*
“You got a Mister Tee here, eh? Big Tee?” The cigar moved in rhythm with the words. “We want to see’im.”
“You friends?”
Petersen nodded, so did Bunt. “Sure, that’s right. You got’im?”
Mrs. Poupopoulos nodded. “Oh yes, yes, I’ave’eem. I do not know if’e is in. Shall I go and — ”
“No. Thanks all the same, Missus.” Petersen shouldered in through the door, Bunt close behind. Mrs. Poupopoulos retreated, eyes wide and scared, but actions compliant: she knew her Sydney, knew the Cross and its ways. “Where?” Petersen demanded, swinging round on her, cigar jutting.
“Up the stairs…the attic.” Mrs. Poupopoulos pleaded, “I do not hinder you, you do not make damage, yes?”
Petersen gave a soft laugh: echoed by the colourless Bunt. Bunt hadn’t much to say, ever, but he knew how to cope in action, in a two-to-one beat-up. Petersen said, “No damage, Missus, not unless Big Tee makes it.” He stared her out, then added, “That is, not unless you do anything we don’t like while we’re upstairs…like running out for the cops. After we’re gone, too. You do that, you suffer. But you wouldn’t do that to us, would you, eh?”
“No. I do nothing like that, I swear.”
“Good on yer, then.” Petersen swung away again, clumped for the stairs. Bunt kept close, shadow-like. All the way up, and no Big Tee, no Shard: just an empty room, very disappointing to earnest men. Petersen used filthy language and began ferreting in drawers, cupboard and bed. More blanks, more swearing.
Bunt spoke, unusually: “So what do we do?’
“What d’yer bloody think?” Petersen snapped.
“Only asking.” Bunt sounded pained.
“We bloody wait, what else?” Petersen was fuming: he felt so bloody randy, and he’d had hopes tonight. If it wasn’t a tricky situation, he’d have banged that coal-eyed bloody Greek…
They waited, sweating in the airlessness of the Poupopoulos establishment. Midnight, 1 a.m., still no Big Tee. Silence in the house, muffled sounds from next door, through the thin party wall: thumps, giggles, sighs, moans, bed-creaks. Petersen had no imagination to speak of, but with those sounds you didn’t need much. Such imagination as he had lay below the belt in any case — there, and in the killing game. Waiting, his thoughts went back once again to the Gilder station. He stared narrowly at the butt of his cigar: never killed kids before. Silly little bastards shouldn’t have got in the way. Petersen thought with savage anger. He’d had a job to do on Tuball’s orders and he’d done it — and the kids had come buzzing down the stairs so in the end he’d had to do them in as well if he was to get clear away and leave no yackers behind. As for Tuball…to Tuball, death was death whoever it came to, and if it came to anyone who could harm him physically or financially, then death was good, kids and all.
At 2.30, Petersen knew he had to make a decision in Tuball’s interests. He said, “Bastard’s not bloody coming back, not tonight, maybe not ever.”
“Hopped the twig?”
“Looks like it, don’t it?”
“What about Tuball?”
Petersen said belligerently, “Look, I’m not bloody magic. If Shard don’t come, I can’t get Shard, can I? That’s logic, isn’t it?”
“Logic don’t always make Tuball tick.”
“Ah, shut up.” Petersen spat across the room and lit up a fresh cigar. “One more hour, then we’ll pack it in. We could be wasting time here, if the bastard’s decided to move out.”
*
It was almost a quarter to four when Petersen and Bunt got back to Petersen’s car, sank in, and banged the doors. They had left the Mercedes in a side street and Petersen was just taking the corner when he felt rather than saw a movement in the back and then felt the cool steel pressure of a gun on the back of his neck. His mouth sagged open and he stopped the car.
“Get moving,” a voice told him. “Slow but sure. And be careful. No risks — of any sort. Get me?”
Petersen let his clutch back in and they moved. “Who’re you?”
“As if you didn’t know,” Shard said, and gave a quiet laugh. “If you’d waited a little longer I’d have been in such an advanced stage of cramp I couldn’t have risen behind you. But that’s just your bad luck, isn’t it? Now: names, please.”
