Crucifixion Creek (21 page)

‘A bikie? Oh no. He works at the hospital. That was one of the attractions of living
here, within walking distance.'

‘And now you must be the last non-bikie residents in the street, aren't you?'

‘I suppose we are. We've only been here a year, so we're not one of the long-term
residents like Phoebe. They all grew old and moved away, and their houses were bought
up by Crows members. Very communal, really.'

‘Do you have any children?'

Donna looks surprised by the question, and Kelly adds quickly, ‘I just wondered if
there are any children left in the street.'

‘Well, yes. We don't have any, but a couple of the Crow families
do. I mean, they're
just ordinary people really, with ordinary jobs and ordinary families.'

They talk on for a while. Donna is pleasantly straightforward, and when she says,
‘Are you sure you're not going a bit overboard with your great Creek conspiracy?'
Kelly finds it hard to argue.

She returns to her car, feeling dispirited, and drives to the
Chronicle
offices.
It's a quarter to twelve when she gets there, and she still hasn't phoned Catherine
Meiklejohn.

The offices are quiet. Bernie is away somewhere, but there is a package waiting on
her desk for her. She opens it and finds a mobile phone inside. When she switches
it on she finds one number in its memory. She hesitates for a moment, thinking, then
leaves the office again and goes out to the car park behind the building. She dials
the number and hears a familiar voice.

‘Hi Kelly.'

‘Harry! You still want to talk to me?'

‘I'm not sure, Kelly. Where are you going with this?'

‘To be honest I don't know. Everyone's saying my idea about the south-west underground
rail is wrong. Maybe it is.'

‘Yes, maybe. I know nothing about that. But that doesn't mean something isn't going
on. I'm going to send you another photo. Tell me if you recognise the people.'

Kelly waits for the picture to come through, a cluster of men in a bar. She gives
a little gasp of excitement. ‘Harry, that's Derryn Oldfield, isn't it? With Maram
Mansur again. And the one next to them is Councillor Potgeiter.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘It was taken in a hotel bar in Jakarta, last April.'

‘And that's…Kristich, is it? On the other side?'

‘He paid Potgeiter's expenses for the trip—airfare and hotel.'

‘Brilliant.'

‘I can get you a copy of the hotel bill.'

‘Yes, I'll need that.'

‘I don't know what it means, Kelly. Maybe there's a perfectly innocent explanation.'

‘Okay, I'll be careful. I'll do some checks. Thanks.'

‘Don't try to contact me any other way, Kelly. And watch your back.'

The line goes dead. She stands for a moment, biting her lip, then phones Catherine
Meiklejohn, who invites her to come to the
Times
office the following morning. As
she hangs up Bernie comes into the office, puffing from the stairs, struggling out
of his wet coat, grumbling to himself. She waits until he's settled at his desk,
then goes over to him and tells him about the offer.

He nods. ‘Not surprising, Kelly. You're a good reporter. Bit wild in your theories
sometimes, but they'll knock you into shape.'

She reaches across his desk and gives him a big hug. She doesn't mention the new
photograph.

26

Harry goes in to headquarters early to catch Toby Wagstaff at the end of his shift.
The inspector is tired, wanting to get home, and with nothing good to report. ‘They
were all out of town, Harry, in Bathurst. The whole gang. They rode out there on
their bikes the night before, stayed at a hotel they'd booked, and didn't get back
till yesterday afternoon. We were monitoring their phones, and the local boys and
the hotel staff check it out.'

‘Bebchuk? You're sure?'

‘Yeah. He's a distinctive figure, big man, beard. He was there.'

Harry shakes his head. ‘They're fooling you, Toby. They did it. Bebchuk did it.'

Wagstaff sighs. ‘Or someone else wants them in the frame. They say O'Brian was supposed
to go on the ride, but never showed up. The thing is, whoever killed him made a pretty
good job of fingering the Crows. His upper left arm was badly burnt, remember? That's
where he had a tatt of the club colours. They burned it off. Pretty obvious pointer,
yeah? Might as well stick a note on him, “The Crows did it”.'

‘What about the post-mortem?'

