HOOK, LINE & SINKER
A SYD FISH MYSTERY
SUSAN GEASON
© SUSAN GEASON 2007
AUTHOR’S NOTE
If some of the background to this story seems dated,
it’s because I wrote it in 1998 when the property
market was still roaring. It began to level out after
that and then headed south. Because of a shortage of
housing stock, is now on the way up again. The Police
Integrity Commission (PIC) in this story was set up in
response to the 1995-97 Wood Royal Commission into
Corruption of the NSW Police. In 1996 an English
‘cleanskin’ (the ‘Clive Metcalfe’ of this story) was
appointed
as Commissioner. He did not live up to Syd’s
hopes, and left the force divided and low in morale
when he left in 2002 after a prolonged media campaign
against him over unchecked drug and organised crime in
Cabramatta in Sydney’s west. NSW has had two
Commissioners since then, the latest a devout biblereading Baptist. Hope springs eternal…
2
This book is dedicated to my brother, Patrick Geason.
3
1
To avoid the axe murderer on the loose in Kings Cross, I kept to
the main streets on my way to Victoria Street to lunch with
Lizzie Darcy. It was a perfect Sydney summer’s day: the smog
levels were miraculously below hazardous; there was no bushfire
smoke, and the graceful plane trees were in full leaf. Only the
sight of all those perfect, tanned blond backpackers doing
nothing soured the experience.
The axeman had first struck on a Tuesday night, coolly hacking
a young Czech tourist to death at the top of William Street, the
main artery leading into Kings Cross, and making a perfect
getaway. He’d appeared again the following week, in one of the
Cross’s laneways, and tried to whack an Irish tourist. This time
he’d chosen the wrong man: after a couple of slashes, the victim
had knocked him down and fled. To add to the general mayhem, a
gang of Koreans then pulled two Korean ‘tourists’ called Kim from
a car in Earl Place and laid into them with furniture, golf
clubs, fists and boots before making their getaway. A horrified
resident filmed the victims being stomped to death.
Perhaps this is what the Chamber of Commerce means when it
talks about the unique character of Kings Cross.
For a few blissful days the tourists thinned out, the drug
dealers and muggers kept to well-lit streets, and the back alleys
4
became safe for law-abiding citizens. I almost expected little
old ladies to return, like fish to the Thames... or was it the
swallows to Capistrano?
But when a week passed without an attack, the
hookers,
junkies and street kids ignored police warnings and began to
trickle back. In their culture, a confrontation with an axewielding madman in a dark street was regarded as an acceptable
risk.
Life returned to normal, or what passed for it around here.
The only reminder of the fuss was a copy of the identikit picture
of the axeman fading on the wall of the deli. It made him look a
little like Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver.
Lizzie had managed to grab an outdoor table at Roy’s, and was
immersed in a newspaper account of the murder.
‘I reckon this bloke’s hearing voices telling him to kill
people,’ she said, as I sat down.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Well, he’s not wearing a disguise; he’s approaching the
victims front-on; he’s not worried about witnesses, and he
doesn’t know the victims. As far as we know, anyway. He certainly
didn’t know the Irishman. So he’s got no impulse control and he’s
not worried about consequences.’
‘He’s doing some planning, though. He’s managed to get away
with it twice, and he’s obviously choosing his victims...’
‘Yeah, he’s a repressed homosexual, I reckon.’
‘Why?’
‘Straight men attack women.’
5
‘But you said he’s a psycho.’
‘So what? Flipping out doesn’t change your sexual
orientation.’
‘What about the Koreans?’
We were only metres from the scene of the double murder.
‘Different sort of crime. That was about money, not sex. They
were sending a message to their colleagues in Korea to keep off
their turf. We’ll see a dramatic drop in visa applications from
Seoul for a while, mark my words.’
That got us started on immigration policy and what Pauline
Hanson and her One Nation followers would make of Korean illegal
immigrants chopping each other in the streets of Sydney. This led
us through multiculturalism, the woeful lack of leadership in the
country, the bleak economic outlook, the collapse of the
education system and the parlous state of non-ratings season
television, which led inevitably to the dismal state of our
personal lives.
In case I wasn’t depressed enough, Lizzie then told me she’d
decided to buy an apartment.
‘After just telling me the country’s going to hell in a hand
basket and that you’re not sure you’ll have a job next year?’
‘Syd, there’s never a good time to hock your soul to the
devil, so when the urge becomes irresistible, you might as well
give in. Besides, interest rates will never be lower than this.’
This was true. But even cheap money had failed to lure me into
the mortgage market. It’s like the local swimming hole: it looks
6
safe, but just under the surface lie submerged rocks, old tree
trunks, the bones of dead cows, and the odd crocodile.
Lizzie read my mind. ‘And prices can only get higher.’
We were both old enough to recall a time when property prices
in the Eastern Suburbs didn’t increase by twenty per cent a year.
Every year.
‘What’s the real reason?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why now?’
I had to wait while Lizzie decided whether or not to be honest
with me. She sighed. ‘I’ve always prided myself on being able to
move house with two suitcases, but that’s not true any more. I’ve
got heaps of junk, but I’m still living in other people’s spaces.
It’s schizophrenic. And I’m terrified of turning into a bag
lady.’
‘That’s irrational.’
‘No, it’s not!’ she snapped. ‘I look around the newsroom and
I’m the oldest person there! It’s terrifying. And when the
kiddies finally get to do the hiring, they don’t want oldies
hanging around nagging them about grammar and reminiscing about
the good old days when people could still tell the difference
between news and advertising.’
‘You’re getting paranoid,’ I said.
‘It’s all right for you. You’re a man. It’s OK to look like
Methuselah’s billygoat if you’re a man—think about all those
face-lifted, hair-plugged TV anchormen —but nobody wants old
women. It’s a fact of life.’
7
‘The answer is no,’ I said. OK, so I’m not super sensitive,
but I know when I’m being manipulated.
Lizzie’s eyes narrowed. ‘No, what?’
‘No, I won’t help you look.’
‘Did I ask?’
I didn’t deign to reply to that.
Lizzie changed tack. ‘Why not?’
‘It’s boring. It’s depressing. All those lying estate agents,
all those avid young couples, all that perving on other people’s
desperate lives.’
Lizzie ignored this piece of blatant hypocrisy. I’m a private
detective and Lizzie is a journalist: we get paid to invade the
privacy of perfect strangers. It’s just that I
prefer to do it
on a retainer.
‘Come on Syd. You know every building in every street in this
area. I don’t want to end up buying some smelly fire trap just to
stop the pain.’
There is a look Lizzie gets when she’s not going to be
deterred by excuses, reason, or even heavy ground fire. Mulish, I
believe the nuns would have called it. All that was left was to
salvage something out of the ruins.
‘What’s it worth to you?’
She brightened. ‘I’ll think of something.’
As I was warning her to think fast, my mobile phone cheeped.
I’d finally caved in and entered the technological age when my
12-year-old answering machine gave up the ghost. A battalion of
cockroaches had eaten through the wiring, I discovered, when I
8
opened it up. Enraged, I’d slung it out the window. It had been
salvaged by a second-hand dealer almost before it hit the ground.
As I’ve been known to insult people who shout inanities into
mobile phones in restaurants, at weddings and funerals—and
probably during the opening of Federal Parliament—I walked down
the road and propped under a plane tree to take the call.
‘Who was that?’ asked Lizzie when I got back.
‘Carmel Aboud. The one whose husband thought she was having an
affair because she’d dropped about 10 kilos.’
‘Wasn’t she sneaking off to the gym?’ Lizzie had total recall
for confidential details of cases she’d wheedled out of me in
inebriated or weak moments.
‘Yeah, but instead of being relieved, Eddie did his block.
Told her to stop or he’d divorce her.’
Lizzie snorted. ‘Terrified she’d find another man if she got
down to a size 12.’
‘Quite likely. She’d be a knockout.’ I’d been about to say
Carmel had eyes like a houri from a dirty Victorian postcard, but
Lizzie’s raised eyebrows stopped me. ‘She decided she’d rather be
lumpy and married than single and svelte.’
‘Does she love him, or is she safeguarding her investment?’
Lizzie asked.
‘Who knows? But she’s smart enough to know if she divorced
Eddie she’d end up in a women’s refuge or back at mum’s camped in
the sleepout. She’d never get her hands on the dough. Most of it
would be offshore, anyway.’
9
In property-obsessed Sydney, Eddie Aboud was a real estate
legend. He managed the sales of three quarters of the multimillion dollar mansions in the Eastern Suburbs, and his squad of
avid blonde saleswomen handled the smaller deals. They were tough
customers. Eddie would fly over and bomb the competition back to
the Stone Age, and the blondes would move in and strafe any
survivors.
‘It must be nice to have enough money to need a tax haven,’
said Lizzie.
‘It would be nice to have enough money to need an accountant.’
Thinking I was joking, Lizzie laughed. ‘So what did Carmel
want?’
‘She thinks Eddie’s having it off with one of his blondes.’
‘That’s quite likely,’ said Lizzie. ‘Old wives and young
blondes are natural enemies, like rabbits and foxes. What’s she
looking for, fidelity or leverage?’
‘I’ll let you know.’
I met Carmel at Roy’s the following day. At three o’clock on a
summer afternoon, Victoria Street slumbered in the dappled shade
of the plane trees. In the coffee shop impossibly tall, blond,
suntanned backpackers wrote postcards to their mothers in Europe,
leaving out all the best bits; out-of-work actors smoked moodily
over newspapers; an ageing youth with a shaven head and black
gear struck a writerly pose over a bound journal. With her
expensive matronly clothes and gold jewellery, Carmel looked as
if she’d walked onto the wrong film set.
10
After she’d told me about her kids and her new BMW and I’d
lied about how busy I was, we finally got down to brass tacks. ‘I
think Eddie’s having an affair with that blonde bitch who works
for him,’ Carmel said.
‘Which one?’ Eddie’s hiring policy was a reflection of his
deepest adolescent yearnings: without name tags, it would be
impossible to tell his leggy, toothy, bottle-blond assistants
apart.
‘Chantelle Ryan,’ snarled Carmel, her dark eyes fierce. She
handed me a torn-out page of the Wentworth Courier, the eastern
suburbs free newspaper that consisted almost entirely of real
estate ads. A goldmine. Ranged around Eddie Aboud in his agency
ad were a slick, dark young man in an Armani suit and three
blondes. Carmel named them: ‘Todd Kratzmann, Bree Nichols,
Alysha Dolinksa and Chantelle.
‘Where do they get the names?’ I asked, trying to lighten her
up.
‘Their mothers were addicted to soaps, obviously. Chantelle
was probably christened Sharon.’
I laughed: I’m a sucker for spite. ‘What do you want me to
do?’
‘Follow Eddie around for a week or so. Find out if he’s
bonking that bitch in some love nest somewhere.’
I groaned. I’d been trying to avoid to avoid trekking the
through real estate market with Lizzie—this was the same game in
a higher price bracket.
‘It’ll cost you, Carmel.’
11
‘I’ve got the money. I regard it as an investment.’
‘Can I ask a personal question?’
I thought I detected a small flare of alarm, but then she
shrugged. ‘Ask away.’
‘Do you want Eddie back, or evidence for the settlement?’
Carmel laughed. ‘That’s for me to know and for you to find
out, Sydney. Call me when you’ve got something to report.’ She
threw a $10 bill onto the table and got up. ‘By the way, I’d like
a list of everyone Eddie sees.’
I nodded. It’s what I intended to do anyway. At the time I put
down Carmel’s request to inexperience in dealing with private
investigators. Later I wondered.
12
2
Lizzie didn’t waste a minute. By nightfall she’d conned an
airline into giving her a package for two to Broome. I relented:
I’ve always wanted to walk on Cable Beach and fly over the Bungle
Bungles. I’d have to live without the dinosaur footprint, though:
an enterprising fossil hound had dug it out of the rocks. It was
probably in a glass case in some mad millionaire’s mansion in New
York by now.
When I told Lizzie what Carmel suspected, she didn’t seem
surprised. ‘There should be a blonde adventuress insurance policy
for wives. You must be getting sick of divorce work, though.’
‘Yeah, but it pays the rent, and I can do it on cruise
control.’
‘Remind me not to hire you,’ said Lizzie tartly and hung up.
I cracked a beer and watched some cricket on the box. To my
horror, I found myself enjoying it, though I still have no idea
where silly mid-on is. Old age, I guess. I was dozing gently when
the phone rang again. It was Tracy Wilkes. She had finished her
hairdressing apprenticeship and was living in Paddington with her
boyfriend Dan Jenkins, an alleged actor. The baby boomers have a
lot to answer for: all their kids want to be actors. The problem
is nobody wants to go to plays any more. If Dan were lucky, he’d
get a pizza ad, and unless I had completely misjudged him, would
13
eventually slink back to university and do commerce-law and
assume his rightful place in the social order.
‘Syd, we’re being evicted!’ Tracy wailed.
‘What did you do?’ I asked, remembering the wild parties and
assorted outrages my friends and I had perpetrated in rented digs
when we were students. The night the neighbours finally flipped
out and hosed us all down with cold water lives in my memory
still. Now, of course, I identify with the neighbours.
‘Nothing! They’re going to turn the building into strata
apartments! They’re chucking us into the streets!’
‘So you’d better put on your hiking boots and start looking
for somewhere to live,’ I advised.
Denied sympathy, Tracy switched to whinge mode. ‘I’m sick and
tired of Sydney. Why can’t they leave anything alone? They’re
always pulling everything down and putting up all these ugly
expensive boxes.’
‘You could always migrate back to Armidale,’ I suggested.
Tracy and I went back a long way. She’d hijacked me at a
service station in the boondocks ten years before, and I’d put
her on the train to Brisbane where her grandmother lived. When
I’d come across her later in Kings Cross as an aspiring teenage
hooker, I’d kidnapped her off the streets and found her a job in
a hair salon run by a transsexual who owed me. She’d never looked
back. At twenty-four, she was a Sydney sophisticate, and
beginning to turn into a human being.
She laughed. ‘I’d rather live in a fridge carton under a
bridge. In fact, that’s probably all I’ll be able to afford. Have
14
you looked at rents lately? You wouldn’t believe what they’re
charging for dark, dank little boxes.’
I would: I lived in one. Fortunately my flat was owned by an
old bloke who’d got Alzheimers and ended up in an institution.
His children had waited too long to get power of attorney and his
accountant was too slack to look after his money—which he was
probably busily embezzling if the statistics were to be believed—
but the minute the owner died, his heirs would double my rent, or
sell.
Tracy was still emoting. ‘It should be criminal offence to
rent some of those places to human beings.’
‘Stop ranting,’ I said. ‘You could always move out of the
golden triangle. Paddington isn’t Shangri-La. You won’t crumble
to dust like Jane Wyatt if you move out of the Eastern Suburbs.
What about Newtown?’
‘Oh, God, please no, not the inner-west. No trees, non-stop
traffic and aircraft noise. You could chew the air out there.’
‘Face facts, mate, you’ve turned into a snob. But you’re not
alone. Lizzie’s decided to buy a flat.’
‘You’re kidding me! Did she win the lottery or something?’
‘I think she’s finally realised she’s too old to be a hippie
any more. The bad news is that I’m helping her look.’
‘Boy, she really knows how to con you,’ said Tracy, who wanted
the sole rights to manipulating me. ‘You’re a pushover.’
‘You think so, do you? In that case, I’ll start asserting
myself. Don’t even think about moving in here if you get stuck,
and don’t ask me to help you move.’
15
Tracy considered this threat, and decided I was bluffing.
‘Incidentally, who the hell is Jane Wyatt?’
The next day I started shadowing Eddie Aboud. Carmel had told me
he left home at about 8.30 am. every day, and returned about
seven unless he had to wine and dine clients or attend an
auction. I fought my way through the early morning traffic to the
Aboud’s vulgar pile at South Coogee. It wasn’t the most glamorous
address in Sydney, but it had a beach for the kids and enough
space for a circular driveway, a swimming pool and a three-car
garage. The house was a grandiose monstrosity with lots of angles
and glass, dwarfing the modest Californian bungalows on either
side. Eddie had probably hounded some old lady to an early death
to get the site.
Looking sleek and prosperous, Eddie tooled out in a white
Lexus at eight on the knocker. We convoyed to Edgecliff, and
Eddie’s office. He parked in front and I went round the block
till a parking space came up within spying distance. I fed the
meter and found a coffee shop and read the newspaper. Sure, Eddie
might have Chantelle backed up against a desk this very minute,
but as he knew me, there was no way I could barge in to take a
look.
Speaking of which, by 9 am. most of Eddie’s SWAT team had
arrived: three of the sales staff and two secretaries. Chantelle
didn’t appear till 9.30—keeping mistress’s hours, or up late
schmoozing a client?
16
Very little happened. As Eddie’s agency was too up-market to
bother with rental accommodation, very few people ventured in. A
couple of middle-aged citizens strolled past, looked in the
window and reeled back, murmuring in horror at the prices. At
morning tea time the spotty receptionist emerged to do a coffee
and raisin toast run. To ease my numb bum, I followed her to a
busy takeout that did excellent espresso and pastries.
At one o’clock Eddie emerged and wheeled out, with me in tow.
He led me to the Yacht Club at Double Bay where he met up with a
fake commodore type and disappeared inside. I took the
registration number of the Commodore’s red Jag, then went around
the corner, bought myself some fish and chips and sat on a bench
wasting time and feeding some overweight pigeons. Then back to
the office and hours of watching street life in the backblocks of
Woollahra. Home at 7 pm. Only day one, and already I was bored
senseless.
The following day I accompanied Eddie to a tasteful harbourside
mansion at Point Piper. He emerged looking satisfied, so I
assumed he’d got the contract to sell the house, which looked,
even to an amateur like me, to be worth several mil. Day three
saw wild activity at the office as the staff prepared for an
auction. Much rushing to and fro as the blondes ferried signs and
papers to the Sir Stamford hotel at Double Bay.
Inside one of the meeting rooms at the back of the hotel, it
was the usual crowd of auction goers—a few serious buyers and
their supporters, locals who wanted to know how much their own
17
place was worth, some virgins getting a feel for the auction
process and the usual freeloaders who came for the sandwiches,
drinks and a bit of impromptu theatre.
The nervous energy trapped in an auction room would power an
electricity generator for a small town. You could almost smell
the adrenalin. Despite the Arctic air-con, the room quickly
heated up, and people started fanning themselves with the auction
list. Home hunters peered around them suspiciously, trying to
suss out the real competition; held frantic strategy conferences
with their supporters, and surreptitiously did calculations on
the back of the sales list.
After watching some spirited bidding for a decrepit rooming
house in Maroubra, an elderly gent next to me said, ‘It’s always
the Greeks and Italians with their arses out of their trousers
who’ve got the huge property portfolios, have you noticed?’
I told him I hadn’t.
‘They look as if they couldn’t afford a pot to piss in. It
lulls the trendies into a false sense of security. It’s always
the showy types who run out of dough early.’
I nodded sagely and watched several well-dressed young women
compete ferociously for several overpriced one-bedrooms, some
with harbour glimpses from the lavatory seat or a window ledge. A
few middle-aged couples from the north shore tried to buy flats
for their kids but didn’t get a look in. Two fattish, middle-aged
men, developers probably, sniffing a healthy profit, went after a
run-down block of four flats in Old South Head Road, but were
18
outbid by a consortium of yuppies—lawyers and architects,
probably.
Smooth and deadly as sharks, Eddie’s team sliced through the
crowd, chivvying ditherers, whispering to vendors about
unrealistic reserves, promising everyone the moon. ‘You’ll never
see another bargain like this,’ they’d be saying. ‘Mortgages have
never been cheaper. Property has never been so affordable.’ ‘It’s
only another ten thousand.’ Swept up in a frenzy of
acquisitiveness—or perhaps hope—the punters would wake in fright
at 3 am. feeling like victims of a mugging.
Eddie loomed confidently at the front of the room, the epitome
of parvenu success in his slightly too sharp suit. When a
million-dollar eyesore at Clovelly sold for fifty grand over its
reserve, he positively glowed.
Gnawing on a ham sandwich, I lurked behind a pillar down the
back, gloomily aware that I was looking into my own future, that
I would have to go through this ordeal with Lizzie. Finally it
was over. Despondent losers trooped out into the night, probably
wondering if they’d missed their last chance to buy into Sydney.
The winners went home to do their sums and plot how to squeeze
another twenty grand out of the folks.
After an orgy of self-congratulation, Bree and Alysha loaded
up a car and disappeared. Eddie, Todd and Chantelle repaired to
the bar and rehashed the night’s triumphs over cocktails. At
about 11 pm. Chantelle got a lift home with Todd, and Eddie set
off across the road to pick up his car. One of the developers
who’d missed out on the apartment block was waiting beside the
19
Lexus, and bailed him up angrily. I edged nearer, but couldn’t
get close enough to get the gist of the disagreement.
Eventually Eddie pushed past the man, got into his car and
roared off. The developer watched him go, then got into a green
Audi and drove away. I took the number, then chased Eddie home.
By midnight he was safely tucked up in the marital bed with the
lights off. I was beginning to think Carmel was imagining this
affair: from what I could see, Eddie channelled all his passion
into making money.
On day four, Eddie intimidated a retired doctor type in a
Mercedes out of a parking space in front of the Cosmopolitan cafe
in Double Bay by shouting insults, and then abused a dopey
waiter. Had he and Carmel been bickering, or had last night’s
auction results disappointed him? However he seemed calmer when
he emerged from the restaurant in the company of Skipper
Martindale, a property developer who’d thrown up several ugly,
overpriced apartment complexes in the eastern suburbs in the
nineties building boom. They seemed very chummy: perhaps Eddie
had scored the rights to sell the apartments in his latest
eyesore in Bondi Junction.
By the time we got back to his office that afternoon, all the
parking spaces were gone, and I had to circle the block. I got
back to Eddie’s office just in time to see him storm up to a
white Kingswood parked nearby, wrench open the driver’s door and
drag a young man out onto the footpath. The man, who was in his
twenties and wearing jeans, a black tee-shirt, a baseball cap and
20
sunglasses, almost fell, but sprang back onto his feet without
missing a beat.
From the other side of the road I couldn’t hear what Eddie was
saying, but he was angry, yelling and wagging a fat finger in the
man’s face. It didn’t look like a good idea to me. The guy looked
muscular and fit—and wired—jigging menacingly on his air-sprung
sneakers. A cocktail of testosterone and cocaine, by the look of
it. Eddie kept on yelling, unaware or oblivious of the danger.
I’d slowed down to get a better look, but a delivery van
behind me started tailgating me and sat on his horn. I gave him
the finger and managed to hold out long enough to see Eddie give
the young man a shove. The guy looked taken aback for about four
seconds, then bounced on the balls of his feet and launched
himself forward, driving his shoulder into Eddie’s chest. Eddie
went down like a sack of shit. His arse would hurt for a month.
By this time the driver of the delivery van was having
apoplexy, so I moved on. In the rear vision mirror I watched
Eddie’s assailant jump back in his Kingswood and take off with a
screech of tyres. By the time I got back, Eddie had disappeared
inside. I parked the car, got out and looked around. A young
woman in a white uniform came out of a nearby newsagency carrying
a copy of Cleo, saw me gawking around and squeaked, ‘Did you see
that?’
‘Sort of. What started it?’
‘I think the man in the suit said something about the young
guy following him.’ She looked up at me with the soft-eyed,
gormless gaze of a kangaroo. A badge on her bosom read: ERIN. It
21
stuck in my mind: in primary school the nuns had taught us a
dance called The Pride of Erin.
It was then I realised with an unpleasant shock that Eddie had
been right: the kid was following him. In fact I’d almost
collected that same white Kingswood earlier in the day when we’d
both pulled out from the kerb suddenly after Eddie’s Lexus. I was
slipping, letting the boredom make me slack.
The girl was looking at me curiously. ‘Shouldn’t we call the
police or something?’
‘Probably better to stay out of it,’ I said. ‘It mightn’t be
something he wants advertised.’
Disappointed, she shrugged and walked away, done out of her
five minutes of glory as a witness. Everybody wants to be a crime
stopper these days. I went back to my car and called Carmel at
the house, but got no answer. I tried her mobile, and caught her
in the car, taking one of her kids to gymnastics. She was
horrified when I told her about the bashing, but professed
ignorance. I let it go: I’d been hired to guard Carmel’s
interests, not to mind Eddie.
I had the weekend off. Carmel had decided Eddie was too busy on
Saturdays making money to get up to any hanky panky, and they
were driving to the Southern Highlands on Sunday to visit
friends.
I’d had vague ideas of a sleep-in on Saturday, but the phone
woke me at 8 am. It was Lizzie, who’d obviously picked up the
papers at sparrow’s fart and had already compiled a list of flats
22
in her price-range. We met at 9.30 at the restaurant near the
fountain in Fitzroy Gardens in the Cross and drank coffee served
by a Pommy with a working visa, a deep tan, a strawberry tattoo
and glottal stops.
I perused her list critically. ‘I can tell you now these three
will be dumps. I know those buildings.’
‘Yes, but I think I should see them anyway. It’ll give me some
idea of the range.’
‘Why drag me out of bed if you’re not going to take my
advice?’
‘Misery loves company, I suppose.’
I got my revenge by translating some of the agentspeak in the
ads. ‘“In need of some cosmetic work,”—no floors. “Suit first
home buyer,”—outside dunny. “Light and airy,” —no roof. “Cosy,”—
no windows. “Private,”—no windows or doors. “Bijou apartment,”—
shoebox decorated by a gay set designer. “Sun drenched,”—faces
west. “Affordable,”—no kitchen...’
‘Give me a break,’ protested Lizzie.
But I was just hitting my stride. ‘“Compact,”—mate, if an
agent admits it’s small, it would make an excellent coffin. For a
dog. “Close to the action in Oxford Street,”—above a gay brothel.
“Needs total renovation,”—the former owned died in the bath...”’
‘Stop, I said!’ she shrieked. ‘You’ve made your point!’
Our first viewing was in Onslow Avenue in ‘exclusive’
Elizabeth Bay. The flat was so small I could almost touch both
walls of the bedroom with outstretched arms. The kitchen had last
23
been painted during the Depression, and the ghost of an
incontinent cat lurked in the corners.
‘It’s very quiet and private, and very close to...’ said the
agent, a cheerful young man called Brett, to a pair of wide-eyed
first home buyers who were beginning to realise they’d have to
settle for something under the flight path. He was drowned out by
the sound of the 311 bus grinding to a halt outside the living
room window.
‘Transport!’ he shouted, into the sudden silence.
As the woman started to speak, the bus started up with an
earsplitting roar.
‘What was that again?’ asked Brett, smiling gamely.
‘What’s it likely to sell for?’
‘In the high twos,’ said Brett, with no apparent shame.
Her eyes widened: ‘The low two hundred thousands?’ she said
faintly.
‘That’s right. Very reasonable for this area.’
‘Isn’t it a bit, well, small?’ I asked innocently.
‘It’s compact, yes,’ said Brett, and I distinctly heard Lizzie
snigger behind me, ‘but it’s close to coffee shops and
Rushcutters Bay Park. And of course, the Cruising Yacht Club is
just down the road.’ He pointed in a vaguely eastern direction.
‘Oh, good,’ I said. ‘I’ll have somewhere to moor my yacht.’
‘Syd!’ hissed Lizzie. ‘Let’s get out of here before I die of
claustrophobia.’
24
‘It sounded OK,’ she mused, as we walked down the airless
stairwell. ‘Compact one-bedder, leafy outlook, scope for creative
makeover. Close to transport and shops.’
‘Poky hovel with a tree down the block and a bus route through
the living room would be more like it,’ I said.
That day we looked at flats with views of air shafts, other
people’s bathrooms and bedrooms, Sydney Harbour (an exercise in
masochism), and four lanes of traffic. One flat had a ‘health
studio’ next door; another abutted a fried food takeout which
ducted recycled carcinogenic fat fumes into its bedroom.
Succumbing to despair, we retreated to Bondi and ate a
ferociously expensive Turkish bread sandwich in a noisy
restaurant with a view of the surf.
‘I can’t go on,’ said Lizzie.
I brightened. ‘But I have to,’
she continued, dashing my hopes. ‘Even if it takes six months.’
‘If it takes six months, you’ll be doing it by yourself. A
ticket to Broome is worth a month of house hunting, not a minute
more.’
‘Maybe I’ll have to lower my sights and settle for
Darlinghurst,’ she said gloomily. ‘With the likes of you.’
For the next week, absolutely nothing happened. Eddie kept a
lowish profile after his humiliating thumping, even letting a
young woman in a Saab convertible psych him out of a parking
space outside a fashionable restaurant in Potts Point.
I tailed him to lunches with divorcees getting rid of the
marital pile, to his bank, to coffee shops and restaurants, to
25
the dry cleaners and once to a florist to buy flowers for Carmel—
it was her birthday, she informed me without enthusiasm. I sat
outside while he conducted open house in expensive monstrosities
in beachside suburbs, nondescript mansions, and luxury apartments
with unsurpassable harbour views. It got harder and harder to go
home to my airless box in Darlinghurst after my exposure to all
those square metres of prime real estate with gardens, views,
quiet and privacy, that indefinable gloss that whispered,
‘Money’.
When I presented my report to Carmel and assured her that her
husband was as faithful as a Saint Bernard, she didn’t seem glad,
or even relieved, just preoccupied. Perhaps she was embarrassed
at being proven wrong about her old man.
‘Where did you get the idea he was playing around?’ I asked.
‘I called him one day on his mobile. He’d arranged it to call
forward to the office, and nobody seemed to know where he was.
And Chantelle was missing, too.’
‘It must have been a coincidence. If she’s having it off with
anyone, it’s Todd.’
‘They’d be perfect,’ said Carmel, dripping acid. ‘I can just
see it: Ken and Barbie’s wedding. My daughter would love it.’
I changed the subject. ‘Did Eddie put in a complaint about the
bloke in the Kingswood?’
‘No, he didn’t bother. He said he’d never recognise the kid
again, and he got so overwrought he didn’t think to get the
number of the car.’
26
‘But didn’t he say something to the kid about following him?
Isn’t he worried about that?’
‘If he is, he didn’t tell me,’ said Carmel. ‘And you didn’t
see him following Eddie, did you?’
‘No,’ I said. What was I going to do, confess I’d been too
incompetent to pick up the second tail? As Carmel seemed as
uncomfortable with the subject as I was, I let it drop. If Eddie
Aboud didn’t want the police poking around in his life, that was
his affair.
Carmel paid me in cash, explaining that she didn’t want her
vote of no-confidence in her husband showing up on their bank
statement. That was fine by me. I’d worry about the tax
implications later. Or not.
That night I turned on the TV to discover that the government
had set up a special task force to investigate crime in Kings
Cross as a result of the recent Royal Commission into police
corruption. The spokeswoman for the Police Minister told us, with
a straight face, that the members of Task Force Abacus had been
hand-picked and subjected to the strictest integrity tests. The
names rang no bells with me. I was relieved to see that Leggett
and Bray, my ancient enemies on the force, had not made the cut.
The Royal Commission had given the jaded citizens of Sydney
some of the best guerilla theatre in years. The Commission had
caught a copper in the act, rolled him over, and sent him out to
entrap his colleagues in crime. A succession of bad actors
protested their innocence only to be faced with videoed evidence
of their wrong-doing. Night after night we watched police caught
27
on ‘crotchcam’—a camera trained on the front seat of the mole’s
car at waist height —taking bribe money, and discussing their
crimes. On the Central Coast a member of the drug squad was
filmed snorting coke in a tryst with a prostitute. ‘Tapped on the
shoulder’ by commission investigators, some cops rolled over and
‘dropped a bucket’ on their brothers: the door to the
Commission’s hearing rooms became known as the ‘rollover door’.
The hard cases denied everything, calling the accusations
‘black lies’, or insisted they were being ‘squared back’, that
is, victims of revenge. Those who couldn’t recall the events in
question were accused of having ‘the Carmens’, after a former
state Premier accused of lying to another Royal Commission.
As a long-time resident of Kings Cross, I was mildly sceptical
about Operation Abacus’s chances of success. With its entrenched
vice and drug interests and its rag-tag army of drug pushers and
users, whores and pimps, and a continual turnover of willing
victims, The Cross is the country’s toughest integrity test.
Thrown into the deep end, poorly-paid and under-appreciated
coppers find it hard to resist the blandishments of cashed-up
crims. It’s easier to take the dough and look the other way. And
in a culture of corruption, young cops have to go along or face
ostracism at best, or a posting to Moree at worst.
Time would tell. Maybe this time, with a new Police
Commissioner allegedly committed to cleaning up the force, we’d
see some serious law enforcement in Kings Cross. Maybe.
28
3
That weekend Lizzie and I took to the streets again, this time
confining our search to Darlinghurst. Though it shares a postcode
with Potts Point and Elizabeth Bay, Darlo is still a bit raw for
those of tender sensibilities. The problem for the upwardly
mobile is that bottom crawlers can still afford to live there.
Coming home to junkies shooting up in your stairwell or pimps
beating up hookers in the alleyway under your bedroom window
eventually palls, even for the most liberal minded.
But during the day, with the sun shining down and the
footpaths jammed with pallid caffeine addicts, Darlinghurst has a
certain tatty charm. Our hopes were raised by the lobby of a
grand old mansion called, appropriately enough, The Hope, but the
flat for sale was so small it must have been built for Bilbo
Baggins. In the Savoy, another grande dame from the thirties, we
lingered in an elegant two-bedroom apartment that seemed to be
the home of an artist, but you’d have to be deaf to sleep through
the non-stop traffic below and the shrieks and bellows of weekend
drunks on the ran-tan.
In Tewkesbury Street we looked at an modern characterless flat
with balconies and city views. Lizzie was aghast when she found
out what it was worth.
‘But why?’ she asked the agent, a middle-aged man who twitched
with nervous energy and had the wizened skin of a chain-smoker.
29
‘It’s very popular with the gay community,’ he said.
‘Why should gay buildings be dearer than straight buildings?’
Lizzie asked me as we descended in the lift.
‘Because when gays move into a building, they take over the
board and start tarting up the lobby. Then they spend a fortune
renovating and get their mates to run photos in the glossy
magazines. If it’s a company title building, they change the
rules so people can rent out their flats, which drives up the
prices. Pretty soon the building is too expensive for everybody
except gay couples on huge incomes with no kids to educate.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Because it’s all anybody around here ever talks about. They
all live in terror of waking up one morning and finding
chandeliers in the halls and a notice for a special levy to pay
for it in their letter box.’
‘Maybe we could talk some gays into moving into your
building,’ said Lizzie.
I didn’t like our chances. One look at the liver-coloured
brick facade, the threadbare hall carpets, the bilious paint work
and the sullen tenants would send most gays into style shock. And
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
A couple of days later Lizzie called me to tell me Declan
Doherty was in hospital. The old priest, whom I regarded as a
kind of Catholic Debretts—he could give you the lineage of any
Sydney Irish Catholic going back several generations—had given me
some useful leads in a couple of cases. I owed him a visit.
‘Where at?’
30
‘The Repat Hospital at Concord.
‘I didn’t know he was an old Digger.’
‘Yeah, New Guinea. He became a priest after the war. He went
to the seminary at Goulburn with people like Gerry de Montfort
and Pat McMahon.’
Heavy-duty connections—Gerry de Montfort had stayed a priest,
but had managed to combine his pastoral duties with writing books
and playing literary politics. Pat McMahon had dropped out and
was now running a public television station. Declan Doherty had
eventually run out of options and ended up as pastor to an order
of nuns at their mother house in North Sydney.
‘I suppose I should got out and see him,’ I said, hoping
Lizzie would talk me out of it. What do you say to sick people—
G’day mate, how’s your hernia?
‘Yes. We’ll go together.’ Sister Mary Elizabeth digging in the
spurs again.
We visited that night. The ward was full of fading warriors,
most of whom had the horrible hacking coughs of emphysema
victims. I quietly thanked God I’d given up smoking. Looking
around the room, I realised
my father’s generation was giving up
the ghost. He’d checked out early, but every Anzac Day there were
fewer of his old mates marching.
Doherty looked dreadful. He was obviously dying. Lizzie held
his hand and we chatted of inconsequentialities. A couple of
times he drifted off. Suspecting we wouldn’t see him again, we
were subdued on our way to the car park.
31
Lizzie broke the silence on the way back to the city: ‘Poor
old Declan. Fancy ending your days living in a convent hearing
nuns’ confessions.’
I tried to imagine what nuns would confess: coveting a second
helping of trifle, falling asleep during the Office, sneaking ten
extra minutes in bed on winter dawns? Not the sort of stuff to
fir Declan Doherty’s imagination. Perhaps that’s why he spent so
much time at the movies. ‘Didn’t someone tell me he was chaplain
at Goulburn Gaol?’
