Cross Off

by Peter Corris

  Cross Off

  Peter Corris

  Copyright © 1993, Peter Corris

  For

  James Fraser

  Peter Corris was born in the Wimmera in 1942, educated in Melbourne and Canberra, and worked his way slowly north to New South Wales where he has lived since 1976. In Sydney he has been on the dole, worked as a sports journalist, and was literary editor of the National Times.

  Peter has been a full-time professional writer since 1982. He is married to the writer Jean Bedford and they have three daughters. He divides his time between Marrickville and Coledale on the Illawarra coast. His recreations are reading, writing, movies and sport, including learning to play golf.

  Thanks to Chris Corris, Jean Bedford, Linda Funnell.

  This is fiction. No incident, location or character resembles any actual event, place or person.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  PART II

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  PROLOGUE

  The light blue car shooting out onto McCarr's Creek Road from a track in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park almost collided with a white Holden utility being driven by park ranger Bruce Humphreys. It was a couple of hours after dawn on a misty morning and Humphreys didn't get a good look at the car. He wasn't able to identify the model, let alone see the registration number. A rainstorm had swept the Sydney area the day before; all unmade roads were muddy and Humphreys' impression was that the number plate of the car he saw was covered in dirt. But he was pretty sure the car was light blue and newish. The track was a fire trail. No reason for anyone to go down it except maybe to have sex or dump an unwanted litter of kittens. Humphreys had nothing against sex but a lot against feral cats. He slowed, U-turned and drove down the track.

  He was a hundred metres from the road, driving slowly with the window down, careful of his suspension on the rough, still wet trail, when he saw the place where the car had turned. Saplings were bent and broken on one side of the track and the wheels had thrown up stones and mud. Humphreys turned in the same place but more carefully, not touching the scrub. He got out and looked around for the usual signs — the pillow-case, the cardboard box, sometimes even a pet-pack. He saw where the undergrowth had been pushed aside and grass trampled to make a path into the bush. He followed the path for ten metres and that's where he found the grave.

  PART I

  1

  'Stupid prick turned his ute exactly where the other bloke had turned,' Detective Inspector Colin Brown told Luke Dunlop. 'Danced the fuckin' fandango all over the shop. One of his mates arrived before us and did much the same. Place looked like a building site.'

  Dunlop nodded. An ex-police detective himself, he could imagine the scene—wheel tracks, footprints, cigarette butts and the yellow area-of-the-crime tape put up much too late. The mud wouldn't have helped. But he wasn't inclined to take it too seriously. He could think of few crimes solved via clues left at the site, although, in a way, this one had been.

  'So, we start to dig and there he is, David Rankin. Dead, neck broken, but quite fresh. Not looking too bad as these things go. You've seen some further along.'

  'Yeah. And fresher still.' He was thinking of the man he'd killed in Glebe when he was a rookie detective. Lucky shot, really. And Judy, who he was supposed to be protecting and who'd bled to death about an hour before he got to her, and Kerry Loew whose brains he'd blown out at point-blank range nine months before.

  'Part of the job, Harry . . . Luke. Shit, I still can't get used to calling you that.'

  Dunlop had taken the option of changing his name when he joined the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation's Witness Protection Unit. Harry Carter had become Lucas Dunlop. He was used to it himself now, preferred it. 'Tell me about Ava Belfante,' he said.

  'You must have a disk-full on her.'

  'To tell you the truth, I've gone off computers. They give you too much or too little.' Dunlop tapped the side of his head. 'I like to hear the tone of voice when the names are mentioned. Reading screens is like talking to the monkey, I'd rather talk to the organ-grinder.'

  Brown grinned. 'I wouldn't say no to a grind with Ava. They reckon she was a great root when she was younger.'

  Dunlop did indeed have a file on Ava Belfante, who was a protected Crown witness. Mrs Belfante had told police that the murderers of David Rankin—a high-profile investigative journalist for a national newspaper—were her husband, Vance Belfante, and another man named George Frost. Because of Rankin's status and the media attention amounting to pressure, the case was a big one and the police were desperate to achieve a conviction. The discovery of the body within two days of Rankin's disappearance had been a plus. Ava's evidence coming very soon afterwards was manna from heaven.

