Peter Temple - Shooting Star

‘One thing worth knowing, though.’

‘Which is?’

‘Camel,’ he said.

‘What?’ I looked at him, startled. ‘What’s worth knowing?

‘Driver’s a secret Camel smoker.’

Orlovsky had opened the glovebox. Packed with packets of cigarettes, it glowed like a Walt Disney cave. With two fingers, he extracted a packet, put it in his inside jacket pocket.

‘Yes, honesty’s a much overrated virtue,’ he said. ‘There’s something else. My original opinion was this dickhead thinks he can hide his voice with some primitive piece of shit from a mail-order catalogue. Wrong. He’s no dickhead. That’s worth knowing.’

Orlovsky’s thumbs released the briefcase catches. The lid popped up. A laptop computer hidden in a battered leather briefcase.

‘I borrowed this,’ Orlovsky said. ‘Box of tricks.’ He switched on, did some key tapping.

Are you where you should be? said the electronic voice from the laptop speakers.

Yes. Me.

Okay, this is what you do. If there’s wrapping on the money, take it off. Then walk down to the front of the stand and throw the money off. All of it. Understand?

Yes.

Don’t talk to anyone. We’ll know. Just do it. Now.

My voice: First tell us when we get the girl back.

Do as you’re told. Or the girl dies. Understand? Just do as you’re told.

Mick tapped. Now a different electronic voice said the last words. He tapped again. Yet another eerie nonhuman voice. Then another one. And another.

‘This is smart stuff,’ Mick said. ‘The boy didn’t buy this machine anywhere. The Feds’ voice ID software can’t crack it.’

‘You know that?’

‘I know that.’

‘You’re hacking into the Feds’ system. What’s the penalty for that?’

‘I’m not hacking. This is legitimate access.’ He paused. ‘Someone else’s legitimate access.’

I sighed. ‘We’d better get back to the Carsons. Maybe these pricks will let the girl go tonight.’ I didn’t think that was likely. To put it mildly.

‘So they just did it to give the fans a treat?’ said Mick, closing his briefcase. ‘Wow. Maybe the two supporters’ clubs got together and arranged it. Kidnapping. Could become a regular thing for clubs.’

‘Get out,’ I said.

‘Sir.’

In Kooyong Road, in heavy traffic, he blinked his lights at me. I pulled over. He parked behind me and came to my window.

‘This Merc’s transmitting,’ he said. ‘Why would that be?’

‘How do you know?’

‘My box of tricks says so. Playing with it at the last lights.’

A tracking bug in Noyce’s car? I looked at Mick. We had the same thought at the same instant. I reached into the back seat and got the empty leather sports bag, gave it to him.

In the rearview mirror, I saw the interior light go on as he got into the Holden. It went off for a few seconds, went on and off as he got out again.

He gave me the bag back through the window. ‘Maybe they’re standard in bags like this,’ he said. ‘Sewn in by hand in Paris by an ancient Frog craftsman. Some cunt lifts your bag at the Hilton gym, you track him down, send your personal trainer over to kick the shit out of his personal trainer.’

All the way back to the Carson compound, cocooned in German steel and leather, wipers treating the drizzle with quiet contempt, I thought about Pat’s study the day before, the grim faces, Pat’s words:

This time, we’re just payin. What they ask, we’re payin. It’s only bloody money, it’s nothin. The child safe. That’s what we want. That’s all.

A bug in the money bag. Someone hadn’t embraced the philosophy of This time, we’re just payin. Someone wanted to know where the money went. Someone wanted to do police work.

Noyce was on the terrace. As I opened the car door, he said, ‘They rang a few minutes ago. It’s a bit frightening.’

This evening, the Carson boys had been joined in the elegant library by a woman. She was thin, in a loose sweater and jeans, blonde hair on her shoulders, sitting upright in an armchair, arms folded, whisky glass on a drum table. At first glance, she looked like a teenager, but then you saw the lines bracketing her mouth, the little frown pinched between her eyes. She was probably in her early thirties.

‘Stephanie, this is Frank Calder,’ said Noyce. He frowned as Orlovsky appeared in the doorway. Mick was neatly dressed and clean-shaven but he always managed to give the impression that he’d escaped from somewhere.

‘And this is his associate, Michael Orlovsky. Mrs Chadwick is Tom’s daughter, Anne’s aunt.’

Stephanie Chadwick stood up and shook hands. She was tall, Orlovsky’s height, only a head below me. When you knew the relationship, you could see her father in her, in the eyes and the jaw and in a certain arrogance of carriage.

Tom Carson was standing behind his daughter, smoking a panatella, in a dark suit now, his face clean and dry from the second shave of the day, drinking something colourless, rattling the ice in the glass.

Barry was seated at the table, no drink, also in a suit. He nodded at us. He had the look of a man who had undergone an ordeal, didn’t trust himself to speak.

‘Play it, Graham,’ said Tom, no bark in his voice this time.

Noyce played it.

Tom Carson.

Pause.

So you think Carson money can buy anything, don’t you? Just money, that’s what you thought, isn’t it?

Pause.

Tom: We’ve followed your instructions.

Becoming less stupid. Learning to do what you’re told and… Tom: We’ve done that. Now… Shut up. Don’t say NOW to me. I don’t take your orders. I don’t need your money.

Tom: All we want…

Shut up, I’m talking to you. You’re not talking to your tame cops now. You don’t have the money to buy your way out of this. You’re talking to someone quite different now. Do you hear me? Hear me, cunt?

Tom: We’ll do whatever you want…

I WANT YOU TO SUFFER AS YOU HAVE MADE OTHERS SUFFER. I WANT YOU TO FEEL PAIN AS YOU HAVE MADE OTHERS FEEL PAIN. I WANT YOU TO BLEED TO DEATH.

Click.

No one said anything for a while, the harsh electronic voice reverberating in the room. Then Stephanie took a big drink of whisky. I looked at my watch. It was just on 6 p.m. ‘Can we watch the news on Seven somewhere?’ I said.

Noyce found a remote control. A section of panelling on the righthand wall parted, revealing a large television monitor. He clicked twice more. We watched commercials and previews before a woman newsreader with a starched and ironed face appeared. She did the There were amazing scenes today preamble. Then we saw a man wearing dark glasses and a Collingwood beanie pulled down to his eyebrows on the top level of the Great Southern Stand. He stood at the parapet, reached into a bag, threw handfuls of paper into the air. Some of the bits of paper blew backwards into the stand behind him, some fluttered down and were sucked into the packed tiers below, others drifted down onto the field, where people jumped the fence and a feeding frenzy developed. After half-a-dozen handfuls, the thrower got bored, tipped the bag over the edge, shook it. Large wads of paper fell out. The camera zoomed in on the paper-thrower but my collar was up and I kept my chin down. Then I turned and walked up the ramp.

The voice-over said:

A police spokesman said it was a miracle that no one was seriously injured in the near-riots that developed as football fans fought over the new fifty-dollar notes. No exact figure is available on the sum of money thrown from the Great Southern Stand by the unknown man, but police put the amount at more than a hundred thousand dollars.