‘Do you think if you say it enough, it’ll make it true?’
‘Look, baby, don’t you get it? I couldn’t go through with it because of you and now Kippax wants me dead. That’s the only deal here.’
‘He wants you dead because he knows you’ve been working for my father all along.’
‘Who’s been telling you this stuff? Is it fucking Astrid, that bitch?’
‘And I want you dead because every single thing that’s ever come out of your mouth is a fucking lie.’
Beaumont, trying confident, getting smug: ‘You’re upset, Claudia. I understand.’
The gun went off: bang! Something shattered and crashed to the floor.
Jack ran to the end of the aisle, slipped as he pulled left and struggled to keep his balance, grabbing for the bookshelf. He saw Claudia holding a gun aimed straight at Duncan Beaumont, sitting in a chair, head down and hands up covering his face. One knee up too, as though that might be enough to stay alive in front of a Glock 19. Maybe because the first bullet had missed him, he thought it might work again.
‘No,’ said Jack, urgently, as Claudia turned to look at him. He stopped, arms wide and palms out, like he was about to try herding a goat. He wondered where the hell Claudia had got the firepower from, but deep down he knew it was because she was Ziggy Brandt’s daughter, and he should be afraid of her and not do anything stupid. Like Duncan Beaumont had.
‘Stay away from me, Jack.’
‘Claudia …’
Christ.
Chester Sinclair lay on the floor by the far wall, tied up and on his side like a Christmas pig for the slaughter, something stuffed in his mouth.
Claudia turned back to her fiancé. ‘I’m saying stay where you are, Jack, or I’ll fucking shoot you, too.’
28
‘Don’t do it.’ Jack said it, but the line was more impulse than instruction.
Claudia had both hands on the gun, arms extended, posed to enhance the long cursive lick of her body, from the high heels and smooth legs, along the extended dew-drop of her hips drawing into the belted waist, all the way up to the jacket now bunched up with intent over her shoulders. Jack wondered if he said Cut! would she lower the gun, smiling, make-up people zooming in from the wings with fluttering brushes and dabbing pads, Chester and Beaumont standing up and stretching and yawning, both bored shitless because it was the tenth take.
‘Come on,’ said Jack, not quite sure what else to say. Added, ‘Think about it,’ the words as useless as burnt matches.
Sinclair moaned from the floor.
‘Do you know what he’s done?’ said Claudia, firmly holding the scene as it was.
‘Jack!’ Beaumont turned to him now, flushed and round-eyed, almost sweaty though Sinclair’s unheated book nightmare was cracked with cold. ‘You believe me!’
‘Shut up.’ Claudia leaned into the Glock a little more, as though this would make the bullets faster, deadlier. Jack, feeling helpless, let his arms drop. He felt the Luger through his coat pocket, pressing against his forearm. Should he pull it on her? Could he get her to put the Glock down with his fucking antique?
‘Where’d you get the gun?’ he said.
‘Twenty-first-birthday present from Dad. It’s engraved.’
‘With what? Hope you enjoy using it as much as I did?’
She looked at him then. Their eyes met briefly but Jack could not hold hers: they were inscrutable, lost. ‘You’d better go, Jack. Roberto will be here in a minute.’
It pulled him up with screeching brakes. He did not hang his head but wanted to. ‘So you rang him.’
‘Yeah, I fucking rang him.’
He pointed at Beaumont. ‘First you wanted to find the guy and now you’re giving him up?’
‘Read the newsflash, Jack. He’s finished.’
Beaumont, losing colour fast, stretched towards Jack like a beggar with a cup. ‘Tell her, for Christ’s sake …’
‘Can you see this?’ said Claudia, shaking her head. ‘Reeking of lies. They’re making him sweat.’
Jack, eyes on the woman he used to love and probably still did, took her in, whole and formidable. Grateful, for once, that this was only a side-on view. ‘You tied Sinclair up?’ he said. ‘Pulled a gun on everybody?’ He could not help but sound impressed.
‘I would have done it at Susko Books except I didn’t want you to get involved.’
‘Because up until now I’ve been minding my own business?’
