by Peter Corris
Chang stepped off the path to pick up a soft drink can. He tossed it at a bin; it bounced on the rim but went in. 'It could be. Business is the lifeblood of ethnic communities in this city. It affects everything-family, religion, schools, politics, sport, the lot. If criminal organisations get control of big Chinese and Lebanese businesses-I mean in terms of money and personnel-it'd be a nightmare.'
'It's big, as he said. But you're not going to pass it on higher?'
Chang didn't reply. We reached the pond, took a turn and headed back towards the towers. There was a dog exercise area away to our left and the sounds of the dogs and the children had a calming, normalising effect on me and apparently on Chang, who stopped and looked.
'My people have been here for a hundred and fifty years,' he said. 'They were on the Victorian goldfields and then had the good sense to come to Sydney. They were market gardeners, laundrymen and shopkeepers. My great-great-grandfather fought in World War I. A couple of my great uncles fought in the next war.' He laughed. 'Mind you, a few members of my family were mistaken for Japs and interned. This place isn't perfect, but I love it and I'm fucked if I'm going to let a bunch of foreign sleazebags come in and bugger it up.'
At home, I punched the buttons to disable the alarm and put my key in the lock. I heard a soft footfall and felt something hard and cold in the nape of my neck.
'Open the door and we'll go in. Drop the keys as soon as we're inside and keep your hands where I can see them.'
What I could feel on my neck wasn't the muzzle of a pistol. Bigger. A silencer. I did as he said, and as soon as the door was closed he slammed me against the wall. He was as quick as a cat and before I could catch my breath he had both wrists handcuffed behind my back.
'Sergeant Ali,' I said. 'Sharpshooter.'
'Don't forget it. Move inside, we've got some talking to do.'
We went into the sitting room and I froze as I heard him open a flick knife. He sliced my jacket down the back and pulled both halves clear of my tied wrists. He shoved me into a chair, put the gun and knife within reach and felt in the jacket. Deftly, he pulled out my phone and the recording device. He fiddled with it and swore.
'Where's the disk?'
I looked at him and said nothing.
'Doesn't matter,' he said. 'You did us a great service getting rid of Freddy and Lester.'
'Us?'
'William and me.'
'William Habib, aka Richard Malouf?'
Ali smiled. 'Light dawns. I'm curious, Hardy, what made Stephen Chang suspicious of me?'
'Is he suspicious?'
He sighed. 'You're going to be a nuisance the way I knew you would be. Stephen's been keeping me busy on a variety of things. Some of them touching on… what we're talking about now, but I could tell he was holding a lot back. I know you've spoken to William recently.'
As always, Ali was impeccably dressed and groomed. He was handsome, looked fit and clear-eyed-the image of a rising professional policeman. His body language exuded confidence, but I sensed that he entertained a small doubt.
'I did speak to him,' I said, 'and it worries you that you don't know what was said, doesn't it?'
'I said it doesn't matter.'
'I think it does, Karim. You probably don't know that Freddy Wong was getting ready to dispense with Houli. Habib was setting up to double-cross Houli and Freddy Wong. What's to say he won't double-cross you? Hard to find someone to trust, isn't it?'
'You don't know what you're talking about. Shut up and let me think.'
'I'll tell you who to think about-Stephen Chang.'
'Oh, we've already thought about him. Pity, he's a good policeman, but good policemen get killed in the line of duty all the time.'
'Kill him and you'll never draw another peaceful breath.'
'I won't kill him. It'll depend on how things work out, but I think it's most likely that you'll kill him.'
28
'You must have a weapon here somewhere,' Ali said, 'otherwise it could get messy. Let me see.'
His eye drifted to the cupboard under the stairs. He opened the door and felt among the jackets and coats and bits and pieces hanging there.
'Aha.' He pulled out the. 22 I'd got from Corbett and had more or less forgotten about. He held it by the end of the barrel.
'A popgun, but it'll do.'
