Worse than Death (Anna Southwood Mysteries)

by Jean Bedford

  “I don’t understand,” I moaned, clutching at my hair. “That’s him. In the tracksuit. That’s the bloke who pushed me off the wharf. I’m sure of it. How come he knows Birkett? Why? What did I ever do to him?”

  “Perhaps it was an accident,” Graham said. “Perhaps he really did try to grab you and then he didn’t want any publicity…”

  “Bullshit.” I remembered that shove in the back very clearly. “He meant to kill me. And anyway, it’s just too much of a coincidence that he knows Birkett, and Birkett knows Rex.”

  “Anna, I don’t think he did,” Evan said suddenly. “Mean to kill you, that is. I think he just wanted to give you a fright. Just a ducking. He couldn’t have planned on the ferry hitting you.”

  I subsided, and took a large gulp of champagne. He was right of course. But there were still a few hard questions I wanted to ask Rex Channing.

  “D’you want the rest of my report then?” Evan got out a handsome leather notebook. “Well, mostly it’s just captions to these photos here. Except the visit to the cemetery.” He shuffled through the pictures and brought out one of Rex staring thoughtfully at a gravestone. There were fresh African orchids in a pot on the slab.

  “That’s his mum’s grave,” Evan said. “It’s got her name and ‘Beloved mother of Rex’ on it, but I don’t know who this is…”

  He put another picture on the desk. It showed Rex standing in front of what looked like a row of tiny terrace houses, faced with stone, each with its own little porch and pot-plants on the steps. The one he stood outside also had fresh flowers in a vase — African orchids again.

  “What on earth is it?” I said.

  “They’re family vaults,” Evan said. “Apartments for the dead. I talked to one of the men working there. It’s like any other housing development — they pre-sold the building lots before they built them. Mainly Italian and Yugoslav families bought them. Most of them have just got one or two bodies so far, but they’ve got room for everyone unto the nth generation.”

  “But what’s the connection with Rex?” I asked. I was fascinated by the little mausoleums. I made a private vow to go out and look at them myself, soon.

  “Don’t know,” Evan said. “This chap’s name is Giuseppe Digrigorio. He died at the age of eighty-one.”

  “I know,” Graham said grumpily, looking at me. Then, in an offensive imitation of my voice: “Check it out. It was probably some old codger he hit with the Ferrari.”

  “It’s a Merc,” I said absently, remembering seeing it parked outside his house. I was still trying to work out why Terry Birkett had thought it worthwhile to get a thug to frighten shit out of me.

  “He’s got a Ferrari, too,” Evan said. “It’s in the photos. Number-plate’s REX 000. The Merc’s probably just for the servants to use when they go shopping. Or when Rex is visiting his more respectable pals. D’you want me to go on with this, then?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve found the chap I was looking for.” I wrote Evan a cheque and Graham left with him, talking karate. As soon as they’d gone I poured another glass of champagne and picked up the phone book.

  “Detective-Sergeant Birkett, please,” I said into the phone and gave my name. I sipped at my glass while I waited.

  “Birkett here.” I was almost certain I recognised the voice from the threatening call.

  “Why did your friend push me off the wharf?” I’d drunk more than I thought, I realised, hearing my question come out friendly and interested.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s a dangerous allegation, lady.” I didn’t know if I was imagining the emphasis on ‘dangerous’, but I did know it was the same person who’d threatened me before.

  “Just you and Mr Robinson be careful,” I said and put down the phone. I finished the champagne, giggling a little at the weakness of my threat, with a vague premonition that I wouldn’t find it nearly so funny when I sobered up.

  Chapter 6

  I was right. I woke up the next morning with a hangover and a persistent feeling of unease. I toyed for a moment with the idea of putting Evan back on the payroll, then told myself I was being silly. I had a long hot bath, the glass of Berocca mixed with champagne (Rita’s infallible hangover cure) sizzling beside me, then forced myself to eat a whole bowl of muesli. Several black coffees and Panadols later I felt able to think of going downstairs to the office. Toby had to make do with dry food — nausea rose in me strongly at the thought of opening a tin of heavy-smelling cat fish.

