Shooting Star (4 page)

‘Mid-week. Goodnight.’

Repeating myself, breathing too shallowly. What kind of teenage nonsense was this?

A sallow man in a white jacket was at the open door pushing a small serving trolley. Supper was grilled fish, tiny tomatoes and roasted eggplant. I had just finished it when there was a knock: a big handsome man in a dark suit, fortyish, fat coming on, neat short hair. Dennis Whitton, Pat Carson’s driver, the girls’ driver. I’d questioned Noyce about him. Ex-cop, excellent credentials, four years in the job.

‘Mr Noyce said…’

I got up and shook hands, closed the door, sat him at the library table, sat opposite him.

‘Bad luck this,’ I said.

He nodded, rolled his head ruefully, scratched the back of it. He had pale blue eyes, wary. ‘Let em talk me into it,’ he said. ‘Went in the first coupla times, hung around, pretend I’m lookin at the CDs. You feel like a perv, no one more than sixteen in the place. Second time, a bloke come up to me, he’s about twenty. He says, I’m the manager, we’d be happier if you looked at CDs somewhere else. After that…’

‘How long’s this been going on?’ I said.

‘This term, that’s all.’

‘Every day?’

‘No.’ He was indignant. ‘Only on sport days. Tuesday and Thursday. It’d be six, seven times.’

‘Who talked you into it?’

‘They did, the girls.’

‘Both of them?’

‘Yeah. They worked on me. I gave in, I’m an idiot, what can I say?’

‘Who suggested it? Whose idea?’

He shrugged, put up his big hands. ‘Jeez, I can’t remember. They talk all the time, they tease me, shave your head Dennis, no, he should grow his hair, Dennis, PE teacher said she thinks you’re a spunk, Dennis, how old were you when you did it the first time? They go on like that all the time. You wouldn’t think they were fifteen. Not like kids at all.’ He sighed. ‘I dunno who asked first.

Really don’t know.’

‘The times you went in, they talk to anyone?’

‘Sure. There’s other kids from the school there.’

‘Girls?’

‘And boys. That’s what it’s about. Boys.’

‘That’s what what’s about?’

‘Goin there. The record place. Triple Zero.’

‘Triple Zero. That’s its name?’

He nodded.

‘They went there to meet boys. Any boys in particular?’

‘Dunno. I said, only went in twice, didn’t really notice.’

‘But they were talking to boys.’

‘Well, yeah. In a group like, boys and girls.’

‘The time. How long were they in the store?’

‘Twenty, twenty-five minutes.’

‘You tell anyone you were doing this? Taking them to this place?’

‘No.’ Quick response. ‘Who would I tell?’

I got up, put my hands in my pockets, looked at a pen-and-ink drawing on the wall above the writing desk: a cobbled street, shops on either side. Somewhere in Europe. It was signed A. Carson. In the glass, I could see Whitton. He was rubbing his jaw with his right hand, looking at the ceiling.

I turned and walked around the library table, perched close to him so that he had to lean back and look up at me.

‘They’d kick your tyres a bit before you got a job like this,’ I said.

‘Cop in WA, that’s right?’

‘Right.’

‘Quit to be a security man at Argyle. Diamond mine pay better?’

‘Lots, yeah.’

‘And then the Hanleys. Big move. Perth to Melbourne.’

‘Married a Melbourne girl, she wanted to come back. Kept on about the green grass, all that. Never stopped.’ He shrugged. ‘What can you do?’

‘How long in that job?’

‘Hanleys? Nine years. Done all the driver courses, done one in England. Brands Hatch. Hanleys sent me. Ten days. Blokes from all over, America, Italy, you name it. Then Mr Clive Hanley died. Mrs Hanley wanted me to go to Sydney with her, she went to live in Sydney. Couldn’t go, the wife wouldn’t go, her family’s all here.’

‘England. So you know all the stuff. Unpredictable routes, evasive actions, emergency drills, that sort of thing.’

A slight blush crept up from his collar, tinged his jowls. ‘Yeah, all that.’