Everyone has a weakness and Karim Ali's was vanity. He couldn't resist telling me how Habib had engineered financial disaster for a large number of sizeable Chinese and Lebanese businesses in Sydney and had arranged bail-out finance which carried penalties that would bring whole conglomerations of family concerns crashing down. I didn't really understand much of it, but I gathered that
Habib could keep all the balls in the air for about as long as he pleased.
Offshore, he had similar grips on DFAT personnel who were in a position to facilitate visas for criminals who wouldn't have got through the first level of screening. The idea was that they'd bring their experience and capital to Sydney and operate an under-the-radar criminal network.
'Worth millions,' he said, almost savouring the word. 'Millions.'
'Dirty money,' I said. 'I thought you had a promising career.'
'Too slow, much too slow.'
'I can see Freddy and Lester and Houli and Talat as enforcers, but I don't see your role.'
The expression on his face was almost a smirk. 'That's the cutest part, I-'
'But Habib changed tack,' I said, 'pardon the pun. He took to his boat and ducked out of the arrangement. Let me guess-he thought he and you didn't need the Wongs and Houli. You kept him abreast of things when the little chink in the plan appeared. He was sighted.'
Ali nodded. 'That was careless. I told him to change his appearance and use the moorings he'd set up, but he had the hots for Sun Ling. Gretchen. Putting it all at risk for a woman. Promising her the earth, and she's a junkie.'
'It's been done before and it'll happen again. He's flakey now; wants to do a deal with Chang.'
'No, he knows I'll have to step in. The only deal he can do now is with me. When this is all up and running I'll be in charge of the unit and Chinese and Lebanese crime will run… smoothly.'
I shook my head. 'Megalomania. I don't think you're on very solid ground.'
'Compared to you, I'm on terra firma. You know as well as I do that a big-money, dirty-lawyer network operated here until a certain media magnate left us. The WASPS have had their go: it's the wogs' turn now.'
I watched him as he handled my phone very carefully. It wasn't a particularly interesting phone. He acquainted himself with its functions and I suddenly realised why and had to laugh. His hand shot out for his gun before he realised I hadn't moved.
'You're waiting for his call on my phone,' I said. 'You fed him information when he called you. You don't know where he is, do you?'
'Shut up.'
'To use your boss's expression about how Habib handled me, he'll play you like a fish.'
He took two steps and hit me with a hard chop to the side of my neck. I tried to duck but he was too quick and the blow had a paralysing effect. I could breathe and see but I couldn't move.
The phone buzzed. He had the voice message activated, listened, and let the message run out.
'A woman,' he said, 'sounded young. You old goat.'
Probably Megan, I thought. I was developing a contempt blending with my dislike for him and had to fight the feelings down. Such impulses cloud judgement, and I didn't think Ali held all the cards, not yet. The feeling of paralysis receded, but I kept myself in the rigid position I'd been in as it hit me.
The phone rang again; he listened and then he surprised me. He cleared his throat and answered in a very good imitation of my voice.
'Hardy.'
A pause, then he said, 'It's Karim Ali, William. You're not going to do any deals with Chang, you're going to do a deal with me.'
It wasn't hard to guess at Habib's surprise but I had no way to tell what he said except to infer it
from Ali's responses. He told Habib to cool down and think and it was a sure bet Habib was doing plenty of thinking. Ali explained that he'd been forced to act because Chang had become suspicious of him.
'He has to be removed.'
Habib must not have liked that because Ali had to go into some detail about how it could all still work with him running things-would work better, in fact.
He told Habib he could arrange to make it appear that I had killed Chang. Habib apparently liked that even less.
'Very well,' Ali said, 'we'll have to discuss all this face to face. I agree there's a lot to consider.'
At a guess Habib said something about his intention to ditch the whole thing in return for immunity because Ali became conciliatory.
'Look, you were under a lot of pressure. It got bigger than we thought too quickly and you were all caught up with that woman. That's water under the bridge. The Wongs are out and that's a plus. We can get some other Chinese in who're more compliant and I can handle Houli. It'll be all right. You can… recover her.'
