Silent Kill

by Peter Corris

  ‘Take it easy, Pen. Payback for that’s what we’re on about now.’

  ‘I wonder why he killed her.’

  ‘I think you’d have to say he has difficulty relating to women.’

  I told her what Kelly had said about Bright’s behaviour towards her and Melanie Kim. She shook her head and turned her attention to the material she’d printed out.

  We worked through it for a couple of hours, drank wine and made notes. The politicians had standard careers—the ALP guy came from a union to a staff position with another MP until he got his slot. The National had a farming background and a degree in accounting. The Liberal had been a corporate lawyer who showed persistence by standing four times in elections and by-elections before winning his seat.

  Their connections with businesses of one kind or another went back to their earliest years. Cartwright had been a go-between several times in disputes between waterside workers and stevedoring companies; Featherstone had worked for mining companies and sat on several of their boards; Polking–horn had been retained by a number of major companies and had successfully defended a big pharmaceutical firm in an action brought against them for marketing a dangerous product.

  The researchers had uncovered existing connections—retainers not listed in declarations of interest, dodgy family trusts, family members in sinecures, favourable treatment by banks and credit-card companies, two DUI charges not proceeded with, an apprehended violence order violated but not followed up.

  ‘Plenty of skeletons in those cupboards,’ Pen said. ‘Hard to say which is the most likely.’

  I’d pushed the papers aside and was staring at the empty bottle.

  ‘What? You reckon we should open another one?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Something just struck me. Bright really screwed up when he grabbed Kelly and killed Melanie Kim.’ ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He was working for someone then. He said he was. But would you keep him on after that? After he’d gone so far off the rails?’

  ‘I suppose not. What’re you saying?’

  ‘Maybe he’s not working for anyone now. Maybe he’s gone freelance.’

  17

  ‘Makes it harder,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Hard to guess what he’ll do with the information. Would he sell it and, if so, who to? His former employer? Maybe, maybe not. Or perhaps he’d settle for blackmailing the pollies.’

  Pen said, ‘I hate the thought of him out there doing what he likes.’

  ‘We don’t know enough about him,’ I said. ‘This is going to be hard on you but you spent time with him in three phases, as it were—as the IT guy, as the heavy in Darwin, and later . . . travelling.’

  ‘Delicately put.’

  ‘Sorry. I said it wouldn’t be easy. Try to remember everything you can about him—mannerisms, the things he said, what he ate, what he drank. What he watched on TV or showed an interest in. Anything that might help us get a handle on him. Can you do that?’

  ‘I suppose. Rory spent almost as much time with him, more in Darwin.’

  ‘That’s true and I’m told he’s left Darwin. Where would he go now that the Bright threat’s lifted?’

  ‘Home, I imagine, to lick his wounds. No, he put it on the market before we took off and he put all the furniture in storage.’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘Friends, perhaps. But I don’t know any of them.’

  ‘Jack might have some idea.’

  ‘Hold on. I remember that he had to see his surgeon for the last day of this month. I kept track of his appointments. That’s the day after tomorrow. He was worried about missing it because he thought his leg wasn’t coming along as well as it should.’

  ‘Would he help us?’

  ‘If there was something in it for him.’

  She said O’Hara had been due to see his surgeon at 10.30 am at the Royal Prince Alfred Medical Centre in Camperdown.

  We called it a day. We ate and watched TV. Pen tired quickly. She said she’d try to recollect everything she could about Bright after she’d had a sleep. I looked through the printout sheets and the notes we’d made without achieving any enlightenment. Of the politicians I disliked Polkinghorn the most because of his merchant bank connection and his defence of the pharmaceutical company. But that could just have been prejudice due to my resentment at the number of pills I had to take following my heart bypass.

  As I was getting ready for bed I remembered what my chemist had said when I told him how boring taking the pills was. His reply was very like Wes Scott’s.

  ‘Be more boring out at Rookwood.’

  I was smiling at that as I went to sleep. I woke up to feel the covers being raised and Pen slipping in beside me. She curled herself into my back.

  ‘Just for the warmth and the company,’ she said.

  She’d left the bed when I woke up and I could hear Kasey Chambers’s voice coming from below and smell coffee. I showered and dressed and found her in the kitchen drinking coffee and munching toast.

  She waved her piece of toast. ‘D’you usually sleep this late?’

  ‘No, I usually get up at first light, do a hundred push-ups and jog five kilometres.’

  ‘I doubt that, but you’re in pretty good shape for an older guy.’

  ‘Thanks. It was nice having you there last night.’

  ‘Did me good. I’m not going to be one of those raped women who can’t bear to look at or think of a man ever again.’

  ‘Good.’

  I had some breakfast and then we went up the street to get the papers and more coffee. She watched me swallow four pills.

  ‘I’d like to collect my car,’ she said. ‘Have a bit of independence. Will you drive me to Bondi?’

  ‘Sure. Independence? Do you want to find somewhere to stay?’

  ‘Are you kicking me out?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Fine. I’m sticking with you until we see this thing through. I’ve been thinking about Bright and his habits. He has a slight accent. It’s faint but it’s there. Russian, at a guess. I know a bit about accents.’