‘Jack …’ Beaumont pleaded.
‘What, you think Jack wants to be your friend?’
‘Claudia, please.’ Her fiancé looked like he might start to cry. ‘Listen to me!’
‘Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? You think I’m that stupid?’
It threw Beaumont a curve: Jack watched his face tighten, thinking, then it was gone. Was he playing at something? The sudden silence puffed in around the guy and he shifted awkwardly in the creaky chair.
Jack turned to Claudia, who seemed to have come into sharper relief with the voices off and breaths held. Who the hell was she, this woman with the gun? ‘Come on, babe,’ he said, soothingly, the babe slipping in unintentionally though nobody appeared to notice. ‘You don’t want to shoot him.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t have a knife.’ Claudia grinned, seeing Beaumont’s knees come together. ‘And I am my father’s daughter. You know that, don’t you, Duncan?’
‘You’re …’ He worked up some courage. ‘You’re fucking crazy, is what you are.’
Jack winced at Beaumont’s bravado, expecting the instant crack of a bullet in his ears. If the guy had been even half smart up until this point, it looked like everything was rushing out the window now.
‘I believed everything,’ said Claudia, the words an effort, as though her ribs were cracked and every breath tweaked a pain in her chest. ‘That he loved me. That he had deceived me, yes, but that he loved me and everything was going to be okay. He promised …’ The last sentence was delivered with self-disgust.
‘It’s true!’ Beaumont jumped on the softer tone, not realising it was a bruise. ‘Why won’t you believe me? Can’t you see I’m on the out here? Everybody wants to fucking kill me and I’ve been running around like a fucking rat in a maze and now you want to kill me too!’ Beaumont shook his head with a look of self-pity. ‘I told you the truth. Yes, I wanted to kill your father. But then … then I fell in love with you!’ He laughed. ‘But it was all too fucking late, because Kippax was in the picture and I had no choice. I had to … Fuck, I don’t know what I had to do. It’s just a big fucking mess …’ He lowered his head in defeat. Then, quietly, with feeling: ‘I’m sorry.’
Claudia’s face twisted up. Beautiful, regardless. ‘Look, Jack,’ she said, condescending and cruel and all addressing-the-kiddies. ‘Duncan still thinks that I don’t know he’s working for my father.’
She fired the gun into a shelf of books just behind his head.
In recent memory, Jack had never been so relieved to be himself as he was right now. Even with all his money gone and the gun smoke in the room and some heavy work to do about getting out of there in one piece, it was a nice change.
The gun went off again.
‘Jesus! Fuck!’ Beaumont’s knee worked an emergency Morse code into the floor. ‘If I’m working for your father, then why the fuck would I try and kill him? Huh?’
‘To make it look like a shooting, you shit!’
‘Why?’ The guy smiled, bemused, as though it was the craziest thing he had ever heard in his life: but Jack noticed the inflated self-assurance. ‘What would be the point of making it look like a shooting and why the fuck would I do that and why the fuck would your father want to do that?’
‘Duncan works for my father, Jack,’ said Claudia, evenly, staring right through Be
aumont, her eyes burning into the wall of books behind him. ‘From the beginning. I didn’t see it until now. Dad hating Duncan, telling me every day that I should leave him, that I had made a terrible mistake. It made sense, you know, with Dad wanting you to come between us and all that? He told me that Duncan was trying to indict him on tax evasion, and then that he was working for Allan Kippax and that they had done a deal and that the two of them were trying to frame him for something.’ She took a deep breath: Jack saw her shoulders drop. ‘He hated Duncan, right? Didn’t want his daughter marrying him. Obviously.’ A cough bumped out of her. Eyes glazed now and syrupy. She composed herself. ‘But it was all bullshit. Smoke. Roberto told me most of it. I thought he was just trying to fuck us up, but turns out it was all true. Duncan had played them the whole time he was playing me, too.’
‘What else did Florez say?’ Jack bristled with jealousy. What he really wanted to know was how she had spoken to him, her tone, her intention: whether he had comforted her with an arm around her shoulder. He threw the thought to the floor.
‘That he even managed to get fifty grand out of Kippax. For shooting Dad.’