All of a sudden Ali noticed how closely I was following the conversation. He swore, switched to rapid Lebanese, and that was the end of my understanding. The only word I caught in what followed sounded like 'fairchild'.
He hung up and looked me over. Moving quickly he upended the chair I was on, leaving me with my feet in the air. He stripped off his tie and trussed my feet together. Then he righted the chair and went into the kitchen. He returned with a tea towel, cut a long, wide strip from it with his knife and gagged me.
'That'll keep you quiet for a while.' He took a small bottle from his pocket, shook out a pill and swallowed it down dry. He worked his shoulders to loosen them and stretched like a cat. He cleared his throat again and punched a number into the phone. He smiled as the call was answered.
'Inspector, this is Hardy. I'm at my place and I need to talk to you. Can you come over here?'
I'm a fair mimic on a good day, but he was better; and again, I was in the frustrating position of listening to only one end of a conversation. Tied up as I was, it was more stressful this time.
'I don't want to talk about it on the phone. I still think Habib could be picking up signals… I don't think it's paranoia… I'm worried about Houli… Talat? No, I don't know anything more about him… OK, as quick as you can, and… be careful.'
He cut the call and took a deep breath. The impersonation had been very good, not perfect, but good enough allowing for telephonic distortion. Ali looked pleased with himself as he put the phone down. He went back to the kitchen and got a bottle of wine and a glass.
'We're not supposed to drink alcohol, but then, there's lots of things we're not supposed to do.'
He poured himself a glass of my cut price merlot and sipped it. 'I don't drink enough to tell whether it's good or bad. I suspect it's cheap, like you, like everything people like you do.'
He was nervous, talking at me, but to himself. Nervous, he was even more dangerous than relaxed. I wondered what the pill he'd taken was, and what effect the wine might have with it. He left the room and I heard the toilet flush. The phone rang, he raced back, swearing, and answered using my voice, perhaps less convincingly.
'What?… When?… Where did she go?… I can't right now
… Yes, yes, soon as I can.'
Gagging is an art that not many people study. Ali hadn't. I worked my jaw against the strip of cloth and loosened it so that I could push against it with my mouth and tongue. It flopped down.
'It's unravelling, Karim,' I said. 'It's not going to work.'
'Fuck you!' He spilled wine from the glass he'd picked up and threw the rest into my face. His arm jerked back, hit the wall and the glass broke. Blood spurted from his hand.
I licked at the drops around my mouth. 'Thanks,' I said. 'Cut your losses, mate. Get together what you've managed to rip off so far and head for the hills. You'll have left DNA all over the place and you'll never convince the SOC people of the scenario you've got planned.'
'Shut up!'
Red wine stained his white shirt and without his tie he suddenly looked nothing like the in-control executioner he'd seen himself as. He paced up and down, getting more and more agitated. He sucked at the cut on his hand. I hoped someone else would ring to up the stress level but no one did and I had to try to do it myself.
'Turn on the news,' I said, 'maybe they've found Habib on his boat.'
'How did you learn about the boat?'
'Oh, that's right. I left certain things out in that off-the-record chat we had after you shot Lester. Let me think… Sun Ling, Gretchen, told me.'
'That crazy junkie bitch.'
'Didn't look crazy to me.'
'She is. She's been in and out of institutions since puberty. Nearly killed a man once. I know what I'd do to her if I…'
'What?'
'Never mind. Where is that bloody Chang?'
'That was May Ling calling, wasn't it? So Gretchen's on the loose? You should warn Habib, but you can't unless you impersonate me again and, frankly, your last effort wasn't that good.'
He was so close to the edge that he didn't even bother to reply. He took out his phone and looked at it.
'You've got no one to call,' I said, 'no one you can trust. I'm almost sorry for you.'
The doorbell rang. I opened my mouth to shout but, again, Ali was too quick for me. He pulled the gag back into place and hit me with another of his paralysing blows. He picked up the. 22 and headed down the passage.
