Pino shuffled in, wearing dust-covered loafers, and placed a Regione Milano e Como phone directory on the desk. Milano was the last place Massimo knew for certain that Tommy Paul had visited. Without a word, he flicked to the accommodation and hotel section, guessing that he had hundreds of calls to make. He picked up the handset and began to dial. Pino went directly to the back of the cave, slipped a small effective pocket-knife from his waistband and placed it between his teeth as he pulled a cured salami from a roof rod and a single plate from the top of the other desk.
The annual gathering of the Association of Crime Analysts was held each June in the same conference room in the tired old building that once housed the Melbourne casino. Detectives jokingly referred to the conference as ‘the geeks’ get together’. Twenty or more specialists in their field from across the country collected in one space for a keyboard fest of all the latest computer gadgetry, software programs and whizz-bang analytical paraphernalia. Just the sort of stuff to send hardened detectives running, yet just the sort of stuff that helped solve crimes.
Spud was seated front and centre in one of those fold-down cluster rows of mobile function seating. Before him was a weighty table stacked with pamphlets and the odd giveaway, to encourage commercial relations. The talk of the conference this year was a USB drive in the shape of an oversized bullet. Such comics these analysts could be, all together in one room.
Morning tea could be just as stimulating with all the geeks huddled around the urn dunking tea-bags and roaring into the free banana cake. Spud didn’t mind helping himself to a second slice in among the jocularity and camaraderie of the group. One of the analysts was sitting alone. No one passed him a hedgehog or offered him a top-up of his Darjeeling. Spud had noted that for the past two days everyone seemed to deliberately ignore him; it was as if he had leprosy. Ironically, this was the one man Spud wanted to speak to, when the time was right; it was the Toe Cutters analyst.
‘Any good ideas for you guys at the conference?’ Spud asked in his best attempt at an opening line.
‘Yeah, I don’t mind that software we were told about at the start of today. I could see us using that on asset disclosure,’ the man replied, delighted that he finally had someone to talk to. He proceeded to ramble on endlessly about a list of purchases he wanted to make.
Spud, who had nothing much to offer in that regard, thought he would cut straight to the chase. His analyst colleague seemed up for a chat.
‘Listen, Henri,’ he began, ‘we reckon we’ve got a real stink in our office.’
Henri moved his chair in a little closer.
‘The life of one of our members might be at risk.’
Henri was now all ears and big eyes. ‘Talk to me,’ he said.
‘Confidence?’
‘Confidence,’ came the reply.
‘Donny Benjamin. He stinks,’ said Spud. He had thrown out his best bait.
Henri was a little slow to reply, but he knew that Spud was squeaky clean. He batted back. ‘We’ve suspected that for months.’
‘Well, he’s watching the credit card of someone important to us, and passing on information to the Mafia,’ Spud continued in a hushed tone.
‘And what’s the flow-on potential?’
‘That someone special to us could be killed.’
‘Cole Goodwin,’ Henri stated, sure of the correctness of his statement.
‘He never killed the old codger in New Zealand,’ said Spud.
‘ We thought that,’ Henri replied, ‘but we’re not the Homicide Squad. Who did the old guy?’
‘The Mafia.’
‘And who’s driving it?’
‘Inspector Mack.’
Henri smiled broadly, as if a secret tucked away at the back of his mind had been touched. He pulled his calling card from his shirt pocket and handed it to Spud. He said firmly, but with a wink, ‘You get your people to contact my people.’
Spud took the card, placed it into his own pocket, and with an equal smile said, ‘I’ll get my people to contact your people.’
They both laughed as the conference was called back to order.
