‘Don’t be too hard on him, Barb,’ he replied. ‘He’s got me to protect him from Blackstone, but nobody to protect him from me.’
And with that, he threw down his drink, mumbled goodnight, and took himself off to find a car and driver.
‘Jed really needs a day off,’ said Kip once they were alone. ‘D’you think he’d like to come and do a bit of trail walking with me?’
Barbara Kipper didn’t need to answer. The look on her face told him exactly how stupid a question that had been.
49
DARWIN, NORTHERN TERRITORY
She had never seen the man before. He wasn’t even vaguely familiar - and he was the sort of chap you would’ve noticed. All elbows, knees and awkward angularity, this man looked like he’d stand about six and a half foot. Had he been standing.
When Jules first saw him, he was slumped in a chair, his hands secured behind his back, and his feet fastened to the legs with plastic zip ties. One of Shah’s young Gurkhas - Baran, if she remembered correctly - stood behind him with a drawn kukri dagger. The shining silver blade remained free of blood, so far. But she knew that Baran would not return it to his scabbard without a few drops to taste. She wondered if the man in the chair knew that.
‘Miss Julianne, I would like you to meet Norman Parmenter,’ said Shah, handing her the captive’s wallet.
She ignored the man’s murderous glare. The wallet was thick with plastic and paper, some of it quite old and faded. Dockets, receipts, a few handwritten notes, all of it the sort of thing one found in any man’s wallet when he didn’t clean it out very often. It lent credence to the notion that this might well be Norman Parmenter. Whoever the fuck he was.
Of course, that credence could have been very carefully constructed. But she thought not. Commando Barbie, back in New York, she was the sort of person you might expect to lob into your life with an artfully constructed false identity. Even Nick Pappas, she thought, might have had a passing acquaintance with such things. But there was something about Parmenter’s old, battered wallet, with a couple of faded photographs of him posing with some woman at the seaside, that suggested authenticity.
Downstairs, the rock concert, dogfight, mixed martial arts tournament, or whatever, was rolling along at high volume, the punters seemingly unconcerned with a brief outbreak of gunplay on the upper floors. The room in which they were enjoying a chat with Parmenter appeared to be an unused office. An old metal desk, some plastic chairs and the 2007 Pirelli calendar - the first published after a three-year hiatus - constituted the sum of its furnishings.
Jules hobbled over to sit herself up on the desk next to Shah, feeling her bruises and strained muscles every inch of the way. Her neck was so stiff and sore, she had to turn her whole body rather than just moving her head. She needed a long hot bath, a cold G and T, and some answers. She needed to know the Rhino was going to pull through, and that Cesky was going to leave off. She didn’t need him brought to justice, or anything so fucking infantile. She just wanted to be left alone. Perhaps, with one of his hirelings now in her possession, they could come to an understanding: he could give up his vengeance kick, and she could keep her mouth shut about it. She was about to speak, to ask their prisoner why he was trying to kill her and her friends, when somebody wrapped gently on the office door.
Shah bid whoever it was to enter, and Nick Pappas appeared. He smiled at Jules and said, somewhat cryptically, ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes.’
Shah seemed to understand what he meant.
‘This the last of the Mohicans, is it?’ Pappas said, pointing at Parmenter, who still hadn’t spoken.
The Australian was holding a phone, identical to the one he’d given her at the cafe yesterday morning. Unlike Julianne, Pappas knew exactly what he was doing. The screen lit up as his fingers danced over it, and after a few seconds he held up the mobile to compare their prisoner with an image that appeared on screen.
‘What do you reckon?’ he asked, passing the phone to Shah. The old soldier took it and spent a few moments considering the likeness. He nodded at the young Gurkha, fluttering his fingers under his chin. Grabbing a handful of Parmenter’s lanky grey hair, Baran pulled his head back with brute force, so that they could all get a look at his face.
‘Fuck you,’ he growled in a recognisably American accent. He sounded as though he hailed from the north-east, like the Rhino. Jules wondered how he’d got into this line of work. Ex-military? Mafia? He didn’t look the type. Creepy rather than hard.
Shah passed the phone to Julianne. She couldn’t immediately make out what she was looking at, but the meaning of the image soon resolved itself. It was a still, taken from security footage at the Gonzales Road Marina. A man was walking away from the Rhino’s mooring. A long-billed baseball cap hid his face, but there was no mistaking the unusually tall frame nor the stiff, inelegant gait of a man who was all knees and elbows.
‘Well, it wouldn’t stand up in court,’ said Jules, ‘but you can say fuckity bye-bye to any legal recourse, Norman. You’re well out of luck. So unless you’re interested in finding out what it feels like to have a kukri dagger inside your windpipe, I’d suggest you entertain us with a little story.’
Shah inclined his head, almost imperceptibly, at the young man carrying the cruel blade. Baran was still holding Parmenter’s head back by his hair, but the blade flashed up now and described a short transition across the man’s brow. The fighting knife had been sharpened to such a fine edge that there was probably no pain. At first. Just a cold burning sensation, followed by shock. Blood began pouring from a long gash, blinding the captive, who squealed at the unexpected violation.
‘Jeez, mate,’ said Pappas. ‘You’d better watch out with that thing. It’s sharp. You’ll end up scalping the bloke.’
Parmenter began to gobble for air as though he was drowning. Panic took over. Shah came off the desk in one fluid movement and drove a spear-hand strike into his solar plexus. It would have knocked the American onto his back had Baran not braced himself for the impact. Instead, it drove all the air from Parmenter’s body, without doubling him up. The restraints kept him secured.
‘Mr Parmenter will require a minute to compose himself,’ Shah declared.
Julianne took the chance to squeeze Pappas’s arm in greeting. She’d been so surprised when he walked in, yet his appearance was not really unexpected. Not when she thought about it. Shah obviously relied on him as a conduit to the local power structure, and the shadow state that was the real power in the city.
‘Do we have time for this? I mean, here?’ she asked waving her hand around the room.
‘We’ve got about ten minutes,’ Nick replied. ‘Then we’ll have to move him.’ He didn’t explain any further, but nor did he give the impression that further explanation was necessary.
‘Deep breaths, Mr Parmenter,’ said Shah. ‘That’s right. You’ll feel better in no time, as soon as you’ve told us everything we need to know. I’m sure you understand the alternative. It would be overly dramatic to go into details.’
Parmenter struggled to fill his lungs and blink away the blood that was blinding him.
Julianne turned back to him. ‘Who’s paying you?’ she demanded to know. ‘I don’t care how much. I just want to know who sent you, and who else is on your list.’
Baran pulled Parmenter’s head back again, slowly this time, lest he actually remove the man’s scalp. Jules blanched at the sight of bone inside the gaping, lipless maw the kukri dagger had opened up. The Gurkha laid the edge of his knife hard up against Parmenter’s nose. It had a salutary effect.
‘Rubin,’ the prisoner rasped, as if fearful that he might not get the information out quickly enough. ‘His name is Sam Rubin.’