by Garry Disher
Eileen put her hand over his. She’d been playing with this idea herself.
‘He’s got to be putting a job together,’ Niall went on. ‘He didn’t come around just to apologise and chat about old times.’
Eileen knew exactly what Wyatt had in mind. Ross had let it slip. Late at night, in the comfort and darkness, his bony flank cushioned against her, Ross liked to murmur to her, end-of-the-day murmuring, after love and before sleep, expressing hopes and doubts. It was something they’d done together since the first night. Pushing down her guilt, Eileen said, ‘I think you could be right.’
Niall said in a rush, ‘Look, have a word with Napper. Tell him I want out of remand straight away and I want a suspended sentence.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better if you talked to him yourself?’
‘Christ, no.’ Niall leaned back, folded his arms. ‘My reputation would be shot if I did that. If the others knew he’d been here they’d think I’m dogging them and I’d wake up with a shank in my guts. Has to be you, Mum.’
Eileen closed her eyes, picturing a biro with a razor melted into the end of it, a canteen fork with a sharpened handle. Just then a loudspeaker crackled into life. It was unintelligible but prisoners were standing and screws were coming into the room, so Eileen knew her time was up. ‘Not a word of this to Dad.’
‘Mum,’ Niall said, ‘you have to get Napper onto this straight away.’
She left the prison. The heartache in her son’s face and voice had Eileen chafing in frustration at every one of the doors and gates, every one of the dozy screws that passed for human beings in that place.
****
Sixteen
Two days ago Napper had been hassled by his solicitor, then by a whole lot of women snapping wet towels at his legs. This morning his ex-wife’s solicitor had had a go at him, ringing him at work, reminding him of the court order, reminding him he was nine thousand bucks behind. So now Napper was knocking on a door in Richmond, a move he hoped would help him reduce that nine thousand.
The house was owned by a man called Malan and it presented a face full of bluster and threat. ‘No trespassing’ and ‘protected by electronic surveillance’ stickers were plastered to the fence, gate, windows and doors, and, judging by the sounds coming from inside, the front door had been triple-locked. As if that would keep the junkies out. Napper waited.
Malan opened the door. He was slight, greying, pursing unhappy lips in a wedge-shaped head. His face always seemed out of kilter to Napper, as if something on it was missing or lacking in size. ‘Councillor Malan himself,’ Napper said. ‘Just the man I want to see.’
Malan regarded him carefully. ‘What about?’
‘Business.’
Malan stepped aside and extended his arm into the hall. The house smelt of hot stale air. Napper saw four cats in the doorway, come to see who had arrived. Cat fur was caught in the hall rug. Malan led the way to a back room and waited while Napper sat down before sitting himself. ‘What do you want?’
‘I don’t know if you remember our little talk a while back,’ Napper said. ‘That ALP fundraising bash?’
‘I remember it.’
Malan was being sour and wary, so Napper held up a calming hand. ‘Take it easy, old son. I’m not here to arrest you.’
‘It was just talk,’ Malan said. ‘I was drunk. You haven’t got a thing to arrest me on.’
Napper glanced around the dim room. ‘You need a skylight in here.’ He sorted idly through some leaflets and magazines in the rack next to his chair. ‘Ah, here we are.’ It was a handbill. It read Stop the Asian Invasion.
Malan said, ‘Somebody slipped it under the door.’
‘Sure they did.’
Malan scowled. ‘Spit it out, Napper.’
Napper rested his forearms on his knees and butted his big head into the space between them. ‘You remember how you told me Eddie Ng has got the numbers to make mayor next month?’
Malan nodded curtly.
‘Well, I’ ve been reading the local rag, listening around the local waterholes. I reckon you’re right.’
‘Boat people own half of Victoria Street,’ Malan said passionately. ‘Now they want to take over local government.’
‘Exactly,’ Napper said. ‘I mean, where will it end?’
Malan said nothing. They were watching each other. Napper spoke first. ‘What are your chances of making mayor, if Councillor Ng was out of the running?’
‘First rate.’
Napper leaned back. He tried to lace his fingers behind his head, but that strangled his circulation. He swung forward again. ‘I’ve been going over what you said, something about a fear campaign?’
