The Bear Pit Page 22

  “You got a minute, John?”

  August had enough sense of humour to appreciate the situation: “To talk about a killing and seventy-five thousand bucks? Sure, George, go ahead. Shoot, as they say.”

  Gandolfo winced, but managed a weak smile; he had some humour but he always had trouble getting it to the surface. “I’ve talked to my client. The seventy-five thousand is okay, but it’s still only five thousand down, the rest when the—the deed is done.” He stumbled again, as if this time embarrassed by being self-consciously literary. “It’s gotta be done soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “A coupla months at the most. Give you time to prepare.”

  “Do I get to meet the client?”

  “No.”

  “Is it a he or a she?”

  “It’s not necessary you know. Why would you wanna know, anyway?”

  “I’d never do a domestic. I knew a guy in Pentridge, he did one and he was never sure who was right, the husband or the wife. Domestics are never cut-and-dried.”

  “Yeah, you’re right there,” said Gandolfo, sounding like a man who was drowning in a domestic. “Well, waddia you say? Is it on?”

  “Who’s the target?”

  Gandolfo leaned close to him, gave him the name. August showed no expression, just nodded. “I’ll need time, get a fix on his movements. I’m not gunna do a drive-by, that’s for knuckleheads. It’ll be professional. How will I be paid? Cheque or cash? I don’t take credit cards.”

  “Cash, of course!” Then he saw that August was grinning and he said lamely, “Are you always a joker?”

  “It’s the only way to survive, George. It’s a shitty world—” He opened the back door of his van, gestured at the hot-boxes containing the meals he was delivering. “I take them in to some old ducks, some old fellers, they never see anybody but me and the community carer comes in twice a week. Is that what we grow old for, George? You wanna grow old?”

  “Yes,” said Gandolfo, who was afraid of dying.

  “Okay, I’ll put your name down for Meals on Wheels. Maybe I’ll still be delivering, we can grind our dentures at each other. You got the five thousand down payment?”

  That had been almost two months ago and now he was on the run. He had not panicked when Ailsa, Lynne’s assistant, had called him on his mobile. She had just called to say there was some trouble at the Happy Hours and he should get down there quickly and help Lynne.

  “What’s the trouble, Ailsa?”

  “The police are here and they’ve found a suitcase and a gun under the hall.”

  “Thanks, Ailsa. Tell Lynne not to worry.”

  But of course Lynne would worry; she was a born worrier and he had always felt good when comforting her. His first wife had never been a worrier and had never needed comforting; that had been the difficulty between them because there was part of him that was a born carer. He had tried to kill his wife’s lover because he cared, or so he had told her. She had not believed him and he had only half-believed himself. He knew the cold current that occasionally surfaced through his caring exterior.

  As soon as he had left the flat, where he had been hanging a new bathroom door, he had gone down and out the back door of the building, over a fence and through the back yard of a neighbouring house into the next street. Already thinking ahead he had gone up to the main road and caught a bus to North Sydney, where his bank was. There he had withdrawn almost all his cash, then come out of the bank and gone to a public telephone.

  “Lynne’s not here, John.” It was the other assistant, Beth. “The police have taken her away—she said she’d be back.”

  “Where’s Ailsa?”

  “There are a couple of policewomen here interviewing her. She’s scared stiff, John. Do you want to talk to her?”

  “No.” He tried to keep the panic out of his voice. What were the police doing with Lynne? Christ, she knew nothing about the money and the gun. “Don’t say I rang, okay? How did they find the suitcase and the gun?”

  “One of the police went under the hall after young Fred Norman. Do you know anything about it, John?” Her voice was cautious, as if afraid of offending him.

  “No, Beth, I know nothing about any of it. Tell Lynne—” He was about to say, Tell Lynne I love her. “Tell her I’ll call her. How are the kids?”

  “Fine. They’ve never seen so much excitement. Wombat Rose is sitting on a policewoman’s lap, giving her a rundown on everything.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  He hung up, walked out into the lunchtime crowd. He looked at them, wondered what sins and crimes lay behind their chattering faces, their pensive expressions, their laughs. He heard a siren and stiffened, but it was a fire engine heading for someone else’s disaster.

