Pascoe missed his closest friends, and he knew that they would miss him too. It was strange, but Pascoe felt lucky. If he died a free man in the coming days then that was a personal victory. But if he was recaptured and was healthy enough to be returned to his old cell, among his friends, then that was alright too. It was only the middle-ground that was unacceptable to him. Most of all, Pascoe didn’t want to die in hospital, surrounded by strangers.
He didn’t have much time left, but thinking about that time helped slow it down and fill it out. He thought now about what might happen next. The businessman, Tremain, hadn’t been strong enough to make the payment himself, meaning that Pascoe would have to do it. This exposed him to a degree of scrutiny that wasn’t good, but he didn’t have a choice.
Pascoe tucked the flare-gun pistol under the driver’s seat. His purposeful walk toward Tremain’s office was undermined by the squeaking of his boots, something that made him smile. He entered the gate that fronted the office block, passing between overgrown beds of orange-flowered nasturtium and purple morning glory that he hadn’t noticed on his earlier visit. The lobby still smelt of stale cigarette smoke. All of the other offices were closed, the thin veneer doors labelled with the names of various trading companies and mining concerns. Tremain’s office door was ajar, and Pascoe didn’t bother knocking. He pulled the door back and walked inside. Tremain sat behind his desk, an old Gladstone bag placed between the trays laden with invoices and faxes. Tremain watched Pascoe from behind a veil of smoke. He cleared his throat and nodded to the bag, whose weight Pascoe realised was going to be a problem.
Pascoe stepped into the room and heard the door click behind him. He turned to find a tall middle-aged man with ropy arms and a sallow face. His hair was cut short into natural grey-blond spikes. His jeans and collared shirt looked too large for him, as though, like Pascoe, he’d recently lost weight. He wasn’t armed, but the look in his eyes and the set of his feet and shoulders was familiar, poised for action. Pascoe knew who he was, and put up his hands in mock surrender.
53.
Devon Smith lit his cigarette. His right hand was cuffed to the kitchen table so that he had to extract the smoke and place it in his mouth and repeat the action with his lighter. There wasn’t much else to do except sit there and smoke. He was tired after the night without sleeping, but every time his head began to loll he was overcome with dizziness and then he gasped awake and grabbed for the table.
Ted, the Australian biker, was hidden in the next room. He was supposed to be keeping guard in case the skinheads returned to the North Fremantle bungalow, but Devon could hear the snicker of his breath as he dozed. Devon was placed out in the open, and anybody who climbed over the back fence would see him in their horizontal line of sight, innocently seated at the kitchen table. The same through the kitchen windows, if someone came down the side of the house.
Devon didn’t really understand the purpose of his being there, although he wasn’t about to question it. He was sick of being clouted on the back of his head. The bikers weren’t going to let him go, and the alternative to his current position wasn’t going to be pretty. He wondered how the bikers got rid of their enemies. He had seen the Swan River on his bus-ride into the city, but he didn’t know how deep it was.
Devon had never looked at a map of Australia and so didn’t know whether there were forests or deserts nearby, suitable for dumping someone in a shallow grave, like they did at home. From the temperature in the low-ceilinged kitchen he assumed desert, because the climate here reminded him so much of summer in San Diego, with the desert ringing the city on every side. It certainly wasn’t the same heat as he’d experienced in Florida, or over there in Kenya, where the hot air was so full of water it felt like you were breathing steam, just like it did when he washed dishes in the Vinson scullery. The thought of the galley gave him a little stab of regret. His shitty life there didn’t seem so bad now, with the exception of the sassing he copped from his two workmates. That was one positive, at least, when the inevitable news broke of his theft from the armoury. At least Lenny and Marcus would be forced to respect him now. No more could they accuse him of being dickless and stupid. He had pulled off the theft right under their noses. Who looked stupid now?
The phone began to ring. Next door, he heard Ted come awake as the weight shifted in his creaking chair. The phone rang and rang. As it rang it seemed to get louder. Devon waited for the line to cut out or for the caller to give up, but instead it kept ringing. One minute, two, three. Ted now stood in the bedroom doorway. He looked angry and, like Devon, probably wanted to answer the phone, if only so that the ringing would stop. Ted walked down the hall and looked through the peephole into the front yard. He skirted the lounge and kitchen and peered into the backyard.
