The Shadow Maker (16 page)

‘Have you read the description of the man we’re after?’

‘Yes, of course, and he’s a bit on the young side for this place.

Our clientele is mostly more mature.’ Kasia gestured towards the black velvet curtains. ‘If you want proof, just take a look through that window.’

Just then the buzzer sounded.

Kasia glanced at the security screen.

‘Ah. This must be the job applicant. You’ll have to excuse me while I attend to business.’ She stood up, walked to the door, then paused. ‘Just a friendly warning, in case you open the curtains. Don’t blame me for how it makes you feel. Some people see a sort of bliss.

Others stare into the abyss of their own soul.’

With that parting shot, she went out and shut the door behind her.

It was a challenge Rita couldn’t ignore.

She got up and walked the length of the room to stand before the black drapes. She reached out cautiously. As she drew them aside, she stepped back quickly, before realising it wasn’t a window at all, but the reverse side of a two-way mirror.

On the other side was a bedroom. The decor was mostly in burgundy: matching carpet, chairs, bedspread. The lighting was sombre, moody, lamps on the wall. There was a recessed light above the shower cubicle. Filling the wall beside the door was a gilt-framed painting of an explicit sex act. The same act was being performed by the couple on the bed, just a few feet from Rita’s steady gaze.

They were both naked. The girl was young, blonde, quite attractive, slim. She was on the edge of the bed - down on all fours. The man wasn’t attractive at all. Balding, middle-aged, with a beer gut, he was standing by the bed, thrusting heavily from behind, the girl wincing and gripping the bedspread under the strain.

As she watched, Rita’s mouth went dry. It was both obscene and compelling. A physically repulsive man using a pretty girl to indulge in anal sex. Even his ugliness was somehow engrossing. Despite her aversion, she couldn’t look away.

As Rita walked back to her car, the side streets and alleyways were filled with hot afternoon sunshine and little else. There was no one about. Not even any traffic. The rows of locked warehouses seemed to sleep in the heat, the smell of bitumen rising from the road surface. All so quiet and mundane, as if the place she’d emerged from wasn’t real - a dark, fantasy interior that didn’t fit with its surroundings.

Her car was parked around the corner of an intersection. She got in behind the wheel, shut the door, switched on the air-conditioning and sat there, doing nothing, just staring through the windscreen.

Letting the cool air blow over her face and neck.

After a while she shook herself out of the trance and glanced around. At least there were signs of human activity here. On one corner a milk bar. The subdued ding of its bell followed a customer out the door. It was an elderly woman, weighed down with shopping bags, a scarf over her head, her shoulders stooped, walking slowly away. On the opposite corner, people were sitting at the tables of a pavement cafe, umbrellas shading them, drinking coffee, eating sandwiches, reading newspapers. At one table a man and a woman were chatting casually. Office workers by the look of them, nodding, shrugging, exchanging gossip. And sitting on her own, a teenage girl - the cafe’s waitress - sunning herself, smoking a cigarette and looking bored.

Rita relaxed a little. The scene had a drowsy appeal to it, full of the dull normality of the world. A new model BMW drew up beside her. She recognised the man at the wheel. He was wearing a suit, a white shirt and a neatly knotted tie, the picture of respectability.

But in the past half-hour she’d seen his bald head gleaming with sweat, his beer gut wobbling, as he had his way with a prostitute. He looked each way, checking the traffic, then accelerated off, putting distance between himself and the brothel. A moment later his car was out of sight.

Her mobile started ringing, and to her surprise the call was from Detective Inspector Jim Proctor, head of Taskforce Nero, the secret operation set up to track Tony Kavella.

‘I need your help,’ he said. ‘How quickly can you get to Fioretto’s Restaurant in the city?’

‘Ten minutes,’ she said.

‘Good. But don’t go near the front of the restaurant. We’ve got a surveillance point on the opposite side of Bourke Street.’

‘Okay,’ she said, and listened to his instructions on how to approach it.

Rita drove fast into the city, found a parking space near the top end of Chinatown, and rushed on foot to an alley that threaded its way to the rear of a fast-food outlet. A panel van with tinted windows was conspicuously out of place at the end of the alley. Its door slid open and an officer she didn’t recognise led her swiftly up two flights of fire escape stairs and into a room with a view over the busy street below. Inside the room were Proctor, members of his taskforce, surveillance equipment and a pervasive smell of hamburgers.

