Gunshine State Page 12
‘Okay,’ said Tavener. ‘Your friend Gao had ambitions to get started in the drug trade. Surfers was supposed to be his first deal; he brought me in to help get him started.’
‘Why you?’ said Chance.
‘Let’s just say I have industry experience. Gao had the drugs shipped in a couple of weeks before his arrival and we took possession of them when he got to Surfers.’
Chance remembered tailing Tavener to Coolangatta, the meeting in the restaurant, following him and the other men to the block of flats.
‘He was going to offload the drugs in Sydney,’ Tavener said.
‘Then we showed up,’ said Kate.
‘Yeah, you showed up.’
‘Is Costello the buyer?’
‘No, ma’am, but he’s associated with them. They paid a deposit and since the drugs disappeared on Costello’s patch, his business partners are holding him responsible for their losses.’
‘Is he some sort of criminal?’
‘Of the worst kind,’ said Tavener. ‘Used to be very corrupt cop. Retired now, but still has his fingers in a lot of illegal pies. Our friend Matthias here works for him.’
‘And this man, Costello,’ Kate said, ‘he thinks Chance and I have the heroin?’
‘Yep.’
‘Are you saying this man doesn’t have the drugs?’ Viljoen looked around, his bruised face screwed up in confusion.
‘Give the man a prize,’ said Tavener.
‘Then who does?’ said the South African.
‘That’d be a fella by the name of Frank Dormer and his accomplice, Sophia Lekakis, right, Gary?’
‘And a man named Kerrigan,’ added Chance.
‘No, he’s dead,’ interrupted Viljoen. ‘We found his body in an old farmhouse on the outskirts of Brisbane.’
Chance felt Kate flinch. Her lip trembled. She tried to control it before it was too noticeable.
‘Didn’t hear about that in the media,’ said Tavener. ‘Cover it up, did you?’
The South African nodded, happy to be of use.
‘‘There’s one thing I don’t understand,’ said Chance.
‘What you don’t understand, be a long list, son, but go on.’
‘Where were you the night of the robbery?’
‘I was lucky enough to be out sampling some of the extra-curricula delights of Surfers Paradise.’
‘What?’
‘I was getting laid,’ Tavener pronounced each word slowly, as if speaking to a child. ‘What? I’m not a fucking monk. I came back a few hours later, found someone had turned Gao’s suite into a slaughterhouse, and the money and drugs were gone. Didn’t fancy hanging around, having to explain myself to the local law enforcement, so I split.’
‘How did you find us?’
‘It’s a talent I have. Look, we don’t have time for any more of this.’ Tavener turned back to Viljoen. ‘Aside from you, how many cops has Costello got looking for these two?’
‘Three.’
‘Which means we need to think fast.’
‘What’s the fucking point, like you say, they’ve framed me tighter than a fish’s arse.’ Chance felt a wave of exhaustion course through him. ‘We can’t go to the police, all we can do is get as far away as possible.’
Tavener smirked. ‘And how far do you think you’ll get with Costello after you?’
‘What are my alternatives? Trust you? I don’t even know who the fuck you are.’
‘Costello won’t give up.’
‘We can do a deal,’ blurted out Viljoen. ‘I’ll tell Costello you don’t have the drugs, that you’ll help us find them. I swear I can protect you.’
Tavener gave the South African a withering look, unzipped his money pouch, whipped out the pistol, bought the butt of the grip down hard on the side of Viljoen’s head. The South African went out like a light being switched off.
‘If you’ll allow me to speak,’ said Long. ‘I have an idea.’
All eyes focused on the old man. He studied the twist of smoke from his cigarette.
‘As your friend Mister Tavener here says, Costello’s people won’t give up.’
‘It gets worse,’ interjected Tavener. ‘Word is a couple of guys flew into Brisbane from Manila a week ago. They’re not as good as me, still looking for Chance on the Gold Coast, or at least they were according to the last information I received.’
