Gunshine State Page 7

  The Clockwork Orange Gang had kept sweet with the cops by doing the occasional job for them in addition to their other criminal activities. They were also tight with the Brisbane branch of the Painters and Dockers, which is where Kerrigan had met Curry.

  ‘Kerrigan had on occasion acted as an informant for the Queensland police,’ said Blake. ‘Think that might have anything to do with his killing?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Dundee. ‘Live by the sword, die by the sword.’

  Nolte snorted. ‘Check out Mister fucking Shakespeare.’

  ‘Actually, it’s from the Bible, shithead. Gospel of Matthew, verse twenty-six, fifty.’

  ‘Given the shit this has stirred up, divine intervention might be the only thing that saves us,’ said Blake.

  The three of them stared at Kerrigan’s body. Blake used the silence to make a mental checklist of the investigation so far.

  Whoever killed the two Filipinos had gained access to their hotel suite with a pass card that was most likely supplied by someone working for the hotel. That was almost certainly a woman named Sophia Lekakis, the receptionist on duty at the time of the killings. Lekakis, who had disappeared, was probably also responsible for disabling the hotel’s internal video surveillance cameras, depriving the investigation of any footage of the murderers entering or leaving the building.

  In addition to Lekakis and the woman known as Amber, police were looking for two other people. The first was Gao’s chauffeur, a male in his mid-thirties named Peter Jacobi. The second was the American citizen who’d accompanied Gao to Australia.

  Blake’s mobile rang. She recognised the number on the screen, Viljoen, a ruddy-faced Boer and Costello’s main attack dog. A former member of the South African police, Viljoen accumulated excessive force charges like most people collected frequent flier points.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve got Jacobi’s real name,’ said Viljoen in a thick accent.

  ‘Well, are you going to give it to me or do you want a drum roll?’

  ‘Gary Chance, former truck driver in the Australian Army. His prints, all over the Volvo, match his ADF file.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes, it gets better.’

  ‘Let me guess, the pistol’s registered to the chauffeur?’

  ‘You got it,’ said Viljoen, his voice smug. ‘The papers are obviously fake, I’m looking into them further.’

  ‘Who else has this information?’

  ‘Just us, for now.’

  ‘Okay, I need to get moving.’

  ‘One other thing,’ Viljoen said, before Blake could hang up.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Davros wants to see you.’

  Blake pocketed the phone, turned to Nolte and Dundee.

  ‘Clean this place up and get rid of the body. I’ve got to go and see Costello.’

  SIXTEEN

  Blake turned on the car radio, skipped between stations. The airwaves crackled with the killings, their aftermath and associated rumours of police corruption on the Glitter Strip.

  She felt cold fury as she listened to the self-righteous shock jocks and their legion of incensed talkback callers, the naivety with which they discussed police corruption.

  Tackling corruption involved more than weeding out a few bent cops. Surfers Paradise had forty licensed premises, and fifteen thousand hotel rooms and units in a two-block radius. More went up all the time, the buildings spreading like algae bloom. Add to this the continuous year-round stream of tourists wanting to be fed, fucked, and watered. The idea of clamping down on corruption when there was that much money about was idiocy.

  Blake switched off the radio, thought about her son, now living with her ex in Western Australia. Four years of watching the boy grow up via the occasional Facebook update or colour photo included with a birthday card.

  The police career that had devoured her marriage now drilled into the core of her being, seeking out the last few drops of anything she had in reserve. She sensed herself losing the ability to feel empathy, to converse with anyone other than cops, to talk about anything other than the job.

  She could still recall with razor-sharp clarity the first time she’d seen a cop take a bribe. She and her partner, an older officer near retirement, were on patrol in Fortitude Valley. The owner of a nightclub had slipped him a thick envelope. She’d thought it was strange, an on-duty cop getting a gift from a member of the public, only realised later that night what had actually been going on.

