‘Oh, well. There’s always a way to make money, isn’t there. You should know that, comin’ from Queensland. I ran the odd pro, bit o’ this and that, used to get a lot of racing tips. Still do. A man’d be crazy not to take a daily double if he knew it was in the bag, wouldn’t he?’
‘I suppose he would.’
‘My oath.’ He looked at the letter in his hand. ‘The bastards. They’re gonna bleed me dry, drag me through the fuckin’ courts, take every fuckin’ last cent. I’ll have to sell this place, live in a fuckin’ caravan, like a gypsy. Fair enough if I was on my own, ’cause I’m a big lad and I can fend for myself, but what about her downstairs? She’s completely useless, mate. Useless. Couldn’t take a piss in a paddock unless I held her out – which reminds me, where’s that bloody beer?’ He returned to the staircase and yelled the order again, and this time Geoff could hear the woman get up from the table.
‘She’s losin’ it fast,’ Dawes said, sitting down again. ‘Nobody home upstairs anymore. She used to be such a lively little thing, full of fun, go out on the town, dance like a dervish – and now she’s just baggage, dead weight. She can remember what I tell her for five seconds, then it’s out the window – pffft. Doesn’t even remember her name, or mine. “Who are you again?” she says to me. Know what she does? Picks up the teapot to make a cuppa, then talks to it for half an hour. Talks to the fuckin’ teapot. Ah, it’d make you weep, china. I’m gonna have to look after her full-time – and I’m nearly ready for the pine box too. If they gave me a birthday cake, I wouldn’t be able to blow out the fuckin’ candles.’
‘Doesn’t sound too good, mate.’
‘It’s ratshit. Ratshit. Anyhow, you didn’t come here to listen to me whingin’ and carryin’ on. What’s this about Ray Ward? He’s a decent bloke – for a copper.’
‘He’s all right.’ Mick’s wife appeared, holding a can of Toohey’s Draft. She seemed unsure about what to do with it, so Geoff half stood and said, ‘Thanks, Mrs Dawes.’ She gave it to him, smiling with innocent, vacant eyes.
‘Myrtle, it is,’ Dawes said. ‘Mrs Dawes was my mum, God rest her soul. Go on, dear, off you go now.’
She scuttled downstairs as Geoff popped his can and took a decent slug.
‘Yeah, Ray Ward,’ he said. ‘Not a bad old trooper. Straight arrow, as long as you don’t cross him.’
Dawes said, ‘One o’ my generation, almost. Shit, there’s none o’ them left. They’re all dead and gone. An army of ghosts, that’s what they are – an army of friggin’ ghosts. And I’ll be joinin’ ’em soon. We’ll be the ghost riders in the sky.’ He seemed genuinely saddened by the prospect.
‘I was talking to Ray today,’ Geoff said. ‘He mentioned something about some cold murder cases.’
‘They’re so cold they’re in the deep freeze, mate – like that ice man they found up in the fuckin’ Himalayas. There’s no way they can fit me with all that shit, is there? What d’you reckon?’
Geoff was taken aback by the directness of the question, as if Mick valued Geoff’s opinion. It was a little thing, but it altered the balance of power, giving Geoff some leverage. It would be a mistake, however, to underestimate Dawes. He was coming across as a poor, pathetic pensioner, a victim, but he was still Mick Dawes. Old and sick he might be, but he was nonetheless the same man who once ruled the streets with a steel chain. He was still a criminal; he still had his contacts, he sold guns, and if he were not capable of doing something to you he could find someone who was. Men like Dawes might mellow with age, but they still had the same blood running through their veins. But right now he was in a tight corner – he needed help, and he knew it. Geoff decided to cut the crap and play it straight. There was an element of risk if he put the man offside, but he felt he had an advantage that needed to be pressed home.
‘Hard to tell, mate. They did with Neddy Smith.’ Smith, a longtime criminal and current lifer, had been slugged with a string of unsolved murder beefs.
‘Neddy. Yeah, I know, but … this is different. This is just a try-on, a bloody fishing expedition. They can’t prove a fuckin’ thing – I mean, even if there was somethin’ to prove.’
That was an unfortunate slip, but he did have a point. Senior elements of the New South Wales police had been in bed with top criminals during Neddy’s reign in the eighties, when these murders were committed. A cynic might therefore conclude that the force was trying to fix up its image, twenty years on. But in Dawes’s case, the murders went back to the late sixties – and no-one who cared about that era was around anymore. Still, marriages between cops and criminals always ended in betrayal and bitter divorce, sooner or later – a lesson neither party ever learned.
