Ecstasy Lake (16 page)

23

Bert knocked on my door early the next morning.

‘You need educating,' he said.

We drove into town, to Franklin Street. It was peak hour and we dawdled with the rest of the traffic. The sky was overcast and the air was hot. The overhanging clouds were dark; there was a chance of a thunderstorm.

‘Where are we going?' I said to Bert.

‘To an indoor firing range. It's about time you knew something about guns.'

‘I don't like guns.'

‘You don't have to like them. You just have to know what to do with them.'

The guy behind the desk knew Bert by name. I gave him my driver's licence and he filled in the paperwork, which I signed, and we were buzzed through to the secure area. We entered a room with two booths. Beyond the booths was the range; it was smaller than a tennis court, and overhead wires ran down the length of it. On a shelf in one of the booths were four pistols, arranged in order of size.

‘Pay attention,' said Bert. ‘You are going to fire four types of handgun.' He picked up the smallest one, a natty black number that looked familiar. ‘This is the same make as the pistol you took from Numbat. It's a nine-millimetre Glock. It can fire about a hundred rounds a minute—that is, one hundred bullets per minute. Bang bang bang bang, that sort of pace.' He picked up a magazine and showed me how to insert it into the handle of the gun and then how to put a cartridge into the chamber by pulling back the slide. ‘The gun is now loaded and armed. Pull the trigger and it fires.'

He unloaded the gun and made me load and unload it a few times and put rounds into the chamber. ‘Okay,' he said. ‘Now you're ready to shoot.' He showed me how to stand and how to hold the gun, pointing it at the paper target.

‘A lot of people want to put their thumb here,' he said, and wrapped his right thumb across the top of the gun. ‘It's a good way to lose a thumb because the slide jumps back when the gun discharges.' He showed me how to put my right thumb over my left thumb. He gave the gun back to me. He checked my stance and grip. ‘Okay, let's see how you shoot. The key is to squeeze, not twitch. Put the gun down and put your ear-muffs on.' I did as instructed and picked up the gun again. ‘Aim, and fire when ready.'

I aimed at the bullseye and squeezed, and the gun fired. I was struck by the violence and sexiness of the act. The noise, even with earmuffs on, was loud, the jerk of the gun in my hand was hard, the smell was mean and bitter. Men, and fewer women, had been firing handguns for centuries. Now I could understand why. After the first shot I emptied the magazine in a few heartbeats. My arm ached from holding the gun and my heart was beating hard and my dick felt bigger. Bert reeled in the target. To my surprise there was a fairly neat spread of holes around the bullseye.

‘Not bad for a beginner,' said Bert. ‘But it
was
only five metres away.'

I fired the .45 Glock next, and then the two Ruger revolvers.

‘These days the cops and most security guards use Glocks,' said Bert, when I had expended all the rounds. ‘They're compact and easy to load and you can fire more rounds without reloading. But you can't beat these for reliability.' He held up one of the revolvers. ‘This is a .44 magnum, the sort of gun Dirty Harry used. It's called a magnum because the cartridges have more gunpowder than standard and therefore more energy for propelling the bullets.' He picked up the other revolver. ‘This is a .357, so it has a smaller-diameter bullet than the .45 Glock, but it's more powerful. When it hits you, you stay hit. Don't get in the way of one.'

‘Alright.'

Bert packed up the guns and made me sweep up the spent cartridges that littered the floor. ‘Now you know how to fire a handgun,' he said. ‘Maybe it will come in handy.'

24

I worked on the exploration licence application for the next two days, and finished a draft. I delivered a hardcopy to Tasso in his office.

‘Look it over,' I said. ‘Tell me what you think.'

‘I will. Thanks.'

‘We have a week to submit it.'

‘I know. I'll get it back to you tomorrow.' He put the application on his desk. ‘What's Hardcastle been up to in the last few days?'

‘I'm not exactly sure.'

‘Been distracted?'

‘Just a little.'

‘Maybe you could look into it. See what I've got to show for the twenty grand I invested.'

‘Maybe I could.'

‘We need to discredit him.'

‘I know. I might have something for you. I'll be back in a minute.'

I went to my office and found the document I was looking for and returned to Tasso's office. I held up the paper. ‘This is a letter from a law firm stating that Hiskey had sold or given some of his shares in Black Hill to Harlin. In effect, it shows that Hardcastle and Harlin are business partners.'

I gave him the document and he looked it over. ‘Where did you get this?' he said.

‘Harlin's place. I took it the other night when I was there rescuing Melody. Then I forgot about it. Sorry.'

Tasso read the letter again. ‘My God. My God.' He looked up. ‘We've got him nailed.'

‘Yes. Just wave that under the minister's nose. I don't think he'll want to give a mining lease to a company part-owned by a suspected drug lord.'

‘I don't think I'll wave it under his nose. But he might receive an anonymous copy in the post.'

‘Good idea.'

‘Let's go for a beer.'

‘I'd like to, but I've got other plans.'

He eyed me suspiciously. ‘You're not going to do anything stupid, are you, Steve?'

‘Such as?'

‘Such as fall in love with Melody.'

‘I wouldn't have thought so.'

‘It doesn't exist, you know.'

‘What doesn't?'

‘Love. It's just a hormonal imbalance that clouds your judgement.'

I laughed. ‘Please show me your PhD in biochemistry.'

‘I'm telling you it's a myth, and it will only get you into trouble.'

‘I'm not so sure it's a myth, but I agree it leads to trouble. I'll try to avoid it. Thanks for the advice.'