“Get stuffed.”
“Funny names!”
“I don’t feel like joking, Shard.”
“Then I’ll stop. Meanwhile, thanks for one thing: you know who I am, and that gives me a clue to who you are — or anyway, what your business is, gentlemen!”
“So?” Petersen glanced sideways at Bunt, was told from behind to keep his eye on the road.
“I think your business concerns the hard drug traffic…with a little murder thrown in. Of course, I don’t expect you to admit that too readily…nor that you had a hand in what happened up near Narromine recently.”
“Narromine?”
“The Gilder place.”
“Never heard of it.”
“No, I thought not, though I see you drive a Mercedes. Who d’you work for?” Silence.
“I have a gun, remember,” Shard said pointedly.
“So you have a gun. But you’re a copper — aren’t you?”
“I’m a copper.”
“So coppers don’t shoot first, right?” Shard laughed. “Right. But they shoot a very close second, all things being equal. All I need is the formal excuse. First hint of trouble…and that can be very widely interpreted, I do assure you! Meanwhile
I’ve come a long way to get results. I mean to get them, gentlemen. I really do. I hope you understand. Now, drive with extreme caution, because my gun’s light to the touch and my finger’s susceptible to the slightest jog. While you’re driving, talk.”
Still silence.
Shard said, after long enough to give an edge to his tone, “Right, so you won’t talk. And a copper doesn’t shoot first. Full of empty threats — aren’t I?”
Petersen briefly turned his head and smiled. “Some!” he said.
“Yet some are less empty than others, friend.”
“Uh?”
Shard pressed a little harder with the automatic. “I’m a copper, as you truly said. I’m arresting you — ”
“In Sydney — a pom?”
“All arrangements made,” Shard said mendaciously, “all approvals given. And I hope that makes you think, you pair of bastards. Hard drug trafficking is dirty, so is child murder. I’m human, and I loathe your guts — yours and your bosses. The bosses more, maybe — but you’re closer. And I’m losing patience. So I’m arresting you, gentlemen both. I’m ordering you to drive this car to police headquarters where you’ll be taken into custody. If you refuse, if you do the tiniest thing I don’t like, I’ll assume you’re breaking out from arrest. And that assumption made, the gentleman behind the wheel dies first. Don’t make the fatal mistake of thinking I don’t mean that.”
There was a slow hissing sound from Petersen, a nervous gulp from Bunt, the weaker of the pair. Shard saw this weaker one catch the driver’s eye, and heard him start to say something low: “Better get to…” and then followed a sound, which could have been a name, a sound that Shard could formulate only as “Tew”. Whatever it was to be, it was cut almost at source, clean, by an oath from Petersen; and Shard decided not to have heard. Questions wouldn’t be answered, not just now; and the private knowledge could be useful someday. He pushed his gun so hard into Petersen’s neck that the man gave a grunt and a snarl. But he did as bid, and never mind Tew: kept on the right track route-wise by Shard, who by this time had a fair working knowledge of Sydney’s layout.
*
Shard caused major consternation: truly, Sydney was way off his patch. He should not, he was told with a high degree of vehemence, go around arresting Australians and threatening them with guns.
“Not even when they come to kill me?”
“I don’t give a damn about that — ”
“No, but
I do. A citizen’s arrest, Superintendent? How about that?”
“Not with a gun. Look, what the hell d’you expect anyone to charge’em with, Mr. Shard? Not that any charge from you is going to be accepted in my — ”
“Please, please.” Shard held up a hand, coolly. “The charge will be, ultimately, murder and trading in hard drugs. Heroin. The murder — ”
“What murder, where?”
“Narromine. The Gilder family.”
“That, eh?” The superintendent gave a whistle. “Look, you got any evidence, Mr. Shard? If — ”
“No, I’m sorry to say I haven’t. But if you dig, you’re going to find some. Those men were sent to get me — duff me up, or more likely do me in — because I’m who I am, because I’m investigating the British end of this. I want to find out who sent them.” Shard paused. “Does ‘Tew’ convey anything? Tew as, perhaps, the first syllable of a place or a name?”
