I dived down under the table where I’d pulled her and found her on her back, staring up at the holes that had punched through the Formica. She was breathing, but a dark stain was still spreading across her pale blue blouse.
17
Then it was chaos, ambulances, cops and more cops. Fay was dead and Montefiore was close to it. Lorrie had a serious shoulder wound and I was unhurt apart from a pain in the shoulder damaged in my earlier fall downstairs and again in the flat, so all the shit came down on me. I gave them the names of the dead, dying and wounded and my own name. They bagged the. 38 and the money and would have taken the tape recorder if they’d found it. Then they hauled me off to College Street, gave me a few minutes to use the toilet and set to work. Detective Inspector Keith Carmichael, forty plus and beefy, was ably assisted by Detective Sergeant Lucille Hammond, lean, dark and keen.
I agreed to be interviewed without a legal representative present but reserved the right to call one in if I chose. Then I refused to say anything until I established that Lorraine Master’s lawyer and the au pair had been informed and that arrangements were in place to look after the children.
‘She’s okay, Hardy,’ Carmichael said. ‘Small calibre flesh wound. No bone damage. Clean exit. Shock and blood loss. That’s it.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Montefiore?’
Carmichael shook his head. ‘Took five rounds to stop him. Small calibre, like I say. He was unlucky, one nicked the aorta.’
‘He had some guts. He kept trying.’
‘Like you?’ Hammond said.
I shook my head. It was still early but the adrenaline rush had faded, leaving me worn and tired. ‘No. I just blasted away a couple of times.’
‘Scared him off, but,’ Carmichael said.
‘If you say so. Anyone see him?’
Hammond consulted her notebook. ‘Yeah, and lucky for you.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Otherwise it might look like you did it.’
‘Right. What did I do with the pistol and the silencer?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s not an issue. A couple of people saw a man running along Darling Street not long after the shots. That’d be your shots. Went through Gladstone Park and then…’ She closed the notebook.
Carmichael nodded to her and she switched on the tape recorder and logged the date and time and the names and credentials of those present.
‘Okay, Hardy,’ Carmichael said. ‘Let’s hear it.’
From long established habit, I stuck to the truth as much as I could and tried not to include or exclude anything that might contradict Lorries version. I said that Mrs Master had hired me to investigate the circumstances of her husband’s conviction and that I’d gone to Noumea, met Fay Lewis and Jarrod Montefiore and arranged to pay them money for information back in Sydney. When they asked what the information was, I told them it was the name of an individual they suspected of some involvement.
‘And that name was?’ Carmichael asked.
I shook my head. ‘Fay Lewis knew the name but she was shot before she could tell us.’
‘And you’ve no idea?’
‘All I know is that someone left a threatening message on my computer soon after my first meeting with Mrs Master and that I was attacked about the same time.’
Hammond said, ‘Attacked?’
‘I was knocked down a set of stairs.’
From the looks on their faces they would both have been happy to do the same, now or sometime in the future. ‘C’mon, Hardy,’ Carmichael growled, ‘you know more than that.’
I did, sort of. But there was no chance I’d tell them about Montefiore’s version of the conspiracy to convict Master and the alleged police involvement in getting a big haul of marijuana onto the Australian market. I had no idea whether the story was true, but if it was, a couple of New South Wales cops I knew nothing about weren’t the people to talk to.
All I know is that an average-sized man, or maybe a tallish woman, wearing dark clothes and a stocking mask killed Fay Lewis and Montefiore and would’ve killed Mrs Master and me except that I got lucky.’
‘Bullshit,’ Hammond said.
I shrugged. ‘Ask Mrs Master.’
Carmichael snuffled and blew his nose. ‘Oh, we will. And we’ll jump through any cracks in your stories.’
‘You’d better be careful. She’s a very successful high-powered businesswoman and she’s got a top-flight lawyer.’
Carmichael blew his nose again and Hammond drew slightly away from him. ‘She’s married to a lowlife.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
She jumped at it. ‘So you’ve met Master? That’s interesting.’
I hadn’t meant to let that slip, but it wasn’t disastrous. ‘I saw him out at Avonlea after I took this case on.’
‘You didn’t know him before that?’
‘No.’
‘Or Mrs Master?’
‘No.’
‘How well do you know her now?’
‘What do you mean?’
Carmichael took over. ‘You know what she means. You saved her fucking life, it looks like.’
‘And mine, don’t forget. Where is she, by the way?’
‘By the way,’ he mocked. ‘She’s down the road in Balmain hospital, but if what you say’s right, she’ll be in some flash private place any minute.’
Hammond said, ‘Where did the gun come from?’
‘It was there.’
‘Whose was it?’
‘No idea.’
‘You knew how to use it.’
‘I’ve got one similar. Licensed. But I didn’t have it with me.’
‘You weren’t expecting trouble?’
The air in the interview room was stale and Carmichael was filling it with germs. My chair was hard and my eyes were still stinging from the cordite and plaster dust. ‘Look, I’m getting tired of this. I’ve been cooperative and tried to tell you everything I know. I’ve got a client in hospital, a car collecting fines and a shoulder that hurts like buggery. I’ve also got a solicitor. Do we wind this up for now, or do I contact him?’
Carmichael burst into a fusillade of sneezing and coughing and his high colour got even higher. Hammond looked concerned and when he caught his breath he gave her the nod.
‘Interview concluded at 11.50 am,’ she said and turned off the machine. ‘And you’re a slippery prick, Mr Hardy.’
I suppressed a rude reply.
I took a taxi back to Balmain and found my car sitting on its wheel rims with the tyres slashed. A heavy parking fine and an unroadworthy notice completed the picture. I organised an NRMA tow, watched SOC officers at