  Then he began to wonder where he would run to.

  III

  Inspector Clarrie Binyan came across from Ballistics at Police Centre and walked into Malone’s office. He sat down, taking his time. As, he would say, his Aboriginal forbears had been doing for the past forty thousand years. He ran a hand through his thick greying curls and gave Malone his slow smile.

  “The prints on that Winchester matched those of this bloke August?”

  “Yes,” said Malone. “They were on the suitcase, too, and on some of the money.”

  “Well, I’ve got some bad news for you, mate. That Winchester isn’t the gun that killed The Dutchman. It’s a .308 and so’s the bullet they took from his neck. But they don’t match. There’s no way you could offer that gun as evidence.”

  Malone sucked his lips. “So he’s got another gun somewhere?”

  Binyan nodded. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of weapons, from the boomerang and woomera through to the latest developments of honest, God-fearing employees of honest, Godfearing nations. “Probably. There’s another thing. I noticed in the report someone mentioned a night-’scope. I went down there last night, to that sewing centre where he stood to fire the shot. The lady who owns it, she says it’s knocked the bottom outa her business. All the well-knowns, they don’t want it known they come to her to get their trousers and their skirts let out.”

  “Get on with it, Clarrie. You didn’t go down there to have a yarn with her.”

  “Patience, Scobie.” He always sounded as if he’d had forty thousand years of it. “At night it’s almost like bloody daylight down there. Too much light for a night-’scope. This bloke knows guns, knows what he’s about. He wouldn’t of used a night-’scope. He’d of used a “twilight”-style—the Germans make one, a Schmidt and Bender, or there’s an Austrian one, a Swarovski. They’re not large. Did they search every inch under that hall?”

  “Every inch, Clarrie. There was nothing else under there but the suitcase and the Winchester. Where would he buy the guns? How much would they cost?”

  “He could buy ‘em in any gun shop, if he had a permit. They, the Winchester and the Tikka, if that’s the other gun, they cost just on a thousand bucks each. If he had to buy ‘em without a permit, they’d cost more. Maybe he’s had ‘em for years. That Winchester we’ve got is a 1985 model. I went downstairs from my office to the blokes on the task force, they gimme a look at his form. He belonged to a gun club before he went into Pentridge, but there’s nothing in the report that they confiscated any guns. He could still have ‘em. Or anyway, the second gun.”

  “Why do you always come bearing bad news? Is that an Abo custom?”

  Binyan had the most charming smile, a real reconciliation smile. “Mate, don’t you think it hurts me, I can’t come in here and lay all the evidence you want there on your desk? I had a lotta time for The Dutchman. He did a lot for our mob—it might of just been politics, but sometimes it made him unpopular and he still did it. He had more guts than all of those who are gunning for him. Were gunning for him.”

  “What’s your guess? Someone in politics hired the hitman?”

  Binyan spread his hands. “Your guess is as good as mine. Russ Clements told me you had a girl in mind who might of hire
d him, going after Jack Aldwych or his son. That right?”

  “I’ve got even money on her.”

  “And anyone else?”

  “Two or three. And maybe I could be dead wrong. It could be someone way out there in right field—”

  “Left field.” Binyan knew his baseball.

  “Right field.” Malone knew his politics. “There are some nutters on the Left, blokes still living in the 1930s, but they would never knock off The Dutchman. He protected them from the go-getters of the nineties, the economic rationalists. He never agreed with them, but he protected them. Nobody from the Left did him.”

  “That’s taking economic rationalism a bit far, isn’t it? Knocking off a State Premier.”

  “Get outa here. Where do you get your ideas?”

  Binyan stood up, still smiling; but Malone often wondered how much pain it hid. “Our mob are always on the sidelines, mate. That’s where you get the whole picture. Good luck. I’ll let you know if I get any more bad news.”

  “Do that.”