Rossanna had Tommy looking utterly ridiculous. He sat on the small stool on the balcony of his room with a bath towel draped around his shoulders and a waterproof gown over the top. His look was completed by the addition of a heavily stained, thick, plastic skullcap that fitted snugly over his head and concealed all of his hair beneath. Rossanna plucked at Tommy’s head with what appeared to him to be an oversized crochet hook. Each time she prised out a tuft, he screamed and she laughed. The bottle of white wine that sat on the old parquetry floor beside the stool was all but empty. Both of them held a glass to toast Tommy’s successful travels. He had just told Rossanna that he planned to leave Bellagio the following morning. She in turn had insisted that he allow her to tidy up his wayward facial growth and he had found himself as he was now, enduring the addition of a few blond tips to his otherwise brown locks. Rossanna worked away, conjuring a sticky paste of bleach in her plastic beaker. She applied it liberally to Tommy’s cap; too late now, he thought, as he sat with the cold mauve mass on his head.
‘Are you going back home, Tomasso?’ she asked as she worked.
‘I can’t.’
‘But why not?’ Rossanna asked just as the incoming ferry master blasted his horn. They both looked across at another near-full load of tourists. Tommy had to think of an answer to Rossanna’s question apart from the obvious, so he focused on Jude, whom he had often mentioned to Rossanna during their morning walks, as he had also mentioned Lola. They had become more than good friends, Tommy and Rossanna. He saw her as a confidante.
‘I’m still uncertain about Jude,’ he offered, ‘I don’t know if it’s time to go home yet.’
‘Are you sure you are uncertain? You speak of such love for her.’
‘Yes there is a strong attraction, I’ll admit, but she may be married by now, Rossanna. She has a fiancé, remember.’
‘But maybe she’s not. You men are so strange,’ Rossanna placed down the bowl of bleach and took another mouthful of wine.
‘If I cared for her so much, why did I get involved with Lola?’ he said.
‘Because something sad was on your mind and she was there. Simple.’
Although Rossanna didn’t know anywhere near all there was to understand about the circumstances that caused Tommy to leave Australia, she was right about Lola, he thought. She appeared at a difficult time for Tommy, and it was easy for him to lose himself in her arms. She was beautiful, very hard to resist.
‘Could you live in Argentina, Tomasso?’ Rossanna enquired further.
He didn’t answer that question straightaway. Instead he drifted off to Buenos Aires and the little he had seen of it, the long motorcycle ride through the jungle regions, the Iguazu Falls and Paraguay.
‘You’re right,’ he said, returning to the present, ‘I couldn’t live there.’
‘But you could live with Jude in your bellissimo appartamento?’
He didn’t answer that question either. He knew the answer, and he knew that he desperately wanted to see Jude again.
20th June
The rattly second-hand royal blue Fiat Uno travelled easily along the Bellagio–Como road, Como bound. It had done that twenty-minute drive hundreds of times over the years, when Rossanna attended university in the town. Today her passenger was Tommy, who, since his hairstyling appointment, now resembled a Miami drug dealer. He was delivering up a last-minute string of Australian colloquialisms to keep Rossanna in fits of laughter as she drove him to the bus stop.
‘It’s true. It means, that’s amazing!’ Tommy said.
Rossanna laughed and repeated the unusual phrase, ‘Stone the crows.’
‘How do they happen, your funny Australian words?’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘Maybe it’s ’cos we were all convicts once?’
‘Really, Cole? I will miss your talk,’ she said as the car turned the ben
d at Torno. Lost in memories, it took a little while for Tommy to realise that Rossanna had called him Cole.
‘What did you say, Rossanna?’ he enquired, puzzled and momentarily unsure of his hearing.
Rossanna realised her mistake and tried to brush it off as insignificant. A now very worried Tommy demanded that she stop the car. She pulled in nervously to the tourist wayside stop that overlooked the beautiful Moltrasio village across the lake.
‘Tomasso, what’s wrong? You are angry?’
‘Tell me!’ he almost yelled. He mentally rechecked the possibilities. He knew that there was nothing in his room, his luggage or even in his wallet that would associate him with the name Cole. What else did Rossanna know? How had she discovered his real name?
Rossanna attempted to explain.
‘Well, last night during dinner service, a Calabrian guy rang and asked a strange question.’ She took a breath and swallowed deeply. ‘He said, is there a Tommy staying there?’