“It does not. Good Christ, there could be bloody thousands…look, if I asked the blokes at Modus Operandi Section for the on-line computerised information on something beginning with Tew, why, I’d get about half a million — ”
“All right, all right, I can guess the odds. But I’m convinced there’s a connexion between those two bums and what happened to the Gilders, Superintendent.” Shard slammed a fist into his palm. “Those two children — think of them, and do something!”
“There’s no evidence to support a charge and you know it — ”
“For God’s sake, man, they can help you with your inquiries! Can’t you at least play along to that extent — rather than just let them go?”
The superintendent paced his office, frowning, troubled, angry with a dilemma. Shard said, “I suggest you ring the British High Commission in Canberra — ”
“For what?”
“To speak to First Secretary Mathias. He won’t be in his office yet, of course, but when you do reach him, I think he’ll convince you. If he doesn’t…”
“Yes?”
“I’ll fly up to Canberra and talk on the closed line to my chief in Whitehall.”
“And then?”
“Then,” Shard said with a snap in his voice, “I believe you’ll find yourself under orders from your own authority. You Aussies may have cut all the last ties politically and constitutionally, but you still listen diplomatically!”
“You threatening me, Mr. Shard?” Shard laughed, a hard sound of anger. He wanted to say, violently, yes, you stupid bastard, I’m threatening you; but he didn’t. In Australia, if a pom threatened an Aussie, he stood in risk of a bum’s rush to the door, or worse. So he said, “By no means, Superintendent, I’m just trying to tell you without breaking too much security that those two hoodlums are the arse end of something between East and West that could break both you and me if we make a balls. That’s understating it. So please…shove those customers in the cooler till Canberra comes through?”
*
First Secretary Mathias spoke to the Sydney superintendent at 0945 hours. At 1020 he was rung back by the Commissioner of Police in person: he confirmed urgency and a high-level involvement. Five minutes after the call the High Commission initiated a further call, this time to Shard direct. A message had come through in cipher and was being dealt with. It would reach Shard at police HQ within three hours. In the interval the police brass, who were holding onto the two strong-arm boys for the time being but had reached no longer-term conclusions, consulted with legal advisers and, unofficially, with a few tame politicians who might be able to pre-indicate parliamentary feeling over a British involvement. While this was going on, there was no questioning of the two men. Petersen and Bunt, who were not known to the New South Wales Police, at any rate not officially, were treated with politeness and were fed a good wholesome breakfast and fags to go with the coffee.
No cells: they were being kept, politely, in an interview room with a constable to chat to and another discreetly loafing outside the door. Nothing nasty at all: lawyers could be so slick. Yet there was just a hint, a sop to Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Shard from London, that if they’d said they were going home, they would, politely, be asked to wait a little while longer.
The deciphered message from London via Canberra reached a highly impatient Shard at 1305 hours. It informed Shard that the body of Tanya Gorukin had been on anonymous despatch from Bodmin to London when it had been ambushed on the A30 a little before Stockbridge. The special guards and the police escort had been gunned down to a man and the corpse had vanished. Shard’s presence was urgently required in London. Shard decided they just might have to wait a while for him. He decided also that in current circumstances some breakage of security was not only permissible, it was also desirable — very.
He showed the cable to the Commissioner of Police. He filled him in on a little more of the background than had passed the prudent lips of First Secretary Mathias. He said, “That’s the basis from which my presence flows.”
“And those men — Petersen and Bunt?”
“They fit. They’re pawns, of course. Minnows. But they’ll have something to talk about.”
“In the hard drug traffic, Shard, it’s not often anyone knows the names of anyone else except their immediate boss and ditto underling. You know that!”
“As you say, I know that. So we take it step by step. A long job, maybe, but…” He shrugged.
“And your orders to return to London, Shard?”
Shard smiled. “They should have called me Nelson,” he said. “Now — will you start the ball rolling, rather heavily, towards Petersen and Bunt?”