Geoff shrugged. ‘You don’t know what they’ve got, mate. And they might bring charges just for the pleasure of screwing you around in your twilight years. You know what cops are like.’
‘I do. But if Ray Ward has anythin’ to do with it, I should be sweet.’
‘Might not be Ray’s decision only. They have to take advice from the Public Prosecutor, weigh up their chances of getting a conviction as against the cost to the taxpayer.’ He drank from the can and said, ‘But for what it’s worth, I could have a word in his ear.’
Dawes sat up. ‘Would that do any good?’
‘Couldn’t do any harm. He’s an old mate, and a reasonable man. You know that.’ Geoff felt he was on pretty safe ground here – Ray had as good as told him they wouldn’t be proceeding against Dawes. Apart from the cost involved, there was serious doubt they would be able to come up with enough credible witnesses who would be prepared to testify against him.
Dawes was nodding, the wheels turning in his head. ‘Why would you do a thing like that? We’re not exactly blood brothers.’
‘In return for some help from you.’
‘What help?’
Geoff produced a newspaper clipping from his shirt pocket, opened it up and put it under Dawes’s big red nose. ‘Is this the man you sold guns to, Mick?’ He watched Dawes’s eyes narrow as they moved from Geoff’s face to the picture of the teller machine incident, then back to Geoff. It was a testing moment – there was no way of knowing which way Dawes would jump.
‘Who said anything about me sellin’ guns?’ he said.
‘There might be one or two people in cloud cuckoo land who don’t know it,’ Geoff said. Shit, he thought, big mistake. He might take it as an insult to his wife. Dawes fixed him with his famous blue-eyed stare, his face hard, expressionless: he might be cool, or he might not. There were a million things Geoff didn’t know about Dawes – how he responded to people crossing him under his own roof while drinking his beer, for instance. Having pulled a gun from inside his dressing gown and shot Geoff, it would only be a matter of a phone call to a fixer to come and take care of the mess, and there’d be no witnesses …
He was looking intently at Geoff, running his eyes over him, trying to see through him.
‘What’s the matter, mate,’ Geoff said. ‘Think I might be wired? You’re welcome to feel me up if it turns you on. Or do you want me to take my shirt off?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Dawes said. ‘You can’t be too fuckin’ careful though, can you?’
‘Right. Now what about the photo, Mick? You want to take a decent gander?’
Dawes held the clipping at arm’s length. ‘Need me fuckin’ glasses,’ he said finally, getting up and finding them on the mantelpiece. He put on an old pair of horn-rims with a bit of tape on one of the arms, and studied the picture. Geoff drank and waited.
‘That’s him,’ Dawes said.
‘That’s Duane?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘Any surname?’
‘Nope. That’s all – Duane.’
‘Was he American?’
‘Could’ve been.’
‘Did he say where he was staying?’
‘Nope.’
‘What did he buy?’
‘I believe he bought … a Smith & Wesson .44
semi-automatic, and a Weatherby .270 rifle, with a Nightforce infra-red scope.’ He decided not to say anything about the hand grenades.
‘A Smith .44.’
‘Yeah. Nice unit. Nickel-plated.’
‘I see. Pistol and hunting rifle. Did he say what he wanted them for?’
‘Nope. But he sure wasn’t heading for the hills in a four-wheel drive.’
Geoff drank some beer. A disturbing thought was gnawing at the corners of his brain, and he didn’t know whether to bring it up or not. What the hell – he’d come this far. ‘Mick,’ he said. ‘You mentioned Anthony Diaz earlier.’
‘What about it? You did too.’
‘That’s right, I did. His name keeps surfacing like a shitty smell, and I wonder why. I’ve seen him, too, recently, and I can’t say it was a thrilling encounter. As a result of it, I believe he broke into my apartment and knocked off some stuff.’
Mick didn’t say anything, but Geoff could see he was putting it together, trying to arrive at the point before Geoff.
‘One of the things he stole was a Smith .44 semi-automatic pistol. It was American army issue, never been used as far as I know’ He watched Dawes’s eyes closely. ‘It was nickel-plated.’
‘… I see.’
The eyes, flat and dead as ever, gave nothing away.
‘Did Diaz on-sell it to you, Mick?’
‘… Could’ve done.’