‘And?’ encouraged a very anxious Tommy.
‘Well, I get calls every day for people, but it’s always like, can you put me through to Tommy, or has Tommy arrived yet, never do you have a Tommy staying there? It was odd, and we are suspicious of the motives of southerners. His dialect was Calabrese, the worst of them all. And then he asked do I have a Cole staying there, an Australian?’
‘What did you tell him, Rossanna?’
‘I told him nothing. I said no. Then he tried to sweet-talk me like a Casanova. I asked him why he was so interested in an Australian. He wouldn’t tell me but, Tomasso, I really tried to find out. All I could get from him was that he was ringing all the hotels in Como and Milano.’
He couldn’t really imagine little Rossanna as a spy and her flustered explanation sounded believable; someone else had found him. Tommy sat in the car and looked out across the water to the village. He wondered what a mess Rossanna may have made of her attempt at being a ‘Rossanna Hari’ to a world-savvy Massimo.
Neither of them spoke as they drove on.
The silence hung over the little car for the next forty minutes except on one occasion when Rossanna offered and Tommy accepted a lift straight through to Milano Railway Station. On the way there, in the convenient silence, Tommy formulated a plan: he would head for Greece.
In the awkward few moments that the car idled illegally in front of the railway station, Tommy attempted to make amends with his young friend. He reassured her that no harm had been done, and also that his name wasn’t Cole, and that he had no idea why anyone would be searching for someone called Tommy. The strained and far-fetched explanations sat heavily on both their minds as Tommy collected his Bees-Knees from the back seat and placed a kiss on the cheek of the very troubled Rossanna before uttering his last goodbye. He walked away briskly, heading into the train station and towards the ticket office as Rossanna’s car pulled slowly from the kerb.
Taking up the vacant car space left by the royal blue Fiat Uno was Pino’s 156 black Alfa Romeo, completely covered in dust from its ten-hour overnight drive from Calabria. Massimo was behind the wheel and Pino sat jittering on the passenger seat, his dirty shirt covering his stomach, belt and waistline.
‘Stupida,’ said Massimo tersely.
Pino opened the door and stood on the roadway, leaning in.
‘Buona fortuna, Pino. Good luck. Kill him good.’
‘Nessun problema, capo.’
The Alfa Romeo left the kerb as Pino also disappeared into the railway station crowd.
There’s a first time for everything, Sandra thought. She was ushered sheepishly into the Toe Cutters office, to a strategically arranged meeting with the second-in-command, Superintendent Willy Fountain. They walked together through the main muster room, and surprisingly she saw that it was not dissimilar to every other detectives’ muster room she had been in. Pinboards, dozens of photos, headshots and happy snaps, paraphernalia, cluttered mess, empty coffee cups with fungus growing in the bottom, and even a few girlie calendars with darts embedded in their breasts gracing the walls. Most of the time she focused on the back of the superintendent’s balding head.
Just before they reached the interview room where they planned to spend the next half-hour, she stopped and stood firm in her tracks. She glanced back into the muster room, and more particularly at the photos she had just walked past. All cops, she realised, all serving policemen and women, mostly young, mostly less than her own age. Suddenly she felt very unwell. No high-ranking officers. She thought of Inspector Mack, and wondered whether Cole’s affair would change that.
Sandra took her seat opposite Fountain, and her first impression as the coffees were placed between them was that this was a thoroughly decent man. They made small talk for a while. It was Fountain who took the first serious serve.
‘Henri’s briefed me on the chats he’s had with your analyst, and you have to know, Sandra, we’re on your side.’
Sandra let that ball go through, and then served up her own. ‘There’s little value in fucking around, Boss. I’ll be honest from the start. Until the other day we had no evidence to give you. Now we do. But first you have to know one thing. We did an illegal phone tap on Inspector Mack’s mobile.’
Fountain momentarily lost most of his composure as he replied, ‘Maybe we should be working on you, Detective?’
The mood shifted.