Long and Tavener exchanged a furtive look.
‘And exactly when were you planning on telling me this information?’ said Chance. ‘Dormer’s got the money and the drugs, not me.’
Tavener shrugged, scratched his nose with the muzzle of his pistol.
‘According to my sources, Dormer’s gone back to Afghanistan, along with the Lekakis woman, will most likely stay there until the heat dies down.’
Long pretended to concentrate on butting out his smoke, his brow furrowed. But Chance could tell the old man was sniffing the wind, thinking through all the options. He glanced at Kate. She sat on the couch, momentarily lost in grief over Kerrigan, oblivious to how close both of them were to joining him. He had to make himself relevant, quickly, before Long and Tavener cut a deal that didn’t involve him.
‘This idea of yours, Long, what is it?’
The old man gazed at Chance, his eyes hard little slabs of obsidian in the brittle light.
‘The police, Gao’s people, they can’t find you if they don’t know what you look like.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Surgery, to change your face, make you a better hunter.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Plastic surgery is a very easy procedure. I have contacts in Thailand who can arrange it for you.’
‘Why go to all this trouble,’ said Chance. ‘What’s in it for you?’
‘Let’s just say I’m protecting my investment,’ Long’s thin lips formed a knowing smile as he spoke. ‘I’ll get you out of the country, put up the costs of the surgery, any other expenses. In return, once it’s done, you retrieve the drugs and money.’
‘Plus with me out of the country there’s less possibility I’ll fall into the hands of the police and lead them to you?’
Long acknowledged the point with a slight tip of his head. ‘All things considered, the most convenient solution for everybody.’
Chance noted the implied threat, felt like a dog that would do anything to avoid its master giving it another kick.
‘Guess I don’t have much choice.’
‘Not unless you want to keep walking around with a target on the middle of your head,’ said Tavener, placing the pistol back in his money pouch. ‘Mister Long, exactly how many ways would you be prepared to split up the proceeds from the Surfers’ job?’
‘I would be satisfied with a three-way split. Consider your end payment for accompanying Gary to Thailand, making sure he comes to no harm while he’s there.’
‘Sounds good to me.’ Tavener rubbed his hands together. ‘I’ve always wanted to see Thailand.’
‘What about me?’ Kate looked up from where she sat on the couch.
Long and Tavener didn’t respond, but Chance could see them deliberating Kate’s fate, weighing up the pros and cons of adding another body to the pile.
‘She’s no threat,’ said Chance. ‘The police don’t even know her real name, she’ll just disappear, right, Kate?’
‘I haven’t come this far to be left on the side of the road,’ said Kate.
Buried by the side of the road if you’re not careful, thought Chance. ‘We’re talking about going to Thailand, who knows for how long. Your anonymity is your disguise here. There’s no need for you to come.’
Kate sat there, stone-cold determination on her face.
‘I have no objection to her accompanying you to Thailand, but her expenses will come out of your end,’ said Long. ‘Understood?’
Chance nodded.
Long’s thin lips formed a knowing smile. ‘We can talk about the details later, right now we
have more pressing matters to discuss.’
‘What’s that?’ said Chance.
‘Our South African friend, we have to get rid of him.’
Kate looked up, alarmed. ‘What, you’re going to kill him?’
‘I’m afraid he’s right,’ said Tavener. ‘Viljoen’s not a fish, we can’t just throw him back.’
Kate stared at Chance, as if expecting him to support her.
Chance shrugged. ‘You wanted to know everything.’
ELEVEN
Elyssa Blake watched with mounting frustration as the two police detectives worked over the young redhead. The light from the single fluorescent tube cast the pre-fab cabin’s interior in a sickly lemon hue. Blake looked around, dirty clothes on the floor, unwashed dishes in the sink, a stack of porn magazines on a kitchenette table, something about naughty matures peeked out at her from under an overflowing ashtray. Heavy metal blared from a CD player, the perfect soundtrack to cover the smack of fists on flesh and the young man’s grunts of pain.
