The Big Ask (14 page)

I knew Webb. He was no gentleman.

Surf was up. The waves of shit were about to start breaking.

Noel Webb was a copper.

We'd had dealings a couple of years back when Angelo was Minister for the Arts, a little matter concerning forged paintings. It was not a happy encounter. I took a couple of deep breaths, asked Trish to send him in, slipped the contract back into my top drawer and stood at my desk, waiting.

Webb filled the door frame. He had the build of an icebox and a personality to go with it. His hair was cut to an assertive two-millimetre burr and his ears stuck out the side of his head like the handles on a cast-iron casserole. He had the sort of face you could strike a match on. It wouldn't light but you'd get a lot of satisfaction doing it.

‘Hello, Noel.' I didn't offer him a seat. ‘How's life in bunko?'

‘Wouldn't know,' he said. ‘I'm on other duties now.'

‘Let me guess. Public relations?'

Webb leaned idly against the door frame and surveyed my broom closet as though it confirmed his estimation of my net human worth. ‘I understand you were at the wholesale fruit and vegetable market earlier today.'

It wasn't a question. ‘So?'

‘Why were you there?'

‘To buy some asparagus.' Until Webb eased back on the attitude, gave me some explanation, I saw no reason to answer his questions. ‘I'm planning on making a quiche.'

‘It's not the asparagus season.'

He was right. The asparagus season didn't officially begin until they put up a sign at the Melbourne Club requesting that members refrain from urinating in the umbrella stand. ‘I was misinformed,' I said.

Webb sucked in his cheeks. ‘Still a smartarse, I see, Whelan.'

‘So this a social call, then?'

Noel Webb liked to be the one asking the questions. ‘When did you leave the market?'

‘Before the asparagus arrived,' I said. ‘But after the last of the stone fruit.' Provoking Noel Webb was like shooting fish fingers in a supermarket freezer. I relented. ‘Five thirtyseven,' I said. ‘Or eight.'

He thought I was still winding him up. ‘Looked at your watch, did you?'

‘Matter of fact, I did.' I made a show of looking at it again. ‘It keeps very good time. Which is a valuable commodity. So how about you stop wasting mine with the quiz-show routine and tell me what this is all about.'

‘Happen to see Darren Stuhl at the market?'

If he was here asking, he already knew the answer. Shit, I thought, Darren's reported me. Got in first, claimed that I was the one who attacked him. Which is what it must've looked like to those blokes who witnessed the fight. Men who, conveniently, were Stuhl employees, unlikely to contradict the boss's son, even if they knew the true story. Which they didn't. Shit. There went my
quid pro quo
. ‘I saw a lot of people,' I said. ‘It's a very busy place.'

Webb ran his tongue around his teeth and pursed his lips. His repertoire of facial expressions was limited but communicative. He wanted me to understand that he could barely restrain his irritation. In that regard, nothing had changed since we were in the same class at Preston East Technical High School.

‘And if you blokes were doing your job properly,' I said, ‘you wouldn't be harassing innocent people. You'd have Darren Stuhl behind bars. He's a vicious prick and it's only a matter of time before he does someone a serious injury.'

‘Not much chance of that,' said Webb complacently. ‘He's on a slab in the morgue.'

That gave me pause. ‘What happened to him?'

‘Run over by a truck. Squashed flat as a tack. Raspberry jam from arsehole to breakfast.'

Call me uncharitable, but I felt a momentary flash of elation. ‘Nasty,' I said. ‘Then again, accidents do happen. And they couldn't happen to a bigger jerk than Darren Stuhl.'

‘Whether it was an accident or not remains to be seen,' said Webb. ‘And your comments about the deceased are not exactly well-chosen, considering.'

‘Considering what?'

‘Considering that you were in the truck that ran him over.'

My insides rose, then fell, as if I was in a plummeting elevator. The burst sack, the smear of red on the asphalt. Then another thought jostled forward. Holy moley, I thought, this is about my parting words to young Dazzer. If he came near me again, I'd told him, he wouldn't know what hit him. Now something had.

