Gun Control

by Peter Corris

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Pistol shot with him. He was bloody good. Then he was . . . useful in certain ways.’

  ‘I suspect Fowler or someone close to him had the man’s son killed to keep the father in line. Greenhall Junior had seen some evidence of his father’s connection to your lot and had been indiscreet about it.’

  Soames nodded. ‘That’d be Rooster’s style.’

  Paul clearly thought this was straying from the point and he brought us back. ‘I get the feeling you know where Fowler is, Hardy,’ he muttered. ‘You haven’t said so but it would’ve come up if you didn’t know.’

  On the ball again, I thought. ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea.’

  Soames said, ‘And, before I popped up, supposing you found Chas and had some useful dope on him, how do you plan to induce him to finger Fowler?’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to appear paranoid but has this place been checked for recording devices?’

  Paul gave one of his rare laughs. ‘I’ve been here for a while, right, Uncle Arthur? And I’ve done a state-of-the-art check. If anyone had any kind of line open it’d be defeated by the whistling from my little box of tricks.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, looking at Soames. ‘Well, now that I know what you have tucked away, that’d certainly be useful. But I wasn’t planning on anything so subtle. I just thought I’d get Paul and the Bravados to scare the living shit out of him.’

  part three

  24

  I explained that I couldn’t hurry the information on Henderson. ‘I told my guy to be careful and that takes time.’

  The lawyer nodded approvingly; the other two were less happy. I decided to turn the screws a little and asked Paul how his authority in the Bravados stood.

  He gave me a sour look. ‘Okay for now, but I need a result.’ I turned to Soames. ‘How’re you feeling, Luke? I see you’ve still got your hair.’

  He reached for the sherry bottle. ‘They told me you were a smartarse bastard and they were right.’ He poured a glass, took a sip and smiled. His face was transformed and I could see the chameleon-like quality in him that must’ve helped in his undercover days. ‘But then again, that’s exactly what this situation might need.’

  ‘Where’s Fowler?’ Paul snapped.

  I shook my head. ‘All in good time.’

  The meeting broke up with each of us establishing contact numbers. I didn’t ask where Soames was staying. I was sure he’d be keeping his distance from everyone else and monitoring events rather than taking an active part. When his hour came I was prepared to believe he’d give it all he had and, if it never came, as he’d done before, he’d be gone without a trace.

  I’d caught a bus into the city and was heading for the stop when my mobile rang. I didn’t recognise the number.

  ‘Hardy.’

  ‘Cliff, this is Alicia.’

  I stopped in my tracks. ‘Alicia.’

  ‘You sound surprised.’

  ‘No, pleased.’

  ‘Where are you? I tried your home and office numbers first. You’re out and about.’

  ‘Macquarie Street.’

  ‘That’s good. I was working late and just finished. Could we meet up?’

  After the all-male, mistrustful, conspiratorial meeting with its likely highly unpleasant consequences, the thought of seeing her was like a cooling breeze. She proposed a restaurant at Circular Quay. That sounded full of promise and I agreed to meet her there in thirty minutes. I changed direction and strolled down towards the water.

  Lower Macquarie Street, opposite the Botanical Gardens, was quiet and dark—mostly office buildings with very little traffic and only one hotel or café per block. I noticed two young men cross from the park side and walk towards me.

  ‘Got a spare smoke, mister?’

  Young and no actor this one, tone all wrong, and his mate moved to get around me. I kicked the one who’d spoken hard in the shin. I was wearing solid shoes and a kick just there is crippling. He lurched away swearing and gripped a parking-meter post for support. His mate attempted a clumsy rabbit punch but I ducked it, bullocked him up against a sandstone wall and hit him with two sharp jabs to his left ear. That hurts and doesn’t damage the fist of the one doing the hitting. He sat down hard and swore just as his mate had done. Muggers with no talent.

  ‘Do something else,’ I said. ‘Because you’re not too bloody good at this.’