*
Shard was present at the questioning. The men were interviewed separately but not simultaneously, so Shard could listen to the lot. Listening and assessing, he said nothing himself: it was not his manor. Petersen and Bunt were cool, you couldn’t help admiring them. Innocence, wide-eyed and indignant, came across wonderfully. They didn’t know who the pom was, why should they? They hadn’t made any call on the pom. Why, the pom had called on them! From the back of the Merc — and that was all they knew. The pom must be crazy, a nut-case. He had to be.
Realising it was probably useless, but hoping all the same, Shard got the police to have a quiet word with Mrs. Poupopoulos. Nobody, she said, had called. She kept on saying so. She knew where danger lay. No progress: neither Petersen nor Bunt had carried a gun. Not even an “offensive weapon”. The Merc was clean, too. Petersen was a strong man physically: Bunt, Shard convinced himself, had probably managed to chuck some kind of a weapon out through the Merc’s window during the drive in. He didn’t seem the sort to operate a tricky mission without metal support in some form.
It was an impasse.
CHAPTER IX
Petersen and Bunt talked about their lawyers. Tuball, they knew, would if necessary arrange legal details and get them off the hook. However angry he might be, it would be in his interest to do that. The time would come when a formal request for representation couldn’t be stalled, and Shard had no wish to wait for that time. Lawyers he considered 75 per cent an impediment to justice. Another thing he would have to consider before too long, and never mind his Nelson’s eye, was Hedge’s clear directive to return home. Shard would have to take note: but was determined, having got this far, not to leave Australia without a positive result.
When the time for lawyers loomed up too close, Shard seemed to cave in. He said, “Let them go. You’re not getting anywhere. Oh, they could be broken, I suppose, given time and no lawyers, but…”
“But what, Mr. Shard?”
“Never mind.” Shard looked the picture of defeat. “Just let them go. With apologies!”
His name was now mud: the Sydney police definitely didn’t like him, having been made to look foolish. He slid out of HQ with his tail between his legs, almost hearing laughter from Petersen and Bunt, hearing in very actual fact the parting comment, loud sotto voce, of the superintendent: “Poms! Never did understand ‘em.”
But Shard
was only just starting in, knowing he would achieve better and faster results, now, by using his own methods. Those methods, very direct ones, involved a return to the Cross that could be risky: often magnets didn’t get away with it twice in a row. He had to be quick, had to act before Petersen and Bunt were fully back in circulation. This would need a touch of luck as well. Making his way back to the Cross. Shard tried to visualise Petersen’s and Bunt’s likely work-out, and made a mental settlement that they would first report to the next highest in the chain, the man who could be presumed to have given them their orders with regard to Shard. It was doubtful to say the least that they would try to get back in favour by attempting another job on Shard in the meantime: the boss could have got word through the grapevine that they’d made a balls and he might have other ideas in mind, such as lying low for a while: that boss couldn’t be sure, now, how much the coppers knew. There could be, therefore, just a little time in hand.
*
The police hadn’t said anything about putting a tail on Petersen and Bunt, but Shard knew that was just what they would do, just to satisfy their curiosity if nothing else, though it wouldn’t be kept up for long. Shard also knew that Petersen and Bunt would be bearing the possibility in mind, so would the boss, and nothing would be handed to the cops on any plates. The same would apply in Shard’s case if he’d bothered to mount a private tail, which was why he didn’t, nor did he go on a Tew hunt. His nominal list of inward passengers on his flight from London showed no Tew but quite a number of associated possibilities: Tewkesbury, Tewson, Tuball, to say nothing of a slight mishearing that could have produced Dew-shall or Dusun. Shard felt in his bones that time was too short to make this thing into a long, slow grind of procedures by the book. There was that so much faster method he had in mind, and late that night, after many hours spent diligently haunting the cafes round the Cross, the method brought results in the form of a vague smell of pot emanating from a semi-recumbent figure with a beard and long matted hair, the hippie from Kabul, slouched in front of coffee.
Call for Simon Shard Page 9