  The office was hot and foetid and I’d forgotten to switch the phone over to the machine. I rinsed out champagne glasses and opened all the windows. Toby stalked to his usual spot, sulking because of his breakfast, settled with his back to me and began an elaborate toilette. I found it hard to think of sitting at my desk and realised that I was truly craving a cigarette for the first time in months. I began a manic search of all the drawers and cupboards and found a half-full packet of Ultra-Mild in the stationary shelves. I lit one up on the hotplate and nearly fainted at the first in-drawn breath. Great, I thought, I’ll simply persevere until it feels better. I was just getting into the swing of it when the phone rang.

  “Yes?” I said, somewhat dizzily.

  “I told you to stay out of it.” It was the same muffled voice as before. “This time it won’t be just a ducking.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Listen, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to stay out of. And anyway,” I went on wildly, “I thought Rex had fixed things…”

  “Rex thinks he knows everything, but he doesn’t.” The phone went dead under my hand. I was shaking by now, and I didn’t think it was still the hangover. I dialled Evan’s number and left a message on his machine to ring me urgently. I lit another cigarette from the butt of the last one and wondered what else I could do, then decided I’d wait until Graham came in. I’d see what he thought.

  I was starting to feel really frightened. I tried to visualise the man at the ferry and on the bridge with Birkett — somehow it seemed less scary if you could put a face to the voice. But what I couldn’t work out was why. I racked my brains for anything I’d done that was a danger to anyone. If it was something to do with Clyde, why had they waited so long to threaten me?

  By eleven o’clock I’d smoked all the cigarettes in the packet and Graham still hadn’t come in. I let myself out of the house and found myself looking furtively along both sides of the street as I walked to the corner shop and bought more cigarettes and a lighter. I was making a real commitment to smoking again.

  On the way back there was a car parked outside my gate that hadn’t been there before, with two men in the front seat. As I went to pass it I was just starting to laugh at myself for my cheap-thriller paranoia when the back door opened and the third man I hadn’t seen, a man with a knitted balaclava covering his face, who must have been crouching on the car floor, leaned out quickly and grabbed my arm. The front passenger door of the car opened, too, blocking my way, and I stood completely unresisting and silent. It was so like every cliché of every kidnap scene that I was immobilised by its apparent unreality. As I was bundled roughly into the back seat, the only coherent thought I could summon was to thank Christ I’d bought cigarettes.

  “No need for a gag, is there, Mrs Southwood?” said the man in the balaclava. The car was already moving and I could only see the backs of the men in front. One of them, the passenger, laughed, and half turned his head. He was a redhead and he had what Trent called one of those moustaches, probably false. He had on dark glasses.

  “Better blindfold her, though,” he said, and passed over a large checked scarf. His voice was pleasant, with a Scottish edge — probably a Glasgow thug, I thought viciously.

  “Why?” I finally said, when the scarf was in place around my eyes. “What’s it all about?” This had to be a dream, I thought — the banalities were tumbling over each other, almost as if it was rehearsed. I had absolutely no idea of struggling. or trying to get out — it all had the inevitabili
ty of a much-watched movie sequence.

  “Shut up,” said my companion in the back seat, and poked me with what I assumed was a gun.

  I shut up and sat back in the seat. I wondered if they’d let me smoke and groped towards my bag. The pressure of the presumed gun increased and I made miming movements with my hand to my mouth. I heard the click of a lighter and a cigarette was put in my mouth — not one of mine, a real one that made me cough, but I smoked on, bravely.

  Many cigarettes and what must have been hours later, the car slowed down over a badly rutted track. No one had spoken during the entire trip. A shack in the bush, I thought. Of course. I had no idea what direction we’d taken out of the city — I’d tried to listen for the Harbour Bridge traffic, but going north you don’t have to stop for the toll. I wasn’t sure if I’d heard southbound drivers throwing their coins in or not. You can imagine a lot when you’re blindfolded and in a state of shock. Any script I’d written would make it the mountains — it was the obvious location shot.

