A Dark Place to Die (35 page)

The place is ashes.

All that remains of Meeks and Link are two twisted black shapes who have morphed into what remained of what was once a fine Jaguar. A second Jag and a Lexus are also now just smouldering hulks.

The roof of the lock-up is gone, as is most of the back wall. There's a layer of wet ash underfoot and the place reeks of burnt flesh and rubber.

Across the parking lot, Red Rooster is doing great business.

Eckhardt walks outside, crosses the tapes and leans against the side of the mobile unit. He slides out a cigarette and sucks down the smoke. He's only taken a couple of drags when Collins joins him.

'Smoking as much as ever, Warren?' Collins says. He's carrying a card file which he uses to waft the smoke away.

What do you think? Jesus. Eckhardt lifts the cigarette from his mouth in a what-can-you-do gesture. 'I'm a slave to it. Is everyone at OCG a health nut or just you and Chakos?'

Eckhardt remembers the conversation with Keane. 'You spoke to the Poms?'

Collins nods. 'I talked to a DI Moresby. He gave me what they had at their end. The trouble is there's nothing concrete.'

Warren Eckhardt lets that pass. If OCG classes the deaths of Kite and Stevie White as 'nothing concrete', there's little to be said.

'What about Koopman?'

Collins moves to look in his file and then remembers.

'The retired cop? Moresby says he's out. Nothing to do with Kite. Which makes him nothing to do with our thing.'

'So you don't object if I talk to him? DI Keane mentioned he might be useful.'

'Keane?'

'Another Pom. He's out of the loop over there. From what he tells me.'

'Knock yourself out, Warren,' says Collins. 'I'll pick up on Koopman if I need to. I think he's a loose end at best. We have these two bodies, plus Kolomiets, Gelagotis and the bodyguard over here. That's enough to be going on with.'

Eckhardt can't work out if Collins is dumb, or is playing dumb. Can't OCG trace the connections, see that this is all one thing, that it's a straight-down-the-line dogfight over some deal? If the body count is anything to go by, it must be a hell of a deal.

And then the penny drops.

OCG
have
made the connections on this.

Or they're making them. They just don't want me involved, but Collins doesn't want to come out and say it. Giving me Koopman is his plan to ease me out of the way.

Fuck it. If they're giving him a free run at Koopman, that's exactly where he'll go.

60

North didn't know what a ute was until today, although he's seen plenty of them driving around. Tradesmen's vehicles, as commonplace as pigeons in London.

He places his suitcase in the cab behind the driver's seat and gets in. He paid cash for it at a sprawling used-car dealership near Nerang, dressing down in khaki shirt, jeans and workboots for the sale. A baseball cap and sunglasses complete the look.

After the fire, North had driven the Jag back to his hotel, and picked up his stuff. He hadn't checked out; the room had been paid for upfront for a week. By then, in the unlikely event of being traced to that hotel, he'd be long gone.

North drove the Jag to a large shopping mall where he bought clothes, including the jeans and boots. He took a cab out to Nerang and bought the truck, a plain white one with eighty thousand kilometres on the clock. The dealership looked to be a good one and the truck seemed reliable.

It would need to be.

North adds a solid box cover for the rear tray before picking up a number of supplies at a hardware store,
including a large metal lock-box which he has bolted to the floor of the tray at a 4x4 specialist workshop. He takes the truck back to the mall where he parks it and the Jag at the most distant corner. In a spot hidden from most people, North unhurriedly unloads the cocaine and places it in the new lock-box. To an observer he looks like a mechanic attending to a broken car. When he reaches the last brick, he slices into it and discreetly chops out a line on the top of the lock-box. With a look round to check he is completely unobserved, North snorts the coke.

He reseals the brick, stows it with the rest and locks the box before taking the Jag to a nearby car wash where he runs it through a complete cycle. Returning to the shopping mall he wipes the interior clean using a bottle of spray disinfectant and a cloth from the supplies bought at the hardware store. He locks the car and places the keys under a large stone, one of many in the adjacent landscaped strip. He has no plans ever to return to the Jag but you never knew. He doesn't want the keys on him in the event of arrest, but to throw them away could be wasteful.

His tasks complete, North gets in the ute and drives out of the shopping mall. He has a clean car, a rifle, Link's gun, several knives, eighty kilos of cocaine, three thousand kilometres ahead of him, and a buyer at the end of it.