‘Maybe I should just go,’ said Sandra. She edged herself cautiously out of her chair, only to be stopped by Fountain who had moved around from behind his desk towards her. He sensed the need for an olive branch if his unit was going to move any closer to arresting Donny and Inspector Mack, and he reached his strong arm out to gently guide her back into her seat.
‘Okay. Okay, Sandra, let’s start over again, full disclosure. No problems for you or your team. Let’s do this properly.’
An hour later, Fountain escorted Sandra out of the interview room. Both looked exhausted but they walked closely together. Clearly they had formed a trusting relationship of sorts as they passed conspiratorially through the muster room. Half-a-dozen bent heads looked up. Fountain gave a silent ‘thumbs up’ and a smile. Sandra broke from her position alongside the officer, went over to the pinboard and pulled a dart from a calendar. She took deliberate aim and bullseyed the head-shot of Donny pinned to the board. She was gone within the minute. Fountain then returned to the muster room and clapped both hands together loudly to corner the attention of his crew.
‘Grab a coffee, and get ready for a briefing,’ he said.
The TGV train to Venice had long ago left the station of Padova, travelling rapidly due east. A blur of farmhouses, paddocks, crops and the autostrada that paralleled his journey was visible from Tommy’s carriage window, which was mostly shaded by the blind that the two female backpackers had pulled down. Tommy had sat beside one of them. Since the start of their trip nearly three hours earlier, he had been pretending to read his Andrea Camilleri novel, Scent of the Night, when what he was in fact doing was constantly going over the words Rossanna had spoken, as she had nervously described her conversation with the mysterious caller. A southern Italian who could be none other than Massimo, he thought. These thoughts of danger and Italians led him back to the previous year, when he had lived undercover buying cocaine, kilos at any one time …
Having arrived, as usual, at an otherwise normal-looking house, he found his Mafia mates in the back shed offering pure blocks of the stuff for sale. Packaged up into the size and shape of footballs, these large pure white rocks would each fetch up to a million dollars on the nightclub scene. Cole’s mind’s eye almost surreally saw his own figure blend familiarly among the group as he weighed each block on the minute scales and watched the electronic weight indicator register 1000 grams. He’d barter the price down to wholesale rates, drug-dealer mate’s rates, and, once it was over and the deal was done, they’d all sip wine and enjoy some friendly southern Italian hospitality, before agreeing on a time to meet and do it all again. In, out and gone, quick
business for all, profits to be shared, such was his relationship with the Mafia. At least until the arrests came, that is, until the giggle was over, and everyone was locked up, everyone except him.
With the information from Rossanna, Massimo was now searching the Milano area, and Tommy’s plan had to change. His revised plan was simple. After an overnight stop on the outskirts of Venice, he intended to be on the very first ferry of the morning to Corfu. From there he would ferry on to Igoumenitsa, where he would find a local boat to take him to Lefkata Island, off the Greek coastline. There he’d bang on the door of an old and trusted friend, a mate from his early childhood. He’d left Australia years earlier to marry his Greek girlfriend and had taken to driving a Holden Commodore around the island as a taxi. Tommy couldn’t wait for the sanctuary of their home and the sight of a couple of friendly faces.
Intermittently he chatted with the two young backpackers, a pair of 20-something New Zealanders who were in the middle of a gap year from Wellington University to see the world. He told a couple of white lies initially, claiming he had never been to New Zealand, but otherwise they freely swapped travel talk and playful verbal sparring over cricket and rugby. The only thing they agreed on was the music of Crowded House, although there was a short dispute over the origin of the group. When they weren’t chatting they were reading their respective books. At least Tommy was pretending to.
As thoughts of New Zealand took their natural progression to those New Zealanders of his personal acquaintance, he sunk into a valley of gloom recollecting Cary and Lynette. His mind kept imagining with the death of Cary, and his worry escalated, wondering whether Lynette had died. The only information he had been able to glean on her state was from the newspaper stories that he had read a couple of weeks earlier.
On the Run Page 15
