by Peter Corris
I circled around the next street and came up the lane behind the Falcon, staying in shadow, silent in my sneakers, and with the .45 in my hand. The person in the driver’s seat of the sky blue Falcon was solidly built, with thin, dark hair, scalp showing, besuited. Detective Inspector Vincent Gregory beyond a doubt.
I stayed a few metres back from the car, well-hidden but puzzled by his apparent inattention. He was almost slumped in his seat, but he had the window down. Did he have a sighted-in, silenced sniper rifle at the ready? No way to tell. It’d take a rifle to do the job from this distance. How long would it take him to bring it into play on me if I jumped him at the open window? Too long. But what if he had a pistol in his lap, or in his hand?
I decided that was ridiculous. I turned away to muffle the sound as I cocked the automatic.
What are you doing? I thought at that moment. Putting an unlicensed gun on a serving senior police officer? I had a moment of indecision at that point. Frank Parker’s message on the answering machine came back to me: Don’t go feral on this, Cliff. You’ll only come to grief.
I hesitated. How much more grief could I come to? Lover gone, career finished.
Gregory stayed slumped in his seat. Light a cigarette, I pleaded. Use your hands. But he didn’t.
I went forward as quickly and quietly as I could and had the muzzle of the .45 in his right earhole before he could move a muscle. There were no weapons in view. He had one hand on the steering wheel, the other flat on the seat beside him.
‘Don’t even twitch,’ I said.
The musty stench from his body was stronger than ever. As he drew in a breath and let it out slowly, I caught a strong smell of alcohol.
‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe you’d shoot me, but I’ll still do what you say.’
‘What makes you think I won’t shoot you?’
‘Because you want to know who killed Lillian Truscott and why, and I can tell you.’
‘Why would you do that?’
He reached up and pushed the pistol away. ‘To save my skin, Hardy. To save my fucking skin.’
19
I didn’t like him, I didn’t trust him and I didn’t take any chances with him. I made him get out of the car, open his jacket and turn around to be sure he wasn’t carrying a gun. If any Australian policeman, private eye or crim has ever carried a pistol in an ankle holster, I’ve never seen it. With my gun in the pocket of my tracksuit pants I propelled him ahead of me, across the street, through the gate and up to the door. I had to reach for my keys and if he had any intention of attacking me this was his moment. He stayed as passive as a lamb and he hadn’t said a word on the way.
We went inside and I kicked the door shut. He turned around slowly.
‘You don’t need the gun,’ he said.
Now that I was face to face with him the change since I’d last seen him, only a matter of hours back, was remarkable. The flesh on his face seemed to have sagged, fallen in, giving him a haggard look. His suit could have done with a brush and his top shirt button was undone and the tie knot was sloppy.
He reached into the side pocket of his jacket and took out a half-full flask of Johnnie Walker. The Gregory I’d first met would never have ruined the sit of his suit with something like that.
‘Wouldn’t mind a drop of water,’ he said.
I pointed down the passage towards the kitchen and followed him through. His previous arrogant strut had been replaced by a shamble. He slumped into a chair. I ran water into a glass and handed it to him. He topped it up with the whisky, drank half, held on to the flask.
‘You could arrest me for possession of an unlicensed pistol,’ I said, ‘and for threatening a police officer. Deprivation of liberty, maybe. Why don’t you?’
He sniffed as though he had a cold. ‘I’m not arresting anybody. Not anymore. What I’m concerned about is not getting arrested myself.’
He poured some more whisky, put the flask in his pocket and made a half-successful attempt to pull himself together by straightening up in his chair and patting down the hair that had stuck in patches over his skull. He nursed the drink.
‘You know what’s been going on in the unit, don’t you, Hardy?’
‘I’ve got a fair idea. The top cops are in with the money men and a couple of pollies doing all sorts of fiddles. Bribery and corruption. One murder has been covered up; another is in the process of being covered up. Then there’s the murder of Lily Truscott—that’s not going to be covered up as long as I have breath in my body. The thing is, Gregory, how do you know that I know this stuff?’