‘Great, you made it,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a job for you if you think you’re up to it, but we’ve got to move quickly.’

‘Tell me,’ said Rita.

‘Let me brief you first,’ said Proctor, more animated than usual as he led her through a jumble of cables and listening devices to a front window. Detectives with headphones squatted on their haunches doing nothing.

Proctor pointed through the lace curtains. ‘We’ve got direct line of sight to Fioretto’s.’ Rita looked through the window to the elegant Italian restaurant on the opposite side of the road as he went on.

‘Notice the three stretch limos parked outside? They belong to Tony Kavella, Victor Yang and Paolo Fazio.’

She was beginning to realise what this was about. ‘I see.’ Three of the biggest names in the underworld were meeting together, the heads of three rival crime gangs.

‘Kavella’s playing host to the Triads and the Calabrian mafia, our local axis of evil,’ Proctor explained. ‘He’s commandeered the upstairs dining room, while their goons police the downstairs entrance.’

Rita noticed the figure of Kavella’s chief lieutenant, Brendan Moyle, looming just inside the door, his eyes scanning pedestrians as they passed.

‘I’m assuming you’ve got a problem,’ she said.

‘You’re damn right,’ said Proctor. ‘This is an unprecedented criminal summit on neutral turf, as brazen as they can get. It’s also a golden opportunity to gain intelligence. We’ve got all three cars tagged with listening and tracking devices, but we’re not hearing a thing from inside the restaurant.’

‘Why not?’ she asked.

‘Kavella’s dropped some sort of electronic curtain in the dining room, back and front, a jamming device that blocks our long-range mikes.’ Proctor’s frustration was showing. ‘But this is a unique chance to eavesdrop on them, so I’ve got to try something. That’s where you come in.’

‘Go on,’ said Rita.

‘I want you to gatecrash.’

She looked at him dubiously. ‘Won’t that be counterproductive?’

‘There’s a risk of that,’ Proctor admitted, ‘but it might achieve what I want. In fact, you’re the only one who might be able to pull it off. Let me explain. I need somebody to bug the dining room

- to plant a short-distance, high-performance digital microwave transmitter. I’ve already got the receiver in the bistro directly below.

It’s between the feet of two undercover officers who are busy flirting and pigging out.’ He sighed. ‘But I haven’t been able to get anyone upstairs to plant the bug. It’s embedded in this wine list.’

He handed her a leather-bound folder from Fioretto’s.

‘Exactly
how
am I supposed to get away with what you’re asking?’

said Rita.

‘I’ll leave you to improvise the details,’ he answered, ‘but I suggest a frontal assault. If you can barge your way through the hoods downstairs, and past the lone goon on guard outside the dining room upstairs, I think Kavella will assume you’re doing your maverick bit again, especially after the feedback he’s got. It wouldn’t hurt if you ham it up a bit.’

‘You’re asking a lot,’ said Rita, ‘after what you told Jack Loftus about no provocation.’

‘If you don’t want to do it -‘ Proctor began.

‘I just want Jack brought up to speed,’ she interrupted.

‘As soon as practical,’ Proctor agreed. ‘One final thing. Your role is twofold - to plant a bug and drop a stink bomb. I want you to mention the Delos Club, almost as a throwaway line.’

‘Won’t that spook them?’

‘It should certainly get a reaction, which is what I want.’

‘And how am I supposed to have heard about it?’ she asked.

‘It’s been blabbed about in public at least once. One of Kavella’s henchmen shot off his mouth at a Grand Final party.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He retired after being disciplined - had his left hand fed through a meat grinder. Look, in case you’re worried, I’ve got an armed response team in place.’

Rita looked sceptical. ‘Is that supposed to put my mind at ease?’

Proctor shrugged. ‘It means you’re not alone.’

‘As long as the bug works.’

‘It’ll work.’

She shook her head. ‘All right. What the hell.’

‘Excellent,’ said Proctor. ‘I like your style, Van Hassel. There’s something fearless about you.’

‘Only when I don’t think about it,’ she said.

With the bugged wine list hidden in her shoulder bag, Rita emerged from the hamburger outlet, crossed the street through the traffic, and strode between the stretch limos parked outside Fioretto’s Restaurant. As soon as she reached the front door, the bulky figure of Moyle blocked her way.