‘Me, probably,’ said Lizzie. ‘He told me he loved it,
hobnobbing with villains, listening to their war stories. I don’t
know what happened. Maybe he got too old. He was at some toney
seminary in Dublin after the war, and I think he wanted to go
back there, but he wasn’t their type. He wasn’t well educated
enough to teach theology, so they couldn’t see any use for him.
The church has got very ruthless with its superannuated
employees.’
‘I thought it was a job for life. Car, doting housekeeper,
loyal parish ladies.’
‘Not any more. If you get sick or get caught diddling the
altar boys, they turn you out. Unless you’ve got good connections
like Declan or a private income, you’re likely to end up in your
niece’s spare room. It’s iniquitous.’
‘Doherty seemed to have a pretty good life, though,’ I said.
As far as I could see, he spent most of his time at the movies,
hanging about in bookshops or holding court in coffee shops.
32
Lizzie gave me one of her more in sorrow than anger looks.
‘The poor old bugger was desperately lonely. Did you ever see his
room in the convent? It was like a cheap motel unit. He tramped
the streets all day to get away from it. You’re appallingly
obtuse sometimes.’
I sulked obtusely for the rest of the journey.
The hospital visit disturbed me. It was like looking into my
future. At seventy I’d probably be cadging drinks in pubs and
boring the ears off youngsters too well bred to tell me to piss
off. I went home, cracked a Cascade, and slumped in front of the
box. I channel surfed through a series of raucous, unfunny
American sitcoms, and then watched a bunch of animals fornicating
and eating each other on a nature show. The wowsers are right:
there is too much sex and violence on TV.
On Thursday afternoon Lizzie rang to tell me that another massive
heart attack had taken Declan Doherty to his eternal reward. I
was glad I’d agreed to visit him: one less reason to feel guilty.
She said she’d let me know when the funeral was to be held.
But that wasn’t to be my only shock for the day. From a late news
bulletin I discovered that Eddie Aboud had been shot—‘gunned
down’ was the way the reporter put it—in the driveway of his home
about an hour earlier. They showed footage of Eddie’s body being
driven off in an ambulance, the police SWAT team milling about
carrying guns, the scene of crime team sifting the front yard for
33
clues and one quick shot of a distraught Carmel in bathrobe in a
huddle with some coppers.
What the fuck do I do now? I wondered. The small voice of
civic responsibility that I’d spent most of my adult life trying
to stifle insisted I go to the police and tell them all I knew.
The cops would probably find out about Eddie’s altercation with
Baseball Cap, but I was the only witness to his argument with the
property developer after the auction. The more insistent voice of
self-interest reminded me that certain members of New South
Wales’s finest would welcome any opportunity to make my life
miserable.
I decided it would be unwise to do anything until I knew which
way Carmel was going to jump. Spouses were automatically
suspects, and if she told the cops she’d been having Eddie
tailed, she’d become the prime suspect. If I came forward and
discovered Carmel had kept mum, it would look even worse for her.
A phone call from Lizzie interrupted my ruminations.
‘Did you see the news?’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah, what? Who did it?’
‘How the hell would I know? God knows how many people Eddie’s
dudded over property deals in the past ten years.’
‘What about the guy who attacked him outside his office?’
‘Baseball Cap? If it was him, they cops will have their work
cut out. Three quarters of the young blokes in Sydney fit the
description.’
34
Lizzie scented evasion in the ether. ‘Did you see anything
else?’
I could have told her about Eddie’s argument with the
aggrieved property developer but she’d start nagging me to tell
the police about him. That was the last thing I wanted while I
waited for the chips to fall. I decided to sin by omission:
‘Eddie bullied an old bloke out of a parking spot in Double Bay.’
Lizzie snorted. ‘That might be a motive for murder in Los
Angeles, but we’re not in that league. Yet.’
I didn’t get much sleep that night. The events of the two
weeks I’d spent tailing Eddie ran through my mind in a continuous
tape loop. The police would find the fact that Eddie had been
killed soon after his wife had put a PI on his tail as more than
coincidental. I knew Eddie Aboud hadn’t been cheating on Carmel,
and that she therefore had not motive to kill him, but would the
cops believe us? The cash payment of my fees muddied the waters,
too: it looked like collusion.
I decided to sit tight. If Carmel talked, I’d have the cops on
my doorstep soon enough. In the meantime, I could pursue my own
inquiries and protect my own interests.
Declan Doherty’s funeral service was held on Friday at a small,
working class church in Rozelle. Like so many Catholic churches
in Australia, it was built on a hill, but the good planning ended
there. The interior was ugly as well as stifling, with drab,
plaster stations of the cross and dreary, dirty stained glass
windows. The bog Irish missionaries who fought to keep
35
Catholicism alive in Australia against Protestant persecution had
their strengths, but an appreciation of art wasn’t one of them.
A veritable map of the inner-western Sydney Catholic power
structure, the gathering would have sent a political sociologist
into ecstasy. I recognised three Labor MPs, and several union
heavies among the mourners as well as Doherty’s cronies Gerry de
Montfort and Pat McMahon. In addition to family, there were
political minders and a sprinkling of bureaucrats, as well as
some shabbily-dressed low-lifes who might have known Doherty from
Goulburn Gaol. The priest’s cronies from the Apia Club, an old
Italian stronghold where he and his brother had dined once a
week, were also out in force.
The biggest shock was the number of priests in attendance;
serried ranks of clerics in full dress regalia—an Archbishop, two
Bishops, several Monsignors, and a raft of priests who acted as
altar boys. ‘What’s all this about?’ I asked Lizzie.
‘It’s a Pontifical Requiem Mass. Didn’t you read the notice in
the paper?’
I hadn’t. It would be a few years before I started reading the
death notices and gloating about outliving my enemies. ‘But where
are they all from?’
Lizzie asked her neighbour, Pete Drummond, a former
schoolteacher who was now MP for the trendy-left seat of Balmain.
‘They’re old boys from Goulburn Seminary down here for a
conference,’ he said. ‘Declan just got lucky.’
Or not, I thought.
36
Lizzie snorted. ‘Hypocrites. Most of them would have crossed
the road to avoid him last week.’
The mass dragged on, punctuated by lacklustre hymns sung by
the nuns from Doherty’s convent in tuneless, reedy voices. The
church grew hotter. Lizzie reached over and grabbed Pete
Drummond’s program and started fanning herself with it. The heat
and boredom sent me into a waking dream. I returned to planet
earth with a thud when the Archbishop of Canberra-Goulburn, a man
with the pinched, ascetic look of an inquisitor, mounted the
pulpit to give the eulogy.
It was a minor masterpiece. The Archbishop managed to praise
Doherty’s love of life, art and talk while leaving us in no doubt
he regarded him a pleasure-loving gossip. The posse of pursemouthed priests in clerical drag sniggered uncharitably. The rest
of us silently cheered Declan for managing to squeeze some fun
out of a religious life. No wonder he sought his friends outside
the fraternity.
On the steps after the service, Len Ryan, an old Commie and
a
power in the left-wing union movement in his heyday and an old
friend of my father’s, shook my hand and gestured at the crowd.
‘Look at this bunch,’ he said. ‘Have you ever in your life seen
so many branch stackers in the one room?’
I laughed. ‘I’m surprised Paddy Callaghan isn’t here.’
Callaghan was one of a group of infamous crims who’d taken
control of the inner-city Labor branches in the 1970s by bashing
the opposition, stuffing the ballot boxes, and when that failed,
stealing the branch records.
37
‘He’s still in jail, isn’t he?’ said Len.
A young man joined us and was introduced as Len’s nephew,
Tony.
‘He’s a copper,’ said Len, rolling his eyes heavenward. In his
time, Len had been bashed soundly and often by members of the
constabulary in strikes and street marches. Times had certainly
changed.
I shook hands with Tony Ryan, a fit, gingery open-faced
thirtyish specimen with an iron grip. ‘Where are you stationed?’
He shrugged. I’ve been at King’s Cross for the past year.’
Kings Cross station had been under investigation by a special
task force into corruption for the last three months. It was
pretty clear that some heads would roll. I was dying to ask him
about it, but something in his manner warned me off.
Lizzie, meanwhile, had been buttonholed by one of the nuns.
From where I was standing, I couldn’t read her expression. ‘What
was that all about?’ I asked when she extricated herself.
‘She told me the nuns chose the music.’
‘That was pretty obvious,’ I said.
‘She also pointed out what a happy man Declan was.’ She shook
her head in disbelief. ‘The nuns must live on the same planet as
you. Anyone with half a brain could see Declan was a lost soul.’
Father Declan Doherty was interred in the Priests’ Lawn at the
Northern Suburbs Cemetery. His best friend, an ancient Monsignor
he’d confidently expected to outlive, did the honours at the
graveside. Only a few diehards turned up: I wouldn’t have gone
except for Lizzie.
38
‘We should have brought his famous red bag and buried it with
him,’ Lizzie murmured to me. ‘He never went anywhere without it.’
‘I don’t think these stuffed shirts would appreciate the
gesture,’ I said. ‘Too pagan.’
Afterwards, when the Monsignor told Lizzie that Declan had
been very fond of her, she cracked and shed a few tears. But at
the wake at the Riverview Hotel in Balmain she cheered up
sufficiently to tell Pat McMahon how to reorganise his television
station, argue with Gerry de Montfort about the thesis of his
book about Sydney Catholics and enter into a tête-à-tête with the
owner, a woman who knew where every political body in the country
was buried. Or someone who did.
When the wake wound down, Lizzie and I took ourselves to
dinner in Chinatown and discussed life, death and the price of
real estate at a round laminex table at the Hingara, which
possessed the singular virtue of not having changed in thirty
years.
39
4
The next morning I went out and bought all the papers. The
financial meltdown in Asia had hijacked the front page of the
Herald, but Eddie Aboud’s murder made page three above the fold.
It made page one of the Tele, however. Their crime reporter
obviously regarded it as a professional hit. The shooter had
waited till Eddie slowed down at the security gates in front of
his house, then plugged him twice with a .32
pistol. One shot
got him in the chest, the other in the head. The car lurched
forward and crashed into the gate. The noise woke Carmel, who
came out to see what was happening and found Eddie dead, slumped
over the wheel.
It was a typical no-news news story, filled with background
about Eddie’s real estate coups. There would be little to go on
yet. There was no mention of witnesses: the police would still be
interviewing neighbours and any stray passers-by. I itched to
call Carmel, but restrained myself.
Later that day I was back on the house-hunting trail. While we
breakfasted in Challis Avenue under an umbrella on the footpath
outside a trendy coffee shop the size of a luxury horse box,
Lizzie quizzed me closely about Eddie Aboud’s murder. She had to
shout to be heard above the roar of the airport bus pulling in
across the road. ‘Have you been to see the cops yet?’
‘Uh, no.’
40
She stopped spooning the froth off the top of her cappuccino
and fixed me with her basilisk stare. ‘Why not?’
‘I don’t want to get dragged into it. If the cops don’t have a
suspect, they’ll jump all over me so they can tell the media they
have a lead.’
‘Hasn’t Carmel put them onto you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘That’s interesting. Why not, do you reckon?’ In this mood she
was like a pointer stalking a grouse.
‘Maybe she thinks it will make her look guilty.’
‘But surely if you told her Eddie wasn’t cheating, it means
she had no reason to kill him. She’s being irrational.’ Lizzie
pondered. ‘Unless she’s got a guilty conscience.’
had something
to do with it.’
‘What’s the motive?’
‘If it isn’t sex, it has to be money. How much do you know
about the Aboud finances?’
‘Bugger all.’
‘If I were you, I’d make it my business to find out. Carmel’s
landed you in the shit, and it’s up to you to get yourself out. I
don’t trust her, and neither should you.’
‘But why would she hire me to tail Eddie if she intended to
bump him off?’
‘An elaborate cover?’
‘Don’t journos ever get tired of conspiracy theories? If
she’d hired me to make herself look innocent, she would have told
the police about it. It doesn’t add up.’
41
‘I suppose not,’ conceded Lizzie, reluctant to jettison a good
story, no matter how far-fetched. ‘You realise that if somebody
was stalking Eddie Aboud, you probably saw them? You could be in
danger.’
There was something in that: I’d been too lame-brained to
notice Baseball Cap following Eddie, but he might have seen me. I
shrugged. I’d worry about that later. ‘What’s the journalists’
scuttlebutt on Eddie Aboud?’
Journalists tend to know plenty of dirt they can’t print
without bringing the wrath of the libel lawyers down on their
heads. Some of it is even true.
‘Oh, he’s bent, all right. He came out of Brisbane cashed up
about fifteen years ago—drug money according to my sources—and
bought into a failing real estate agency in Bondi. Eventually he
bought out the owner and moved to Edgecliff. He finances
developments and gets other people to front for him, I’m told.
Maybe he figures he’d lose business from his yuppie clients if
they found out he was demolishing lovely old houses and putting
up Lego highrises.’
‘But if he’s making so much money, why does he hang onto the
agency?’
‘Use your brains. It’s first in best dressed in the property
market. When Great-Aunt Emily decides to sell the mansion, he
gives her a low valuation and one of his mates buys it at a
knock-down price. Then they resell and split the difference or
develop the site.’
42
‘Isn’t there a law against estate agents buying properties
from clients?’
‘Yeah, like there’s a law against tax evasion. And arson.
‘He’s a firebug?’
‘I don’t think he skulks around warehouses with tins of
kerosene and a cigarette lighter, but you could say he’s lucky
with fires. You remember the furniture store on Parramatta Road
that went up? Rumour has it he was a silent partner in the
development of that site.’
Taken over by middle-class greens after decades of governmentsanctioned vandalism, the council had refused to let the owner of
the huge Victorian building demolish his shop. The dispute had
dragged through the courts for months, but was resolved overnight
when the shop went up in flames. Everyone in Sydney knew it was
arson—the malignant troll who owned it was heavily insured and
stood to gain an extra million if the development went ahead—but
the police weren’t able to pin anything on him.
Torching heritage buildings or letting them fall down from
neglect had a long and honourable history in Sydney—fire
statistics rose as the value of the dollar fell. Finally, worn
down by lobbying from architects and conservationists, the
government had passed laws to force owners to maintain listed
buildings properly or sell out.
‘Anything else? Any heavy criminal connections?’
‘The residents action group in Ultimo swears goons were
terrorising protected tenants to get them out of a couple of old
block of flats down there when the developers moved in a few
43
years ago. I heard that Eddie had an interest in that site. If
it’s true, he’s got connections with people who aren’t afraid to
use muscle. Maybe he got offside with one of his partners in
crime.’
I immediately thought of the scene outside the auction. If the
developer had murdered Eddie because they’d fallen out over a
business deal, I’d regard it as a net gain for society. The only
reason I gave a damn about Eddie Aboud’s murder was that Carmel
had dropped me in it.
In the meantime, there was house hunting to be lived through.
At two-thirty, at the last opening of the day, Lizzie found
her dream home. It was hidden down an alleyway off Macleay Street
in a deco block built against the cliff. The signs were not
auspicious. As we came down the stairs, two shaven-headed young
men pushed past us, one saying: ‘Jesus, I wouldn’t touch it with
a bargepole. Too much work, mate.’
I was all for bolting, but Lizzie grabbed me by the wrist and
dragged me inside. The flat was a wreck—scabrous, malodorous
carpet, peeling wallpaper, water penetration. All the furniture
had been built in, including a fifties radiogram that would be a
collectors’ item in some quarters. The kitchen, which was pitch
dark and looked as if it had been designed for a yacht, had
cupboards built in front of the only window. There did not appear
to be a stove, only a T-model microwave.
‘There’s no stove,’ I said to the agent, who introduced
himself as Tony Massimo.
44
‘The original owner spent thousands doing it up,’ he said,
indicating remnants of expensive wallpaper and fifties light
fixtures. ‘Obviously he didn’t do much cooking, but there’s a
fridge.’ He pointed to a huge, blue hulk in the corner. I didn’t
dare look inside. I was afraid I’d find Titus Oates buried in the
glacier in the freezer.
Lizzie was intrigued. ‘It was obviously a love nest,’ she said
to me, sotto voce. ‘He was probably married.’
Its racy past didn’t impress me. When I pulled up the edge of
the carpet to check the floors, I discovered that the underlay
had disintegrated into a kind of loam. Underneath that was loose
parquetry. ‘Needs a new floor,’ I said.
Lizzie frowned at me and asked Tony who owned the place now.
‘It’s a deceased estate. An old Scottish bloke lived here. His
daughter came and got most of his stuff.’
‘You’re kidding,’ said Lizzie faintly. There was still so much
junk in the flat you could hardly move.
Kicking aside the carcases of some mouse-sized cockroaches, we
moved into the bedroom. ‘Welcome to the Bates Motel,’ I intoned.
‘Stop it!’ hissed Lizzie.
It was pitch black, its windows covered by bars, boards and
chains, all nailed down. This place made Declan Doherty’s slot in
the convent look downright sybaritic.
‘Either this guy was paranoid, or this building has a serious
security problem,’ I remarked.
Lizzie didn’t hear me. She’d gone into some kind of trance.
45
I tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get out of here before I
catch asthma.’
‘You can’t catch asthma.’
‘Want a bet?’ I said, making a dash for the balcony, to take
in some ozone and the famous harbour glimpse.
Inside, Lizzie took another turn around the flat and went into
a huddle with the agent. Finally she beckoned me out into the
hallway. ‘It’s got good bones,’ she said.
‘It’s not Zsa Zsa Gabor; it’s a flat. It stinks.’
‘It’ll be all right after all that furniture is ripped off the
walls and the carpet comes up.’
‘It’s dark.’
‘It won’t be so bad once I take all that crap off the bedroom
window. Anyway,
it doesn’t matter if the bedroom is a bit dark.’
‘It hasn’t got a stove.’
She gave me an incredulous look. ‘So who cooks?’
‘You’re not really going to buy it, are you?’
‘I’m thinking about it. I reckon it’s the last bargain in this
street. You heard that gutless wonder: most people would be so
appalled by the look of it they wouldn’t see its good points.’
‘Realistic people, sane people,’ I said. ‘What good points?’
‘Balcony, harbour glimpse, good sized living room, living room
faces east, has a hallway. There are only neighbours on one side.
Having Elizabeth Bay House in front means nobody can stick a high
rise there. It’s got position.’
‘What’s your mate Tony saying?’
46
‘He’s bullshitting, quoting really low to get the suckers
along to the auction. It will go for at least two-eighty.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Suddenly you’re the expert?’
‘I’ve been doing my research.’
‘Like what?’
‘Watching the auction results in the paper, ringing up agents
and asking them what they got for some of the places we looked
at, the usual stuff.’
We were so busy squabbling, we’d gone down instead of up, and
found ourselves in the street behind Elizabeth Bay House. Now
squashed in between a small park and medium-rise apartment
blocks, Elizabeth Bay House had once presided over its own
Botanical Gardens which ran down to the Harbour. When its owner,
Alexander Macleay went broke, his heirs started selling off the
land. All that was left of the estate was a little park in front
of the house, with a goldfish pond and views to the Heads.
‘And my own private park,’ said Lizzie, gazing down at some
fat goldfish which would have ended up on barbecues long ago
anywhere west of Leichhardt.
The auction was in two weeks. I promised to accompany her to
make sure she didn’t go more than ten thousand over her absolute
upper limit.
As I had no idea how to track down the developer without
Carmel’s help, I decided to go after Baseball Cap. The only other
witness to the attack was the girl in the white uniform. The
uniform meant a doctor’s office or a pharmacy. I tracked her down
to a fashionable pharmacy in Woollahra. Instead of smelling like
47
chemicals, as pharmacies used to, this one smelled of exotic
oils, emanating from a small aromatherapy burner in the corner.
My sinuses immediately clanged shut. Perhaps the marketeers have
discovered an aroma that makes you want to spend money. Maybe
that’s what’s meant by leading people by the nose.
Erin recognised me immediately. She seemed more vivid than I
remembered: the Aboud drama must have stimulated her. Death has
that effect on a lot of people. When she’d finished wrapping an
old woman’s blood pressure pills, she came over, smiling widely,
desperate for a gossip. Her smile faded when I told her I was
looking for some shampoo, but she dutifully led me to a dazzling
array of bottles that promised to plump up my limp locks, to give
my hair a dazzling shine, to reverse the damage done by perming
and dyeing, to untangle snarls, and get rid of my unsightly
dandruff—to make me irresistible to hair fetishists, in short.
Unable to contain herself a minute longer, Erin burst out:
‘Wasn’t it awful about that poor man.’ She was more excited than
horrified, however. ‘Do you reckon it was that guy who bashed him
the other day?’
‘Could be,’ I said. ‘We might have come face to face with a
murderer.’
She gave a theatrical shudder and held up a bottle of viscous,
bile coloured fluid that smelt like rotting apples.
‘No, I eat fruit. I don’t put it on my head’. Erin sniggered.
‘What did you tell me the guy in the baseball cap said to
Eddie?’
48
‘I think Mr Aboud accused him of following him. That’s all I
heard.’
Why would a yob like Baseball Cap follow Eddie About? Even
after the murder, that didn’t make sense to me. Unless Eddie was
doing a sideline in stolen cars or was in the market for drugs,
it was difficult to imagine how the lives of these two would ever
have intersected. I’d watched Eddie for two weeks, and doubted
he’d have time to run a second business. Besides, his drug of
choice was money, and he certainly didn’t need any help in
procuring that. Baseball Cap had to be working for someone else.
Erin finally found me a shampoo that smelled of herbs and
didn’t promise anything, and took my money.
As I was leaving, she called after me. ‘Did you see his tatt?’
‘What tatt?’
He had a little tattoo on his forearm. I noticed it because
I’d been thinking of getting one myself...’
‘Don’t do it,’ I interrupted. ‘They’re ugly.’
Erin blushed. Realising that coming on like a parent was
unlikely to endear me to her, I said, ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just
being a fogy. What did it look like?’
She described it.
‘Can you draw it for me?’
‘I think so.’
She went into the dispensary and got a piece of paper and drew
me a snake eating its own tail.
49
The middle-aged pharmacist poked his head up and peered at us
suspiciously, but as the shop was empty, he held his tongue. Then
the phone rang, and he left us alone.
‘Are you a policeman?’ Erin asked.
‘No, a Private Eye.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Who are you working for?’
‘It’s confidential.’ I didn’t want to admit I was working for
myself. Maybe Lizzie is right: maybe most men stay fifteen
forever.
When I left, Erin followed me to the door. A bright girl,
bored with flogging corn pads and headache remedies and listening
to pensioners’ troubles, she seemed wistful. ‘D’you really think
tattoos are ugly?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, and if you change your mind, it costs a fortune to get
them lasered off. Plus you can get some very nasty diseases from
dirty tattoo needles.’
The spectre of AIDS clinched it. Erin paled slightly. Some
people still seem to be prepared to die for a fuck, but you’d
have to be particularly dimwitted to die for a butterfly on your
butt.
‘Get some of those stick-on transfers,’ I advised. ‘Nobody
will ever know the difference.’
As I walked to my car, she called out from the pharmacy door:
‘By the way, the guy in the baseball cap? He was English.’
I found a yuppie pub—clean air, tasteful carpets, polite bar
staff with university educations, lots of imported beers—and
bought my self a Bock. While I watched a couple of out-of-work
50
actors play pool and pretend they were Paul Newman in The
Hustler, I wondered how I could track down the property
developer. The most obvious place was Eddie’s agency: if he’d
been negotiating to buy a property, the staff would know his
name. Carmel could easily find out for me—if she ever got in
touch.
Stymied for the time being, I was forced to concentrate on the
Pommie basher . For the next few hours I toured Sydney’s tattoo
joints. I struck out at the House of Pain in Annandale and at the
Illustrated Man in Elizabeth Street in the city. Returning to
home ground, I found a precious parking spot in Victoria Street
and cut up to Lankelly Place, an alleyway running off
Darlinghurst Road to check out The Marked Man.
Tenaciously grim and grotty, Lankelly Place resists most
shopkeepers’ efforts to tart it up. However, a Thai takeout has
put some plastic tables out in the alley, and after a terrible
Indian takeout went bust, some young hopefuls opened a coffee
shop with an outdoor section. Having pissed in this alley myself
late at night, I’d think twice about eating in it, but it doesn’t
seem to faze backpackers. After Nepal and India they could
probably survive any bugs known to science.
The Marked Man crouched between a sex shop and a shoe
repairer. Pushing through the last set of plastic strip curtains
in captivity, I interrupted a fat, completely bald tattooist
engraving a huge dragon on the pigeon chest of a skinny, halfpissed yob with a stringy blond ponytail and a mouth like a
bombed-out cemetery. The walls were papered with samples of
51
tattoos—Celtic symbols, hearts, initials, anchors, barbed wire
bracelets, fruit, angels, devils, Chinese characters—and pictures
of satisfied customers wearing dull red, black and blue doodles
and stupid grins.
‘Got a minute?’ I asked.
The tattooist, who looked like an old biker, didn’t look up.
‘Whaddya want?’
‘I’ve got a description of a tat, and I want to know if you
did it.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘The murder of that real estate agent.’
‘Bloody good thing if you ask me.’ While his moronic client
squawked with laughter, he sized me up. ‘You’re not a cop.’
‘I know. It’s worth fifty bucks.’
‘So who the fuck are ya?’
‘I’m working for the wife.’
‘She probably done it herself.’ Torturer and victim laughed
uproariously.
I waited. The tattooist’s curiosity finally got the better of
him. He was dying to tell the next international brotherhood of
tattooists’ conference in Sarajevo that one of his creations
adorned the epidermis of a real live murderer.
‘Gi’s a look.’
I handed over the sketch Erin had made.
‘Nah, never clapped eyes on it.’
Dragon Boy peered at it for a moment, then said, ‘I seen
somethin’ like that somewhere...’
52
They played a little game, with the tattooist reminding Dragon
Boy of all the places he might have seen it. It was a guided tour
of the gutter—though I will admit to having been seen in most of
the venues over the years, in varying states of consciousness. I
resisted the impulse to seize the needle and inscribe MORON on
their low foreheads.
Dragon Boy finally figured it out. It was like watching a 20watt light come on in a bar fridge. ‘I know! That bastard that
chucked me out of the fuckin’ Coogee Bay Hotel had one of ‘em.’
‘A bouncer.’
‘Yeah. What a fuckin showoff. Acted like he was in some kung
fu movie. Told me he’d kill me with his bare hands. Wait till I
get me hands on that arsehole.’
No doubt the bouncer was quaking in his steel-tipped boots. I
handed him twenty dollars.
‘You promised me fifty!’
‘You have my most sincere thanks, sir,’ I said. ‘If your
information checks out, I’ll leave the rest here for you to pick
up.’ I exited smartly, ahead of a barrage of abuse highly
critical of my mother’s virtue. We all knew I had no intention of
paying up, but I was bigger than Dragon Boy and the tattooist
didn’t give a shit either way.
As it was too early for the Coogee Bay Hotel, I killed some
time by walking down through Elizabeth Bay to Rushcutters Bay
Park, where I sat and watched the doctors and merchant bankers
departing for a twilight sail. The air was moist and smelt of the
harbour, and the sun cut diamonds into the small waves. Dog
53
owners trickled out of apartments and chucked balls at ecstatic
pets or stood in clumps discussing muttology. Middle-aged couples
did the daily thirty-minute brisk walk recommended by the Heart
Foundation; a few youngsters jogged by, self-conscious in their
skimpy gear. I even saw a mother and baby, a rare sight in these
environs.
None of the denizens of Kings Cross ever ventured into the
park in daylight hours: like vampires, they’re terrified of fresh
air and sunlight.
I took a walk down to Darling Point along the harbourside
path, where a war had been fought recently between the yacht
club, which wanted to keep the so-called temporary marina berths
and car park it had constructed for the Olympics, and the locals,
who wanted their open space back. Take paradise, put up a parking
lot. Incredibly, the yacht club had lost.
On my way back, a southerly buster blew up, turning the
pollen from the plane trees into a shower of golden rain in the
setting sun. Calmed and comforted, I made my way home.
If Eddie Aboud’s assailant was a bouncer at the Coogee Bay
Hotel, he’d have to be on duty on a Friday night. To fortify
myself for the ordeal ahead, I returned to Darlinghurst road,
which felt like something out of Hieronymous Bosch after the
park, and stopped in at the Acropolis for a feed of steak and
chips. Though the diner wasn’t the same without Val, who’d
finally retired, the food hadn’t changed, and neither had the
disreputable clientele. They still ate with their mouths open and
54
blew smoke on other people’s food. The romantically inclined call
it atmosphere.
The Coogee Bay Hotel is a goldmine for its owners, and a
valuable source of overtime for the local police. On the weekends
the live music attracts hordes of revellers, accompanied by the
usual drug dealers, trouble makers and violent drunks. The pub is
no place for the faint-hearted. It was hot, noisy, and jammed to
the gunwales. Its front door was guarded by a giant Samoan. I had
a beer at the bar, then checked out the premises. None of the
hotel staff looked familiar. Finally I asked the Samoan if he
knew an English bloke who worked there as a bouncer. I described
the tattoo.
‘Why d’ya wanta know?’ he asked, glaring down. He was
suspicious, but perfectly relaxed. He had little to fear from a
runt like me: he could kill me simply by sitting on me.
‘I saw him here a couple of weeks ago,’ I lied. ‘I wanted to
offer him a job doing security at a private do.’
‘I reckon you’re too late, man. He chucked it in a couple of
weeks ago.’
‘Where can I get in touch with him?’
‘Dunno. He used to talk about going to the Gold Coast, but he
might have pissed off back to Pommyland. That’s where he came
from. He was on a working visa.’
‘Got a name for him?’ I asked.
‘Paul, somethin’.’ I waited while he took a stroll through his
memory bank. ‘Yeah, Paul Watson.’
55
‘Give me a call if he turns up, will you?’ I said, handing him
my card.
As I walked to the car park, I saw him flick it onto
the footpath. Miraculously, the Valiant was still there, and
still had its hubcaps. I climbed in and rang the manager of the
Coogee Bay Hotel. Identifying myself as my nemesis, Detective
Sergeant Dick Bray, I demanded Paul Watson’s address. The tone I
adopted, a subtle blend of self-importance and threat instantly
recognised by all those who’ve have had a run-in with the
constabulary, was apparently convincing.
‘What’s it about?’ he asked.
‘Murder.’
‘Shit! This won’t get us in the papers, will it? The owners
will go apeshit.’
‘Just answer the question,’ I said, mimicking Bray at his most
obnoxious.
In a well-fuck-you-too voice, the manager gave me an address
at Bondi Beach. I should have guessed: Pommy tourists head there
like lemmings to the nearest cliff.
56
5
I wheeled out to Bondi. The impossible blue of the sea and the
salty tang of the air hadn’t changed, but Bondi Beach was
undergoing an acute identity crisis. Yuppies with a yen for a sea
view were moving in and rising prices were putting the squeeze on
the surfers and hippies and old-time residents who’d bought in
when Bondi was unfashionable. The main drag, Campbell Parade, had
been tarted up for the Olympics. The unsightly but handy parking
bays were gone from the middle of the street, and the footpaths
had been widened to create a network of outdoor restaurants with
views of the sea.
Paul Watson lived in a nondescript block of liver-coloured
brick flats in Frances Street, running off Campbell Parade. The
tide of gentrification hadn’t reached this building yet: the
tenants hadn’t bothered to take in their rubbish bins, and the
grass needed mowing. I walked up the dilapidated stairs and
knocked on the door of number 7. Someone was home: I could hear
music—R&B to be precise. When I got impatient and pounded louder,
a woman’s voice yelled: ‘I’m coming, for Christ’s sake!’
The door swung open, bringing me face to face with small,
slender woman in her thirties, dressed in a pair of baggy shorts
and a faded purple tee shirt. She had shoulder-length sandy hair,
clear lightly-tanned skin, eyes the colour of the surf on an
57
overcast day, and a pugnacious look on her face. When she got
sick of me staring at her she said, ‘So?’
‘I’m looking for Paul Watson.’
‘And who might you be?’
‘Syd Fish. He works with me at the Coogee Bay Hotel, but he
hasn’t turned up for work for a couple of days. I’m worried about
him.’
She narrowed her eyes: perhaps I don’t look like an altruist.
She decided to give me the benefit of the doubt: ‘Are you sure
you’ve got the right address? There was a young bloke here before
me, apparently, but his name wasn’t Paul Watson.’
‘How do you know?’
‘A letter came for him from England. I think I’ve kept it.’
‘Can I see it?’
She scrutinised me closely and decided I wasn’t Albert de
Salvo. ‘I’m Nicki Howard. Come in while I get the letter.’
She led me into a big old seaside flat that hadn’t been done
up in thirty years. The polish had worn off the floorboards and
the paintwork was dingy, but it was big and airy and had a view
of the north end of the beach from the living room window. She
didn’t have much furniture—an old velvet couch and two armchairs,
a coffee table covered in papers and a long, messy table with an
expensive computer on it. Like many self-employed Sydneysiders,
she was using her living room as an office. There were books and
magazines everywhere, stacked on the table, the floor, the
windowsills and even in a couple of crowded bookshelves. An
58
expensive sound system was belting out slide guitar, my kind of
music.
‘I make documentaries,’ she said, gesturing at the clutter.
What is it mothers do to daughters? In all my life and travels
I’ve never met a man who felt the need to apologise for a messy
house.
‘Film?’ I asked.
‘And TV.’
‘Like what?’
‘I did one on breast cancer, and I’m doing the research for a
doco on public attitudes to the police.’
‘That’ll be short and sweet,’ I said.
‘Do you think so? I think it’s a very complicated issue. I
mean, take that shooting on the beach. People are up in arms
because two cops shot a psychotic wielding a knife, but a few
months ago they were outraged because a Assyrian gang stabbed a
young cop to death out west. It’s starting to get interesting, I
reckon.’
‘At least it’s not as bad as Melbourne,’ I said. ‘Our cops and
robbers haven’t started a range war yet. You said you’d just
moved in. Where did you come from?’
‘I’ve been in Melbourne for the past three years, but before
that I was in England for a few years. I’m a Perth girl by
birth.’
‘Plenty of grist for the mill there,’ I said. Everything in
Western Australia is on a grand scale, including corruption.
59
‘Yeah, I tried it for a few months, but I get agoraphobia when
I go there now. You know, the Indian Ocean on one side and the
desert on the other... It seems such a long way from everywhere
else.’
‘Life is elsewhere?’ I said.
‘Something like that.’ She finally found what she was looking
for under a pile of press cuttings on the table. ‘Is this what
you want?’
The envelope was addressed to
letter from someone called
Adam
Quinn. Inside was a
Vanessa Kemp in Putney begging him to
come home and reprising their last encounter in gynaecological
detail. She’d thoughtfully put her name and address on the back
of the envelope.
‘Do you mind if I take this?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘What’s he really done?’
‘What makes you think he’s done anything?’
‘I’ve get told a lot of lies in my line of work. Unless this
bloke was hospitality employee of the year, nobody would give a
damn if he pissed off home to England. And no barman I’ve ever
met would give up an afternoon off to find his mother if she went
missing.’
I gave in to superior logic. ‘You know the real estate agent
who was shot in Coogee the other night?’
‘Gunned down in an apparent professional hit?’ she said,
mimicking a television anchorwoman.
60
‘Yeah, that one. A couple of days before he died, he was
bashed outside his office by a young bloke. I think it was your
mate.’
She grimaced. ‘I had to ask, didn’t I. Now I’ll have to change
the locks.’
We were at the front door. As I was loitering with intent,
trying to get up the nerve to ask for her phone number, she said,
‘In case any thing comes up, have you got a card?’
I had a whole wallet full of them.
She reappraised me. ‘Ah, a private investigator.’ From her
tone of voice, I could tell my stocks had risen. As a new girl in
town, she’d need all the help she could get, and I was plugged
into the sorts of networks she needed to penetrate. ‘Who are you
working for?’
It wasn’t going to be quite that easy. ‘Myself, at the
moment.’
She gave me a shrewd look that said I’d keep. I didn’t mind:
she was welcome to practise her powers of persuasion on me any
time.
That night I got a call from Tracy: ‘Can I come over?’
‘What do you want this time?’
‘What makes you think I want something?’
I sighed. This was like playing ping-pong against a member of
the Chinese national team. ‘Bring some beer and leave the
boyfriend at home.’
61
She was at my doorstep within half the hour.
‘How did you get here?’
‘I walked over from Paddington. It’s nice out.’
She cracked two beers from a sixpack and put the rest in the
fridge. Like most young women, Tracy prided herself on never
having to buy a drink: now I was certain she wanted something.