  But when we pulled up and they untied the scarf, I wasn’t any wiser. It could have been somewhere in the hills near Black-heath, but equally it could have been Kangaroo Valley or out past Foxground going south. It was very beautiful, wherever it was — lush rainforest and the hint of mist lifting from the trees. The ‘shack’ was more of an elegant weekender — architect-designed, built of stained pine with large gracious decks around three sides.

  My minder took off his balaclava, revealing a suntanned, rather good-looking blond man, and, sure enough, the Scotsman ripped away his moustache. The driver got out, and all three shepherded me towards the house. I recognised none of the men, and the fact that they didn’t seem to mind if I was in a position to identify them later gave me a very nasty feeling.

  They took me into a well-equipped kitchen and indicated I should sit at the scrubbed pine table. The shock was wearing off and I was starting to panic.

  “Coffee?” the Scotsman said, as if I’d just dropped in for a visit. I nodded. The balaclava man delved into my bag and put my fags and the lighter on the table in front of me. The driver left the room and I heard him lift a receiver and dial a long number. We were definitely out of the metropolitan district. A lot of help that was. New South Wales is a big state, and there’s a lot of remote bush within a few hours’ drive of Sydney.

  “Please,” I said, when I had my coffee, wrapping my hands around its warmth to try and stop their shaking. “Please tell me what this is supposed to be about. I honestly don’t know what I’ve done. Tell me and I’ll stop. We can all forget it. Just an honest mistake, guys…” I was nearly in tears.

  The driver had come back into the room. He was a thin, wiry man with a rat-like, pointed face. “We’re just the hired help,” he said, in a not particularly unfriendly voice.

  “We get told ‘Take the bird’, so we take the bird.”

  I wondered what happened if they ever got told ‘Kill the bird’…

  “He coming?” Balaclava asked, jerking his head towards the room with the phone.

  The driver nodded. “Yeah. You and Sandy stay till he gets here. I’m off.” He drained his coffee and went out, jangling his car keys. There was the sound of the engine starting up, then its gradual fading as it went back along the track. Sandy leant at the sink, staring out at the bush. Balaclava simply sat, his eyes half closed, waiting. They were very good at being strong and silent.

  My mind churned and I chain-smoked until I felt sick. Graham would be in a panic, surely. Perhaps Evan had called back — I cursed myself for not leaving him a more detailed message. ‘Last seen buying cigarettes…’ I could see the headlines.

  I took a few deep breaths and tried to still my rising hysteria. List your options, I said to myself. Examine the facts, I added, when the first bit of advice seemed to lead nowhere very good. ‘Sandy’ might be short for Alexander. It might also be a generic term for a Scot or a redhead. It might be entirely made up to disguise who he was. I knew what they all looked like. I’d recognise their voices again. I knew which room the phone was in. It didn’t add up to much. My real hope seemed to lie in the cavalry arriving at the eleventh hour.

  I asked to go to the bathroom and Sandy came up with me.

  “Leave the door partly open,” he said. He lounged against the wall outside.

  I could see other rooms leading off the passage, and as we went downstairs again I said, “Nice house.”

  “Yeah,” he said. Great conversationalist.

  We sat at the table again and Balaclava took up Sandy’s position at the window, leaning against the sink and half-closing his eyes. After what seemed like hours of just sitting and smoking, Sandy looked up suddenly and then I heard it, too. The sound of a car coming towards the house.

  *

  I wasn’t surprised in the slightest when the man from the ferry — the so-called Jack Robinson — walked in with Birkett. The policeman looked a lot tougher and harder in the flesh than in his photographs. They were both big, beefy men.

  “Everything okay?” Birkett asked Sandy.

  “Yeah. No problems. No one saw us. She says she doesn’t know what it’s all about.” He gestured towards me and I felt grateful surprise that he’d bothered. I wondered if I was imagining the hostility from Sandy and Balaclava towards Birkett. They’d both seemed to stiffen when he came in.

  Birkett’s cold eyes flickered over me as if I was irrelevant. ‘Robinson’s’ stare was harder to interpret, but I didn’t like it.

