that held the gun and jabbing for his eyes before he knew what was happening. I hit his right eye and he screamed. I wrenched the gun away and clouted him with it above the ear. He groaned. Blood was leaking from his eye. I hauled him out of the chair and laid him on his back. ‘Listen, Leo. You’re going to lose that eye unless you lie here perfectly still. I’ll get the doctor for you. But don’t move. Understand?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘The doctor.’
I checked the pistol — a. 45 Colt Trooper, nice gun. Nothing was happening in the corridor but I could hear noises coming up from the lower level. There were two more shots from different weapons and shouts in a language I couldn’t understand. Then silence. I eased forward to look down the stairs. John Kelo was backing up towards me with his hands in the air. Below him were two men. One stood on the bottom stair facing towards the door, the other was a few steps below Kelo; his gun was pointed up at the Bougainvillean’s broad chest.
I tried to keep my voice loud and steady. ‘Stand where you are. I’ve got clear shots at all three of you.’ I proved the point by putting a round into the wall a metre from the gunman’s head.
Everybody froze. The man at the bottom of the stairs also had a gun and he lifted it a fraction.
‘You at the bottom. Put it on the floor.’
The man on the stairs was trying to locate me but I had a partition to hide behind and the acoustics in the stairwell were puzzling him. ‘You, too,’ I said. ‘The gun on the step behind you.’
‘Who are you?’
‘When the guns are down we’ll talk. Mr Kelo, plant your fat arse on the stairs.’
Kelo slowly lowered himself, keeping his hands in the air.
‘We’re the Federal Police,’ the gunman said. ‘Put down your weapon.’
I laughed and cut the sound off when I heard a note of hysteria in it. ‘I hope you are, mate. But until I’m sure you’d better do as I say.’
He bent smoothly and put his gun on the stair. His right hand went into his jacket and he took out a small folder which he flipped open. ‘Phillip Allen, Detective Sergeant. Can we stop this?’
Kelo came out of his crouch like a tiger. He swept up the gun, straightened, turned. I shot him in the right shoulder; he yelled, the gun flew from his hand and he bounced off the wall before falling, slowly, awkwardly, to the bottom of the stairs.
After that, it was a matter of cautious approaches and you show me yours and I’ll show you mine. We convinced each other that we were PEA Hardy and policemen Allen and Blake. Kelo was bleeding badly and in shock. Blake was phoning for help when Frank Harkness came storming down the stairs.
‘What the fuck’s going on here? Who the fuck are you?’ He confronted Allen and for a minute I thought he was going to plant one on him.
‘Policemen, Frank,’ I said. ‘It’s a bit of mess. Could you take a look at the bloke on the ground there?’
I pointed and Harkness’ belligerence fell away. He hurried down the stairs and bent over Kelo.
‘Ambulance is on its way,’ Blake said. ‘How is he?’
‘Strong man. Plenty of meat on him. If they get here tonight he should be OK.’
‘How’s Buckawa?’
Blake was assembling weapons-he had my. 38, which they must have taken from Kelo, the Colt Trooper which I’d handed over and Allen’s pistol. Allen moved closer to Harkness who was packing his pipe. ‘Are you Professor Frank Harkness?’ he said.
Harkness nodded.
‘Do you have any knowledge of the whereabouts of Jonas Buckawa?’
Another nod. Harkness, standing immediately under a No Smoking sign, lit a match.
‘I’m here to interview him.’
The doctor puffed smoke and laughed at the same time. You won’t be interviewing him for a while yet, sonny Jim. He’s up there sedated and bandaged to buggery.’
Allen seemed unable to cope with Harkness’ style and manner and I wondered if it was something he’d assumed long ago as a means of putting people off-guard and getting his own way. Sirens sounded outside and the ambulance team raced in followed by a couple of uniformed cops. There was a lot of talking and note scribbling. The paramedics loaded Kelo onto a stretcher and headed for the door. Then I remembered Leo.
‘Hang on,’ I yelled. There’s another one. Frank, up here.’
He bounded up the stairs beside me and if there’d been another flight I think he might’ve got to the top first. I dashed along the passage and opened the door to the room where I’d left Leo. He was lying rigid on the floor, not moving a muscle, with his eyes closed. The trickle of blood had dried on his dark face. Harkness bent over him and the touch of his hands seemed to soothe Leo instantly.
‘Open up, son.’
The eyelid flickered, then lifted slowly. I didn’t want to look. I remembered how soft and jellylike the eye had felt when I hit it. ‘Frank, is it…?’
‘Fucking mess. We’ll have to get him into the theatre. Where’s that other pair? They’re not bad.’
Kelo was taken off in the ambulance. I rounded up Pali and Kwaisulia who were sitting quietly in another room on either side of the recumbent Buckawa. We got Leo into the theatre and I finally had time to talk to Allen and Blake, with Ian Sangster sitting in. They told me that there were a number of new charges pending against Buckawa in PNG-fraud, embezzlement, assault-and that the Buka Strait Committee had very recently disowned him. That was news to Ian. The Committee was persisting with the lawsuits and the surveillance and Buckawa’s splinter group was looking to make a deal.
‘That fits,’ I said. I told him about Buckawa’s behaviour and what Kelo had said. ‘What now? You’ve got a fair bit on him-illegal entry to Australia, firearms offences
Blake and Allen exchanged looks. ‘Just between you and me, Hardy,’ Allen said, ‘I think our government wants to cooperate with Mr Buckawa, not prosecute him.’
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Kelo…’
Allen smiled. ‘Got the wrong end of the stick. Like the people who gave us the tip.’
Harkness came into the room, puffing smoke and drying his hands. ‘He’ll be all right, wasn’t as bad as it looked. You’re a fucking gloomy threesome. What’s next?’
‘Frank,’ I said. ‘You and me are going off somewhere to drink a little whisky.’
‹‹Contents››
Ghost Writer
The magazine was old and faded, the paper yellowed and crisp. I treated it gently, opening it to the page which had been marked by a Post-it. The article was entitled ‘Death Duo’ and it went for atmosphere right from the jump. I read:
A body lay on the steps. One hand rested just above the level of the water and a narrow watchband was visible above the cuff of a light-coloured coat. Dark hair curled damply to the nape of the neck. The legs were a little apart: the new sole of a woven brown leather shoe faced upwards.
No marks could be seen on the head or hands, but beside the face lay two items, a train ticket from Adelaide and a small silver rose. A dawn walker had called the police from The Rocks station; they arrived as the mist was lifting from the Opera House…
I skimmed another few paragraphs and put the magazine down. ‘I remember it,’ I said. ‘Vaguely- she really made a name for herself with that piece.’
The woman sitting in the client chair in my Darlinghurst office nodded. Dark red hair waltzed around a pale, perfect face-huge green eyes, sculpted nose, cheekbones, put-it-here lips. Physically, Madeline Ozal had everything women dream of having and men lust after. Furthermore, she had a quality that was probably worth around a million a year to her as an actress-she riveted your attention so that it didn’t matter what she said or how she said it, you just wanted to hear more, and watch.
‘Valerie Drewe,’ she said. ‘God, what a bitch.’
I watched the way her lip curled. You read about it, lip-curling, actually seeing it was unnerving. ‘She was a