And one last thing to take care of.

61

Koop's Emirates flight touches down in a windy Sydney at six in the morning. Two hours later he hops a VirginBlue flight north to Coolangatta and is blinking in the Gold Coast sunshine by nine-thirty.

He tried calling Zoe from Sydney when he landed, and standing outside the arrivals gate he tries her again now, but she isn't picking up. He calls her mobile too, but since they seldom have reception out at Nashua, he doesn't worry too much about that. His best bet is that she and Mel have taken off somewhere. Zoe and Mel enjoyed a long weekend out towards Tenterfield earlier in the year and Koop hopes that's where they are.

Clutching his meagre plastic bag of belongings, he walks into the terminal, the sky over the hills behind him an ominous blue-black. Mount Warning – The Cloud Catcher – is shrouded. Rain is coming.

Inside, there's a man holding a scrawled sign with 'Koopman' written on it in black.

'Mr Koopman?' the man says in a gravel-laden voice and holds out a hand.

'I didn't order a pick-up,' says Koop.

'I know,' says the man. 'Warren Eckhardt. Queensland Police.'

Koop shakes hands. 'Frank said you might be in touch. I wasn't expecting it quite so soon.'

Warren Eckhardt rubs his chin. 'Well, I don't believe in waiting for things to happen, Mr Koopman. I've got bodies stacking up faster than I can count them and I think it's all connected to your son. I need to pick your brains. If you have any left after the journey.' He points outside the terminal towards a group of tables clustered around a bar. 'Why don't we find somewhere comfortable?'

With a perfect creamy flat white in front of him, Koop's spirits rise. Despite the first-class flight, the events of the past days have taken an inevitable toll.

He stirs a spoon of brown sugar into the foam and sips, his eyes closed.

'You have no idea how bad the coffee is in England, Mr Eckhardt.'

'Warren.'

'Warren. And please call me Koop.'

Eckhardt holds his cigarettes up for inspection. 'Do you mind?'

Koop does, but isn't inclined to get into that right now.

With almost comical relief Eckhardt drags on his cigarette and Koop is glad he hadn't objected. If ever a man looked like he needed a cigarette, it's Eckhardt. Eckhardt blows out a long line of smoke, wafting it away from Koop with his free hand.

'You were a cop, right?' Eckhardt doesn't wait for
an answer. He knows Koop's history. 'You went over to Liverpool to see what you could do about Stevie's death.' Again, it isn't a question.

Eckhardt takes another deep drag. 'We've had some bodies over here, Koop. Five in all that I think are linked to Stevie's murder. OCS might feel the same way too, but so far they're not letting me in on that information.'

'Five?'
Keane had mentioned three.

'The last two showed up yesterday. Burnt.' Eckhardt's eyes flick to Koop.

'Like Stevie.'

'Like Stevie. But not . . . not tortured.'

'That's the link?'

'No offence, Koop, but do I look like someone who'd think that was enough? The two who turned up dead will, in my opinion, turn out to be Tony Link and Stefan Meeks.'

Koop looks blank.

'No, you won't know them,' says Eckhardt. 'They are – or were – two of Jimmy Gelagotis's boys. Just like Stevie was.'

Koop sits up a little straighten Eckhardt is telling his story well. Koop can see why Keane wanted them to meet, but can't see where he fits in. Not yet, anyway.

'And this Gelagotis?'

'Well, this is where it all gets interesting. Or more complicated, depending on your point of view. Gelagotis also turned up dead a couple of days ago in the back yard of a potential witness against him. A thirteen-year-old boy. Gelagotis was armed and the boy was pretty clear that he was going to kill him if he hadn't been shot first.'

'The boy shot Gelagotis?'

'No, he was killed by a head shot from a high-calibre rifle from somewhere in the scrub behind the boy's house. No sign of the killer. No witnesses.'

Eckhardt stubs out his cigarette and lights another. He coughs wetly and looks at Koop ruefully. 'These things are going to kill me.'

Yes they will, thinks Koop, if you keep sucking them down like breath mints. 'Something has to,' he says.

Once his next cigarette is lit, Eckhardt continues. 'The boy that Gelagotis was after had been a witness in a murder two weeks back. A Ukrainian called Kolomiets and his minder, Bytchkov. It doesn't take a genius to figure out who was behind that. Even OCS could join the dots.'