‘Put it into practice, driving the girls?’

‘Sure, yeah.’

‘So you’d never take the same route from the school to Armadale? Use different cars?’

He hesitated. ‘That’s right.’

I didn’t say anything, sat with my fingers on the table, still, expressionless, looking over his right shoulder.

‘Not worth much if they know where you’re going,’ he said. ‘All that stuff.’

I didn’t comment. ‘Know about the other Carson kidnapping?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Think about it before you gave in to the girls?’

He sat forward, shoulders hunched, eyes on the table. ‘Not enough,’ he said. ‘Jesus, not enough.’

‘So you told no one.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you’re not involved in any way?’

‘Christ, no.’

‘Mr Whitton,’ I said softly, ‘you’re pretty much finished in this line of work. But things can get much worse. Whatever happens to this girl, even the best result, you are going to be gone over by people who will look into every pore of your skin, stick a probe up your arse and look at your eyes from the inside. If you’re involved, they’ll find out. Believe that, believe it. And then you’ll be finished in all lines of work. Listening?’

His eyes were still on the table.

‘Look at me,’ I said.

His head came up. His eyes were watering.

‘I’m asking you again, Mr Whitton. Tell me the truth. You’ll be glad you did. Are you involved in any way?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no, no. No.’

The telephone rang at a writing table between the French windows. It was a flat black high-tech device and its ring was a gentle warbling sound, a sound suitable for a library.

Noyce came in without knocking. ‘Wait in your quarters, Dennis,’ he said.

Tom Carson was in the doorway, Barry behind him. They stood back to let Whitton leave. Then, not hurried, Tom went to the writing table. He sat down, took a fountain pen from an inside pocket, removed the top, fitted it to the back. He picked up the receiver.

‘Tom Carson.’

We watched him listen and write on the broad white tablet in front of him. He said only one word: ‘Yes.’

When he’d put the receiver down, Noyce went over to the table and pushed a button. We listened to the ringing, to Tom saying his name. Then a harsh, grating, high-pitched electronic voice said:

Make sure you’ve got two hundred thousand dollars in notes by twelve noon tomorrow. Fifties. If you contact the police, we’ll know and the girl dies.

Straight away. Got that?

Tom’s voice:
Yes.

Wait for a call.

They were all looking at me.

‘That’s pretty straightforward,’ I said to Noyce. ‘Purely out of interest, ask your friends at Jahn, Cullinan where the call came from.’

WHEN THEY had gone, I rang Orlovsky on the high-tech library telephone. It was a long time before he answered.

‘Frank,’ he said.

‘How did you know?’

‘No one else lets it ring for five minutes.’

I saw the survivors of C Troop irregularly but we never lost touch. We were like people who had come through a death camp, bearers of a guilt that knew no rationality and admitted of no untroubled sleep. In any year, I talked to all of them. Except Lucas, who disappeared at night from a prawn trawler lolling in its reflection on a Torres Strait sea, and the small and lethal Jacoby, who went to Burma to fight for the Karen rebels and never came back. They called from truckstops and brothels, from jails and pubs, from backpackers’ hostels and a rich woman’s beach house in Byron Bay. I went to see one in the feral, freezing high country, slept in a foul-smelling bark tepee beneath strips of rabbit flesh black from smoke. It wasn’t that we liked one another that much. It was that we were like children of the same abusive father: beyond his reach now and scattered, but always joined by our secret knowing.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I need help with a job. Tomorrow. You free?’

‘Free till next Thursday,’ he said. ‘Then I’m on the road.’

I didn’t know what Orlovsky did for a living now. ‘Legal drug distributor,’ he’d said when I once asked him. I took that to mean he was running tobacco and I didn’t want him to tell me any more. He would have told me because my being a cop did not inhibit him in any way. ‘Cops should have a moral sense,’ he said one day, back to me, fishing on the greasy bay. ‘It should be a calling. Even stupid people can have a calling. You should be able to respect cops. People like you, you’re only cops because otherwise they’d have to lock you away. They. We.’

