Fern’s eyes widened. ‘You wouldn’t.’
‘I would.’
She fought to compose her face. She got to her feet and picked up Harry. ‘He needs changing.’
‘Too much imaginary tea, maybe,’ I said, trying to get her to smile. It didn’t work.
‘The nappies are in the bathroom,’ said Fern. ‘Unchain me.’
Coy looked at Jenny, who nodded. ‘Go with them and don’t hurt them,’ she said. ‘Give me the gun.’ Coy wasn’t keen on giving Jenny the gun. He had a staring match with her but it was no contest. He handed it over.
‘Sure you don’t want me to shoot their kneecaps, just to make sure they don’t jump you?’ he said.
‘I’ll do it myself if I have to,’ said Jenny. She gave Coy a key, and he used it to unlock Fern’s chain from the heater. Fern took Harry, dragging the chain behind her, and Coy followed.
Jenny sat, Coy’s gun next to her on the table. We were still on our knees.
‘This your place?’ I said to Jenny.
She nodded. ‘Investment property. Between tenants. You can sit if you want.’ She motioned to a two-seater.
I looked at Tasso, who shrugged. We got to our feet and staggered to the couch. Somehow I felt better sitting up. I started to think about how we could deal with Jenny. Perhaps it showed on my face because she picked up the gun.
‘Don’t think I won’t shoot you,’ she said. ‘I know exactly how to use this thing. I’ve shot thousands of rounds.’
The skin on her fat face was strangely inert. It formed no lines. When she talked her mouth moved but the skin around it somehow absorbed the movement without seeming to move itself. Her eyes peered out through slits, like gun ports in a bunker.
‘Let’s talk business,’ she said. ‘You have something I want.’
‘Money?’ said Tasso.
‘No.’ For a moment her eyes opened wider than a crack. This is not about money. It has never been about money. I want the lease.’
‘The lease?’
‘The exploration lease. You’ve put in an application. I’ve put in an application.’
‘You mean Black Hill?’
‘Yes, Black Hill. I own Black Hill.’
‘Since when?’ Tasso looked puzzled.
‘Since she and Coy threatened to shoot off Frank Hardcastle’s kneecaps,’ I said.
Tasso looked at me.
‘How do you know that?’ said Jenny.
‘Never mind.’
She levelled the pistol at me. ‘Tell me.’
‘I bugged Hardcastle’s office.’
‘You bugged his office? Shit.’
‘I heard you and Coy threaten to kneecap Hardcastle unless he signed the company over to you. Coy has a fascination with kneecaps.’
‘Frank was going to freeze Sonia out,’ said Jenny. ‘He was fucking her but wasn’t going to give her a share. I couldn’t allow that. We bought him out. It’s legal.’
‘Apart from the threat of kneecapping.’
‘But Sonia would have inherited Hiskey’s share,’ said Tasso.
Jenny snorted. ‘What was left of it after he gave most of it to Coy and Harlin.’
‘Coy owns part of Black Hill?’ I said.
‘He does.’
‘Jesus, talk about a rogue’s gallery.’
‘So between the four of you—Harlin, Coy, Sonia and you—you own Black Hill outright,’ said Tasso.
‘Correct. And Harlin has forfeited his share; he’ll never claim it. So it’s just me, Coy and Sonia.’ She smiled, at last, by tightening her gun ports. There was a nasty glint of gold among her neatly arranged teeth. Then the smile was gone. ‘We own a company that’s currently worth jackshit. It’s worth jackshit because you and Hiskey stole from it.’
‘That’s not …’ said Tasso.
She held up her hand. ‘Please, Tasso. Let’s not. We know about the find. We know it’s worth billions. That find belongs to me, to Black Hill. I’m entitled to it. I want it. I want you to give me the exact location of the find.’
‘I give it to you, you let Harry go. Is that how it works?’
‘Yes. If you give me the exact location of the find, I’ll let Harry go.’ She looked at me. ‘Plus we’ll need the tapes from Hardcastle’s office.’
‘You let Harry go, you’ll get everything you want,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘Uh uh. You give us what we want, then we let Harry go.’
‘What guarantee do we have you’ll let him go?’ said Tasso.
She shrugged. It was impossible to read her impassive face. ‘None. But what’s the alternative?’
