Appeal Denied: A Cliff Hardy Novel (18 page)

‘How soon’s soon?’ I asked.

‘She says a couple of days.’

‘Can you set things up that quickly? You told her it’d take a week. It’ll be a rush but she’s calling the shots.’

‘Hmm … First I have to know the meeting place. She says she’ll try to make it somewhere people can hide.’

‘Their people or ours?’

‘That’s one of the problems, isn’t it?’

‘It could be. When d’you expect her to get back to you on that?’

Townsend shrugged. ‘With her, who knows? She’s an alpha female. There’s a bit more I have to tell you.’

I told him to have something to eat and to drink some coffee before he did. Gave me time to anticipate what it might be. Difficult to see how things could be more uncertain or dangerous.

He cleared his throat. ‘After we’d … reconciled, I showed her the little Morello video and told her about the photographs.’

He obviously expected me to explode and, maybe if I hadn’t had so much to drink, I would have. But for an aggressive, assertive man, he was now showing a vulnerability I hadn’t seen before and I didn’t have the heart to make it any harder, at least until I’d heard him out.
Stay calm
, I told myself.

‘That’s without showing the face of the woman or using her name, right?’

Relief showed in his every movement as he drank more coffee. ‘Yes, of course.’

I felt I’d been too soft. ‘It wasn’t a fucking rhetorical question. Did you or didn’t you use the name, let it slip between kisses?’

‘I did not.’

‘Okay. Well, in a way it puts the matter into an interesting perspective. Did you tell her I had the photos?’

‘No, but she knows we’re working together and …’

‘Right. So if anyone comes after me or you in the next couple of days, we’ll know she’s playing for the other side, won’t we?’

He went pale, almost yellow under my spotty light. ‘I didn’t think of that.’

‘Have to think of everything. Cheer up—you’ve got good security and so have I. Just keep a wary eye out.’

Some of the self-confidence was back. ‘You’re making fun of me.’

‘Just a bit. Look on the bright side, Lee. If we don’t get any flak coming our way you’ll know we can trust her to do what she says she’s going to do. Isn’t that a comfort?’

‘Anyone ever told you what a prick you are?’

‘Just a few.’

Townsend went home and I cleaned up, put the pistol away and went to bed. I woke up in the early hours zooming out of a fierce nightmare. One of those that make you relieved that you’re awake, at home and still alive. I’ve heard that the part of the brain that produces nightmares is the same part that affects schizophrenics. If that’s true, their pain and fear must be truly terrible.

The experience left me too shaken to get back to sleep. I tried to read Doctorow’s book about Sherman’s march through Georgia. Great stuff, but I couldn’t concentrate and some of it was too bleak for my mood. I got up, made coffee, ate two boiled eggs and moved restlessly from one room to another. Wandering about in an empty house in the early hours of a soon-to-be winter morning isn’t good preparation for confident forward planning. I worried about where things stood with Townsend and Farrow and the Northern Crimes Unit and the Internal Affairs people. Complicated. Twisted.

Pieces of the nightmare came back to me the way they can after the event. It had something to do with a threat to my daughter Megan as a child. Not a lot of sense in that, because I didn’t meet her until she was past adolescence. But perhaps that was the source of the mental disturbance. Trouble was, she seemed to have a blind brother and that made no sense at all.

Dawn and the opportunity to go up the road for the papers came as a relief. It was drizzling. I pulled on a plastic raincoat with a hood and I was about to leave the house when the thought struck me that Jane Farrow had had plenty of time to relay the information about the Morello evidence, if that was the game she was playing. I put the Walther in my pocket.

Nothing happened, except my feet got wet in leaky sneakers. I read the papers. Still no significant coverage of Gregory’s death. It was being sat on very effectively. Mid-morning the phone rang.

‘Hardy.’

‘Mr Hardy, this is Hannah Morello.’

I had a full cup of coffee in my hand and I spilled some. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. Why should anything be wrong?’

‘I’m sorry. That’s good. What can I do for you?’

‘Oh no, you can’t brush me off like that. What’s been happening?’

I gave her an abbreviated version of events, stressing that no mention had been made of her in the proceedings.

‘You didn’t sound so sure of that when I said who I was.’