‘It was just talk.’
‘No it wasn’t. You’re a worried man. I’m a worried man. I grew up around here. I don’t like to see it going downhill any more than you do.’
Malan’s long fingers slipped in and out of his pockets as if searching for somewhere to rest. ‘What have you got in mind?’
Napper said quietly, ‘Eddie Ng runs a restaurant just around the corner from Church Street. You said it yourself, he walks up and down and they all love him. We need to wipe the smile off his face.’ Napper tried folding his arms. ‘I’m your man.’
‘It’s not enough to wipe the smile off his face. He’s got to resign from Council.’
‘And we can pursuade him. An anonymous strike out of nowhere. He’ll get the message. If he doesn’t, we’ll hit again.’
Malan watched him for a while. ‘What’s in it for you?’
Nothing grand or elaborate, according to the look Napper gave him. ‘Order restored, the white man on top. Plus that three thousand you mentioned.’
‘I didn’t mention any three thousand.’
Napper was hard and precise. ‘Mate, that’s exactly what you did mention. I made a note of it in my book after.’
‘Supposing I had three thousand to give you. What do you propose? Beat him up? Bomb his place? He lives above the restaurant.’
‘His car,’ Napper said. ‘People get attached to their cars. Damage one and you cause a lot of grief. The restaurant is too risky, too many people could get hurt.’
‘How will you do it?’
‘A small charge.’
‘A timer?’ Malan leaned forward, his face alight. ‘A radio signal maybe?’
‘Too fussy,’ Napper said. ‘Mercury. That way the victim detonates the bomb himself.’
‘How so?’
‘The object is to throw a scare into him, correct?’
Malan nodded.
‘Two little pools of mercury in the boot of the car or somewhere,’ Napper said, ‘a small lump of explosive, plus blasting cap and battery. The target gets into the car, the motion rocks the mercury pools so they run together, there’s an electrical connection, pow! The beauty of it is, the explosion is directly related to his getting into the car. It doesn’t hurt him, blows the boot lid up maybe, but it sure as hell scares the shit out of him.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as I get paid,’ Napper said.
‘How do I know this isn’t a set-up?’
Napper leaned forward again. He was quiet and solid when he said, ‘I’ll level with you-I need the money. Plus I can’t stand these chinks.’ He got heated. ‘Jesus Christ, the Department’s even got me down for a community policing course, learn how to get on with the bastards, can you believe it?’
‘Three thousand.’
‘Tell you what, I’ll make it easy for you. Half now, half on delivery.’
He declined tea or coffee. He told Malan that he wanted to get moving on this. They left the house and walked through to the Westpac on Bridge Road. Half an hour later, Napper was back at the station with fifteen hundred in his pocket.
At one o’clock a call was put through to his desk phone. A woman’s voice said, ‘Sergeant Napper, please.’
‘You’ve got him.’
The woman had started strongly, but now she was silent. ‘Can I
help you?’ Napper said.
‘Eileen Rossiter here.’
‘He got remand, Eileen. Nothing I could do about it. These things aren’t up to me.’
‘I know. I’ve been to seen him.’
Again she clammed up, so Napper said, ‘Neither of us is getting any younger, Eileen.’
She said with a rush, ‘What are the chances of bail? I mean, is it too late?’
‘Theoretically, no, the powers that be could put in a good word, kind of thing. But you know, they’d have to have a reason.’
‘Maybe I can give you one,’ Eileen said.
‘Like what?’
‘Information.’
‘Depends on the quality of the information.’
‘Oh, it’s quality all right.’ The voice was hard and certain now.
Napper said, ‘Your old man put you up to this? He’s heard something?’
‘This is nothing to do with him. You keep him out of it.’
Napper’s face creased, knowing he’d found a lever. ‘Just you and me and the gatepost, right, Eileen? When can you come in?’
‘I’m not bloody coming in there.’
Napper knew she wasn’t. He wanted to hear the strain in her voice, that’s all. ‘Could meet you somewhere, I suppose. This afternoon?’
‘Lounge bar of the Barleycorn, two o’clock,’ Eileen Rossiter said, and there was a click in his ear.