  Alicia was wearing her business pants suit, a white shirt and a wide smile as we arrived simultaneously outside the restaurant. We wrapped our arms around each other and kissed hard.

  She released me and stepped back. ‘Hey, you’re supposed to be Mr Keep Your Distance.’

  I reached for her. ‘Who says?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘I’m very glad to see you, Alicia.’

  She took my arm and we went in. The place was busy but we were shepherded to a table where we could just see the water if we craned our necks.

  ‘Good day?’ she said.

  ‘Promising.’

  ‘That can be better than good. What was that I smelled on your breath?’

  ‘Sherry. I was in a conference with a lawyer. Sorry.’

  ‘I didn’t mind. It took me back. It was all the go at department parties in my final year at Sydney. The senior lecturers were trying to get into our pants.’

  ‘How about the professors?’

  ‘They were already in—some of them, and some pants.’

  The waiter hovered with the menus.

  ‘I want fish, salad and white wine,’ she said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Steak, potatoes and red wine.’

  The waiter beamed. ‘So refreshing, the difference,’ he said. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll bring you both the very best.’

  We handed him the menus. Oddly, after the initial rapport, we were both silent for a minute as the restaurant noise buzzed around us and the sounds of the Quay carried faintly through.

  The wine arrived—her riesling in an ice bucket, my merlot naked. Our waiter poured and we both waived the tasting ritual. He stood aside to let another waiter put small plates in front of us, fried whitebait for her, grilled mushrooms for me.

  ‘Enterprising chap,’ I said. ‘Do they know you here?’

  She smiled and didn’t answer. We drank some wine and started in on the food.

  ‘Tell me something interesting you did today,’ I said.

  She told me about researching a cache of military weapons found on a building site at Coogee. World War I stuff. ‘Well before your time, but I thought you’d be interested, having been in the army.’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘You’re in the records, Cliff. No getting away from it.’

  The mains arrived.

  ‘Now you,’ she said.

  I spoke about a man coming back from exile. A man with a secret and a score to settle as well as a Damoclean sword hanging over his head.

  ‘It’s much the same line of work, isn’t it? The past impacting on the present.’

  I savoured a mouthful of excellent eye fillet. ‘It’s central to you, I guess. For me it often explains things, but I have to deal in the here and now.’

  We caught the ferry to Balmain and stood outside sheltered from the breeze and holding each other.

  ‘How long since you did this?’

  ‘Alone or with a beautiful woman?’

  She dug me in the ribs. ‘None of your blarney. How Irish are you?’

  ‘About half. How about you?’

  ‘Much the same. Troy must have been an assumed name picked up somewhere.’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘Could be worse. Could’ve been Athens.’

  I laughed. ‘To answer your question, I can’t remember the last ferry ride but I think the last time I was afloat here my assistant and I rowed out to a boat and found a dead man. This is a whole lot better.’

  ‘That’s to remind me that you’re a tough guy?’
r />   I kissed her. ‘No, at a time like this it’s to remind myself.’

  We did the long walk to her place, sticking close together and not saying much. We went in and, still with a minimum of speech, we undressed each other and made love with a dimmed-down light on.

  She fell asleep almost at once and I propped up on one elbow and looked at her. The signs of strain that I’d seen on her face at our earlier meetings were smoothed away by sleep. I imagined a police artist being asked to draw her from my description: translucent skin, strong nose and jaw, heavy brow. Feature by feature it’d take a good artist to capture her beauty, which was a matter of how the features blended together.

  I fell asleep and dreamed a mélange of Hawes, Cathy Carter, Frank Parker and Paul the bikie all doing an incomprehensible mixture of things they’d never do.

  Over a very early breakfast, Alicia in a flowered silk kimono and me in my shirt with a towel around my waist, my mobile bleeped with an email from Nils Olquist.

  Alicia lifted an eyebrow the way some people can and others never master. ‘Important?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll get dressed.’

