Dark Summer (37 page)

She rang Jack Junior at his office. Then she went out of the house, got into the rented Toyota and drove from Wahroonga into the city. Deciding that the red Capri was too conspicuous, she had locked it in the garage and gone into Chatswood and hired the grey Toyota. If she was being too-fucking-smart, she did not worry about it. Several times she looked in her driving-mirror to see if she was being followed. Once she thought a particular car, a pale blue Commodore, seemed to spend too much time behind her; but at St. Leonard's it turned off the main highway. She was too smart to recognize the simple routine tailing method of cars succeeding one another as the tail. She would have learned something if
she
watched crime series on television, but she watched only documentaries and current affairs on the ABC and SBS, as intelligent people like herself did.

She drove into the basement of the building in William Street where Jack had his offices. This was a building owned by one of the largest insurance companies in the country; its tenants would have lent added respectability to the Vatican. Landfall Holdings, the Aldwych holding company, had the aura of a top legal firm, one that would take briefs only from clients with irrefutable proof of their innocence or enough funds to buy the firm's own innocence. The girl at the reception desk introduced herself as Minerva, though Janis thought she looked a little too slick, too Friday-nightish in her mini-skirt and tight top, to be the goddess of thought and intelligence.

“Mr. Aldwych is expecting you, Miss Eden. It's a pleasure to meet you at last, after talking to you on the phone.” She was looking Janis up and down with an eye that missed nothing.

Jack rose as soon as Janis entered his big office. He waited till Minerva had closed the door, then he gestured for Janis to sit down. He did not approach to kiss her, which piqued her. She did not want to be kissed, but she wanted the right of refusal. “This is the last payment, Janis. You'll have to finance yourself from now on. You should be able to, if this shipment goes okay.”

“You'll get your share within a month.”

He shook his head. He was dressed like a banker was supposed to dress; he fitted perfectly into this large panelled office. The panelling might be fake; but then, she thought, so is he. She hated him, a feeling that made her feel good.

“All I want is repayment of this.” He gestured at the large briefcase, a Gucci, naturally, on his desk.

“So it's really goodbye? Your father's orders?”

“Don't be nasty, Janis. If you were his daughter, you'd be doing exactly what I'm doing. Paying heed.”

Reluctantly she agreed; she remembered the ruthlessness in the old man's face. “Perhaps. Do we kiss goodbye?” She
would
kiss him, make it as cold as a witch's.

“
I don't think so. There'll be time for that when you return the case and the money.” He was surprised at how easily he was shedding himself of her. He was not given to fantasy, so he did not see himself, despite his father's casting of the role, as Sam Spade getting rid of Brigid O'Shaughnessy. He had learned his lesson: never become a partner to a power-hungry woman. Be content just to be rich; there were worse burdens. “Take care. Especially of your partners, White and what's-the-other-one's-name?”

She picked up the case; she was surprised how heavy paper money could be. “I'll have to give them the money in this. I didn't bring a case with me.”

“Buy me another one when you're paying me back. You'll be able to afford it. Maybe a Louis Vuitton?”

She left him, smiling at Minerva on the way out, aware of the latter's stare at her legs and bottom, and went down to the basement. She took the Toyota out into William Street and headed east towards Bondi. She did not notice the pale blue Commodore in the traffic behind her, because this time she did not bother to look in her driving-mirror. When she took her eyes off the road it was only to glance at the briefcase on the seat beside her. She could smell the money inside it, as one can smell sex though it is hidden.

She found the Larissa Café without any trouble. She beat four surfies in a beat-up panel-van to the last parking space at the kerb. She gave them two fingers to their cheerful insults, then, leaning slightly against the weight of the briefcase, she walked across to the Larissa. She went down to the back of the café, which was filling up for lunch, and pulled up when she saw that the last booth was occupied. The boy and the girl holding hands, both of them as scruffy as stray dogs, were not the sort of messengers sent to pick up a quarter of a million dollars in cash.