‘Yeah?’ Beaumont scoffed at her. ‘So why do you think I’ve been on the fucking run, then? If it was just about making it look like something, why the fuck am I running?’
‘Because you’re an idiot. Thought you could play with the big boys. But my father doesn’t need you anymore, Duncan. Does he?’ She pronounced the words slowly, clearly, like a jury verdict. ‘You’ve done everything he needed you to do. And now …’ The words hung on like a faint echo.
Jack’s head was freewheeling. Ziggy Brandt had taken revenge to a high art in his time, but the subtleties here seemed too much even for him. Jack was looking for his place in the story but there were no pages with the corners turned down. ‘Why would your old man want me to break you up if Beaumont was already working for him?’ he said.
‘I just said, Jack. To make it look good.’ Claudia sneered the words at Beaumont. ‘That’s why he wanted to hire you and that’s why he had this arsehole pretend to take a shot at him.’
‘Why?’ It was the only question left.
Claudia answered, narrowing her eyes down the line of the gun: ‘Business.’
It was like a magic word: all fell quiet and the low light around them dimmed some more. Clouds of smoke seemed to swirl into Sinclair’s book-mess warehouse and spread down the aisles, pungent and sinister, as though from the very nostrils of the demon Ziggy Brandt, whose giant head hovered above them in the sodden gloom like Kali the Destroyer having a bad day. Business. Of course it was fucking business.
‘The Barangaroo development,’ said Jack. Millions of dollars and your name on the waterfront of the world’s most beautiful harbour. The last thing Brandt would have being willing to allow was Allan Kippax coming in from the side and trying to nudge him out of the game with a hard shoulder. Ziggy Brandt was a resourceful man. He had the means. Hell, even his ex-driver was there to help if necessary. And when it came down to it, even his daughter.
Jack looked at Beaumont and felt one last twinge of sympathy. They had both been pawns here, too low to the ground to ever see the whole board. The guy’s mistake was thinking he had the best view in town.
Jack said: ‘So when did Kippax find out you were working for Brandt?’
‘I never worked for Brandt.’ The knee started pumping again. ‘You want me to take an ad out in the Herald?’
Beaumont was sunk but kept trying to come up for air, hoping somebody would throw him a line. Jack stepped forward, rolled his shoulders a little, working the jigsaw pieces in his head. He decided to go for the throat. ‘Who came up with the my old man’s an alcoholic swindled out of his land story? You or Ziggy?’
Claudia stared at her fiancé, willing him to look at her, but his eyes were on the floor. Jack pushed it in that direction some more, unable to resist the opportunity to bring Beaumont down in front of her.
‘Jesus, there must have been some incentive, Dunky boy,’ he said. ‘How long have you been at it, huh? Poor dad, lost his land, over and over.’
The guy squirmed. Jack felt a glow come over his body, a heady thrill as he turned the screws.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Jack smiled: then Claudia’s voice, faint and choked, broke his momentary reverie. ‘Why, Duncan?’
When Jack looked, the tears were rolling down her cheeks. Something weighed down on him and the pomp in his chest leaked flat.
The Glock tilted down, just a fraction, heavy as a brick in Claudia’s hands. Beaumont was stricken, his raw blue eyes bulging. There was no denying anything now, the game was up, but maybe the guy had felt something for her after all.
‘It just … it just happened … I …’ He was barely able to mouth the words.
Claudia lowered the gun. Dropped her chin into her chest. Defeated.
Jack felt a presence loom behind him, then heard something, squeaky rubber footsteps approaching. The hairs on his neck instantly stood up, but his movements were slow, limbs thick and heavy. He had not turned far when something small, hard and cold pressed into the back of his head. A whisper: ‘Relax.’ Jack froze, head angled a little to his right. Florez. He wondered if his day was ever going to get to lunch. Then Allan Kippax walked into the path of his gaze.
‘Just shoot him, my dear,’ he said, addressing Claudia in a bright voice and smiling. ‘The world could do with one less fucking degenerate.’