‘No tunnels welcome,’ he said.

She looked up into his face.

‘I’m going upstairs for a glass of wine,’ she said. ‘And you’re getting out of my way.’

‘Make me.’

She pulled out her police radio and spoke into it. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Van Hassel. I want all available units to deploy outside -‘

‘Okay.’ Moyle held up a hand. ‘One member of the filth’s not worth a pinch of shit.’

‘Cancel that,’ she said into the radio, and Moyle stepped aside, allowing Rita to walk in past two more minders. She trotted up the stairs unhindered, grabbed a glass of wine from a bar tray and, slipping the wine list from her bag, approached the man barring the way into the dining room. It was the Duck.

‘Private party,’ he told her. ‘No one go in.’

She stared at him, glass in hand, the wine list tucked under her arm.

‘I tell you what,’ she said with more confidence than she felt,

‘you let me pass, right now, or I arrest you for obstruction, call for backup and arrest everyone inside this room. Think about it, a full-scale raid, and who’ll get the blame?’ She let him consider, then added, ‘The Duck will be fucked.’

He cocked his head to one side, weighing up the choices. Rita could feel her pulse thumping as she waited to see if the ploy would work. He must have decided that dealing with one cop armed with a wineglass was the most palatable option.

‘No worries,’ he said with a smile. ‘I announce you.’

As he opened the door she followed him through, dumped the wine list on a sideboard and faced the three occupants of the dining room.

‘Most sorry,’ the Duck told them. ‘Uninvited guest.’

‘I can handle this - wait outside,’ said Kavella, watching the Duck close the door behind him. Then he said to Rita, ‘You must be fucking mad.’

She walked towards them and stopped at the end of their table.

‘I get a bit mad when an ape like Moyle tells me where I can, or can’t, have a drink.’

Despite her racing heartbeat, Rita was relieved that her first task had been achieved unnoticed. The bugged wine list lay inconspicuously amid the flower bowls and serving utensils on the sideboard. She only hoped the bug was working.

‘Do we have a problem here?’ asked the elderly Yang.

‘She’s no more problem than a bush fly,’ replied Kavella. ‘Not even that. No more than a maggot.’

‘What we’ve got here,’ put in Paolo Fazio, leaning across the white damask tablecloth, ‘is a floor show.’

Paolo was young and slick in a red silk shirt and gold medallion.

His family ran an extortion racket in the wholesale supply of fruit and vegetables, with connections to the American mafia, and several politicians at their beck and call. Yang, conservatively dressed in a suit and tie, controlled a lucrative trade in heroin.

‘Who is she?’ asked Yang.

Paolo laughed. ‘She’s the cop who nearly put Kavella away.’

‘It’s just a matter of time,’ said Rita, and Paolo laughed some more.

With a calmness that was more acting than real, she sipped her wine and took in the incongruous scene. Here they were, the sole customers in a dining room that was a relic from the Art Nouveau era. High above their heads were leadlight windows and chandeliers hanging from a decorated ceiling, on the walls, wood panelling and Tuscan murals. They were sitting around a table adorned with fine crockery, champagne and gourmet food, and while the ambience was distinctly civilised, the occasion was perfectly evil. It was hard to tell which of the three had the most blood on his hands.

‘Maybe Paolo’s right,’ said Kavella. ‘Maybe we deserve a bit of entertainment.’

‘Nothing that’s bad for business,’ warned Yang.

‘Relax, Victor, this isn’t business, it’s personal.’ Kavella eased himself back in his chair, his face expressionless. ‘She did a profile of me,’ he continued. ‘So I did a profile of her. You want to hear it?
White female. Age twenty-nine. Single. Obsessive. Lives alone in a two-bedroom house. Unable to sustain relationships. Psychologically disturbed since childhood. Fucked over at the age of seven when father abandoned her. Suffers from Electra complex. Has compulsion to shove father figure’s cock up her sexually uptight arse …
‘

‘You’ve made your point,’ said Rita.

But Kavella kept going. ‘
Craves submission. Needs to be dominated.

Fantasises about rape.
‘ He paused, then added, ‘
Destined to have her
wish fulfilled, barbecue style, complete with skewers and butchers’ hooks.

She’ll be hung up, like a piece of meat. Yeah, a treat for gang-bangers,
three at a time, a pig on a spit.
‘