Silent Kill

by Peter Corris

  ‘They didn’t know that I was documenting everything. And they were desperate. Politicians are always manoeuvring and they know when their days are numbered. The right move by those three could save their careers.’

  ‘Not now,’ I said.

  ‘No, I’m on the nose now, but they’ll be shitting themselves and so will their . . . sponsors. If those politicians go down they’ll want to take people with them.’

  Dave was sceptical. ‘What can they do?’

  ‘You don’t understand politicians. They’re snakes, treacherous bastards, that’s how they get where they are. They know people have the dirt on them and they fucking get as much dirt as they can back. They boast about it; they give you hints.’

  ‘And you were ready to deal with them. What happened to the tribune of the people?’

  O’Hara refilled his mug. He drank some coffee that must have been lukewarm but he didn’t seem to care. He shook his head as if he were dismissing his whole activist reputation and career. ‘The tribune had a lot of money, then he didn’t. That made the difference.’

  Dave waved his hand at the room. ‘This costs a bit.’

  ‘It’s all on Penelope’s dime,’ O’Hara said. ‘She had some cash hoarded. Don’t ask me why. Anyway, she’s got all that compromising stuff stashed somewhere in Sydney. We knew the people behind Bright would come looking for us so we did the flit to here to lie low, let things cool down and think what to do next. Pen persuaded Gordon Glassop to get us false IDs. He didn’t take much persuading. He asked for some money, not a lot.’

  I nodded. ‘Not a bad plan, but you left too much of a trail.’

  ‘Yeah. Bright must have known that I liked boxing and looked for me there. Shit, he was intimidating. All he wanted to know about was the evidence. He had a gun and a nasty-looking knife. He scared the shit out of me and he . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He came on to Penelope, I remember that.’

  ‘What d’you mean, you remember?’

  O’Hara dropped his head, stared into his empty mug. ‘I’ve been drinking a lot. I was in AA for a while and got it under control but all this freaked me. I was more or less drunk when I went to the boxing. When I got back and he turned up I was pretty useless. I don’t know what he did to Pen but she told him she had the evidence stashed. Bright bashed me and when I woke up they were gone.’

  ‘So you took off your clothes and got really drunk?’

  ‘I told you I freaked. What else was there to do?’

  ‘Are you saying she went willingly?’

  He shrugged and the action hurt him and resparked the anger in me. He touched the side of his head and closed his eyes briefly. ‘Women,’ he said. ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Stashed the evidence where?’ I said.

  ‘No idea. She’s a complete mystery to me.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘She just sort of arrived when I was starting on this new track. Just making noises. She sort of took over things, you know? The way women can. She really pushed things along, set up meetings, kept minutes, handled the tax side. I tried to screw her, of course, but no dice. Then Kelly happened along and I sort of enjoyed playing them off against each other.’

  Dave gave a snort of disgust and got up to look out the window as some clouds came across and the light dimmed.

  ‘In Wollongong she told me she was in love with you,’ I said.

  ‘Is that right? Clive told me she was giving Bright the eye back then. It looked to me as if she was interested in you.’

  ‘You’re painting her as a conspirator from the start.’

  ‘I just don’t know. Maybe.’

  We sat in silence for a while with O’Hara sipping cold coffee, Dave tracing pictures with his finger in the dust on the window and me thinking hard.

  ‘Okay, Rory. Who’re the politicians and who’re the sponsors?’

  ‘Fuck you. I’m not going to tell you and I’m going to have a drink.’

  I nodded. What did I care? I was focused now on Bright and Pen, nothing else. ‘Before you do, who recommended Penelope to you?’

  O’Hara limped to the bar. He’d recovered his stick and it tapped the floor. He slopped a big measure of Johnnie Walker Black Label into his coffee mug, took a long pull and raised the mug in a kind of salute.

  ‘Jack Buchanan,’ he said. ‘Or Harry Jacobs, or both. I honestly forget. Won’t do you any good though—Jack’s a financial train wreck since he lost out big time in an arbitration and Jacobs took off for Israel the minute he came out on top. Presumably to thank Jehovah at the Wailing Wall.’