  If corruption was a well-oiled machine, Costello was the master mechanic. He only picked cops who had something to lose or hide, was famous for being able to find people’s weaknesses, their dark secrets, twist them to his own design.

  Years after the nightclub incident, she’d been investigating a suspected rapist stalking Brisbane’s southern suburbs. She had a strong suspect, knew he was guilty, but couldn’t fit all the pieces together to make it stick.

  One night she got drunk, followed the man, confronted him as he was about to get into his car in the empty parking lot of a suburban shopping mall, told him she was going to take him down.

  He’d just smiled and said, ‘Do your worst, bitch. You’ve got nothing on me, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’

  Something inside her snapped. Blake pulled her service revolver, shot him dead.

  She tried to make it look like self-defence, still wasn’t sure how the hell Costello had found out. A week later Dundee appeared on the doorstep of her apartment, asked if he could come in. He seemed almost apologetic as he told her she had two choices, work for Costello or her career was over, she’d be disgraced, probably end up in jail.

  It was no choice at all. At least that’s the way it had seemed back then.

  A grey-haired woman answered the front door of the white weatherboard house.

  Inside was a slice of bygone Australia: doylies on a polished mahogany dining table, three ascending porcelain ducks on the wall. The bookshelves were lined with thick sporting biographies and framed pictures, a few family shots, but mainly Costello and his fellow officers. Smirks on their faces, all in on ‘The Joke,’ the nickname for the network of corrupt police that extorted money from illegal gambling and prostitution in Brisbane in the sixties, seventies, and early eighties.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, dear?’ the lady said as she ushered Blake onto a screened-in balcony, children’s laughter audible from the backyard.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Costello sat in a wheelchair in semi-shadow in the far corner of the balcony. Despite the heat, he had an old grey cardigan over his shirt, a tweed cloth cap. A blanket covered his knees. He glared at her, eyes magnified through his coke-bottle glasses, the skin around his face loose, like it no longer fit.

  She met the old bastard’s stare, shivered. Blake doubted Costello could piss without help but he was still a fearsome presence, last man standing from a generation of bent cops. He’d survived everything thrown at him, even the Fitzgerald inquiry into corruption. Ancient history now, but at the time, Fitzgerald had been like a cluster bomb let off in the middle of a tightly packed formation of infantry. When the smoke cleared bodies were everywhere, but Costello had emerged unscathed.

  He was retired now, but still influential, sheer willpower plus several decades of the dirt he reportedly had on politicians, journalists and fellow officers. Not even a bout of throat cancer had killed him.

  Blake faced him, hands clasped behind her back, like she was at parade rest. ‘You wanted to see me.’

  Costello placed a mechanical larynx against his throat.

  ‘Detective Sergeant.’ His voice came out a flat mechanical buzz. ‘You’ve just come from the scene of the Kerrigan murder?’

  ‘Yes.’ They’d kept Kerrigan’s death out of the news, so how did he know? Viljoen had obviously briefed him.

  ‘Knew Kerrigan from the old days. He was a dog, deserved to die like he did.’ The old man paused, took a raspy breath, repositioned the mechanical larynx. ‘Wh
at else you got to report?’

  ‘We think we’ve got the weapon used in all four murders. It’s registered to Gao’s chauffeur, an ex-Army man. Hopefully, there’ll be prints on it, and they’ll match the ones we found in the Volvo that was parked near the hotel.’

  She stopped, noticed the look of disinterest on the old man’s face.

  Costello was just going through the motions, Viljoen would have already told the old man everything they’d found out.

  ‘I don’t give a fuck who shot the chink or his bodyguard. Where’s my bloody heroin?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The old man’s face twitched in disgust or anger, Blake couldn’t tell which.

  ‘Do you know how much heroin was stolen from Gao’s room the other night?’

  ‘No,’ she lied.

  ‘Twenty-four kilos. Pure. That’s around ten million dollars. Gao bought it in, was going to sell it to some associates in Sydney who’d already paid a deposit. Now their money and their drugs are gone. The robbery occurred on our patch. That means I’m responsible for their losses.’