‘What about us?’ I said. ‘What about Fern?’
She smiled again, and there was another flash of gold. Fern came back, carrying Harry. Coy was behind them and he shut the door. Harry twisted in Fern’s arms so he could see his father.
‘Dada?’
Tasso did his best to smile at him. Harry held out his arms but Coy jabbed Fern in the ribs. ‘He can play with his fucken pots,’ he said. He re-padlocked her chain to the heater. Fern settled Harry on the floor and did her best to distract him. ‘He’s hungry,’ she said. ‘He needs food.’
‘We don’t have any,’ said Jenny. She looked at Tasso. ‘Let’s get this done quick. Dragging it out will only put the boy in harm’s way.’
Fern was holding it together, but only just. She looked at Tasso with red eyes. ‘What does she want?’
‘She wants Hiskey’s find.’
‘Well, for fuck’s sake, give it to her. It’s only gold.’
‘Of course I’ll give it to her,’ said Tasso. ‘But you know that as soon as I do, we’re dead?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean they can’t let us live. We would go straight to the cops. They know that. And Jenny would never get what she desperately wants, which is a goldmine. We’re dead meat. We only have their word they’ll let Harry go.’
Fern looked in amazement at Jenny, and was silent. Harry started to cry again.
‘In fact I’m shooting the little fucker now,’ said Coy. ‘Give me the gun.’
‘No, we need the boy,’ said Jenny. She looked at Fern. ‘Shut him up.’
Fern somehow found the composure to reach out to Harry for another embrace. It took her a few moments, but calmness came to her face, a certain resolve. ‘Hush, hush,’ she whispered. He kept crying. Fern was looking at Tasso’s feet. ‘Throw me a sock,’ she said.
‘A sock?’ Tasso shrugged, and with my help he removed one of his socks and tossed it to her. She sat Harry on the ground and put the sock on her hand as a puppet.
‘Hello, I’m the friendly sock jock,’ she said, in a funny voice. Harry stopped crying and stared at the sock. The sock jock looked around, and sniffed. ‘Do I smell?’ Harry laughed. Fern continued her monologue, and Harry was entertained. Fern was a natural with the kid, and it made me wonder what Tasso had missed out on for all these years.
Jenny reached into her briefcase and took out a notepad and a pen.
‘Give me the coordinates,’ she said.
‘I’ll need to write them down,’ said Tasso. ‘I can’t recite them.’
Jenny looked at Coy. ‘Do your thing with the tape, Peter.’ Coy came to us and grabbed Tasso by the ankles and pulled him off the couch onto the floor. I went with him. Coy grabbed a large roll of duct tape from the sports bag and wound it round Tasso’s feet, up his legs to the tops of his thighs. Then he did the same to me. I tried to kick him but in socks I was ineffectual and it earned me another jab in the ribs.
‘Keep struggling, West, and I’ll give the kid a smack,’ he said. He bound me tightly.
‘You like duct tape, don’t you,’ I said. ‘You used it on Hiskey, too.’
‘Yeah, I like duct tape.’ I received a dose of his bad breath. His eyes were moving back and forth, as always. ‘When we’ve got what we want, I’m going to wrap you up in it, all the way to the top of your head. Imagine it. I’ll poke a little hole in t
he tape so you can breathe. I might be a mummy’s boy, but you’ll be a mummy.’ He sniggered. ‘Want to know what’s going to happen? Jenny knows plenty of places in the outback where we can dump a few bodies. I’m going to wrap you up like a mummy but I’m not going to shoot you for a long time, a few days at least. You’re going to be uncomfortable. Numbat and Tiny are keen to give me a hand. Maybe you’ll be missed, but people go missing all the time. Like your girlfriend’s sister. Ghosts, that’s what you’ll be, just a few more Adelaide ghosts. People will wonder, maybe for years, what happened to you, and every time your name is printed in the paper, I’ll just smile to myself. And eventually you’ll all be forgotten, just skeletons in a mineshaft somewhere.’ He took a breath and stared hard with his shifting eyes. ‘What’s the matter? Nothing to say? Maybe you’ve just run out of smartarse remarks.’ When he finished with the duct tape he took a small pair of pliers from his duffle bag and used them to snip the plasticuff that bound Tasso’s hands. There was a slight release of tension in my wrists, still bound in their own plasticuff, and I worked my fingers to get the blood circulating again. Tasso flopped like a seal to the table and pulled himself onto a chair. Coy reclaimed his gun from Jenny and sat on the sofa, sniffing the gun and feeling the barrel and pointing it at my forehead.
