‘You don’t think I want to strong-arm you, do you? I’m a businessman. I find all this stuff very distasteful, and I want to put an end to it. That’s why I’m here.’
Gary sniffed. He dropped his butt on the floor and stepped on it. Then he used his free hand to scratch his crotch. Talk evidently bored him. He saw me watching him and turned his head slightly to bring me into his strange field of vision. He was small, but not as small as the man who had followed me and run up against O’Fear. That one had excelled at evasion; this one looked as if he liked to see blood flowing. Riley reached into his pocket and took out a cheque book.
‘What’re you being paid on this job?’
‘Ten thousand dollars.’
He nodded, reached out and picked up a ballpoint pen from my desk. He blew on it to get rid of the dust and made a few trial scratches on the cover of the chequebook. On the fourth scratch the pen worked. ‘I’ll double it.’
‘No sale,’ I said.
He sighed. ‘I thought it might be like that. A man of integrity, eh? Too bad.’
‘And curiosity,’ I said. ‘Tell me a bit about it. We might be able to reach an arrangement.’
Riley examined my face for what seemed like five minutes but was probably thirty seconds. Time frames change when the pressure comes on. I stared back at him and tried to guess his age and background. About fifty, I decided. School of hard knocks, with an overlay of sophistication picked up late. Possibly from a woman. He fiddled with the pen, flexed it between his thick fingers and snapped it like a matchstick. He seemed like a man who had followed his instincts for most of his life but had recently got smarter and learned to use his brains. Under stress, though, it was a struggle between the two approaches. Gary yawned and lit another cigarette.
‘Okay,’ Riley said. ‘I’ll put you in the picture. Todd was doing pretty well, competing with me for hauling and storing. He had better people working for him.’
‘He was a leader of men,’ I said. ‘Were you ever in the army?’
Riley flushed. ‘No. I tried to buy him out and he wouldn’t agree. Then he got shitty about security. Started to look into that end of the business.’
This was quite a lot of talk. I thought if I could keep it going, Gary might nod off. ‘There’s a whole set of photographs,’ I said. ‘They show security fuck-ups-guards asleep, patrols not checking gates, boozing on the job. Like that.’
Riley was sharp-witted and shrewd. ‘You’re guessing.’
I shrugged.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘He got interested in security and he got interested in Eleni. I didn’t like that.’
‘Which?’
‘Both.’
‘How does she fit into all this? Does she know about the hold-ups and all the rest of it?’
‘I think we’re getting off the point.’
‘Why did you kill Barnes?’
‘He was careless. He had something he shouldn’t have had, and he tried to use it against me.’
‘To what end?’
‘He wanted in on the operation.’
I shook my head. ‘That’s bullshit, Riley. Todd passed up a dozen opportunities for dirty money. It was the woman, wasn’t it?’
‘You didn’t know the bastard. He wanted her and the action. He thought I was just a dumb mick. He was wrong.’
‘Are you trying to tell me you protected Eleni Marinos from Todd?’
It was a crucial question but it really didn’t make any difference. Poor Felicia, I thought.
Riley was all bluster now. ‘I’ve said enough, and you’ve said fuck all. It’s time for you to give a bit, Hardy. What’ve you got to sell?’
Gary had disposed of his second butt in the same way and was looking more interested in the proceedings. Riley was an impatient and insecure man. My references to Eleni Marinos had touched him in a vulnerable place and tipped the scales against me. The door was standing half open. I wondered whether I had any chance of getting past Gary and out. Not much, certainly not from where I sat. I opened a drawer in the desk and looked up to see the Colt pointing at my Adam’s apple. I moved slowly and showed Riley the safe key. He nodded and I got up, moved around the desk and squatted in front of the safe. The open door was a metre and a half away, and Gary glided smoothly into place to block it off. Neat.
I opened the safe and lifted out the barrels and stocks, using the rubber gloves like pot-holders. Riley motioned for me to put them on the desk. He gave Gary a look that came from his past. ‘You fuckin’ idiot,’ he said.
‘Where’s the rest of them, cunt?’ Gary said.
I went back behind the desk and didn’t answer. Riley got up from his chair and felt around in the safe. There was only one other thing to find- the photographs. He took out the envelope and slopped them onto the desk. The glossy pictures sat on top of the scratched bits of wood and metal.
Riley looked at them, moved a couple aside for a better appraisal and shook his head slowly. ‘Fuckin’ Todd,’ he said. ‘Why couldn’t he be smart?’ The smoothness was gone from him now. It was almost as if the smell of the wharves or the trucks or the mines had settled back over him, expensive suit and all. He struggled for control, clicked his tongue and settled down in his chair. ‘Hardy, I want it all.’
‘Why don’t we have a drink?’ I reached for the cask. Two litres of rough red against a. 357 Colt.
‘Put it down,’ Gary said.
Maybe he didn’t mean to do it, maybe it was the old, instinctive Riley acting, but he took his cheque book from the desk and put it back in his pocket. I felt a chill run through me. Suddenly I was back in Malaya, feeling cold, although the temperature was in the nineties and I was sweating. The two Chinese soldiers were running at me, screaming their lungs out, and I didn’t know how many rounds I had left in the Sten gun…
Riley rubbed the back of his head; the carefully cut grey hair stood up at the crown. ‘We’re still talking. You’ve put the rest of the stuff somewhere.’
‘Somewhere,’ I said. ‘But you’ve put your money away, Stan. That wasn’t subtle. If I tell you what you want to know, I’m dead.’
‘You could be persuaded to tell. I didn’t want this to get messy, but I could give you to Gary.’
I shook my head. ‘If you give me to Gary he’d have to use his gun. I know a bit about guns. He’s got a good one there, but I might get to him. If I did, I’d put his eyes out.’
‘Try it,’ Gary said.
‘Wait on.’ Riley looked at me so hard I could feel the force of it on my face. I wanted to put my hand up, to block out his gaze, but I resisted the impulse. His thin, sharklike lips parted. ‘Mrs Todd,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s the key. D’you know anyone who lives in Chalmers Street, Redfern? Apart from Mrs Todd, I mean?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Pity,’ Riley said, ‘if you did, you could call ‘em up and ask if there’s one of my trucks in the street and an Athena van by the park.’
‘She doesn’t know a thing,’ I said.
‘I think she does. I think she knows all we need to know. I can see it in your fuckin’ face under that stupid beard.’ He swayed a little to the left, away from where the gunman stood. ‘Gary, we don’t need him any more.’
Gary’s hand moved and I started to move too, up and to one side, as if he was the conductor and I was a violinist in an orchestra. I knew I’d be way too slow but it was better than just sitting there waiting for the bullets. My eyes were closed: I felt the explosion bounce off the walls and floor and ceiling, and fill the room with echoing sound.
23