  It wasn’t hard to see how Costello had got the nickname Davros: the metallic drone of the old man’s voice, the jerky, mechanical nature of his movements. Blake stared at the old man, her fascination momentarily getting the better of her fear.

  ‘I want my heroin and the thieving bastards that stole it.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how much heat is on this case? It’s a bloody miracle we’ve managed to keep the heroin and mention of you out of the news. The toecutters are already sniffing around. I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to sit on it.’

  Costello’s eyes grew large at the implied threat. The mechanical larynx trembled in his hand.

  ‘I’m not the only one hiding things, Detective Sergeant Blake. Don’t forget that. If you haven’t got the bottle to do what’s required, you can fuck off and I’ll get someone who has.’

  Blake felt the skin on her face burn, forced herself to meet Costello’s stare. ‘All I’m saying is the best hope of finding the drugs is finding the man who shot Gao.’

  ‘Then find him. I don’t care what you have to do, but find him and get my drugs.’

  Without another word, Blake turned and left.

  She paused by her car and looked back at the Costello’s house, rain and the restless ghosts of Queensland’s underworld past swirling in the air around her.

  BUSH CAPITAL

  ONE

  Kate Norliss drove, eyes constantly on the rearview mirror, she wasn’t sure for what. Half an hour across the border into New South Wales, the realisation of what she’d done hit her like a punch to the stomach.

  She brought the car to a sudden stop at the side of the road, opened her door, vomited into the darkness, kept going until there was nothing but bile and hot breath. A giant semi-trailer illuminated her in its headlights, roared past, momentarily sucking up the air around her as it hurtled into the darkness. She sat up, wiped the tendrils of saliva from her mouth with the sleeve of her denim jacket.

  Chance slept undisturbed in the seat beside her, his legs bent under the dash. Kate had changed out of the black cocktail dress into her Rolling Stones T-shirt, sneakers, and black jeans. He was still in the shirt and pants, the fabric next to his wound caked with dried blood. She’d offered to try finding something for him from her housemate’s clothes, but he’d waved her off, said they had to make the most of the limited time until the police discovered the bodies of Gao and his bodyguard.

  Hank Williams’ scratchy twang serenaded her as dawn broke, streaks of pink unfurling across the sky, mixing with the clouds like coloured ink being added to a jar of water.

  An hour later she pulled into a rest area, spread the map of New South Wales on the bonnet. Chance had insisted they take the inland highway to Yass, not the coast road, said there were likely to be fewer speed cameras, even if it prolonged the thousand-kilometre journey to Canberra.

  Chance hobbled out of the car, stood unsteadily at the edge of the clearing and pissed. The pain on his face and the early morning light made him look old and frail.

  Kate smiled to herself, remembered how Chance’s jaw had dropped when she’d told him Amber wasn’t her real name. As if he were the only one smart enough to try and shield his identity.

  ‘Did you get rid of your mobile phone?’ he said, as he walked toward her.

  ‘No, I thought it would come in handy—’

  ‘Give it here,’ he said clicking his fingers. ‘The police can use it to find the nearest reception points, track us.’

  ‘This part of your tough guy act?’ she said as she handed him the phone.

  Chance ignored her, concentrated on taking the phone to pieces.

  Kate went back to studying the map. She didn’t need medical experience to know Chance must have lost a lot of blood and at least one or two of his ribs were cracked. Taking him to a doctor or a hospital was out of the question but she could get him something for the pain, make him more comfortable until they got to Yass. She selected their next stop, folded the map.

  ‘We’ll drive another two hours, stop to rest and I’ll do what I can for your arm.’

  ‘It looks far worse than it is. It’s more important we get to Yass.’

  ‘Suit yourself, tough guy, but I need food and sleep, and the car won’t run on air. You can stay in the front seat for all I care, but we’re stopping in another two hours. No argument.’