  Brown, the chief investigating officer, had been a friend of Dunlop's in his police days, before his expulsion from the force on manufactured charges, recruitment into the WPU and change of name. The two men stayed in touch and their work sometimes brought them together. Now they were lunching in a Darlinghurst coffee shop. Dunlop was paying and Brown humoured him by running through the facts on the Rankin case.

  'Rankin was working on Belfante. He had a lot of shit on him—drugs, blackmail, financing armed robberies. Frost has form. He did eight for murder.'

  'Eight,' Dunlop said.

  Brown shrugged. 'He rolled over, a bit. Anyway, Frost works for Belfante at his strip club in Bayswater Road—bouncer, money-minder, whatever. The night Rankin went missing the club was closed. Water damage. The place is a fucking sieve. They claim they were in the joint cleaning up along with Ava. Ava says she heard them talking about killing Rankin and they went away for the rest of the night. When he got back Belfante knocked her about and told her to keep her mouth shut. A glass got broken and she got cut. When Rankin's body turned up, Ava came to us.'

  'How soon?'

  Brown twirled pasta onto his fork. 'Two days.'

  'Why wait?'

  'Scared. D'you mind if I get a few mouthfuls down?'

  The two men ate in silence for a few minutes. Brown drank the beer he had brought along. Dunlop drank water. A boozer in his cop days, now he stayed off alcohol for months at a time. Had occasional binges. It was the same with sex. He had been married and later had fallen hard for Kerry Loew's wife. Now he mostly abstained, bingeing when an uninvolving opportunity arose.

  Brown belched. 'So, we check it out. Belfante's car answers the description, near enough, and there's blood in the boot along with a spade and gloves. Soil on them matches up. Blood matches Rankin's. We find partially burned clothes at Belfante's place and more of the right kind of soil. Bingo.'

  'Circumstantial without Ava.'

  'But rock-solid with her. She'll go over well.'

  'Are you sure she'll come through?'

  'If she gets the right treatment. I'll tell you this and you can believe me or not. There was no pressure put on her. None. It's absolutely voluntary.'

  'Good. You must be pleased, Col.'

  Brown cleaned his plate with a piece of bread. Dunlop had eaten half of the pasta and picked at the salad. He ate mostly Asian food and found increasingly that he had little taste for anything els
e. 'Pleased? I'm fucking delighted. The heat that was coming down on this one would've fried my brains. Now that you've picked them, do you have a problem?'

  'Just the usual. Keeping her alive.'

  'Belfante and Frost are inside, of course. You know they've got a shit-smart lawyer named Grant Reuben who's as crooked as they are. If anything's going on, Reuben'd be arranging it.'

  Dunlop ordered coffee. Brown refused and opened another beer. 'We're watching Reuben,' Dunlop said. 'Haven't got the manpower to do it properly. He's bugged, though.'

  'I wouldn't mind hearing the tapes.'

  'You'd be bored. There's nothing on them. That's really what I wanted to ask you, Col. Is it really this easy?'

  Brown moved uneasily on the hard chair. He liked to eat in restaurants, not hippy hang-outs. 'What d'you mean?'

  'We were mates, right?'

  Brown nodded.

  'And when I was kicked off the force I didn't take anyone with me. Could have, but didn't.'

  'So? I got you this job, remember? We're square.'

  'Not quite, Col. Getting there. Level with me. How come nothing is happening? There's not a whisper. I'm meeting her tomorrow and I can't get a feel for it.'

  'Belfante and Frost have both threatened to kill her.'

  'And done nothing about it. They're looking at life. They have to get to her.'

  Brown stood up. 'I've got to go. We've done our job. You do yours. Thanks for the meal.'

  Dunlop grinned. 'Your buy next time.'

