Mac leapt into the silence. ‘Give me sixty seconds and if you want, I’ll walk away, okay?’
Ted’s shoulders relaxed. ‘Okay,’ he said, reaching for his tea. ‘Sixty seconds, but keep your hands on the table, okay?’
‘Ted, I’ve come down from Indonesia overnight. My operation ended with my partner being shot, and now my controller hasn’t answered the phone for three days. His name’s Tony Davidson, and I’m worried about him. He’s never off the air for three days. We go a long way back, and I owe him to at least check. He’d do the same for me.’
Ted was silent, thinking. At an outside table a bunch of lunching ladies shrieked at a piece of gossip.
‘Alan McQueen, down from Indonesia?’ said Ted, like he was savouring a wine.
‘I can wait,’ said Mac, taking off his sunnies. ‘I don’t need to see his place. Just need to know he’s okay. That’s it, Ted.’
‘Let’s walk,’ said Ted, standing.
Mac left a fi fty-dollar note on the table and they walked north, Ted casing the streets and doing a series of perfect counter-surveillance patterns. When they got to the public park at the end of Hastings Street, he asked Mac to stay in one place, in the open, and then moved off.
Twenty minutes later, Ted approached him from behind and held out his hand. ‘Sorry about that, Alan,’ he said. ‘Can’t be too careful.’
They got into Ted’s fi ve-year-old BMW 3-series and drove back along Hastings, around the point and along Sunshine Beach, before veering right and into the suburb behind the famous beach. Mac fi nally asked Ted who he’d checked with.
Ted smiled, and Mac said, ‘Forget I asked.’
‘Since you did ask – Joe.’
‘Did he carpet me?’
‘He said if McQueen’s trying to pick up men in seaside cafes, he’s either desperate or lonely.’
Mac laughed.
‘No,’ said Ted. ‘He said you’re a good operator, that you’d have your reasons.’
At the end of a quiet cul-de-sac about six streets back from the beach, Ted stopped the car and pointed at a cute cottage nestled among wattles and frangipanis. As he got out, Ted pulled something from the glove box and shoved it in the small of his back, then walked towards the cottage. Mac noticed there was no letterbox, no street number.
Along with Tony not being in the phone book or the electoral roll
– and having a false address on his driver’s licence, he’d bet – the old guy had kept all of the habits used by the gainfully employed spy.
‘I was at Tony and Vi’s anniversary dinner last week,’ said Ted. ‘But they had it at a restaurant in town. Only know about this address because my wife and Vi do fundraising for the children’s hospital.’
The property seemed quiet as they walked to the cottage and none of the curtains were pulled. Moving around to the front, Mac noticed an inside light was switched on and, as they stepped onto the veranda, Ted pointed down at a stainless-steel bowl of peas and a plastic bag of pea pods beside it. The peas had cracked dry and the pods were yellowing, misting up the bag with condensation. The fl y screen was shut but the door behind it was open.
The quiet of the day was eerie. Ted pulled a Colt Defender from the small of his back and expertly pulled back the slide. Mac pulled a heavy cricket stump from an old canvas cricket bag on the veranda.
Stalking to the door, Ted leaned into the jamb and slowly pulled the screen door open. It was cooler inside but the smell hit them at the same time and they looked at one another in the gloom. They both knew that smell.
‘Trip wires,’ mouthed Mac, his adrenaline starting to pump in his temples. Then he followed Ted down the hallway, the Saffa holding the Colt in cup-and-saucer.
They slowly cased the house, the smell becoming stronger as they proceeded, although the place seemed to be clean of booby traps.
They found Vi Davidson in the kitchen, lying face down, a pretty fl oral-print dress hiking up her athletic legs. The fl ies rose in a furious buzzing as they walked towards her. Blood had poured from her head and spread to the edge of the fl oor and under the refrigerator. Now it was congealed, fl at. Kneeling down, they saw a small hole behind her right ear.
Mac had always liked Vi. She was a very friendly, very smart woman, born to wheat money but who gave her life to charity, mainly working with intellectually handicapped kids.
Ted looked up at the ceiling, breathed in and out, put his hand up and rubbed his face into it.
Before leaving the kitchen, Mac used the sharp end of the stump to pull down Vi’s dress, give her some modesty. Vi would have laughed at that gesture – shrieked at the silliness of it.
There was nothing in the living areas or bedrooms. Ted checked in the bathroom. Nothing. As an afterthought he pushed open the door to the toilet. Mac yelped as a swarm of fl ies fl ew out and a tide of cockroaches scattered along the fl oor. Tony Davidson was slumped against the cistern and the green tiled wall. His face was almost unrecognisable and the entire back wall of the toilet was covered in blood, viscera and bits of bone and matted hair. His pants were around his ankles.
They headed out into the sun again, both of them paranoid though they needn’t have been. The hit had been done two or three days ago, around the time when Mac and Diane had attended the opening reception at the Lar, and Mac had phoned through what he had on NIME and Bennelong, Grant and Vitogiannis. Someone had known, someone had ordered that not only Vitogiannis and Grant be taken out, but that Davidson and Mac had to go too. They were the four people – outside of the Hassan gang – who knew what NIME really was and what the real deal was for the enrichment codes. Diane would make a fi fth person, but it wasn’t clear that she was supposed to be whacked by the room-service shooter. She was only shot at the tennis courts when she opened fi re.
But someone had to have known that Mac was talking to Davidson, that he was putting it together. Who?
Ted and Mac stood still, not talking for a while.
‘I’m – I’m sorry about this, Ted, I -‘
‘Don’t be, mate,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘This is the game. Tony knew that.’
‘No such thing as retiring, huh?’
Ted fi xed him with a look. ‘Know a way to tell your wife that?’
Ted said he’d take this one, since Mac was still in the fi eld. The last thing intel guys wanted was to get involved in a detective’s quest for the truth. It wasn’t that Mac had anything to hide, but once the questions started – Name? Age? Address? Occupation? How long did you know the deceased? Why were you here? – the lies would just start piling up and Mac would confuse their investigation. They’d end up trying to build a case out of Ted and Mac: Excuse me, Mr McQueen. Did you say you got off the plane from Singapore, went to Hastings Street and trawled the cafes for an ex-spy who could lead you to the deceased?
Mac gave Ted his new mobile number then walked away from Tony and Vi’s house, leaving Ted to ring it in.
He walked along the beach track back to his apartment, fi ghting the nausea, trying to get the taste of Tony and Vi’s house out his mouth.
Pausing near a stand of shrubs on the side of the path, he dropped to all fours and vomited, tears running down his face as the dribble hung from his bottom lip. He breathed in and out as deeply as he could then, rolling around to sit on his bum in the sand, he looked out on the Pacifi c. A middle-aged woman with a German shepherd and a purposeful stride walked towards him with a look of concern.
Before she could say anything, Mac raised his hand in the sign of, I’m okay, thanks.
Getting to his feet, he felt overcome by a pain way beyond the body and deeper than the mind. Putting one foot in front of the other, he made himself walk on, his whole body shaking.
Janice handed him Freddi’s fax as he came into the lobby. His voice sounded ten miles away as he said, Thank you.
Sitting on the edge of the bed in his undies, he stared at the fax.
Freddi was right – the other latent was gibberish. He let it fall to the ground and fell back on the bed. For an age he looked at the ceiling, feeling empty, useless and scared. Someone who knew what Mac was uncovering, who