  She went to the boot, unzipped the army surplus duffle bag she’d brought from Curry’s. It contained three thousand dollars, all the money in the house, clothes, and toiletries. She’d also taken the sawed-off shotgun, a box of shells and, on a last-minute whim, the framed photograph of the old man and Sean at the beach.

  She picked up the photograph, admired her former lover, his fierce, lean features, before the smack had ravaged them. Kate could already feel the bond she had had with Dennis Curry, their stunted shared history, start to fade, willed it to disappear completely. The connection to her former lover was not broken so easily.

  TWO

  The motel was an architectural refugee from the seventies, two-dozen rooms in a single-story cream brick U-shape. Faded blue letters, medieval style, spelled out the name ‘King’s Court’ for passing traffic.

  Chance crawled onto one of the two single beds, immediately fell asleep.

  Kate went into the cramped bathroom, looked at the remains of last night’s mascara vying with the dark circles around her eyes. She took a hot shower, dressed, got back into the car, and drove the two kilometres into the town centre.

  She found a drug store that was open, bought bandages, syringes, and antiseptic. She picked up water, a bottle of scotch, a fresh pack of tobacco, and a lighter from the supermarket. In a bargain store next to the supermarket, she bought a fresh set of clothes for Chance, and sunglasses and a baseball cap for herself.

  She loaded her purchases into the back seat, walked along the main street to scope out the town. Early Sunday afternoon and the place was empty, apart from a few men sitting on benches on the side of the road and the occasional young mother pushing an oversized pram.

  There was a used car lot at one end of the street, a banner with the words ‘Cash for Cars’ strung across the entrance. She’d come back tomorrow morning, trade in her almost new Camry for a black seventies Holden Ute she spied among the vehicles for sale.

  The town had two pubs. One was boarded up, a for sale sign bolted to the front. The other was a two-story wooden building, a balcony around the length of the second level. Pinned to a corkboard covered in bank notes from all over the world was a notice advertising tonight’s entertainment, an eighties cover band, free admission.

  Her reconnoitre finished, Kate felt hungry, realised she hadn’t eaten since early the previous evening. The nearest café was empty except for an emaciated old man mopping the floor.

  She gazed at the menu in chalk about the counter, ordered two burgers with the lot and chips
to take away. She sat in one of the Formica and wood booths while she waited for the food, looked at the framed black and white photographs of old film stars, Bogart, Monroe, Chaplin, that peppered the walls.

  On her way back to the car she caught sight of two teenage girls standing at the doorway of a milk bar. The girls reminded her of the long Sunday afternoons in a one-street town not unlike this one, the mixture of boredom and desperate anticipation, waiting for something, anything, to happen.

  At twenty-six, Kate didn’t have any excuses for where she’d ended up in life, didn’t feel the need to make any. She was smart, came from a good enough home. She didn’t hate her parents, just didn’t want to be like them.

  She finished school, got out at the first opportunity, ended up in Brisbane, took a job pulling beers in a pub. A few gigs like this later she ended up tending bar in a strip club. Graduated to stripping. One night Kate went for drinks with a bunch of the women she worked with, listened with interest when they told her of the money that could be made servicing the mining boom. Soon Kate was part of the fly in, fly out workforce of women selling sex in mining towns throughout Queensland.

  She remembered her first night on the job. She’d sat on the end of the bed in a motel room, waited for the customer. Her stomach churned as she kept telling herself it was just sex. Part of her hoped he’d never turned up. He did. The world didn’t end, just went on from there.

  What she did never struck her as sleazy or demeaning. It was just a job, and a well-paying one. All she needed was a hooker name, Amber, an ad in the local paper, a mobile phone full of credit, and she was in business.

  The mining boom was in full swing. Sleepy rural towns were suddenly packed with young men with money to burn and a shortage of female company. She was popular. Something about her face, her large eyes, made her look vulnerable. Men thought she needed to be rescued.