I sank into my seat. ‘Do forgive me, detective sergeant,' I said. Fortunately I had not yet called Webb by his boyhood nickname, Spider, a usage he deeply disliked. ‘In my understandable excitement at seeing you again, I forgot my manners.' I gestured at the visitor's chair. ‘Please.'

Webb sat down. ‘That's detective
senior
sergeant.' He pulled out a small spiral-bound notebook and laid it on his knee. For the moment, he left it closed. ‘Let's begin again, shall we?' he said. ‘Why were you at the market this morning?'

‘I had insomnia. Couldn't sleep. I was wandering the streets, looking for distraction.' I put my hand on my heart. ‘And that's the living truth.'

He looked at me sceptically but let it ride. ‘And you saw Darren Stuhl there?'

‘Like I said, we spoke to each other.'

‘You knew him from your work here at the Transport ministry?'

‘We met informally,' I said. ‘He punched me in the face and shoved my head down a toilet.'

‘An understandable reaction. Must happen to you fairly regularly.'

My turn to let it ride. ‘Happened at the Metro nightclub last Friday. At the time I had no idea who he was. Thought he was just an aggressive drunk. Check with the bouncers if you like. By sheer coincidence, I saw him again at the market this morning, fronted him, suggested he might care to pay my dental bill.' I flipped back my top lip and bared my fangs. ‘Two grand he cost me.'

Webb's eyes flicked from my teeth to the graze on my forehead. ‘And what was his reaction?'

‘We agreed to disagree,' I said.

‘What time was this?' Webb took a pen from his inside pocket and opened his pad.

‘About four o'clock.'

‘What then?'

‘Nothing really. We went our separate ways. I ran into Donny Maitland. He was there making a delivery. We had a coffee. He offered me a lift home.'

‘And what's your relationship with Maitland?'

I shrugged noncommittally. ‘I've known him since I was a kid. Took his sister-in-law to the Coburg ball in 1970. She was there, too, as you're no doubt aware. Heather. As we were leaving, we got caught in traffic, all those trucks and whatnot. I was running late, had a plane to catch, so I took off, legged it, caught a cab home.'

Webb consulted his notes. ‘This was at 5.37 exactly?'

I nodded. ‘Just before I took off, we ran over something. I thought it was a sack of fruit or something. But Donny's already told you this, hasn't he?'

‘Catch your plane?'

‘Obviously not. Circumstances changed and I cancelled the trip. A family matter. The reason for my insomnia, if you must know.'

He seemed to accept my assurances on that point, or at least he did not pursue the matter. ‘Know anyone who had a grievance against the deceased? Who might want him dead?'

The deceased. The word had such a blunt finality to it. My acquaintance with Darren Stuhl had been nasty, brutish and short and I'd wished him nothing but ill—but I derived no great satisfaction from his death. Not once my initial surge of
Schadenfreude
dissipated. Apart from anything else, it meant that I could kiss my two grand goodbye. Under the circumstances, presenting a dental bill to his father would have smacked of squalid opportunism. Even in death, Darren Stuhl managed to make a pest of himself.

‘Based on my brief contact with him,' I said, ‘Darren was not what might be called congenial. He could've had hundreds of enemies. Thousands, even.'

Webb was hoping for something a little more specific. ‘What about your old mate Donny Maitland? Bit of a stirrer, I understand.'

I flashed on Donny, turbo-charged and babbling, grinding his gears. ‘Donny's got some industrial issues with Stuhl senior's corporation,' I said. ‘And he's got the T-shirt to prove it. But taking things out on the son, that's not his style. Anyway, what makes you think it wasn't an accident? It was pissing down rain, there were vehicles everywhere. Slippery road. Hazardous conditions. And some of those trucks are real monsters, bullbars sticking out a mile. He might've slipped, fallen under. Could happen to anyone.' If Farrell's story about the roofing tile was true, Darren had a history of clumsiness.

Webb wasn't there to speculate on possible scenarios. ‘So the last time you saw Stuhl alive was at approximately 4 a.m.?'

It was, apart from a quick glance through a misted window across a crowded parking lot in the pre-dawn gloom while having my motor tuned. At which time he was holding a pistol to Donny Maitland's head. If I'd seen him then, so had others, men with a better view. And if they wanted to share their recollections with the police that was their business. For my part, I preferred to wait until I had a clearer idea of what was going on. I had no wish to feed an old friend into the maw of the law.