  “Okay. Thanks, boys. Wait outside.” They left and Birkett sat at the table facing me. “Right,” he said. “No more games.” He gave me a cop’s interrogatory glare. “Make coffee, Jack,” he said over his shoulder, as if to a servant. He leaned his elbows on the table, fiddling with his key ring.

  “Look, Mr Birkett…” I began.

  “Detective-Sergeant to you,” he said. He liked this game, you could see it in the habitual folds of his sour grin.

  I was shaking again. I sat on my hands, letting my cigarette burn in the ashtray.

  “Detective-Sergeant,” I said, with no sarcasm. “I wish you’d tell me what it is you think I’ve done. For God’s sake — I really haven’t got a clue. It can’t be Leonie Channing — you were after me before that…”

  “You’ve got the wrong friends,” he said. “You shouldn’t get involved in their little schemes. This is big league, lady. You’re way out of your depth.”

  The script was getting worse and worse, I thought, and stifled a nervous urge to giggle. I withdrew a hand and took a puff of the cigarette. He regarded me steadily; he was a man experienced in lies and truth, and I thought he was beginning to look puzzled.

  “Who?” I said when I thought my voice would be steady enough. “Which friends?”

  Jack put coffee on the table. “Let’s cut the shit,” he said to Birkett. “Rough her up a bit — she’ll soon stop playing games.” I recognised the look in his eyes then — he wanted to hurt me. He was looking forward to it.

  “No,” Birkett said, spooning sugar into his cup. “She just might be straight. It doesn’t matter, anyway.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “She still serves the purpose as far as that smart-arse little journo’s concerned.”

  “Lorna?” My voice came out squeaky. “What’s she got to do with it? What are you going to do to her?”

  “She’s a nosy little bitch,” he said, then stopped himself. “No. If you really don’t know what’s going down we might make a different deal of this. You’re better off not knowing, believe it.” He put out a huge hand towards Jack’s disappointed movement. “No. Don’t want to risk murder if we don’t have to.” His voice was offhand and I realised he’d just changed his mind about killing me as casually as if he’d altered his lunch order at a restaurant. I stared at him with horror.

  “We’ll just keep you here for a while,” he said, thinking aloud. “A few days. Enough to scare the shit out of your friends.”

  “But she can identify us all,” Jack said a
ngrily. His face was red, thwarted, like a kid denied this promised treat.

  “She’d never make it stick,” Birkett said. “The alibis are already in place. It’s only her word, and we’ll have witnesses to the contrary. Too bloody many, in fact. Why’d you have to get those two in on it?” He gestured out the window to where the two men leant on the veranda railing looking pissed off. “I thought you said you could manage it yourself.”

  Robinson looked uncomfortable. “Shit, they’re okay. As long as they get paid.”

  “They’d better be.” He got up and called to the others through the kitchen window. They came in, not looking in my direction. They must still have thought I was going to be disposed of.

  “Change of plans, boys,” Birkett said. “Just mind her for a few days.”

  They shrugged and nodded. They didn’t care either way. But Sandy had spoken up for me, I thought, grasping at straws.

  “I’ll ring,” Birkett said. “We’ll come back for you. Come on.” He took Jack’s arm firmly and they walked out, Jack shooting one last, appraising glare at me. I shuddered at what he was still promising if he had the chance.

  “Shit,” I said when they had gone, and burst into tears of relief. Sandy and Balaclava were starting to seem like old friends compared to those two.

  “Hey, wait on!” Sandy had gone to the door and shouted after them. “What about the money? We get paid the usual way?”

  “No.” Birkett’s voice came back sharp and startled. “I’m dealing with it myself. It’s all arranged — don’t worry.”

  Sandy and Balaclava exchanged a look of surprise and something like disgust, but they wouldn’t say anything in front of me. Sandy went to the cupboards and opened them, then looked in the fridge.

  “Well, it’s well-stocked,” he said cheerfully. “We won’t starve. Even fags in the cupboard there. Cards, too. Play patience?”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s books in the other room,” he said. “You can have a couple if you like, then we might lock you in your room for a while.”