'A take-over,' Koop says, sick that a son of his could be involved like this. Thirteen-year-old boys. Jesus.

Eckhardt nods, smoke streaming from his nostrils. He reminds Koop of a bull. 'Exactly. Gelagotis stepped up to Kolomiets to seize control of . . . something, I don't know yet. Bytchkov was in the way, which is why he died.'

'And Gelagotis came back to the boy,' says Koop. 'When he heard there was a witness.'

'Or thought better about not killing the boy first time round.'

'And where does Stevie come in? Was he involved with Gelagotis going after the boy?'

'I don't know,' says Eckhardt. 'I don't think so. Stevie had left by then. He was no angel, but there's nothing to suggest he was at that level. Let me run this past you. Gelagotis, along with Meeks and Link, work freelance for The Russian. There's a deal happening, or some sort of turf thing. I'm going for a deal because I'm of the opinion that it's linked with Liverpool. And it's linked with Liverpool because that's where Stevie turned up dead. Gelagotis
sends Stevie across to break the news to someone in Liverpool that there's been a change in personnel at the Australian end.'

'And that doesn't go down well with the people there.' Koop can imagine how some of the men he knows would have reacted to that news. How Kite would have reacted. 'Stevie was the messenger.'

'Exactly.'

'So who killed Gelagotis? This Link, or Meeks?'

'I don't think so,' says Eckhardt. He pauses. 'I was speaking to Frank Keane. He said that someone at his end had been killed too.'

'Keith Kite. He must have been the connection.'

Eckhardt has put this thing together nicely. To Koop, it feels right.

'They're all killing each other,' says Koop. 'But who killed these last two?'

'The same person who killed Kite, I would say. Wouldn't you?'

Koop doesn't reply. He's thinking about Keith Kite leaning in close to him at the art gallery in Liverpool, his blood dripping down from the wound in his forehead and his busted nose. He said something that Koop didn't register. Until now.

I'm sending someone your way.

Koop stands up too quickly, knocking his cup onto the concrete, his movements panicked, his bowels liquid. He sees the man who was drinking water at the gallery.

Declan North.

I'm sending someone your way.

Zoe
.

62

Mel flicks a switch and the bubbles in the hot tub gurgle into life. Zoe sinks down gratefully, her spine resting against Mel's breasts, and sighs deeply. It's been hard with Koop away and she deserves –
they
deserve – to kick back. She feels Mel doing something unseen behind her that involves a number of small motions, and then a hand reaches round holding a lit joint. Zoe flicks water from her right hand as best she can and grabs it from Mel.

'Thanks, sexy,' she says, and takes a drag before passing it over her shoulder. They smoke the rest in similar fashion, safe in the knowledge that Koop is in mid-air somewhere over Asia. They do smoke in front of him from time to time, and Koop doesn't, in all honesty, care very much. But a lifetime of chasing drug dealers and being around users with less style than Zoe or Mel has left him with a jaundiced view of cannabis. So he usually chooses not to be around when they indulge. And Zoe, recognising the difficulty the dope poses to Koop, is always tactful.

Now, though, it is heavenly lying in the bubbles, the smoke drifting up into the flawless Northern Rivers night sky. A flying fox, looking like something from a vampire
movie, flaps its papery wings and wheels through the darkness above the tub, black against black. It's quiet. Even Ringo has finally stopped barking, thank God. They're going to have to do something about that overactive hound.

The phone rings and Zoe lets it go. It's probably Koop again. He's already left two messages and Zoe wants him to stew. She knows he's on his way back, that's enough. In fact, her anger has worn off and if she wasn't in the hot tub with Mel, she'd have answered. Instead, she lets it ring out. She'll call him tomorrow morning when his flight gets in and tell him to hurry home.

The tub, which sits on the corner of the deck, juts out over a small escarpment, the ground falling away in front of it so that you appear to be sitting on the edge of a great precipice. Zoe likes to luxuriate in it, preferably with one or two sexy people, and, like now, smoke a pre-sex joint. No-one can see them. From where they are, the nearest house is several hundred metres away and concealed by a fold in the land. The road doesn't intrude on their view, and the pitch-black country night cloaks all sins. Zoe even likes the lights set into the bottom of the tub, the colours slowly changing. There's enough left in her of the child who grew up in grey post-war Liverpool to thrill at the sparkly Hollywoodiness of the hot tub.