“You'll have to wait,” said a waitress behind Janis. “It shouldn't be long.”

Janis thanked her, walked the last few steps to the back booth and stood above the two young lovers. They looked up at her resentfully, as if she had interrupted them in bed.

“Yeah?” The boy wore dark glasses, like at least half of the occupants of the café. Janis thought the place might be a refuge for rock musicians; the walls were decorated mostly with travel posters, but
photographs
of rock stars, all in dark glasses, peered out from between the posters, like a gallery of the sightless. The café's sound system was playing a Midnight Oil tape; the lead singer was exhorting the diners to save the world, but the diners couldn't have been more indifferent. If the worst came to the worst, they would grill their hamburgers under the hole in the ozone. “You want something?”

“If I gave you fifty dollars, would you give up this booth?”

“Why d'you want it?”

“Sentimental reasons.”

“Make it a hundred,” said the girl. “We're sentimental, too.”

“Fifty,” said Janis, recognizing a sister under the black T-shirt and the jagged haircut.

“We're in love,” said the girl.

“So am I,” said Janis. “Fifty.”

“We'll take it,” said the boy, stood up and held out his hand. “C'mon, love. We can go somewhere else. Don't let's stand in the way of middle-aged love.”

“Up yours,” said Janis, gave them the money and they left.

She sat down, putting the briefcase between herself and the booth's wall. She looked at her watch: two minutes to noon. Then the man sat down opposite her.

“On time, Miss Eden,” said Peter Keller.

III

Romy had left, to go to work. “It's better that I do, that I keep myself occupied.”

“It's not gunna take your mind off what he's done, working on corpses,” said Clements.

She smiled wanly. “Russ,
anything
will be better than just sitting around waiting for you to call me. You will call as soon as—”

“Yes,” said Malone. “We'll call you.”

When Clements came back from escorting Romy out to her car, he said, “She's taking it better than I thought.”

“
She hasn't had to face the worst bit yet. Wait till we bring him in and then the media gets to work on the story. One good thing is she isn't laying any blame on you and me for what we have to do. The other good thing is that
she
came to us. I think she'll be glad to have you hold her hand.”

“Sure.” But Clements still looked like a man who, in a familiar situation, had suddenly found himself on the wrong side of the border.

He went out to his desk to monitor the calls coming in from Terry Stratton, with the Customs squad and the Federal police tailing the contraband container, and from Andy Graham, with the Drug Unit team tailing Janis Eden. Malone reached for the paperwork in his In basket, for crime prevention, like any other business, has to be papered and carboned or what would be the reason for Administration?

At eleven-thirty Clements came to the doorway. “Terry's just called in. The container's in one of those mini-warehouses, you know, the caged-in spaces you rent, out at Artarmon. There's nothing in the cage but the container. There's no sign so far of Snow White and The Dwarf. They've dropped out of sight.”

“What about Janis?”

“Andy says she's just pulled into the basement of a building in William Street. He's checking who the tenants are. She's dumped her red Capri somewhere, she's in a grey Toyota.”

“She's up to something. Righto, tell Andy to stay with her.”

At five past twelve Clements was back in the doorway. “Christ, you're not gunna believe this! Andy's just phoned in again. Janis is sitting in the Larissa, that place where we met Lee-roy. And guess who's with her?”

“Russ—”

“Keller! Peter Keller. Andy says it took him a minute or two to recognize him as one of our cleaners—”

Malone was on his feet, grabbing for his hat and jacket. Two minutes later he and Clements were speeding up Oxford Street in an unmarked car, blue light flashing on the roof and siren wailing. They went through three red lights on their way to Bondi, twice narrowly missing cars whose drivers both
thought
they had right of way over any speeding police car.

“Bloody women drivers!”

“They were both men,” said Malone, grinning to relieve the tension that had gripped him as the cars had loomed up. He was not, and never would be, a comfortable passenger.