‘And you sold it to Duane.’
Dawes was working his tongue around in his mouth – a gesture that Geoff took to indicate the affirmative. Making too many verbal admissions clearly cut right against the grain for him. But in his own way he had ’fessed up enough. Geoff had his answer.
In the car he rang Barrett. They knew some things now: one, their man was ‘Duane’, an American who had featured in the teller machine mugging. Two, ‘Duane’ had Geoff’s gun, per medium of Anthony Diaz/Mick Dawes. Three, he had already tried to use it on Bunny, and nearly succeeded in killing Geoff with his own piece. Also, he had a sniper’s rifle and scope, so he had more than one string to his bow. The rifle made it hard, very hard. If he was a crack shot – and you had to assume he was – how could they stop him from killing Bunny from five hundred metres or more?
At the time Geoff called, Barrett was standing at the window of his apartment watching the nude follies across the way. He had been home long enough to change into a T-shirt and shorts before noticing the action. The woman was prancing around in a little pair of panties, nothing else, a drink in her hand. She had come in, slung the briefcase, kicked off her shoes, skirt and top, put on some music, gone to the fridge and poured herself a champagne. Then she’d lost the bra. All this Barrett could see in perfect detail through Lance’s powerful Zeiss binoculars. There was no sign of the swinging dick yet. She was grooving to the music, flute in hand, then switched on the TV and surfed through thirty or more channels. Finding nothing to hold her attention, she killed it and tossed the remote on the bed. Returning to the living room, she faced the window – against what looked like a brilliantly back-lit movie set – placed a hand on her hip, jiggled her tits and appeared to propose a toast to Barrett. He lowered the binoculars. There was a stirring in his shorts. The little tart was playing him like a harmonica. Maybe the swinging dick was out of town. Maybe she was inviting him over …
And that was when the phone cut in.
Earlier he and Geoff had accompanied Bunny to the Olympic Village, along with a shuffling procession of gaudily tracksuited or Lycra-clad athletes and officials. Flags of all nationalities were in abundance. When they finally reached it, the accommodation itself was a pristine, interlocking complex consisting of hundreds of brick-substitute, near-identical units, much of which would be dismantled after the Games. The plan was for the village core to become a permanent, low-budget, completely self-contained housing estate in the years to come – a satellite community for the new millennium. Right now, however, it was hard to see it as anything other than a cheap, jerrybuilt cluster of prefabricated boxes that would start to lose its gloss as soon as the last athlete had gone home – architect-designed slums of the future. Problem was, no matter how they dressed it up, Homebush Bay was not Vaucluse or Woollahra – it was an unloved outpost, a wasteland wedged between the razor-wired perimeter of Silver-water – the biggest prison in New South Wales – and the endless, flat sprawl of Sydney’s west. If you strained your eyes you could just see, through a dun scarf of smog, the top of the Harbour Bridge and city skyscrapers. If you looked the other way, past the prison, you saw factories, transport depots, light industry – then the Blue Mountains. Profit-conscious developers had no wish to burn their fingers in the long term.
The move-in itself, although protracted because of the numbers and the heavy security screening, was simply a matter of claiming a bed space and stashing gear barracks-style. Barrett and Geoff had hung around for a while, checking out the site, watching for the odd man out, then departed, leaving Bunny protected by the small army of uniformed security staff that would patrol the precinct around the clock. After that Geoff had made his visit to Mick Dawes, while Barrett ate dinner alone at the Pattaya Affair.
Afterwards, Geoff’s report gave him plenty to ponder as he rattled around in his apartment. Bunny had pledged to call first if he planned to leave the village, and it seemed unlikely now that he would break his word. They had no choice but to trust him on that. Having been apprised of the urgency of the situation, the Olympic Hotel management had promised to do their best to find them a room as soon as possible – maybe in a day or so, after they had done some reshuffling. All Barrett could do now was wait for the call. Wait, wait, and wait. In the army there had been an expression: Hurry up and wait. This summed up his position right now. He was feeling edgy, powerless, out of sorts. Barrett had not slept properly for too long – years – and when he did go under for a couple of hours there was always a horrifying nightmare waiting for him. This grotesque underworld consisted of violence, appalling violence – of Barrett defending himself with a pistol that either jammed or ran out of bullets. Visions of psychopaths loomed over him, telling him he was going to die. Almost invariably he was trying to get somewhere – why, he never knew – but it was clear he was never going to make it.