Jenny gave Tasso the notepad and a pen and he wrote on it. ‘Of course, there’s no point giving me the wrong coordinates,’ she said. ‘We’ll be watching Harry for months. We start drilling and don’t find gold, Harry gets a bullet in his head. We’ll keep tabs on him, don’t worry.’ When Tasso finished she took the paper and keyed the numbers into the laptop. ‘They’re in the lease area.’ She smiled and closed the laptop. ‘Thank you, Tasso. You’ve no idea what this means to me.’
‘And no interest.’
‘You killed Hiskey, didn’t you?’ I said to Jenny.
‘That was Harlin.’
‘No it wasn’t. I’ve figured out how it happened.’ I looked at Coy, who was rubbing his nose with his gun.
‘Go on,’ he said, waving it.
‘We don’t have time,’ said Jenny. ‘And who cares what he’s figured out, anyway?’
‘I want to see how clever he is,’ said Coy. ‘He doesn’t look clever.’
‘I think Harlin was involved, like you told me,’ I said to Coy. ‘You and Harlin went to see Hiskey about the missing safrole. Harlin hit him a couple of times with the hammer but he didn’t kill him. He just smashed a couple of fingers, is my guess. Later you called Jenny and told her what had happened and Jenny thought it might be a good idea to go visit Hiskey, too. Somehow you had heard about the find, Jenny, and you were mad with him.’
‘Of course I was mad with him. He was stealing from me.’
‘It was nothing to do with you,’ said Tasso. ‘You didn’t even have a share in Black Hill.’
‘My daughter did,’ said Jenny. She almost barked it. ‘My daughter was entitled to a share of that find, and Hiskey was stealing it from her.’
‘How did she even know about it?’ I said.
‘Hiskey told her, the stupid bastard,’ said Jenny. ‘They had a fight just before he went up north with Tasso. It was nasty. He told her about the find and said she wouldn’t get a cent of it. He was filing for divorce. He laughed in her face.’
‘So you decided to get revenge for the sake of your daughter.’
‘For the sake of my family. No one laughs at my family.’
Tasso sneered. ‘It’s not about family honour. It’s about greed.’
‘No, you’re wrong, Tasso,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s all about honour. My father was a geologist, a prospector. He was a great man, and he was cheated out of a find.’
‘What find?’
‘You know the La Jolle formation?’
‘Of course I do.’ It was a large iron-ore deposit west of Kimba, discovered in the 1960s and worked for more than thirty years. The mine had closed a few years ago.
‘My father discovered it. He staked the claim. He did everything by the book, and he was cheated by his partner and a corrupt dick in the mines department.’ There was an unexpected quiver in her voice, but her eyes were hard. ‘Kimba Iron is a billion-dollar company now, but it’s been built on a swindle. My father was cheated and he never recovered. He remained a poor man, and I watched him die. He died of a broken heart. I was very close to him.’
‘A daddy’s girl,’ I said to Coy. ‘And you’re a mummy’s boy. I don’t think she’s going to keep you around too long.’
‘I’m not going to be cheated again,’ said Jenny.
‘You went to Hiskey’s office that night, knowing he had already been beaten up.’
‘Yes.’ I supposed she saw no harm in giving information to the dead. ‘Coy called me and told me what had happened, just like you said. I had an idea, and we went there. Harlin had smashed some of his fingers, but he wasn’t feeling any pain. He had shot himself up with heroin. The stupid, stupid man. He was just sitting there, out of it, a stupid grin on his face. Coy taped him to the chair and we tried to get sense out of him. I hit him a few times with the hammer but he was too high. He wouldn’t say anything. He just grinned. Eventually I lost patience.’
‘And smashed his skull in. You used the same hammer as Harlin.’
‘Yes, and I wore gloves. The hammer only had Harlin’s prints on it, and Coy hid it until he gave it to you.’
‘You’ve been a good mummy’s boy, haven’t you?’ I said to Coy. ‘Doing everything you’re told. You wanted Harlin’s drug business.’