‘Cause of death was cardiac arrest, probably while they were barbecuing him. He'd
been tortured, fingers, toes broken before that.'

‘But when did this happen?'

‘They're still working on that. Roberts reckons it could have been up to forty-eight
hours before he was dumped.'

‘Before they all headed off to Bathurst.'

‘He's not sure. We've got CCTV footage of the car that brought him to your place—green
Holden reported stolen twenty-four hours earlier, found torched yesterday out at
Hurstville. The cameras show two, maybe three, occupants.'

‘That should narrow it down.'

‘Piss off, Harry.'

He hangs around, unable to settle. When he sees Deb he complains that Wagstaff is
making a mess of it, but she doesn't want to know. ‘Keep out of it, Harry. You're
a witness, that's all.'

There's an email on his computer from the psychologist suggesting he make an appointment.
He deletes it. Finally he does a search on the smash repair business in Mascot. It
is owned by Marco Ganis, cousin of Stefan Ganis who died in the siege. He owns a
tow truck, first registered two years, colour red.

The rain has newly stopped, the pavements are still slick, trees dripping, a heavy
black cloud cover in the night sky. Harry parks a kilometre away and walks quickly
down deserted streets. He pulls a black ski mask over his head as he approaches the
compound, which sits on a corner. On the footpath facing away from the streetlight,
a gnarled paperbark tree hangs half over the chain link fence, and Harry quickly
climbs it and drops into the yard. The dog stirs, then appears from the shadows behind
the shed, sniffing, peering. Harry calls softly, ‘Here boy.' It gives a deep growl
and comes
bounding across the concrete, then stops abruptly as the steak—half a kilo
of rump—lands with a fat plop. It sniffs, licks, then grabs it and begins to chew.
Harry stays motionless against the fence as the meat goes down in greedy gulps. When
it's finished, the dog peers over at Harry and growls again. It begins to lope towards
him, then pauses, sags onto its haunches and falls flat.

The dark mass of the tow truck fills the shed. Harry examines the bodywork carefully
with his torch, the gleam of fire-engine red, then begins to scrape away at the paint,
collecting the flakes into a plastic pouch. It isn't long before he finds white beneath
the red. Then he hears a sound. He switches off the torch.

‘Caesar? Where are you boy?'

The voice comes from the far side of the truck. Harry circles around and sees a figure
reaching for the wall. As the light clicks on he darts across and grips the man's
throat, showing him the gun in his other hand. The man makes a gargling sound as
Harry forces him across to a metal chair at a bench, makes him sit and ties his hands
behind him to the chair.

Harry searches him and opens a wallet, examining the man's licence. ‘You're Marco
Ganis.'

‘Look,' the man croaks. ‘I don't keep any money here.'

Harry moves round in front of him so that the man can see him for the first time.
He sees the fear in his eyes as he takes in the mask, the gun. ‘I don't want money.
I want to know about your truck.'

‘Where's Caesar?' Ganis gulps. ‘You killed him?'

‘Maybe. Maybe I'll kill you if you don't tell me about your truck. You rebirthed
it two years ago, right?'

‘Go fuck yourself.'

Harry hits him across the face with the gun. Ganis squeals with shock, then sobs
and moans for a while, spitting blood from his mouth. Harry waits till he quietens,
then says again, ‘You rebirthed it two years ago, right?'

The man nods his head.

‘Before that it belonged to you and your cousin Stefan, who's now dead.'

‘Who are you?' Ganis mutters. ‘Oh Christ, I think that was a tooth.'

‘Three years ago, on the twenty-sixth of June, you drove it up north to Thunderbolt's
Way where you ran a silver BMW saloon off the road.'

‘No.' Ganis shakes his head, then gives a little shriek as Harry raises the gun again.
‘No! I've no idea what you're talking about. I swear!'

Harry considers him for a long moment, then walks away, out of the shed to the forecourt,
where he takes hold of the dog's rear legs and drags it back inside and dumps it
in front of Ganis. ‘Now I'm going to show you what I do to people who tell me lies.'
He cocks the pistol and points it down at the dog's head.

