by Berry, Tony
So that was it. Bromo knew the phrase they would be using: he had become ‘a person of interest’. Not because of anything he had done but by reason of the people he had met, or been seen with. So why weren’t his watchers on the scene when Dayani’s people had bailed him up outside his apartment? He felt he was being accused without being told why. Mayfield had him on the defensive.
‘They’re not my mates. Just an old friend and her friends.’
‘As I said, others will be the judge of that. Our job’s done. Isn’t that so, Rusty?’
‘Yep. All finished here.’
Bromo heard the scrape of heavy boots on the footpath behind him. The laconic Rusty stepped away and took a few leisurely paces towards an anonymous black car and opened the passenger door.
‘Sneaky cars for sneaky jobs,’ said Bromo.
Mayfield shrugged.
‘Just following orders. Someone feels you need looking after. Can’t have lover boy getting hurt, can we?’
Mayfield winked. Bromo tried to still any facial reaction. Both knew what was meant – and who was meant. It was something he should have realised – the surveillance, the guarded warnings, the watch on Dayani; they all pointed to undercover involvement. That meant Delia Dunstan was in a back room somewhere pulling strings and working the phones. And maybe their paths might cross again with the same fiery sexual intensity as before. He could only hope.
‘At least that’s put a smile on your face,’ said Mayfield.
Bromo felt his cheeks redden and welcomed the dim lighting.
‘Actually, I was thinking of getting home and tossing back a couple of malts. Presumably you’re on your way to hassle a few more innocent citizens.’
They walked side by side towards the unmarked car. Mayfield rested a hand on Bromo’s arm, slowing them down.
‘You’re not under arrest. Just a pretence for any watchers.’
His voice dropped to a murmur.
‘A word on the quiet. I was asked to pass it on.’
Told, more likely, thought Bromo. And firmly so, unless Delia had changed her ways big time.
Mayfield paused and looked cautiously around, as if expecting eavesdroppers on the deserted street. He spoke even quieter, a deep bass whisper.
‘The murdered girl … in Citizens Park … an autopsy …’ He paused and took another look up and down the street.
‘Opened her up … the word is they found a condom full of diamonds.’
FOURTEEN
FAZAL Ibrahim Bundy slumped into one of the capacious leather sofas scattered at carefully judged intervals across the expanse of the hotel foyer. He spread his arms, bat-wing style, out along the settee’s low back. His body language said ‘I own this place’. Which was the impression he wanted to give, even if it was a lie of the first magnitude. He knew only too well that appearances were all important.
Beneath the bravado he was already wincing at the thought of maybe having to buy one of the grotesque cocktails listed at the bar over in the far corner of the dimly lit space. And there was every likelihood he might have to fork out for two or more if his practised patter failed to do its trick. A frightening prospect; he had what the money men called a serious cash-flow problem and his credit card was teetering on the edge of its excessive limit.
‘Who do you think you are sprawled out like that, the bloody owner?’
He jerked forward, startled by Natalie Cordoza’s sudden appearance. His arrogant pose exploded in a flash as she leaned over the back of the settee, a tangle of bling dangling from her neck. She gave a short, scornful laugh.
‘You couldn’t afford as much as a place mat in the bistro.’
He twisted around, cricking his neck. Too late; she had already sashayed around to stand in front of him. Her look completed the demolition job she had already wreaked on his carefully contrived composure.
She lifted the flap of a large dark red leather handbag strategically dropped in the space between them.
‘I suppose you expect me to buy the drinks,’ she said. She extracted a $20 note and thrust it at him.
‘Here, you’re the waiter.’
She waved him away dismissively with a flick of her hand, clunky with rings.
‘Mine’s the usual; double. And no fancy cocktails.’
He slouched off towards the bar, smarting from her jibe. He accepted it as part of the hold she had over him – those special jobs, the cash in hand – but that didn’t make it any easier to take. The waiting jobs she found for him were fill-ins, extra dollars to tide him over, keeping him in touch with the punters. He made it clear that was obviously not his real calling, or position, and he took shit from no one, not even those hoity-toity tarts from across the river in Toorak who patted him on the bum after they’d had a few chardonnays.