I’d decided to let her twist in the wind, but after an hour of
listening to gossip about the hairdressing salon and a long and
tedious story about a play Dan almost got a role in, I cracked.
‘Cough it up.’
‘I wondered if we... if I could borrow the Valiant...’
I responded like a mother being asked to give away her firstborn. ‘What for?’
‘We’ve found space in a warehouse in Alexandria. I want it to
move my stuff.’
‘What’s wrong with Dan’s car?’
‘He can’t afford to get it registered.’
Tracy was twanging with tension, leaning forward in my antique
seventies Scandinavian armchair and beaming 100-watt sincerity at
me. Except for those enormous blue eyes, there wasn’t much left
to remind me of the desperate waif I’d rescued from the streets
years before. What the hell, I thought. Tracy was the nearest I’d
ever get to having a daughter, and she doesn’t ask for much. Most
parents my age are still keeping their kids, who don’t leave home
till they’re thirty-five these days, and their lovers.
‘How long will you need it?’
‘A couple of hours. We don’t have much stuff.’
62
‘When?’
‘How about tomorrow night?’
‘OK, but it has to be back here by midnight.’
Now that she had me, Tracy risked a little cheek: ‘Why, will
it turn into a pumpkin?’
Without her insufferable boyfriend flouncing about
dramatically and getting the sulks every time she withdrew her
attention for more than five minutes, Tracy was good company. I
took her down the road to Una’s and shouted her a feed.
Una’s new owner, a glamorous Mittel-European woman of a
certain age, had taken over the shop next door and opened the
restaurant to the street. I was suspicious at first, as most
restaurants go downhill when they change hands, but miraculously
she’d left the food and the Hungarian kitsch alone. As we mowed
down heart-stopping schnitzels and fried potatoes followed by
apple cake, Tracy announced that she’d decided to start a degree
part-time.
I almost choked. ‘What’s brought this on?’
‘I’m sick of hairdressing. It’s mindless. I watch these women
come in week after week with their expensive clothes and great
jobs, and there I am up to my elbows in shampoo and hair dye. The
pay’s lousy, too. Unless I open my own salon, I’ll be a
shitkicker all my life. And Dan’s friends treat me like a moron.’
‘Except when they want a free haircut.’
She grinned. ‘Yeah, then I’m a genius.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Business studies.’
63
When I was a student, girls like Tracy studied arts or social
work, but altruism is in short supply these days. To survive, the
universities have shut down unpopular disciplines to concentrate
on the courses the kids want, the ones that will buy them a BMW
and a house in Mosman. Some university is going to offer a
masters in brothel management soon; they’ll be mobbed if they
open a campus in Darlinghurst.
‘What would Lance say?’ I asked. Lance was the step-father
whose violence she’d been fleeing when I’d first met her.
‘He’d say, “I reckon you should come home to Armidale and help
your mother, girlie”. Then he’d hit me for a loan.’
We laughed.
As we promenaded along Victoria Street, Tracy said, ‘Did I
tell you Blush is coming back from Darwin?’
Blush, a florid transvestite, had befriended Tracy when she
was a green girl adrift in big smoke. But Blush had grown tired
of dancing at Les Girls and non-stop partying, and fled to Darwin
work in her sister’s dress shop. At the time I’d wondered if the
deep north was quite ready for Blush’s taste in gowns, or if
Blush was ready for Darwin, a frontier town where folks have a
notoriously narrow definition of gender.
‘What happened?’
‘She reckons her brother-in-law started trying to hit on her.
Her sister blamed her and kicked her out. But I think she just
misses the scene. There aren’t many places up there where you can
wear sequins and a feathered head-dress.’
64
Blush’s life was a cabaret, with her friends, who
unfortunately seem to include me, the long-suffering audience.
I’d probably brought this on myself by complaining about how
boring and predictable my life had become.
After I’d walked Tracy home, I considered ringing Baseball
Cap’s girlfriend in Putney. I even went as far as getting her
phone number from the international operator, but the saturated
fats and sugar, not to mention half a bottle of shiraz, had made
me sluggish. Even the thought of sweet-talking the whereabouts of
Paul Watson or Adam Quinn or whatever his name really was out of
his erstwhile bedmate exhausted me. Anyway, I told myself, she’d
probably be at work. And she’d still be there tomorrow.
The call from Carmel came on Monday. I could hear music thumping
away in the background.
‘It’s me,’ she said furtively, as if the police were listening
in. Which they could well be.
‘What’s happening, Carmel?’
‘What do you think? I’ve got three hysterical kids and Eddie’s
parents on my hands. I’ve got to get his body released so we can
bury him. Eddie’s staff are on my back for decisions, and the
police are pumping me about his business affairs.’
‘Have you told the cops you hired me to check Eddie out?’
‘No, and I’m not going to unless I have to.’
Meaning, Keep your mouth shut, Syd. ‘Why not?’
‘What do you think!? If they find out I suspected Eddie of
screwing around on me, I’ll go to the top of their list. But I
65
did tell them about the bashing. They hadn’t heard, so Eddie must
have kept it quiet. I said he told me about it that night. ’
‘So you’ve got nothing to worry about.’
‘Unless the bloke’s got an alibi.’
‘Haven’t you?’
‘Three sleeping kids and a dog? I don’t think so. There were
no witnesses, so the cops can’t prove I shot Eddie and I can’t
prove I didn’t. ’
‘Do they have any other suspects?’
‘If they have, they’re not telling me. Did you see anything
else suspicious, Syd?’
‘I didn’t put it in the report because it didn’t seem
relevant, but Eddie got into an argument with a disappointed
bidder after the auction on Thursday night.’
‘Who was it?’
I described the man. ‘That sounds like Bert Serafino,’ she
said. ‘Eddie and he developed a site down at Ultimo a few years
ago. What were they fighting about?’
‘I don’t know. You’d better tell the cops you’ve just
remembered that Eddie had an argument with someone after the
auction. You could find out if it was Serafino by asking the
staff. They’d remember the names of the major punters.’
‘What excuse am I going to give for butting into his business
affairs? I’ve never done that before.’
‘You could tell them you’re going to take over,’ I suggested.
‘I wouldn’t know the first thing about selling property!’
66
‘Carmel, your kids have to be fed. Eddie’s spent years
building up that agency. Why chuck away a perfectly good meal
ticket? Besides, look at the bozos who sell real estate: it’s not
exactly astrophysics.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, shouting above the music,
which had the insistent beat of an piledriver.
‘Where are you?’ I asked.
‘Um, I’m in a shopping mall at a public phone.’
That was wise: if she became an official suspect, the cops
would subpoena her phone records.
As it was now about 10.30 pm on Sunday night in England, I
tried the number for
Baseball Cap’s girlfriend. It rang for a
long time, then a woman’s voice came on the line. ‘Yeah?’
‘Is that Vanessa Kemp?’ I asked.
‘Who wants to know?’ It was the voice of a woman who felt the
world had done her wrong. Maybe that was why her boyfriend had
fled to the Antipodes.
‘I’m ringing from Sydney. I’m trying to get in touch with Adam
Quinn, and I believe you’re a friend of his?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He spoke very highly of you,’ I lied.
That softened her up a little. ‘What’s he done now?’
I laughed falsely. ‘He hasn’t done anything, as far as I know.
I moved into the flat he used to rent here in Bondi, and a letter
has arrived for him from Lotto.’
‘What’s in it?’
67
‘It’s
probably a notification about prize money. But I don’t
think it would be right to open it, do you?’
There was a silence while she wondered how to persuade me to
open it. I pre-empted her. ‘Maybe I should talk to
Adam about
it. Do you know where I could reach him?’
‘He sent me a postcard from the Gold Coast,’ she said, sullen
now. ‘He’s got a job at the casino there.’
‘Thank you very much, Miss
Kemp,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell him how
helpful you’ve been. And by the way, do you still have the nipple
ring?’
I hung on just long enough for
Vanessa to compute what I’d
said and start to shriek abuse. Yes, I know: gentlemen don’t read
other people’s mail.
Could I bear to go to the Gold Coast to track
Adam
Quinn
down? Could I hit Carmel for the airfare? It all felt too hard. I
was saved from a decision by a terse message on my answering
machine from a woman who sounded twelve seconds from lift-off.
Divorce work. She didn’t want to talk on the phone from her
office in the city.
Jane Garrett turned out to be the spokeswoman for an insurance
company of legendary rapacity and bloody-mindedness. It was the
sort of institution which squeezed its sales staff as hard as its
policy holders; fought every cent of every two hundred dollar
claim to the High Court; and demanded tax concessions when its
profit dropped from two hundred to one hundred and ninety million
dollars a year.
68
She was whippet thin with a fall of unnaturally black, glossy
hair to her shoulders and cheekbones any man would be happy to
hang his hat on. Her suit was the sort made for an Italian
designer by sweated Indonesian piece-workers. She had pale grey,
uptilted eyes and perfect teeth, and accentuated her matt white
skin with Bette Davis red lipstick. If there was anything wrong
with Jane Garrett’s face, it was a lack of expression. And at
times she seemed a little slow on the uptake, a beat behind the
music, though she was obviously intelligent. Eventually I came to
the conclusion that, when threatened, she retreated to a bunker
in the back of her mind to plot and plan, and that any communiqué
from the real world had to fight its way past sentries and
sandbags to reach her.
Before she sat down, my new client came perilously close to
wiping the seat of her chair with a handkerchief, but managed to
restrain herself. Perhaps her husband had accused her of being an
obsessive compulsive, or perhaps she thought it unwise to
alienate someone she might need. I was impressed by her selfcontrol.
‘I’d like you to facilitate an exchange for me, Mr Fish,’ she
said. She had a low voice with the slightest hint of gravel. A
small shiver ambled down my spine.
‘What sort of exchange?’
‘My husband has Sweet Leilani and I have a computer disk he
needs. We’ve agreed to swap them.’
‘Sweet Leilani? Your daughter?’
69
‘A Burmese cat,’ she said, enunciating slowly, as if to a
half-wit. I was offended: after all, rock singers had been known
to call their children names like Heavenly Hirani Tiger Lily and
Dweezil.
‘I take it you and your husband are separated?’
‘Yes, we’re getting a divorce.’
‘Can I make a suggestion?’
She gave me a suspicious look: perhaps she thought I was going
to advise her to try to save her marriage. I never gave advice to
fighting couples: it’s like trying to negotiate with an Afghani
warlord.
‘Why don’t you and your husband just swap the cat and the disk
yourselves,’ I said.
‘There’s a slight impediment.’ She paused, embarrassed that a
highly-paid executive like herself had let the situation careen
so far out of control. I stared into her eyes encouragingly,
though I’d guessed it already. She took a deep breath: ‘I think
it’s unwise for me to be in the same room as Jasper ever again.’
Which probably meant he’d given her a slap around the ears on
at least one occasion. ‘And?’ I prompted.
‘And I don’t trust him,’ she burst out. ‘He’ll find some way
of doing me over if I go in alone.’
Relieved, she lit a cigarette, took a lethal drag and blew it
towards my ceiling. I scrabbled round in the bottom drawer of my
desk and found the bakelite ashtray Lizzie had bought for me at a
junk shop in Quorn on her way to the Opera in the Outback in
1988, when I was still a slave to the weed, and
70
placed it on the
desk in front of her. ‘What does, uh, Jasper do, Ms Garrett?’ I
asked.
‘He’s an accountant.’
It turned out Jasper Garrett was a senior partner in the
biggest and most powerful accounting firm in the country. Now I
could see what she was up against: at the first hint of trouble
he would have transferred his assets to the Cayman Islands or
Vanuatu.
‘What we need is a neutral outdoor venue,’ I said, tilting my
chair back and searching the water-stained ceiling for
inspiration. ‘I know. The Domain, down near Mrs Macquarie’s
chair, where the two roads form a triangle. You can park on
different roads and you won’t have to come within fifty metres of
each other. Do you know where I mean?’
‘Yes, I jog around there in my lunch hour. It’s perfect.’ The
nicotine and the prospect of a resolution had brightened her up a
little. Her shoulders had dropped several inches.
I’ll do the exchange for you,’ I said. ‘He won’t try anything
with me.’
She didn’t look completely convinced. ‘He’s very tricky. He’ll
go to any lengths to get his own way.’
‘I’ll watch my back,’ I said.
Then I decided to risk a
personal question. ‘I know it’s none of my business, but why did
you marry him?’
‘He wanted me. I think I was his first takeover. I made the
mistake of thinking it was a friendly one.’
71
I grinned, then laughed, and she joined in. Ice broken
finally, we discussed dates and times, and I volunteered to call
her husband to set up the meeting. She was anxious and angry, but
had retained her dignity and her sense of humour. Many people
emerge from a divorce with less. Once she got rid of the bean
counter, she’d probably turn back into the sort of woman I’m
doomed to admire from afar.
After I’d aired out the room, I called her husband. His
officious secretary didn’t want to let me through. ‘Could you
tell me what it’s about?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got a message from his wife, and I’d much rather go
straight to the organ grinder.’
There was a silence while she worked that one out, then she
gritted out: ‘Putting you through.’
Yeah, it was a cheap shot, but if I had all the time back that
I’ve spent telling my story to underlings who don’t need to know
and can’t help you anyway, I’d live as long as the Queen Mother.
Jasper Garrett listened while I outlined my plan. ‘It’s all a
bit over the top, isn’t it?’ he remarked. He affected a slight
drawl, designed to show the proles he’d gone to a private school.
I have fond memories of beating the shit out of his type at
school football matches. ‘Why can’t she just come in here and
give me the disk?’
I didn’t reply. He sighed, as if it were all too much effort.
‘OK, I’ll park on the top road. Taking the high moral ground, so
to speak.’ He laughed at his own joke.
72
Privately I thought Jane Garrett was demented to play fair
with this pompous prat. If it had been me, I’d have broken in and
stolen the bloody cat and kept the disk as leverage. I hadn’t
asked what was on it: I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
73
6
At six pm. Tracy and her paramour arrived to borrow the Valiant.
I read the riot act to Dan, longing to knock the supercilious
smirk off his handsome dial. Like most of the young blokes in the
inner-city who don’t have regular jobs, he’d shaved his head and
affected a perpetual five o’clock shadow—don’t ask me how, maybe
he shaves at midnight. Since Lizzie had remarked in passing one
day that bald men look like ambulatory dicks, I’d privately
thought of him as Dickhead. One of these days it would slip out
in front of Tracy, who would then run off and marry him just to
spite me. For a year now I’d been hoping she’d get bored with
him, but women seem to find vain, self-important men
irresistible.
As they drove off I offered up a small prayer to Saint
Christopher, patron saint of drivers. I’ve been told the Vatican
has fired him, but he’s all I’ve got. Lizzie calls the Valiant my
significant other and sneers at my attachment to an inanimate
object, but the car and I have been through some major life
experiences together. I like to think I’m not as possessive as
Luther Huck was about his Trans Am, but then nobody has fire
bombed the Valiant. Yet.
I was on tenterhooks till curfew. By half past midnight I was
on red alert. I rang Tracy’s number, but it had already been cut
74
off, and I didn’t even know the address of the warehouse she was
moving into. By 1.30 am I started to worry: Tracy was usually
fairly reliable. At two o’clock she rang.
‘Where are you?’ I screamed. ‘Where’s my car?’
‘Syd, I’m really sorry. I wasn’t our fault, really...’
‘Fault? What’s that cack-handed dickhead done now?’
For once Tracy didn’t spring to her lover’s defence. ‘He
didn’t do anything, Syd. The bumper bar fell off the car, that’s
all. I didn’t want to bring it back like that, so we’re getting
it fixed.’
‘You sound shook up, Tracy. What’s really going on?’
‘Nothing, Syd. I just thought you might be angry, that’s all.’
That surprised me; Tracy was as tough as a Blundstone boot,
and usually ignored my temper tantrums. ‘So where’s the car now?’
‘We took it to a garage in Marrickville.’
‘At two o’clock in the morning? Pull the other one.’
Tracy adopted the soothing tone common to animal trainers and
siege negotiators. ‘No, really. Dan rang a friend of his whose
father owns a tow truck company. He got onto this garage he deals
with and they said they’d do it. It’ll be ready by lunch time
tomorrow.’
‘Who’s the friend?’ It would be too much of a coincidence,
surely...
She put her hand over the phone and consulted Dan. ‘Luke
Coogan. Why, do you know him?’
‘Yeah, and his father, Bernie.’
75
I’d calmed down slightly by now. Several years ago Bernie
Coogan had hired me to be the go-between when Luke had gone
missing, and I’d brought the kid back safe and sound. Bernie owed
me, but unknown to him, his son owed me even more. My Valiant
couldn’t be in better hands: every mechanic between Newcastle and
Wollongong was terrified of Bernie Coogan.
‘How do you know them?’ asked Tracy, who had regained some of
her sang-froid when she’d realised I wasn’t going to pitch a fit.
‘It’s a long story. Remind me to tell you about it one day.
And have my car back here by mid-day, or I’ll have your guts for
garters.’ I hung up.
I spent the next morning doing accounts and harassing debtors. It
did nothing for the lining of my stomach and little for my
overdraft. At 1.30 Tracy arrived with the car, which had been
washed and waxed and shone like an entry in the concours
d’élégance at a Valiant club rally. And the petrol tank had been
topped up.
I was slightly mollified, but didn’t show it. ‘Where’s Dan?
Too chickenshit to face me?’
‘He’s got an audition for a part in Neighbours.’
I choked. If he got it he’d become a teen idol, a television
personality—an oxymoron if I ever heard one—and I’d have to put
up with the sight of his smug mug on the cover of glossy
magazines at the newsagency. But there was an upside. ‘You’d
better watch out, mate, if he becomes famous all the girls will
be after him.’
76
Surprisingly, Tracy didn’t rise to the bait. I soon found out
why. As she was leaving, she lingered at the door.
‘What?’
‘Uh, what do you know about Luke Coogan?’
Too much. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Oh, just, you know...’
‘His father, Bernie, is a bad actor. Made his money in tow
trucks and porn. Not a man to trifle with. His mother, Denise,
lives in Newcastle. Great lady, got religion. She and her second
husband brought Luke up, but he got in touch with Bernie when he
was a teenager.’
‘How do you know them, Syd?’
‘I got called in to mediate when Luke got kidnapped.’
Her eyes snapped open. ‘Who kidnapped him?’
A good question, but not one I was at liberty to discuss. If
she looked like getting involved with Luke, I’d have to
reconsider my vow of silence, though. ‘He escaped before the
money changed hands,’ I said.
Overwhelmed by the drama of it all, Tracy didn’t notice that I
hadn’t answered the question.
‘What’s the kid doing now?’ I asked.
‘Commerce-Law at Sydney Uni.’
Skills Bernie could use, I thought. ‘Have you got the hots for
him or something?’ I asked.
She got on her high horse immediately, a dead give away. ‘Of
course not. I’ve only met him that once. Anyway, he’s Dan’s
friend.’
77
Minor impediments to true lust in my experience. ‘Before you
chuck your hat into the ring, I’d suggest you find out if Luke
intends to go into business with his father. Coogan’s a nasty
piece of work. He makes your step-father look like a Sunday
school teacher.’
There were other reasons I didn’t want Tracy mixed up with the
Coogan menage, but
I wasn’t prepared to go into them unless I
had to. I had enough enemies already. ‘What’s this paragon like?’
‘Quiet. Good manners. Nice eyes.’
My heart sank. Once women start talking about a man’s eyes,
they’ve already got one foot off the ground.
I was locking my office to go for a sandwich to fortify myself
for the duel between the Garretts, when a car pulled up outside
and two men in suits alighted. Detective Inspector Bob Leggett
and Detective Sergeant Dick Bray. Sprung.
‘Going somewhere?’ asked Leggett.
‘Probably not,’ I said, unlocking the door again.
They shouldered their way in, looked around pityingly and
pulled up two of my bum-numbing office chairs. I assumed they’d
do their usual routine: Leggett the reasonable officer of the
law, Bray the mad dog.
‘Doing well, I see,’ sneered Bray, right on cue.
‘So are you,’ I said, eyeing his spreading paunch. ‘Joined gut
busters yet? I hear there’s a special chapter for fat cops.’
Bray’s narrowed his gooseberry coloured eyes, but before he
could erupt Leggett cut in. ‘We heard you witnessed an attack on
78
Eddie Aboud outside his place of work on the afternoon of...’ He
consulted a dog-eared notebook. ‘Friday the twelfth of January.’
‘What makes you think that?’ I asked. Bloody Erin and her
overdeveloped Irish Catholic conscience, no doubt.
‘A girl by the name of.... Erin McGonigal.... says she saw you
there. She came forward after Eddie Aboud’s murder.’
And I didn’t. Guilty as charged. ‘Yeah, I was there.’
‘What were you doing there?’
‘A friend of mine is looking for a place to buy. I was going
to look in Aboud’s window to see if he had anything suitable.’
Bray sniggered. ‘Your friends couldn’t afford to buy the dunny
in one of Aboud’s properties, Fish.’
This was undeniable. When I refused to bite, Leggett said,
‘Miss, sorry Miz McGonigal says you came into the chemist shop
where she works and quizzed her about the attack. Is that right?’
‘It was a coincidence,’ I said. ‘I needed shampoo. She just
happened to be working there.’
Leggett consulted his notes, discovered I was telling the
truth about the shampoo, and gave me a sour look. ‘But you did
discuss the attack?’
‘I might have. It’s not like someone in a suit lands on his
arse in front of your eyes every day, so obviously we both found
it interesting.’ I paused and pretended to rack my brains ‘And if
my memory serves me, Inspector, Ms McGonigal raised the subject.’
Fortunately a few of my synapses are still firing.
‘Were you working on a case at the time of the attack?’ asked
Leggett, outgunned.
79
‘Yes.’
‘Who for?’
‘I’m not at liberty to divulge that information,’ I said
pompously. ‘It’s confidential.’
‘We could always run you in,’ offered Bray. ‘You might change
your mind after a night in the boob.’
Translation: Ve haff vays of makink you talk. I almost
grinned, but thought better of it. ‘What for?’
‘Oh, obstructing the police... we’ll think of something.’
‘When you’ve thought of something that’ll stick, come back,’ I
said. ‘And meanwhile, if you’re finished, I’ve got a living to
earn.’
‘Not much of a one by the look of this dump,’ said Leggett.
‘Don’t think you’ve seen the last of us, Fish,’ snarled Bray.
I sighed. It was no idle threat: the man had the tenacity of a
floating turd. It wouldn’t take them long to start harassing
Carmel: she’d be at the top their short list of people who might
want Eddie Aboud investigated. Would Carmel talk?
As soon as they left, I called her. She took her time
answering her mobile, and I could hear music throbbing away in
the background. ‘The cops have been here,’ I said. ‘They suspect
I was tailing Eddie.’
‘Which means they think I hired you.’
‘You’d better tell them, Carmel. It’ll look bad if they have
to drag it out of you. By the way, I’ve been checking out the
bloke who bashed Eddie. I’m pretty sure I know who he is.’
Her voice rose: ‘What? Why didn’t you tell me?’
80
‘Well, I was doing it off my own bat, covering my own arse.’
‘Who is he?’
‘A Pommy, name of Adam Quinn. He was calling himself Paul
Watson for reasons best known to himself.’
‘Are you going to tell the police about him?’
‘I suppose I should. If he did kill Eddie, he shouldn’t be on
the streets.’
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘He might be working at Jupiter’s Casino on the Gold Coast.
Why?’
‘No reason, really. I just wondered how long it would take the
cops to track him down.’
‘Maybe forever, maybe five minutes. Are you going to talk to
them?’
‘I suppose I have to.’ Her voice cracked. ‘I’ve got Eddie’s
funeral tomorrow, though. I can’t face them till that’s over.’
I felt sorry for Carmel: she’d be even more stressed after the
cops did their number on her. It was beginning to look as if we’d
made a mistake in not coming forward straight away, but as Carmel
is stubborn and wilful, and I have a tendency to take the line of
least resistance, it had been a folie à deux.
But at least I had one more day of freedom before Beavis and
Butthead descended on me again to check out Carmel’s story. That
gave me time to organise the cat swap and make some money.
At three o’clock as arranged, I went to the Domain and parked
on the road near Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, a rock formation on the
harbour front named after an early governor’s wife. As I was a
81
bit early, I sat on a bench and watched the ferries, yachts,
tourist boats and ships criss-crossing the harbour. Eventually a
busload of Korean tourists pulled into the loading bay behind me,
shattering the peace. I left before the camera clicking,
chattering throng descended on my sanctuary, squawking like a
flock of cockatoos. Anyway, it was time to get this Punch and
Judy show on the road.
As agreed, Jane Garrett pulled into the bottom road and parked
her BMW. Her husband parked his Saab convertible on the top road.
Jane walked up the incline, took a zipdisk out of her shoulder
bag and hissed ‘Watch him, Syd.’ Her eyes had the strained,
blasted look you see in photos of diggers on the Kokoda Track.
After years of dealing with women in the midst of bitter
divorces, I was intimately acquainted with this expression. I
patted her lamely on the arm, and watched her return to her car,
where she stood, arms crossed defensively, keeping a close eye on
the transaction.
Jasper Garrett strutted down the hill and handed me Sweet
Leilani, obviously sedated, in a carrying box that was the feline
version of a suite at the Crillon. He didn’t speak. He seemed
keyed up, however, and when his gaze suddenly flicked over my
shoulder, I realised he was about to pull some kind of stunt. I
turned. Two men in running gear, caps and sunglasses were
galloping towards me, much too fast. Hampered by the cat box, I
had Buckley’s chance of getting out of their way.
I steeled myself for the collision, but just before they would
have careened into me, they parted ways. One grabbed the cat,
82
which gave one of those spine-chilling Burmese yowls of outrage;
the other ripped the disk out of my hand. They shot off up the
hill, the perp with the cat pausing to give us the finger as
disappeared over the crest.
Too surprised to react, I watched Jane run up the hill
screaming, ‘You organised this, you shit!’ and start hitting
Jasper wildly round the head and shoulders with her expensive
shoulder bag. Given the clobber women can cram into a bag, he’d
be black and blue in the morning.
From behind his raised arms Jasper shouted: ‘Rubbish! It was
you, you bitch! You can’t stand to lose!’
I was still too stunned to take sides. In fact, I was hoping
they’d kill each other. I was quite happy to forego the fee to
get these monsters out of my life. I know single men are supposed
to neglect their health, be the unhappiest people on earth and
die before married men, but at times like this it seemed a small
price to pay.
Eventually I got bored enough to interrupt. ‘Where do we go
from here?’
It was pretty obvious that Jasper Garrett had set up this
scam. I wondered if he really wanted the cat, or had only done it
to spite his wife. Whichever, he was unlikely to get much fun out
of being Sweet Leilani’s sole parent: Jane was the type to hire
twenty-four hour surveillance to watch his house. After this
fiasco, I wasn’t about to volunteer for the job.
Gracious in victory, Jasper sneered: ‘Seeing you’re so
distraught, I’ll pay the man.’
83
Jane flushed scarlet and drew a hissing breath, but before she
could renew her assault,
I led her away and tucked her gently
into her car. ‘Can you drive?’
The small kindness turned her anger to tears. ‘What will I
do?’ she asked me.
Now some romantics would have told her to get another man, but
I’ve done too much divorce work to harbour any illusions about
love. ‘Get yourself another cat,’ I advised. And stay away from
men: your judgment is lousy.
Although it looked as if I’d get paid, I was disappointed in
the way this had turned out. I’d hoped to be able to reunite Jane
with Sweet Leilani, and perhaps take her out for a celebratory
drink and worm my way into her affections. Now she’d associate me
with the loss of her cat and never want to clap eyes on me again.
Eddie Aboud’s funeral made the six o’clock news that night. It
was a who’s who of the real estate industry. Many of the mourners
had a hunted look. If Eddie Aboud, with all the security money
could pay, could bite the dust, no-one was safe, and if
disgruntled clients started bumping off doublecrossing agents,
every real estate firm in Sydney would have to close its doors.
Flanked by relatives and her three shell-shocked children,
Carmel was there, pale and rather fetching in a large black hat.
She seemed to have lost some weight, and instead of hiding her
bulk inside her usual shapeless Mother Hubbard gear, was wearing
a black suit and showing off excellent legs in a short skirt and
sheer black stockings. I spotted some plain clothes dicks in the
84
crowd—no doubt waiting for the murderer to rush forward and throw
himself on the grave and proclaim his guilt.
Deeply depressed by the prospect of another interview with
Leggett and Bray, I rang Nicki Howard, who seemed pleased to hear
a friendly voice, and took her out for a pizza. She insisted on
paying her way, but she got her money’s worth by quizzing me
about police corruption in Sydney since the Boer War. We got
along well: she had an ironic sense of humour and an incisive
mind and knew lots of film and TV gossip. After dinner she
suggested we do the Bondi to Bronte walk along the seafront to
work off the saturated fats. If I’d had any idea what I was in
for, I would have kept walking.
85
7
It was about midnight by the time I got home and drove into the
car park. My building, grandly titled the Commodore Apartments,
and dubbed Desolation Row by Lizzie Darcy, was built in the
sixties, when it was open slather for brickies turned developers.
Consequently, it’s your typical ugly, red-brick cube with ‘under
cover parking’, that is, you might get mugged, but at least you’d
stay dry while it happened.
Having enjoyed more than a half bottle of red and the company
of a good woman, I was pleasantly mellow. So mellow that I
dropped my car keys on the ground when I got out of the car. As I
bent down to pick them up, I heard a whang of metal on metal that
sounded suspiciously like a bullet hitting the Valiant.
Programmed by thousands of westerns and cops and robbers movies,
I immediately hit the deck and covered my head. While I was lying
there abjectly waiting to be finished off, I heard a car scream
past me, heading out of the car park. Pumped up with adrenalin,
and light-headed with the realisation I was not going to die, I
jumped up and started running after it—for a few metres, anyway,
until I started to feel as foolish as a dog chasing a car.
Strangely calm, I walked back and checked out the Valiant.
There was a bullet hole in the window of the driver’s side, about
where my heart would have been if I’d been standing up locking
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the door. Whoever had tried to kill me was a good shot: he just
didn’t have the balls to stick around and finish me off. Or did
he think he’d hit me? Because the management is too cheap to
replace dead light bulbs, the place is always dangerously dim.
On automatic pilot, I locked the car and walked up the stairs
to my flat. I had trouble unlocking the door, and my legs seemed
to have turned to jelly. I slumped in a chair till the trembling
stopped, then got up and grabbed a tinnie out of the fridge.
It took me a while to process the past 15 minutes. Somebody had
actually lain in wait in my parking lot and taken a pot shot at
me. Just as somebody had taken a shot at Eddie Aboud. I was
luckier, that’s all. Had the kid who’d bashed Eddie Aboud heard I
was on his tail and decided to get rid of a witness? I couldn’t
think of anyone else who’d profit by my early demise. I had
plenty of enemies, even a few who’d be tempted to dance on my
grave if God felt moved to take me to his bosom, but I hadn’t
thought any of them cared enough to expedite the matter.
When I’d regained my calm and my pulse rate had dropped below
cerebral haemorrhage level, I chucked a few clothes and
toiletries into a
gym bag, left a message on my machine that I
would be out of town for a few days, and fled the scene of the
crime. I drove the Valiant with its shattered window to Rydge’s
nightclub in Kellett Street, and after circling the block several
times, found a parking space.
Luther Huck had graduated from door duties to the managerial
suite of what the owner Ronnie Brackenridge called a nightclub
and honest cops called an illegal gambling den. Other cops called
87
it a home away from home. The no-neck steroid abuser on the door
tried to hassle me but I stood my ground and insisted on talking
to Luther. Something about my staring eyes warned him not to try
to eject me. Trying to look like Clint Eastwood playing a minder
to the President of the United States, he muttered into his
mobile, glaring at me as if I were a terrorist.
After a suitable interval to show me how busy he was, or
perhaps needing time to stash illegally gotten gains in the safe,
Luther arrived to escort me to his office. One look told him I
was in no mood to be baited, so he kept his mouth shut and
signalled me to follow.
As we convoyed through the club, I took a look around. The dim
lights bathed the club in a romantic glow and concealed the dust
on the gilt mirrors and the paint by numbers masterpieces and the
worn patches on the carpet. The place was crammed with the usual
Asian gambling addicts, ‘models’, businessmen being daring, a few
tourists with more money than sense. I was almost certain I
recognised a high-ranking police detective in mufti, despite the
heat from the Royal Commission and the corruption inquiry. There
was a noticeable lack of joie de vivre.
Joints like Rydge’s were becoming an endangered species now
that legal casinos were multiplying like exotic viruses. Every
capital city had its temple to greed and bad taste, selling hope
to the hopeless and the prospect of painless wealth to the
slothful. The much touted Asian high rollers had for the most
part failed to materialise, and the regional economic melt-down
was keeping the tourists at home. Casino ads feature young models
88
with perfect teeth having hysterical fun, but every joint I’ve
ever been in has been full of badly dressed desperadoes with all
the charm of junkies looking for the next fix. Their idea of a
good night is getting out before they have to sell their kids as
well as the house.
Safe in his lair and totally oblivious to the moral ambiguity
of his calling, Luther poured us both generous whiskies, motioned
me into to a chair and sat down behind his desk. It was
completely bare: whatever he did here, it wasn’t the books.
‘What’s with the eyes?’ he asked,
‘What do you mean?’
‘You look like you’re speeding.’
‘It’s adrenalin. Some fucker took a pot shot at me’
That caught his interest. ‘What sort of shot?’
‘A big one—.32, .38 probably. There’s a bloody great hole in
the window of my car.’
He raised his eyebrow interrogatively.
‘I was on the ground trying to find my keys.’
‘Lucky you’ve got that St Christopher medal,’ he said, taking
the wind out of my sails. Did he mean it, or was he taking the
piss? I was too wrung out to ask. ‘Where’s the slug?’
‘Who the fuck knows,’ I snarled. ‘Somewhere in my upholstery,
probably.’
‘So who’s after you?’ It was pure curiosity, not outrage. He
regarded most of my wounds as self-inflicted. He was right.
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I shrugged. ‘I’ve been asking questions about a young bloke who
attacked Eddie Aboud the week before he got offed. Maybe it was
him.’
‘Cops know about him?’
‘Maybe.’
He cocked an eyebrow.
‘Client confidentiality,’ I said.
Luther ruminated for a while. ‘Carmel hire you?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Gotta watch those wives. Especially wives like Carmel.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Carmel’s dad made a lot of dough slinging up blocks of jerrybuilt flats like that dump you camp out in. Chucked a lot of
dough around, never had to worry too much about getting his plans
through council. He slugged it out with the builders’ labourers a
few times, too, and survived. I don’t reckon Eddie could have
done some of his deals without Carmel’s experience. And her
dough. She brought him
a big dowry, I heard.’
‘What’s this got to do with me being shot at?’
‘I’m just telling you to watch your back, Sydney. You’re a
sucker for a pretty face.’
I was too tired to defend myself. We sucked on our scotches in
moody silence while Luther waited for me to spit out the reason
for my visit. For once he cracked first. ‘What’s with the bag?
Don’t tell me you’ve taken up exercise.’
‘I’m not going back to the flat. I don’t intend to be around
when they figure out they missed.’
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‘So you’re looking for somewhere to stay.’
‘Yeah, somewhere nobody would think of looking for me. And I
need somewhere to stash the Valiant. It’s a dead giveaway.’
Luther sat on, impassive as a wombat. He was going to make me
beg. I complied. ‘I don’t suppose I could stay at your place?’
Anybody else would have smirked, but total victory was
sufficient for Luther. He rooted around in his desk drawer and
pulled out a set of keys. ‘Front door key, garage key. If you so
much as put a fingerprint on any of my vehicles, Sydney, I’ll
personally remove it.’ From my finger, he meant.
I started to babble my thanks, but he raised an imperious hand.
‘If you wake up the old girl next door, tell her you’re a friend
of mine. She gets the wind up about burglars.’
No point in trying to understand an enigma like Luther Huck:
whacking recidivists’ knees with baseball bats one minute and
playing boy scout to senior citizens the next. I grabbed the keys
and pissed off out of there before he changed his mind.
Luther owned a big terrace house in Paddington, a suburb
regarded in Sydney as the barometer of the property market. It
went up first and came down first. He’d bought his house from an
old lady who hadn’t touched the decor since 1954, and hadn’t
changed at thing. Except to extend the garage: Luther has his
priorities right. I eased the Valiant in beside his pistachio
green 63 Studebaker Hawk and his ‘42 Harley with sidecar. I
lingered longingly, but somehow restrained myself from getting on
the bike and going ‘vroom! vroom!’.