  13

  O’Hara had nothing more to add. I asked him what he was going to do next.

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say and shrugged.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said, and added more scotch to his mug.

  ‘He’s a miserable piece of work,’ Dave said as we drove away.

  ‘Different man from the one I met at the beginning of this. He was brim-full of confidence, hot to trot.’

  ‘Hard to believe. I’ll ask you what you asked him—what’re you gonna do?’

  ‘Find Bright and the woman.’

  Dave muttered something in his own language and I asked him what it meant.

  ‘Big country,’ he said.

  * * *

  I paid Dave his standard time rate and for his expenses—use of his vehicle and advice. He told me he and Tania were getting married at the end of the year and that I’d be invited. ‘Where will you go for your honeymoon?’ I asked.

  ‘Bali, where else?’

  I checked out of the Capricornia in the morning and caught a noon flight back to Sydney. On the way I went over everything I could remember of my contact with Penelope Milton-Smith, which didn’t amount to more than a few hours in all. She’d said she would put Jack Buchanan at the top of the list of people who might have had it in for O’Hara because he had marketing rights on him and, like Elvis and John Lennon, he’d be worth more dead than alive. But that could’ve been disinformation.

  She’d clearly known what O’Hara was going to say about his political ambitions, but hadn’t even given me a hint. I’d thought she was sincere when she told me she was in love with O’Hara but, as someone said—was it Richard Nixon?—if you can fake sincerity you’ve got it made.

  Pen’s distress when Kelly was abducted seemed genuine too, but that could have been faked as well, or a surprise because it was an interruption to an earlier plan. She hadn’t come on to me in the slightest way, but she hadn’t needed to. I’d been attracted to her and when that happens the antennae go down and you see and hear what you want to see and hear.

  That led me to thinking about Bright, with whom I’d scarcely had any contact at all. He’d pulled the wool over a few people’s eyes and shown himself to be resourceful and ruthless. But he’d also shown patience and restraint with O’Hara and it was uncertain quite how he’d handled Penelope. Ruthlessness and restraint were dangerous attributes in the one package. Combine that with the support of powerful business interests and it added up to a formidable opponent.

  Back in Sydney, I had the uncomfortable task of reporting to Neville Kim. I didn’t have much to show for his considerable outlay of funds except confirmation that politics and money lay behind the killing of his sister.

  As before, we met over coffee in the city. He didn’t seem overly disappointed.

  ‘It would help to know the names of the politicians,’ he said. ‘Their connections could be traced.’

  ‘Too hard the other way around.’

  He smiled. ‘True. We businessmen have to keep many channels open, and many tributaries to those channels. How do you propose to proceed?’

  ‘You want me to go on, to look for a resourceful and well-financed man and a woman whose actions and motivations are a mystery?’

  ‘Of course. Isn’t that what you do?’

  I said it was; what I didn’t say
was that it was about as big a challenge as I could remember facing.

  Jack Buchanan. Things seemed to keep circling back to him and one thing was for sure—he hadn’t been straight with me from the beginning. It was time to sort him out. His office was in Randwick; I knew he lived in one of the beachside suburbs but I didn’t know which. I felt pretty sure that, after our last conversation, he wouldn’t want to see me. But how strongly would he feel about that? I parked across from the exit to the car park under his office block and rang on my mobile.

  ‘Mr Buchanan’s office.’

  ‘This is Cliff Hardy. I’d like to talk to Jack.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr . . . Hardy, Mr Buchanan’s not in the office today. Can I take a message?’

  Her voice had the unmistakable tone of someone telling a pre-programmed lie.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe you. Tell him I’m in my office and he can call me there. If he doesn’t, I’m coming to Randwick and I’m not in a good mood.’

  She didn’t respond and I hung up.