His eyes were red and he had difficulty focusing. ‘I know you talked to Pam Williams. Perkins didn’t know who you were when you butted in at the pub—thought you were the bouncer, like you said—but I did from his description of you.’
I shook my head. ‘I talked to her, but all she had were suspicions. You’re spooked and I’m glad to see it. You’re right. I know things, but the question remains—how do you know I know?’
‘You’ve been talking to someone in the unit.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Kristos.’
I did my best not to show surprise. ‘Maybe.’
‘Has to be. Didn’t fool me when you provoked him for the cameras where Williams got killed. Same when he fronted up to you at the Lord of the Isles. That was a blind. He’s in it with you and I can guess where he’s going to lay the blame.’
The man was delusional and paranoid, carrying a burden of guilt and fear of retribution. I had to guide him carefully in the right direction.
‘Do you know who killed Rex Robinson?’
‘I know Kristos was there.’
‘So do I.’
‘He told you? I bet I know who he said did the killing. Me.’
I shrugged.
‘I didn’t. I wasn’t there. He’s cutting a deal, isn’t he? He gets out from under while Perkins and the rest of us go down.’
‘It could work out like that.’
‘No, it won’t. Kristos had Robinson and Williams and your girlfriend killed.’
‘Had them killed,’ I said. ‘Who by?’
He shook his head. ‘Not here, not now, not just to you. I want your mate Townsend to be in on this, and I want it real quick. I’ll make a statement he can film, do all his bullshit with, and I’ll produce evidence. Then you and Parker can strike a deal for me. I’ll be long gone and the understanding I want is just that I won’t be pursued. Ever.’
I had trouble keeping a straight face. ‘Parker.’
He drained the glass and when he saw it was empty his hands began to shake. He said, ‘Fuck it,’ and reached into his jacket pocket. He took out a metal cylinder about the size of a lipstick and a masked razor blade. He got up, grabbed a recipe book Lily had bought from above the fridge and spilled white powder from the cylinder onto its laminated surface. He constructed two lines, took a short plastic straw from his shirt pocket and snorted the lines—left nostril, right nostril. He licked his index finger, dabbed up the residue, rubbed it on his gums and tidied the fixings away.
‘That’d look great on the video,’ I said.
He sat and drew in several deep breaths. He blinked his eyes, moved his head from side to side and rotated his shoulders as if he was trying to speed up the effect of the drug through the upper half of his body. It seemed to work after a fashion, but only briefly.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll be straight when the camera rolls.’
A smile now, almost foolish. He wagged a finger at me. ‘Know how I twigged that you and Kristos were acting?’
‘No idea.’
‘I went to NIDA for a year. Didn’t make the cut. They said I wasn’t any good. Maybe I wasn’t. I thought I was. Anyway, I can tell bad acting when I see it.’
‘You should’ve stuck with it. I believe Mel Gibson didn’t graduate either.’
But he wasn’t listening to me, only to himself. ‘I know how they work, those Internal Affairs cunts.
They target you and play their fuckin’ funny games long range. Frank Parker, Frankie the Clean, and Cliff Hardy, the disgraceful private eye. Both out of the action. Bullshit.
‘Soon as your sheila got hit they saw their chance and moved in on us. Got to Kristos. Save the wog and fuck the rest of us. Fuck, I should’ve seen it coming. It was all too good to last. Mind you, I was only in on the drugs and that, not the big bucks, not the killings or the cover-ups. You have to believe me, Hardy.’
‘It doesn’t matter whether I believe you or not. Your proposition’s interesting. I’ll put it to Townsend and … other parties. It’d take a while to set up …’
He shook his head and sniffed hard. His eyes were bright from the coke and his hands had steadied. ‘Has to be tomorrow night. Sunday. Things are quiet. That’s all the time I can allow. Soon as it’s done, I’m out of here.’
‘How do I contact you?’