I gave him the address. ‘Around eleven. There’s an entrance at the back to an underground garage. Tell the voicebox you’re Mr Calder’s associate.’

‘Mr Calder’s associate,’ he said. ‘That’s nice. It’s like a title.’

I felt someone’s presence. Noyce was at the door. He had less hair in front every time I looked.

‘Bring clothes,’ I said to Orlovsky. ‘Could be hours, could be a while. Clean clothes. Least dirty clothes.’

I put the receiver down and stood up. Tiredness was settling into my lower back, the feeling of grip, of compression.

‘I don’t need to stay now,’ I said. ‘I’ll come back in the morning.’

Noyce put his head to one side. ‘I think Pat’d be happier if you slept here,’ he said. ‘I’ve arranged clothes. Okay?’

‘I’ll pick up clothes and come back.’ I didn’t mind the idea of wearing expensive clothes. I minded the idea of wearing clothes I didn’t own.

‘Pat doesn’t show much,’ said Noyce, ‘but he’s shaken by this. He’d like to talk to you.’ His hands went to his tie, one at the knot, one below, made a minute adjustment, an unconscious gesture, reassuring himself, like touching a gun under your arm, feeling the cold comfort of the fit in your hand.

Pat Carson was where I’d left him, behind the huge desk, glass of whisky now beside his right hand. He seemed smaller, lower in his chair, his hair less galvanised, less electric.

‘Sit,’ he said.

I chose the chair directly across from him. Noyce was moving to sit at my left when Pat said, ‘Graham, go home. Eat and sleep like a normal person. Tomorrow, tomorrow is its own bloody day.’

I looked at Noyce. He wasn’t happy, spread his hands, long fingers for a stubby person.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘In the morning. Early. Pat. Frank.’ He backed out reluctantly. At the door, eyes on Pat Carson, he said, ‘Any development…’

‘Yes, Graham. Thank you. Goodnight. Sleep well.’

Noyce closed the door behind him, a precise, solid click. ‘The more he’s paid, the more he worries,’ Pat said. He pointed at an open drinks cabinet against the wall to his right. ‘Help yourself.’

I went over and poured two fingers from a whisky decanter, water from a beaded silver jug, sat down again.

For a moment, Pat and I sat in silence in the comfortable room, calm yellow light around the table lamps, whisky glowing in the heavy crystal glasses. We looked at each other, the hirer and the hired.

‘Two hundred, not much money,’ Pat said. ‘For the trouble.’

‘No.’

‘Why, do you think?’

‘Could be they’re not too clever, don’t know what the market will bear. Could be that, could be they just want a quick and easy deal, off they go, spend it on drugs in a few weeks. Two hundred thousand, that’s four bundles, briefcase, sports bag, shopping bag, doesn’t weigh too much.’

Pat studied me. ‘What else?’

‘It’s just a trial to see how we behave.’

‘A trial.’ He picked up his glass, swilled the liquid. I could see the high-water mark it left. ‘A trial you can do with half a million, more.’

I had concerns about things other than the amount of money but I didn’t express them, tasted the whisky, just bathed the gums in the anonymous liquid from the decanter. Single malt. Fire in it, and peat smoke and tears. The Carsons probably owned the distillery, the spring, the heather, the whole freezing spray-blasted gull-screaming granite Scottish outcrop.

‘They don’t know what your pain threshold is,’ I said.

‘Pain threshold,’ he said. ‘That’s when we scream, is it?’

‘Yes. Two hundred thousand it’s not likely to be. If they ask for half a million, you might say, that’s too much, get the cops in.’

He thought about this, studying me, eyes just slits, took a sip of whisky, said musingly, ‘What is our pain threshold? A million? Two million? Ten million?’

‘I wish it were two hundred thousand,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late.’

Pat shook his head. ‘No. We give the bastards what they want and we hope. Get Anne back, then we look for them, Frank. To the ends of the bloody earth.’

But I couldn’t leave it. ‘Anne,’ I said. ‘She’s always lived here?’