bottle.
‘Join me?’
I shook my head. ‘It’s not the answer.’
‘What is?’
‘Do you know who killed Carmel?’
He shook his head and took a big slug of Bell’s.
‘Do you know why she was killed?’
‘I guess so.’
‘You were compiling a sort of dossier on the movers and shakers, that right?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Carmel’s mother.’
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I hope nobody else talks to her. I thought it was just Carmel and me and…’
‘Who else? Who knows?’
He glanced fearfully at the door which he hadn’t quite shut. Then he drank again. ‘Whoever killed her.’
‘What sort of stuff did she have?’
‘Hot. Shots of people meeting wrong people. She used special mikes and picked up conversations.’
‘Didn’t you know how dangerous that was?’
‘It was her idea.’
‘I was told you were the more radical one.’
He shrugged. ‘I had the.. manipulative ideas but Carmel had the concept.’ He snorted and emptied his glass. ‘Listen to me. I’m talking like a movie producer.’ He reached for the bottle and poured another big drink. He was drunk but a long way from incapable. Still, I thought I’d make that his last even if I had to use the. 38 to convince him.
‘You’ll have to make that clearer.’
He drank again, flicked back the hair and leaned towards me intently. ‘Look, you have to understand that she was the most brilliant kid with film I’ve ever seen, or heard of.’
‘I’ve seen Bermagui.’
‘Nothin’. He snapped his fingers. ‘Nothin’, to what she could do. What she did with this footage was amazing-the way she cut it and laid in the conversations and did the voice-overs. Devastating.’
‘Who did she film-Legge and Porter, Broadhead…’
‘Yeah, and others. Carmody, Gabriani…’
‘Jesus.’ Wal Carmody was a renegade policeman who advertised himself as a ‘security consultant’; Carlo Gabriani owned stud farms and helicopters-a few years back he’d owned market gardens and a couple of broken- down trucks. ‘What was the idea?’
‘Expose the lot. Get film and sound showing they interconnect, how they meet. They meet in parks a lot, you know that? So they can’t be bugged. Didn’t stop Carmel, amazing judgement on where to put a mike. She could bug a phone, a room
‘Have you done any of that?’
‘A bit.’
‘Whose places?’
‘I’m not sure. I got scared and I wanted to back away but Carmel kept getting braver.’
More whisky went down. The only reason I had to believe that he was lying was Moira Wise’s view that de Vries was the more radical, but that’s what I did believe. ‘Her mother thinks you were pushing her.’
He sneered. ‘Push that chick? Push the Opera House-same result.’
‘What did you mean by manipulative ideas?’
His head dropped forward and I thought he was going to let go of his glass, but, trust a drunk, that’s the last thing they’ll do. His shoulders shook and I realised he was crying. Maybe he was drunker than I’d thought. The sobbing became louder and his shoulders jerked compulsively. Fat bulged at the waistline under the T-shirt and his thighs strained the stitching of his jeans. It was hard to be patient with him; I had the feeling that he was crying not for Carmel, but for himself. I took the glass away and slapped him lightly. ‘What did you mean, Dr de Vries?’
He lifted his head and looked at me with shocked eyes. ‘You hit me.’
‘Just barely. Manipulative ideas-what does that mean?’
His smile was loose and foolish. ‘We…she sent some samples.’
‘You bloody idiot. Pull yourself together! Who did you send them to?’
He gulped and wiped his eyes. Another gulp and he was steadier. ‘I don’t know. Carmel kept the records. Brilliant…’ he drank and spilled some of the whisky out of the corner of his mouth,’… brilliant.’
‘What’re you saying?’
‘Know what she did? You’ll love this. She dropped the footage of the targets, the meetings and all, into commercial videos and tapes from the TV. Off-line edits. Same with the records-dates, names. All on tape. All in the middle of movies.’ He laughed. ‘Crazy chick.’
‘These samples. What were they?’
‘Just bits of film-highlights.’
‘That was your idea, to send this stuff to the people. Why?’
‘Push the bastards! Push ‘em!’ The drink was giving him a spurt of aggression. ‘Worked too. Ran around like crazy things. Carmel got this shot of…well, I won’t say who it was… with this hit man. Got ‘em, right there. On film.’
‘You maniac! One of them killed her, you know that?’
He nodded. ‘Nearly killed me too. Why d’you think I’m here?’ He emptied his glass and reached for the bottle. He was slow and sluggish and I beat him to it. I had the bottle by the neck and would’ve liked to brain him with it.
‘What happened?”
‘Drink.’
‘After. What happened? You weren’t at the Greenwich?’
He shook his head. ‘I was at the car. Guy took a shot at me. I ran.’
‘Did you see him?’
A floorboard creaked and there was a sudden draught smelling of cement and the sea. ‘You saw me, didn’t you, de Vries?’ A man came through the door. Two things about him frightened me. One was the gun in his hand, the other was that he was tall and thin with dark, unruly hair and a broken nose-just like me.
21
The resemblance didn’t seem to strike de Vries or the man with the gun as forcibly as it did me. But then, they didn’t know what I looked like without the eye-pad. The gun was a real show-stopper-smallish calibre and with a silencer fitted. That meant the user was a good shot who was prepared to come up close to his work.
‘Move a bit, Hardy,’ he said. ‘He goes first.’
‘No!’ de Vries shrieked. ‘No, no!’ He held the glass in front of his face and put his free hand up with the fingers spread.
‘Yes,’ the man said. He moved forward quickly, brought the gun up and fired twice. The glass exploded with a sound louder than the two pops from the gun. Fragments bounced against the wall and the TV set. De Vries’ head dropped forward and his dark hair was suddenly made darker by the welling, spurting blood. The gun swung towards me. I had no chance to reach for the. 38 under my jacket. There was just no point. He tensed his arm and then suddenly relaxed it a fraction.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘It’s like shooting my fuckin’ self.’
‘How did you find him?’ I moved a millimetre; if he’d let me move maybe I could fall off the chair and move some more. If he’d let me live that long.
‘Picked you up at the Lane Cove house, Hardy. Been following you from there.’