  Ten minutes later Jack’s silver Alfa emerged from the car park and headed east. Late afternoon traffic in the eastern suburbs is as heavy as anywhere else in Sydney, but it tends to be more polite—more women driving, and more people driving expensive cars they don’t want to damage. Jack was an exception; he drove in an ill-tempered, stop-start fashion, bullying the women in the SUVs and competing with the men in the other up-market imports. The style really gains you no advantage; you tend to end up with your competitors at the same sets of light. But it made him easy to follow from back in the body of the traffic.

  We were heading towards Bronte when my mobile rang. I had it slotted into the hands-free set-up and I answered.

  ‘Mr Hardy, this is Kathy Mason, Mr Buchanan’s secretary. I thought I should warn you. Mr Buchanan has been acting very strangely in the last few days and he bolted from the office after you rang and took a gun with him. I saw it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  Somehow I forced a laugh. ‘Jack was a stuntman, as you probably know. It won’t be a real gun. I wouldn’t worry. I’ll call his mobile and I’ll see him at home. We’ll sort it out. I’ll let you know what happens.’

  ‘If you’re sure . . .’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘He thinks a lot of you, Mr Hardy. He has a photo of the two of you on his wall.’

  ‘Does he? Well, there you are. It’ll be all right. Thank you, Kathy.’

  The water came into view, sparkling under a blue-sky break in what had been an overcast day. The Alfa made a turn ahead of me and I was blocked off by a council truck backing slowly out of a lane. I fretted while the reversing signal bleeped at me. If there was anyone who knew his way with guns it was Jack. His gun would be the real thing, but why?

  The Alfa pulled up in front of a semi-detached house in a quiet street a block back from the water. Jack got out of the car to unlock the gate so he could park in a paved area in front of the house. I pulled up behind him.

  ‘Jack!’

  He whirled around, his old instincts not forgotten, and whipped out a pistol.

  ‘Don’t move, Cliff. I swear I’ll shoot you. They got to you, didn’t they?’

  ‘Who got to me? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I want to ask you stuff about O’Hara.’

  ‘Have you got a gun?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Show me.’

  I turned out the linings of the pockets in my jacket and opened it to show him I had no shoulder holster. I turned around slowly so he could see I didn’t have a gun in my belt at the back. If he was worried about an ankle gun he was even crazier than he seemed.

  ‘Better put the piece away, Jack. Neighbours could be watching. You know how things are these days. They’d be on to the terrorist hotline in a flash.’

  His pistol disappeared and he was the business-suited executive again, opening his gate.

  ‘You came close then, Hardy,’ he said. ‘I’ve been under a lot of pressure. Anyway, I don’t want to talk to you. Piss off.’ ‘You know me, Jack. I won’t give you a minute’s peace.’

  ‘More gossip, is that what you want? I suppose you saw Kelly?’

  ‘She was very helpful.’

  ‘Fuck you. We’d better bloody get it over with.’

  He drove in; I backed away and parked in the street. I followed him up a bricked path to the front of the house, staying a judicious distance away in case he tried one of his commando tricks. His shoulders were slumped as he fumbled with the door key. Not the Jack of old. The house had the cold, echoing feel of emptiness.

  ‘Wife left when the judgment went against me, the bitch.’

  His third or fourth wife. Nothing to say to that. We went down the passage, passing three doors, to a kitchen at the back of the house. There was a glassed-in sun porch beyond that and then a smallish paved courtyard.

  ‘Say nice place and I’ll pull out the gun and shoot you.’

  ‘Take it easy, Jack,’ I said. ‘What made you think I’d been got at by someone? Who?’

  He explained that he’d borrowed money to finance his legal battle with Harry Jacobs on the expectation that he’d win. He lost, and applied for more money to launch an appeal. That was refused and the original loan was being called in.

  ‘Who by?’ I said.

  By this time we were sitting around a pine table in the kitchen drinking wine. Jack put his Glock on the table next to his glass.

  ‘Some Lebs,’ he said. ‘You had dealings with them a few years ago, I heard.’