  I punched in the password, my fingers clumsy on the small keys. The message said that Henderson was financially embarrassed and contained an address in Haberfield and numbers for a landline and a mobile phone.

  Alicia came out in a pants suit again, this time beige, with a red shirt. She was transferring things from a bag that had matched her outfit of yesterday to today’s version.

  ‘Fiddly stuff you blokes don’t have to bother about,’ she said. ‘But then again, I don’t need to shave. I have to go, Cliff. Just close the door hard and I’ll leave it to you to contact me next time. Okay?’

  ‘I will.’ I stood and the towel fell off.

  She looked me up and down. ‘I hope so, I really do.’

  A quick kiss and she was gone.

  I dressed, called a cab and had the driver use his GPS to locate the address. It turned out to be opposite a stretch of Haberfield parkland bisected by a canal. The driver slowed and I told him to keep going and then turn back, stop and wait. He looked puzzled and did it. The house was a large California bungalow set on a big block with a chest-high wall in the front.

  I rang the mobile number Nils had given me and hung up as soon as a male voice answered. After a few minutes a man in pyjamas and dressing gown came through the gate in the wall and looked at his doorstep, squinted at the path, then scrabbled in the shrubbery and retrieved a rolled-up newspaper before going back inside.

  About twenty minutes later the gate in the wall opened again and he stepped out, this time with an Old English sheepdog on a leash. The cab’s clock showed precisely 8 am. The dog walker was in his sixties, heavily built and more rugged-up against the cool morning air than seemed necessary. He crossed the road and took a path that wound through the park.

  ‘Where to now, sir?’ the Asian taxi driver said, sounding troubled.

  I had no idea how long the dog walk would take but it wouldn’t be long enough to organise a reception committee—meaning me, Soames and Paul’s soldiers—to intercept him. And I couldn’t be entirely sure the man was Henderson. Could’ve been a visitor or a professional dog walker. I told the driver there was nothing to worry about and asked him to take me to Glebe. I gave him a big tip with Timothy Greenhall’s money.

  At home, I phoned Soames. ‘Describe Henderson to me.’

  ‘Jesus, it’s been years. No idea what he looks like now.’

  ‘Height? Weight?’

  ‘Medium, getting fat when I last saw him.’

  ‘Anything distinctive?’

  A pause. ‘He was a cold-blooded bastard. I don’t mean in the character sense. He felt the cold. He was always wearing extra layers.’

  ‘Tell me he was a dog lover.’

  ‘He was. He bred Old English sheepdogs. Dopey animals, in my book, but he was nutty about them.’

  I told him that I’d spotted Henderson and that he’d begun his walk at a precise time, on the hour. Probably his usual routine. Soames said that was Henderson to a tee. A stickler for time.

  ‘I’ll ring Paul,’ I said, ‘and set up an intercept for tomorrow morning. It’s an ideal spot. Leave it for a bit and then you liaise with him. Can you be convincing about having the torch?’

  ‘I don’t have to be. Chas knows I have it. And I can be convincing about using it. Don’t worry.’

  I rang Paul and told him what I’d told Soames.

  ‘You want me there with the brothers, at the east end of the park?’

  ‘That’s right. Bring ten bad ones.’

  ‘You haven’t said which house. You don’t trust us.’

  ‘Right again.’

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind, and, Hardy, there better not be anyone else there except Luke. Understand?’

  ‘Yes. Have you got anyone who’s good with dogs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bring him and supply him with whatever sheepdogs like to eat at eight o’clock in the morning.’

  That got me the last word with him for the first time.

  25

  With a day to fill in, I drove to Erskineville and paid Nils his five thousand. He took it with a becoming reluctance. It was a little too early for the aquavit, even for Nils, so we drank coffee. He started to explain the difficulties he’d experienced but I stopped him.

  ‘I wouldn’t understand a tenth of it, mate. Just tell me you got in and out without leaving a trace.’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘A hundred per cent?’