‘Bitches.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
The woman behind the bar had her hands pressing hard down on the counter, fingers spread, her busty body thrusting towards him, her face fixed in an ice-cold glare of dislike. She was on the attack.
Fazal stared back, briefly unaware of what he’d done, then startled into a stuttering explanation of his spoken thoughts.
‘Hey, sorry, not you. No. Thinking of someone else; something else.’
She eased back, the tension fading from her stance. Her face relaxed; the glimmer of a smile.
‘I should hope so. We’re not all bad.’
Fazal shuffled his feet, flustered, feeling the sweat of discomfort and embarrassment. Not a good look for a would-be hard man. He gabbled his order and made a hurried return to where Natalie was sitting cross-legged and serious, tapping a message into an iPhone.
‘Upsetting the staff, eh?’
She didn’t shift her gaze from the screen.
‘Just a misunderstanding,’ he grunted, handing her the change.
‘It always is with you.’
Natalie slid the phone into her handbag and picked up her drink. She looked at him over the rim of the glass, unsmiling.
‘Like with Tamsyn.’
He wriggled his backside on the seat, leaned forward, knees apart, glass clasped in both hands as he studied the polished floorboards.
‘Yeah, well …’
‘Is that all you can say?’
His shoulders lifted in a slight shrug, his gaze staying focused on the floor.
‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
‘Hah.’
Her loud and raucous reaction turned the heads of two men at the bar briefly in her direction. A comment flicked between them. She didn’t notice; her eyes were lasering down at Fazal, his head still turned away from her. Her voice became a whispered screech.
‘Is that all you can say? It’s the sort of response I’d expect from our dickhead of a prime minister, not from some steroid-sucking hard man. That’s what you think you are, isn’t it? So bloody well start acting like it.’
She took a quick, angry sip of her drink.
‘Sit up. At least have the guts to look at me when I’m talking to you.’
The robot within him responded. That’s what he’d been trained to do: take orders – from his bullying monster of a father, from the leader of the gang that ran the schoolyard, from the clique of standover men who controlled the local shops and bars. Always waiting for their commands, doing their bidding, the frontman for the Mr Bigs behind the scenes.
Now Natalie had commanded; he obeyed and slowly sat upright, turning to face her. He smirked. One day he would be the one giving the orders.
‘We did what you wanted, Nat. The girl’s gone. The cops’ll think it’s some bloke who did his block because she wouldn’t put out. They’re already putting the squeeze on one of the guys working at the park.’
‘And that business with the diamonds?’
She let her words hang between them, an accusation as much as a question. He sipped his drink, flipped one hand aimlessly.
‘Yeah, well, I thought it would put us in the clear; involve th
e girl, not us.’
He tried pushing the charm button.
‘I was thinking of you, Nat.’
Wrong button. It didn’t work.
‘Fuckwit.’
She spat the word out. Vicious. Fazal winced. It reminded him of the time he had stuffed up for the playground gang. They had stripped him from the waist down, lashed his ankles to a couple of fence posts and covered his dick and balls in bright yellow dayglow paint. Then left him, pegged out right where the young tarts from the girls’ college walked to catch their bus home. It was a shaming and traumatic few hours that he sensed could now be seen as a mere prank compared with what Natalie might do to him in her present mood.
‘What harm could it do?’ he pleaded. ‘It makes her look like a courier, not me. Not any of the others.’
She let out a cry of exasperation.
‘Think, Fazal, think. It might be a whole new experience. Where did Tamsyn work, and where will the cops start looking for connections? How the bloody hell did you think stuffing her with diamonds was going to divert attention?’
Natalie took a deep breath and a measured sip of her drink. Calm now, but chillingly cold with not a glimmer of a smile or softening of her gaze.
‘You have become a fucking liability.’