Devon didn’t know what Ted was supposed to do if the skinheads returned with the M16s. Ted had a Glock and a sawed-off shotgun. For them to be effective he had to be near his target – the reason Devon was there to lure them inside. Not the same with the M16. It could be fired from some distance and even then its bullets would shred the weatherboard siding. Until the caller hung up, Ted had no way of communicating with his fellow bikers, who’d moved to a safe house to make further plans.
The phone kept ringing. Five minutes, six, seven. Ted was starting to swear. Devon lit another cigarette and kept his head down. Even he could feel it. There was something wrong. The ringing phone was clearly a cover for something. Its volume.
Ted got the idea the same time as Devon. Don’t answer the phone, but instead turn it down. Ted moved across to the phone the same time the tall skinhead, Barry Brown’s nephew, appeared behind him in the bedroom doorway, Glock raised. Three pieces of floorboard were missing where he’d come up through a cellar or crawlspace. Ted had his back turned and Devon went to cry out but didn’t make a sound. The bullet caught Ted in the spine and he toppled onto the sink, slid onto the floor. He was alive, but paralysed. The skinhead, Antony, coolly crossed the room and fired a bullet into Ted’s face.
54.
Swann recognised the older man as Tony Pascoe. He’d aged plenty since Swann last saw him, painting a yard wall in 4 Division. It was just a moment, Swann on the way to interrogate an old crim in connection to a murder, but Swann had often pondered upon it. Pascoe was something of a legend when Swann was a kid, as both a notorious stick-up man and safe-breaker. Pascoe had the nerve to handle a timed confrontation but also the brains to execute an overnight payroll heist. But there was Pascoe, a few years into his latest stretch, working quietly alongside another man painting whitewash onto the yard wall. The next time Swann visited the division, the wall had already been painted over.
Swann glanced over the old man’s scarred knuckles, looking for the bulge of a concealed weapon in his jacket, but it didn’t look like he was carrying. Swann too was unarmed, and because of his neck injury was reluctant to get into it, even with an old stager. Swann knew from the newspapers that Pascoe had a terminal illness, and that he was on the run. Whatever he wanted from Tremain, he would be desperate to see it through.
‘I know who you are,’ said Pascoe. ‘Frank Swann. My apologies for trading on your name. Though it was him who brought it up, not me.’
Tony Pascoe surprised Swann by putting out his hand.
Swann ignored it. He turned to Tremain. ‘That true?’
Tremain wrung his hands, shrugged. ‘I dunno. Can’t remember. Does it matter?’
Swann stared evenly at Pascoe, but spoke to Tremain. ‘I don’t know what’s going on between you two, and I don’t care. But it ends here. I’m going to take Mr Pascoe outside, have a word. But you’ve got to do one thing for me, Tremain, in return. You’ve got to call Detective Sergeant Gooch and tell him I’ve got nothing to do with any of this. He’s all over me, and I can do without it.’
Swann saw the flare of anger in Pascoe’s eyes. Swann had just named him in front of a citizen. It didn’t take long for Tremain to understand.
‘You’re that
bank robber, in the papers.’
Pascoe grimaced, little mutter of disgust.
‘You hear me, Tremain? You call Gooch. Soon as we leave. I hear that you’re using my name again, you’re going to cop it. Tell him whatever you want, but make sure you leave me clear.’
Swann heard the courtyard door open. He turned, and there was Gooch, aiming a Browning pistol at Swann’s belly. Not his service weapon, but a throwdown.
Swann looked to Tremain, who looked at his feet. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t have a choice.’
Gooch smiled cruelly, looking at Frank Swann and Tony Pascoe. ‘Oh, this is just too good.’
Gooch kicked the courtyard door closed behind him. He pointed the gun at Pascoe, who was standing next to the front door. ‘Get over there beside Tremain.’