  'Sure. Listen. Don't worry, but there is one thing about Ava.'

  'What's that?'

  'Don't bring her here for lunch. She's used to a better class of place.'

  2

  The plane banked steeply and Ava spilled her rum and Coke. The liquid slopped from the glass onto her lap, staining her tight white skirt. The skirt, short to begin with, had ridden up showing Ava's long, shapely thighs. Luke Dunlop looked away and sighed, thinking of the dry-cleaning bill. Ava's red-painted claws scratched at his wrist.

  'Whatsa matter, sweetie? You don't like my legs?'

  'They're great legs, Ava,' Dunlop said. 'Pity they don't spend enough time together to get properly acquainted.'

  Ava laughed. She had a nice laugh, even when she was a little drunk, as now. 'That's a good one. D'you think I've got time for another drink?'

  You couldn't offend Ava. Dunlop had tried and failed a dozen different ways. He looked out of the window. They had come down through thick, grey cloud and were now flying low over a brownish-green patchwork cut by muddy, meandering waterways. The sign instructing passengers to fasten seat belts came on, saving Dunlop from having to reply. He was glad of the break. Being with Ava was exhausting and any chance to conserve energy was welcome.

  Ava drained the dregs and chewed on the ice as she handed the glass to a stewardess. She took an unnecessary deep breath before locking her belt. Her impressive breasts rose under the red silk blouse and she sneaked a look sideways to catch Dunlop's reaction. He was concentrating on the scenery, fastening his seat belt automatically.

  'You're not a bad looking bloke,' Ava said. 'Good head of hair on you, no gut. But you're no fun.'

  Dunlop brought his seat upright. 'You've had too much fun. That's why you're in the spot you're in.'

  Ava took her bag from the pouch, extracted her make-up equipment and went to work on her face. 'I'm doing okay. Don't worry about me.'

  'I have to worry. It's my job.'

  'You're good at it, sweetie. I never saw a better worrier.'

  She had a thick mane of reddish hair, dyed blonde previously to conceal the grey that had crept in a few years back, but now with a red rinse in it to change her appearance. Her heavy, bold features were sagging and her large, expressive eyes needed a lot of artwork to retain their lustre. From fourteen to thirty-four she had been a stunner. Now, nearly ten years later, she was still handsome, but booze, cigarettes and late nights were making the clock tick faster. She finished applying the war paint and flashed Dunlop a smile. She had good teeth.

  'How do I look?'

  'Too much like yourself.'

  'I take that as a compliment. You can't make a diamond dull.'

  Dunlop grinned. He liked her. He fought against it but he couldn't help himself. She was vain, promiscuous and ignorant, but she loved life and she had guts. Her husband had sworn to cut her face off back to the bone and another man, who had served time for murder, had sent a similar message. Ava continued to enjoy herself. It was worrying.

  It was cool and damp in Cairns, but it didn't seem to bother Ava. Not for the first time, Dunlop was amazed at her capacity to pick the right clothes. He was shivering in the drill trousers, cotton shirt and light jacket he'd thought appropriate to the tropics in September. Ava wore a lined poplin trench coat over her blouse and skirt and looked entirely comfortable. She had tied a big silk scarf around her neck in the plane, pulled it up over her head for the walk across the tarmac to the terminal, and now had it sitting stylishly around her shoulders. The belt of the raincoat was drawn tightly in and Ava attracted a number of admiring glances from males.

  'I'm a man's woman,' she had told him on their first meeting a fortnight before.

  'Is that right?' Dunlop had said.

  'Right. And I don't mean what you think I mean. I can't stand women—sitting about talking and moaning. I like men who're up and doing.'

  With Ava, conversation naturally fell into double entendre. Dunlop had laughed at this one. They got along fine except that he was no fun. Ava tried non-stop to seduce him on their first few meetings but, after his disastrous affair with Cassie May Loew, Dunlop had kept business and pleasure strictly separate. As a sacked cop with no other skills, he needed the WPU job. Besides which, he enjoyed it—some of the time.