As they came down the hill towards the blue blaze of the bay Clements turned off the siren but kept the blue light on the roof. He jerked the car to a stop in a No Parking zone and he and Malone jumped out, the heat hitting them at once like a blast of resistance. Andy Graham was waiting for them with two Drug Unit plainclothes officers.

“They're still in there, both of 'em,” said Graham. “They're right at the back, in the back booth.”

“Righto, radio the locals for back-up.”

“You want the Tac Response guys?”

“Not yet. I'm hoping Keller will listen to common sense.”

“What's he doing in there, anyway?”

“He's the curare killer—” Andy Graham's face opened up with shock, but Malone turned away from him to the two Drug Unit men. “Sergeant Clements and I are going inside. Once we're down the back of the café, you come in and clear the front section. Get everyone out.”

“Will he use a gun?” asked one of the officers.

“I don't know. I don't think so. That hasn't been his style up till now.” Then it struck him that the Interpol report had said nothing about the way Keller had killed the Starnheim doctor.

He led Clements into the café. Every table and booth was full with the lunchtime crowd, virtually all of them young. The long room was loud with voices, the clatter of dishes and the raucous music from the sound system. The owner, seated at the cash register just inside the front door, recognized the two detectives as soon as they entered. He frowned and stood up, but Malone shook his head at him and he and Clements walked steadily without hurrying down to the back of the café.

Peter Keller, briefcase in hand, was just about to rise from the back booth, was half turned to
face
the front door. Then he recognized Malone and Clements. He dropped back into the booth, fumbled in his jacket pocket and produced a syringe. He dropped the briefcase on the seat beside him, reached across the narrow table and grabbed Janis' wrist with his free hand.

“Don't, Peter,” said Malone, keeping his voice as calm as he could. He had left his hat in the car, but he was wearing his jacket to hide his gun. Several of the diners, however, had recognized that the place had just been invaded by two cops. “You've killed enough people.”

“I'll kill Miss Eden, too, if you try to stop me leaving here.” Keller's voice, too, was calm.

Malone didn't take his eyes off Keller, but he was aware of Clements quietly but firmly ushering the diners, one or two of them resentful, out of the nearby booths and up towards the front of the café, where, babbling and grumbling, the rest of the luncheon crowd were being shepherded out into the street by the two Drug Unit officers.

The door to the kitchen, only feet from the back booth, swung open and a waitress appeared, laden with plates. Clements stepped quickly behind Malone, pushed the girl back into the kitchen—“Stay there. We're police”—and closed the swing door. Then he stood with his back to it, looking at Keller and Janis Eden. Malone glanced at him, but couldn't read the expression on the big man's face: it could have been anger or sadness or a mixture of both.

Then Janis said, voice tight but controlled, “Do something, Inspector. Don't let him kill me!”

Keller was still holding her wrist, the needle of the syringe held only an inch from the flesh, “If they let you come with me, you won't die.”

Malone had calculated the chances of jumping Keller before the latter could use the needle: they were nil. He was only four or five feet from Keller, but the older man was backed up against the wall of the booth, the table acting as a barricade. “Do you have a gun, Peter?”

“No. This needle is all I need. If I stick it in Miss Eden, she will stop breathing in seconds and she will be absolutely dead in a few minutes.”

“How many times can you use it? Once, twice, maybe three times? You kill Miss Eden, maybe Sergeant Clements and me, but what then? There are three police officers, all armed up there at the front
of
this place and more out the back.” There was no one but the cooks and the waitresses out the back, but Keller, an ex-cop, would expect the back exit to be guarded. “You'll be shot before you get to the front door, Peter.”

In the haste to clear the café someone had forgotten to turn off the sound system. Another rock group was belting and yelping a number that Malone, an antiquarian when it came to pop music, had never heard of. An occasional phrase or two came through from the screamed lyric:
Dead in bed
. . .
You bled . . . I bled
. . . Lunchtime music, he thought; and wondered why Keller had chosen this rendezvous.