would come. There was no other way.
I was right. He dropped over a fence onto the pavement about the same time as a car drove up the street in my direction. He was a small man, dressed in dark clothes but with a white stripe on his jacket sleeves. He shrank back against the fence as the car went past. Then he ran.
I drifted down the street, keeping well back and not showing any lights. He rounded the corner into Glebe Point Road and sprinted down the hill towards the water. I saw him take the turn into the avenue beside the park before I put my lights on and followed. I picked him up under the light where the street bends. He tore open the door of a car, gunned the motor and took off. I kept as far behind as I could, delaying on the turns and hugging the kerb until he was back on the main road. I relaxed a little then, allowed a car to pass me to serve as cover and tried to pick out something distinctive about the car I was following. There was nothing distinctive, no broken tail light or racing stripe, but the number plate was KNM 223.
He drove badly. His reactions were slow and he was indecisive; probably the results of O’Fear’s gentle tap. But he managed to get into King Street and turn off towards Erskineville. This was harder for me-narrow streets, some of them one-way, relatively unknown territory. He threaded through between the factories and terrace houses and dark, empty looking lots, still driving erratically, clipping the footpath more than once. His right indicator flashed and he turned sharply into a wide concrete driveway. A man stepped out of a lighted booth, consulted something the driver showed him, and waved the car ahead. A heavy metal gate slid open, and KMN 223 was home at last.
I pulled in to the kerb and killed my lights. It was a long, narrow street, poorly lit. The side I was parked on was mostly taken up by the backs of factories. Opposite me and a bit further on, the metal gate was set in a high brick fence. Higher than that of Brown amp; Brown, almost prison-like. I felt in the shelf under the dashboard and located the half bottle of rum I keep there for emergencies. Emergencies are fairly few and the bottle was almost full. I took a swig and looked at the brick fence. The guy in the glass booth was bent over, reading or eating or playing with himself. Anyway, he wasn’t looking at me. I took another drink and squinted until I shut
out the peripheral light and could read the words painted on the gate: ATHENA SECURITY PTY LTD.
I let out a rummy breath in a low whistle. Athena was a big security firm, comparatively new. It advertised extensively and aggressively and boasted that it had the latest technology in all departments of the game. I get a lot of the security business propaganda in the mail- brochures, magazines, sales pitches-and Athena had loomed large in the material in recent times. It’s a very competitive field. I glance at the stuff, some of it I file, most of it I throw away, but one unusual fact about Athena had stuck in my mind-the head of the company was a woman.
18
I drove around the Athena establishment, taking in the high walls, signs of electronic equipment and the glow that suggested spotlights within. The wall was lower along one side which occupied a section of a neater residential street. It was almost as if Athena didn’t want to look too institutional among the tidied-up terraces and wide bungalows. Image is everything, or nearly everything. Still, it wasn’t the sort of place you storm with a Smith amp; Wesson. 38 shouting: ‘Freeze! Nobody moves until I get some answers to these questions.’
The rum was warm and comforting inside me as I drove home. I was looking forward to some coffee and plain food. I’d even be able to manage a conversation with O’Fear now that we had something solid to talk about. It was good to make a connection. I could check out Athena and its boss lady, talk to everyone ail over again from this new angle. What might Anna Carboni and Bob Mulholland know? I remembered Mulholland saying Barnes Todd was considering moving into the security business. All very promising. And the cut on my hand had stopped throbbing.
I parked in the street behind mine, put the. 38 in my pocket and approached the house warily. No sense in taking chances now that things were starting to break. I hoped O’Fear had not found the scotch or had brought his own. A few lights were on, as per normal. Nothing was lurking in the shadows. I opened the door and stepped in with the gun in my hand and knowledge of the terrain on my side. The house was quiet. I walked right through it, upstairs and down. There were no gunmen or baseball bat swingers. No obscene messages scrawled on the walls. There was no sign of O’Fear either.
A soggy, bloodied-up towel was lying in the bath. The louvre window was a wreck, and there was blood on the floor and outside on the bricks. Look for a small man-and he had to be small to get through the window- bleeding from the hands and head. I cleaned the bathroom roughly, threw the towel in the laundry basket along with my own shirt and underwear and had a shower. I kept the. 38 within reach and, as I washed, I tried to remember when I had last used it. Some time ago, I thought. Good. Keep it that way.
I sat down with a strong black coffee and my notebook and reviewed the day’s confusing developments. O’Fear had gone voluntarily; there was no evidence of a struggle, and he would have managed to leave some sort of sign even if they had caught him unawares and marched him out. But no note either. Gone where, with whom?
My supposed ally, who also represented $10,000 on the hoof, was wandering about with a knife wound in his side, doing God knows what and in possession of a pistol.
Added to that, I had the new information on Barnes Todd-art charlatan with his wife’s connivance, and war criminal. I felt in less than complete control of the situation.
I got to the office early and rummaged through my files for material on Athena Security Pty Ltd. I had kept a coloured brochure and a form letter suggesting that independent enquiry agents should consider amalgamating with bigger concerns. I had written something rude across the letter. The managing director’s signature at the bottom was a big, bold scrawl-Eleni Marinos. There was a postage-stamp-sized photograph of her beside the letterhead. She had pale skin, blonde hair and light eyes and looked about as Greek as Grace Kelly.
According to the brochure, Athena was the ‘newest, most innovative security firm in the Southern Hemisphere’. It could supply guards, patrols and electronic protection. It had an armed delivery division, a strongbox deposit facility and a security courier service. It could provide enquiry agents, bodyguards, drivers, pilots and debugging experts. Paranoia Paradise. A close and productive relationship with the state and federal police was implied, along with the certainty of insurance cover and legal advisers of an eminence it would be too vulgar to detail.
I looked at the cool, calculating face of Ms Marinos and wondered. I was sure I had seen her in the flesh, but I couldn’t pinpoint the memory. I occasionally went to the functions thrown by the various arms of the security business. At them I had encountered some sharp minds and classy talkers, although after a while the display of, and concentration on, money tended to depress me. Anyway, the roll-up was overwhelmingly male, and Eleni Marinos would have stood out like a diamond in a dustbin. She didn’t look the type to walk her dog in Jubilee Park or drink in the Toxteth. She wouldn’t exactly fit in at the Journalists’ Club where I occasionally went with Harry Tickener. I had never met her-I’d have remembered the name- but I had seen her. Where?
I used the Birko to make instant coffee. I had some instant Turkish I’d been meaning to try and this seemed as good a time as any. I poured the boiling water over the pulverised grounds and obeyed the instructions by adding some sugar. I stirred the cup with a spoon that Helen had lifted from a cafe in Darlinghurst after becoming exasperated at the lousy coffee and inflated prices. I sipped the thick, sweetish brew and, the way a smell or a sound can, the unusual taste triggered the memory. I’d seen Eleni Marinos in a Greek restaurant. Her escort at the time had been Barnes Todd.
I couldn’t remember exactly when it was. More than a year, because I’d been with Helen. We both liked Greek food and this place in Paddington was our favourite. We had been to a film, and the hour was late. Barnes was just leaving and I hadn’t even had a chance to speak to him. But that’s where I had seen her-across a smoky room. I remembered her white skin standing out amid the general swarthiness, and the way she had tossed her blonde hair as she said something to a waiter. In Greek, presumably. Then she had clasped Barnes’ arm and they had gone out.
I stared at the letter and the brochure as I tried to make something out of it. The brochure carried a picture of one of the silver armoured cars that had appeared on the streets in the last few years. They carried a big green
