‘How?’
‘For one thing, it could help to put some pressure on Stewart.’
‘I’m all for that, but I’m a bit scared. Here’s the money.’
It was packed into a manilla envelope and not that bulky. I put it in the side pocket of my windbreaker. ‘They’re not exactly desperadoes, Lorrie. Montefiore’s potentially violent, but Fay’s got both eyes on the money. She’ll keep him in check. She’s the player. Don’t be worried if you see a revolver on display. I told them to leave it out where I could see it. It’ll be unloaded.’
Her composure wavered a little. ‘A gun? Have you got one too?’
‘No. This is about money and information. All sorts of threats about them maybe, but no one gets hurt.’
We were standing outside the shop and it was still ten minutes to meeting time. Lorrie gave a startled jump as metal grated on cement and the security gate to the flats opened.
‘You’re early, Hardy,’ Jarrod Montefiore said. ‘Who’s your good-looking friend?’
Dumb of me, we hadn’t agreed on a name. Lorrie was up to it. She swung around and took off her shades. ‘That makes us equal. Mr Hardy hasn’t told me your name either. Better that way, don’t you think?’
We went up the steps and then in single file along to the door of flat three. Fay opened the door and stepped back. With four of us inside there wasn’t a lot of space left over. The place was what’s called a studio, meaning that cooking, eating, living and sleeping all went on in the same room. The bathroom and toilet were just about big enough to sit down and turn around in. The furniture was old and battered. The Smith amp; Wesson sat on top of the TV set with the cylinder closed. They were game-playing. Fair enough. So were we.
‘Fay,’ I said. ‘Good to see you.’
Fay was looking at Lorrie and ignored me. The jacket she wore and the bag she carried were cheap; I couldn’t tell about the shoes, pants and blouse. I wondered if Fay could. Lorrie returned the look. Fay’s dark roots were showing and she’d put on some weight, presumably from inactivity. There was a suggestion of a double chin and her jeans looked tighter than would be comfortable. She swung away, picked up a packet of cigarettes from the stained Formica table and lit one.
‘Let’s get down to it.’
‘Meaning let’s see the money,’ Montefiore said. Unlike Fay, he was looking good-tanned and fit and moving loosely. Maybe he’d had to work hard on the boat; maybe he was back in the gym kicking canvas. He looked now as if he could give Sione a good run for his money.
I tossed the envelope on the table and turned the tape recorder on inside my blazer pocket. I hooked a chair out for Lorrie, who took off her jacket and sat down. Fay looked nervous. She smoked and flicked ash into a saucer crowded with butts. She watched Montefiore as he counted the money.
‘Four thousand,’ he said.
I said, ‘Four thousand one hundred and fifty.’
Montefiore bunched a fist. ‘I said five.’
I shrugged. ‘All she could muster.’
Fay butted her cigarette and dropped heavily into a chair. ‘Sit down, Jay. What the fuck’s the difference?’
Montefiore glanced at the. 38.
‘Don’t even think it,’ I said. ‘You’ve got twenty thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars to come.’
He sat down next to Fay. ‘It’d be almost worth it, you tricky cunt.’
Lorrie glanced at me. ‘Can we start, Mr Hardy? I’ve got a busy day.’
Fay lit another cigarette. The air in the room, already stale and smelly, was thickening. ‘I thought you were going to record this,’ she said.
I nodded. ‘We’re recording. Let’s start with the bloke’s name. Make it loud and clear.’
‘She’s not even listening,’ Fay said.
Annoyed, I glanced at Lorrie, who was looking distracted. ‘She’ll listen to the tape.’
‘I can hear something outside,’ Lorrie said. ‘I-’
The flimsy door crashed inwards and a man wearing a stocking mask burst through the gap. He had a pistol with a long barrel in his hand and he fired twice quickly, the shots no louder than heavy coughing. I pulled Lorrie to the floor between the first and second reports and Montefiore, who’d been hit somewhere low, reeled towards the gunman, who shot him again, point-blank. I scrabbled across the carpet to the television set, bumped it away stand and all with my shoulder and scooped up the. 38, praying that it was loaded. Montefiore had collapsed towards the gunman but was still clutching at him. The gunman squeezed off more wild shots before I had the. 38 roughly aligned. I fired twice in his direction but he was already moving, heaving against Montefiore’s bulk, heading for the door. I fired again, but he was gone.
The air in the room was thick with the smell of cordite and dust from where the bullets had impacted on the walls and ceiling. I coughed and spluttered as I got to my feet, fighting for physical and mental balance. Through the haze I could see that Fay was lying back in her chair, a dark hole in the middle of her forehead. Montefiore lay face down with his hands stretched out like claws, pointing in the direction his killer had taken. Blood from his wounds had surged forward and was trickling towards the shattered door.
‘Lorrie?’
I dived down under the table where I’d pulled her and found her on her back, staring up at the holes that had punched through the Formica. She was breathing, but a dark stain was still spreading across her pale blue blouse.
17
Then it was chaos, ambulances, cops and more cops. Fay was dead and Montefiore was close to it. Lorrie had a serious shoulder wound and I was unhurt apart from a pain in the shoulder damaged in my earlier fall downstairs and again in the flat, so all the shit came down on me. I gave them the names of the dead, dying and wounded and my own name. They bagged the. 38 and the money and would have taken the tape recorder if they’d found it. Then they hauled me off to College Street, gave me a few minutes to use the toilet and set to work. Detective Inspector Keith Carmichael, forty plus and beefy, was ably assisted by Detective Sergeant Lucille Hammond, lean, dark and keen.
I agreed to be interviewed without a legal representative present but reserved the right to call one in if I chose. Then I refused to say anything until I established that Lorraine Master’s lawyer and the au pair had been informed and that arrangements were in place to look after the children.
‘She’s okay, Hardy,’ Carmichael said. ‘Small calibre flesh wound. No bone damage. Clean exit. Shock and blood loss. That’s it.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Montefiore?’
Carmichael shook his head. ‘Took five rounds to stop him. Small calibre, like I say. He was unlucky, one nicked the aorta.’
‘He had some guts. He kept trying.’
‘Like you?’ Hammond said.
I shook my head. It was still early but the adrenaline rush had faded, leaving me worn and tired. ‘No. I just blasted away a couple of times.’
‘Scared him off, but,’ Carmichael said.
‘If you say so. Anyone see him?’
Hammond consulted her notebook. ‘Yeah, and lucky for you.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Otherwise it might look like you did it.’
‘Right. What did I do with the pistol and the silencer?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s not an issue. A couple of people saw a man running along Darling Street not long after the shots. That’d be your shots. Went through Gladstone Park and then…’ She closed the notebook.
Carmichael nodded to her and she switched on the tape recorder and logged the date and time and the names and credentials of those present.
‘Okay, Hardy,’ Carmichael said. ‘Let’s hear it.’
From long established habit, I stuck to the truth as much as I could and tried not to include or exclude anything that might contradict Lorries version. I said that Mrs Master had hired me to investigate the circumstances of her husband’s conviction and that I’d gone to Noumea, met Fay Lewis and Jarrod Montefiore and arranged to pay them money for information back in Sydney. When they asked what the information was, I told them it was the name of an individual they suspected of some involvement.