‘It’s at an edgy stage, Mrs Morello. I couldn’t see how you’d be in danger, and I’m glad you’re not alarmed. Townsend and I could be in the firing line. We’ll have to wait and see. Now, what was it?’

‘I don’t suppose you know the school holidays have started.’

‘I didn’t, no.’

‘There speaks the childless man. Well, they have, and I got a call from Pam in Rockhampton. She’s fine. She’s settled in with her sister. Apparently they’ve got a big place and she wants me and the kids to come up and stay for a while.’

‘Sounds good. Rocky’d be better than down here at this time of year.’

‘Milly and Josh’re dead keen and I could do with a break. I just wondered if I was going to be needed while you go about nailing those bastards.’

‘Maybe later if the photographs need to be verified, but for now …’

‘Given you’re not a hundred per cent sure I’d be safe, going to Queensland would be a bloody good idea. Thank you, Mr Hardy.’

She rang off. Not entirely pleased. Couldn’t blame her, but at least one niggling area of worry was out of the way. There were plenty more to be going on with.

I went to the gym, parked where I had the night I was attacked, and got through a pretty solid workout. A few people I knew were there and we yarned in between sets and cracked the usual gym jokes.

Heard about aerobics in hell?

No.

Starts with ten million leg lifts.

I enjoyed the companionship and felt my mood, which had been dark ever since Lily died, begin to lift a bit. I felt so good physically that I even did some stretching. Not much.

With the coldness of the day, a hot spa appealed and I soaked in the bubbles for a full cycle. I passed on the sauna—enough is enough. I wandered down to the Bar Napoli and had a flat white. At one time, when I had a second generation Italian offsider named Scott Galvani, I acquired a smattering of Italian. I’d lost it, but it was good to hear the language being spoken around me and to pick up a word or two. I’d been to Italy once, very briefly, liked it a lot. Looking at the wall posters—the standard stuff: the Colosseum, Pompeii, the Isle of Capri—I thought I’d like to see it again, closer up and for longer. I realised that I was looking ahead, beyond settling accounts for Lily.

The drizzle had stopped but the day was overcast with more rain predicted. I walked back to my car parking spot and was about to open the door when I heard a shout from somewhere above me.

‘Hey!’

The memory of the attack here and my army training and long experience kicked in, and I had the pistol out of the raincoat pocket and was crouched down with the car for cover before the sound of the shout had died away. I looked up and saw a man leaning out of a window, well above me and to my left. He was in his pyjamas and had a stubbie in his hand. I lowered the pistol and stood.

‘What?’ I said.

‘I seen you here last week when you got attacked, like.

You all right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s thanks to me, mate. That bugger was going to do you. I yelled at him and he pissed off.’

The window was in a building about ten metres away. I approached it. ‘Well, thanks. What happened next?’

‘Like I say, he shot through and I was going to call the police and that. Couldn’t find me phone. Tell you the truth I was a bit pissed. I found the mobile and took another look out and you was up and moving and looked like you was gonna live, so I didn’t do nothin’. Glad to see you’s all right.’

He reached up to close the window but I raised a hand to stop him. ‘Hold on. Did you get a good look at the guy who attacked me?’

‘Yeah, mate. Pretty good.’

‘Big, dark bloke in a suit, right?’

‘Shit, no. He was littler than you but he musta been strong the way he grabbed you. Sort of medium-sized solid bastard. Bald head.’

‘Drove off, did he? What sort of car?’

‘Jesus, now you’re asking. Hey, this isn’t police stuff, is it, ’cos I …?’

‘Nothing like that.’ I opened my wallet and took out a twenty and a ten, all I had. I bent, put them on the ground and pinned them down with loose piece of concrete.

‘This is yours and I’m gone as soon as you tell me about the car.’

‘No car, mate. He went off on a fuckin’ motorbike, and don’t expect me to tell you what kind because I don’t know one from another.’

My informant wasn’t a witness who’d stand up in court. By his own admission he was drunk when he saw what he saw. But that didn’t matter to me. His description fitted the man who’d been with Kristos at the murder of Robinson as caught on film by Danny Morello, and his departure by motorbike was too much of a coincidence not to connect it with Gregory’s murder.