The Barleycorn was out on two counts: one, simply because the woman hadn’t bothered to check first if the place and the time suited him; two, because he met one of his regular snouts in the Barleycorn. Maybe He could groom Eileen Rossiter as a snout; if so, he wouldn’t want to meet her on the same patch of ground.
He left the station and got to the Barleycorn forty minutes before Eileen Rossiter was due. He walked through the place quickly, saw that she wasn’t waiting for him, and went back to the car. She arrived shortly before two. No one followed her in. Napper crossed the road to a public phone and called the Barleycorn, asking for the lounge bar. ‘I was supposed to meet a friend there, Eileen Rossiter? Woman about fifty, short dark hair?’
‘Just come in. Want me to put her on?’
‘Could you do us a favour? Tell her I’ll meet her in the coffee shop across the road, but I’ll be half an hour late.’
He went back to the car to wait, checking the street automatically. Eileen came out a moment later and walked across the road to the coffee shop. Napper, taking in her strong face, her comfortable flesh, was betting that an afternoon coffee and Danish pastry were more appealing to her than a drink in the Barleycorn. When she was inside the shop he crossed the road to join her.
He found her peering at cakes and pastries displayed in a glass cabinet. Sensing him, she straightened, looked appraisingly at him. ‘You were watching me.’
Napper said nothing, hoping stillness and silence would rattle her. Instead, she snorted. ‘Well, you’re a bundle of laughs. Coffee? Something to eat?’ Without waiting, she said to the woman behind the counter, ‘Two cappuccinos, one apricot Danish, one cheese,’ and led him to a corner table.
They were the only customers. Napper could smell fresh coffee. He realised that he hadn’t had lunch. Eileen Rossiter smiled at him, patted a chair. It discomposed Napper. It meant Eileen felt sure of her ground. For some reason then, he wondered what it would be like to touch her. Sure, she was getting on a bit, but there was something about her body, a kind of pneumatic appeal. To wipe the smile off her face, he said, ‘I’m not promising anything.’
‘Of course not.’
Napper said nothing. The ball was in her court. All he could do was see how she played it.
‘A deal,’ she said. ‘Niall gets bail, maybe a suspended sentence-’
‘No way.’
‘I’ll settle for bail. In return, you get some interesting information.’
‘What kind of information?’
‘Deal, first.’
‘I can’t offer anything for your boy until I know what this is all about. I want quality information, not the name of some bloke who’s been stealing hubcaps.’
‘All right, I’ll give you a name. The Mesics.’
Napper was irritated. He had no illusions about himself. He was a plodding beat cop who’d just scraped through his exams to make sergeant, he was uniform, not one of the flash boys in CIB, and he’d barely heard of the Mesics. ‘What have they got to do with me?’
‘Someone’s going to do them over.’
‘So?’
So Eileen told him who was going to do over the Mesics, and this time it was a name he did know well, the kind of name that earned a commendation for the copper that put it behind bars.
****
Seventeen
Stella Mesic drove fast and well. Bax didn’t touch her until she had wound her way through the complacent streets to the freeway entrance. Traffic was slight. The wind whispered over her car. Bax said softly, ‘I want you to take off your pants.’
She laughed, a short, uncomfortable bark, but what Bax had said was calculated to stir her blood and he saw her go tense, then settle back and breathe deeply. After a moment she lifted her rump and there was the unmistakeable scrape of cotton on her skin and the soft snap of elastic. Neither of them said anything until a few kilometres had passed and Bax had the taste of her flooding in his mouth. She trembled more than once. He felt her fingers on his neck, tangled in his hair. The car was scarcely moving. ‘How did you know I’d go for that?’ she said, pulling him upright.
‘I just knew.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ she said. ‘It’s probably a common fantasy.’
‘No way. It’s you and me, Stella. Everything starts with us.’
They no longer met at his place, he couldn’t chance the compound again, and she said motels were tacky, so she’d taken out a short lease on a flat in South Yarra. They could scarcely stand up when they got out of the car, and in the flat they were at each other before they reached the bed.
When they were resting Stella said, ‘Let’s see what this has done for your face.’ She turned his chin right and left. She frowned. ‘Slightly more relaxed, maybe.’ She touched her fingers under each eye. ‘A bit less strained? Maybe.’