  I nodded. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Don’t jump up and down with excitement, will you? The only other thing is I saw him doing martial arts moves. You know—kicks and jumps. His hands . . . are very strong and hard.’

  She was recovering a bit of the waspish part of her temperament but she was still quite vulnerable.

  ‘That could be very useful,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t . . . I was going to say don’t patronise me. Sorry, I’m being a bitch this morning. Know why?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I’ve usually had a drink by this time, maybe two. I’m going to try to cut it down. Do you think that’s a good idea, Cliff?’ ‘It is, and it’s bloody hard to do. Join the club.’

  We drove to Bondi. She opened the garage and backed out a sporty VW Golf. We drove off, parked side by side down near the beach and walked along the concourse. There was a sharp wind; Pen wore a pea jacket I hadn’t seen for years. It was too long in the sleeve for her and too wide in the shoulders but not by that much. She matched me stride for stride.

  ‘Sorry to keep taking you back to it, but you said Bright drove to your lock-up in Bondi.’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Did he know the way?’

  ‘Oh, I see. Yes, like the back of his hand.’

  Seeing the garage and knowing what had happened there brought up another question I’d been meaning to ask.

  ‘Pen, why didn’t you keep a copy, or copies?’

  ‘Tried to. I transferred everything to Rory’s computer to put it on a flash drive but the computer crashed and corrupted the stuff on Rory’s machine. I didn’t have another flash drive at the time so the data on my computer and the flash drive was all we had. I got caught up in all the arrangements for the tour and didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t think it was all that important just then. I didn’t know Rory was going to talk a
bout his plans. I used an iPad for the routine stuff.’

  I could understand that. My backing up has always been erratic. I checked that Pen had her key and she went shopping for clothes. I drove to Newtown and visited Megan and Ben. Pen came back with bags and parcels and changed into fresh clothes and new shoes. We ate, and both drank less than we wanted to. We listened to some music and went to bed together. We lay with our arms around each other.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said.

  ‘Okay.’

  But it wasn’t okay. I wanted her badly and it sharpened my determination to find Bright and see how he got on when he had more than terrified women and a drunk to deal with.

  At ten-forty-five the next morning I was standing a little way along the corridor from the rooms of Dr Patrick Ross, orthopaedic surgeon, in the RPA Medical Centre. I’d been sitting in the coffee shop behind a newspaper since nine-thirty and had seen O’Hara arrive. He still looked puffy in the face, but he’d shaved and had his hair cut and styled in a way that at least partially concealed the retreating hairline.

  He went to the X-ray unit as Pen had told me he would, and came out twenty-five minutes later carrying the X-rays in a bag. Then he caught the lift. At ten-fifteen I’d drifted past Dr Ross’s glass door and seen Rory was the only patient waiting. He was gone by ten-thirty and I guessed his consultation wouldn’t take more than thirty minutes. He’d seemed to be walking pretty easily without putting much weight on the stick. He wore a suit and tie, polished shoes.

  At a little after eleven he came out looking pleased with himself. He was carrying the stick rather than using it. I let him walk a few strides before stepping in front of him.

  ‘Hello, Rory, X-rays good, were they?’

  He stopped and his cheerful look fell away. ‘Hardy. What the hell are you doing here?’

  He lifted the stick as if to use it as a weapon but changed his mind.

  ‘I’m here to ask for your help.’

  He tried to brush past me. ‘Not a chance.’

  I crowded him against the wall. ‘If you don’t agree I’ll break your other leg and you can go right back in and see Dr Ross.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  The corridor was empty. I grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and dragged him into the disabled toilet. I locked the door and wedged him between the toilet and washbasin with the support bar biting into his spine. I took his stick away and held him by the shoulders.

  ‘Enough pressure this way and the right leg goes or maybe just the knee; the other way and you’re back in rehab again for the left leg.’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  I exerted some pressure and he yelped.

  ‘I’m not mad, but I am angry.’

  I pushed a little harder and he started to shake, which made it worse.

  ‘Okay, okay, whatever you say. What do you want?’

  ‘A couple of things. You’re going to come with me. We’ll meet up with Penelope and we’ll take it from there. You remember her, don’t you?’

  I released him and he drew in a deep breath. ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Worried about her, were you?’

  ‘I’m worried about every fucking thing. I don’t know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Well, here’s a chance for you to do something useful.’

  I shepherded him out of the building and across to where I’d parked. He offered no resistance. He’d arrived by cab. He said he hadn’t driven since his accident and that he’d lost his nerve for driving in Sydney’s traffic. All of a sudden he seemed to need his stick again for support.

  He was silent on the short drive to Glebe except to ask what had happened to Pen and how she was. I told him I’d let her answer that. He noticed the Golf parked outside my place. We went into the house and through to the living room where Pen was sitting in a chair, turning the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald. O’Hara stopped in his tracks and Pen let the paper slide from her lap to the floor. They exchanged the look of lovers when the thrill is gone.

  ‘You two have a chat,’ I said. ‘I’ve got some calls to make.’ I went upstairs and hung around for a few minutes. Their voices were low at first but rose as the talk became heated and some bitter things started to be said.