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Before I went to bed in his spare room, which smelt musty and
disused, I had a poke around. To my amazement, Luther had kitted
himself out for the 21st century with a room full of electronic
gadgetry, including the latest, most expensive computer. Who
would have thought. Perhaps he was considering a little banditry
on the information superhighway. I had no desire to pry; to
Luddites like me, the Internet is as mystifying as nuclear
physics.
I was so exhausted by my brush with death that I didn’t even
hear him come in, which was akin to sleeping through the annual
migration of the elephants through the Serengeti.
I slept late and woke wondering where the hell I was. As soon as
I was conscious I remembered that someone had tried to kill me
last night. Maybe this was what they meant by post-traumatic
stress. If it was, it had no effect on my appetite: I was
ravenous. On my way out to buy a newspaper and some milk and
bread, I ran into the woman next door and introduced myself. Mrs
Trussell, who had been sweeping the footpath, gave me a shrewd,
assessing look which made me suspect she had few illusions about
the boy next door. When people get old they either turn into
paranoid bigots or decide it’s all a bit of a joke; Mrs Trussell
had evidently decided to live and let live.
With some toast and coffee inside me, I rang Lizzie at the
newspaper and told her what had happened.
‘Did you call the cops?’ Luther hadn’t even bothered to ask.
‘Uh, no.’
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‘Why not?’
‘I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I’ve already had
one visit from Leggett and Bray about Eddie Aboud. And I wanted
to get out of sight.’
‘So where are you?’
‘Luther’s place.’
‘You’re going to get your big brother to bash them up if they
come after you?’
I was stung. ‘It’s the last place anyone would think to look.
Would you rather I came round and camped at your place?’
‘Bugger that. I don’t want people shooting at me because of
you.’
‘I thought not.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Look for that little shit with the tattoo. He’s got a tatt
shaped like a snake and he’s into martial arts. Maybe I can find
him through one of the kung-fu clubs. Who do you know who’s into
that sort of crap?’
Lizzie lit a cigarette and pondered. ‘I’m sure I saw a book
about martial arts reviewed somewhere in the last few months.
Hang on while I call it up.’
After a few minutes, she read out: ‘Gentle Warriors by Damien
Cole, Academic Press. It’s apparently a post-modern treatment of
the phenomenon. It says here Cole is a lecturer in cultural
studies at the University of Western Sydney.’
I groaned.
Lizzie sniggered. ‘Do you still want to talk to him?’
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‘What choice have I got?’
‘None.’ She put me on hold and then came back on the line. ‘I
told them I wanted to interview him. They were amazed. Here’s the
phone number. Got a pen?’
I wrote down Damien Cole’s number on the back of a supermarket
receipt. ‘Thanks, mate.’
‘You’re not in over your head on this one, are you, Syd?’
‘Probably,’ I said and rang off.
Definitely, I thought. A mad assassin on one side and Leggett
and Bray on the other, panting to get me down to the station and
take a pair of bricks to my balls. And the prospect of
interviewing an academic who called kickboxers gentle warriors.
Taking refuge in denial, I sat in the sun in Luther’s back yard
and read the paper. He emerged about noon, as sociable as a bear
awaking from several months’ hibernation, and lumbered around in
the kitchen. I wasn’t foolish enough to speak to him. In his blue
worker’s singlet and stubbies, he looked like a construction
worker. A fit one, I suddenly realised. When I’d first met
Luther, he was fat, though hard, but he’d obviously been sneaking
off to the gym. The lady bodybuilders would find him
irresistible. It occurred to me that I’d never seen him with a
woman under sixty, and that I knew absolutely nothing about his
emotional life. Or if he even had one.
When I’d scoured the paper and even read the personal finances
supplement—full of advice about investing disposable income the
share market: disposable income?—I reluctantly rang Damien Cole
and told him I was writing a book about tattoos and asked if I
94
could consult him. He sounded as surprised as his publishers, but
politely invited me round to his house in Leichhardt.
For a few mad moments I considered taking the Valiant, but the
world is full of snoops, and the Valiant attracts too much
attention. I also briefly considered public transport, then
decided life was too short. Instead I walked up to Oxford Street
and hailed a cab. I got an old Aussie driver, a member of a dying
breed who spoke English, knew where the Town Hall was and could
read a map. If I were a superstitious man I would have taken a
lottery ticket.
I asked the cabbie to detour to Glebe, to a bookstore catering
to the university crowd. They’d have Cole’s tome if anyone did.
Thirty dollars lighter, I got back in the cab and we set off up
Parramatta Road, which was as usual clogged with traffic and
stank of exhaust fumes. On the way I leafed through the book.
Billed a post-modern interpretation of the martial arts, it used
words like agency, empowerment and masculinism and quoted people
like Derrida and Kristeva. I wondered what the brick choppers and
grunt merchants in the martial arts studios in the western
suburbs, disciples of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, would make of
it. I wondered what I would make of it.
Leichhardt is the epicentre of old Italian culture in Sydney,
and its main drag, Norton Street, is chockablock full of
restaurants and coffee shops and galerias that sell holy
communion dresses and little girls’ party frocks that would send
an Oxford Street trannie into raptures. As we pulled into Norton
Street, a 747 buzzed us. It was so low I could see the KLM
95
insignia, a few metres lower and I could have seen the whites of
the pilots’ eyes.
‘Bloody government,’ said the cabbie. ‘You don’t see all these
bloody planes over the Prime Minister’s bloody electorate.’
I had to agree. Squeezed between competing interest groups the
government had procrastinated too long over choosing the site for
a second airport and had opened up a fourth runway at Mascot.
Since then a war had been waged to decide who was going to get
the extra aircraft noise. Already under one of the noisiest
flight paths, the residents of Leichhardt, which was home to
numerous lefties and campaign-hardened old 68-ers, had
jacked up
and fought an inspired guerilla war. One of their more inspired
tactics was to record aircraft noise and play it outside
politicians’ houses early on Sunday mornings.
They’d won. A compromise was reached, and conservative voters
in expensive suburbs were having to put up with aircraft noise
for the first time in their lives. Some were sufficiently
outraged to write to the paper and suggest that the inner-westies
should get more noise because they were used to it. Let them eat
aviation fuel.
Damien Cole lived in a little semi-detached bungalow in a
narrow side street. The first wave of Italian settlers wouldn’t
recognise parts of Leichhardt now that the incomers had jackhammered up all the concrete backyards, rooted out the Hills
hoists and planted trees. Most of them were now living farther
out in ostentatious modern palazzi squeezed onto small suburban
blocks.
96
Cole met me at the door. He was skinny and unhealthy looking,
with the regulation shaved head and black tee shirt and jeans and
Doc Martens. After giving me a slightly suspicious look—maybe I
wasn’t his idea of a book reviewer—he led me down a dark hallway
to an extension at the back of the house, all sun, pine and
glass. Somebody with a green thumb had laboured over the tiny
courtyard: it had flagstones, urns and even a fishpond. It looked
like a palace garden designed for leprechauns.
Cole quizzed me about my project. I stumbled through an
explanation which seemed to satisfy him, but when he started to
gossip about the publishing industry, headed him off before my
ignorance became too obvious. When I showed him Erin McGonigal’s
drawing of the tattoo she’d seen on
Adam Quinn, he stared at if
for a moment, then went into another room and returned with some
manila folders crammed with notes and photographs. He leafed
through them and pulled out a photo of a man wearing a kickboxing
outfit: the sleeve had fallen back to reveal the cobra tattoo.
‘He belongs to a group called The Cobras. They’ve got a school in
Chinatown.’
‘What do you know about them?’
‘Not much. They’re secretive, probably a bit bent. Martial
artists are supposed to use it for self-improvement, selfdefence. You know, like Grasshopper and the Master.’
I’d watched Kung Fu as a kid, too, but I’d hated all that dopey
Eastern mysticism. I’d preferred the sinister, black-clad, starknife hurling Iga Ninjas in The Samurai. As they say, the boy is
father to the man. ‘So they’re renegades?’
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‘Pretty much.’
‘Where do they hang out?’
‘In an upstairs room in Dixon Street.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’
‘No worries.’
He saw me out, pausing at the door. ‘I wouldn’t go charging in
there asking questions. They’re heavy bastards. They wouldn’t
talk to me. Everything I know, and it’s not much, came from
people who don’t like what they stand for. But most of it’s just
rumour.’
I got the message—they’d kick the shit out of me if I started
snooping around. I strolled back to Norton Street and picked up a
cab. The driver was Chinese, which for once was good news: he
knew how to find Chinatown. I got off in George Street and walked
down Goulburn to Dixon and had a meal in a food hall in the
basement of one of the high-rises built by Hong Kong money in the
late eighties and nineties. It was jammed to the gunwales with
chopstick-waving, shouting people, probably because the food was
about half the price of the regular restaurants.
Full of hot and sour soup, I wandered down to the address
Damien Cole had given me. It was one of the few old low-rises
that had escaped redevelopment, and looked as if its owner was
waiting for it to fall down to save the cost of demolition. On an
upstairs window was painted the legend KICKBOXING: no proprietor,
no phone number. Rather than trying my luck with the ancient
lift, I walked up the stairs, found the door and tried to open
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it. Locked. According to the hand-written timetable pinned on the
door,
the next class started at 6 pm. Three hours to kill.
Plenty of time to take in a movie. I was certainly in the right
part of town: the downtown cinema precinct was just around the
corner on George Street. On the weekends it was ugly, dirty and
often dangerous, a magnet for ferals who hung out in the pinball
parlours, mugged people and occasionally got into knife fights.
When the honest punters started staying away in droves, the
cinema chains saw the writing on the wall and redeveloped some of
the slummier cinemas.
I checked out the marquees—the choice seemed to be saccharine
Disney kiddieflicks, Pommy period pieces, or sex and violence for
retarded fourteen-year-olds. Succumbing to nostalgia I queued up
and watched Lord of the Rings, which I’d been inveigled into
reading by a hippie girlfriend in my misspent youth. I emerged
blinking into the real world. On the walk back to Dixon Street, I
found myself sorting passersby into hobbits, elves and orcs.
By six-fifteen, I’d parked myself on the stairs above the
kickboxing school to watch the students trickle in. There were
none of the usual 98-pound weaklings building themselves up to
get the girl, and there were no females. The students were toughlooking dudes with more than a passing acquaintance with
steroids, some with the aggressive-defensive aura of ex-cons.
Adam Quinn wasn’t among them.
I waited till the class started, then inched the door open and
peered in. The room was cavernous, with high ceilings and smeared
semi-circular windows along one side. It reeked of male sweat,
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dirty feet and aggression. One whiff would send most women
shrieking into the night. They must be right about martial arts
sharpening the senses, because the teacher, a middle-aged,
swarthy type with a thick gold chain around his bull neck,
spotted me immediately. He stiffened, and the class ground to a
halt. Twenty or so warriors turned to look at me. Their
expression was not welcoming.
‘Whaddya want?’ he boomed. Keith Carradine would be shocked by
such an unseemly display of intemperance.
‘I was thinking of learning karate,’ I said, all nerdy
enthusiasm.
The gentle warriors sniggered.
‘I’m sorry, we’re full up,’ said the bossman, colder than Mt
Fuji in winter. He didn’t sound sorry.
I beat a retreat. There were enough cobra tattoos in the room
to convince me I’d come to the right place. Pushing my way
through the early diners and tourists, I realised I’d seen the
kickboxing teacher somewhere before. But where?
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8
I picked up some takeaway in Chinatown and cabbed it home to
Luther’s. When Lizzie checked in by phone around eight, I told
her I’d tracked down Eddie Aboud’s attacker to the Cobras.
‘But he wasn’t there?’
‘No. I suppose he’s lying low if he bumped Eddie off.’
‘But didn’t his girlfriend say he’d taken off to the Gold
Coast?’
I knew what was coming next. ‘Let the cops find him,’ I said.
‘But if they think Carmel did it, they’re probably not even
looking for him. And if they find out you were working for
Carmel, they might think you helped her.’
‘I hate Surfer’s Paradise, and I hate casinos. And I don’t
have any money.’
‘Get Carmel to pay for it. She’s the one who dropped you in
this shit. And surely it’s to her benefit to find him if he’s
guilty.’
I told her I’d think about it.
My tone warned Lizzie to lay off. She changed the subject.
‘How are you getting on with Luther?’ Like almost everyone I
know, she’s fascinated by him.
‘Who knows. He tolerates me, like a rhino tolerates those
birds that eat its ticks.’
‘You mean rhinoceros birds,’ said Lizzie. ‘Can I visit?’
101
Ever since I’d first breached Luther’s defences, Lizzie had
been dying to get a look at his house. ‘Absolutely not. What if
the cops are watching you?’
She snorted. ‘You’ve been watching too much TV. You just don’t
want to let the girls into your cubby house.’
Lizzie had elaborate theories about boys and cubby houses, men
and clubs and husbands and garden sheds, but I wasn’t in any mood
to listen to them tonight. If I had
to fly to the Gold Coast to
look for Adam Quinn what I needed was a quiet night.
When I hung tough, Lizzie said, ‘So you haven’t got time to
hear what Steve McAllister told me?’
McAllister was her newspaper’s property writer. He compiled a
weekly gossip column—who was buying what, with whom and for how
much. It was a code for who was bankrupt, who’d defaulted on
their mortgage, who had left spouses and was in the market for a
love nest. Understandably, it had attracted the odd law suit. It
was also essential reading in the Tax Office.
‘Steve reckons Eddie was negotiating with Skipper Martindale
to buy that parcel of land at Darling Point he conned out of the
Sisters of Charity back in 1987.’
‘Before the property boom.’
‘Yeah, so the profit will be enormous.’
This tallied with what I’d observed when I’d been tailing
Eddie. He and Martindale had had two tête-à-têtes that I knew
about. The Skipper, who’d got his nickname from an expensive and
unsuccessful bid for the America’s Cup in the eighties, was a
very slippery customer. He’d owned heritage buildings which had
102
spontaneously combusted, allowing him to demolish and redevelop,
and he had a way of getting permission to build where other less
well-connected and more scrupulous businessmen failed.
‘So what?’
‘If it’s true, it’s the biggest deal of Eddie’s life, and
Steve thinks he’d have to hock everything he owns, including his
wife and kids, to raise the money.’
‘And now the deal’s off. So who benefits?’
‘Maybe somebody else wanted in,’ suggested Lizzie.
It didn’t make much sense to me. ‘And maybe it’s got
absolutely nothing to do with the murder.’
‘Did Carmel mention it?’
‘Carmel’s story is that Eddie kept her out of his business
deals.’
‘Do you believe that?’
‘Who knows? Luther told me Carmel was brought up in the
building trade, but on the other hand, Eddie was an old
fashioned-patriarch. He had very strong ideas about what women
could and couldn’t do.’
‘Maybe you and Carmel should have a little talk,’ said Lizzie
and hung up.
I rang Carmel and got an answering machine and asked her to
call me. Half an hour later she checked in from a phone box.
She was on the attack. ‘Where are you? I’ve been trying your
office and all I get is a message saying you’re not there. I
would have thought that was blindingly obvious.’
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As I was hoping Carmel would stake me to a flight to Surfers,
I didn’t snipe back. ‘I’m staying with a friend. Someone took a
shot at me outside my flat.’
‘What! Who?’
‘I thought it might be that little shit who hit Eddie.’
‘But isn’t he in Surfers Paradise?’
‘Maybe he’s back. Who the hell else would be after me?’
‘But it doesn’t have to be connected to this case, does it?’
she said. ‘You must make plenty of enemies in your line of work.’
‘I’ve thought of that, but I’d like to be sure. Maybe I should
go to Queensland and look for him.’
‘But if he’s there, the police will find him, surely?’
‘So you told them about him.’
‘Yes, of course. I told you I would.’
‘How did they react?’
‘They didn’t seem all that interested.’
‘All the more reason we should do it for them.’
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Pay for the ticket and I’ll reimburse you.’
Now that Carmel had calmed down a little, I thought I’d try
out the Skipper Martindale conspiracy out on her. ‘By the way
Carmel. There’s a rumour around that Eddie was about to close a
deal with Skipper Martindale on the Darling Point Sisters of
Charity site. Did you know about that?’
‘Who makes this stuff up?’ she snapped. ‘Eddie would never get
into bed with that crook.’
‘Maybe he didn’t tell you because he knew you’d disapprove.’
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‘If there’s any truth in it, it was only in the talking
stages,’ she insisted. ‘He would have had to tell me eventually.’
‘But you said he kept you out of the business.’
‘He might have had some prehistoric ideas about women, but he
wouldn’t have risked everything we’ve got without consulting me.’
Her voice broke: ‘Eddie was a good husband and a loving father.
And a very good provider. The company’s books are in perfect
order. The kids and I will never have worry about money.’
Great. Now I felt like a complete heel. While I was telling
her I’d check in again when I got back from Surfers Paradise, I
could hear muffled sobs even through the noise of background
traffic.
As soon as I got off the plane at Coolangatta the next day, I
knew I was in Queensland. Everyone walked and talked slower and
showed vast expanses of bare flesh. I even saw two men in brown
shoes, long white socks and shorts. The air in the parking lot,
where I picked up my rental car, was hot, humid and laden with
hydrocarbons from the busy highway nearby.
Leaving the airport, I fought the urge to turn right and drive
south to Coolangatta and sit in a beer garden and watch the surf
and inhale some ozone. Instead I turned north. The highway was
thick with traffic, the asphalt shimmering with heat. I drove
through Currumbin, Palm Beach and Broadbeach, past sixties
motels, fibro cottages, brick bungalows flanked by palm trees,
and rows of new tower blocks. The highway cut through Surfers
Paradise, which has turned into a tawdry tourist trap for the
105
Japanese, with cut-price opal shops, shoddy souvenir outlets full
of koala key rings and a McDonald’s with a front row view of one
of the country’s most expensive beaches.
Brisbanites talk nostalgically of the old Gold Coast, with its
fibro beach shacks and easygoing lifestyle, its fish and chip
shops and hamburger joints. Until a mayor who’d made his pile
selling bicycles decided it needed developing, it was a private
watering hole for the Brisbane bourgeoisie. The mayor brought in
meter maids who wore what were regarded in those innocent days as
skimpy bikinis and fed the parking meters for the tourists and
offered incentives to developers to throw up high-rises. Since
then the Gold Coast has roller coasted through a boom and bust
cycle. Paradise lost.
Occasionally someone spots a shark in one of the canals that
were gouged into the sandy soil to attract retirees from the
Melbourne and Sydney. It’s a metaphor for the place.
I’d expected to see huge billboards advertising the casino,
but all I saw was a regulation green highway sign just past
Broadbeach. And a
skywriting plane advertising cut-price drinks
at Jupiter’s. The casino was pretty much what you’d expect—
several bars, rows of poker machines manned by dead-eyed, fagsmoking automatons, a water wall, garish decor designed by the
one-eyed for the blind. In the daylight, everything looked tired
and jaded. Bemused-looking tourists, most of them in shorts or
jeans, paraded past looking for some action. If fun resided here,
it was decidedly low octane.
106
I sat down at one of the bars and asked for a cut-price drink.
Nobody knew anything about it. Perhaps they meant the happy hour,
suggested the barman. I gave up and ordered a beer and sat
watching the action, such as it was. The women who hung out at
the Casino were almost all blonde, tanned within an inch of their
lives and wore their clothes skin-tight. A fortyish blonde in
white jeans, a tight pink tee shirt showing off an expanse of
leathery bosom flopped onto a seat near me, ordered a mango
daiquiri and started chiacking the bartender. A group of noisy,
paunchy, suburban Rotarians at the other end of the bar checked
her out closely.
When he brought me a beer, I asked the barman it he knew a
Paul Watson or a Adam Quinn. He looked vacant, so I described
Quinn.
‘What’s he do?’
‘In Sydney he worked as a bouncer.’
‘Maybe you should talk to the security manager,’ he suggested
and moved off to serve the Rotarians, who were showing off for
the leathery blonde. Ignoring them, she leaned towards me. ‘Who
was it you’re looking for? I know most of the staff here.’ She
gave a tobacco-scarred laugh: ‘I’m practically a fixture here,
thanks to the generosity of my poor, dead husband. Ask Alan.’
Alan, the bartender, gave her the polite smile of a man who
was rapidly tiring of fending off bored divorcees.
I described Tony. She slurped up some daiquiri and gave me a
sharp look. ‘What’s he done? The name’s Fern, by the way.’
107
‘Syd.’ She shook my hand, mashing my knuckles with a
divorcee’s ransom of diamond rings. ‘Nothing that I know of,
Fern. He’s a Pom. His father’s sick in England and his parents
want him to come home. They’ve lost contact with him.’
I don’t think she believed me, but I was under fifty and male,
and she liked a flirt and a gossip. ‘I had a couple of drinks
with him one night, now you mention it. He was a very troubled
lad, that one.’
‘What do you mean, troubled?’
But I’d sounded too interested. Fern retreated. ‘Oh, you
know. Didn’t know if he wanted to stay in Australia or not.
Missing home.’ She gave me a shrewd look. ‘Probably just upset
because he couldn’t get a Watney’s Ale. You know what the Poms
are like.’
Just then a shaven-headed hulk in a security uniform loped
past. ‘Steve!’ she shrilled. ‘Get yourself over here for a sec!’
Steve paused, processed the order, turned, and came over.
‘Yeah, Fern?’
His small eyes flicked over me, decided I wasn’t a threat or
any competition, and settled on Fern’s breasts like a pair of
flies on a fudge sundae.
‘Is Adam Quinn around? Syd here is trying to find him. His
father’s sick.’
Steve didn’t have enough brains to find my story suspect. He
ruminated. ‘Haven’t seen him for a coupla days. He was supposed
to work last night, but he didn’t turn up. Ron called him but
there wasn’t no answer. Said he’d sack him if he come back.’
108
‘Where does he live, do you know?’ I asked.
‘In that shitheap motel on the corner of Porpoise Avenue and
the highway down at Burleigh Heads. I put him onto it. Me uncle
manages the place.’
‘Thanks, mate,’ I said.
‘No worries,’ said Steve and lumbered off.
I called Alan and paid for my beer. ‘You’re not leaving, are
you?’ asked Fern. It didn’t break her heart, though: she was
already eyeing off the Rotarians.
The sunlight was so bright when I emerged from the gloomy
casino car park that it singed my retinas. It was too nice a day
to waste entirely on the likes of Adam Quinn, so I
drove to the
Spit at Southport and bought myself some fish and chips and sat
watching codgers fish and pelicans swoop and kids splash and
swim. An hour later I dragged myself back to duty, but by the
time I’d fought my way through the holiday traffic to Burleigh
Heads my mellow mood had curdled and I missed the Sundowner Flats
on my first pass through.
The Sundowner was a fifties fibro eyesore with a walkway along
the front and parking underneath. It had seen better days. The
manager’s tiny office on the ground floor turned out to be empty.
A transistor radio spewed bigoted talkback unheeded. I found
Steve’s uncle round the back watering a row of gaudy hibiscus
bushes. A big muscly bloke gone to fat, with the flat nose and
scarred eyebrows of an old pug, he was clad in a dingy singlet
and a pair of baggy khaki shorts hanging down around the crack in
his bum.
109
‘Yeah,’ he asked around a rollie, giving me a cursory glance
to see if I was selling anything. He was well past curiosity.
‘Looking for a bloke called Adam Quinn,’ I said. ‘Your nephew
Steve reckons he lives here.’
‘What’s it worth?’ he said, and turned the hose on a
frangipani tree, shaking loose a gust of heady fragrance.
‘Twenty bucks?’
He took the rollie out of his mouth, hawked and spat onto the
grass.
‘Thirty?’
He put out a dirty, nicotine-stained hand and I gave him most
of the money in my wallet.
‘Unit 12,’ he said, nodding his head in the direction of the
stairs.
Cursing myself for not taking a free look at his registration
book in the office when I’d had the chance, I laboured up three
flights of stairs, the relentless Queensland sun frying my
brains. The motel was aptly named: the sun was definitely going
down here. The third floor was deserted. Flat 12, which was at
the end of the building, away from the highway, had a dead,
abandoned look, its windows shut and the faded 1970s orange and
brown op art curtains pulled.
I banged on the door to no avail. After taking a quick squiz
around and finding myself unobserved, I leaned hard on the
flimsy, rain-damaged door. The cheap lock gave way and the door
burst open with a splintering sound. A wave of corruption rolled
out of the flat. Covering my mouth and nose with a hankie, I went
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in. Reluctantly. The room was dense with well-fed flies. The
stink of charred flesh and corruption made me gag, but I managed
to control myself. Not a good idea to leave evidence.
The body of Adam Quinn was lying on a grubby, scorched double
bed. On the bedside table stood a half-full bottle of scotch and
an ashtray spilling butts. It looked as if he’d fallen asleep
while smoking and burned to death. It was a miracle the whole
building hadn’t burned down.
Or was it? He might have died in the fire, but he could just
as easily been killed and burned afterwards. That would be up to
the forensic scientists to work out. But why would anyone want to
burn the body? The tattoo, of course. I peered at his arms: no
sign of a tattoo on the blistered, charred remains.
Resisting the urge to bolt, I checked out the flat. In the top
drawer of the bedside table I found his wallet; in it were with
couple of hundred dollars, a dry-cleaning receipt and a photo of
a girl who might have been his girlfriend. There was nothing in
it to identify the dead man, and if he’d had an address book, it
was gone. The wardrobe contained some spivvy looking clothes too
heavy for the climate, shoes, a few tee shirts and a suitcase.
And the famous baseball cap. Quinn had been travelling light.
I hit pay dirt in the pocket of a pair of black work trousers—
a casino match book with a phone number scrawled on the back. I
pocketed it.
Feeling nauseous, I backed out of the flat, hawked and spat
several times over the balcony, then went in search of the
manager.
111
‘He’s dead,’ I said. ‘Looks as if he burnt to death.’
The fat man got such a shock he dropped the hose, which
sprayed us with mercifully cold, clean water, and almost
swallowed his fag. He set off at a lumbering trot for the stairs.
If he wasn’t careful, the police would find two bodies. I
followed him up the stairs and waited outside the room.
He emerged looking green around the gills, and angry, as if
I’d snuck the body into the motel behind his back. If he was
sorry for anyone, it was for himself. I didn’t like his chances
of renting Unit 12 in the foreseeable future.
‘Who the fuck are you and whaddya really want?’ he demanded.
‘He might have been involved in a murder in Sydney. What do
you know about him?’
‘Bugger all. Kept to himself. Went to work, came home.’
‘Did he have any visitors?’
‘Picked up some tart at the casino one night and brought her
home.’
‘Any men?’ He thought about it. ‘Anyone asking for him a
couple of days ago, before he died?’
‘I didn’t see anyone go in, but there was a bloke parked in
the street out there for a couple of hours on Tuesday night.
Late. I seen him when I went to put the garbage out. I went to
the fence to get a better look at him and he drove away. He might
have come back after I went inside.’
‘What time was it?’
‘About 10 o’clock.’
‘What time did Adam Quinn usually get home from work?’
112
‘About midnight.’
‘What did this bloke look like?’
‘Didn’t take much notice. Dark, big built, about forty. Dark
clothes, wearin’ sunnies.’ He gave a derisive snort. ‘Didn’t want
to be reckernised, I’d say.’
‘What about the car?’
‘Japanese job. White. Common as muck. Looked like a rental.’
‘You live in that bottom flat?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So you wouldn’t have seen anyone go up the stairs?’
Nah. I woulda been watchin’ tele. Anyway, I don’t get paid to
perve on the guests.’
Discretion being the better part of valour, I decided to let
him notify the cops. By the time they got there, I’d be long
gone.
On the way to the airport I stopped in at a recycled clothes
shop and bought myself a pair of cotton slacks and a polo shirt.
In the airport washroom, I stripped off, washed with detergent
from a dispenser and changed. Remembering at the last minute to
retrieve the matchbook from my pants pocket, I stowed my reeking
clothes into a plastic bag and chucked it in the rubbish bin.
I had scrubbed the worst of Adam Quinn off my skin, but
despite the two beers I drank while I waited for my flight, I
couldn’t get the taste of his death out of my mouth. Before I
boarded, I called the number on the match book, and listened to
it ring out in an empty room somewhere. Well, I’d tried.
113
On the flight home I had recovered sufficiently to scarf the
Lilliputian ham roll and Anzac biscuit supplied by the airline
while I stewed about the case. It looked to me as if someone had
set him alight to get rid of the tattoo. Which meant the answer
to some of my questions lay in that kickboxing school in
Chinatown.
Luther had gone to work by the time I got home, leaving a note
and some passable home-made lasagne in the oven. He never ceased
to amaze me. I ate it in front of the box. The lead news item was
about the reappearance of the axe murderer, who’d struck down at
the Rocks. Unfortunately for him, familiarity had bred contempt,
and his victim got away after sustaining a blow on the arm.
I should have called Carmel and told her Adam Quinn was dead,
and I probably should have talked to Lizzie so she could tie the
death in Queensland to Eddie Aboud’s murder and get herself a
page three, but I didn’t. It’s not every day I come up against a
char-grilled corpse, and I needed a bit of quiet time.
I wasn’t going to get it, though.
114
9
I was dreaming that I was tied up and that someone was about to
set me on fire when my mobile shrilled and woke me up. The bed
clothes were tangled around my legs and I was sweating like a
hog. I finally found the phone under the bedside table and
answered it.
It was Jane Garrett, almost incoherent. While she babbled and
cried, I looked at my watch: 3 am.
Fully awake now, I said, ‘Stop! Stop!’
Shocked, she shut up.
‘What’s wrong?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Jasper hit me. He’s outside banging
on the door. I’m frightened.’
‘Call the police,’ I said. The eternal optimist.
‘No! Please, I couldn’t bear that.’
I stalled. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Make him go away!’ she shrieked, and held out the phone so I
could hear the crazed banging on the door all the way from
Paddington.
‘OK, OK. Can you lock yourself in the bathroom or something?’
At that point she screamed and dropped the phone.
115
I practically broke my neck trying to get into my jeans and
out of there. In the hallway I ran into Luther. ‘You’d wake the
bloody dead,’ he groused. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
‘I’m going to save a damsel in distress,’ I said, racing out
the back towards the garage. To my surprise, he followed me, and
motioned me towards the red ‘57 Thunderbird he’d bought with the
insurance money from the fiery death of the Trans Am. It was
certainly faster than the Valiant and built like a tank. It also
made me feel like Troy Donohoe. All I needed was a ducks arse
haircut and Annette Funicello in the passenger seat.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ I said, as we sped towards
Bellevue Hill, the expensive, dull harbourside suburb where Jane
and Jasper Garrett lived.
He stared straight ahead. ‘It might be fun.’
I filled him in on the details. ‘I’ve seen that pompous prick
on that money show on TV,’ he commented. If I’m any judge of the
almost imperceptible changes in his Easter Island demeanour, he
seemed gratified at the prospect of battering a yuppie.
We roared through the night in perfect communion, adrenalin
pumping. Screaming to a halt in front of the Garrett family home—
an architecturally mediocre mini-mansion worth, to my newly
sensitised eyes, about one mil five—we almost skittled Jasper’s
Saab, which had been abandoned half way up the grass verge. The
neighbours would not be pleased. Of the man himself there was no
sign. Motioning Luther to the right side of the house, I took the
left. Stealthily we crept forward.
116
A bellow of pain rent the placid suburban night. I broke into
a run and almost crashed into Jasper Garrett, on his knees, his
hands pressed against his face. He was moaning, evidently the
victim of the famous Luther Huck head-butt. Luther had a skull
like a warthog, and was not afraid to use it. Without wasting a
word, Luther picked Jasper up by his collar and frog marched him
to the front door. I knocked and called out to Jane. The door
opened a crack and she peered out, her eyes huge in her ashen
face.
‘Your husband has come to apologise,’ I said.
Jasper, who was a nasty putty colour and seemed disoriented,
promptly threw up on the front step.
‘Oh, God,’ moaned Jane, leaping backwards.
‘Do it,’ said Luther amicably, lifting Jasper a foot off the
ground by his collar.
‘I’m sorry!’
I said, ‘I don’t think he meant it, Luther.’
Luther applied sufficient pressure on the back of Jasper’s
neck to force him to his knees in the pool of vomit. That did it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, more quietly this time.
At the end of her tether, Jane shot me a pleading look.
‘Enough,’ I said.
Luther turned Jasper Garrett around, marched him to his car,
opened the door with one hand and threw him inside. ‘Faggot car,’
he commented, slamming the door.
Keeping one eye on Luther, Garrett fumbled with the keys, but
finally got the car started and took off with a scream of tyres.
117
Several lights went on in nearby windows. Agitated fingers would
be busily dialling 000.
‘The bastard’s woken the whole neighbourhood,’ I said. ‘Can we
come in?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jane, reverting to suburban hostess mode.
‘Please.’
We followed her into the sort of tasteful but anonymous living
room beloved of interior design magazines, all big, soft cream
couches, little polished wood tables and a pale Chinese rug. A
few expensive and rather ugly abstract paintings adorned the
wall. It looked as if the colours had been chosen to go with the
cat.
By this time Jane had had calmed down and poured us all
generous slugs of brandy out of a crystal decanter. If I had to
die of lead poisoning, this would have to be the method of
choice.
‘What was that all about?’ I asked Jane. Out of the corner of
my eye I could see Luther staring around like an anthropologist
trying to get a feel for an alien tribe from its habitat.
She paused and took a sip of her drink. ‘He accused me of
spying on him.’
‘And were you?’
She was affronted, probably because I was right. ‘I just
happened to be sitting outside his flat in my car, and he came
rushing out, shouting at me. I drove off and he followed me and
grabbed me while I was trying to unlock the door. He socked me.’
Still shocked and unnerved by the blow, she began to cry quietly.
118
It was probably the first time in her life anyone had hit her. It
would take longer to recover from the shock and the insult than
the injury. ‘I was just trying to find out if Sweet Leilani was
all right.’
Yeah, sure. ‘Are you sure you weren’t trying to break in?’ I
asked.
She flushed. ‘No, I told you...’
I held up a hand. ‘Maybe you should call the police and report
the assault, then.’
‘No! They’d leak it to the papers. I don’t want everybody
knowing I’m a battered wife! It’s too humiliating.’
I looked to Luther for support, but he was too busy ogling
Jane to notice. I could understand why: in skin tight black
pants, bare feet and a figure-hugging black tee shirt, she looked
like Audrey Hepburn playing a jewel thief. Perhaps Luther fancied
himself as Cary Grant.
‘I thought you’d agreed to get another cat....’ I began.
‘I don’t want another cat! I want that cat! It’s my bloody
cat! I bought her with my own money! I’m not letting that bastard
get away with stealing her!’
The lady had a temper: ten to one Jasper had caught her trying
to steal the cat back. ‘You’re overwrought,’ I said. ‘Your
husband is not going to put up with being stalked for long...’
‘Stalked! I’m not a stalker! I’m just trying to get my
property back!’
‘The police might regard it as harassment,’ I said. ‘He could
take out a restraining order against you.’
119
Suddenly all her defiance dropped away and she put her head in
her hands and sobbed. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘Life’s not fair. He’s got more money than you and more clout.
And he’s got the cat. Give it up. Get on with your life.’
Pulling herself together with an effort, she wiped her face
with the end of her tee shirt, showing an expanse of very white
midriff. She looked dreadful, as if she’d been buried in a box
for three days and dug up. Though she was as stubborn and wilful
as the mistake she’d married, you had to admire her spunk. ‘Do
you need a doctor?’ I asked.
‘Probably. I’ve got enough problems without having my nose
spread all over my face.’
A voice broke in. ‘I’ll drive you to St Vincent’s.’ It was
Luther. He’d been so still, I’d almost forgotten he was there.
For the first time, Jane looked at him closely. He stared
back, solid, impassive, a smear of blood on his forehead from her
husband’s pulped proboscis.
‘This is Luther Huck,’ I said, somewhat belatedly. ‘An old
friend.’
Luther eyeballed me. ‘It was Luther who flattened your
husband,’ I admitted.
‘Really,’ said Jane, who hadn’t taken her eyes off her
saviour. ‘Thank you, Mr Huck. I’d like that.’
After the day I’d had, I was only too pleased to get rid of
her. We piled into Luther’s car. Nobody spoke. Jane was in shock;
I was exhausted, and silence was normal for Luther. After
dropping me off at the Paddington house, they continued on to the
120
hospital. I had the feeling I hadn’t seen the last of Jane
Garrett and that she would not rest till she wrested that bloody
animal from Jasper. What would these two be like if a child were
involved?
I had no illusions that it was love that motivated
her: this was all about revenge. She was angry and humiliated at
allowing herself to be tricked out of the disk and the cat, and
would not rest till Sweet Leilani was back home. Or dead. Well,
she’d have to do it without me.
