by Peter Corris
I sat at one of the empty tables and ordered a glass of red wine. One waiter was doing all the work. He was fat and bald with a fierce moustache and a brusque manner.
‘The kitchen is closing in ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Do you wish to eat?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Are you intending to play? You are waiting for someone, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps.’
He shrugged, went to the bar and poured the wine. He brought it to me, hovered for a few seconds and walked away. Several of the diners looked at me curiously; the chess players didn’t. I drank some of the wine, which wasn’t very good. I got the newspaper photograph of Bright/Balakin from my wallet and put it on the table along with my PIA licence. The waiter couldn’t resist. He came over with a cloth to wipe nonexistent spots from the empty table next to me.
There was a buzz of conversation from the diners loud enough to keep what I said to the waiter private. I took out a $50 note and caught his eye.
‘I’m looking for this man.’ I put my finger on the photo. ‘Do you know him?’
He glanced around the room but said nothing. I added another fifty. He was tempted but he resisted.
‘Police?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Probably something more bad. Go away.’
‘There could be more money.’
‘Drink your wine and leave!’ He flicked the towel, sending the photo, money and licence folder to the floor. I collected the things, preserving as much dignity as you can bent double. One of the chess players picked up the photo, which had drifted towards his table. He looked at it briefly before returning it. I thanked him, left the wine and walked out.
The waiter’s reaction seemed excessive to me. I thought about it as I made my way back to the car. If the waiter did know Balakin, talked to him and described me to him, Balakin would know who I was. That could be a good thing if I was willing to be the Judas goat. Was I? I wasn’t sure.
When I reached the dark street where I’d parked I became aware of someone close behind me. Had the waiter had time to contact Balakin and put him on my track? Only if Balakin had been close by. Or had Balakin simply been in the vicinity and spotted me? I tensed myself for an attack. I didn’t reach for my keys. A street fighter keeps his arms loose and his hands free. When I sensed the person was less than a couple of metres away I spun around and stepped forward. Momentum is everything.
It wasn’t Balakin. The young man halted and held a hand up defensively, making a cringing half turn away from my aggressive advance.
‘Jesus,’ he gasped, ‘go easy.’
I stepped back and let him straighten up. There wasn’t much light in the street, but up close I saw enough to recognise him as the one who’d picked up the photo of Balakin from the floor.
‘You scared the shit out of me,’ he said.
‘Dark street, late night. Dumb behaviour on your part. You know Stefan Balakin, don’t you?’
‘What if I do?’
I took out my licence and let my jacket fall open so he could see the holstered pistol.
‘I need to find him,’ I said. ‘And if you help me I won’t have you charged with assault or do unpleasant things to you right here and now.’
‘How about the money? I saw you flashing a hundred bucks.’
‘That’s more like it,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk.’
We went to a coffee shop in Bondi Road. He told me his name was Vane Goldman, that his mother was Russian and that he played regularly at the Kiev Café for money.
‘I played this guy, the one in your photograph, a couple of weeks ago and beat him. He lost five hundred bucks.’
‘You must be good.’
‘I am.’
‘And he only spoke Russian while you were playing?’
‘That’s right. How did you know?’
‘I know. Why did you come after me?’
‘I’m sorry. I was frustrated. I just wanted to talk to you, see what you were on about. Stefan said he’d pay me and he hasn’t. I need the money. I’m a student and winning money at chess is how I keep going, partly.’
‘Have you got any way of getting in touch with him?’
He’d regained his confidence but not all of it. He looked down into his cup. ‘What’s in it for me?’
‘What’re you studying?’
‘I’m doing law at New South.’
‘Perfect fit.’ I took $200 from my wallet and passed it to him.
He grabbed the money. ‘If you shoot him I’m out three hundred bucks.’
‘I’m not going to shoot him. I’ll pay you the rest when I hear something useful.’
‘He . . . he’s thinner than in that photo. He looks a bit different.’
‘I know that. Does he have a regular night at the café?’
Goldman thought about it. ‘I played him on a Thursday. That’s one of my regular nights. I think I saw him there the Thursday before. Yeah, I did. He was winning that night but I thought I’d be able to beat him. His opening—’
‘Don’t bother, I wouldn’t understand.’
‘One other thing I can tell you is that he has this knife strapped to his forearm.’
‘Which forearm?’
He considered. ‘The right, I think. He’s a scary guy.’
‘You weren’t scared to tackle me.’
He shrugged. ‘You’re older. I didn’t know you had a gun and I didn’t realise you’d be so quick and hard.’
I paid for the coffees and took him along to an ATM, where I drew out more of Neville Kim’s money. I gave Goldman another $300 and told him to stay away from the café.
‘What’s it all about?’ he said.
‘You don’t need to know, Alfie.’
‘Alfie?’
‘A joke.’
‘I need to go to the Kiev to win money.’
‘Give me your phone number and I’ll let you know when it’s all clear.’
He gave me a mobile number and I gave him my card. He looked at it uncertainly.