The caravan park manager, Fergus, had received a late night call a couple of weeks ago, was told to expect two new tenants. It wasn’t the first time. All expenses would be covered, the caller had told him, plus extra for his silence.
Two people arrived half an hour later, the woman and a man who never left the car. Fergus put them in a cabin at the rear of the park. The new arrivals kept to themselves, although sometimes the woman, Amber she called herself, visited Fergus to share a joint. She didn’t talk much about herself or why they were there.
Blake yanked the power cord out of the wall. The CD player went silent, Dundee and Nolte paused mid-blows.
‘That’s enough,’ she barked. ‘He’s told us everything he’s going to.’
Nolte was sweating from the exertion of the beating he’d helped administer. He wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his jacket, put a hand against the small of his back, pushed his gut forward. Dundee stood, head slightly stooped to avoid hitting the low roof. Fergus sat between them, his face a mass of cuts and contusions.
‘What now?’ asked Dundee.
‘Leave him here, it’s not as though he’ll go to the police.’
A traffic camera had caught a car registered to the late Dennis Curry crossing the New South Wales border the same night Gao and his bodyguard were murdered. Blake and her squad checked all the larger towns heading south from Surfers Paradise. A used car dealer in a one-horse town called Tenterfield reported he’d traded a black ute for Curry’s, the same ute that now sat abandoned outside the empty cabin at the rear of the caravan park. The customer matched the description of a woman last seen in Gao’s company on the night of his death. The dealer remembered her saying something about going to Canberra.
When Canberra had drawn a blank, they’d split up, cased the surrounding satellite towns. Viljoen had taken Yass, got lucky, spotted the woman on the main street and followed her here, called Blake and the others.
One minute, Blake and the others had been chasing them through the bush, the next they’d vanished. Worse, it looked like they’d taken Viljoen as a hostage. But how the hell had Chance and the woman found out they were coming? Someone must have tipped them off. She was pretty sure it wasn’t Fergus. So who?
Blake stepped outside into a pool of burnt-orange cast by the hooded light above the door. Insects swarmed around her.
She noticed a tear in her cotton pullover, cursed. Blake was a city girl, Sydney, then Brisbane, regarded the bush as enemy territory. The prospect of spending any more time in it than absolutely necessary was hell.
Forensics had found traces of blood around the pool at the hotel in Surfers Paradise and matched it to the blood type in Chance’s military file. It meant Chance was wounded. Blake and her team had tossed the cabin used by Chance and the woman, found a stash of medical supplies, bandages, needles, a blackened T-spoon, and a small plastic bag with traces of fine white powder. Heroin, the pain relief of kings.
The reception door slammed behind her, Nolte emerged, a cigarette dangling from his thick lips.
‘What do you think?’
‘I should have done that hairdressing course after school instead of joining the police.’
Nolte looked at her blankly.
‘I mean about Viljoen?’
‘What do you suggest, Gavin?’
Nolte kicked a loose rock with the toe of his boot. ‘We can’t just leave him here.’
She’d lost count of the number of times the Boer had talked about his time as a scout in the South African defence force. The story he always repeated, chasing an African National Congress guerrilla three days through the bush, shooting him just as he was about to reach the border between Namibia and Angola. Viljoen had inspected the body and found the man had been running barefoot the entire time.
‘Good riddance to the prick,’ Blake muttered under her breath.
The rest of the investigation had ground to a halt. No sign of the others involved in the robbery, the woman on hotel reception, Sophia Lekakis, and the other man seen leaving the hotel with her. Like Chance and the woman called Amber, they’d vanished into thin air.
You don’t steal ten million in heroin, thought Blake, hole up in some shit hole caravan park, barely one step ahead of the law and whoever else is after you. Money like that at your disposal you disappear without a trace just like the others involved in the robbery.
The nagging voice in the back of Blake’s head became deafening. She was chasing the wrong people.