Bax felt bands loosening inside him. It only happened when he was with her. He began to feel slowed down, looser, valued, inclined to lovers’ talk. He murmured some things against her neck. She flexed sleepily. The slow, stretching quality of her movements reminded Bax of a cat. She had rounded arms, swollen lips and legs the colour of honey, and it all paced like a restless creature in his groin.
‘So what’s Victor up to?’
‘Not now.’
‘Now, Stella.’
She groaned and sat up. ‘He’s still arguing with us. Nothing gets resolved. He wants to go one way, we want to go another. Same old story.’
Bax turned his lean trunk around. He stroked her stomach absently, then something about the conjunction of his well-shaped hand and her gleaming flank caught his attention. They both watched the hand, saw it flex, the fingerbones articulating with style and intent. ‘Can he carry it out, though, that’s the question.’
Stella arrested his hand with hers. ‘You know the old man was grooming him? I mean, not just sending him to the States but paving the way so he could step into his shoes?’
‘How does Leo feel about that?’
‘That’s the whole point. Leo gets some cash and a couple of flats from the estate, but Victor gets all the rest, giving him all the power. As for me, I’m just a woman, Leo’s wife, old Karl didn’t give two hoots about me. Called me a hooker once.’
Bax rolled away and hoisted his rump up the bed until he was looking down at her. ‘You think Leo might fold, give in to Victor?’
‘I’m sure of it. He’s always half looked up to him, half resented him.’
‘Well, you’ll just have to keep working on him.’
‘I’ve been working on him ever since we got married. Before we got married. He would’
ve caved in to his father if I hadn’t kept pushing him. Often it works, but he also tends to go with the flow. I can’t be with him twenty-four hours a day. Victor thinks big, and Leo’s listening to some of it’
Bax turned the pillow onto its narrow edge, rested it against the wall, sank his back into it. ‘How big is this big talk?’
Stella curled two fingers together. ‘He claims he’s like that with the casino people in Las Vegas. Says they’ve paid off bent officials here in Australia, meaning if our family invests with them, we’ll make a killing from legalised gambling.’
Bax turned her chin toward him. He didn’t blink, didn’t give anything away, just stared at one cat’s eye and then the other. ‘How do you feel about that?’
The slightest flinch, the slightest hesitation, and he would have jacked the whole thing in. But her hand clasped his wrist, then slipped around his neck. ‘It’s all hot air.’ She kissed him. ‘If it isn’t, then he’s subjecting our assets to an unacceptable degree of risk.’ She kissed him again and pushed his head down. He found the hollow inside her thigh joint, the area he’d told her he liked most. It was fairly stubbly today. He burrowed, lapping at her.
Later, when they were rocking together, she stopped him sharply, clamping the hair above his ears in her fists. ‘Think, Nick. Think.’
****
Eighteen
On Thursday morning Lloyd Phelps flew into Sydney with a pocketful of the diamonds that netted the Outfit a hundred thousand dollars four times a year. The diamonds were rough-cut pink Argyle diamonds from a mine in the Kimberley area of Western Australia. The mine’s owners paid Phelps good money to secure customers in Sydney four times a year. They didn’t know that the Outfit paid Phelps good money to steal a pocketful of pink diamonds from them four times a year.
The Outfit required Phelps to leave the stolen diamonds in an airport locker, complete his legitimate company business in the city and fly back to the Kimberley. Phelps didn’t know what happened to the diamonds after he’d left them at the airport but he guessed that a buyer flew in from Hong Kong or Amsterdam, collected them and flew out again, leaving payment behind. Phelps often thought about that payment-cash, maybe? US dollars? Yen? Bearer bonds? Phelps himself collected a cash payment left for him at the airport-ten thousand smackers, four times a year. By the time he’d sweetened a security officer and a computer records clerk at the mine, however, only six of the ten thousand was left. He sometimes thought about hanging on to the diamonds, intercepting the buyer, then disappearing with diamonds and payment. He didn’t think about it for long, though. He didn’t have that kind of nerve. The Outfit would find him. Somewhere, some day, they’d find him, and the result would be painful and permanent.