‘Just a bit. Look on the bright side, Lee. If we don’t get any flak coming our way you’ll know we can trust her to do what she says she’s going to do. Isn’t that a comfort?’
‘Anyone ever told you what a prick you are?’
‘Just a few.’
Townsend went home and I cleaned up, put the pistol away and went to bed. I woke up in the early hours zooming out of a fierce nightmare. One of those that make you relieved that you’re awake, at home and still alive. I’ve heard that the part of the brain that produces nightmares is the same part that affects schizophrenics. If that’s true, their pain and fear must be truly terrible.
The experience left me too shaken to get back to sleep. I tried to read Doctorow’s book about Sherman’s march through Georgia. Great stuff, but I couldn’t concentrate and some of it was too bleak for my mood. I got up, made coffee, ate two boiled eggs and moved restlessly from one room to another. Wandering about in an empty house in the early hours of a soon-to-be winter morning isn’t good preparation for confident forward planning. I worried about where things stood with Townsend and Farrow and the Northern Crimes Unit and the Internal Affairs people. Complicated. Twisted.
Pieces of the nightmare came back to me the way they can after the event. It had something to do with a threat to my daughter Megan as a child. Not a lot of sense in that, because I didn’t meet her until she was past adolescence. But perhaps that was the source of the mental disturbance. Trouble was, she seemed to have a blind brother and that made no sense at all.
Dawn and the opportunity to go up the road for the papers came as a relief. It was drizzling. I pulled on a plastic raincoat with a hood and I was about to leave the house when the thought struck me that Jane Farrow had had plenty of time to relay the information about the Morello evidence, if that was the game she was playing. I put the Walther in my pocket.
Nothing happened, except my feet got wet in leaky sneakers. I read the papers. Still no significant coverage of Gregory’s death. It was being sat on very effectively. Mid-morning the phone rang.
‘Hardy.’
‘Mr Hardy, this is Hannah Morello.’
I had a full cup of coffee in my hand and I spilled some. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Why should anything be wrong?’
‘I’m sorry. That’s good. What can I do for you?’
‘Oh no, you can’t brush me off like that. What’s been happening?’
I gave her an abbreviated version of events, stressing that no mention had been made of her in the proceedings.
‘You didn’t sound so sure of that when I said who I was.’
‘It’s at an edgy stage, Mrs Morello. I couldn’t see how you’d be in danger, and I’m glad you’re not alarmed. Townsend and I could be in the firing line. We’ll have to wait and see. Now, what was it?’
‘I don’t suppose you know the school holidays have started.’
‘I didn’t, no.’
‘There speaks the childless man. Well, they have, and I got a call from Pam in Rockhampton. She’s fine. She’s settled in with her sister. Apparently they’ve got a big place and she wants me and the kids to come up and stay for a while.’
‘Sounds good. Rocky’d be better than down here at this time of year.’
‘Milly and Josh’re dead keen and I could do with a break. I just wondered if I was going to be needed while you go about nailing those bastards.’
‘Maybe later if the photographs need to be verified, but for now…’
‘Given you’re not a hundred per cent sure I’d be safe, going to Queensland would be a bloody good idea. Thank you, Mr Hardy.’
She rang off. Not entirely pleased. Couldn’t blame her, but at least one niggling area of worry was out of the way. There were plenty more to be going on with.
I went to the gym, parked where I had the night I was attacked, and got through a pretty solid workout. A few people I knew were there and we yarned in between sets and cracked the usual gym jokes.
Heard about aerobics in hell?
No.
Starts with ten million leg lifts.
I enjoyed the companionship and felt my mood, which had been dark ever since Lily died, begin to lift a bit. I felt so good physically that I even did some stretching. Not much.
With the coldness of the day, a hot spa appealed and I soaked in the bubbles for a full cycle. I passed on the sauna-enough is enough. I wandered down to the Bar Napoli and had a flat white. At one time, when I had a second generation Italian offsider named Scott Galvani, I acquired a smattering of Italian. I’d lost it, but it was good to hear the language being spoken around me and to pick up a word or two. I’d been to Italy once, very briefly, liked it a lot. Looking at the wall posters-the standard stuff: the Colosseum, Pompeii, the Isle of Capri-I thought I’d like to see it again, closer up and for longer. I realised that I was looking ahead, beyond settling accounts for Lily.
The drizzle had stopped but the day was overcast with more rain predicted. I walked back to my car parking spot and was about to open the door when I heard a shout from somewhere above me.
‘Hey!’
The memory of the attack here and my army training and long experience kicked in, and I had the pistol out of the raincoat pocket and was crouched down with the car for cover before the sound of the shout had died away. I looked up and saw a man leaning out of a window, well above me and to my left. He was in his pyjamas and had a stubbie in his hand. I lowered the pistol and stood.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I seen you here last week when you got attacked, like. You all right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s thanks to me, mate. That bugger was going to do you. I yelled at him and he pissed off.’
The window was in a building about ten metres away. I approached it. ‘Well, thanks. What happened next?’
‘Like I say, he shot through and I was going to call the police and that. Couldn’t find me phone. Tell you the truth I was a bit pissed. I found the mobile and took another look out and you was up and moving and looked like you was gonna live, so I didn’t do nothin’. Glad to see you’s all right.’
He reached up to close the window but I raised a hand to stop him. ‘Hold on. Did you get a good look at the guy who attacked me?’
‘Yeah, mate. Pretty good.’
‘Big, dark bloke in a suit, right?’
‘Shit, no. He was littler than you but he musta been strong the way he grabbed you. Sort of medium-sized solid bastard. Bald head.’
‘Drove off, did he? What sort of car?’
‘Jesus, now you’re asking. Hey, this isn’t police stuff, is it, ‘cos I…?’
‘Nothing like that.’ I opened my wallet and took out a twenty and a ten, all I had. I bent, put them on the ground and pinned them down with loose piece of concrete.
‘This is yours and I’m gone as soon as you tell me about the car.’
‘No car, mate. He went off on a fuckin’ motorbike, and don’t expect me to tell you what kind because I don’t know one from another.’
My informant wasn’t a witness who’d stand up in court. By his own admission he was drunk when he saw what he saw. But that didn’t matter to me. His description fitted the man who’d been with Kristos at the murder of Robinson as caught on film by Danny Morello, and his departure by motorbike was too much of a coincidence not to connect it with Gregory’s murder.
You don’t comb Sydney for medium-sized, strong men covering their baldness with a cap and driving a motorbike. But now I had a credible description of the man who’d probably killed Lily. I looked forward to finding out who he was and to meeting him.
24
I couldn’t wait any longer. If I could get hold of Kristos I’d find a way to make him tell me who his bald-headed killer mate was and all this farting about with Perkins and videos could stop right there. I had a few persuaders-the photos, kept in a deep slit in the driver’s seat of the car, the Walther and a Swiss army knife. Whatever it took. I had Jane Farrows’s mobile number and I rang it. She answered.