‘And now I have it,’ he said. ‘Harlin’s a fugitive and Barenfanger’s in hospital. I have the contacts, the know-how, a little bit of capital. Sure, we lost a lab, but we’ll build others.’
‘And there’s just a little problem of us,’ said Tasso.
Coy shrugged. ‘You’re no problem.’
‘Let Harry go now.’
‘We let the boy go when we’ve dealt with you,’ said Jenny. ‘He’s our little insurance.’
‘Are you sure you want to let him go?’ said Coy. ‘He might remember us.’
‘He can’t even talk,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s worth the risk.’
‘I don’t think it is.’
‘I do.’
Harry started crying again. ‘For fuck’s sake. At least can I belt the little shit?’ said Coy. He strode over to Harry and Fern. Fern stood up and swung at him with the aluminium saucepan. Coy wasn’t expecting it and it caught him on the side of the head.
‘Bitch,’ he said. He backhanded her with his pistol. The suppressor caught her on the cheek, and there was instant blood. Harry started screaming, and Coy aimed the gun at him. Fern lunged at Coy. Her ankle chain stopped her short and she knocked him off-balance.
She tried to grab the gun and it was forced against her stomach. There was a muffled gunshot and she fell to the floor. Coy aimed at her again. Seated at the table, Tasso reached over and grabbed Jenny’s laptop and threw it at Coy. It spun through the air like a Frisbee. Coy didn’t react to it and it hit him in the temple. He appeared to think about things for a moment, and then twisted, crumpled and fell. I lurched towards him. The duct tape was tight round my legs and I couldn’t bend at the ankles or knees. Coy wasn’t moving. I fell on top of him and my shoulder wound screamed at me. My bound hands were on his gun hand. Jenny was coming at us, a small gun in her hand—it must have been in the briefcase. I rolled Coy on top of me by pulling at his arm. Jenny fired twice, and I felt the impacts in Coy’s chest. I lifted Coy’s dead hand, still holding his big silver gun, and pointed it at Jenny. I squeezed on Coy’s trigger finger, and the gun spat. Judging from the look on her face, the bullet, when it hit, cut short the blossoming of an outraged sense of entitlement.
42
There was a phone in Jenny’s briefcase. Fern was still breathing and we did our best to stem the bleeding until the ambulances arrived. The bullet had struck her in the lower abdomen, just above the groin. The ambulances were quick, and the first one took
her away with its siren blasting.
‘I’ve always had mixed feelings about that sound,’ said Tasso. He was holding Harry in his arms as he watched Fern’s ambulance disappear around the corner. Harry watched it go, too, fascinated by the siren and the flashing lights, and then went to sleep against Tasso’s chest, Tasso stroking his curly hair.
‘You mean the siren?’
‘Yeah, the siren. On the one hand it is the sound of civilisation, you know? The sound that tells us we are an organised and humane society and we’ll do our best to save every life. Every life, even the dicks. That’s civilised.’
‘I never really thought about it.’ I was pulling duct tape from my jeans. We had sliced through our bindings with a kitchen knife, but the pieces were still sticking to me.
‘But on the other hand, it’s the sound that reminds us that death stalks us all and that there’s always someone out there who is breathing his final breath, fighting his last fight, letting go his white-knuckled grip on the world. One day the siren will call for you, Steve. It’ll call for me. It’ll call for us all.’
‘Yeah, I guess it will. But I’m fucken just not going to answer it.’
Tasso gave a grim little grin. ‘And in the end, what was it all for?’
‘We all have to find our own meaning, Tasso.’
‘Yeah.’
The first cops sealed off the scene, and eventually the forensics guys turned up in their hairnets and white overalls. Tasso and I sat on the back of one of the ambulances and a local resident brought us a cup of tea. A paramedic tended my shoulder wound, which had opened up in my struggle with Coy and was hurting like buggery.
‘Tell them everything,’ Tasso said. ‘The cops.’
‘Even about Ecstasy Lake?’
‘Yeah. You know what?’
‘What?’
‘Ecstasy Lake wasn’t worth this.’
Bert arrived, bringing Melinda. She ran to Harry and grabbed him from Tasso. She kissed him about fifty times and woke him. He started crying.
Ecstasy Lake Page 28