I was woken again by my mobile phone. I’d been too whacked to
remember to turn it off. My watch told me it was 8.30 am. It was
Sergeant Bray on the line, spoiling for a fight.
‘Where the fuck are you hiding out, Fish?’ he greeted me.
‘What do you mean hiding?’ I said, buying time. I clambered
stiffly out of bed, chucked on the short, frayed robe I wore in
company, and padded down to the kitchen to make myself a heart
starter.
‘You’re not at your flat and you haven’t been to your office
for two days,’ said Bray.
‘What exactly is it you want?’ I asked, filling the jug and
turning it on.
‘I want to talk to you about Eddie Aboud’s movements in the
weeks leading up to his death. Mrs Aboud had admitted she hired
you to watch him.’
‘So talk,’ I said, measuring Kenya Mocha-espresso mix into the
cafetiere. In some respects, Luther Huck was a highly civilised
man.
121
‘At headquarters, I meant,’ said Bray, his voice rising.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Why not?’
‘I have reason to believe my life is in danger,’ I said.
He laughed in disbelief. It sounded genuine; apparently it
wasn’t Bray who’d been shooting at me with his service revolver.
‘You’re having yourself on. Why would anybody want to bump off a
nonentity like you?’
‘That’s what I’m endeavouring to find out,’ I said pompously,
pouring boiling water into the coffee pot. ‘I’m afraid I don’t
have the time to come down to the station to help you with your
inquiries, Sarge.’
Bray had had enough of my insolence. ‘I’ll have you for
obstructing justice!’
I clicked my tongue. ‘Temper, temper. Ask Carmel Aboud. She’s
got my reports.’
I hung up. Carmel must have handed over my surveillance
records by now; Bray could only be hounding me because he badly
needed a suspect. With the investigation going nowhere and the
media baying for blood, he wanted to be able to tell them I was
helping the police with their inquiries. Dream on.
A movement at the door interrupted my thoughts. I looked up
from pouring myself a coffee to find Jane Garrett standing in the
doorway wearing a tee shirt big enough for... for Luther Huck. My
jaw must have dropped.
‘I smelled the coffee,’ she explained, totally unfazed. For a
woman with two black eyes, a plaster on her nose and about four
122
hours sleep, she looked remarkably chipper. I pointed to the pot,
and she came and found herself a cup and poured it. It wasn’t
rudeness on my part—I was poleaxed. I was also a little jealous.
Jane Garrett and Luther Huck!
Jane foraged in the fridge, found bread, butter and marmalade
and put on some toast. Then she pointed at my phone and raised
her eyebrows. I handed it over and she called in sick at her job.
Then she loaded two coffees and the food onto a tray and
disappeared up the stairs. I felt like rubbing my eyes. Any
minute now I’d wake up and discover I’d dreamt the whole thing.
I couldn’t have dreamt Bray’s phone call, though. If a real
suspect didn’t rear his ugly head soon, it looked as if I’d end
up being the compromise candidate. As I hadn’t done it, they had
Buckley’s hope of proving anything, but that didn’t mean they
couldn’t blacken my name from one end of the state to the other.
I had no intention of becoming known as the bloke who got away
with snuffing Eddie Aboud.
Carmel answered her phone on the first ring, as if she’d been
hovering over it. I told her what I’d found in the Sundowner
Motel.
‘Burned!’ she said. ‘Why would anyone do that?’
‘To make it look like an accident, to burn the cobra tattoo
off his wrist.’
‘Tattoos! Snakes! What on earth are you talking about?’
‘It’s what I used to identify him, Carmel. The tattoo led me
to a kickboxing school in Chinatown. The students all wear it.
They’re apparently martial artists gone bad.’
123
‘Have you told the police?’
‘No. They already think I killed your old man. I don’t want to
be dragged into Adam Quinn’s death as well. I’m not being paid to
do their job for them.’ I wasn’t being paid for doing anything,
in fact. I had no idea where I was going to find next month’s
rent.
‘So you think these kickboxers are involved?’ said Carmel.
‘Maybe. He could have been working on his own, though.
Somebody could have got onto him through the Coogee Bay Hotel.’
As I was about to ring off, Carmel asked me where I was.
‘Why?’
‘I came by
your office yesterday, and you weren’t there. Then
I rang your home number and got your message. What’s going on?
‘I decided it was politic to relocate for a short time.’ Her
curiosity hummed across the wire, but I didn’t enlighten her. If
she’d killed Eddie, as Leggett and Bray seemed to think, she
might have been behind the attack on me. I didn’t actually
believe that, but I didn’t entirely rule it out. You can’t be too
careful.
124
10
Feeling like a gooseberry in the Huck household, I walked up to
the shops on Oxford Street and bought myself a copy of the
Courier Mail, the Brisbane daily. After wading through pages of
the Queensland government’s latest atrocities, I found a
paragraph about the discovery of Adam Quinn’s body in a column of
late breaking news. The police were treating the death as
suspicious.
Police corruption was all over the Herald, as usual. If the
police ever cleaned up their act, the newspapers would go to the
wall. While I was sitting in a coffee shop reading the paper and
avoiding my real life, my mobile rang. It was Lizzie. To escape
the eavesdroppers and gossips, I went across the road and sat on
a bench and rang her back.
‘They’ve found Adam Quinn’s body...’ she said.
‘I know. It was me who found it.’
In the ensuing silence I distinctly heard the reproach, And
you didn’t tell me?!
Somehow she managed to resist and asked,
‘How long dead?’
‘Too long in that climate.’
‘Who did it?’
‘Someone from that kickboxing school, probably. But I’ve got
absolutely no idea why.’
125
‘How about, he killed Eddie Aboud and someone was afraid he
was going to talk and bumped him off?’
‘Yeah, but who? We still don’t know why anyone wanted Eddie
dead.’
‘It’s got to have something to do with real estate,’ said
Lizzie. ‘Speaking of which, you haven’t forgotten the auction,
have you?’
‘I’m in hiding.’
‘Really. Where are you now?’
There was no point lying: she must be able to hear the noise
of people and traffic in the background. ‘In Oxford Street.’
‘Ah,’ said Lizzie. ‘Hiding in plain sight. Very clever. That
means you’ll be quite happy to come to the auction with me on
Tuesday night at the Rex Hotel in Macleay Street.’
I hesitated, trying to think of a way out.
‘You think the guys who tried to kill you might be at the
auction?’ she sneered, bringing me to the ground bleeding and
defenceless.
‘What time?’
By the time I got back to Luther’s, Jane had gone. Luther was
ambling about looking enigmatic, waiting for me to pry so he
could tell me to mind my own business. I desisted. Over lunch I
told him what had happened in Queensland.
‘I’ll have to find out more about this bastard who runs the
Cobras,’ I said. ‘He fits the description of the guy who had Adam
Quinn staked out.’
126
‘It’s your funeral,’ said Luther.
‘Fuck them. I can’t stay in hiding forever.’
‘Better take the Harley,’ said Luther and threw me the keys.
I was shocked into silence; Luther offering a vehicle was the
equivalent of a normal human being donating a kidney.
I borrowed a helmet and wove my way through the peak hour
traffic—which now goes on for about twelve hours a day in Sydney—
to Chinatown, where I parked up an alleyway with a view of the
doorway to the kickboxing school. I was tempted to duck into a
shop and score some crispy skin chicken, but if anyone stole the
Harley while I was in charge, I’d be forced to leave the country
and become a fugitive. My current predicament was a minor
distraction compared with having Luther Huck on my case.
At 7.30 the Cobras poured down the stairs and into the street,
giving little grunts that passed for conversation among the
vocally challenged and making playful kicking motions with steeltipped boots. The teacher followed ten minutes later and
sauntered off in the direction of the public car
park. I
followed. Surveillance was certainly easier on a motor bike, and
I was completely anonymous in a helmet: perhaps I’d have to
invest in one.
The quarry emerged from the car park in a black BMW that was
far too expensive for a kickboxing instructor—unless he was
Stephen Seagal’s personal trainer—and set off towards the Eastern
Suburbs. In Bondi Junction, his car disappeared into the
underground parking lot of one of the new overpriced apartment
blocks that are springing up around the railway station to cater
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to cashed up empty-nesters who are deserting the dull, leafy
northern suburbs for the livelier, downtown neighbourhoods.
I parked outside and waited. At night Bondi Junction is a dead
hole, killed off by the mall that splits the town centre in two
and is so windy that McDonald Douglas could test propellers
there. Perhaps some of the planned redevelopment will breathe
life back into the corpse. So there wasn’t much to look at while
I waited to see what Bruce Lee was going to do with his Friday
night. In a word: nothing. At midnight I called it quits and went
home.
The next morning I rang Damien Cole and asked him if he knew
anything about the kickboxing teacher. He didn’t but said he had
contacts who might be able to put a name to the description I
gave him. He promised to let me know.
Later in the day, as I was returning to Luther’s from an
espresso run, I saw the Thunderbird wheel out of the laneway and
proceed in an easterly direction, as the police would say. In the
direction of Bellevue Hill. With the house to myself, I made it
an early night.
According to my bedside clock it was 11.08 pm. when my mobile
woke me. It was Luther, calling me from Rydge’s. ‘Jane’s having
some trouble, and I can’t get away from here. Could you go over
and see what’s going on?’
‘What sort of trouble?’
‘Someone chucked a dead cat into her front yard.’
‘Sweet Leilani?’
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‘What?’
‘That’s the name of her cat,’ I said, enunciating clearly.
‘How the fuck would I know?’ he said. ‘Just do it, would you?’
I took the Valiant. It was unlikely that the people who wanted
me dead would be hanging out in Bellevue Hill at night. Jane
answered the door on the first ring, looking slightly deranged.
Her bruises had turned a peculiar shade of purply yellow; she was
chalky pale, and her eyes and were bright with fear and anger.
‘He’s killed the cat,’ she said, opening the door to let me
in. Sweet Leilani was laid out stiffly on newspaper on the
kitchen floor, dead as the proverbial doornail. Jane stook over
the corpse, wringing her hands. ‘He’s poisoned her.’
‘She looks pretty peaceful,’ I said in a ham-fisted attempt at
consolation. I needn’t have bothered; she wasn’t listening.
‘He probably slipped her a few of my sleeping pills,’ she
said. ‘It doesn’t take much to kill something as small and
helpless as a cat.’
She began to shake. I went into the living room and poured her
a brandy. ‘Drink this, you’re in shock.’
She gulped it down, spluttering. ‘He’s not going to get away
with it.’
‘Go to the cops,’ I suggested.
‘They’ll laugh at me. And I can’t prove he did it.’
‘You could be next.’
‘Why would he kill me?’
Why, indeed? ‘What’s this really about?’ I demanded. ‘Level
with me, just for once.’
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‘What do you mean?’ Cool and highly alert now.
‘How much do you know about his business deals?’
‘Nothing. I was never interested.’
This was a woman who worked in the finance industry. I didn’t
buy it. ‘What was on the disk, Jane?’
‘How would I know?’ she protested.
‘I’ve been around a lot of divorces. If there was something on
that disk, you could use to gain an advantage in the property
settlement, you strike me as the kind of woman who’d use it.’
I could see her reappraising me and realising she wasn’t
dealing with some romantic sap like Luther Huck, that I wasn’t
prepared to be conned.
‘You’re right,’ she conceded finally. ‘It’s got some of his
clients’ files on it. Private clients, not the firm’s clients.
It’s encoded, but I think I can crack it, or find someone who
can. I reckon the Tax Department would be very interested.’
‘Interested enough to put him away?’
She nodded. ‘And them.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Heavy hitters. You’d recognise some of the names from Royal
Commissions.’
‘Jane, if these guys find out you’re using their confidential
records as a bargaining chip in a divorce, it’s your funeral
you’re worrying about, not the bloody cat’s. And if you scare
Jasper badly enough, he’ll do the job for them.’
Whatever synthetic energy she’d been running on since I met
her—hatred for her husband, desire for revenge, injured pride,
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sheer bloody mindedness—deserted her at that point and she fell
into a chair and put her head on the kitchen table. ‘What’ll I
do?’
‘Get the hell out of here for a start.’ I grabbed her by the
elbow and led her into the bedroom. ‘Pack enough stuff for a
week. You’ll be safe at Luther’s.’
‘I have to take care of Sweet Leilani first,’ she said,
shaking me off. The tears started then: I was relieved—a normal
reaction at last, or so I thought. She went to her closet, pulled
out a box with Italian label on it and removed a pair of
expensive leather boots. Into the box she stuffed a small satin
cushion off her bed. From a drawer she took a silk scarf. Then
she took everything into the kitchen, picked up the cat and
arranged it tenderly on the cushion and covered it with the
scarf. I wondered briefly if anyone cared enough about me to
waste a $300 scarf on my corpse and decided not. I also wondered
if she’d ever lavished that amount of love on her husband and
decided she hadn’t; otherwise he wouldn’t be fighting her to the
death over property.
But she wasn’t quite satisfied. She stared at the cat for a
few minutes, then went back into the bedroom. The hairs on my
neck stood up. Was she going to get candles and incense and
indulge in some burial ritual? No, thank God. She returned with a
diamante cat collar and exchanged it with Sweet Leilani’s
everyday leather number. Satisfied, she put the lid on the box,
wrapped it in a plastic shopping bag from an expensive boutique
and stowed it in the freezer compartment of the fridge.
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Perhaps my eyes were popping, because she looked defensive and
said, ‘I’ll bury her later.’
Mad as a cut snake, I thought.
In the car on our way back to Luther’s, Jane decided to
unburden herself. ‘You think I’m a vengeful bitch…’ I made a
half-hearted protest, but she drowned me out. ‘But Jasper started
screwing around on me within six months of our wedding.’
I kept my eyes on the road and held my tongue, hoping to find
out what made her tick.
‘He said I was...’ Her voice broke.
I finished the thought: frigid. It didn’t seem so far-fetched
on reflection, despite Jane’s vamp act. It was difficult to
imagine a woman who was such a control freak thrashing and
moaning on sweaty sheets; part of her would always be off to one
side, monitoring the effect, checking the angles.
But I’d been
wrong before, and so far Luther hadn’t kicked her out of bed...
Jane, who’d been watching my face, decided she’d given too
much away and lapsed into silence.
The Huck household slept in on Sunday. Well, I slept, anyway. I
was sitting out in Luther’s backyard reading the paper when I got
a call from Blush, who told me she was back in Sydney and looking
for somewhere to live.
‘I’d bunk down at Tracy’s warehouse for a while,’ she said,
‘but I think she and Dan are squabbling. I’d feel like piggy in
the middle.’
‘What are they fighting about?’ I asked, brightening.
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‘I think her affections are engaged elsewhere,’ said Blush
diplomatically. That meant she’d decided to go after Luke Coogan;
more problems on the horizon.
‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like him?’
‘Luke Coogan comes with more baggage than Liberace on a world
tour. I’ll tell you about it some day. And if you’re about to ask
if you can stay at my place, the answer is no. It’s too
dangerous. Someone took a pot shot at me in the parking lot the
other night.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve moved out till I can figure it out.’
‘Where to?’
‘It’s confidential,’ I said. ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt
you.’
‘But they’re not after me, Syd. I’d be OK.’ Blush suspected me
of self-dramatisation, and was offended by my secrecy, but
telling her would be like putting an ad in the Star Observer,
Sydney’s gay newspaper. She and her Darlo tranny mates are
inveterate gossips, especially after a few beers and a toot or
two. They make the world wide web look like semaphore.
‘No. N.O.’
I’m generally regarded by women—real and manufactured—as a
sucker, but even I have my limit, and Blush was sufficiently
intuitive to know when she’d pushed me to it. She let the subject
drop and regaled me with stories about the sex lives of the
aptly-named Darwinians—it’s survival of the fittest at the Top
End. Two years helping her sister run a clothes shop in Darwin
133
had tapped her into the gossip. If her stories were to be
believed—and that’s a big if—women are just as indiscreet in
change rooms as they are under the hair dryer. I suppose it’s
cheaper than therapy.
She rang off, telling me she’d let me know when she found
somewhere to stay. I was glad she was back. She and Tracy were as
thick as thieves, and though most people would regard Blush as
the last person on earth qualified to give a young woman advice
on her love life, at least Tracy would have someone sympathetic
to earbash. It couldn’t be much fun bitching to a curmudgeon like
me who’d only say I told you so.
I went back to reading the paper. New revelations on the
police corruption front took up the front page. The paper was
predicting controversial disclosures at next week’s hearings in
the Policy Integrity Commission, an offshoot of the Royal
Commission into the Police. Not that anyone would take the
slightest notice. Sydneysiders are so inured to police corruption
that they expect senior cops to be captured on film attending the
christening of top criminals’ children and the funerals of their
beloved mothers. They were surprised only when someone was caught
and brought to book.
It was starting to look as if Clive Metcalfe, the fresh-faced
Pommy Police Commissioner who’d been brought in over the heads of
the tainted locals a couple of years earlier—to a certain amount
of scepticism, one would have to say—was actually going to earn
his spurs. If so, he’d be the first Commissioner to tackle police
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corruption seriously since the much-missed John Avery, who tried
to clean up the force in the 1980s.
I wouldn’t be holding my breath. If past performance is
anything to go on, the trauma of arrest causes sudden and
irreversible amnesia in most police witnesses.
While I was working my way through a pizza that night, Luther
and
Jane emerged from Luther’s bedroom. Wearing her black
burglar’s gear, and with those surreal yellow eyes, Jane looked
like some exotic and rarely-sighted marsupial. Perhaps Luther
found the look erotic. They didn’t greet me—too exhausted,
perhaps—but as Luther passed the table, he grabbed a slice of
pizza from the box. With his left hand. In his right, he was
carrying a baseball bat.
I could have asked where they were going, but I didn’t want to
know. Officially, the less I knew, the better.
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11
After Monday night’s television news I knew for sure where Luther
and Jane had gone. Jasper Garrett, well-known investment adviser
and media commentator, had been attacked outside his Woollahra
house by two assailants, one wielding a baseball bat. An elderly
woman had witnessed the attack from a window across the road, but
as it was dark, could only report that one was huge and the other
much slighter. A police spokeswoman speculated that it was a
mugging gone wrong.
Luther, whose day off it was, slumped on the couch watching.
He didn’t bat an eyelid. Jane, seated beside him, let out a long
sigh and leaned forward to get a better look at her husband being
loaded into an ambulance.
‘Nothing like a bit of summary justice,’ I commented.
Jane smirked: ‘Terrible isn’t it. The streets simply aren’t
safe for law-abiding citizens any more.’
‘Do you reckon Jasper would be able to identify his
attackers?’ I asked.
‘I doubt it,’ said the ice-maiden. ‘Severe blows to the knees
tend to cause loss of memory. It’s a well-known physiological
phenomenon.’
Though I sympathised with Jane’s desire to bash the
supercilious smirk off her husband’s dial, I was getting a little
136
concerned about the escalation in the Garrett’s vendetta. ‘Don’t
you think you’d better cool it, Jane?’
‘You mean like Sweet Leilani?’ she snapped and stalked off.
I looked at Luther. He shrugged and gave me a What’s a man to
do? look.
Later that night Blush called and said she wanted to have a
talk about Tracy.
‘So talk.’
‘Not on the phone. Jeez, I haven’t seen you for two years and
you’re already fobbing me off.’
Back two days and trying to guilt me. I chose not to bite.
‘Did you find somewhere to stay?’
‘Oh, yes. You know me. I can doss down anywhere.’
I met Blush next day at a coffee shop in Darlinghurst. Feeling
like a tourist, I walked across through the Fiveways and up past
St Vincent’s Hospital. I was starting to miss my own territory:
though it had more dogshit per square metre than the Yagoona
pound, Paddington was too sanitised for me. Too many Volvos, too
many blonde wives, too many spoiled, trophy children- too
bourgeois, in a word. I didn’t know how Luther could stand it.
But perhaps if I had to spend my nights among the denizens of
Rydge’s, I’d want my days to be deadly dull.
The merciless Top End sun hadn’t done Blush’s skin any good,
but she looked healthy, and had dropped a few pounds. Heads
turned when she made her entrance wearing hot pink pedal pushers
and a floaty silk rainbow-coloured shirt, high heeled pink
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sandals and a large yellow straw hat. Her hair was the colour of
a newborn chick and had the consistency of fairy floss. Evidently
she’d decided to dress down. She greeted me effusively with air
kisses, arranged her plumage and in a tranny bass, called for a
double macchatio. When the young waiter brought it to the table,
she couldn’t resist flirting with him till he flushed scarlet.
‘Stop harassing the help,’ I ordered.
Blush rolled her eyes. ‘What’s the matter, Syd? Jealous? Still
pining after that sculptress?’
‘No, that’s well and truly over. She married some bloke she
went to art school with. Runs a gallery in Canberra.’
‘Oh, dear. Well, that’s the end of her career,’ pronounced
Blush. ‘That place is absolutely fatal to the creative urge.’
My spirits lifted: nothing like a little Schadenfreude to
cheer a man up. ‘What’s this about Tracy?’ I reminded her.
Blush dropped the gay theatrics. ‘The good news is that she’s
left that pompous little actor prick she was banging, and the bad
news is she’s fallen in love with Luke Coogan.’
‘Why bad news?’
‘Seems his stepmother doesn’t approve. Michelle, is that her
name?’ I nodded. ‘Luke still lives at home, apparently, and
Michelle won’t let him see Trace without a battle. Poor little
kid’s heartbroken.’
‘Randy, more like it. She was madly in love with Dan two weeks
ago.’
‘Can’t remember what it was like at that age?’ asked Blush
nastily.
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Of course I could, but I forlornly hoped Tracy would be safe
from the sort of conscienceless prick I’d been. ‘At the risk of
betraying your faith in romance, I hope Michelle does break it
up,’ I said.
Assisted by the weight of half a kilo of false eyelashes,
Blush narrowed her eyes. ‘Convince me.’
‘Luke’s a devious little shit. He went behind his mother’s
back and started spending time with Bernie Coogan when he was a
teenager. Told Denise he was staying with his Gran in Rozelle.
Michelle was bored and seduced him—or vice versa, who the hell
knows—and she got pregnant. Then they cooked up this little plan
to pretend Luke had been kidnapped and use the ransom money to
run away together.’
By this time Blush’s eyes were huge. ‘So how did you get into
the act?’
‘Bernie hired me to be the go-between. When I figured out what
was going on, I organised a cover-up so Bernie wouldn’t murder
both of them. As far as I know, he never found out.’
‘So the kid’s Luke’s?’
‘Yeah, but Bernie thinks it’s his. He was very proud of his
virility. Which is a joke, because if Declan Doherty was right,
Luke wasn’t his son either.’
Blush shrieked laughing: ‘This is priceless! Two cuckoos in
the nest!’ The couple at the next table were leaning so far back
in their chairs they were in danger of breaking their necks.
‘Keep it down, Blush. You don’t want Bernie Coogan for an enemy.’
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She sobered up, or pretended to. ‘So Michelle’s still carrying
a torch for Luke.’
‘Sounds like it. What should we tell Tracy?’
Blush cogitated for a few minutes. ‘I don’t think we should
tell Tracy anything. If Luke Coogan is serious about her, it’s
his responsibility.’
‘What if he keeps his mouth shut?’
‘Then we tell her. But we’ve got to give him a chance to come
clean first.’ Blush gave me an expectant look.
‘Oh, no, I’m out of this. You want to play mother, you talk to
him.’
Blush wasn’t happy about my evading parental duty. ‘You’re as
weak as piss, you know that?’
Life is a boomerang. The fifteen-year-old Tracy had written
similar words on a postcard after I’d rescued her from an abusive
home and given her my last hundred bucks to get to her
grandmother’s in Queensland.
‘So they tell me.’
At six-thirty I met Lizzie in the lobby of the Rex. She was
twanging with anticipation and nerves. ‘I thought you were never
going to arrive!’
‘It’s not first up, is it?’
Lizzie picked up a program at the door of the auction room and
skimmed the sales order. ‘I’m on last,’ she announced. This was
bad news—she’d be a gibbering wreck by the time we got to item
140
six. ‘All the properties after mine have been sold prior. Is that
a good sign or a bad sign?’
‘How the hell would I know?’ I said, exasperated. Auctions
were just another form of legalised gambling as far as I was
concerned, one where a bet is called a bid.
We entered the ballroom where the auction was to be held and
found a space against the back wall, where we could see what
everybody else was doing. It was a full house—yuppie couples in
Country Road casuals; young arty types with a friend for support;
several gay couples; some nondescript men by themselves; two
affluent retired couples moving closer to the action.
Hyped-up agents cut through the crowd like blue heelers
through a flock of helpless sheep, handing out programs,
whispering to their favourite punters and conspiring in huddles.
Lizzie’s agent, Tony Massimo, hove to, hyped up and grinning.
‘Ready?’
‘As I’ll ever be,’ said Lizzie. ‘How many contracts went out
in the end?’
‘Only three. You’re in there with a chance.’ He squeezed
Lizzie’s arm and moved away to stiffen the resolve of another
victim.
‘Why is it so hot in here?’ Lizzie griped. The auction room
was stifling.
‘I think fear raises people’s temperature.’
Lizzie was staring around, checking out the competition. ‘Look
at all the single women buying their own places. Where are the
blokes?’
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‘Living with mum?’
‘Maybe they intend to marry these women for their houses,’ she
suggested.
I snorted. ‘Around here all the men marry each other.’
Lizzie laughed, then went ominously quiet. She was starting to
lose her nerve. ‘All these people look as if they’ve got more
money than me.’
‘Relax. Buying houses is like sport. It’s all psychology. If
you really want the place, you have to go for it. If you’re
timid, you’ll lose.’
‘Do you suppose they’re all here for my flat?’
‘Get real. The only people who’d be game to bid for that dump
have got a father who’s a builder, or are flat broke like you.’
The show began. The auctioneer, an unctuous professional, told
a few jokes to relax the victims and read out the rules.
‘Tell me he’s kidding!’ said Lizzie, when he’d finished. ‘Can
the vendor really put in a bid? That’s bloody criminal!’
‘’Fraid so. Half the people in here are probably dummy
bidders.’
Lizzie stared around her suspiciously, trying to suss out the
fakes.
The first property, a small, run-down flat with stunning
harbour views but no parking, was first cab off the rank, and was
quickly bid up to four hundred thousand dollars. As it was
knocked down, a ripple of fear ran through the audience, who were
afraid every property would sell for a similarly outlandish sum.
‘Christ, I’m sunk,’ said Lizzie, subsiding into gloom.
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When the Sydney market is in full roar, every property, no
matter how ramshackle and unlovely, will sell, as people start
panicking about being locked out; but when the punters start
worrying about the Asian meltdown or job security, the market
stalls, and it shows up immediately in the auction rooms. It’s an
iron-clad measure of economic confidence.
Confidence was in short supply tonight. People sat on their
hands and had to be browbeaten into opening the bidding, and then
bid in dribs and drabs. Frustrated when a bidder for a tiny,
‘bijou’ terrace in Darlinghurst wanted to make one hundred dollar
bids, the auctioneer lost patience. ‘You’d better make it a
thousand, mate. The only thing you can buy around her for a
hundred dollars is a cup of coffee.’
The audience laughed hollowly, but the attempt at humour
didn’t make them any more reckless or feckless, and many of the
properties didn’t reach their reserves. It was a slow and
agonising process, with the auctioneer waiting while agents tried
to talk recalcitrant into going that extra ten grand over their
budget.
‘God, this is going to go on all bloody night,’ groused
Lizzie. ‘I’m going to go outside and cool down.’
And have a smoke, I thought, but as auctions are the civilian
equivalent of nerve gas warfare in Iraq, I could hardly begrudge
her a little comfort.
‘How is it going?’ she asked, when she returned, looking
slightly calmer.
‘Yours is next.’
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After the auctioneer passed in a big, new apartment in a
trendy development surrounded by busy highways, images of
Lizzie’s dream home flashed up on the screen. They’d photographed
the front of the building, an attractive art deco number from the
forties, and the view from the balcony. Not even the blasé,
brazen agents in this area would dare show the interior of
Lizzie’s dream home. The sight of those mutant cockroaches would
have caused a stampede.
‘We have a bidder from Perth on the phone,’ said the
auctioneer.
‘No competition,’ said Lizzie, gaining confidence. ‘Anybody in
Perth with enough money to move into the
Sydney market wouldn’t
touch this place with a bargepole.’
There was a tense silence while everybody waited for someone
else to make the opening bid. Terrified the property would
attract no bid at all—professional death for an estate agent—Tony
Massimo crossed the room and started talking in Lizzie’s ear.
Lizzie made a Turn around and piss off gesture and said, ‘I’ll
handle this, Tony.’ The agent hesitated, then beat an embarrassed
retreat to the other side of the room where he stood poised,
ready to gallop back at the slightest encouragement.
Finally a man who had to be the famous dummy bidder leapt into
the breach: ‘Two hundred thousand.’
Another nerve-racking wait ensued. Getting tired of the game,
the auctioneer started to knock down the property. ‘Selling for
the first time, selling for the second time...’
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Smoked out, Lizzie stuck up her hand, and the serious bidding
began. It was a two-horse race, Lizzie and The Man from Perth. If
he actually existed. When the auctioneer misread one of Lizzie’s
bids, she corrected him, and he backed down. Several people in
the room turned around and gave her a V for victory sign.
Revolution was in the air. Encouraged, Lizzie started to take the
piss out of the process.
At the two hundred and twenty mark, The Man from Perth started
bidding in five hundred dollar increments.
‘He’s on his credit card,’ I said.
Focused like a laser, Lizzie nodded. ‘Yeah, I’ve got him on
the ropes.’
The bidding clawed its way up to two sixty-eight and The Man
from Perth’s agent spoke urgently into his mobile, trying to
stiffen his client’s resolve. No go. He signalled this to the
auctioneer, who said to Lizzie, ‘If you went straight to two
seventy, it would open the door.’
‘What door, and for whom?’ asked Lizzie, icily calm.
‘It means you’ll get the place,’ said the auctioneer.
‘But as the highest bidder, I’ll get the place anyway,’ said
Lizzie, her logic unassailable. The audience sniggered.
Unable to contain himself, Tony launched himself across the
room and crouched in front of Lizzie. He was sweating bullets.
‘Lizzie, the reserve is two eighty!,’ he hissed. ‘If you come in
at two seventy, you can buy the place tonight. Otherwise, you’ll
have to spend tomorrow negotiating with the vendors.’
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Lizzie looked up and said to the room at large. ‘OK, but only
if The Man from Perth throws in the towel.’
While this was going on, the other agent muttered fiercely
into his mobile.
‘Selling for the first time, selling for the second time,
sold...’
‘Wait a minute!’ shouted Lizzie, leaping to her feet. ‘Is The
Man from Perth in or out?’
‘Out,’ said the second agent, hastily folding his phone, and
his tent.
‘Sold for the third time to the woman at the back!’ announced
the auctioneer, visibly relieved.
The crowd applauded, a tension-relieving device invented by
estate agents to prevent fist fights and fainting fits.
‘You could have got it for two sixty-nine,’ I said.
‘Shut-up, Syd,’ said Lizzie. ‘I mean it.’ Exhausted but
triumphant, she allowed Tony to lead her away to write a cheque.
Totally wrung out from helping spend someone else’s money, I
wandered over to the bar and poured myself an orange juice. A
young couple nearby were having a hissing squabble.
‘But he said $240,000,’ said the wife. ‘Why do they do that
when they know the reserve is three hundred?’
‘To suck idiots like us into coming to the bloody auction,’
said the husband.
‘All that running around getting the finance,’ said the wife,
sounding as if she wanted to cry. ‘I don’t know if I can live
146
through another auction. Why can’t people just put a price on
their places?’
‘Why do you think? Greed.’
‘I’d like to rip his ugly head off,’ said the woman and
stalked off.
Maybe a disgruntled home buyer had murdered Eddie Aboud, I
thought. Two million suspects; I didn’t like the cops’ chances.
Lizzie emerged eventually, clutching her cheque book and looking
shell-shocked, and we left the scene of the crime.
‘Let’s have a drink at the Bourbon,’ she said.
‘Is this the beginning of a nervous breakdown?’ I asked. I
hadn’t darkened the door of the Bourbon and Beefsteak since about
1978.
‘Let’s pretend we’re tourists. After all, I’m not going to be
able to afford a holiday for about ten years.’
With its huge red BOURBON AND BEEFSTEAK sign, its flashing
lights and the kitsch facsimile of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on
its facade, the bar-restaurant was a Sydney landmark, a place
everybody in Australia passed at least once in their lifetime.
Straddling the corner of Darlinghurst Road and Macleay Street
next to the fountain, it had been built by a Texan during the
Vietnam War and quickly became a magnet for GIs on R&R, and
locals looking for grog, drugs, sex and trouble. It had survived
the end of the war and the repatriation of the Yanks to become a
tourist attraction. It had an all-night licence and on the
weekends was jammed to the gunwales. When the fleets were in at
Garden Island, the naval base at the bottom of Potts Point, it
147
was a magnet for every camp follower in the greater metropolitan
area. Stepping through the front door was like stepping back into
the seventies.
‘What I like about this place is that it never changes,’ said
Lizzie.
‘Not for much longer,’ I said. Now the owner had gone to his
final reward, negotiations were under way for its sale. With its
multi-million dollar site, its days as a bar could be numbered.
We found a table and ordered a bottle of decent wine to
celebrate. ‘Do you really think I could have got it for a
thousand less?’ Lizzie asked.
Behind us a dire MOR band with a fading chanteuse walloped
out a Dusty Springfield song to an audience of out-of-town
businessmen, discreet hookers and nostalgic tourists. Poker
machines pinged away in the background. Punters wandered in and
out, seeking a connection, company, mischief—that elusive
commodity called fun.
‘Maybe, but look on the bright side. You’ve bought a bit of
good will, so if you want to get in before settling to start
renovating, they’ll probably let you.’
Her face fell. ‘I’d forgotten about renovating. Oh, my God!’
The wine arrived in time to prevent her slitting her wrists,
and we toasted the new flat.
‘Drink up,’ I advised. ‘It’s the
last bottle of decent plonk you’ll be able to afford for twenty
years.’
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12
Along with several threatening messages from Det. Sgt. Bray, and
a reminder from my landlord that the rent was overdue, that I
recovered from my office answering machine the following day,
there was a terse demand from Michelle Coogan that I call her on
her mobile. Deciding I couldn’t evade all responsibility, I
reluctantly dialled the number. Michele was peremptory and
businesslike. ‘These phones aren’t secure. Meet me at the Lord
Dudley in Woollahra.’
‘Michelle...’
‘Just do it, Syd.’
I walked to the pub. If my exile kept up for much longer, I’d
actually get fit. On the way I passed Eddie Aboud’s agency and
wondered what Carmel had decided to do with the business. She’d
ceased confiding in me; who was advising her?
It was business as usual at the agency. There was no sign of
Chantelle or Brie’s name in the latest sales catalogue, but
Alysha Dolinkska’s orthodontically-perfected smile beamed out
from the glossy pages, and Todd Kratzmann appeared to have
survived the purge. Perhaps he was good with widows. I poked my
head in. There were two new female staff at work, both brunettes.
I could sense Carmel’s fine hand in this reorganisation.
I hadn’t seen Michelle in eight years, and wouldn’t have
recognised her if she hadn’t hailed me from across the room. Then
149
she’d been a flashy red-head trading on her looks and sex appeal,
but smart and down-to-earth with it. A bit of a tart, but
likeable. Somebody had taken her in hand. The hair was a subdued
blonde, straightened and cut into a pageboy; the linen cinnamon
coloured shift was well tailored and revealed not a centimetre of
cleavage as well as hiding most of the famous long, tanned legs.
And worst of all, flat sandals.
Michelle had turned into a wife, one of those the hordes of
interchangeable middle-class mums waiting in 4WDs and Volvos
outside the gates of Sydney Grammar prep school for their budding
masters of the universe. She’d sent me an invitation to the
christening of Matthew Bernard, the Coogan scion, who’d be about
nine now, but I’d made my excuses. I was sick of having to lie to
Bernie.
‘How’s Matthew?’ I asked, sitting down and calling for a beer.
‘Fine. The image of his father.’
‘Thank God for that,’ I said, po-faced.. ‘If he’d been
Bernie’s kid, he would have ended up with red hair on his back.’
Michelle inhaled her drink and had a coughing fit. She’d told
me about Bernie’s pelt all those years ago when she was trying to
explain why she’d committed adultery with his underage son. The
old Michelle would have laughed then, but seven years with Bernie
would destroy most people’s sense of humour. ‘You’re still a
shit, I see.’
‘It’s you who’s being the shit, the way I hear it, Michelle.’
‘What have you heard?’
‘That you’re trying to break up Luke and Tracy.’