She looked briefly towards the bar and nodded. The two men slid off their stools and stepped rapidly across the room and grabbed Fazal’s arms almost before he realised what was happening. He had no time to resist as they set him on his feet. He sensed the drowsiness overpower him almost at the same time as he felt the prick of the needle. Seconds later he was just another drunk being escorted into the fresh air by a couple of caring mates.
Natalie took the phone from her bag and tapped out a brief message. She sunk back into the lounge, crossed her legs and took a leisurely sip of her drink, totally at ease. A gentle smile softened her face as she looked around the room. Maybe later some punter would offer her a drink – or even more.
FIFTEEN
IT was another bad night. The dreams returned. All through the hours of darkness Bromo battled a draining turbulence of confusing images that kept him restless and disturbed. He inhabited a limbo land of uncertainty – wide awake and aware of the stillness of the night while seemingly involved in an endless succession of frighteningly real action scenes that could only be the product of dreams.
He ran, he jumped, he leapt and even tumbled down a grassy slope. There were people chasing him and people to be chased. He was in a car, sometimes driving and sometimes being driven, always at a furious speed. There was water, never calm but surging surf or eddying whirlpools. Turbulent, frightening stuff. He was caught in headlights and trapped in lightless rooms. The people – were they friends or foes? – were always faceless, anonymous. Except for Poppy. Bromo had no trouble recognising her. She moved in and out of the scenes at will yet seemed remote from the action, like a director, a puppeteer. At times she came and went on the sidelines, fading in and out, similar to the Cheshire cat; an observer and always with a knowing feline smile.
He hadn’t given her a thought for years yet here she was manipulating his dreams, wrecking his sleep. As controlling as ever. He was aware of trying to become fully awake, to get up and perhaps make a hot drink, or read, or simply focus on the real world. Anything but this jumbled joyride through semi-consciousness. The best he achieved was spasmodically to halt the onrush long enough to lapse briefly into a deeper sleep before everything started up again.
The cooing of pigeons eventually ended the nightmare. Their incessant burbling on the windowsill was as good as any alarm clock. Briefly Bromo envied their rigid routine: get up, make a nuisance of yourself until someone throws out some scraps of bread and move on to the next free meal. No worries about hangovers, headaches, armed mercenaries or the aches and pains of bashings.
‘Think I’ll be a pigeon in my next life,’ he muttered as he cut the crusts from his toast and scattered them on the veranda. Two birds clawed sideways along the rail to keep an arm’s length away.
‘That’s your lot,’ he said and went indoors. The birds alighted among the crusts and pecked furiously at the feed.
Bromo ground beans, tamped the fine grind and pressed the button on the coffee machine for a double espresso. As the machine’s spout dribbled dark brown liquid into the glass Bromo recalled Mayfield’s message about the murdered woman. Swallowing diamonds encased in a condom suggested serious intent. It was too extreme an act for petty theft. The woman must have known what she was doing. Yet it was an act of desperation that didn’t make sense.
She lived here; she wasn’t some new arrival or pseudo tourist trying to smuggle the gems into the country past Customs officers. Even more preposterous was the fleeting thought that some felon banged up in jail was expecting her to bring him diamonds during a prison visit. What would he do with them; facet them and set them in the prison workshop as gifts for the screws? Drugs would be well ahead of diamonds on any prisoner’s shopping list. Anyway, how could she eliminate them during such a brief social call? Another dead end.
Bromo sipped his coffee and tried to think of other scenarios. None came. Instead, another memory from his chat with Mayfield intruded. Delia. Her name hadn’t been spoken but the sergeant’s words left no room for doubt. Somewhere in the background, federal agent Delia Dunstan was involved. If not actively, then at least keeping an eye on things. Asking questions, getting reports, letting the local cops know she had an interest. Another file awaiting attention, jockeying for priority in her endless list of investigations. Dropping a hint or two to the local cop shop was Delia’s twist on the old ‘need-to-know’ syndrome. She had obviously decided Mayfield and his superiors needed to know that she needed to know. Beyond that, however, they would get told very little until she decided otherwise.