Swann saw how it was going to go. The room was sealed against the sound of a gunshot. ‘I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, Swann. This is for Don Casey. For Ben Hogan.’
It didn’t matter to Gooch that there were witnesses. Tremain would do what he was told. Pascoe lived by the code.
Gooch moved two steps to his left, which put Swann in the corner. Three metres to cover the speed of a bullet. Gooch raised the Browning, grinning, teeth like a kicked-in fence, cold light in his eyes, just as Pascoe got beside him, stabbed three fingers into the armpit of his gun-hand. Gooch grunted as the nerves in his arm died, tried to switch the gun to his other hand. Swann covered the space, but he wasn’t needed. Pascoe grabbed Gooch from behind, a bar chokehold, left hand gripping his forearm as the terrible weight drew against Gooch’s windpipe, his carotids. Gooch fired, the bullet passing through Swann’s shirt, the arm flailing as bullets sprayed into the wall, the ceiling, the noise deafening until five second passed and Gooch’s lights went out. Pascoe held the chokehold a few seconds more, dropped Gooch where he stood. Gooch’s head cracked on the floor. The three men stood around him, looking down.
Swann picked up the dropped Browning and aimed it at Pascoe while they waited for Gooch to come around. But he didn’t come around. A stirring behind his eyelids, then a terrible gurgling, and then nothing. Pascoe knelt down, felt at Gooch’s neck.
‘He’s dead.’
Swann dropped to his knees, took Gooch’s pulse. Tilted back his head, made sure the airway was clear.
‘It’s too late. Seen this before. I didn’t mean to crush his windpipe, break his hyoid. Oh, Christ.’
But Pascoe wasn’t talking about regret. Swann looked up and watched the blood rush from the old man’s face. Pascoe reached for his own neck, put a hand on the desk, then fell to his knees. Managed to whisper, ‘White painter’s van out front. Passenger seat. Oxygen bottle.’
Swann angled his head at Tremain, who hadn’t moved throughout. His eyes were big and his mouth was open. ‘Get moving,’ Swann hissed. ‘Oxygen bottle, and hurry.’
Tremain hustled out of the room. Swann knelt down. ‘If you go under, mouth to mouth work?’
Pascoe was beyond talking. Shook his head, panic in his eyes. Everything put into drawing breath, his chest heaving, little gurgles of air going in but nothing coming out. Swann heard Tremain in the hallway outside, the hiss of oxygen as he opened the cylinder into the mask. Swann took the bottle off Tremain and put the mask over Pascoe’s face, held it firm with his hand, began to pump the rubber valve-primer that forced gas into Pascoe’s lungs.
55.
The murder of the biker had shocked Devon in a way he hadn’t expected. He had grown up around men who considered themselves killers, and who talked endlessly about violence, but he had never seen a life taken.
And this was what it’d felt like.
Despite the muzzle-blast in the darkened room, and the bullet that’d torn into Ted’s skull – a transference of fire from the shooter into the shot – what it felt like to Devon was that the skinhead had reached down and snatched something from Ted, who never moved again. The skinhead looked equally shocked at what he’d done. They both stared at the dead biker for nearly a minute, both of them deafened and silent, in reverence for the strangeness of what’d just happened.
And then Devon began to speak. A stream of shit and drivel that came from some deep reservoir of instinct and dread. He spoke, and he laughed, and played the role of the rescued man rather than the man expecting to be executed. The animated light in the skinhead’s eyes died away as the adrenalin left him and he was confronted with the babbling fool still handcuffed to the table.
‘You’re Ant,’ said Devon. ‘Barry Brown’s nephew. Remember me?’
Ant pointed the gun at Devon, nothing in his eyes, then turned away.
Devon didn’t know what the plan was, but the other man didn’t appear to be in any hurry. He took the biker’s Glock from his dead hand and placed it at the waistband of his jeans. He went into the bedroom and put the floorboard pieces back into position, then returned with the shotgun and boxes of shells. He put them beside the front door and returned for Devon, lifting the kitchen table so that the handcuffs slid down the heavy table-leg, freeing him.