  I came down to find O’Hara sitting on the couch massaging his leg. Pen had picked up the paper and laid it aside. She was staring, stone-faced, at the bank of CDs and DVDs. I knew that she wanted a drink. I winked at her.

  ‘Let’s have a drink,’ I said.

  I went to the kitchen, opened a bottle of red and poured three glasses. I left the bottle in the kitchen and put the glasses on the coffee table. I sat in a chair opposite Pen, who picked up her glass and took a small sip. O’Hara drank his off in a gulp and seemed to regain a bit of his spirit.

  ‘You’re fucking this gorilla, are you?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Pen said.

  ‘This is how I see it,’ I said. ‘There’ve been some casualties since you started playing your tricky games. You’re one yourself, with the leg, and there’s the IT guy Bright nobbled; but Melanie Kim’s dead, Kelly’s got a serious coke problem and now you know what happened to Pen. I reckon you have some responsibility here.’

  O’Hara fiddled with his empty glass. ‘You could say that. Are you appealing to my better nature?’

  ‘I think you’ve probably got one somewhere, but you’re a mess and you’ll stay that way until this is cleared up.’

  ‘Cleared up how?’

  ‘By putting Bright out of action and reclaiming all that dirt and data you gathered and . . . decommissioning it. Then you’d have a clean slate and could start putting your life back together again. You’ve got talents.’

  ‘Can I have another drink?’

  ‘We’re going slow, Pen and me. You could do the same.’

  ‘Shit, you’re a moralistic bastard.’

  ‘He’s just applying the pressure, Rory,’ Pen said. ‘You used to say you were good at handling pressure.’

  ‘I thought I was. I’m not so sure now.’

  ‘Let’s start off easy,’ I said. ‘When I asked Pen to tell me everything she could about Bright, one of the things was that he went through some martial arts exercises. That’s all we have apart from knowing he’s left-handed and has a slight accent.’

  ‘Hapkido.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a Korean martial arts style. I was chatting to Bright before all this shit happened, about the only time I talked to him then, and I just mentioned that I’d done karate when I was younger. Can’t remember why. Anyway, he virtually sneered at me and said it was for wimps and that he did this hapkido. I looked it up—it’s very violent, so violent the people doing it have to be well padded to avoid crippling each other.’

  I looked at Pen. ‘A Russian who practises hapkido. Can’t be too many places around that cater to that stuff.’

  ‘So I’ve been helpful,’ O’Hara said and he held up his glass. I took it out to the kitchen and refilled it. They didn’t speak to each other while I was gone.

  ‘Yeah, that was helpful,’ I said. ‘But there’s more you can do.’

  ‘Shit, what else?’

  ‘I want you standing by. If I can’t find Bright with the information we’ve got, you’re going to help me flush him out.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Because if you do I’ll help you to become a celebrity all over again.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Wait and see.’

  18

  O’Hara was staying with a friend in Haberfield. He gave us the address, the landline and his mobile number. I called him a cab and he left, summoning up some reserves of dignity.

  ‘How are you going to make him a celebrity again?’ Pen said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You were bluffing? That’s devious; you might even say ruthless. He’s in a pretty bad way.’

  ‘Maybe, but I wanted to keep him on tap and that seemed the best way to do it. What was the verbal st
oush about?’

  ‘He was trying to persuade me to come back to him.’

  ‘You can’t do that. I’ve got work for you to do.’

  She laughed. ‘You,’ she said. ‘Okay, what work?’

  I told her that we’d have to try to find all the places in Sydney where hapkido was taught or practised.

  ‘Can’t be many, from the sound of it,’ she said. ‘Web job. You can do that.’

  ‘Right. And then we have to go to those places to see if Bright is on their books. You’ll have to do the asking.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re more likely to respond to a woman than a man, especially a good-looking one. Did you buy any . . . fancy clothes?’ ‘D’you mean sexy?’

  ‘I suppose I do.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You’d better get some. You’ll have to be disguised in case Bright is actually on the spot. You’ll need a wig.’

  Her bruises were fading but still visible. She touched her face.

  ‘Heavy makeup,’ I said. ‘More disguise.’

  She said she knew where to buy a wig and went off to do it. I got on the web and searched for hapkido in Sydney, coming up with only three gyms—in Crows Nest, Stanmore and Auburn. I wrote down the addresses and waited for Pen to come back. She walked in wearing a black wig and dark glasses that transformed her. She laughed at my reaction.

  ‘Wait till I get dressed,’ she said.

  ‘Look, there’s no rush. It’s lunchtime.’

  ‘Fuck lunch. Let’s get going.’

  She hadn’t quite finished the wine from before. I drank it. After what seemed like an hour but probably wasn’t, she came down the stairs, treading slowly and carefully. She reached the bottom, pirouetted and posed. She wore a tight, low-cut print top under a skimpy, shiny leather jacket; an impossibly short black skirt, black tights and stilettos. The black hair was a wild riot of shapes and her makeup was bold. She fluttered false eyelashes.

  ‘Too tarty?’ she said.

  I cleared my throat. ‘No, just right.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  I showed her the list. ‘You choose.’