‘No! Not Caesar! Don't kill Caesar!'

‘Up to you.'

‘I wasn't one of them! I was never a Crow.'

‘But Stefan was.'

Ganis nods.

‘Who was with Stefan?'

Ganis gives an awkward little squirming shake of his head.

Harry says, ‘If you don't tell me, or if you tell me lies, I'll kill the dog and
then you. But if you tell me everything, truthfully, you and Caesar will live. Understand?'

‘Stefan went with another Crow.'

‘Name?'

‘I don't know.'

Harry presses the muzzle to Caesar's skull. ‘Last chance, Marco.'

‘Roman. That was his name, Roman. Stefan couldn't stop talking about it. They ran
the car off the road and then Roman went down the hill with a baseball bat to make
sure they were dead.
But we had to get rid of the truck, he said. So I drove it down
to this bloke I know in Melbourne, and he kept it there for a year, then we brought
it back with a new ID.'

Harry lowers the gun. ‘If you keep quiet about tonight there will be no consequences
for you, Marco. Caesar will wake up in an hour. If you've told me the truth you won't
see me again.'

‘It is the truth, I swear.'

‘Why did Stefan fall out with the Crows?'

‘It was the drugs, chief. They made him crazy.'

Harry leaves him there, tied to the chair, and climbs back out of the yard. He concentrates
on remaining unseen all the way back to the car, but when he is finally seated behind
the wheel he allows himself to think of Roman Bebchuk climbing down the hill with
a baseball bat in his hand, to make sure they were dead.

27

The sleek glass cube overlooking Pyrmont Bay makes a startling contrast with the
scruffy little dump that she's worked in for the past twenty-odd years. As she rises
up in a glass elevator to the top floor she looks out over broad acres of floor space
filled with rank upon rank of the latest IT equipment served by a bustling community
of vigorous young staff. She wonders if she'll be up to it.

Catherine Meiklejohn is reassuringly warm and down to earth. She glances over Kelly's
CV and says with a smile, ‘Yes, I think I'm familiar with all this. Now I want to
focus on your future.' She describes the make-up of their crime desk, their resources,
their strengths and weaknesses.

‘We see you complementing the team perfectly, Kelly. Your boots on the ground familiarity
with this city, with the western suburbs, with how it works, will be invaluable to
us. But I need to ask,' she leans forward, watching Kelly closely. ‘In light of the
attack on your flat, are you quite certain that you want to continue with this work?'

‘Yes, absolutely.'

‘Good.' Then Catherine makes an offer of a package that Kelly tries hard not to goggle
at—in total, with the perks, at least twice, maybe two and a half times what she's
currently getting. ‘And we will provide you with temporary safe accommodation until
we're sure you're out of danger. But I would like a swift decision, Kelly, and, if
the answer is yes, as early a start date as possible.'

Kelly says ‘Yes,' and ‘Tomorrow'.

She leaves, thankful that Catherine hasn't raised the awkward matter of her Crucifixion
Creek conspiracy theory beginning to look shaky.

But it does come up the following day, after she's gone through HRM and been given
a security pass and allocated a desk, when Catherine invites her up to her office
again to talk about her work. She takes a folder with her of copies of her articles
and supporting material.

‘Kelly, before you get down to work with anyone else, there's a matter of confidentiality
that we need to clear up. It's apparent from your recent articles that you have sources
of information that you don't disclose. Is that right?'

‘Yes.'

‘What can you tell me about them?'

‘Well, they've insisted that I keep their identity to myself.'

‘All right. Can I ask, is it one source, or multiple sources?'

‘Predominantly one, although I've been getting many new contacts since the first
article from people who are obviously knowledgable and concerned about what's going
on.'

‘But this primary source, are you absolutely satisfied that they would have access
to this sort of confidential information?'

‘Yes.'

‘Have you met them in person?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you are certain they can be trusted?'

‘Yes, I am.'

‘All right. Let's give them a name for convenience—how about “Kelpie”? Okay?'

‘Yes, all right.'

‘So, for example, Kelpie gave you that “three kings” photograph, did they?'