He took another gulp of caffeine. Perhaps it was time to give her a call. As he half expected, the phone rang six times then went through to voicemail.
‘Diamonds aren’t always a girl’s best friend,’ he said into the phone.
He hesitated and thought briefly of adding something more personal. Just as quickly he rejected the idea. Why let feelings get in the way of a relationship?
‘Ring me,’ was all he added, and cut the call. His message was clear enough if Mayfield’s information was correct.
The lack of any immediate response from Delia left him at a loose end. He felt he should be doing something, talking to someone, asking questions, but was uncertain of what and who. Events were swirling around him and he still didn’t know why. A murdered girl who had swallowed diamonds had been befriended by Liz Shapcott who had sent him to a diamond merchant who had warned him off and shown little concern for his mugging. Sri Lankan youths were stalking him, delivering cryptic messages attached to shonky diamonds and taking their orders from a gun-toting undercover agent using past liaisons to coerce him into action. In between, Liz attends the dead girl’s funeral and suffers threats of her own from a menacing standover man. It was a whirlpool with no visible source.
Bromo ran his fingers backwards through his hair, scratching at his scalp and entwining them at the back of his neck. He stretched his back and flexed his shoulder blades. Joints cracked. Taut muscles relaxed. Easing himself into wakefulness seemed to take longer day by day.
He looked out over the rooftops, assessing the weather. Distant cranes poised on burgeoning high-rise apartments made dark slashes in a blue sky. A flotilla of hot-air balloons was making a gentle descent towards the parklands bordering the Yarra River. It added up to a clear, cool sunny day with a light breeze – one that turned his thoughts to a gentle bike ride rather than immersion in murder. Or perhaps he should combine the two and use a bit of pedal power to suss out the scenes of recent events. Maybe take a closer look at where the unfortunate Tamsyn once worked; the place that Liz had discovered employed an assortment of strangely intimidating workmates for the murdered girl. It would be exercise with a purpose. And in a disguise in which fe
w would recognise him. Bromo had often found there was something conveniently anonymous about a bike helmet, dark goggles and lairy riding gear.
*
His machine was no racer; nothing that would be a match for the feather-light frames holding the wheels that the Lycra brigade pedalled furiously along the beachfront road every weekend. It was a sturdy workhorse that took the bumps and cracks of the bike paths in its stride and conveyed him down alleys and lanes where no car could go. He wheeled it from the shed and threw his leg over a saddle cracked by sun and sweat. At this time of day the footpaths were too crammed to use them as an illegal side-track and the bike lanes in Bridge Road were occupied by parked cars. He had no alternative but to nose out into the traffic, seeking the outside lane to turn right into Church Street. He made the turn as the lights went to red and one of the old green rattlers trundled forward off the tram stop and into the intersection. Bromo felt the driver’s glare but decided against any response. He needed to focus on the road ahead. Parked vehicles had narrowed it to one lane either side with scarcely room for a bike in between.
A car door edged open just in front of him. He swerved around it, his handlebar missing by centimetres a scrape along the length of a sparkling new Mercedes.
‘Stupid idiot,’ he yelled. ‘Use your bloody mirror.’
He turned in his seat and looked back at the driver with the open door. She had one clenched hand raised toward him, the middle finger pointing upwards. She was mouthing words but they failed to carry.
‘And the same to you darling,’ Bromo muttered, his attention turning back to the road ahead.
Another hundred metres or so and he could turn off and trundle down the narrow streets and back alleys of an area that had gone through so many changes that it had yet to decide if it was residential, commercial or industrial. Panel beaters, food processing plants, warehouses, wine merchants, a couple of art galleries, computer technicians, hardware merchants and paint shops mingled in with slick new apartments, Victorian terrace houses, century-old workers’ cottages and deeply anonymous places that hid behind electronically operated roller doors. So much secrecy and furtiveness where a few decades ago neighbours never locked their doors and chats over the garden fence were part of the fabric of everyday existence.