29
‘Duncan, my boy,’ said Kippax. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
Beaumont snapped up straight and moved to the edge of his chair, hands holding on to the seat as though he was about to take a sharp dip on a ride at the fair. Kippax held up a finger and pointed it at him. ‘Where you are,’ he said and slipped his hands into the pockets of his dark-green pea coat. Beaumont sat back a little, but his hands remained clamped.
Kippax adjusted his shoulders and looked down at his Cuban heels. Paused to brush something from his blue pinstriped stovepipes, then began to stroll, slowly, around the chair where Beaumont sat. He glanced over at Claudia. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t shot him yet, my dear,’ he said. ‘I mean, after all he’s done.’
Claudia stared at him, frowning, confused. The gun rested against her leg. Kippax took out his right hand and ruffled Beaumont’s hair like a five-year-old’s, still walking around the chair. ‘And you, Jack,’ he said. ‘I had hoped for more from you. What happened to our deal, the five thousand? It seems you prefer trouble to money.’
‘A wild and malicious rumour.’
Kippax left Beaumont and held out his hand to Claudia. ‘May I?’
She continued to stare at him, taking in Kippax with a brief movement of her head: for a smallish guy, he exuded large on subtle threat. He grinned and gave her a wink. Claudia glanced at Jack for a moment, saw Florez’s gun still stuck to his head. Her eyes showed fear for the first time since she had walked back into his life a few days ago. He gave a slight nod, closing his eyes for a second. Without looking, she handed over the gun.
‘Thank you, dear,’ said Kippax. ‘It was so good of you to call Roberto, let him know where you all were.’ Then he turned back to Beaumont and struck him across the face with the Glock. He cried out and collapsed to the floor.
Claudia moved towards him, yelling ‘No!’, but only managed one half-lunging stride before Kippax pointed the gun at her.
‘Easy, Miss Brandt,’ he said. ‘Just take it easy.’ He shook his head, disappointed. ‘What did you expect, dear? We’re both injured parties here, aren’t we? After all, it was you who called, all huffing and puffing and angry, remember? Wanting to hurt him, no? And Roberto said he’d take care of it for you. So here we are.’
‘Don’t you touch him.’
Kippax grinned again. He b
rought his hands to his chest and crossed them over his heart, the Glock pointing up over his shoulder. ‘I promise. Touch him, I will not.’ Then he spread his arms and balanced himself and laid hard into Beaumont with one of his Cubans. A second time, too, his face flushing with the effort. He stopped, pulled at the sleeves of his pea coat and readjusted his shoulders, while Beaumont groaned and curled himself up into a ball. ‘Goal?’ he said to Jack.
As well as the gun to his head, Florez was holding Jack by the arm, the same one that big dead Mick had tenderised before. As he stiffened, Florez gripped him harder and pushed the gun into the soft bit just behind his ear. There was no jumping anybody for the moment.
‘So, the entertainment business, Allan?’ said Jack. ‘Got too boring, huh?’
Kippax scratched his beard with the barrel of the gun, making an O of his lips. ‘Do you know how long it’s been since I hurt somebody? I’d almost forgotten how much fun it is.’
‘Still got your outfit?’
Kippax looked down at Beaumont, who was dabbing at his bleeding cheek with a sleeve. ‘I’d keep the smart-arsing to a minimum, Susko. I’ve got a real temper today.’ He came over to Jack, got in nice and close and gave him the hard-case eyes. ‘So which one of you two motherfuckers killed Mick?’
‘Way I heard it,’ said Jack, feeling himself sink into the floor as though it had turned into molten lava, ‘he fell over.’
He tensed, but the punch he was expecting did not come. Okay. Breathe: one, two. So Kippax wanted to surprise him. The man walked away, holding the gun as casually behind his back as a folded newspaper. He stood next to Claudia and Jack saw what was about to happen — but as he called out it was too late, and Kippax slapped Claudia across the face with an open palm. She shrieked and stumbled and brought her hands to her face, her breathing instantly sounding fast and wet through her fingers.
Jack flinched, felt the grip on his arm tighten, the gun press harder in behind his ear. Florez in closer too, whispering like a snake. ‘Go on. Help her.’
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