TWELVE
Blake stood in front of the old man, in a neutral voice recited the facts of what had happened. At several points during her monologue, Costello raised the mechanical larynx to interrupt, only to lower it, unable to comprehend what he was hearing.
Blake had left Nolte and Dundee to clean up the loose ends in Yass, driven straight through what was left of the night to Canberra airport, waited for the first plane to Brisbane. She glanced at a magazine but took in nothing, poked at her in-flight meal, on emotional autopilot. Two weeks tracking Chance and the woman, only to have them slip away. It took all her strength to keep on top of the fear and apprehension at having to confront the old man, the consequences of what she would tell him.
Costello sat in his wheelchair in the same corner of the balcony. The backyard was still, stripes of brilliant green visible through the slats in the wooden porch screen. No grandkids today. The only sound was the drone of a solitary lawn mower in the distance.
‘What about Viljoen?’
‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘What do you mean?’ His face contorted as he spat out words. ‘Are you playing a fucking game with me, Detective Sergeant?’
‘No.’
‘Because if you are—’
‘It’s no game,’ she repeated firmly. ‘Chance and the woman were in their cabin in the caravan park until the moment we arrived. They fled into a patch of forest behind the park. We followed them. One minute I thought we had them the next they’d disappeared and so had Detective Viljoen.’
‘What about my drugs?’
‘No sign of them, either.’
‘How can that happen?’ came the old man’s metallic reply.
‘Someone obviously tipped them off.’
‘Who?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. For all I know it was your boy, Viljoen.’ Blake saw the look of horror on the old man’s face, like she’d slapped him. ‘How do you know he wasn’t working with them? Ten million in heroin beats the hell out of a police pension.’
‘That’s not possible, this man Chance, and the woman, they must have taken the drugs when they fled.’
‘I can’t see how they would’ve been able to flee so quickly through thick bush, hauling twenty-four kilos of heroin—’
‘Fucking useless as tits on a bull,’ interrupted Costello. ‘Doubted you had the metal for the job, and I was right. I’ll get someone more suitable, maybe Dundee, to take over, go after Chance and the woman.’
‘The premier, the media, they’ve wanted someone to blame for the lack of progress on the Gao case,’ Costello continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘They bloody can have you. I throw you to them and they can tear you to pieces for all I care—’
Costello paused mid-sentence. She noticed his bloodshot eyes start to wander, followed the direction of his gaze to nowhere in particular. His skin was pale, his mouth drooped slightly, like plastic left too close to an open fire. The rest of his body had gone rigid, as if he’d been given an electric shock. He dropped the mechanical larynx. It fell to the floor, rolled under the wheelchair.
The old bastard was having a heart attack. Blake reached for her phone, started to dial zero-zero-zero, paused, slipped the phone back into her pocket.
Costello stared at her, glasses askew, his eyes wide. His fingers clutched at his chest. The wheelchair wobbled from side to side and backward and forward, looked like it was going to topple over.
Blake took a deep breath, leaned forward and gripped the worn vinyl armrests to prevent the wheelchair from falling over. It felt like bearing down on a frightened child but for the smell—stale breath, decaying flesh and menthol rub. She made herself look directly at the old man’s eyes, bear witness to the last moments of his life.
It was several minutes before she dared let go of the wheelchair. She placed two fingers on the clammy skin on the side of his neck, got no pulse, drew herself up slowly, as if worried any sudden movement might break the spell, bring Costello back to life.
Blake heard an angry whistling sound somewhere in the house behind her. A kettle. It became high pitched, stayed like that for what seemed like an eternity until someone killed the flame underneath.
She willed herself to think straight, not to give in to the urge to flee. She manipulated the old man’s body into a normal position, his hands resting in his lap, brushed his eyes closed, rearranged his glasses so they sat straight on his nose. She reached under the wheelchair, picked up his mechanical larynx and placed it amid the jumble of used tissues and plastic pill bottles on a rattan table next to him.