‘Why did you give me this?’
‘When you’re a lawyer you might need me.’
‘I hope not.’
‘What’s the Russian word for knife?’
‘Nozh.’
30
It was messy and I wasn’t happy. Balakin was still around, presumably in the Bondi area, and not hiding. His appearance had changed enough to make him feel safe from the police, who didn’t know his real identity and background anyway. The spooks did but, according to Josh, they were slow to organise themselves. I was best positioned to get him but that position wasn’t secure. The waiter might tip Balakin off about me and so might Goldman, who I’d trust about as much as I would a horoscope.
Staking out the Kiev Café looked to be my best strategy but it wouldn’t be easy and might not yield quick results. I drove home considering the options. Neville Kim had promised help. That could be useful for the stakeout but it meant losing control. Kim was vengeful and I knew nothing about the attitudes of his minions. The more I thought about it the messier it looked.
The house felt emptier than usual. They say that when you can’t sleep you want to eat, a metabolic thing. I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want to eat. I wanted to drink but I didn’t. I thought of Pen and wondered how she was coping with her problems as I sat up, waiting for the dawn.
Of course I did fall asleep, somewhere around 5 am. The phone woke me a few hours later.
‘Hardy,’ I grunted.
‘This is Sean Bright or whatever you might want to call me.’
I came instantly awake. ‘I’d call you Stefan Balakin.’
‘That’ll do for now. You’ve already caused me a lot of trouble. My message to you is, back off.’
‘So you can murder more women?’
‘If I choose to, or maybe your daughter and your grandson. I know where they live.’
‘They won’t be there ten seconds after you hang up.’
‘But I’m right outside
and she’s taking him to the crèche. Nice-looking boy, and she’s cute.’
I was chilled and said nothing.
‘Relax,’ he said, ‘I’m nowhere near Newtown. But you get the point. Back the fuck off!’
The line went dead. I sat listening to the hum and the thumping of my heart. I rang Megan.
‘Where are you?’
‘Home.’
‘Good. Where’s Ben?’
‘In bed sick.’
‘Good.’
‘Good?’ she said. ‘Good?’
I rang off. Thinking started a few seconds after that relief. It had to be the waiter.
Minutes later I was in the car, frowsy, unshaven, with dry, sore eyes and a leg threatening to cramp from the awkward position it had been in while I slept in the chair. I could taste the sourness of my breath. The early morning traffic was heavy; it seemed that every parent in Sydney was taking kids to school in badly driven SUVs.
I parked illegally outside the café. The bottle shop wasn’t open at that hour but the patisserie was trading. I almost knocked down a man carrying his pastries away as I ran from the car into the café entrance. I pounded on the door with my fist. I kept pounding and was aware of people in the street making alarmed noises. The door opened and the fat waiter stood there in his pyjamas. I took a fistful of his pyjama jacket, rammed it into his second chin, and shoved him inside. I kicked the door shut and pushed him, stumbling, up the stairs.
Some lights were on in the café and I heaved him down into a chair. I stood over him. I was breathing hard, barely under control.
‘Stefan Balakin,’ I said. ‘You know him. You’ve spoken to him. Where is he?’
His eyes rolled and blinked as he spluttered in Russian. I swatted him hard with an open hand.
‘English!’
A voice came from the spiral staircase which presumably led to the living area. ‘No need for that, Hardy. I’m right here. I thought you might come running.’
Balakin moved into a pool of light at the bottom of the staircase. Ten kilos lighter and with his hair cropped short, he was only barely recognisable as Sean Bright. He wore a white T-shirt and jeans. A sheathed knife was strapped to his right forearm and in his left hand he held a short-barrelled pistol.
31
A short-barrelled pistol has no range and poor accuracy, but that wasn’t even in my thoughts as I launched a chair at Balakin almost before he’d finished speaking. I followed it, charging at him like a battering ram. The pistol fired twice and I felt heat and sensed something buzzing past me but all my energy was going into crushing Balakin. He’d threatened the two people I cared most about in the world and his little gun was no defence against my anger.
He slammed back against the bar; a stack of glasses crashed to the floor and the pistol flew across the room as he groped for support. I came in low and hooked him in the ribs trying to get his head down so I could use my fist to wreck his jaw and neck. It didn’t work; he had a layer of muscle where my punch landed and the blow hurt me more than him.
The knife was in his hand now and he slashed, laying open the sleeve of my jacket from shoulder to wrist and slicing into my forearm. I scarcely felt the pain as I chopped at the hand holding the knife. He grunted as I connected but he kept his grip and brought the knife down again. It missed my face by a fraction. His knife hand was below waist level now and I grabbed it with both hands and drove it down. The knife dug into his thigh and he screamed as blood spurted like a fountain.
He stumbled sideways, knocking over two chairs and plucking at the knife with shaking hands. It fell free with a new gush of blood. I went after him again and drove a hard right into his sternum. I felt the bone break as he lurched backwards and fell down the stairs. He lay at the bottom near the door, crumpled like a crash-test dummy. He didn’t move.