  Ava sat with her legs crossed and smoked while Dunlop waited for the luggage. Being a man's woman, he noted, didn't mean sharing the work. The terminal was very basic, just a big shed with the essential amenities. At three p.m. on a Friday it was busy with flights landing and taking off for parts north and south regularly. Schoolkids, businessmen, surfies, Asian tourists, Aborigines and Islanders, nuns. Dunlop automatically surveyed the crowd, looking for the person-out-of-place, listening for the discordant note. Not that he expected trouble at the airport—a bad place to kill anyone unless you were a terrorist and didn't mind killing a dozen or so and probably dying yourself.

  They had travelled business class so their luggage came off early—Ava's matched set and his large overnight bag and golf clubs. Ava mocked when she saw the clubs.

  'I figured you for tennis. What's your handicap?'

  'Don't ask, Ava. Just don't ask.'

  'They'll have clubs up there. No need for you to haul all that around.'

  'I've got an M1 carbine in here. You want protection, don't you?'

  'Bullshit. You've got a gun in your armpit. How'd you get it onto the plane?'

  'Trade secret.'

  He loaded the trolley and trundled it across to where Ava was engaged in conversation with a fat man in a Hawaiian shirt.

  'Darling, this is Chuck,' Ava said. 'He's from Indiana.'

  'Omaha,' Chuck said.

  Dunlop adjusted the cover on one of his woods. 'Gidday, Chuck. The flight for Omaha's just boarding.'

  'Say, buddy. No need to . . .'

  Ava patted his plump cheek as she stood. 'He's a brute.'

  Ava stood only a few centimetres shorter than Dunlop's 180 and had a long stride, even in heels. She caught up with Dunlop as he pushed the trolley towards the exit and tucked her arm through his.

  'You'll chat up the wrong guy one day,' Dunlop said.

  Ava laughed. 'Whaddya mean, one day? I've done it a hundred times. But I feel safe with you, darling.'

  They stood under cover outside the terminal. The hills were misty and the drifting drizzle had become a steady, light rain. The light was bad and they were facing a car park. Dunlop was edgy and freed his arm from Ava's hold.
r />   'Bad day for golf,' Ava said.

  Dunlop grunted. 'Why don't we just stay in Cairns? Plenty of pubs they tell me. Your kind of town.'

  'No way. I want to go to the resort. I want to see what two hectares of swimming pools and a million bucks' worth of palm trees looks like.'

  Car doors and boots were opened and closed quickly. Tyres hummed on the wet cement. Parking lights were turned on against the gloom. Everything normal.

  'We'll get the resort bus,' Dunlop said. 'I draw the line at a stretch limo.'

  3

  Nervously, Vance Belfante watched the approach of George Frost across the exercise yard in the remand section of Long Bay prison. A big man, at 185 centimetres and eighty-five kilos, he never felt that his several centimetres and kilos advantage over Frost would do him much good if it came to a fight. There was something about George that told you to keep your hands to yourself. Belfante had seen Jeff Fenech in the street in Marrickville once and had the same feeling. If Fenech had told him to step off the pavement into the gutter to let him pass, Vance would have given serious thought to doing it. Not that he'd admit it to anyone.

  Frost had his hands in his jeans pockets and his leather jacket zippered against the cold morning. As remand prisoners, they were entitled to wear their own clothes. Belfante wore a tracksuit and rubbed his hands together to keep them warm. Frost had asked to see him and had kept him waiting. It wasn't the right way for an employee to behave, although George wasn't exactly an employee now. Hard to say what the fuck he was. They'd kept their distance from each other since they went inside. Belfante had his reasons for this. Among them was the suspicion that George had set him up somehow and that it had gone wrong, leaving George in the same frame. Vance was bright enough to guess that Frost had thoughts along the same lines.

  'What's on your mind, George?'

  'I've been thinking about Ava.'

  'That makes two of us. That bitch! I wish I'd never laid eyes on her. I wish . . .'