Garry Disher - Cross Kill

‘Depends on the quality of the information.’

‘Oh, it’s quality all right.’ The voice was hard and certain now.

Napper said, ‘Your old man put you up to this? He’s heard something?’

‘This is nothing to do with him. You keep him out of it.’

Napper’s face creased, knowing he’d found a lever. ‘Just you and me and the gatepost, right, Eileen? When can you come in?’

‘I’m not bloody coming in there.’

Napper knew she wasn’t. He wanted to hear the strain in her voice, that’s all. ‘Could meet you somewhere, I suppose. This afternoon?’

‘Lounge bar of the Barleycorn, two o’clock,’ Eileen Rossiter said, and there was a click in his ear.

The Barleycorn was out on two counts: one, simply because the woman hadn’t bothered to check first if the place and the time suited him; two, because he met one of his regular snouts in the Barleycorn. Maybe He could groom Eileen Rossiter as a snout; if so, he wouldn’t want to meet her on the same patch of ground.

He left the station and got to the Barleycorn forty minutes before Eileen Rossiter was due. He walked through the place quickly, saw that she wasn’t waiting for him, and went back to the car. She arrived shortly before two. No one followed her in. Napper crossed the road to a public phone and called the Barleycorn, asking for the lounge bar. ‘I was supposed to meet a friend there, Eileen Rossiter? Woman about fifty, short dark hair?’

‘Just come in. Want me to put her on?’

‘Could you do us a favour? Tell her I’ll meet her in the coffee shop across the road, but I’ll be half an hour late.’

He went back to the car to wait, checking the street automatically. Eileen came out a moment later and walked across the road to the coffee shop. Napper, taking in her strong face, her comfortable flesh, was betting that an afternoon coffee and Danish pastry were more appealing to her than a drink in the Barleycorn. When she was inside the shop he crossed the road to join her.

He found her peering at cakes and pastries displayed in a glass cabinet. Sensing him, she straightened, looked appraisingly at him. ‘You were watching me.’

Napper said nothing, hoping stillness and silence would rattle her. Instead, she snorted. ‘Well, you’re a bundle of laughs. Coffee? Something to eat?’ Without waiting, she said to the woman behind the counter, ‘Two cappuccinos, one apricot Danish, one cheese,’ and led him to a corner table.

They were the only customers. Napper could smell fresh coffee. He realised that he hadn’t had lunch. Eileen Rossiter smiled at him, patted a chair. It discomposed Napper. It meant Eileen felt sure of her ground. For some reason then, he wondered what it would be like to touch her. Sure, she was getting on a bit, but there was something about her body, a kind of pneumatic appeal. To wipe the smile off her face, he said, ‘I’m not promising anything.’

‘Of course not.’

Napper said nothing. The ball was in her court. All he could do was see how she played it.

‘A deal,’ she said. ‘Niall gets bail, maybe a suspended sentence-’

‘No way.’

‘I’ll settle for bail. In return, you get some interesting information.’

‘What kind of information?’

‘Deal, first.’

‘I can’t offer anything for your boy until I know what this is all about. I want quality information, not the name of some bloke who’s been stealing hubcaps.’

‘All right, I’ll give you a name. The Mesics.’

Napper was irritated. He had no illusions about himself. He was a plodding beat cop who’d just scraped through his exams to make sergeant, he was uniform, not one of the flash boys in CIB, and he’d barely heard of the Mesics. ‘What have they got to do with me?’

‘Someone’s going to do them over.’

‘So?’

So Eileen told him who was going to do over the Mesics, and this time it was a name he did know well, the kind of name that earned a commendation for the copper that put it behind bars.

Stella Mesic drove fast and well. Bax didn’t touch her until she had wound her way through the complacent streets to the freeway entrance. Traffic was slight. The wind whispered over her car. Bax said softly, ‘I want you to take off your pants.’

She laughed, a short, uncomfortable bark, but what Bax had said was calculated to stir her blood and he saw her go tense, then settle back and breathe deeply. After a moment she lifted her rump and there was the unmistakeable scrape of cotton on her skin and the soft snap of elastic. Neither of them said anything until a few kilometres had passed and Bax had the taste of her flooding in his mouth. She trembled more than once. He felt her fingers on his neck, tangled in his hair. The car was scarcely moving. ‘How did you know I’d go for that?’ she said, pulling him upright.

‘I just knew.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ she said. ‘It’s probably a common fantasy.’

‘No way. It’s you and me, Stella. Everything starts with us.’

They no longer met at his place, he couldn’t chance the compound again, and she said motels were tacky, so she’d taken out a short lease on a flat in South Yarra. They could scarcely stand up when they got out of the car, and in the flat they were at each other before they reached the bed.

When they were resting Stella said, ‘Let’s see what this has done for your face.’ She turned his chin right and left. She frowned. ‘Slightly more relaxed, maybe.’ She touched her fingers under each eye. ‘A bit less strained? Maybe.’

Bax felt bands loosening inside him. It only happened when he was with her. He began to feel slowed down, looser, valued, inclined to lovers’ talk. He murmured some things against her neck. She flexed sleepily. The slow, stretching quality of her movements reminded Bax of a cat. She had rounded arms, swollen lips and legs the colour of honey, and it all paced like a restless creature in his groin.

‘So what’s Victor up to?’

‘Not now.’

‘Now, Stella.’

She groaned and sat up. ‘He’s still arguing with us. Nothing gets resolved. He wants to go one way, we want to go another. Same old story.’

Bax turned his lean trunk around. He stroked her stomach absently, then something about the conjunction of his well-shaped hand and her gleaming flank caught his attention. They both watched the hand, saw it flex, the fingerbones articulating with style and intent. ‘Can he carry it out, though, that’s the question.’

Stella arrested his hand with hers. ‘You know the old man was grooming him? I mean, not just sending him to the States but paving the way so he could step into his shoes?’

‘How does Leo feel about that?’

‘That’s the whole point. Leo gets some cash and a couple of flats from the estate, but Victor gets all the rest, giving him all the power. As for me, I’m just a woman, Leo’s wife, old Karl didn’t give two hoots about me. Called me a hooker once.’

Bax rolled away and hoisted his rump up the bed until he was looking down at her. ‘You think Leo might fold, give in to Victor?’

‘I’m sure of it. He’s always half looked up to him, half resented him.’

‘Well, you’ll just have to keep working on him.’

‘I’ve been working on him ever since we got married. Before we got married. He would’ve caved in to his father if I hadn’t kept pushing him. Often it works, but he also tends to go with the flow. I can’t be with him twenty-four hours a day. Victor thinks big, and Leo’s listening to some of it’

Bax turned the pillow onto its narrow edge, rested it against the wall, sank his back into it. ‘How big is this big talk?’

Stella curled two fingers together. ‘He claims he’s like that with the casino people in Las Vegas. Says they’ve paid off bent officials here in Australia, meaning if our family invests with them, we’ll make a killing from legalised gambling.’