  But Malone always enjoyed his meetings with Clarrie Binyan. The dark-skinned man had a macroscope in his Ballistics office that, he claimed, could tell the difference between a white man’s single hair and an Aborigine’s single hair: the split hair would be the white man’s. It was a joke that Malone, faced almost every day with men who split hairs, could appreciate. But he sometimes imagined that Binyan, staring into the macroscope, looked at more than the lands and grooves on a bullet. He saw life with a macroscopic eye that amused him. It was a way of surviving.

  IV

  “You like literature, Gert?”

  “Not literature, Billy. Literature is what critics and academics run around in. I like books, that’s what ordinary readers enjoy.”

  “Did Hans read much?”

  “Only political histories. I don’t think he ever picked up a novel. That’s what I read. Novels. I learn more about people from reading novels than I would from political histories.”

  “Hans knew people, backwards and forwards.”

  “Personal experience, Billy. Not from reading books.”

  Gert Vanderberg and Billy Eustace were in her study; though she still thought of it as Hans’ study. Eustace had rung her and said he wanted to see her privately, then he had come out here, accompanied only by his driver, to the Vanderberg house in Rockdale. They had bought it twelve years ago when Hans had taken over the Boolagong electorate. It was a blue-brick California bungalow, built in the twenties, on a double block; it was the largest house in the quiet street, but not pretentious. There was a tibouchina tree in the front garden, a huge purple bouquet like a reminder that death had recently come to this house, and there were four peach trees, with the fruit of longevity, in the back yard. There were security doors and bars on the windows, but no high security fence; it was the home of the State’s most powerful politician, but there was no one on guard duty; the voters would have considered it an affront to themselves. That was the Australian way; or had been up till a week ago. Now there was 24-hour police surveillance, something that made Gert Vanderberg uncomfortable.

  “The police know who the hitman was,” said Eustace, coming to the point with unusual brevity.

  “I’ve read the papers, Billy. I’m waiting to hear who paid him. It was someone in our party.”

  She knew, as well as anyone, that in this State, political parties were firing squads standing in a circle.

  Eustace shook his head, but not in denial. “It’s a different world to what you and I knew, Gert. We had bashings, that sorta stuff, but a killing—” He shook his head again.

  “Are you afraid you might be next?”

  “Gert, I’m just a fill-in.” He had no conceit, a political handicap. “When we get back in, they’ll let me lead for a while, then they’ll dump me.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “I’m not sure.” But she was sure he was. “Of course, the shot might not have been meant for Hans. There’s a rumour it was meant for Jack Aldwych.”

  “Jack Aldwych?” she said innocently. “Oh, the ex-criminal.”

  “You don’t call him that, not these days. It doesn’t take long, you got enough money, to become respectable, not these days. I thought you knew him?” he said innocently.

  “I’ve met him once or twice, just casually. Why would anyone want to shoot him?”

  “The police are working on a theory that an ex-girlfriend of Jack Aldwych’s son might of paid for the killing.” He was not yet accustomed to being Acting Police Minister; he liked to show what he knew. Gert Vanderberg had been privy to all of Hans’ secrets, both as Premier and Police Minister, but she was his wife, for God’s sake. Billy Eustace, she guessed, would spread secrets like patronage. “She could afford him, they think. The hitman, I mean. Seventy-five thousand dollars.”

  “That was the price?” She was suddenly angry at the price, as if Hans had been devalued. She sat quiet for a long moment, then she settled back in her chair: “Billy, what did you want to see me about?”

  He took his time; one could almost see him putting the words together like play-blocks: “Gert, this is the only electorate left that hasn’t decided its pre-selection. We’ve got everyone else everywhere else all lined up for the election. All except Boolagong.”

  “No problem, Billy. Barry Rix is going to be our candidate.”

  “He’s not endorsed—”

  “He is, Billy. By me.”

  “Gert, Barry is the one I want to talk about—”

  “Ah!” she said and waited, like a mother confessor.