He laughed. ‘You’re fuckin’ joking. I’ll contact you at intervals. That phone of yours better be to hand. I’m lying low, very low.’
‘What if it can’t be worked out? What d’you do then if this plan of yours falls through? Where d’you go?’
‘Think I’d tell you? You’d be after me with the bolt cutters.’
‘What’s to stop me using them on you now to get this name?’
‘I thought about that. You wouldn’t kill me because that’d close the book. You might try to beat it out of me. Might succeed, but how would you know I wasn’t lying?’
‘How would we know that anyway, if we play along with you?’
‘You’d know.’
I nodded. He was far gone in what I guessed was a mixture of fantasy and reality and there was no point in heavying him. As doped up as he was, he’d be close to oblivious to pain. Playing along was the only way ahead, although as a strategy it was as full of holes as his story.
I picked up the mobile. ‘Want to hear me talk to people?’
‘Fuck no. I’m going off to get some sleep. Haven’t had any since … I dunno.’
‘You’re too wired to sleep.’
‘I’ve got some downers.’
He heaved himself up, suddenly looking older and heavier and slower in the body, although his head was still buzzing.
‘Are you going to drive like that?’ I said.
‘Why not? Been doing it for years. Get on the dog and bone, Hardy, if you want to find out what’s really been going on.’ He gave an uncharacteristically high-pitched laugh. ‘That’s as one thoroughly fucked-up detective to another.’
I let him out—watched him gather himself for the step, the path, the gate, the crossing of the street, the location of the keys, the remote, the car door, the ignition. He drove off, apparently in control, but I hoped for his sake, and other road-users, that his bolthole wasn’t too far away.
I made coffee and turned to my notebook diagram, but there was no point in adding anything, or revising it. It hadn’t been of any particular use anyway, and now the whole game had changed. I could believe that Gregory was in the grip of a fear that he was to be made the patsy by Kristos, with the cooperation of me and others. Why not? It had happened before. His offer to dump on everyone and skip away also seemed feasible. If he’d been in on drug dealing for some time, the chances were that he’d feathered his nest. His own drug use was a factor, too. Bound to have an effect on his paranoia.
But what had kicked him off? What had brought him to the point of suspecting Kristos and feeling that their whole operation was sliding out of control?
It could have been the murder of Williams. Killing journalists is one thing, risky enough in its way, but killing a police officer ups the ante. I thought of the Neddy Smith, Chris Flannery, Michael Drury quagmire that had cops and crims turning against each other like ravening wolves. But what if the trigger was something else? I didn’t know enough about Gregory, but there was that little bit of his recent past I did know about. What if this break-out had something to do with Jane Farrow?
20
I rang Townsend and told him what had happened. Only thing to do.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘This is getting sticky. Jane’s changed her mind, wants to move now on her plan. Says she can’t take the strain any longer.’
‘And you told her how much?’
‘Nothing, as agreed.’
‘Well, let’s make it all one big show—Jane, Gregory, Kristos, Perkins, the whole cast, all singing their heads off.’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘No. You have to stall Jane. Do Gregory first. If he’s got what he says he has, the whole Jane/Morello thing might not be needed.’
‘You believe that, Cliff?’
‘No, not really. Gregory’s a close-to-the-edge cokehead, but we can’t afford to pass up on what he has to say. Surely you can hold Jane off for forty-eight hours? You with your charm.’
‘Fuck you again. I can. But you know what you have to do, don’t you? Good luck.’
He meant I had to convince Frank Parker to play along with the scenario Gregory had devised in his disturbed mind. Not easy, with Frank still clinging to correct police procedure, despite some of his recent experiences and all the shit that he knew was going down with the Northern Crimes Unit. It wasn’t something to negotiate over the phone. A face-to-face job.
I’d charged the mobile as soon as I’d got home from the lunch meeting with Townsend, so it had plenty of juice to be available for Gregory’s call. I went on trusting Hank’s assurance that my landline was clear and rang Frank. I told him that I needed to see him urgently and that I needed a big favour.