With blood running from my arm I went down the stairs and examined him. The angle of his head told the story. His neck was broken and he was dead. The blood from his leg wound had stopped spurting.
I went back to the café and found the waiter slumped in his chair. One of the bullets had hit him in the shoulder. He was covered in blood but it was Balakin’s blood, not his own. He was in shock, staring at me and opening and closing his mouth with no sound coming out.
I worked my arms out of my jacket and let it fall to the floor. The cut on my forearm was long but not very deep. Blood was seeping out but not flowing. I went to the bar, grabbed a handful of paper napkins and used them to staunch the blood.
The waiter watched me and when it dawned on him that I wasn’t going to hurt him he held out his hand. I gave him a wad of napkins and he pressed them to his shoulder.
‘My nephew,’ he said.
I nodded. My pulse was slowing, the adrenalin was draining away and I was starting to think. The room was a shambles with overturned chairs, blood everywhere, two wounded men and one dead. A bloodstained knife and a pistol lay on the floor and there was a bullet hole in a wall somewhere. Glass crunched under my feet with every step. Hard to explain and probably impossible to excuse.
I took out my mobile phone. The first thing I did was go halfway down the stairs and take a photograph of Balakin. It was difficult; my right hand throbbed and I could feel the internal damage. I had to use my left. Then I dialled a number.
‘Josh,’ I said. ‘It’s Hardy. I need some help.’
A clean-up team arrived ninety minutes later with Josh himself in command. By this time the waiter, who was actually the owner of the café, had had three vodkas and was feeling no pain. He said Balakin, who he knew by quite a different name, had been a thorn in his side for years. He’d told him about me and Balakin had orchestrated things from that point on.
‘A bad man,’ he said.
He didn’t know how bad. I said, ‘But a good chess player?’
‘Not so good. People were afraid of him.’
‘Not anymore,’ I said.
He said something in Russian that sounded profound.
The team included a doctor who made arrangements for the bullet wound to be treated without being reported. The doctor cleaned and stitched my arm and gave me a tetanus shot and an antibiotic injection.
‘Take it easy for a few days,’ he said.
Josh said, ‘He will.’
They fitted Balakin into a body bag and took him away, who knows where. Then they set about cleaning the café of any signs of disturbance. A .32 bullet was prised out of a wall and the hole filled; the glass was swept up, the floor was swabbed and surfaces were wiped. Josh talked intently to the café owner in Russian, drawing from him nods and what looked like pledges to cooperate.
‘Your people are good,’ I said to Josh.
‘They are, but they’re actually contractors.’
Jones was right, I thought.
It all took hours and I sat there answering questions from Josh. My arm ached and my hand had swollen to nearly twice its normal size. The doctor had examined it roughly and said it was bruised and tendons had been stressed but no bones were broken. Before he left I asked him what had killed Balakin.
He was a hard-eyed type with acne scars and tobacco breath, which he’d unsuccessfully tried to disguise with mints.
‘You did,’ he said. ‘Either by severing an artery in his leg with the knife or by pushing him down the stairs. Take your pick.’
‘He was holding the knife himself,’ I said, ‘and he fell.’
‘That’s your story.’
‘That’s enough,’ Josh snapped. ‘I saw your car outside. I’ll have someone drive you home.’
‘You’ll have to find out where he lived and—’ ‘He didn’t exist,’ Josh said.
One of the clean-up guys had put my slashed jacket in a plastic bag. I had the sleeve of my shirt rolled almost to the shoulder and a gauze bandage covered my arm from the elbow to the wrist. I nodded my appreciation to the team and thanked Josh.
‘You saved us a lot of trouble, Cliff,’ he said. ‘You gave us a silent kill.
’
32
The rest of the day was a blur induced by the two injections, fatigue and the lousy feeling that comes from dropping down from a high adrenalin level. I slept, but not well; I drank more and ate less than I should have and slid into a low-blood-sugar torpor.
I cleaned myself up and regrouped the next day. I phoned Neville Kim and told him I had good news. He invited me to join him for lunch in a Korean restaurant in Surry Hills. We sat at a table for two where we received smooth, efficient service above the ordinary. When I commented on this he smiled.
‘I have a substantial interest in the place. Now tell me your good news, Mr Hardy. I’m afraid I have to say you look somewhat strained, and I see your arm is bandaged.’
A spicy soup arrived. He’d ordered barbecued pork to follow and we were drinking OB beer. I traced the course of the investigation for him in detail.
‘You should have asked for my help when you had narrowed your search down.’
‘I thought about it, but events moved too quickly.’
I showed him the photograph on my phone of Balakin lying dead at the foot of the stairs. He looked at it for a long time.
‘I would have preferred him to suffer in prison for twenty years, but I suppose that couldn’t have been guaranteed.’
I shook my head. ‘Nothing can be guaranteed.’
‘That is true. I can tell people in my family that I’m satisfied Melanie has been avenged, even though I can’t give them the details.’
‘That’s right, no details.’