‘Yep,' I said.

Webb jotted something down, flipped his notebook closed and stood up. His glance alighted on the phone book, open on the desk between us, where Donny's entry was highlighted. ‘I sincerely hope you're not trying to play funny buggers with me, Whelan,' he said. ‘Because if you are, rest assured that you'll live to regret it.'

‘I have no reason to want to play anything with you,' I said, also standing up. ‘And I've answered your questions to the best of my ability. If you have any other queries, you know where to find me.'

Webb put his notebook in his pocket and turned for the door. When he reached it, he looked back. ‘You should be careful how much you bite off, Whelan,' he said. ‘Make sure you can chew it all.'

As soon as he was gone, I slumped back into my seat. My mind was racing or at least hobbling as fast as it could. It was more than twenty-four hours since I'd slept. Hectic and draining hours, many of them. Fatigue was beginning to tell. I could scarcely string two beans together.

The note I left for Red on the refrigerator, the one place I was sure he'd find it, said that I'd be back about midday. It was that now. Before I went home, however, I needed to make a call.

I looked down at the phone book and started to dial.

A machine answered the Maitland Transport number. I started to leave a message for Donny to call me when Heather picked up.

‘How's Sydney?' she said. ‘Any news about your son? Donny told me he's gone missing.'

‘Red turned up here in Melbourne,' I told her. ‘Made a unilateral decision to come and live with me.'

‘Well, at least you've got something to be pleased about,' she said. ‘That thing we ran over, it was Bob Stuhl's son.'

‘So I heard,' I said. ‘How's Donny?'

‘Shook up, as you can imagine. It was a pretty grisly sight. The police didn't finish with him until ten o'clock. First the uniforms, then the plainclothes lot. They took him up to Citywest station to sign a formal statement. He kept your name out of it, by the way. Thought you had enough on your plate, what with your kid missing. Save you any hassle. I didn't say anything either.'

The only other person at the market who knew my identity was Frank Farrell. He must have supplied that information to the cops. ‘I appreciate the thought,' I said. ‘Any idea how it happened?'

‘Beats me,' she said. ‘He was a fair way under when the wheels went over him, that's all I know. Soon as you left, there were people coming from everywhere. You could've sold tickets. Until the cops arrived, that is. Then the cone of silence descended. The only one left to do any talking was Donny.'

‘Any suggestion of culpability?'

‘Why should there be?' said Heather, slightly alarmed. ‘It was an accident wasn't it?'

‘Let's hope so,' I said. ‘Get Donny to call me when he can, okay. I'll be home in bed.'

‘Alone?'

‘Asleep. Five minutes with you and I'm all shagged out.'

I got off the line before she could come back at me, gathered up my paperwork and took the contract to Trish for typing. ‘That Webb guy was a cop, wasn't he?' she said.

‘Road trauma squad,' I said. ‘I'll be out for the rest of the day.'

I took the payment requisition down to accounts, kissed some bean-counter backside, extracted a promise that Donny's cheque would be cut by the next morning, then caught a cab home. Red was on the couch, watching ‘The Young and the Restless' in pyjamas that were three sizes too small. ‘Sorry, mate,' I said. ‘I had to go to the office for a while. Work.'

He was familiar with the concept, if not the practice. ‘No worries. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.'

Clearly what these particular men had to do next was go shopping. Apart from the clothes he was wearing, Red had arrived with a Walkman, some tapes, a pair of Nike crosstrainers and a towel he'd filched from boarding school. Thanks to his hyperactive growth hormones, nothing in his room fitted him. ‘Just ring Mum and tell her to send all my stuff down,' he suggested.

That pleasure would have to wait. We lunched at a local pizzeria, then schlepped down the street to the Brotherhood of St Laurence thrift shop near the Housing Commission flats. The choice was not choice. Eventually we hunted up a couple of pre-loved tracksuits. Perfect condition. Twelve dollars the pair.

‘I look like a bogan,' Red complained.

‘If you want to make a fashion statement, you're welcome to catch the next bus back to Sydney,' I told him. ‘I understand that boaters are all the rage up there.'