The second explosion came only a split second later, but in that time I recorded a few impressions. I wasn’t shot; someone had come into the room from the passage; Gary had been thrown around like a soft toy… My movement in reaction to Gary’s with the Colt had taken me over to the wall by the window. At the second blast the window shattered and I was showered with glass. I dropped to the floor and found Stanley Riley down there. He was writhing and cursing; there was a gaping hole in the floorboards and the worn old carpet square around it was scorched and sticky with blood.
A sharp sound made me look up. O’Fear had worked the pump action and was pointing a shotgun at Riley’s head.
‘O’Fear, don’t!’ I scrambled to my feet and moved towards him. He held the gun very steady as if he was taking aim, although at that range he couldn’t miss. Riley had guts; he looked at me and then at his legs. His grey trousers had turned black and there were puddles of blood around his knees and ankles. Blood was dripping into his shoes.
‘Get an ambulance.’ He ground the words out and clenched his jaw tightly as he struggled to get into a sitting position by the wall. O’Fear tracked him with the gun, but the murderous impulse had passed. He took his finger off the trigger as I grabbed for the phone. I called for an ambulance and also rang Frank Parker. When I put the phone down, I discovered that my recently healed hand was bloody from nicks and scratches caused by the broken glass. So we had the unwounded, the slightly wounded, the seriously wounded and the dead, all in one room.
Gary lay on his back in front of the safe. The charge had taken him in the left side below the armpit. Splintered rib bones stuck out through the bloody red meat and grey lung tissue. His eyes were open and bulging, and blood trickled from his nose and mouth.
A white, startled face appeared in the door. The iridologist. ‘All under control,’ I croaked. I waved her away with my bloody paw and she went. O’Fear put the shotgun on the desk and looked at the spread of photographs. He glanced at Riley, who was sitting with his back against the wall and his eyes closed. For a moment I thought O’Fear was going to pick up the gun and I got ready to stop him, but he relaxed and pointed to the photographs.
‘See,’ he said. His breath was whisky-laden, and there was a hysterical note in his voice.
‘What?’
O’Fear’s finger pointed to one of the men wearing a silver jacket and carrying a rifle. The face was sharp in every detail-the loose, slack mouth, the guileless eyes and soft jawline. It was the face I knew I’d seen but couldn’t put a name to.
‘That’s Danny,’ O’Fear said. ‘My boy. These bastards have got him into the sort of trouble he’ll never… He closed his eyes and struck himself on the chest with his fist. ‘They killed a guard, didn’t they? Danny’ll die in gaol.’
‘Easy,’ I said. ‘He mightn’t have been involved.’
‘He was. You’ve just got a few of the pictures here. I found a lot more in the office. Danny’s in them all. Bastards! He can barely write his own name, y’know. But there’s no real harm in him, if he’s left alone.’
‘So what’ve you been doing?’
‘I went looking for Danny, a’course, but I couldn’t get to him. He’s holed up in that bloody Athena fortress, I suspect. I was coming to see you here when I saw a couple of them in those poncy silver jackets using a scanner outside. Then these two arrived. I got hold of this pump gun the other day. I brought it with me and sneaked up for a listen. I heard enough.’
‘I have to thank you,’ I said, ‘He was going to shoot me. I’ll say that loud and clear to every cop and lawyer I meet. You’ll be all right.’
He nodded. Riley groaned and swore. ‘Where’s that bloody ambulance?’
‘Did you have to shoot him?’ I said.
‘I didn’t shoot him. I wanted to, but I pulled down and fired it into the floor. He’ll live. Y’don’t think it’d be a good idea for me to scarper?’
‘I do not,’ I said.
The ambulance men came, and the cops came, and there was a lot of standing around and photographing and measuring and collecting of trophies. I was treated for my cuts and Riley got some temporary relief for his pain and discomfort. Frank Parker put in an appearance. He was careful not to interfere with the work of the detectives from the Kings Cross station, but I managed to tell him that a few cruising squad cars along Chalmers Street, Redfern, could be useful. Riley refused to make a statement without his lawyer being present. O’Fear and I made statements and the photographs and shotgun parts made a big impression. Still, cops are cops.
Detective Sergeant Blazey looked at his notes. ‘I can’t count the number of bail provisions you’re in violation of, O’Fear.’
The ambulance men spread heavy plastic over a stretcher, lifted Gary’s body aboard and carried him out.
‘He was acting as my operative,’ I said. ‘That should give him some protection.’
Blazey, a dark good-looking man in a good-looking suit, lit a cigarette with a gold lighter. ‘Don’t make me laugh. Christ, this place is a mess.’ He consulted his notes again. ‘Two shots. What happened to the window?’
‘The building’s old,’ I said. ‘It probably just couldn’t stand the pressure. Like me.’
Blazey blew smoke. ‘Now I’m going to cry. You should’ve come to us the minute you got hold of this stuff, Hardy.’
‘I know I could have come to you, sergeant. I know you’re a man of integrity. But we’ve only just met. I think Riley owns a few of your colleagues, if you’ll excuse me saying so. I was working my way towards the police.’
‘Through Parker?’
I nodded.
Blazey gave the all-clear for the ambulance men to put Riley on a stretcher. ‘Parker’s okay,’ he said. He pointed his cigarette at O’Fear. ‘Gary Gilbert’s an escapee and no bloody loss. That’s lucky for you.’
‘Getting a break on that holdup and killing’s going to be very lucky for you, sergeant,’ O’Fear said. ‘What about my boy?’
Blazey turned away. O’Fear reached out and grabbed his well-cut sleeve. “What about Danny?’
Blazey’s civilised veneer cracked. ‘Take your fuckin’ hand off me. You’re charged with manslaughter. Like father, like son. Your kid’ll be lucky if he’s not up for murder.’
O’Fear punched him; Blazey reeled back with blood spurting from his nose down the front of his immaculate shirt and jacket. One of the uniformed men, a lightly built, fresh-faced youngster, tried to grab O’Fear from behind. He didn’t have a chance; O’Fear fought him off. He bullocked his way to the desk and grabbed the shotgun.
‘Bugger you all!’ he bellowed. ‘Bastards!’ He worked the pump action and swung the gun towards us-Blazey, two uniformed men, a forensic guy and me.
I jumped towards him with my hands outstretched to beat down the gun. I yelled, ‘O’ Fear! No!’
I felt the heat of the bullet that missed me by millimetres, hit O’Fear above the right eye and sprayed his brains and blood all over me.
24
Gary Gilbert’s fingerprints were all over the stocks and barrels of the shotguns, but Gary Gilbert was dead. O’Fear was dead, too, and without him to identify where the evidence had come from, the case against Riley and Athena was cloudy. I didn’t know how hard they searched or where, but no trace of the other photographs O’Fear referred to could be found. The few I had, with no negatives, and without Riley in them, didn’t carry much weight. I had no witnesses to support my claim that Riley had threatened my life, and Blazey was adamant that the uniformed man who had shot O’Fear had prevented a massacre.
‘You know, it’s funny,’ I said to Parker several days later, ‘it’s almost as if Gilbert and O’Fear shot each other. A sort of criminal shootout. One of the papers wrote it up like that.’
‘Yeah, I saw it,’ Parker said. ‘The journos are getting younger and dumber every day. Eleni Marinos is out of