Devon didn’t shut up the whole time. He could hear his words but he wasn’t really listening, saying how he was glad things had gone the way they had. That he would rather the weapons were in the hands of fellow race patriots than the bikers. That he was going to help them. That he was AWOL and planning to stay in Australia, to help with whatever was needed. On and on he went until the skinhead angled his head toward the front door, indicating for Devon to follow.
The skinhead Antony drove the white transit van that Devon had last seen parked in the alley outside the racetrack. Ant was silent until he lit his first cigarette. Reaching for the dash-lighter, Devon saw that the man’s hand was shaking.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ Devon lied. ‘First one is always the hardest. Was the same for me.’
‘Shut the fuck up now,’ the man answered.
Devon still wore the cuffs. He didn’t know why Ant had done what he’d done, murdering the biker, except that Devon was grateful, even if he was still a captive, still in danger. The skinhead gave off an acrid odour of stale sweat and possibly fear. How long had he waited under the floorboards? Or had he crept under the house after the others had left, when Devon was left alone with Ted?
‘That was a sweet move you just pulled, Ant. Where we headed?’
The skinhead tugged hard on his cigarette.
Devon had to try, and keep trying. He was just about to speak when the skinhead glanced at the dashboard clock, leaned over and turned on the radio. It was ten o’clock.
‘Shut the fuck up now,’ he said. ‘I’m not gonna tell you again.’
The radio announcer’s plummy voice sounded comical to Devon, but what he said wasn’t funny.
‘The US Navy has confirmed the theft of six semi-automatic M16 weapons from the USS Carl Vinson, thought responsible for yesterday’s drive-by shooting at the clubhouse of The Nongs outlaw bikie gang in Bayswater. Following the premier’s comments that the perpetrators would face the full brunt of the law, this morning the headquarters of the APM, a white nationalist organisation, were raided by Federal Police and several squads of the Tactical Response Group. So far the weapons have not been retrieved. The APM has been previously linked to arson attacks against Asian businesses, as well as several serious assaults. It is not known why the attack was made against the outlaw motorcycle club. The leader of the APM, Mr Nigel Kinslow, who ran unsuccessfully as a candidate in the recent state elections, said this morning that the allegations are based on malicious information designed to further damage the reputation of what is a legitimate political force. Working together with local investigators in an effort to recover the stolen weapons, USS Navy Master-at-Arms Steven Webb has released the name of the serviceman believed responsible for the thefts. He is identified as Midshipman Devon Smith of the USS Carl Vinson, who has been AWOL since yesterday. Members of the public with any information regarding Midshipman Smith are asked to contact the police. He is described as Ca
ucasian, five foot nine inches with green eyes and distinctive “Nazi-style” tattoos on his upper arms. The theft and supply of the weapons comes on the tail of the inquiry into the murder of two Perth women, with an AWOL American sailor, Midshipman Charles Bernier, the only person of interest in the ongoing investigation. In other news, Prime Minister Bob Hawke has said that –’
The skinhead killed the radio, punched the dash-lighter. ‘Hope you caught all that, Yank. First time I’ve heard you shut your fuckin mouth.’
Devon didn’t reply. They’d already crossed the river. It was too late for him to glance behind, to where the Vinson lay moored. Whatever happened next, he had a feeling that he’d never see that damn ship again. The skinhead lit his cigarette and took a long hit.
‘Can I get some of that?’ Devon asked. The skinhead grunted, passed it over to Devon’s cuffed hands, punched the dash-lighter again.
Devon sucked greedily on the smoke, tried to make conversation. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I get it. I get all of it. Especially now that it’s come out. If you –’
All it took was one glance from the Australian, his arms stiff on the wheel, to shut Devon up again.
56.
Tony Pascoe’s breathing stabilised and the colour returned to his face. Emergency over, Swann told Tremain to bring him the phone. The businessman looked stunned, shook his head.
‘I’m not going to ask you again.’
Tremain reached under the desk and Swann’s gun-arm made ready. Tremain stood holding the phone, whose cord had been ripped from the wall, presumably by Gooch as he lay in wait outside.
‘Where’s the nearest phone?’
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