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‘Who told you that? That dreadful, ugly transvestite you sent
to abuse me?’
‘What!?’
‘Don’t act all innocent with me. I know exactly what you’re
capable of!’
‘You’re telling me Blush came to see you?’
‘Blush! I’ll make her blush on the other bloody side of her
face if she’s not careful. That bitch barged into my house and
threatened me! She said she’d tell Bernie all about me and Luke
if I didn’t stop trying to control Luke!’
‘And were you?’
‘You don’t get it, do you? I’m not trying to keep Luke for
myself. That all finished years ago. Once I had Matthew, I had
Bernie over a barrel. I wasn’t going to ruin that for some...
boy.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘Use your brains. That little hairdresser doesn’t have a pot
to piss in. Luke can do a whole lot better than that.’
I’d been suppressing my mirth since she’d told me about
Blush’s raid, now I laughed out loud. Michelle flushed an angry
red. When I caught my breath, I said, ‘Michelle, that’s exactly
what you were when you snared Bernie—an ambitious hairdresser. I
never thought you’d turn into a social climber. And a hypocrite.’
‘How dare you?’
‘You’re having yourself on. If Luke proposes to some
Protestant Princess from the Eastern Suburbs, her parents will
get you Coogans checked out, and all the skeletons will come
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tumbling out of the closet. You’re not the lady of the manor,
you’re a little scrubber from the western suburbs who flashed her
tits in front of an ageing pornographer and got lucky. And Bernie
isn’t Small Businessman of the Year, he’s a vicious crook with a
police record. By comparison, Tracy’s a bloody aristocrat. You
lot are lucky she’s prepared to be seen in public with anyone
remotely connected with you and Bernie.’
By this time I’d worked my way into a rage. I still resented
the bullshit she and Luke had put me through years ago. I
stood
up and threw ten dollars on the table. ‘And tell Luke if he
doesn’t level with Tracy before the end of the week, I’ll
ringbark the bugger.’
I was half way home before I regained my equanimity. Michelle
would tell Luke I’d threatened him, and Luke would tell Tracy,
who’d never forgive me. I’d certainly put the cat among the
pigeons, but Blush had started it. If I went down, she’d go with
me.
Jane Garrett was keeping a low profile at Luther’s, being
agreeable and making herself useful. She even cooked us dinner—a
mistake; she was a lousy cook. While she was sitting at the
kitchen table having a smoke and watching Luther wash up and me
dry, she said, ‘By the way, Syd, someone called Damien Cole left
a message for you. He said the name you want is Joey Nasser.’
It didn’t ring any bells with me. ‘Ever heard of him?’ I asked
Luther.
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He shook his head. ‘A Lebo by the sound of it. Not from around
here.’
After dinner Jane and Luther disappeared into the computer
room until it was time for him to leave for work. Trying to
unlock the disk, I guessed.
That night I got a call from Len Ryan, the old union heavy
I’d run into at Declan Doherty’s funeral. We shot the shit for a
while, then Len said, ‘You remember my nephew, Tony? The one who
got transferred to Kings Cross Police Station?’
‘The big redhead?’
‘That’s the one. He’d like to have a chat with you.’
My stomach lurched. ‘In his official capacity?’
Len laughed. ‘No, this would be entirely off the record. In
fact he wouldn’t want anyone but you and me to know about it.’
‘What’s it about, Len?’
‘I don’t know, mate. He’s acting funny. I hope he’s not in
trouble. You’d be doing me a favour…’
Guilted, I gave in. ‘When?’
‘Fairly soon. It would have to be when he was off duty.
Somewhere public, where he could run into you accidentally.’
‘Some place not frequented by cops and their snouts, you
mean?’
‘Exactly. He wondered if you’ve ever been to the Aquarium.
He’s been promising to take his little girl there for months, and
this way he could kill two birds with one stone. Or do I mean
catch two fish with one hook?’
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‘OK,’ I said. I’d never been to the aquarium, though I’d often
felt as if I lived in a goldfish bowl. ‘When?’
‘Saturday, 2 pm?’
That night I tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Len’s phone
call bothered me. I didn’t really know Tony Ryan, or who his
friends were. Was this some sort of trap to lure me into the open
so Leggett and Bray could pounce on me? At about 2 am. I decided
I was being paranoid, and that I’d go.
It seemed like I’d just got to sleep when my phone rang again.
By the time I found the phone under my pillow I was fully awake.
It was Tracy.
‘What took you so long?!’ she opened.
‘It’s the middle of the night, in case you hadn’t noticed.
What do you think you’re doing calling me at this hour? What are
you on?’
‘I’m not on anything! Someone’s beaten Blush up. They grabbed
her off the street and stuck her in the boot and took her away.
They tried to get her to tell them where you’re hiding.’
‘But she doesn’t know,’ I said. Then dawn broke. ‘Why would
they think Blush would know where I was?’
There was an uncomfortable silence. ‘We’re staying in your
flat.’
I’d always known I’d rue the day I’d given Tracy a key to the
flat. I tried to interrupt, but she talked over me. ‘I couldn’t
stay with Dan any more, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
And neither had Blush.’
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‘I told Blush why she couldn’t stay there. The bloody sun must
have scrambled her brains.’
Tracy tried to make an excuse, but I was in full flight by
now, frightened by what might have happened to both of them, and
angry at their stupidity. ‘What the fuck is the matter with you
two? You knew someone was trying to kill me.’
‘That’s just it. We thought someone was after you. We didn’t
think anyone would go for us. And don’t you care how she is?’
Guilty as sin, I lowered my voice about a decibel. ‘So how is
she?’
‘They brought her back here when they realised she really
didn’t know and threw her out of the car onto the road. Her face
is a mess, and she’s got abrasions, but she’s OK.’
I wondered what they’d have to do to Blush to make her not OK.
‘Get her to St Vincent’s casualty,’ I said. ‘I’ll come down and
meet you there.’
I was in the kitchen making myself a cup of coffee when Luther
came in.
‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘Bloody Blush and Tracy moved into my flat behind my back.
Someone grabbed Blush and tried to get her to tell them where I
was.’
Luther frowned. ‘She OK?’
‘I’m going to pick them up from St Vincent’s. I suppose I’ll
have to put them up in a motel somewhere.’
‘Bring them here,’ said Luther. I nearly dropped my cup. The
place was turning into a commune: maybe he was nostalgic for the
155
sixties. ‘For a few days,’ he added. He threw me the keys to the
Ford. My eyebrows shot up. ‘They might be watching the hospital.
Just make sure you don’t lead them back here.’ He went upstairs.
By the time I got to the hospital, Blush was in a cubicle
being patched up. Badly in the wrong, and scared by the close
call, Tracy was far from her usual cocky self. She huddled on a
bench beside me drinking some kind of pale brown muck from the
coffee dispenser. I decided to let her suffer for a while. It
wasn’t often I got the upper hand in this relationship. ‘Does she
have any idea who it was?’
‘A couple of amateurs, she thinks. When she wouldn’t crack,
they got scared and let her go.’
‘Didn’t say who they were working for?’
She shook her head. ‘Who do you think it is?’
‘Maybe whoever killed Eddie Aboud. I thought it might be Adam
Quinn, but he’s dead, too. I’ve run out of suspects.’
‘What if it’s got nothing to do with that case?’
‘Then I’m in deep shit, because I don’t know how to get them
off my back, because I don’t know what they want.’
We slumped into a gloomy silence, broken by the arrival of
Blush on the arm of a nurse. The right side of her face and her
right arm and leg where she’d hit the road were badly abraded and
covered in brown Betadine. Having come off a motorbike without a
leather jacket in my salad days, I knew all about hitting the
tarmac at high speed, and felt some sympathy despite my
determination to be unforgiving. Her clothes were stained and
torn. Without her fluffy wig, her hair was short and brown,
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greying at the temples. If she’d walked straight past, I wouldn’t
have recognised her.
The nurse handed Tracy a carry bag containing Blush’s wig,
high heels and handbag. Blush was wobbly, under the influence of
pain killers and shock, and leaned on me heavily as we made our
way to the car. When she saw the fire-engine red Thunderbird, she
stopped. ‘What happened to the Valiant?’
‘I’m endeavouring to be unobtrusive.’ Blush gave me an oldfashioned look. ‘It’s Luther’s,’ I conceded. ‘He bought it with
the insurance money after the Huns blew up the Trans Am.’
‘Well, I am honoured,’ she said. ‘Fancy little old me being
allowed to ride in Luther’s new toy.’ I hid a grin; you can’t
keep an old trouper down. I decided to let her get a good night’s
sleep before I questioned her about her ordeal.
‘We’re going to Luther’s,’ I said. ‘He’s very kindly offered
to put you two up till you find other accommodation.’
‘So that’s where you’ve been,’ said Tracy. She was cheering
up. The worst had happened and we’d all survived. Again.
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13
By the time I dragged myself out of bed the next day, Tracy had
gone to work, and Jane was in the kitchen eating muesli with
bananas and skim milk and reading the paper.
‘What was all the ruckus about last night?’ she asked.
‘A friend of mine got beaten up,’ I said. ‘They were looking
for me.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re a very popular man.’
‘When are you going back to the bank?’ I asked. I didn’t trust
Jane Garrett, and was suspicious of her reasons for cultivating
Luther. Luther was physically tough, but I wasn’t sure he was any
emotional match for a New Woman.
‘When I look like a human being again.’ Her tone was cold; she
knew I wanted her out. ‘By then I should have my personal life
sorted out.’
I didn’t ask what she meant. I didn’t want to know.
An hour later I heard the cistern flush upstairs and deduced
that Blush was back on her feet. I went up to her room. She was
propped up in bed on several pillows, looking as if she’d gone
several rounds with a Rhodesian Ridgeback.
‘How are you?’ I asked lamely.
‘How do I bloody well look?’
I shrugged. ‘What did they do to you?’
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‘Punched the shit out of me in places where it wouldn’t show.
Called me the usual names, then tried to get me to give them a
blow job.’ She shuddered. ‘Mongrels.’
‘What did they say?’
‘Just kept asking me where you were. When they finally
realised I didn’t know, they chucked me out on the road. At least
they slowed down...’
‘Do you want to go to the police?’
She snorted. ‘Oh, yeah. Like they’d really care that another
trannie got bashed. I got myself into this; I’ll have to get
myself out.’ She gave me a sly look: ‘And I know you don’t want
me to bring the cops in.
Saved again. ‘Do you want something to eat?’
‘My mouth’s cut to pieces inside. Something mushy like
porridge, would be nice—if you can figure out how to read the
directions on the packet. And a cup of coffee.’
As I got up to go, Blush grabbed my wrist. ‘Don’t be too hard
on Trace, will you? It was my idea. I put her up to it.’
I doubted that Blush had had to twist Tracy’s arm, but I
figured they’d got such a bad fright they’d paid for their sins.
And I hate naggers.
It was high time I had a closer look at Joey Nasser, the
kickboxing teacher. As I still had the keys to Luther’s Harley, I
decided to use that for surveillance. Helmets confer instant
anonymity and a bike can slip into places no car can go.
Chastened by the sight of Blush’s gravel rash, I wheeled by my
159
office to pick up my old leather jacket. Parking the bike in the
back alley, I climbed in through the lavatory window, went
through the mail and picked up my messages—nothing I wanted to
know—then got out of there.
It took only ten minutes to get to Nasser’s apartment
building. People were too cautious these days to put their names
on their buzzers, so I had to find him the hard way. Nobody
answered my first two attempts, then I rousted an old woman who
was obviously stone deaf. After I’d bellowed my request twice I
lost heart and hung up on the poor old girl. She’s probably still
wondering who it was.
On my next try, a male voice answered. ‘I’ve got a parcel for
Mr Nasser, but it doesn’t have a flat number on it,’ I wheedled.
‘Do you know which apartment he’s in?’
‘Christ, what’s a man got to do to get some bloody peace and
quiet around this place!’ the voice said. ‘Just because you work
at home doesn’t mean you’re the bloody caretaker!’
Probably a failed writer, I thought uncharitably. ‘I’m sorry,
sir...’
‘He’s in 406! Now piss off!’
I buzzed 406. A gruff, male voice answered. ‘Is Mrs Fitzgerald
there?’ I asked.
‘No, dickwit,’ he said, and crashed the phone down on me.
Now I knew he was home, I settled down to watch the exit.
Delivery vans came and went. Mums with babies and dawdling
toddlers perambulated by. Taxis made illegal U-turns in front of
me. A dumpy parking officer in an unflattering Akubra hat checked
160
me out, but as I’d fed the meter I could afford to ignore her.
Emissions from a steady stream of traffic slowly poisoned my
lungs. When the hunger pangs got too insistent to ignore, I made
a burger run, hoping my quarry didn’t escape in the ten minutes I
was in the milk bar.
My patience was rewarded at 1 pm. when the black BMW erupted
from the exit ramp across the road and sped south-east. I
followed him down Bronte Road, into Carrington, to Coogee Bay
Road, then into the back streets of Coogee. Nasser was an erratic
driver, impatient and rude and reluctant to use his indicators.
He’d tailgate vehicles and jam on his brakes when they slowed.
One of these days he’d drive straight into the back of some
pensioner in a Morris Minor and then kick him to death when he
objected. Nasser eventually pulled up outside a small,
nondescript building bearing the sign Ozone Health and Fitness
Club—a gym, in plain English.
I waited an appropriate time, stowed my disreputable jacket
and helmet under the seat of the bike, hoping some desperado
needing a hit would steal them, and presented myself at the
reception desk, where I inquired about membership and solemnly
perused the glossy pamphlets pressed on me by Jodee, the muscular
and relentlessly cheerful receptionist. I gasped when she
outlined what she called the subscription package, but recovered
sufficiently to ask if I could look over the facilities. Jodee
picked up the phone to call someone to show me through, but I
insisted I’d be perfectly happy by myself.
161
She looked dubious, as if I might be planning to steal the
dumbbells, but when a group of chattering women piled in the door
and milled around the desk demanding attention, took the line of
least resistance and pointed to a doorway down the hall.
It quickly became apparent why the privilege of posing around
the Ozone Health and Fitness Club cost so much. It was tasteful
and plush and had every legal torture instrument known to fitness
freaks—a weight room, running and rowing machines, a running
circuit, a wet and dry sauna, a small swimming pool. There were
rooms for massage and facials. Pinned to the wall was a timetable
for aerobics classes, hydrotherapy and two kinds of yoga.
Out here in the ‘burbs in the middle of the day the clientele
was predominantly housewives fighting gravity. Sweaty, grimacing
women puffed away on exercise bikes and aerobic machines chatting
like magpies. The weight-lifting room was empty but for Joey
Nasser, who was grunting and straining away on leg weights. I
silently prayed I’d never be on the other end of his boot. As I
watched from cover, the receptionist came in and spoke to Nasser.
Something about her demeanour gave me an idea Joey wasn’t just
any old iron pumper.
Lured by the thump of disco, I looked in on an aerobics class
full of overweight women in skin-tight Spandex outfits designed
for their younger selves. It did occur to me, however, that I’d
have difficulty keeping up with some of the exercises being
barked out by a sinewy, pony-tailed brunette who had probably
trained at Puckapunyal Army Training School. Deciding it was a
waste of time, I left the gym.
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‘How did it go?’ asked Jodee brightly.
‘Very nice, I said. ‘I’ll think about it. By the way, I
noticed Joey Nasser in there? Does he give classes?’
‘Oh, no!’ she said, shocked at my disrespect. ‘Mr Nasser is
the owner. He occasionally takes individual pupils, though. If
you’re interested, I can find out if he’s got a vacancy?’
‘Don’t bother, it was just idle curiosity. I’ll get back to
you.’
I’d just put on my helmet and remounted the bike when a white
Lexus pulled up. For a moment I wondered I were suffering from
post-traumatic stress, but it was definitely Eddie Aboud’s car,
though it was Carmel in the driver’s seat now. She hadn’t wasted
any time commandeering the better vehicle. Maybe she’d given her
BMW to the cleaner. Suddenly the music in the background during
Carmel’s phone calls made sense: she hadn’t been out shopping;
she’d been here at the gym. At Joey Nasser’s gym. Every nerve in
my body longed to follow Carmel inside, but she’d be onto me in a
nanosecond.
What I needed was a spy. Blush was out of action and Lizzie
was too far away, but Nicki Howard was just down the road, and
she’d probably be at home. I called her and gave her just enough
information to whet her journalist’s appetite. She said she’d be
right there.
Fifteen minutes later she rocked in driving a beat-
up old Toyota, dressed to look like the kind of woman who could
afford top-of-the-range body maintenance.
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‘Thank God you rang,’ she said. ‘I’m sick of working at home
alone. I couldn’t get myself started today. What do you want me
to do?’
I described Carmel and Joey Nasser, and said I wanted to know
if they spoke to each other.
‘Is this the boyfriend?’
‘I don’t know. But if they do know one another, it puts Carmel
in the frame for Eddie’s murder.’
‘But she’s been the cops’ prime suspect all the way along,
hasn’t she?’
‘Yeah, and much as it pains me to admit it, they might be
right.’
Looking determined, Nicki disappeared into the gym. Ten
minutes later she reappeared, crowing: ‘Joey Nasser is Carmel’s
personal trainer!’
‘How did they seem?’
‘Very personal. Thick as thieves, hands on, if you’ll pardon
the pun. I couldn’t get close enough to hear what they were
saying, unfortunately. That officious Barbie on the desk came
after me in case I breathed in too much free ozone.’
‘You busy?’ I asked.
‘Do I look busy?’
I followed her back to Bondi, where we had a cup of coffee at
an outdoor cafe on Campbell Parade, bathed in sunlight, breathing
in sea air and traffic fumes. Nicki told me she’d found a contact
in the Police Department who reckoned that Operation Abacus,
which had been set up to clean up Kings Cross, had been
164
penetrated by a couple of major crims. I listened with one ear: I
was more interested in Eddie Aboud’s murder, and waited my chance
to use Nicki as a sounding board. I started by filling in the
background, relating how I’d met Carmel through her husband
Eddie, who’d hired me to see if she was having an affair.
‘She was actually sneaking out to go to a gym,’ I said.
‘The Ozone?’
‘No, a little dump in Kingsford. She probably thought she’d be
recognised by the other mothers from the school tuckshop at any
of the trendy places.’
‘So did she meet Joey there, do you reckon?’
‘Probably. When I first saw him, he rang a bell. He was
probably a trainer there, and I must have spotted him when I was
tailing her. If that’s the case, he’s gone up in the world. Maybe
Carmel bankrolled him in the Ozone Club. It looks like Eddie was
right all along and I got suckered. They must have pissed
themselves laughing when I gave her the all clear. All she had to
do was promise to give up the gym, come home and be a good wife.
A good, fat wife.’
‘She’s probably been sneaking out to see that hairy hoon ever
since,’ said Nicki. ‘Do you think she got him to kill Eddie?’
‘Either that or he recruited Adam Quinn from the Cobras to do
it.’
‘So why did Adam have to get bumped off?’
‘Because I was onto the tattoo that connected him with the
Cobras and with Joey Nasser. I told Carmel about the punch-up
between Eddie and Adam, and when I found out where Adam was, I
165
let her know. They had plenty of time to get up to the Gold Coast
before me and get rid of him. And the evidence. He was probably
set alight to get rid of the tattoo.’
‘So it was Joey who shot at you?’
I thought back through the sequence of events. I’d told Carmel
about Adam Quinn on Tuesday the 30th, and somebody tried to gun
me down later that night. That gave her plenty of time to line up
Eddie or his kickboxing students to do it. ‘The timing works.’
‘Does Carmel know where you’re staying?’
I shook my head. I’d had just enough native caution not to
trust anyone with the address. How long it would stay secret with
Jane Garrett, Blush and Tracy in the know was another matter.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Confront Carmel, I suppose, and give her a chance to convince
me I’m wrong. And if she can’t, I’ll probably have to go to the
cops. I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life shacked up with
Luther Huck.’
Though I had to admit the food was significantly
better than anything on offer at Desolation Row.
But it could all wait. I had no intention of spoiling our day.
I had other plans. As the day waned we abandoned the seafront for
a quiet pub where we got pleasantly smashed, played pool and
socialised with the malingerers and time-wasters who haunt
watering holes in the daylight hours, then went back to Nicki’s
flat. She cooked some pasta, and as she didn’t seem to mind
consorting with a wanted man, we went to bed together. Oddly
enough, even after several months of celibacy, I could remember
166
what to do. Maybe the sight of those exercise bikes at the gym
had reminded me.
Nicki was an early and cheerful riser, which was a bit of a
worry, but in the first glow of lust, I was prepared to overlook
such perversion. I even allowed myself to be talked into a prebreakfast power walk to Bronte and back, dodging corporate
joggers and alarmingly fit retirees. Let’s face it, I’d have
followed her on a forced march to La Perouse to score a return
bout. After a disappointingly healthy breakfast, I took my leave
and joined the commuter traffic to the city. Sexual satisfaction
had made me almost light-headed, and I zipped in and out of the
traffic like an eighteen-year-old. Now I could understand why
Luther’s disposition had improved so markedly since Jane’s
arrival.
Chez Huck was quiet when I arrived. I sneaked upstairs and
looked in on Blush, who was snoring like a grampus, mouth wide
open. Luther’s door was closed tight.
At 10 o’clock I had a call from Tracy at the salon, asking if
I could meet her for lunch.
‘What for?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. It’s important,
Syd.’
I grumbled, but complied, walking the few blocks to the salon
where she worked. I lurked outside to avoid the atmosphere of
female conspiracy and the carcinogenic fumes that pervade
tonsorial establishments. Tracy’s boss, Lola Mason, who’d
generously taken Tracy on years ago to repay a favour, spotted me
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and came outside. ‘Long time, no see,’ she said, firing up a
cigarette.
Tanned, slim and impeccably groomed, Lola was holding up well.
A nip here and a tuck there had probably helped. ‘You must have
been behaving yourself,’ I said.
‘No choice. I’m a respectable married woman now.’ A discreet
transsexual, Lola had finally married the prominent businessman
she’d been romancing for years in a big society wedding. Only in
Sydney.
‘How’s the kid doing?’
‘Very well, of course. I wouldn’t have taken her on if I
hadn’t thought she had the makings. She’s polished up nicely,
don’t you think?’
‘I suppose so. She seems to be contemplating a move, though.’
‘Well, good for her. She’s got the brains to do anything she
wants. Not like me.’
I rolled my eyes. Lola was a savvy businesswoman who’d made a
pile flogging hair products and sympathy to society wives,
picking up the odd stock market tip and enough gossip to
blackmail half the social élite of Sydney. That inside knowledge
had been invaluable in getting her sponsored for membership of
several A-list charity committees.
When Tracy emerged, I took an objective look at her. She had
polished up well. Under Lola’s guidance, she’d transformed
herself from a tough, defensive little hayseed into a poised,
likeable young woman. Far too good for the likes of the Coogans.
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I still tended to think of her as a spiky teenager, probably
because I was too close to register the changes.
We took our leave of Lola, and Tracy led me across the road to
a restored Victorian pub which did decent food. Waiting for us on
the balcony among the expense account suits, jiggling his foot
nervously, was Luke Coogan. I’d recognise those faded denim eyes,
anywhere. He’d inherited them from his mother, Denise Dwyer, one
of the sexiest women I’d ever met, even after she got religion.
He was ten years older and had filled out and lost the innocent,
baby-faced look that been his stepmother’s downfall, but his
blond hair hadn’t darkened. No wonder Tracy had fallen for him
like a ton of bricks.
He jumped up and we shook hands stiffly, as alert and
bristling as two strange dogs. Taking refuge in social rituals,
we ordered food and drinks and commented on the splendour of the
day. When we’d run out of small talk, Tracy, forced into the role
of peacemaker by our intransigence, said, ‘Luke’s told me
everything, Syd.’
‘Everything? Such as?’ I made no attempt to hide my hostility.
I don’t approve of men hiding behind a woman’s skirts, not that
anything larger than a rat could hide behind Tracy’s mini.
He cleared his throat and looked to Tracy for support. She
nodded. ‘Michelle, Matthew, everything,’ he said, his voice
cracking slightly.
‘And?’
‘And it’s OK with me,’ said Tracy.
I turned to Tracy. ‘Just like that?’
169
‘It was a long time ago, Syd, and he was very young. I made a
few mistakes myself at that age.’
This was code to remind me that when she’d run away from her
grandmother to Sydney, I’d had to drag her off the streets to
prevent her falling into prostitution and drug addiction on the
streets of Kings Cross. ‘I’ve told him,’ she said. ‘I don’t want
any secrets between us.’
This was serious. Tracy was wearing that calm, determined look
women get when they’ve found the man who’s going to be the father
of their children. Whether he knew it or not. I suppose I was a
bit jealous. I’d never been tempted to hit on Tracy, but with her
father long gone and her step-father a deranged cretin, I’d liked
to kid myself I was the most important man in her life. Now I’d
been replaced by a handsome, intelligent alpha male with bedroom
eyes. Perhaps it made me a tad belligerent.
‘What about Bernie Coogan?’ I demanded. ‘Is Luke going to go
into the family business?’
Luke answered me. ‘No, I’m going to try to get into the film
industry.’ At my raised eyebrow, he coloured and got a little
rattled. ‘Not the sort of films Bernie used to make, though.’
He was implying Bernie had given up producing porn videos, but
short of arrest and trial, it was hard to think of any reason why
Bernie should turn his back on all that easy, tax-free money. I
held my tongue, however.
‘We’d like your blessing,’ said Tracy. I almost choked on a
chunk of prime beef. A week ago I would have told her she’d been
170
watching too many soap operas, but the script had changed in the
last half hour.
‘You can get that from your parish priest. But I’m willing to
wish you well.’
That was enough, apparently. Tracy beamed. Luke and I shook
hands like two tribesmen closing a deal on a bride. Tomorrow I’d
have to cough up several pigs and some cowrie shells.
I staggered home in shock, analysing my impressions of the
kid. He was intelligent, good looking and seemed easy going;
there couldn’t be a drop of Coogan blood in him.
It was probably
the amiability that had marked him out as husband material. Tracy
had done the regulation rounds with charming manipulators like
Dan, power junkies and general purpose losers, but had evidently
settled for the sort of man who’d stay for the long haul. Maybe
her experience with a violent step-father had influenced her; and
maybe, a sobering thought, her years observing commitment-shy
hard cases like me.
I was slumped in a deckchair in the back yard sucking on a
tinnie and contemplating my dismal future as a de facto
grandfather when Blush made her first public appearance since the
bashing. I had to look twice to recognise her. Before the
accident I’d never seen her without her tranny war paint. Without
the disguise, she was a rather ordinary looking thirty-something
male, apart from the plucked eyebrows of course. To go with the
new look, she’d commandeered a pair of my jeans and one of Jane’s
tee shirts with an insurance company logo on the front. I tried
not to stare.
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She ignored my confusion, got a beer out of the fridge and
joined me in the garden. We were communing in agreeable silence,
half listening to the usual litany of disasters emanating from
the radio news, when a name caught my attention. I jumped up and
turned up the volume.
Jasper Garrett had disappeared. The police were treating it as
suspicious. He hadn’t been at work for several days, and unlike
him, had not called in sick. His boss had finally sent someone to
his house to see if he were ill. The front door was unlocked,
though there was no evidence of a robbery. And though his car was
in the garage, the man himself was gone.
‘Do they mean Jane’s husband?’ asked Blush, agog.
‘’Fraid so,’ I said, and filled her in on the atrocities the
Garretts had committed in the name of love.
‘Gawd, makes my break-up with that road-train driver in the
Territory look like a lover’s tiff…’
‘Please, I don’t want to know!’
Blush pursed her lips at my prudery, and changed tack. ‘Looks
like the Black Widow got the last word.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Well, while you’ve been out solving crime, she’s been holed
up in there playing with Luther’s computer and whispering into
the phone.’
Setting Jasper up, she meant. Telling Jasper’s clients he’d
become a loose cannon. Aiding and abetting, I thought. Harbouring
a fugitive. Accessory before and after the fact. ‘He might have
done a runner,’ I suggested.
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Blush gave me a pitying look. ‘You know what I think? I think
his bleached bones will wash out of a sand-dune at Kurnell after
a heavy rainfall, or a pensioner walking his dog in a national
park will find his remains in a shallow grave disturbed by
animals...’
This wasn’t entirely fanciful. The skeleton of a long-departed
and largely unmourned mobster had been unearthed by a bulldozer
at Botany Bay recently, and bodies were dumped so regularly in
parks that it was probably time to erect signs prohibiting the
practice on public health grounds—maybe a skeleton with a red
line through it. ‘Or he might be recuperating on a beach in
Thailand,’ I said.
Blush snorted. ‘Can’t bear the thought that a gorgeous piece
of arse like Jane Garrett might actually be a cold-hearted
killer, Sydney?’
‘I just think it would be better for all concerned if we don’t
jump to conclusions.’
My pomposity tickled Blush, who laughed so hard she sprayed
Luther’s brown, balding lawn with beer, then winced as her
battered ribs complained. We fell silent. I don’t know what Blush
was thinking, but I was nurturing the faint hope that Jane had
not managed to ensnare Luther in her web.
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14
Jane got home around eight o’clock, looking perfectly nonchalant
in chic, funeral black. The Black Widow, indeed. She spotted me
in the living room, came in, kicked off her shoes, and slumped
into a chair, showing lots of thigh.
‘Did the cops get onto you?’ I asked.
She sat bolt upright. ‘What? Why?’
‘Jasper’s disappeared.’
There was a moment of perfect stillness on her face, then
horrified surprise, real or assumed: ‘What do you mean
“disappeared”?’
‘You haven’t heard?’
‘Stop jerking my chain, Syd. Heard what? I’ve had my phone
switched off. I didn’t want Jasper harassing me.’
‘It looks as if he’s been snatched from the house, though he
could have staged it himself.’
‘Why would he run?’ she asked carefully, watching my face.
‘Because he knows you’re going to go public on his smelly
deals,’—her hands jumped in her lap: direct hit—‘and he thinks
his clients might not like being exposed as tax cheats?’
She made an attempt at indignation and missed by a mile. ‘Is
that what you think of me?’
I shrugged. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Burying Sweet Leilani.’
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Off disposing of the evidence, she meant. If Jane had
engineered Jasper’s murder, the death of her cat was a motive,
and the cat’s body evidence. That cat’s corpse would be harder to
find than Lasseter’s lost gold reef. Jane had a good eye for
detail, I’d give her that. And she was lucky: Jasper must have
lain low after his nose had been pulped, probably out of
embarrassment. With him gone, it was only my word, and Luther’s,
that it had ever happened.
I was saved from slapping the triumphant look off Jane’s face
or an intemperate outburst about involving innocent bystanders in
murder conspiracies by the arrival of Blush. Her antennae picked
up the tension immediately. ‘I believe congratulations are in
order, dearie,’ she cooed.
Jane shot me a look that would curdle milk—yes, I had been
indiscreet; so shoot me—and made a dignified exit.
‘I’d call the cops soon, if I were you,’ I called to her
retreating back. ‘Otherwise they might think you’re avoiding
them.’
What I really wanted to do was tell her to get the hell out of
Luther’s house before the rest of us got dragged in, but I
quickly abandoned the impulse. Jane would do what her selfinterest demanded; no more, no less. Besides, Luther might not
take kindly to interference in his private life.
Blush, had been watching this little drama with avid interest.
‘That sinister bitch is going to get away with it, you know,
Syd.’
‘Life’s like that.’
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‘Maybe she’s the one who took that shot at you.’
‘Nah, no money in it.’
‘God, that’s a depressing thought. Let’s order in a pizza.’
Blush and I ate our pepperoni pizza in front of the television
in gloomy silence. Blush was probably anxious about whether her
abrasions would leave scars. I was worrying about getting dragged
into Jane Garrett’s game, wondering how I was going to get the
nerve to accuse Carmel Aboud of arranging the murder of her
husband, and despairing that I would ever find out who was
gunning for me. Maybe I’d have to emerge from hiding and see what
happened.
Finally I got up the nerve and rang Carmel. She was chatty,
apparently recovering rapidly from the trauma of premature
widowhood. I told her I’d looked in at the agency. ‘I take it
you’ve decided to take over the management of the business?’
She was cagey. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘I looked in. Chantelle’s gone.’
She laughed. ‘I know, I just couldn’t help myself. There’s
something to be said for being the boss.’
‘Are you, Carmel?’
She heard the change of tone. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Are you really the boss, Carmel, or is Joey Nasser running
the show?’
I could feel Carmel’s wheels grinding: should she deny all
knowledge of Joey Nasser? Apparently she decided that wouldn’t
wash. ‘Joey Nasser, my personal trainer? What’s he got to do with
it?’
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‘That’s what I’d like to know, Carmel.’ I ventured a little
poetic licence. ‘He was spotted outside Adam Quinn’s unit the
night he was killed. ‘And...’ I paused. ‘He’s got the same tattoo
Adam had.’
‘What are you talking about? Tattoos, murders? This isn’t a
kung fu movie, this is my life! My reputation!’ Carmel was
breathing harshly, probably hyperventilating from pure fright.
‘Unless you think you can prove any of this, you’d better keep
your mouth shut, Syd, or I’ll slap a writ on you.’
‘What was it, Carmel? Was Eddie planning to squander the
family fortune just when you were about to bail out with the
kickboxer? Did you think you wouldn’t be able to get your money
out once he’d signed the contract on the Darling Point
development?’
‘There was no Darling Point development then, Syd. You have
nothing.’
‘What do you mean, then?’
There was an uncomfortable silence: in her anxiety, Carmel had
given too much away. ‘After you told me about it, I looked into
it,’ she conceded. ‘I’ve decided to go ahead with it myself. With
Skipper.’
Skipper, indeed. Skipper Martindale knew which side his bread
was buttered on. He wouldn’t give a damn which Aboud put up the
money, and if it was necessary to get Carmel’s agreement to the
deal, he’d be quite happy to lie and say he’d never intended to
go into partnership with Eddie. I had a sinking feeling I was
going to have to front up at police headquarters and tell my
177
sorry story from the beginning. Otherwise, Carmel Aboud and her
boyfriend were going to walk.
I rang off, feeling like the universal patsy. Calling Lizzie
couldn’t possibly depress me more, I decided. If I tried to pump
her about Jasper Garrett’s disappearance, she’d want to know why,
so I told her what I’d discovered about Carmel Aboud.
‘So Eddie was right. Carmel was playing around on him. And you
walked in and told him he was wrong. No flies on Carmel. She
conned both of you. But then, you always were a sucker for a
pretty face and big tits...’
‘It wasn’t that! I never saw any evidence of hanky panky.’
‘I’ll bet you didn’t look. Carmel gazed at you with those big
brown eyes and swore she was just trying to become more beautiful
for Eddie and you lapped it up. You sap!’
That was true, but I would admit it only under durance vile.
We began picking over the bones of the case, trying to find some
hard evidence against Carmel. What I still couldn’t figure out
was why Carmel hired me to follow Eddie.
In one of her bursts of
intuition, Lizzie said, ‘You said he wasn’t meeting Chanteuse...
sorry Chantelle. Who was he meeting?’
‘Half the silvertails in the eastern suburbs trying to flog
their frontages, and Skipper Martindale.’
‘Exactly. Skipper Martindale, the alleged partner in the
alleged property deal that Carmel says didn’t exist. When did he
meet Skipper?’
Without my notes, which I’d left at the office, I had to rack
my brains to remember.
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‘Was it before or after Adam Quinn took a swing at him? Lizzie
prompted.
‘Before.’
Lizzie breathed out, and I finally twigged. It was so simple.
Carmel had put two tails on Eddie. Once she had proof her husband
was playing footsie with Martindale, she’d sicked the Cobras, in
this case Adam Quinn, onto him. Eddie had spotted the tail and
confronted Quinn, who’d panicked and lashed out. I hadn’t spotted
Quinn until then because I’d been too busy watching Eddie. If
this ever came out, I’d be washed up as a PI.
‘So Carmel fed you this bullshit about a girlfriend to get you
to record Eddie’s meetings. She called you off when she had the
evidence he was lying to her about the Darling Point development.
She’d probably hired Adam Quinn to bump Eddie off, but Eddie
caught him and the plot changed. They had to fire Adam.’
Time to confess another gaffe. ‘Then Quinn got the wind up and
pissed off to the Gold Coast. I found out and told Carmel. I
think she sent Joey up there to get rid of him.’ I didn’t dare
tell Lizzie I hadn’t even been on Carmel’s payroll, that I’d
volunteered the kid’s whereabouts to his killers. ‘That’s why she
kept refusing to go to the police. She said it was because they’d
regard the wife as the prime suspect, but in fact she was buying
time so they could dispose of the only witness before the cops
put her under the microscope.’