  ‘Ninety-nine point nine. Only a fool claims a hundred percent success at anything.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Cliff, I’m a little worried. I’ve noticed a bikie hanging around over the last couple of days. Maybe not the same one, even. I’m wondering if Trudie . . .’

  ‘Nils, I can set your mind at rest. Nothing to do with Trudie, everything to do with what you’ve just done for me. I guarantee you won’t see a bikie again unless you go looking for one.’

  Nils looked relieved at first and then concerned. ‘Bikies, police . . . I hope you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘I hope so, too,’ I said.

  I went to the gym and spent longer there than usual having a thorough workout and then a sauna and a spa. Wesley Scott gave me an ironic look as I left.

  ‘Going to war, Cliff?’

  ‘Just a skirmish.’

  ‘How many of your nine lives you got left, man?’

  ‘Just enough, Wes,’ I said. ‘Just enough.’

  My mobile rang as I was getting into my car.

  ‘Cliff, this is Cathy Carter.’

  ‘Cathy.’

  ‘I’m sorry I . . . went to water. I want to know what’s going on. Can we meet?’

  There was something I urgently needed to know about the Hawes voice record and she was the only one likely to be able to tell me. We arranged to meet at three-thirty in a coffee bar in the complex in Liverpool Road that housed the Ashfield Council Chambers, the library and other enterprises. The arrangement left me time for a drink, just one, and a focaccia at the Bar Napoli.

  Cathy Carter, when I finally located her in one of the several coffee bars, was looking a whole lot better with her hair freshly washed and shining and wearing jeans and an oversize sweater. She gave me a smile as we shook hands.

  ‘You seem tired,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks, I’m working on a look that’ll show clients how hard I’m working.’

  ‘Always joking. I’m sorry about destroying Colin’s disks. It was a stupid thing to do. A waste of what he wanted and . . . Are you still going after them?’

  ‘Yes, and getting closer.’

  ‘Is there any way I can help? I’ve been racking my brains, but I was never on the inside with what was happening.’

  ‘There is one thing . . .’

  ‘I’ve become a coffee addict,’ she said. ‘What will you have?’

&nbs
p; ‘A very hot flat white.’

  She jumped up and went to the counter. The physical sprightliness was part of her determined effort to bounce back. I admired her and had an impulse to tell her what was happening. I repressed it because the outcome was as uncertain as a politician’s promise. She came back and sat, straight-backed and gallant.

  ‘You were saying?’

  I decided she deserved some information. ‘One thing worried me about the snippet I heard from Colin’s disk. We’re actually targeting . . .’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I’ve got help from some unlikely quarters.’

  She nodded. The coffee arrived and we did things with the spoons, the way you do.

  ‘We’re targeting a man named Charles Henderson, also known as Chas.’

  ‘He was mentioned on the disk.’

  ‘Right. It’s possible that the other person he was talking to is the real villain of the piece. You didn’t recognise the voices?’

  ‘No. I assume Colin burned the disk from the surveillance phone-taps. I never knew who the task force was targeting.’

  ‘Well, it was a long shot. Why d’you think Colin copied them and brought them home?’

  ‘He didn’t trust everybody. He was sure there were leaks. I suppose he was going to play you the disks to convince you he was on the same side, to get you to help him find out what was going on. If any current police were involved.’

  It made sense.

  She told me that her application for stress leave had been approved.

  ‘So you’re going to stay in the force?’

  ‘I’m going to the top,’ she said.

  ‘Good for you, and know what? I think I can help you.’

  I picked up a Bravado escort somewhere between Ashfield and Pyrmont. I didn’t know whether to be comforted or threatened. It was clear that Paul had at least some of the gang under his control, but for how long? And what kind of exploit would it take for him to confirm that control? The last thing I wanted was a bikie killing, either at Haberfield or Camden. I completed the drive in a state of apprehension. The bikie peeled off a block away from my office, but there are half a dozen different places from which to watch a building that has no back exit. Even if it did, Paul would have the manpower to watch the two exits and the car.