You don’t comb Sydney for medium-sized, strong men covering their baldness with a cap and driving a motorbike. But now I had a credible description of the man who’d probably killed Lily. I looked forward to finding out who he was and to meeting him.

24

I
couldn’t wait any longer. If I could get hold of Kristos I’d find a way to make him tell me who his bald-headed killer mate was and all this farting about with Perkins and videos could stop right there. I had a few persuaders—the photos, kept in a deep slit in the driver’s seat of the car, the Walther and a Swiss army knife. Whatever it took. I had Jane Farrows’s mobile number and I rang it. She answered.

‘This is Hardy. Is Kristos there?’

‘No, he’s been suspended along with the other senior men. What—?’

‘Where does he live?’

She kept her voice low. ‘What’re you on about? Hasn’t Lee told you we’ve—?’

‘I don’t care about that. Where does he fucking well live?’

‘You’ll spoil everything.’

‘Where are you?’

‘At my desk.’

‘If you don’t tell me where he lives I’m coming over there and I’ll do damage to anyone who tries to stop me finding out what I need to know.’

‘He lives in a flat across the road from the station here in Longueville. He’s probably there now. He was in collecting stuff not long ago.’

‘The exact address.’

She gave it, then she said, ‘You’re an arsehole, Hardy. I was talking to Lee just a little while ago. We’re setting up the meeting with Perkins for tomorrow. You’re going to fuck it up.’

‘I don’t care about your meeting or about you or Lee, but I’ll tell you this, if you alert Kristos that I’m after him you’ll be very sorry.’

‘Fuck you.’

Had to admire her. Oddly, her resilience calmed me down. ‘Listen, Jane, I reckon I’ve got the highest stake in this and there’s a move I have to make now. Maybe I can do it so it doesn’t blow your plans. I will if I can. Just sit tight and don’t tell Lee about this. Go on with your arrangements. It might work out—’

She hung up on me; the second woman to do it in one day. Maybe a record.

I was calm but seething inside. I had no precise idea of how to handle Kristos, but sometimes improvisation is the best policy. It started to rain and the traffic slowed, increasing my impatience. The rain got heavier and my wipers struggled to cope. I had to concentrate to drive safely, and I had the additional worry that the petrol gauge was low. To run dry in the rain in the middle of slow-moving traffic would be no joke. It was stop-start all the way over the Harbour Bridge and through North Sydney and Greenwich—a drain on the fuel.

By Northwood the rain had stopped and, with the needle flickering below empty, I found a service station. I was about to use the pump when I remembered that I’d left the only cash I had back in the car park. I had a keycard, but I suspected that the account was just about tapped out. I put in twenty dollars worth, which gets you bugger-all these days, and asked for thirty dollars on top hoping the card would support it. It did, but it must have been a near thing.

I got on the road again and immediately lost myself. This was unfamiliar territory to me. The police had brought me to Longueville after I’d reported the Williams killing, and a taxi had taken me back to Milsons Point. I hadn’t paid any attention to the route on either trip. I remembered William Hurt’s line in
Body Heat
:
Sometimes
the shit comes down so heavy I feel I ought to wear a hat
. I stopped, dug out the UBD, and plotted my way to the Northern Crimes HQ. My mood wasn’t improving.

I turned into the street, looking out for a block of flats opposite the police station. It was easy to spot. Cream brick, three storey, pebbles and garden, balconies. I drove past and found a parking place around the corner. It felt chancy to be across from a police station, carrying a gun and about to front up aggressively to a serving, if suspended, policeman, but I was charged up enough to do it.

There were several entrances to the block and the one that led to Kristos’s flat was at the front. Good security: you had to buzz from outside the building to be admitted. I pressed the buzzer for the flat number Jane Farrow had given me and waited for a response. None came. I tried again with the same result. Frustration was building as I thought I’d have to lie in wait for him to come home. I pressed again. Still nothing.

The standard trick is to press all the buttons, hope you get an answer and try to bluff your way in. I sneezed and stepped away to wipe my nose and, for no reason in particular, looked up. Kristos, casually dressed, was standing on a balcony three levels up, looking down at me with a mobile phone in his hand. A truck went past on the street and probably drowned out what I shouted up at him. Anyway, he didn’t care. He closed the phone and went back into his flat.