‘We’ve solved it,’ said Lizzie.
I quickly brought her down to earth. ‘Except we can’t prove a
thing. First of all, we don’t know if it was the kid or Carmel’s
179
boyfriend who actually killed Eddie. The weapon hasn’t been
found—it’s probably in the harbour. If Skipper Martindale keeps
his mouth shut, there’s no motive. There’s probably no proof Joey
and Carmel were an item before Eddie died. As for the murder of
Adam Quinn, the motel manager might or might not be able to
identify Joey Nasser as the man waiting in the car outside.’
‘Christ, it’s not like they’re rocket scientists,’ said
Lizzie. ‘They must have made some mistakes. You can’t bump off
two men without missing something. What about Adam Quinn’s
friends? He must have confided in someone. If he was scared, in
over his head and on the run, he must have told someone. Think
about it.’
I made myself a pot of tea and while it stewed, I stewed about
the mistakes I’d made in this case. Tracy’s arrival saved me from
slitting my wrists. After she’d poured herself a cup of tea, she
came and sat opposite me in the living room. With Blush already
in bed, we had a few moments to ourselves for the first time in
days. We needed to talk, but I knew she’d have to be the one to
make the first move. There was still a lot of the watchful,
fearful stray cat in Tracy.
When she decides to talk, she gets straight to the point.
‘What did you think of Luke?’ she asked after ten minutes of
tense silence.
‘I’ve met Luke before, remember..’ I began, but Tracy waved
this away with her mug.
‘I know, but now. He’s different now.’
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‘Tracy, do you really think anybody changes much after the age
of six months?’
The older I get the more I believe that everything is
programmed in before we’re born. It’s all over once we take that
first breath of air: our character, our fate, even the day we’re
going to die. The only way you can alter your fate is by buying a
motorbike.
‘You don’t like him,’ she said. So much for diplomacy.
‘It’s not that simple. I don’t dislike him. He was a ruthless
kid, but the circumstances were complicated. His father was a
pornographer and his mother starred in the dirty movies—before
she got born again, anyway—and he was raised by a stepfather.
Maybe that sort of start teaches you to look after yourself.’
‘My start wasn’t too good, either, so I know what he was up
against,’ defended Tracy.
‘So what’s your point? I wouldn’t call you ruthless.’
‘But women turn it in and hate themselves, Syd. Men take it
out on the world.’
‘Look, I’ll admit you’ve probably got to know him better in
the last couple of weeks than I ever did,’ I conceded. ‘But I
know he lied to his mother, conned his little old grandmother,
and went to bed with his stepmother in his father’s house. What
makes you think he’ll be honest with you?’
Her face fell. ‘I have to trust my instincts.’
I gave up at that point. Ten years ago people would have been
giving her similar advice about me, and we’d rubbed along fine.
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Maybe she’d be lucky. To arouse her fighting spirit, I said, ‘If
it doesn’t work out, you can always come to me for help.’
She pulled a face, then laughed. ‘With your track record on
relationships, I’d be better off with Blush.’ It looked as if we
were friends again.
I hit the sack soon after, and was deep in slow wave sleep
dreaming of Luke’s mother, Denise Dwyer, when something woke me—
raised voices coming from Luther’s room. I snuck to my door and
listened, but I could hear nothing but muffled rage. After an
almighty crash that sounded like a lamp hitting a wall, Luther’s
door opened, then slammed, and footsteps ran down the stairs.
Light footsteps—Jane Garrett’s. Then the front door crashed and a
car started up and roared off, shattering the complacent Paddo
peace and setting several dogs barking.
Luther was single again.
I wasn’t the only spy in the house of love. At breakfast, Blush
and Tracy rehashed the drama gleefully.
‘Poor Luther, his heart will be broken,’ said Blush, softhearted as ever.
‘Does he have one, Syd?’ asked Tracy.
‘Yeah, he told me not to frighten the old girl next door when
I moved in.’
‘We know he’s got a heart,’ said Blush. ‘What she wants to
know is does he have a sex life?’
‘No, I don’t,’ protested Tracy. ‘I mean love. Is he capable
of falling in love?’
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‘You should have seen the way he stared at her that night she
copped the black eyes,’ I said. ‘It was a coup de foudre.’
Blush stared at me blankly. ‘Whatever that is. Maybe he’s into
S&M. Turned on by bruises.’
‘What about her, Syd? Was she for real, or was she using him?’
asked Tracy.
‘A bit of both, I think. She probably fancied a bit of rough
trade, and when he broke her husband’s nose, she went all wobbly
at the knees.’
‘My hero,’ trilled Blush.
At which point Luther lumbered in. Caught in flagrante, Blush
and Tracy exchanged furtive looks and tried to stifle a fit of
embarrassed giggles.
I got up to put on some more coffee. ‘Jane coming down for
breakfast?’ I asked. Blush choked on a toast crumb and had to be
thumped on the back.
Luther shot me the sort of look primitive man would have got
from a mastodon whose lunch he’d interrupted, and took a carton
of eggs and a bowl of evil-looking lard out of the fridge. I
feigned innocence. Forced to give me the benefit of the doubt, he
growled, ‘She’s moved out.’
After heating the dripping, he cracked six eggs into the
frying pan. He looked up and we got into a staring match, but I
refused to back down. ‘Why?’
‘She felt it was time she made herself available to the
police,’ said Luther, moving back from the spitting pan.
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Blush and Tracy, quiet as mice, watched this dialogue, heads
swivelling like front-row spectators at Wimbledon.
‘What’s she going to tell them?’ I asked. Meaning, Is she
going to drag us into it?
Luther put four slices of white bread into the toaster. ‘That
she got the black eye from a mugger, and that she was so upset
she went away on a camping trip to recover.’
At the thought of Jane roughing it, Tracy and Blush started to
snigger. I shot them a warning look.
‘She wouldn’t be mad enough to use that disk to blackmail any
of Jasper’s clients, would she?’ I asked.
‘I advised her not to,’ he said, turning the eggs, which were
rapidly blackening around the edges, making my mouth water.
‘I
told her it would be her funeral.’
A chill settled on the breakfast table.
‘I reckon she’s mad enough to try anything,’ said Blush.
I disagreed: ‘I think she got what she wanted.’
‘Which is what?’ asked Tracy.
‘Manipulating someone else into murdering her husband.’
Tracy was aghast. ‘For breaking her nose?’
‘I didn’t think things like this happened in Paddington!’
said Blush.
‘It wasn’t the nose,’ said Luther, swallowing a huge mouthful
of egg, toast and tomato sauce. ‘It was the cat. That was the
last straw.’ He poured himself a cup of coffee. I thought he’d
got it wrong, but decided to keep my theories to myself.
‘What about the cat?’ asked Tracy.
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‘Jasper poisoned it and chucked it over her front fence,’ I
said.
Tracy and Blush exchanged a look that combined horror and
titillation.
‘About that disk,’
I said to Luther. ‘You didn’t happen to
make a copy, did you?’
Luther wiped up the last of his eggs with a piece of toast.
‘As a matter of fact, I did, but the one I’ve got is the
original.’ He disposed of the toast.
‘It’s got Jane’s
fingerprints all over it.’
‘And Jane knows you’ve got it?’
Luther nodded. That would explain the uproar last night.
Blush was openly enthralled, but Tracy was a bit peeved that
she’d been too wrapped up in her own affairs to notice the drama
going on under her nose. But at least they had solved the mystery
of Luther Huck’s love life: he might have lusted after Jane
Garrett, but he’d been awake to her schemes from the start, and
had made sure she couldn’t frame him for her husband’s
disappearance. Now he had her over a barrel; if she kept her
mouth shut about his role in the battle with Jasper, he’d keep
quiet about the disk. Luther wasn’t averse to a little
kneecapping in the name of chivalry, but no woman in the world
was worth a life sentence.
185
15
That afternoon I cabbed it down to the city and walked across the
bridge at the bottom of Market Street to Darling Harbour. Darling
Harbour, which was the product of Bicentenary fever back in 1988,
had been cloned from the redevelopment of the Baltimore harbour
front. All space-age tubular steel, public art, banners and
tastefully designed open spaces, it had been touted as a mixed
up-market retail precinct and a tourist attraction.
Unfortunately, nobody wanted to shop there, and the retailers
went broke. It had recently been revived with massive
transfusions of taxpayers’ money. Typical Sydney urban planning.
Its major attraction, apart from the Maritime Museum and a
huge conference centre used by for mass meetings by capitalist
evangelists like Bill Gates, was the Aquarium, which was where I
was heading. The aquarium was, oddly enough, designed for the
comfort of the fish—dim, claustrophobic and oppressively humid.
It echoed with the shrieks of excited children and the harried
shouts of parents. For those who preferred the souvenir to the
experience, its gift shop was crammed with aquatic artefacts. As
I was a bit early, I took a stroll around inside and gawked at
the fish, which remained obdurately unresponsive.
At 2.05 Tony Ryan came in with his daughter, a freckle-faced
eight-year-old with red curls and eyes the colour of aggies, as
186
we used to call agate marbles in my boyhood. A face like a map of
Ireland, my mother would have said. She was wildly excited,
pulling her huge father along behind her like a toy truck. Tony
saw me and signalled. I took a quick look around for
surveillance: only family groups and Asian tourists, riveted by
the sharks and stingrays. Nobody looked like an investigative
journalist, a bent copper, a police snout or the chairman of
ICAC, the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
I ambled over to where Tony was reading the information on
hammerhead sharks to his little girl. He introduced us. ‘This is
Mr Fish, Kelly,’ he said.
Kelly’s eyes widened. ‘Is this your place?’
When we stopped laughing, Ryan said, ‘Kelly, Syd and I are
going to have a chat. You stay here and look at the sharks. Don’t
get too far away, now, do you hear me?’
Kelly nodded solemnly and her father and I moved away from the
tanks and crowds, out of hearing range. The little girl was soon
surrounded by a group of Asian women, trying out their English
and exclaiming over her copper curls. She was in seventh heaven.
‘I’m in deep shit,’ Tony Ryan said, and then stalled.
‘Is this about Operation Abacus?’ I prompted.
He nodded.
Operation Abacus had been set up after a Royal Commission to
target organised crime in Kings Cross. I could have scripted the
rest of the conversation. I had a pretty good idea what was
coming. ‘Are you sure you want to tell me this, Tony?’
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‘I want someone to hear my side of it. I can’t tell the old
man…’
I shrugged. He took this as agreement, and told me his story.
There weren’t any surprises in it. ‘I’ve only been at the Cross
for eighteen months. I got transferred down from Gosford. My
wife’s mother was ill, and they did me a favour…’ He laughed
hollowly. ’I had no idea what I was in for. Those bastards must
have seen me coming a mile off. I was put to work for Byron
Turner on Operation Abacus…’
Byron Turner was the most senior detective at Kings Cross, an
old Vice Squad type. A hard, vicious bastard, he’d graduated from
the now defunct Darlinghurst Station. Like a hospital that’s been
so badly infected with an ineradicable bacteria that it has be to
demolished, the Darlinghurst Station was eventually shut down.
Instead of wiping out the infection, this simply spread it.
Darlinghurst old boys were salted throughout the system: some had
gone quiet; for others it was business as usual. Like
cockroaches, the latter seem to survive every anti-corruption
campaign, every inquiry, every purge. Tony Ryan would have been
putty in Byron Turner’s hands.
Ryan watched me adding it all up. ‘It was all hunky-dory for a
while,’ he continued. ‘Then it got serious. We got a tip-off
about a drug dealer moving huge amounts of coke out of a flat in
Woolloomooloo. When we searched the place, we found about twenty
grand as well as a heap of drugs. To cut a long story short,
Turner put the dough in a bag and kept it. He divvied it up later
188
back at the station. As junior member of the team, my cut came to
two grand.’
I could appreciate Tony’s dilemma. If he took his share they
owned him. If he refused, he’d be ostracised or worse: one day
when a speed freak was pointing a blunderbuss at him, he’d look
around for backup and find nobody there. The other alternative
was to blow the whistle, of course. But to whom? As a newcomer,
Tony Kelly lacked a powerful mentor in the Sydney force. Police
networks in New South Wales—anywhere, probably—are labyrinthine,
and police politics Machiavellian. If he’d complained to the
wrong person, a mate of Byron Turner’s, for example, he would
have been cracked like a nut .
He was reading my mind. ‘I thought of going to the
Superintendent, but I’d seen him drinking at the Bourbon with
Turner. I didn’t know if I could trust him.’
His instincts were sound. There had so far been no evidence to
link Danny Kirwan to corruption, but he was a mate of Bob
Leggett, my bête noir, and that made him automatically suspect in
my eyes.
‘So what did you do?’
He flushed. ‘I took it.. I put it in a safe deposit box—as if
that would help me if we got caught… I might as well have spent
it.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Once they had me over a barrel, they didn’t have to pussyfoot
around any more. They’re running an extortion racket out of Kings
Cross Station. All the dealers pay them a percentage to stay out
189
of jail. If one of them gets arrested in another jurisdiction,
Turner will do a deal with the arresting officer, if he’s bent,
or arrange to get rid of the evidence.’
‘Hasn’t anybody noticed?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘They’re careful. They arrest just enough
villains to make it look kosher, and anyone who refuses to pay up
or gets behind, gets run in. That helps keep the arrest rate up.
And it’s an incentive to other dealers to pay on time.’
‘So what’s happened to put the wind up you?’
‘Something’s gone wrong. I think Turner might have got
summonsed to this PIC hearing that’s coming up.’ The Police
Integrity Commission had been gearing up for a major purge for
months, and the city’s bent cops were quaking in their boots
wondering if they’d get the call. ‘Someone must have shopped
Turner, and as new boy on the block, I’m the obvious suspect.’ He
looked up to check on his daughter, and I knew what was coming.
‘Someone left a note in my locker threatening my wife and
daughter. I’m shitting myself. The maniacs these guys hang out
with would off you for a fix.’
I hadn’t been invited along to hear his confession; he could go
to his parish priest for that. ‘So what do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to keep a videotape for me. If anything happens to
me, I want you to get it to somebody who’ll act on it.’
He’d finally caught my interest. ‘What’s on it?’
‘A meeting in a Chinese restaurant. Byron Turner and Floyd
Bartz and another guy. I don’t know who the third man is.’
190
Floyd Bartz was an enforcer for Andrew Stikovic. Known to
friend and foe as The Stick, he specialised in drugs, but was
perfectly happy to branch out into armed hold-up and
GBH. He’d
been acquitted on a murder charge a few years back when the only
witness discovered he had a pressing engagement in Beirut.
‘When was it filmed?’
‘Recently. After Stikovic got arrested on that drug dealing
charge in Marrickville.’
‘Who filmed it and why?’
‘I think Turner set it up. Probably as some kind of insurance
policy.’
‘How did you get your hands on it?’
‘After I got the threat, I stayed back one night and broke
into Turner’s locker, looking for something to use against the
bastard. I’m good with locks. I played a bit of it, and raced it
to a mate’s place and copied it and put the original back.’
Tony Ryan went up a degree in my estimation. He’d been a chump
to let Turner get the goods on him, but at least he’d had the
spunk to fight back. I considered my options. The videotape was
dynamite, and Ryan didn’t want to be left holding it if someone
lit the fuse. If nobody knew I had it, I should be safe. And I’m
a sentimentalist at heart: I don’t like cops who threaten
people’s children. There was also an element of self-interest
involved: there was a chance I could use the tape as a bargaining
chip, either with the cops or with whoever was stalking me.
191
Ryan had been watching me do my sums. ‘If Turner and his mates
have to front the PIC, you won’t have to keep it for long,’ he
said. ‘They’ll go down for sure.’
Ryan had a long hanging on this hearing. If his so-called
mates rolled over on him, he’d probably do time. He’d have to be
sweating.
‘OK, I’ll take it,’ I said.
Tony Ryan suddenly remembered he was on baby-sitting duty and
scanned the room. His face relaxed when he saw his daughter with
her face pressed against the window of a tank full of giant
turtles: ‘Kel! Come over here!’
The little girl dawdled towards us. ‘Can I have you backpack,
please, love?’ her father asked. She shrugged her way out of a
purple rucksack and watched while he unzipped it and took out a
package wrapped securely in a plastic bag with a department store
logo on it. While he was handing it to me, Kelly put her hand up
and her father took it in his big gingery paw.
Suddenly there was a loud crack behind us. We wheeled around
to discover that the shark tank had exploded. Tonnes of water and
stunned fish spewed into the room. In the split second after the
crack, Tony Ryan swung his daughter up by her hand and into his
arms. Excellent reflexes. I instinctively held the video above my
head. Even the tidal wave drenched me and washed me against the
back wall, didn’t make me let go. People who were closer to the
explosion were sent flying backwards by the tsunami; some were
injured when they hit the wall, others were cut by flying glass
or smacked by flying fish. By hanging back for privacy, we had
been spared the worst of it.
192
Mayhem ensued. Kelly started to bawl from fright and shock and
Tony tried to comfort her. People screamed and called out for
family and friends. A siren shrieked and aquarium staff converged
on the area with first-aid kits and mobile phones. Ambulances
were called for those who were bleeding badly from flying glass.
A voice on the public address system urged us all to be calm.
Fish handlers and veterinarians appeared with portable tanks to
rescue the fish.
When Kelly subsided and became engrossed in the mad activity,
Tony Ryan handed her to me, reverted to his professional role and
waded into the rescue effort. When the worst of the fracas had
died down, he came back to check on Kelly.
‘I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be here when the
police arrive,’ I said.
He nodded and grabbed the child, and
we made a run for the
door, dodging an official trying to take names.
But we’d left our escape just a bit too late. When we emerged
blinking into strong sunlight, we were hit by the glare of
television lights and a barrage of noise. As we were the first
two civilians out of the disaster site, a media scrum converged
on us like hungry dingoes.
‘Oh, shit,’ murmured Ryan, and held his daughter up in front
of his face as a shield. I covered my face with the videotape. We
must have looked as guilty as a couple of armed robbers ambushed
outside a courthouse. Cameras were trained upon us, urgent voices
shouted, ‘Tell us what happened! How many people are injured?’
193
Wordlessly, Ryan and I agreed to make a break for it, and
began to fight our way out through the noisy throng. A
frighteningly fit telebimbo sprinted alongside me, thrusting a
microphone in my face, but I pushed her away and took off—I’d
probably be arrested for assault and obstructing the course of
newsgathering. A cab hove into view, but when I tried to hail it,
the driver took one look at my wet clothes and sped off. Shoes
squelching, jeans chafing, I traipsed back to the city, drawing
curious stares from passersby. Halfway up Oxford Street, I’d
dried out sufficiently to get a cab to stop for me.
It was almost five by the time I alighted in Paddington. Blush
was lolling in a deck chair in the back yard, snoring like a
bulldog; Luther was sprawled in front of the box watching soccer,
and Tracy was hogging the bathroom, probably getting ready for a
heavy date with the pornographer’s son.
Interrupting some men at sport is akin to trying to wrest a
haunch of wildebeest from a lion, but I needed to see the
videotape. When I finally managed to capture Luther’s attention,
the wild look in my eyes must have piqued his curiosity. He
snapped off the soccer and chucked me the remote control.
‘What’ve you got there? A judge having it off with a schoolboy?’
If only: then I could trade my way out of the shit I was in.
‘I don’t know exactly,’ I said. ‘I got a bit sidetracked when the
Aquarium exploded.’
‘Whose aquarium?’
‘The one at Darling Harbour.’
‘And it what?’
194
‘It exploded,’ I said patiently.
Luther took a closer look at me, noticed that my clothes were
damp, and decided to suspend disbelief. ‘You’re serious, aren’t
you?’
I nodded and turned on the VCR, noticing for the first time
that my hands were trembling; delayed shock, probably. The tape,
which looked as if it had been filmed on closed circuit
television, showed two men sitting in what looked like a private
room in a Chinese restaurant. The younger one, who was dark and
wore a rap singer’s ransom of heavy gold jewellery, had the
vicious, self-consciously tough look of a hardened crim—Floyd
Bartz, apparently. The older man was middle-aged and bulky, going
to fat, and wore the sort of bad suit that advertised him as a
plain clothes cop—Byron Turner. They ate, chatted—no sound, and
I’m not a lip reader—and drank beer for what seemed like an
eternity.
‘I hope neither of these gentlemen know you’ve got this tape,’
said Luther. ‘And I hope they don’t know you’re staying here.
Where did you get this?’
‘Can’t say. It’s an insurance policy.’
‘More like a bloody time bomb.’
I held up my hand for silence: another man had entered the
room. He was fortyish, confident and well-dressed. Turner
introduced him to Bartz and he sat down. A waiter came into frame
and slapped a bowl and chopsticks onto the table. When he left
the discussion resumed.
‘Know who he is?’ I asked Luther.
195
‘Never seen him. But he looks like a cop to me.’ That’s what
I’d thought.
Suddenly a voice spoke up from the door. It was Tracy,
towelling her hair dry and reeking of rose-scented bath oil.
‘What are you watching?’
‘A dirty video,’ I said.
That piqued her interest. ‘Can I have a look?’
‘Be my guest.’
She sat down and we re-ran the tape. As soon as the camera
zoomed in on the face of Floyd Bartz, Tracy let out a little
shriek. I froze the frame.
Luther and I exchanged looks. ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.
‘It’s him,’ Tracy said, her face white, her pupils huge.
‘Who?’
She hugged herself and started to rock back and forth. ‘I’m
sorry, Syd. It’s my fault.’
I was bemused. She seemed to be working herself up to some
sort of explosion, and I had no idea what she it was about. I put
a restraining hand on her arm. ‘Stop it, Tracy. What are you
talking about?’
She looked mournfully at me, then at Luther, then back at me,
and sighed hopelessly. ‘You know when Dan and I borrowed the
Valiant? And we told you the bumper bar fell off?’
I nodded, my hackles rising.
‘Well it didn’t. We were over at Waterloo in this back lane,
and it was dark, and Dan was mucking about and we ran into a
parked car.’
196
My expression frightened her, and she said quickly: ‘It didn’t
do much damage, really. And we got it fixed.’
‘Where is this going?’ I asked, dreadfully calm now.
‘That creep...’ she pointed to the Floyd Bartz... ‘got out of
the car and came towards us. He was carrying a jack handle. He
was screaming. We thought he might bash us...’ She looked up
under her lashes and said with a flash of cunning: ‘Or the
Valiant. And I know how you feel about that car…’
‘Get to the point,’ I snarled.
‘So we shot through. I know you’re supposed to stop at an
accident, but that guy was really scary. And we did get the car
fixed.’
‘You do realise who your dumb-arsed boyfriend ran into, don’t
you?’
She shook her head.
‘Floyd Bartz, a heavy duty crim. A lieutenant of Andrew
Stikovic, who just happens to be a drug importer,
bank robber
and murderer.’
Tracy paled.
‘What sort of wheels did he have?’ asked Luther.
Tracy shrugged. ‘Something white and ordinary, four door. But
there was a red sports car parked on the other side of the road.’
‘Sounds like The Stick’s car,’ said Luther. ‘That piece of
Japanese shit is his pride and joy.’
‘Why would Bartz be driving it?’ I asked.
‘The Stick’s in jail, awaiting trial. You remember that big
drug bust at Marrickville a couple of months ago?’ I shook my
197
head. ‘Cops raided a house and took out a couple of mil worth of
coke. They arrested a heap of people, including The Stick. His
fingerprints were on the kitchen scales.’
Tracy’s eyes narrowed with cunning. ‘I guess we did the right
thing, then?’
I suppressed an urge to slap her. ‘What about the other man?’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t get a good look at the guy in the
passenger seat. He was lying pretty low.’
Now that we had this cleared up, I felt I had earned the right
to vent my spleen. ‘This is great news. I lend you my car—against
my better judgment, I might add—and your prancing fool of a
boyfriend runs into, yes literally runs into, a secret meeting of
a gangster and someone who probably doesn’t want to be seen
consorting. Like a cop.’
‘Yes, but...’
‘And you didn’t tell me! You knew somebody took a shot at me,
and still you didn’t tell me!’
‘I didn’t know who they were!’ Tracy shrieked. ‘We just
thought they were a couple of heavy hoons. I thought whoever
killed Eddie Aboud was after you…’
Woken by the din, Blush, looking like an unmade bed, appeared
at the door. Realising her chick was under attack, she charged
into the room, threw a protective arm around Tracy and pushed me
away. ‘What are you yelling about, Syd? You’re frightening the
poor child!’
I told Blush what the poor child had done. She pursed her lips
and gave Tracy a more in sorrow than anger look. ‘Oh, Gawd,
198
Trace. That Valiant sticks out like a... well, you know. It
wouldn’t have been hard to find out who owned it.’
‘Yeah, me,’ I said. ‘The idiot, the mark.’
‘It was a bit naughty of you, Trace,’ chided Blush. ‘You
could have got Syd killed.’
Criticism from Blush was more than Tracy could bear in her
overwrought state. She started to weep. As it was more likely to
be self-pity than remorse, I ignored her. A knock on the door
interrupted this drama. We subsided guiltily: maybe it was the
local constabulary, called out to a domestic by the old girl next
door. But in case it was somebody looking for me or Jane Garrett,
I took the tape out of the VCR and stowed it under a cushion
while Luther was answering the door.
It was Luke Coogan, calling for Tracy. We all breathed again.
‘Not a bloody word about this to anyone,’ I hissed at her.
‘Specially not to Luke. Bernie Coogan is probably a bosom buddy
of Stikovic’s. Michelle probably buys her drugs from him.’
The sight of Luke sent Tracy off on another crying jag, and
she flew into his arms. He glared at us and said over her heaving
shoulder. ‘What’s wrong?’
I glared back. ‘Nothing you need to know about.’
‘Come on kiddies,’ said Blush, scenting the territorial
imperative in the air.
She took their arms and ushered them up
the stairs out of harm’s way.
Luther got up, lumbered into the kitchen and returned with a
six-pack. He threw me a tinnie and said, ‘What now?’
‘I suppose I could challenge Floyd Bartz to a duel…’
199
‘Might be a better idea to find out who the bloke lunching
with Bartz and Turner was,’ he suggested mildly.
‘How?’
‘You’re the PI. I’m just a bouncer.’ Shaking his head sadly at
my incompetence, he went upstairs to get ready for work.
Later Blush found me in the back yard sullenly drinking beer.
‘Tracy’s calmed down,’ she said.
I didn’t answer. She tried again. ‘Luke seems like a nice
boy.’
‘Yeah, and Ivan Milat went to the Christian Brothers before he
murdered all those backpackers. So what?’
Blush abandoned any attempt to appeal to my better instincts.
‘She should have told you, Syd, but it probably wouldn’t have
made any difference.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you wouldn’t have known who those blokes were, would
you?’
‘No, but at least I would have known someone had a reason for
shooting at me.’
I wasn’t ready to forgive Tracy’s sin of omission, because I
suspected Dan had been driving and had talked her into the coverup. I was starting to feel paranoid, as if everybody who’d
crossed my path in the last month had lied to me and used me.
‘It looks as if you’re stuck with me for a few more days,
mate,’ I told Luther, when he came downstairs. My announcement
was greeted with silence, which I chose to interpret as assent.
If Luther was disconcerted by the high drama that had invaded his
200
sanctuary, he didn’t show it. I think he was actually enjoying
himself, though it’s difficult to tell.
Speaking of drama, I had forgotten that Tony Ryan and I had
been filmed in full-frontal, full-colour at the Aquarium a few
hours ago. As Luther left for work, I called out, ‘For the next
instalment, watch the six o’clock news.’
Soon after, Tracy and Luke decamped, slamming the front door
defiantly but keeping well out of my way. Blush and I took our
drinks inside to watch the news. The lead item was about the axe
murderer. With all my own troubles, I’d forgotten that the
scourge of the tourists was still at large. No longer: that
morning a 21-year-old man had walked into a police station and
announced, grinning, that he was the axe-murderer. It was all a
bit of an anti-climax. We’d have to wait for the trial to find
out why he’d done it.
The Aquarium explosion was next. The visuals featured Tony
Ryan, Kelly and I, looking like drowned rats, guiltily trying to
evade the cameras.
‘You really should get rid of that shirt, Syd,’ chided Blush,
focused on the essentials as usual. ‘It’s starting to fray around
the collar.’
Watching myself trying to outrun the wily woman reporter, I
was too engrossed to bite. Every cop in Kings Cross would be
watching this, taking notes. I hoped Tony Ryan had somewhere safe
to hide.
201
When she stopped laughing at the sight of the blonde chasing
me up the road, Blush announced in an injured tone, ‘Why didn’t
you tell me you were going to the Aquarium?’
‘Why should I? You’re supposed to be convalescing.’
‘I’m not that sick. I’d have loved to go. I’ve never seen it.’
This finally made me see the funny side of the whole episode.
What did it matter that I’d aroused the suspicions of every
crooked cop in the state and that Tony Ryan would probably have
to go into the witness protection program, when I’d hurt Blush’s
feelings?
‘It wasn’t a pleasure jaunt,’ I said. ‘I was there to meet
the cop who
passed me that video. And if you’d been there, you’d
probably have ended up wearing a swordfish in your navel, so stop
bitching.’
202
16
Later that night a cameo appearance on the late news brought a
call from Lizzie, who’d obviously missed it the first time
around. ‘That was you, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I wish you’d get rid of that awful shirt.’
I started to defend myself, but she interrupted. ‘Is it
impertinent of me to ask what you were you doing at the
Aquarium?’
‘Why, have you got something against fish?’
‘Not when it comes with chips and vinegar, but I haven’t seen
you evince the slightest interest in the wide world of nature in
the fifteen years I’ve known you. I have a right to be sceptical,
surely?’
‘Do you remember the tall gingery bloke I was with, the one
with the little girl?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘Well, he gave me a videotape. Somebody at Kings Cross Station
has squealed to the Police Integrity Commission about the lads’
extra-curricular activities, and they think it’s him. They’ve
threatened him. He gave me a videotape. He wants me to go public
if something happens to him.’
The prospect of a secret police tape made Lizzie salivate.
‘When can I see it?’
203
I played hard to get. ‘He didn’t say anything about passing it
on to the media. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Ask him!’
‘How?’
‘Call him!’
‘I don’t have a number. I don’t even know where he lives. I
only met him once before, at the funeral. It’s his father I
know.’
‘Call Len and ask him.’
‘I don’t know where Len lives either.’
I could hear Lizzie leafing through a phone book, and puffing
angrily on a cigarette. She came back on the line, defeated.
‘There are about fifty L. Ryans in the bloody phone book!’
‘It wouldn’t make any difference. He’s probably in Port
Douglas wearing a wig and false moustache by now, or in the
witness program. The minute he showed up on TV with me, he was
history.’
‘In that case you can use your discretion,’ suggested Lizzie.
‘You’re always telling me I don’t have any.’
She exploded. ‘At least tell me who’s on the tape!’
‘Byron Turner. Floyd Bartz; he’s…’
‘I know who Floyd Bartz is. Who else?’
‘A third man. I’ve never seen him before, but he feels like a
law enforcement type. Someone who shouldn’t be consorting with
the likes of Bartz and The Stick, that’s for sure.’
‘Maybe I could recognise him. This is dynamite.’
‘It’s late! Don’t you ever stop working?’
204
‘Who’s working?’
I gave in. She arrived about a half hour later in her
clattering old Volkswagen, waking the dog up the road, which
loosed a volley of barks and woke another dog several blocks
away. Who needs an electronic alarm?
I made us some coffee and we ran the tape.
‘That’s Byron Turner, all right,’ Lizzie crowed, ecstatic. She
paused the tape so we could get a good look at the third man. ‘I
know I’ve seen him somewhere before, but it’s too long ago. I
can’t for the life of me place him. Damn.’
‘The short-term memory’s the first to go,’ I warned, rewinding
the tape and
removing it.
She ignored my barb. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing. This
stuff is dynamite. If they’re gunning for you already....’
‘It’s Bartz who’s gunning for me,’ I said.
Her eyebrows flew up: ‘How do you know?’
‘Tracy recognised him.’
‘What’s Tracy got to do with this?’
I told her. ‘The little bugger,’ she said. ‘I hope you kicked
her backside. She takes you for granted, you know.’
‘She’s jealous of you, too.’
Lizzie’s lips tightened, but she had more important things to
do than squabble with me. ‘This tape is dangerous. You should
pass it on to someone who can act on it.’
‘Someone like you, you mean?’
205
‘Why not? I’ve been hearing rumours that they won’t be able to
convict Stikovic, that the fix is in on the evidence. At the very
least this tape shows that his side-kick has been having private
meetings with an influential copper.’
‘Turner will say Bartz was an informer, and that they had to
meet secretly to ensure his safety,’ I said.
‘If I had a copy, I might be able to find out who the third
man is.’
‘You start showing this around and you’ll end up giving
evidence at ICAC. Or dead. Do you really want Stikovic and Turner
on your case? On second thoughts, go for it. It might take their
minds off me.’
That gave Lizzie pause for thought. Pretending to give in
graciously, she promised to do nothing with the information until
I gave her the go-ahead.
It was late before I managed to get to sleep. My mind kept
grinding over the possibilities. Andy Stikovic was obviously
running Byron Turner from jail, with Floyd Bartz as go-between.
But who was the third man, and did he have enough to lose to want
to cancel me out? Or was I backing the wrong horse? Maybe Tracy
was right and the real danger lay in the Aboud camp.
That night I dreamed I was scuba diving on the Great Barrier
Reef, surrounded by coral, anemones, sea snakes, stingrays and
huge fish. As I’ve never learned to dive, I wasn’t enjoying it.
Kelly Ryan, holding a small shark in her arms like a doll, swam
towards me underwater and said, ‘Is this your place?’
206
I was glad to wake up. As soon as I regained consciousness, I
thought: ‘Matches. Whatever that meant. Maybe I’d find out after
an infusion of caffeine.
Half-way through my second cup of coffee some stray electric
impulses collided in my memory and it came back: I’d picked up a
matchbook in Adam Quinn’s room with a phone number scrawled on
it. The manager of the Sundowner had said Adam Quinn had brought
a tart home one night. Fern, the barfly at the Casino, knew Adam.
She’d told me he was troubled, so he must have opened up to her.
Maybe it was her number on the matchbook. I found the second-hand
pants I’d bought in Queensland at the bottom of the dirty clothes
basket. The matchbook was still in the pocket. This time when I
rang the number, it answered.
‘Fern Sherbrooke,’ said a husky voice.
I got such a shock I almost dropped the phone. Not expecting
an answer, I had no idea what to say to Fern. As id didn’t want
to risk spooking Fern her give her time to come up with some
fairy tale about how Adam Quinn had got hold of her phone number,
I hung up, sweating. She might provide the leverage I badly
needed with the team investigating Eddie’s murder. Nothing would
convince Leggett and Bray I hadn’t had something to do with it.
At about 10 am. Tracy arrived home, looking and smelling as if
she’d spent the night doing ecstasy in a smoky dance club. She
made a bee line for the fridge and guzzled half a litre of orange
juice out of the carton, watching me warily, like a possum facing
down a goanna.
I pointed at the chair opposite me. Sighing, she sat down.
207
‘I hope you drank lots of water,’ I said, pouring her a cup of
coffee.
Stung by the inference that she didn’t know how to handle
drugs, Tracy snapped. ‘At least I’m not a pisspot like all you
oldies.’
What could I say? My friends and I had started hitting the
slops regularly at about fifteen, as had my father and his father
before him, no doubt. It’s still my generation’s drug of choice,
though marijuana gave it a run for its money in the sixties and
seventies. At least I’m honest enough to own up to my youthful
excesses, unlike those who developed amnesia the minute they had
children of their own.
An uncomfortable silence followed. Tracy broke it. ‘I’m
sorry.’
‘For calling me a pisspot? Coming from you, that’s an
endearment.’
‘Not that,’ she said testily. ‘I mean for not telling you
about the accident.’
‘Not good enough.’
She half rose. ‘What do you mean, not good enough?’
‘I’m angry at you for putting me in danger to protect that...’
Words failed me.
‘Dan?’
‘Yeah, Dan. He ran into Stikovic’s car, not you, but you went
along with the cover- up to protect him. You put me in danger.’
208
‘But I didn’t know that! This is Sydney, not Los Angeles!
People don’t shoot you because you run into the back of their
bloody car! How could I know they’d come after you?’
‘You couldn’t, but if I’d known about the accident, I might
have put two and two together. This way, I had no chance. I’ve
been running around like a headless chook. You left me
defenceless.’
Tears started sliding down Tracy’s face, making tracks in the
mascara rings under her eyes. ‘I said I’m sorry.’
Looking at the little tear-stained face, I was sorry, too.