There was a pause at the end of the line and I could imagine Frank’s mixed reactions. He hated being retired and out of the swim. He loved his wife and his son and his grandchildren, twin girls, now somewhere in the Third World. We were close friends who’d helped each other in the past and caused each other problems. It had to be lineball when it came to the important moves.
As always, Frank tried for a light touch. ‘Cliff, how close are you sailing now to what might be called the waters of significant criminality?’
‘Not that close, and not into the deepest waters.’
‘The shallow waters are the most dangerous. Didn’t you know that?’
‘Frank …’
I must have struck the right note. He agreed to meet me at six thirty after he’d played squash in Edgecliff.
‘Squash?’ I said. ‘What’s wrong with tennis at White City?’
‘Looks like rain.’
I got to the squash courts in time to watch Frank polish off the opposition in the last few points of the final game. Frank was a good tennis player. He always beat me when his mind was on the job and sometimes when it wasn’t. He had a killer backhand, the stroke that was my greatest weakness, and Frank could hit to it off either wing till it broke down. I hadn’t seen him play squash before—a game I hated—but he was just as good.
He farewelled his friend, mopped his face on a towel, and came over to where I sat.
‘Hasn’t rained,’ I said. ‘You’d have been better off playing a real game outside under lights.’
‘I like sweating. There’s a juice bar and a wet bar here. Which would you prefer?’
‘Take a wild guess.’
‘One of your quotes. So happens I know that one— Midnight Run. Good film.’
‘It’s films I want to talk to you about, sort of.’
We went down some steps to a tiny space fitted up like a trophy room with fake cups and plaques in glass cases, and photos of squash and tennis players, golfers and yachtsmen on the walls.
‘Kitsch, I know,’ Frank said. ‘Beer? It’s all foreign.’
‘Stella, then.’
He came back with the bottles and glasses and we poured and lowered the levels. It took me a bottle before I got through everything I had to tell him about Gregory’s proposal and Townsend’s willingness to play along. I felt a bit guilty, but I didn’t tell him about all the rest of it— Morello,
Farrow—then I asked him for the favour.
‘Jesus Christ, Cliff,’ he said. ‘This is cowboy stuff.’
‘The Northern Crimes Unit’s a cowboy outfit. To me, this is about Lily.’
He nodded, said nothing.
‘I know it sounds weird, but all you have to do is act a bit. Must’ve done that in your time, Frank. Have to admit it’s interesting.’
‘I wish I could be confident you’ve told me everything.’
I drained my glass. ‘Everything you need to know, mate. Another?’
‘Why not? Okay, I’m in.’
The mobile phones got a workout over the next twenty-four as we arranged to meet Gregory in Blakehurst. The deal was that he’d take up a position some distance from the actual meeting place and observe the arrival of Townsend, Parker and me in a single vehicle—mine. When he was satisfied we weren’t being followed or had an entourage, he’d advise us of the next step.
I collected the other two in Leichhardt. Townsend had his recorder, I had the .45; Frank’s contribution was three kevlon vests.
I said, ‘How the hell did you get these?’
‘I called in a favour,’ Frank said. ‘I’m fast running out of them, but Gregory’s bound to have a weapon. And from your account of his state of mind it seems like a sensible precaution.’
Townsend put his vest on with apparent enjoyment. He’d obviously worn these things before. I hadn’t, and struggled with the straps. Clearly, Townsend was impressed by Parker’s steadiness. He could probably detect a faint smell of whisky from me, very faint. With Townsend in the front and Parker in the back, I drove towards checkpoint number one.
‘He’s cautious,’ Townsend said. ‘Like you in Drummoyne, Cliff.’
Parker said, ‘He’s experienced. Vince Gregory had a pretty good record before he went into the Northern Crimes Unit. Some good results.’
We reached the checkpoint and stopped. Waited. After ten minutes my mobile rang.
‘Hardy? Got Townsend and Parker with you?’