty but Kippax ignored it. 'Before we get to that, Thomas, I think you should tell Edgar and me what's really going on.'
Kippax shook his head and a few flakes of dandruff dropped onto the shoulders of his dark jacket. 'I can't do that quite yet. But if what I suspect is true, I'm going to have need of your services. And the rewards will be greater than before.'
Tillotson turned slightly to look very deliberately at Georges. 'I don't know, Thomas. With this SCCA inquiry on you're getting just a little bit warm. The inducements would have to be very good.'
Georges was confused. His liver was in an advanced state of degeneration and it took much less liquor these days than formerly to affect him. He hadn't been exactly sober when he entered the meeting, and the strong drink he'd consumed had pushed him close to insobriety. The cigar was a rich, heady drug as well. It seemed to him that Trish was threatening Kippax. That couldn't be true. Best to say nothing. He clamped his jaws around the Havana and returned Tillotson's gaze uncomprehendingly.
'The inducements will be excellent,' Kippax purred. 'As hitherto—payments into your trusts, stock options.'
'I'm worried about the paper trail,' Tillotson said.
Kippax suppressed his anger, made another drink for Georges and added some wine to his own glass, spilling a drop or two as his hand shook slightly. 'Don't be. I have the best people available working on that sort of thing. It's become an art form and the artists are getting better at it every day.'
Tillotson knew when she had pushed as far as she could. 'All right, Thomas. Dunlop, who was Carter, is WPU. If he's minding Dave Scanlon, you can bet Scanlon's an important witness. It doesn't surprise me. Unlike Edgar, I always thought Dave was a player. I take it you had some dealings with him?'
'Not exactly,' Kippax said. 'But thank you, Trish. That's very useful information.'
Georges had consumed half of his second drink and was struggling to stay in touch with the conversation. 'Hard to put any pressure on Dave,' he mumbled. 'Out of the force. Pension and investments. Tough bastard.'
'I might have the answer there,' Kippax said. 'With Trish's help.'
5
Lucy and Mirabelle Scanlon were watching television in a comfortable sitting room towards the rear of the Sans Souci house. The woman appeared to be interested in the program—a Clive James documentary on the fleshpots of Budapest—but her daughter was bored, flipping through a magazine and pointing a remote control at the set, threatening to turn it off. She looked relieved when Dunlop and Maddy entered the room.
'At last,' she said. 'Someone who can tell me what the fuck's going on.'
'Just because it's a man,' Lucy Scanlon said, 'doesn't mean you have to use your father's gutter language. It also doesn't mean he's going to tell us any more than she did.'
'Don't give me your feminist bullshit.' Mirabelle stood up and approached Dunlop. She was tall with gingery hair and a fair complexion, like her father, and lean the way he might once have been. She wore jeans and a Guns 'n Roses T-shirt with high-top sneakers. She made a fist and practically brandished it in Dunlop's face. 'You. What are we doing here?'
Dunlop, childless and with very little experience of young people since he left the police force, was disinclined to accept Mirabelle's behaviour. 'I've just left your father,' he said.
'He told me what a good kid you were. Ms Hardy here's just told me the same. They must be talking about someone else.'
The teenager's aggression level dipped immediately. 'You've been with Dad? How is he? Could you please tell us what's going on?'
'That's better,' Dunlop said. 'Why don't we all sit down? I imagine you can tape that program if you want to, Mrs Scanlon. My name's Dunlop, by the way.'
Mirabelle snatched up the remote control and switched off the set before flopping back into her chair. Lucy Scanlon's movements were almost languid. She was wearing a silk dress with a floral pattern and a short skirt. Her shoes, with very high heels, were lying on the carpet beside her chair. Automatically, she felt for them with her feet and slipped into them as Dunlop addressed her. She patted her elegantly styled auburn hair, and seemed to arrange her porcelain-doll features to reflect intense interest in the person with whom she was communicating. 'It's quite all right, Mr Dunlop. I was just passing the time.'
'Jesus,' Mirabelle said, cranking up again. 'Easy for you. That's all you ever do.'
Lucy Scanlon ignored her daughter completely. 'I imagine we adults have a good deal to discuss.'
'We do,' Dunlop said. 'But Mirabelle's a part of it.'
'Mirabelle is a child. For the next few years at least, thanks to her father's indulgence, she will continue to think and act as a child. Consequently, she has nothing to contribute to this discussion. What would you say was the subject of this meeting, Mr Dunlop?'
Dunlop could not recall the last time he had felt so manipulated. There was something almost mesmerising about the woman's icy calm and certainty that things would fall as she wished. Against his will and better judgement, he said, 'Life and death.'
Mirabelle said, 'Fuck you all,' picked up her magazine and left the room.
Lucy Scanlon sighed and gestured for Maddy and Dunlop to sit down. Dunlop stared at her, unable to reconcile the image of this coiffed, polished creature with the shambling roughness of David Scanlon. He had expected someone strident and tough, perhaps with a veneer of recently acquired sophistication. He had no doubt of the toughness, but he found the rest of her presentation impossible to assess—was it old-money, deportment schooling or play-acting from start to finish? Maddy shot him an amused glance.