Sorry that she’d had a rotten childhood, that she’d had to run
away from home at fifteen, that I’d been the best adult she could
find to latch onto. I was sorry that she’d had to miss out on
being an ordinary teenager, that she’d had to go to work, that
she’d had to live with strangers. I’d always admired her courage
and strength, but had never said so. I didn’t know how she’d take
it. And she’d never thanked me. The incongruities in our
relationship had inhibited us and made us tough and flip with
each other.
‘I’m not some idiot father to be conned and lied to,’ I said,
more kindly. ‘I’m a friend, I hope. If we’re going to stay
friends, you’ll have to stop treating me like the village idiot.’
Sympathy only made matters worse: she put her head down and
howled. I immediately felt guilty. ‘Hey, mate,’ I said. She
looked up. ‘I didn’t get killed. I’ll get over it. You’ll get
over it. You’re a good kid.’
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She rushed into my arms and sobbed on my tee shirt. The last
time she’d cried all over me was when her drunken stepfather had
come to Sydney to try to drag her back to Armidale. That was
years ago.
Eventually she dried her eyes and said, ‘Friends?’
I gave her a hug, patting her awkwardly on the back. A
mistake: she pulled back and went on the offensive. ‘Do you
realise that’s the first time you’ve ever hugged me?’
‘You were a minor, for Christ’s sake! If this hysteria about
paedophilia had been going on eight years ago, they’d have put
you in some institution for uncontrollable girls and arrested me.
I’d be out in Long Bay right now in the dirty old men’s unit with
all those priests and music teachers and judges.’
She gave a hiccupy laugh and released me. ‘I’ve been thinking
about my future,’ she said, deadly serious now.
I held my tongue, for once.
‘Luke wants me to move in with him, but I don’t think I’m
ready for that. I’ve decided to take it slowly. I want to be
absolutely sure this time.’
This from the moony girl who’d been practically choosing
babies’ names a few days ago. I couldn’t believe my luck: I’d
been dreading the engagement party, with Bernie loudly drunk and
self-congratulatory, Michelle glaring at me and Luke on
tenterhooks, waiting for someone to let the cat out of the bag.
And I wasn’t quite ready to be a grandfather.
‘What are you going to do?’
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‘Blush wants us to get a flat together.’ I rolled my eyes,
imagining the decor and the housekeeping. Tracy ignored me. ‘She
can get a job, and I can do some HSC subjects and try to get into
uni. Lola will let me work Thursday nights and Saturdays in the
salon.’
‘You seem to have it all worked out.’
‘Yeah, well, nobody else is going to do my thinking for me,
are they?’
Her tone was bitter. To lighten her up, I said, ‘I’ll come to
your graduation.’
I could just see it. Blush as Mum in a floating peach silk
number and a big hat, and me as Dad in a hired suit. The kid
would never live it down. I grinned.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘I was just imagining your graduation photos.’
Tracy gave a little snort, and started to laugh. It looked as
if life would go on.
On the strength of the reconciliation, I invited Nicki Howard
over for a meal that night. We wouldn’t have been most people’s
idea of a normal family gathering—a private investigator hiding
from the law; a former nightclub bouncer who had just kneecapped
his girlfriend’s husband; a former teenage runaway who’d just
decided not to move in with a pornographer’s son, and her
transvestite mother substitute—but Nicki didn’t miss a beat.
Tracy and Blush watched her like hawks so they could dissect her
later that night and speculate endlessly on our relationship, and
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Luther was courtly in a monosyllabic fashion. Between us we
cobbled together a Sunday roast, and Nicki brought an apple pie.
But if the food was traditional, the table talk was not. While
everybody else in Sydney was discussing real estate prices,
politics, the price of day care and marital breakdowns, our odd
little household spent several enjoyable hours discussing two
murders, an abduction, a disappearance and a narrow escape from
death by drowning at the Aquarium. Nobody mentioned a broken
nose, a kneecapping or the murder of a pedigree cat, however.
212
17
As Tony Ryan had predicted, all hell broke loose at the hearings
of the Police Integrity Commission on Monday. The news bulletins
led with the evidence of a young police officer code-named MI. It
had all started the previous July, when he’d participated in a
raid on a house in Marrickville used for the distribution of
drugs by a criminal code-named Ned Kelly—Andy Stikovic to those
in the know. The police had seized cocaine worth a million
dollars, along with scales and plastic bags. Ned Kelly/Stikovic
was arrested after his fingerprints were found on the scales.
MI testified that he had been approached soon after the raid
by one Detective Sergeant Byron Turner, from Kings Cross. MI
wasn’t surprised to hear from Turner, as the policeman had been a
guest at his wedding, but he was slightly taken aback when Turner
offered him a hefty bribe to wipe Stikovic’s fingerprints off the
scales. Mistake. MI was an honest cop. It had been so long since
Turner had seen one, he didn’t recognise the signs.
MI went straight to Internal Affairs— did not pass Go, did not
collect several thousand dollars. In corrupt cop parlance, this
was called ‘dropping a bucket’ on one’s colleagues. Internal
Affairs, which had taken a bashing during the Royal Commission
for its soft line on police misbehaviour, had a new Commander,
Chris Regan. Regan had become convinced that green-lighting, or a
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police protection racket for selected villains, was still going
on, despite the clean-up after the Royal Commission.
Corruption is like a peat fire. If not completely stamped out,
it smoulders away underground waiting for an opportunity to burst
into flame. Unlike his predecessors, who had a poor sense of
smell, Regan could smell smoke. He had MI wired up and sent out
to get evidence on Turner and his co-conspirators. It was
dangerous work for a suburban cop, but the hardest part would
have been putting up with Turner’s moronic diatribes without
ripping out his tongue.
In its news, the ABC did a re-enactment of some of the taped
phone conversations. One of them went like this: ‘You’re now
playin’ first grade, right, because if you hurt me, and my bleep
people will hurt you, right? But don’t get me wrong mate, I love
you like a brother, you know that... No bleep will ever hurt you
while I’m around, right?...’
Turner kept the screws on MI right up till the hearings.
According to the young copper, he been recorded as saying, ‘The
only thing that caused a problem at the Royal Commission was
blokes under pressure shitting themselves.’
The media went into raptures. My hopes rose. With Stikovic in
jail, Bartz would have directed the operation to turn MI. If they
got Turner, he might shop Bartz, and I could come out of hiding.
Byron Turner gave evidence till lunchtime on Tuesday.
According to the one o’clock news, the Police Integrity
Commissioner then stopped him leaving the court so the police
could arrest him for perverting the course of justice. One down.
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Lizzie immediately rang to try to prise the tape out of me, but I
saw it as a last resort, because I didn’t want any suspicion to
fall on Tony Ryan: I’d only use it to protect myself if Bartz
walked.
Tuesday night again found the Huck household riveted to the TV
news. No doubt Luther was watching it at Rydge’s and I knew
Lizzie would be glued to a set at the newspaper. Before we could
get to the PIC hearings, we had to sit through what passes for
news these days. The first item was a report that Viagra, the
thinking man’s Spanish fly, had killed off a few silly old
buggers with dodgy tickers.
‘The good news is that it will save the rhinoceros,’ said
Tracy, who was an armchair conservationist.
‘And drive silly old farts to extinction,’ said Blush.
‘And kill off the shoehorn industry,’ added Tracy, warming to
the subject.
When Blush asked me if I’d signed up for a Viagra tour to the
US, I cracked and told them to can it. They were still sniggering
when the latest word on police corruption hit the screen. Blush,
who’d been out partying for the past fifteen years while the
concerned citizenry had been obsessed by the unfolding saga of
police corruption, was mystified. ‘What’s this “green lighting?”’
‘It goes back to the eighties, when Bill Williamson got
control of the CID,’ I explained. ‘He and a few of his mates made
a deal with big-name crims to let them do as they liked as long
as they shared the loot and grassed on some of their colleagues.
It was a licence to steal. The armed robbery rate went through
215
the roof. You could buy your way out of anything if you had the
contacts and the dough.’
‘What happened to him?’ asked Tracy.
‘He got away with it pretty much. Spent a couple of years in
jail for opening a bank account under a false name. They could
never make anything else stick.’
They were dumbstruck. Most of us knew shoplifters who’d got
longer sentences than the man who’d sold the NSW police force out
to a syndicate of criminals. And bent coppers from that era, such
as Byron Turner, had simply gone underground, waiting for an
opportunity to strike again, like one of those viruses that take
years to incubate then kills its host.
Though we had found the travails of Byron Turner irresistible, it
wasn’t till Wednesday that we hit pay dirt. That was the day
Danny Kirwan, Superintendent of the Kings Cross police, appeared
before the PIC and testified that yes, he was indeed the head of
Operation Abacus, established to target organised crime in Kings
Cross. And yes, he did live next door to Andy Stikovic, the
notorious Sydney crime identity, and one of Operation Abacus’s
prime targets. But no, he hadn’t been passing confidential
information about the operation to Stikovic and his mates.
Apparently the police had become aware of the special
relationship between the drug dealer and the police
superintendent when they’d put The Stick under surveillance
during the investigation that had netted the cocaine haul.
216
Two down.
The media slavered. This was even better than Turner’s
testimony. After all the publicity about the Royal Commission and
all the promises of a new start for the police under their new
squeaky-clean Commissioner, an illiterate Sydney crim and had
been privy to the secrets of their most high-profile operation
from its inception. And all from the comfort and convenience of
his own living room. With their close relationship, it was only
natural that The Stick would call on Kirwan when he needed to get
those embarrassing fingerprints dusted off the scales. And Kirwan
had delegated Byron Turner to put the screws on MI.
Like Turner, Kirwan was arrested as he left the witness box.
The dominoes were falling, just as Tony Ryan had predicted.
Turner and Kirwan were out of the picture; The Stick was in
jail and doomed to stay there now the conspiracy to release him
had fallen apart; but the PIC moved onto the next witness without
any indication that they were about to arrest Floyd Bartz.
Evidently Turner and Kirwan had hung tough; they were probably
afraid of reprisals. Could I overcome forty odd years of
suspicion of the police and give them the incriminating
videotape? Maybe, but before I did, I wanted to know the identity
of the third man. I might need him.
I turned off the news. ‘Tracy, I need to know who the guy was
in the white car.’ She groaned. ‘I’m not harping on it; it could
save my neck. Try to remember everything you saw.’
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The kid tried hard, but like most women, she took little
notice of brands and models of cars. Dead-ended, I was forced to
abandon my pride. ‘How about asking Dan for me?’
‘No, Syd! Please don’t ask me. He’s really angry at me for
walking out.’
That meant I was going to have to talk to Tracy’s ex myself.
As I itched to drop-kick him to the moon, it would be a test of
my diplomatic skills.
Lizzie was on the horn as soon as the news ended. ‘I can’t
believe it! Those arseholes sold out Operation Abacus the moment
it was set up. After all that hype in the Royal Commission about
integrity tests for police officers...’
‘Yeah, but who did the integrity testing? Either one of the
mates or a one-eyed ostrich who didn’t notice that Kirwan and
Stikovic were bloody next door neighbours.’
‘Do you think Stikovic bought the house because of Kirwan, or
just got lucky?’
‘Stikovic is as cunning as a shithouse rat, but it was
probably just the devil looking after his own. I can just see it.
Kirwan’s mowing the lawn and Stick comes to the fence and says,
“By the way Danny, I hear you been appointed to Operation Abacus,
mate. How about keeping me in the loop?” And Kirwan says, ‘Yeah,
why not? It’s the least I could do for you Stick, seeing as how
you took in the mail last time I went to Bermagui on a fishing
trip.”’
‘I hope he enjoyed it. He won’t be doing any fishing in the
foreseeable future,’ said Lizzie with grim satisfaction. Then,
218
without missing a beat, ‘Bartz is still on the loose, you know.
You might as well give me that tape now.’
‘Not yet. I’ve got one more lead. After that, maybe.’
The next morning, morning, early, I borrowed the Harley and
dropped in on Dan Jenkins at the warehouse in Waterloo. I figured
this would be the best time to catch him; most actors don’t rise
till noon. With the directions Blush had given me, I found the
warehouse and banged on the door for what seemed like hours. Dan
finally answered, looking hung-over and surly, wearing only baby
blue underpants. When he saw who it was, he looked surprised,
then slightly guilty. Realising he’d need something stronger to
intimidate me, he rummaged around in his repertoire of poses and
came up with Bruce Willis. I never did like Bruce Willis. Bored,
I shoved him backwards and followed him into the warehouse.
Warehouses are all the go with a certain type of yuppie at the
moment, though most of the so-called loft developments around
town are just factories divided up into minuscule, overpriced
flats—if hens had to live in them there would be an outcry from
the RSPCA. This was depressingly authentic. Real estate agents
would probably describe it as ‘in original condition”. Too
original for anybody except winos and squatters and students. I
wondered if the rats were protected by heritage orders.
It might have become habitable if Tracy had hung around, but
without a woman’s touch, it was pure student grunge—a rumpled bed
behind a Chinese screen, a dilapidated couch and a couple of
chairs scavenged from a skip, a rudimentary kitchen in one corner
219
and a small room that probably housed a rusty dripping shower and
a dirty sink. The concrete floors were stained with grease, and
the high, elegant windows were opaque with decades of grime.
‘Nice place,’ I said. ‘If you’ve been vaccinated against the
plague.’
‘What do you want?’ he asked, climbing into a pair of board
shorts.
‘Information.’
Some of the tension went out of his jaw. ‘What about?’
I sat down on a chair, and he moved to the couch, cockier now
he’d concluded I wasn’t going to deck him. ‘The car you ran into
in my Valiant the other night.’
‘It was an accident,’ he said.
‘There’s no such thing as an accident, mate, but now isn’t the
time to discuss philosophy. What do you remember about the car?’
‘It was one of those new Holden Monaros. White. No
distinguishing features.’
‘Remember the registration number?’
‘You’re kidding. I was shitting myself. Tracy started yelling
about you killing us, then that orc bastard came at us with an
iron bar.’
‘What about the other guy, the one who stayed in the car?’
‘Didn’t get much of a look at him. Middle-aged, I think,
though.’ He stopped acting for a nanosecond and stared into the
rafters, thinking. Then he snapped his fingers. ‘There was a
baseball cap on the shelf behind the back seat of the car. Dark,
220
blue maybe, with some initials. An A and a C. Maybe an S.’ He
returned his attention to me. ‘Can’t remember anything else.’
It was enough. I got up to go. I was a little disappointed; he
might have just talked his way out of a smack around the ears.
But there was still hope. ‘I’m waiting,’ I said.
‘What for?’
‘Don’t push me, punk.’
He measured me up. I was old, sure, but I was a lot bigger than
he was, and I didn’t have to worry about spoiling my pretty face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he gritted out.
‘Good lad.’
His face reddened with suppressed fury and humiliation.
Grinning, I let myself out. There was a good chance the mystery
man in the restaurant was the man in the Ford. Time to give
Lizzie the go-ahead to start looking for the third man.
Lizzie listened carefully, then went away and found a phone
book. ‘Could be Civil Aviation Safety Authority, if Dan missed an
initial. Don’t think it would be Australian Communications
Authority. Child Support Agency?’
‘Hardly. I know some of these divorced dads are rabid, but they
couldn’t afford to hire Bartz to bump off the wife.’
Community Services Commission? Definitely not. Australian Trade
Commission? No, unless they’re about to start subsidising the
importation of heroin. Commonwealth Rehab, no. It says Customs
here. Wait till I look up the right name. Ah, Australian Customs
Service. ACS. What do you think?’
221
‘Sounds good to me, mate. A bent customs officer could be quite
valuable to a major drug dealer. Come over and get the tape.’
222
18
There was nothing to do now but wait for Lizzie to track down the
third man. When I read Thursday’s paper, I discovered that the
Aboud murder had slipped to page four, below the fold. Clearly ,
the investigation had stalled. I could start a few hares running
by letting Carmel know I’d caught her trysting with her paramour
at the Ozone Club, but it was bad enough having Leggett and Bray
on my trail without setting myself up as a target for Joey
Nasser. Or I could ring Crime Stoppers anonymously and tell them
that Fern Sherbrooke had information about Adam Quinn’s death. I
decided to do nothing. Instead I rang Nicki Howard, who agreed to
stop by for morning tea. I thought it was time to tell her about
the videotape.
Over coffee and Danish, I brought her up to date on the Aboud
case, and related the saga of the stolen videotape.
‘Which one were you?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Groucho, Harpo or Chico? It sounds like a Marx Brothers film.
How about A Day at the Aquarium?’
We were laughing when the doorbell rang. I answered it,
unfortunately. I should have legged it out the back door and over
the fence. It was Leggett and Bray.
223
‘Ah, Mr Fish,’ said Bray, practically salivating. ‘Just the man
we wanted to see. We’d like you to come down to the station with
us for a little talk.’
‘About what?’ I asked. The belligerence in my voice brought
Nicki to the door to see what was going on.
‘About the death of Mr Edward Aboud, for starters. I’m sure we
can think of several other matters if we put our minds to it.’
‘I want a lawyer,’ I said.
‘You’ve got one,’ said Nicki. I looked at her inquiringly.
She’d never mentioned having a law degree.
‘Do I know you?’ asked Bray suspiciously, his gooseberry eyes
bulging.
‘Not unless you’ve done a tour of duty in WA,’ said Nicki
sweetly, staring him down.
My confidence rising, I introduced her to Leggett and Bray. ‘My
lawyer, Ms Howard.’
The racket had woken Luther, who charged into the living room
like a warthog bent on revenge. The sight of two cops at his door
brought him to an abrupt halt. ‘What’s going on,’ he asked,
eyeing them warily.
In official patois, Luther could be described as ‘well known to
the police’; to Leggett and Bray he was proof that the arm of the
law wasn’t nearly long enough. They knew Luther was dirty, but
they’d never been able to get anything on him. While Luther and
the cops were glaring at each other, I noticed Blush’s head
appear over the banister then retract as suddenly as a poked
turtle’s.
224
Before the eyeballing contest erupted into war and got me into
even more shit with the law, I intervened. ‘I’m being taken in
for questioning. My lawyer, Ms Howard is accompanying me to
police headquarters.’ Luther turned to me and the thought BLOODY
JANE GARRETT! flashed telepathically between us. ‘Ring Lizzie for
me and tell her where I am, will you, Luther. Tell her it’s
urgent.’
‘What’s urgent?’ demanded Leggett.
That she find out who the bloody third man is, I thought, and
was suddenly assailed by doubt: what if the third man was an
undercover cop setting up a sting on Turner and Bartz, and not a
corrupt cop? Where would I be then? ‘That she contact my lawyer,’
I said. Suspecting we were up to something, Bray grabbed my arm
and started dragging me to the police car. Mrs Trussell appeared
at her front door, folded her arms and glared at the police, a
bit of old Paddington solidarity asserting itself.
On the way downtown Leggett and Bray were mercifully quiet,
which gave me time to think. They’d had to let me go last time
because they had nothing on me, but by now the Queensland police
would have given them a description of the man who visited the
Sundowner—and didn’t report the incident. I decided I’d throw in
Fern Sherbrooke’s name as a peace offering—thought it would be
like chucking a hamburger to a tiger—but that I’d keep the
existence of the matchbook to myself. No point admitting I’d
removed evidence from a crime scene. Sensing my tension, Nicki
squeezed my hand reassuringly. I squeezed back, hoping that she
225
really was a lawyer, and that if she were, she’d done some
criminal work.
At police headquarters we were led upstairs to an interview
room, where we were joined by Detective Chief Inspector Marty
Sims, who was in charge of the Aboud investigation. The tape was
turned on and people were identified for the record. As Leggett
was about to launch himself into interrogatory mode, Nicki, cool
as a cucumber, held up a slender hand. ‘To expedite matters, my
client would like to make a statement.’
This was news to me. ‘Just tell them what’s happened since
Carmel Aboud hired you to tail her husband,’ Nicki said.
Looking like a bull terrier deprived of a kitten sandwich,
Bray said, ‘I’m running this show....’
‘Actually, Dick, I’m running it,’ interrupted Sims, his tone
deceptively mild. Dark, fortyish and smooth, he was the new face
of the police service, and looked more like a successful
bureaucrat than an old-time cop. ‘I’d like to hear what the man
has to say.’
Leggett and Bray exchanged a heavily-freighted look and
subsided into sullen silence.
It took me half an hour to trot out the story. There were
certain omissions, of course, but the police would be naive to
expect the truth and nothing but, especially from a private
detective. I didn’t mention the matchbook I’d filched, for
example, though I did admit to dodging the police, blaming my
failure of civic duty on an attempt on my life. I let them think
I suspected Carmel and Joey Nasser of trying to get rid of me. In
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the current hysteria about corruption, the very mention of
another police conspiracy would turn my life into a nightmare—and
Lizzie, Blush and Tracy would be dragged down with me. I intended
to get out of here before I was eligible for the pension.
Watching Sims’ face during this recitation, I got the distinct
impression I hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know.
At the end of the statement I played my best card and told
them that I believed Fern Sherbrooke could have information that
would help in their investigation.
I’d finally caught his interest. ‘Who is she and how do you
know about her?’
‘I met her in a bar in the Casino when I was inquiring about
Adam Quinn. She told me she knew him and that he seemed to be in
trouble. I didn’t have time to get back to her.’
Sims signalled to Leggett, who left the room to contact the
Queensland Police and get Fern Sherbrooke taken in for
questioning.
‘So let me get this straight,’ said Sims, when I wound down.
‘You’re accusing Carmel Aboud and Joey Nasser of conducting an
adulterous affair and hiring Adam Quinn to kill Eddie Aboud
before he squandered the family millions on a development
project. You’re saying Eddie Aboud and Adam Quinn had an
altercation in the street when Aboud caught Quinn following him
and this caused Carmel Aboud and Joey Nasser to call Quinn off.
That Quinn, who was supposed to disappear back to the UK, changed
his name and took off to the Gold Coast.’
227
He gave me a searching look. ‘And you’ve told us that you
found this out and told Carmel Aboud...’ This was the sticking
point: was I simply stupid and naive, or had I fingered Adam
Quinn to Carmel and set up his murder?
He took up the story again. ‘And you say that Joey Nasser flew
to the Gold Coast and killed Adam Quinn, burning the body so we
couldn’t identify the tattoo and tie him to Joey’s kickboxing
crew. And that when you went to Queensland to find Quinn, you
discovered the body—leaving the scene without identifying
yourself, incidentally—and returned to Sydney where you went
underground because you were afraid Joey Nasser and Carmel Aboud
would come after you. Have I got it right?’
I was impressed; he’d put together this recitation from a few
scratched notes. ‘More or less,’ I said.
Sims frowned. Nicki kicked me under the table.
‘Yes, sir,’ I amended.
‘And you’ve been holed up at Luther Huck’s house in Paddington
for the last two weeks?’
‘Yes.’
‘You do realise you’ve admitted you had information about Adam
Quinn which would have helped our investigation and that you
withheld it?’
I nodded.
‘Please answer for the tape,’ said Leggett, gloating.
‘Yes,’ I said.
228
‘And you left the scene of the crime in Burleigh Heads, even
though you believed the dead man was connected with a major
murder investigation in New South Wales?’
‘Yes,’ grudgingly.
Bray said, ‘What was that?’
I kept my trap shut and stared at him. I’d learned how to
madden authority figures with dumb insolence at school, dealing
with Marist Brothers whose idea of persuasion was a clout around
the ear or six of the best with a steel-enforced leather strap.
One of my old persecutors was now in the rock spider unit for
diddling schoolboys. I suppose I should be thankful I’d been such
an unappetising lout.
‘My client understands,’ said Nicki, shooting us both a
warning look.
‘Perhaps you could give us one good reason why we shouldn’t
charge you with withholding evidence,’ said Sims.
‘Mr Fish had every intention of coming forward,’ said Nicki.
‘Unfortunately, an attempt was made on his life. He made the
decision to remove himself from the line of fire. It was his way
of defending himself.’
‘What do you think the police are for?’ asked Leggett, giving
me an opening as wide as the Khyber Pass.
‘You tell me,’ I said. ‘Or are you as confused as your mates
on Operation Abacus?’
As Bray turned puce and started to rise from his chair, there
was a knock on the door. Looking irritated, Sims yelled, ‘Come
in!’
229
An embarrassed young police officer sidled into the room and
whispered in his ear. Though his face remained impassive, Sims’
ballpoint pen snapped in half. Nicki’s hand snaked out under the
table and squeezed my thigh.
When the young copper left, Sims switched off the tape
recorder and signalled to Leggett and Bray to leave the room.
Looking uncertain, they rose, but hovered, desperate to find out
what was going on.
‘Does this mean the interview is over?’ asked Nicki.
‘I’d like you to wait here, Mr Fish,’ said Sims. ‘And Ms
Howard, of course. We’ll resume the interview shortly.’
The three police officers left.
‘What was all that about?’ I asked.
Nicki shrugged. ‘Let’s just hope it’s good news.’
‘Maybe the Queensland cops have tortured something out of
Fern,’ I suggested. Then I realised what had happened. ‘Or
Lizzie’s come good.’
Nicki shook her head at me, and I subsided. She was probably
right; the New South Wales police are notorious for bugging the
citizenry, with or without legal sanction.
After a long fifteen minutes, Leggett and Bray burst in.
‘You’re free to go,’ Leggett barked. His jaw was clenched so
tightly I half expected his bridgework to snap.
Bray let me get to the door before he made his move, firing
the words into my back like poison darts. ‘For the time being.’
As our police escort marched us down the corridor, I heard my
name called. It was Lizzie, emerging from an office. She ran and
230
caught up with us. She put her finger to her lips. ‘Wait till we
get outside.’
On our way out, I introduced the two women, who sized each
other up quickly and smiled falsely. As soon as we burst through
the front doors, Lizzie said, ‘I found him, the third man.’
‘What took you so long?’ I asked.
‘Shut up, Syd,’ said Nicki. ‘Who is he, Lizzie?’
‘Alistair Hewitt, Deputy Director, Customs Service of
Australia.’
‘Not an undercover cop?’
‘No chance of it. Too senior.’
I relaxed.
‘How did you track him down?’ asked Nicki.
‘Easy. I got hold of Customs’ annual report. There he was, in
full colour, large as life.’
‘How did you get me sprung?’ I asked.
‘I demanded an audience with Chris Regan at the PIC. I
promised him the tape if they let you go.’
‘But you might lose the scoop,’ said Nicki. Wrong call.
‘Yeah, well Syd and I go back a long way,’ said Lizzie
virtuously. Meaning, I might be a journalist but I wouldn’t sell
my best friend for a story. Not today, anyway. Reproved, Nicki
blushed. Game, set, match to Lizzie Darcy: thank you ball boys,
thank you linesman.
‘How long did you give them?’ I asked, to defuse the tension.
‘I figured a day would give them time to get their story
straight. Then it’s open season.’
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Lizzie had saved my skin again. I was grateful, of course, but
had the uneasy feeling I’d be paying off this debt into my
dotage. I thanked her and she kissed me— Lizzie never kisses me:
this was to show Nicki that she had prior ownership—before
hailing a cab to get back to work. Nicki and I found a pub and
treated ourselves to strong drink and a post-mortem of the day’s
events.
‘I can’t believe you got away with it,’ she said. ‘If it were
me, I’d buy a lottery ticket on the strength of it.’
I was only too aware that I’d had an uncomfortably close
shave. ‘If I hadn’t run into Len Ryan at Declan Doherty’s
funeral, I’d never have met Tony Ryan, and I’d be up shit creek.
That videotape nails Bartz. With him out of circulation I can get
my life back.’
‘What do you think they’ll do about Carmel and Joey Nasser?’
‘Grill Fern for a start. If she knows anything about Eddie’s
murder, she’ll cough it up eventually. In the meantime, I think
they’ll put Carmel and Joey under surveillance. If he’s as stupid
as he looks, he’s probably still got the gun.’
‘Tell me about Carmel. Is she really capable of murder?’
I shrugged. ‘Her father was a crook who never got caught and
punished, so she probably grew up in an atmosphere of contempt
for the law. That would corrupt some people. But murder, I
wouldn’t have thought so....’
‘Maybe it’s a folie à deux,’ suggested Nicki. ‘If she hadn’t
run into Joey Nasser, she would probably just got herself a
lawyer and sued Eddie for her share of the loot.’
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‘But he’s such a creep,’ I protested.
Nicki laughed. ‘What’s the matter, Syd, do you think Carmel
deserves something better?’
Like me, she meant. She and Lizzie had more in common than
they would ever admit—the ability to read me like a book, for one
thing.
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19
In Lizzie’s front-page story about the videotape, she revealed
that Floyd Bartz had been arrested, and that ICAC had launched an
inquiry into the Australian Customs Service.
After some initial reluctance to admit she had let a boy
bouncer from Jupiter’s Casino pick her up, Fern Sherbrooke broke
down under the tender ministrations of the Queensland police and
admitted she’d known Adam Quinn. He’d told her that Joey Nasser
had recruited him from the kickboxing club to tail Eddie Aboud
and that he’d blown it. Fern insisted Quinn had never said he’d
been hired to kill Eddie. She said he was terrified that Joey
Nasser would find out he’d used his pay-off to settle an urgent
coke debt instead of leaving the country as planned.
On the strength of Fern’s evidence, the police put Joey Nasser
and Carmel Aboud under surveillance. Carmel was far too clever to
leave a trail, but Joey Nasser was cockier and less careful. A
police bug in his car picked up a suspicious phone call to one of
his kickboxing students, and a raid on a flat in Newtown
unearthed a gun which proved to have been used in the shooting of
Eddie Aboud, though not in the murder of Adam Quinn. Faced with a
charge of accessory after the fact, the student gave up the
master without a second thought. So much for secret societies and
tattoos and loyalty oaths.
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After his arrest, Nasser lost no time shopping Carmel.
Chivalry is, it seems, stone dead. In his version of the story,
Carmel was a suburban Lady Macbeth and he merely her love-lorn
dupe. It probably wasn’t going to play, but as one of Carmel’s
victims, I had some sympathy for him.
Carmel denied all knowledge of the hit. She admitted she’d had
an affair with Joey Nasser after he’d become her personal
trainer, but insisted he had acted on his own volition in
murdering her husband. She had no idea that he’d been responsible
until he’d confessed. And how could Eddie’s proposed development
in Darling Point have been a motive if she’d gone ahead with it
after his death?
Carmel was a good operator, and she had been careful; the
police could find no evidence to connect her with either murder.
The DPP declined to proceed against her. Joey Nasser was charged
with the murder of Eddie Aboud.
Though they were convinced the duo had also disposed of Adam
Quinn, the police were, as the newspapers like to say, ‘baffled’.
The manager of the Sundowner could not positively identify Nasser
as the man in the rental car, and no weapon had been found. There
was no record of Nasser hiring a car at the Gold Coast. Unimpeded
by legal technicalities like evidence or conventions such as
reasonable doubt, the media tried Nasser for both murders in the
court of public opinion and found him guilty.
Combining money, illicit passion, the martial arts and real
estate, the Nasser trial was as big as Lord of the Rings.
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Eddie’s defence team put Carmel Aboud on the stand but failed
to crack her story. The country divided over whether she was the
victim of male sexual obsession or a femme fatale who had
engineered the deaths of two men and got away with it. I was
besieged by journalists for an opinion, but kept my counsel: I
had no more proof than the police that Carmel was guilty, and was
afraid she would sue me if I started shooting off my mouth. The
jury took only two hours to convict Joey Nasser, and the judge,
who obviously didn’t believe in love, sent him down for life.
Carmel became a celebrity, discussed on talkback radio, at
dinner parties and in think pieces in the newspapers. She gave
interviews about how she and her family were holding up under the
vile innuendo and outright calumny, and even appeared in a spread
in Vogue, showing off her svelte new figure and looking none the
worse for widowhood and notoriety.
Carmel should have resisted the temptation to rub our noses in
it. After the English tabloids picked up the story of the
Antipodean Lady Macbeth, a reader came forward with a very
interesting letter. Meant for Vanessa Kemp, it had been
misaddressed by Adam Quinn, probably in a coke haze, and had gone
to an apartment building several blocks away. Not recognising the
name, the postman stuffed it in the nearest letterbox. The
tenants played pass the parcel with the letter until the arrival
of new resident, who succumbed finally to the universal
temptation to read other people’s mail and opened it. In the
letter, Adam had written that he’d held a strategy meeting with
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Joey Nasser in his car with Carmel sitting in the back seat. It
was Carmel’s only mistake, but a lethal one. She was arrested.
There was no way I could avoid being dragged into the trial.
Called to give evidence for the defence, I was able to swear
truthfully that I’d had no inkling of any murderous intent on my
client’s part, that I’d been hired to find out if Eddie Aboud was
having an affair and had been able to exonerate him. Ergo, Carmel
had no motive to kill him. Apart from the dough, that is.
Cross-examined by the prosecution about the relationship
between Carmel and Joey, I admitted I’d seen them at the same
gym, but certainly not in any compromising positions. Thank God I
hadn’t caught them in a clinch in the sauna. Nicki had prepped me
extensively, and forced me to buy a new suit and get a haircut.
On the positive side, the publicity brought in an avalanche of
work; on the down side, I emerged looking like another of Carmel
Aboud’s sex slaves.
The Aboud/Martindale housing development in Darling Point went
ahead. The publicity drove prices sky high. Starting at $2.5
million, the twelve luxury units were snapped up by the rich and
unsuperstitious. With any luck, Carmel would still be young
enough to enjoy it when she got out of jail. If her kids didn’t
spend it all first.
Life and death went on in Sydney. One of the Korean workers who’d
helped bash the two Kims to death with furniture and golf clubs
in Kings Cross was extradited from New Zealand and turned Crown
evidence. He got off with fifteen months, allegedly for his
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humanitarian impulses; apparently he’d tried to stop his mates
from stomping on the Kims’ heads and suggested they be taken to
hospital. That was his story, anyway. Other arrests followed, and
after a fifteen-week trial, two others were acquitted of the
murder.
There were immediate calls from certain quarters to tighten up
tourist visa requirements.
Nicki Howard got a grant to make her documentary on police
corruption and slung me some investigative work, which appeared
in the accounts as research. I politely declined a mention in the
credits, however.
Tony Ryan’s name never came up in the corruption case. I
continued to maintain that our meeting at the Aquarium was a
coincidence, and Lizzie refused to disclose where she’d got the
incriminating videotape. Ryan sensibly didn’t contact me, but his
father rang to thank me. The kid had the luck of the Irish; he
even wangled a transfer out of Kings Cross to Byron Bay, a resort
on the state’s north coast which is most coppers’ idea of having
died and gone to heaven. As marijuana production is an even
bigger earner there than tourism, the transfer would give him
limitless scope to reaffirm his incorruptibility.
Lizzie took possession of her scabrous flat and started
renovating, which meant I had to listen to hours of harangues
about tradesmen’s work practices, personal hygiene and hourly
rates. I live in dread of the day when she finally moves in and
starts plotting to take control the building’s board of
management.
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Six months after his disappearance, the body of Jasper Garrett
was found by a retired dentist exercising a Weimaraner in the
Royal National Park. The worst storms in a decade had caused
flash flooding, which had washed the body out of its hiding place
and onto a popular walking path. According to newspaper reports,
Garrett’s injuries included a fatal shot to the head, indicating
a professional job, and a smashed kneecap.
The news depressed me. I held no brief for Jasper Garrett, who
was a pompous turd, a fop, a wife-beater and a thief, but I’d
been vaguely hoping he’d cut his losses after Luther kneecapped
him and relocated to Majorca like others of his ilk. Two murders
were enough for me.
One night, during the news, when Garrett’s pale, distraught
widow was captured on camera ducking into her BMW in black Armani
and cats’-eye sunglasses, my phone rang. It was Luther,
chortling. ‘Did you see that?’
‘Yeah. I can’t say I’m surprised. She’s going to get away with
it, of course.’
‘That weak ponce deserved it.’
I was curious about Luther’s take on the whole episode. ‘For
what, double-crossing her about the disk?’
‘No mate, the cat. It was revenge for murdering the moggie.’
He was laughing as he put down the phone.
He was half right. The murder of Sweet Leilani was the
trigger for Jane’s revenge on Jasper Garrett, but not the cause.
His assumption that she would take it lying down had galvanised
her into action, but I believe she’d started hating him the night
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he accused her of being frigid. And when he’d started looking
elsewhere for sex, her resentment had hardened into hatred.
Luther and I were a good pair. We’d fallen for pretty faces
and clever lines, and had almost come undone. Only fancy footwork
and a little help from our friends had saved us from being sucked
into the vortex of the criminal justice system. I’d like to think
we’ve learned something from the experience, but I’m probably
kidding myself. I am seriously considering giving divorce work a
miss in future, though.
57,487
7 January 2001
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