  He was right. It was a tricky case involving a rogue cop, but it had left me at serious odds with a criminal Lebanese family, rather than allied with them, and I told Jack so.

  He shrugged. ‘You’re for hire. I couldn’t be sure. They’re after me for the money, one way or another.’

  I knew what he meant. There’s all sorts of ways to threaten, coerce and use people. Suddenly Jack sat bolt upright in his chair.

  ‘Where’s Roxy?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My dog, she should . . .’ He sprang up and bolted out through the sun porch door to the courtyard. I heard a low, agonised groan and when I got outside I found Jack sitting on the ground with a dog in his lap. It was a big dog, a German shepherd, light brown and black. A large pool of blood had spread over the crazy paving.

  Jack rocked backward and forward.

  ‘Those murdering wog bastards,’ he moaned.

  14

  I’d owned three dogs in my young life and I remembered the pain of losing them. One, a terrific border collie-kelpie cross named Jem after Jem Ward, a gypsy bare-knuckle prizefighter I’d read about, had been killed by a bull terrier and I’d had to be restrained by my father from taking a baseball bat to the culprit and its owner. Jack’s dog had obviously been shot; two dark holes were visible in its light pelt, precisely placed to hit the heart. I glanced up and around. There were tall blocks of flats in three directions with clear views down into the courtyard.

  I persuaded Jack to come back into the house. Got him some brandy and calmed him down. He was limp. Defeated.

  ‘What am I going to do?’

  ‘How much do you owe them?’

  ‘A million plus.’

  ‘What’s this place worth?’

  ‘A million five, around that. There’s water views from two rooms built into the roof.’

  ‘Do you own it outright?’

  He nodded. ‘From my big earning days.’

  ‘What about the wife?’

  He laughed. He’d drunk the first slug of Hennessy and was working on a second. ‘We had a pre-nup. She’s got more than me.’

  ‘My advice would be to sell it, pay them, and start again.’

  He glared at me, his eyes beginning to take on a malevolent glow. ‘Is that what you did?’

  ‘Not quite. Something like it.’

  ‘You smug cocksucker. Sorry, didn’t mean that. Probably go
od advice. I’m tired, Cliff. What was it you wanted from me?’

  I asked him how Penelope Milton-Smith had got the job with O’Hara.

  ‘I put her up for it,’ he said. ‘She was on my books as a motivational speaker. She was bloody good, too.’

  ‘I imagine so. Did she ask for it?’

  ‘Yeah, I think she did. Why?’

  ‘Never mind. I have to find her. Can you think of anything she told you, or anything in her background that might help me?’

  ‘You’d be wasting your time.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘She was bloody good-looking. Well, you know that. I tried to make her but I got nowhere. I think she might be a dyke.’

  ‘I want to find her, not fuck her.’

  ‘Did you fuck Kelly?’

  ‘No. Get your mind off sex. This is business.’

  ‘You’re a cold bastard when you want to be. All right, let me think. I remember a talk she gave to some corporate types about multiculturism. She said her parents had arrived from Greece without a word of English. They’d worked at all sorts of jobs, got some money together and opened a restaurant in . . . shit, where was it? Brighton-le-Sands, that’s it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She said she grew up there, in a little flat above the restaurant that never made any money. Her father died, she said, and her mother kept the place going and still does. She said she sees her mother every week, or talks to her, without fail.’

  ‘Was that true?’

  ‘She’s a great actress if it wasn’t. She had them practically weeping.’

  ‘Name of the restaurant?’

  ‘Same as her maiden name, Marino . . . Marinos. That’s it. Marinos.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  He shook his head and sucked down more brandy. ‘Go away.’

  * * *

  It wasn’t much but it was something. It was easy enough to locate the address of the restaurant on the Esplanade at Brighton-le-Sands. It had got dark while I was with Jack. I’m fond of Greek food; time to combine business with pleasure. I drove to the suburb, put the car in a massive parking station, bought a bottle of cleanskin white wine at Coles Liquorland and walked a block to the restaurant.