Tasting and breathing dirty tea towel, I closed my eyes. I heard a scuffle and a series of thuds after the door opened but no gunshot. When I opened my eyes Stephen Chang was handcuffing Ali to the stair banister. Ali was fighting for breath; Chang wasn't even puffing. He went down the passage and returned with the small pistol.
'You could get in big trouble for this, Hardy.'
I'd recovered movement enough to nod. Chang untied the gag. He spotted Ali's knife and used it to cut the tie around my feet. Ali stood helplessly and Chang felt in his jacket pocket for the handcuff key. He unlocked the cuffs.
'Stand up slowly,' he said, 'let the blood return to where it belongs.'
I did what he said. 'Traditional Chinese advice.'
'That's right, and this prick copped a traditional Chinese heart punch.'
'How did you know?' I said.
Chang sat and crossed his legs. 'Well, we had our suspicions, didn't we? And when I fished around a bit I found out things I should've noticed before. Just small stuff in his reports; some unexplained gaps in his diary. But what saved your arse was May Ling. I was set to come over here although your voice sounded a bit off. But given your health problems… Anyway, May Ling called me and said she was sure someone was impersonating you. She's got a trained ear. A singer, apparently. So I was ready.'
I told Chang about the conversation Ali had had with Habib and the signs of tension between them.
'Any indication of where he is?' Chang asked.
'Not really. When Ali noticed my ears were flapping, he switched to Lebanese.'
'Not really isn't no.'
'I caught a word. It sounded like "fairchild". Mean anything to you?'
Chang shook his head. 'Not a thing. Are we talking about a person or a place?'
Ali's laugh was a hysterical screech. 'You won't find him. He's much too clever for you and the whole fucking-' He was cut off by my phone ringing again. I answered it. 'Cliff Hardy.'
'Cliff, really you?' May Ling said. 'Really me. I have to thank you-'
'No time. I've just heard from Gretchen. She says she's going to kill Malouf.' 'How? Where?'
'She says he's at a wharf in Fairmild Cove.' 'Where the fuck's that?' 'Mortlake somewhere. I'm going there now.' 'May Ling, don't. Wait. I've got Inspector Chang here. We'll get police there-'
'No, no, you don't understand what she's like. I have to get there first. I'm going. I just wanted you to know.' She cut the call.
29
I told Chang what
May Ling had said. As I did, I grabbed my car keys from a hook in the kitchen.
'What d'you think you're doing?'
'I'm going there. That woman saved my life and yours. And if that's where Habib is that's where I have to be.'
Chang pulled out his phone. 'I can get a unit there quicker than you…'
'She says her sister's unstable. Ali here told me she almost killed someone once. A howling siren could set her off. Deal with what you've got here, Inspector, and come along when you're ready.'
'Fuck you, Hardy.'
I left with Chang still swearing and Ali laughing.
The Falcon looked as though half of it had been sitting out in a hailstorm. The passenger side and part of the roof were pitted where the pellets had struck and the windows were chipped. It started perfectly though and I got going. I was tired but adrenalin charged. I had a rough idea of how to get to Mortlake, and I decided I'd search for Fairmild Cove once I got there.
I headed west through light traffic towards Strathfield and picked up the road that went close to the Concord golf course where I'd once had dealings with a client, and on to the outskirts of Mortlake where my sense of direction cut out. I stopped and consulted the Gregory's. Fairmild Cove was adjacent to the Mortlake ferry and the way there was well signposted.
I got moving again and things came back to me. Just before I joined the army I decided to get myself super fit so as to be a star recruit. I'd been told that rowing was the best aerobic exercise of the lot, so I joined a rowing club. There were a lot of chaps from private schools but one or two roughies like me. I was put through my paces in a gym first, and I just qualified to be allowed in a boat. I rowed in fours and eights on the Parramatta River for a couple of months. I'd never done anything as strenuous before and never since, including basic training. A hard row takes everything out of you, breaks you down to your fundamental physical capacities. I remembered the area around Mortlake-a complex of jetties and wharves to do with some industrial concern-coal, or was it gas? It then looked, if not derelict, neglected. I wondered how it looked now.
The suburbs were quiet; the residents of Concord and