Peter Temple: Black Tide

Nothing. Oh God.

Total failure.

Perhaps you need petrol. Yes, that was it. They used petrol. Molotov cocktails rely on petrol.

Too bad.

Dave regained his balance, still the two-handed grip, steady, now for the target practice.

‘Oh, Jack,’ he said, ‘you silly prick.’

A voice from the door, a female voice.

‘Where’s Gary?’

Dave turned his head.

Fleshy-face turned.

Glenda, in the doorway. Hands at her chest, hand showing, hand in her nightgown.

Across the space, I saw her eyes move to the bodies. They lay in a huge dark pool. Tony, sprawled, crucified. Gary, barefoot, on his side, a man sleeping.

‘Bastards,’ she said. ‘Bastards.’

She took her hand away from her throat, her hand from her chest, shot the fleshy man somewhere, he fell over, she fired at Dave, three or four times before she hit him, in the middle of his body, walked over to him, he was upright, half-turned, doubled up, pointed the weapon at him at close range, at his neck. Bang, he jumped back a metre, fell over.

‘Bastards,’ she said.

She looked up and saw me and I was terrified.

‘I’m Gary’s father’s lawyer,’ I said. Loudly. ‘Came to make sure Gary wasn’t harmed.’

Pathetic.

Glenda threw the gun away. Contempt for the gun. It skidded across the concrete, spinning, came to rest.

‘Great work,’ she said, sinking onto her haunches on the cold concrete, hands to her face, rolling over like a puppy. ‘Fucking great work.’

I went outside, walked past Gary, dead, Tony, dead or dying, sleek dark Tony, Dean Canetti’s friend, Dave’s trusted associate, walked past Glenda, alive, sobbing, past the fleshy man, he might live. Live, die, I didn’t care. Walked past Dave, certainly dead. Didn’t mind that either. Past the four-wheel-drive, out the door, into the cold Tasmanian night.

The sky had cleared. Sky impossibly clear and clean and deep. Dense with stars, like city lights seen from a high place.

Last man standing. The Molotov cocktail man.

I took deep breaths, good, clean Tasmanian air, first lungs to use this air. Numb.

Who do you call? These dead and dying people were mostly from the government. Or were they? Did it matter? Two of them had tried to kill me.

‘Don’t know what to do.’

Glenda. Behind me. Shoulders down. Killer. Dream love of Gary Connors. The person of last resort. The one you call.

I pulled myself together. Jesus, Tony might live. Do something.

I turned, went to Glenda, put an arm around her cold shoulders. She came into my armpit, became small, shaking, uncontrollable shakes.

I said, ‘Go to the house, love. Ring the emergency police number. Tell them to send a helicopter, tell them where. Then start a fire down here, love, big fire. Something the helicopter can see.’

‘Right,’ she said. Sniff. ‘Right.’ She set off at a run up the slope.

I steeled myself. Went back into the barn, looked straight ahead, collected the sports bag with the money, walked out, got into the four-wheel-drive, drove away.

Survival of the innocents.

The drone came to my ears seconds before I saw the source. I was looking north but the aircraft came out of the west, just a dirtspeck against the dirty grey beginning of the day. It came down without hesitation, bumped and lurched on the sheep-paddock strip, slowed, slewed around, taxied to within five metres of where I stood beside the vehicle and turned side-on.

The door opened and Cam appeared, black poloneck sweater, leather jacket.

‘G’day. Wiped that motor?’

I nodded, picked up the sports bag with the money.

He looked around, impassively studied the falling-down shed, the rutted road, the bleak and wet landscape. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘seen the attractions of Tassie now. We might go home, have breakfast.’

Inside the Cessna, the pilot was fiddling with something on the instrument panel. His peaked cap was facing backwards. Crapdusters Australia, it said across the front.

‘Can’t find Triple J,’ he said. ‘Got to have that station.’

I groaned.

On the way back, high over the cruel grey strait, Cam said to the pilot, ‘That strip, that’s an abalone strip, right?’

The crapduster looked at Cam, frowned, pushed back his cap, scratched his number one haircut. ‘Y’know,’ he said, ‘go so many places, I forget.’

Cam nodded. He seemed pleased with the answer.

I drowsed. I wanted to go home, to take off my clothes, have a shower, go to bed and sleep. A deep, dreamless sleep.

The landing was silky. So silky that I did not register my return to earth.

In the Brock Holden, running the freeway, I said to Cam, ‘Four people dead. Nothing to do with me.’

‘Before you got there?’

‘No. While I was there.’

He looked at me. ‘While?’

It was too early in the day, whatever day it was, to tell the story. ‘I misjudged this bloke,’ I said. ‘I think his friends might want to have a word with me.’

Cam punched a button on the console. Muddy Waters from every direction, drowning in the Waters.

I woke up in a big bed, white sheets, white blanket, white room, clean-smelling sheets, light of day from huge uncurtained windows.

What day? Where?

I sat up, alarmed, swept the bed linen away, naked, heart pumping. Then I remembered. I went to the window and looked out on a wide arc of the city. Below me lay Albert Park lake and beyond that Middle Park and the bay. Off to the right, I could see the Westgate Bridge and Williamstown.

Time? I found my watch beside the bed. Just after noon. I’d only slept for five hours.

Only? How many hours did I have?

I wandered around the apartment. Little had registered earlier in the day. It was the penthouse, minimally furnished, no pictures, huge windows taking in the whole city, polished boards underfoot, a kitchen like a high-style operating theatre, a gym and a sauna and a Japanese bath and two showers in the football team-sized bathroom.

‘Belongs to a bloke I know, never there,’ Cam had said. How did he know people who owned places like this?

On the coffee table in the sitting room, I found two new shirts, new underpants, my jacket and pants in a drycleaner’s bag, a mobile phone, a ring with three keys, and a plastic card with a magnetic strip and a barcode. A note from Cam said:

Food on the ground floor. The mobile’s clean. Car in bay 12 in basement 1. The card gets you through the doors.

In a shower, water boring into me from all directions, I tried to work out what to do. No Gary to look for now. No videotape of the Bangkok interrogation.

Gary was TransQuik. And Dave was TransQuik, TransQuik inside the government. Possibly a late recruit to the TransQuik cause, recruited after Gary’s disappearance, perhaps even later. I’d been looking for Gary on behalf of TransQuik, a late recruit myself.

What had Gary told Dean Canetti in Bangkok? Something explosive. Dean said:

…wait till you see this, you’ll cream your jeans, it’ll hang Mr S.

Mr Smartarse. Steven Levesque.

Dried, dressed, I got out my notebook, looked for Chrissy Donato-Connors-Sargent. She was home.

‘Chrissy, you said something about someone telling Alan there was funny money in TransQuik…’

A warder with a look that said a mass breakout could be imminent showed me into the interview room.

Miles Crewe-Dixon, formerly accountant to Alan Sargent, was waiting for me, smoking a cigarette. He was in his fifties, a round-faced man, not grown slim on prison food, neat hair, straight, grey, short. He had the air of someone you could trust. I’d appeared for a childcare centre owner with a similar look. The convictions in New Zealand were under another name.