  “Barry is the problem. He’s—he’s dull, Gert—”

  She managed not to laugh. Charisma was a word she doubted Billy Eustace could spell. Political columnists had compared him variously to plain wallpaper, an empty bottle and a wet day in Hobart.

  “He’s a good bloke, a hard worker, honest—honest as the day is long. But he just doesn’t have it, Gert. We want someone from here who’s got git up and go—”

  “I like that,” said Gert Vanderberg, as if she had never heard it before. “Git up and go. Have you got it, Billy?”

  “I don’t need it, Gert. The voters know me—”

  Indeed they do, she thought. “Who’ve you got in mind? With git up and go?”

  She could see him arranging the play-block carefully: “Jerry Balmoral.”

  She took her own time, put off by the gall of the suggestion. Then she said, “No way, Billy. He’s arrogant, conceited, ambitious—” Then she laughed at herself: “What am I saying? I’ve just described ninety per cent of the politicians in this country. Politicians in any country. Except you, Billy,” she added and sounded gracious.

  Eustace was not dumb; he knew compliments for him were few and far between. So he was not offended. “Okay, he’s all those things, Gert. But he’s what voters want, someone they can identify with. Not you and me, Gert, and all the baby-boomers—”

  “I was never a baby-boomer, Billy.”

  “I don’t mean you were. Look, Gert, the voters under thirty-five, forty, they’re not interested in all the old values. They want someone who’s in tune with today. Today, Gert, not yesterday. That’s Jerry Balmoral, he’s just right for the under-forties.”

  “When did you change your mind about him?”

  “How do you know I had any opinion on him?”

  “Billy, I’m like Hans was—” She paused for a moment, like a catch in the breath. “There’s nothing in the party I don’t know.”

  Bloody Roger Ladbroke, he thought. The bastard was still working for his dead boss. He would kick the shit out of him tomorrow, he would sack him . . . But he knew that he wouldn’t. He needed Ladbroke, the man who knew all the shoals and rocks in the media sea.

  “We’re not gunna walk in with this election, Gert. The voters are getting shirty towards us. All that Olympics mess, the hospitals breakdown, law and order—the other mob won’t do any better than us—”

  “But?”

  “
But the voters are sounding as if they might get rid of us.”

  “Not in our electorate, Billy.” She almost said my electorate. “No, you have to look after yourself and the party. Boolagong gets Barry Rix as its candidate. It’s what Hans would’ve wanted. Would you like some tea?”

  Eustace knew now that tea was all he was going to get. “No, I better be getting back.” He stood up. “Do you still make your pumpkin pavlovas?”

  “Occasionally. I’m getting on, Billy, I don’t have the energy I used to have. Not since Hans has gone.” Not two weeks yet, but it seemed like two decades.

  “Well, look after yourself. I’m sorry you don’t see my point about Jerry Balmoral.”

  “Don’t worry, Billy. You’ll survive without him. He’s a back-stabber if ever I’ve seen one, you’re better off without him. The one you have to watch out for is Peter Kelzo.”

  He hesitated, then said, “Do you think he might have paid the hitman?”

  She looked up at him, face expressionless. “He’s on my list, Billy.”

  He let himself out of the house and she sat on in the book-lined room. She picked up the book she had been reading when he arrived, one by Mary Wesley. She and the author were much the same age, old enough to have come to know men and their failings.

  Billy Eustace, she was sure, knew more than he had told her.

  10

  I

  “THEY GOT a phone trace on our man,” said Greg Random over the phone. “He called his partner, Mrs. Masson, from a public phone box in Rockdale.”

  “Crumbs.” Some of the slang of his childhood still clung to Malone’s tongue. It sounded soft beside four-letter words, but it was only an expression anyway. “I thought he’d be miles away—” Then Rockdale abruptly hit him: “Shit, he’s not after Mrs. Vanderberg too!”

  There had been reported sightings of August in Albury, Warialda and Coonabarabran, all hundreds of kilometres from each other. Criminals on the run multiply their images in the ever-helpful public eye. Law’n’order was a heated subject in the coming election and, by God, the public was going to help.