When his eyes were wide open the real world didn’t look much better: ‘Duane’ was on the loose, he was armed up, committed. He knew where Bunny was, and could dictate terms; they, on the other hand, were on the back foot, reacting rather than initiating. And the fact that he had Geoff’s gun was a bleakly ominous sign. Barrett had a bad feeling – as if the program was already written. He felt like a ’roo caught in the spotlight, unable to move. He walked around the place, trying to get his head in order – and then the phone trilled again. He snatched up the receiver.
‘Pike speaking.’
‘Barrett?’
A woman. No, not just a woman – Mai Ling King.
‘Mai Ling? Is that you?’
‘Yes.’ It was a quivering voice, full of fear.
‘What’s wrong? Are you all right?’
‘… I need help. I need you to come. Please.’
‘What is it? Diaz?’
‘Please – come now. I’m frightened … frightened to death.’
‘Are you at home?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Give me the address.’
She told him the name and number of a street in Bondi Junction, which he scribbled on his palm with a felt-tipped pen.
‘Mai Ling – is anyone with you?’
‘… No. I am alone. But please hurry, Barrett. I don’t know what to do. I’m going to be killed.’ There was a click, then the soft burr of a dial tone in his ear.
He pulled on some jeans, an old pair of sneakers and a black leather jacket over the T-shirt. On the bed next to him, still in its shoulder holster, was his Sig, which he had worn to the village. He withdrew the heavy piece, hefted it, checked the action, sliding a round into the breech, set safety and put it in th
e inside pocket of the jacket. It was a fine piece, which he had purchased second-hand via an advertisement in Shooters Journal. In Barrett’s opinion it was hard to go past a 92F Beretta, but the Sig was good value. So … what else would he need? A little insurance wouldn’t go astray, stashed in a very personal place – a place where no macho man is going to search. On the way out he picked up his phone from the kitchen bench and slipped it in a side pocket.
In the car he wondered, for an instant, what in the hell he was doing. But thoughts of Mai Ling were soon supplanted by the image of his dead wife, Karen, being run off a country road and smashed to pieces while Barrett was too far away to do anything about it. It was a guilt trip he had lived with ever since. Barrett Pike could not forgive, nor forget, and nor could he rewrite history. The immutable fact was that he couldn’t have helped his wife because he wasn’t there. No matter how often he re-enacted the trauma in his mind, the outcome was identical. Mai Ling, however, was alive. If he could save her … if he could do something to right the wrong in her life, then maybe – maybe – he could claw a little bit back from that black time when all he wanted to do was send a bullet crashing through the roof of his mouth.
19
Bondi Junction – not quite Bondi Beach – was a middle-class residential and shopping suburb full of rendered brick homes and flaky blocks of apartments that the realtors were fond of calling ‘original’. It also boasted a vast, windy canyon of a bus terminus. Nonetheless, properties here went for ridiculously large sums. The Junction was not within a bull’s roar of the world-famous beach, but having the word ‘Bondi’ in its name made it desirable. Barrett, who would be looking for somewhere to live in a few months, had given it some thought – along with Palm Beach, Coogee, Cronulla and half-a-dozen other places – but it was all academic, since he lacked the brass to buy in. The seventy-five thousand dollar bounty for protecting Bunny would be a big help, but that was nowhere near in the bag yet.
In the dark, the streets of Bondi Junction looked like anywhere else – dead, still, silent, only the squares of yellow light providing a glimpse of private lives. Apartment blocks everywhere. Barrett had reached the right street, Madison Boulevard, and now he cruised, looking for the number. It was a long, divided street that ascended a steep hill and then fell away in the direction of the sea. When he was halfway up the hill he stopped, shone a flashlight on the nearest house and ascertained that he was still well short of the address. At least he was looking on the right side of the road. He crested the rise and eased down it, stopping now and then to look at numbers, then pulled up. Ahead of him was a house with a porch light on. There was a light on inside, too, on the left side of the porch, illuminating the uneven slats of a Venetian blind. There was no car in the driveway. No people anywhere. He reached under the seat, grabbed a tyre iron. Stepping out of his car he felt as if he were the last man alive. Removing his leather jacket, he tossed it in the back seat, then activated the car alarm and put the keys in his pocket. The Sig Sauer he had wedged tightly in the back of his jeans; he pulled his shirt loose to cover it and made towards the house.
Hard Yards Page 20