‘Any time.' I was about to leave, when he said, ‘What are you doing on the weekend?'

‘No plans.'

‘Good. Let's go out on the boat.'

‘Sure.'

‘Fern's keen.'

‘You're friends again?'

‘Yeah, I think so. You can bring Melody, if you like, on the boat. If you insist on hanging out with her.'

‘I'll see what she says.'

After work I retrieved my car from the other side of Greenhill Road, where I had parked it to record conversations in Hardcastle's office. I drove home, showered and changed clothes, and headed out again. The previous night I had stayed late at Chris and Paul's, sitting with Melody and talking. Her face had still been livid, and she had been spending most of her time reading and sleeping.

‘It's doing her good,' Paul had said to me as I had left that night. Melody had told the two docs about her sister and father, her drug use and the abusive relationship she had been in with Harlin. ‘She probably hasn't been this calm, relaxed or drug-and-alcohol-free in seven years.' Paul had looked at me over the top of his half glasses. ‘You're doing her good, too.'

‘How's that?'

‘You're not making demands of her. You're treating her with respect. More than anything, that's what she needs, after Harlin.'

‘She says Harlin saved her from self-destructing.'

‘Personally, I think Harlin would have killed her in the end, one way or another. Chris and I are becoming rather fond of her. Don't
you
hurt her, Steve.'

I drove along Northcote Terrace and just missed the green light at Nottage. I stopped at the intersection, and the cars that had been waiting to cross Northcote started up and headed across my path. First off the mark was a red Holden. I could see the driver clearly and it was Peter Coy, Harlin's sidekick. I thought for a few seconds. The intersection was empty now and I took it as a sign. I turned left against the red light and followed Coy.

He was in no hurry, which made following him easier. The traffic was light, so I let him get a few hundred metres in front of me and used other road-users as camouflage. For a while I assumed he was heading to Harlin's place and thought about turning back because I didn't see any point in going there again. But I stayed with him and he didn't turn into Globe Derby Park. Instead, he took the expressway to Gawler, sitting on the speed limit. Night had fallen now and I had my headlights on. Just outside Gawler he pulled into the first of a line of service stations and I drove past and pulled into the next one and parked. I could see him filling his car and I had an idea. I went into the service station shop and bought masking tape and asked the attendant if he had a cardboard box he didn't need. He found one, reluctantly, and I returned to my car. Coy was still filling his car. I tore off a side of the box and taped it over the right-hand headlight of my car. Coy holstered the nozzle and went into the shop to pay, emerging a couple of minutes later. I waited for him to drive past my service station, let several other cars follow in his wake, and pulled onto the road.

I stayed well back as Coy veered left along the Gawler bypass and took the road to Mallala. By now there was only one car between him and me, and when it turned off we had the road to ourselves. I kept a steady distance from him and we drove just below the speed limit. The road to Mallala took a dogleg to the left but Coy kept going straight along a road that took us past the agricultural college. He turned onto a dirt road a kilometre or two further on. Before I got to the intersection I pulled over and switched off the headlights. I got out of the car and removed the cardboard I had taped over the headlight. Then I got back in, turned the headlights back on and followed Coy onto the dirt road. He was a kilometre or so ahead of me, but the road was flat and straight and I had a direct line of sight to him, and he to me. His brake lights glowed, and he turned off the road to his left. I didn't change speed as I passed the turn-off point, which seemed to be the driveway of a farmhouse set back among trees. A few hundred metres further on I pulled off the road, switched off the lights and the engine, and let the dust settle.

I wound down my window. The night was quiet. A thin moon had crested but wasn't giving off much light. I used my phone to find my location on a satellite map and zoomed in on the property where Coy had turned off. It didn't look like much, just a ramshackle old house and a couple of outhouses in even worse repair. I sat for a while longer and wondered what to do. I didn't think there was much to gain from taking a look at the house, and there was a risk of getting caught. I decided to head back to town and call in on Melody. Maybe I could come out here during the day and take a closer look. Decision made, I turned on the engine and the lights and reached for the gearstick. There was a noise and I turned and Coy was standing by my window. He was pointing a gun at my right eye.

‘Uh uh, don't put it in gear,' he said. ‘Hands on the steering wheel. Thank you. You are quite a sneaky guy, aren't you? Always following folk around.' I was busy looking the gun in the eye. It was his big silver gun, minus the suppressor, but it had a bloody gleam from the red of the dashboard. ‘What's the matter? Lost for words? That's not like you, West.'

‘I'm just waiting for my heart to slide back down my throat,' I said. ‘You gave me a bit of a fright.' I tore my eyes from the gun and looked at Coy, who also had a reddish tint. He was leering at me with his wild eyes and big black eyebrows and dashing moustache. I wasn't sure I liked looking at him any better than I liked looking at the gun. There was enough light and he was close enough that I could see his eyes in detail. The pupils were dilated and his eyeballs were moving back and forth rapidly. I didn't think I could do that with my eyeballs.

‘What am I going to do with you, West?' he said, almost to himself. He looked at his watch and seemed to make up his mind. ‘Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to get in the car and you're going to drive us to the farmhouse down the road.'

‘Alright.'

‘Don't do anything stupid. I'm happy to shoot you if I need to. Maybe in the kneecaps. Turn the engine off and give me the keys. You might as well give me your phone, too.'

I did as I was told. He put my phone in his pocket and kept the gun trained on me as he walked around the car to the passenger side. He saw the cardboard that had been taped to the headlight.

‘What's this?'

‘I used it to cover one of the headlights.'

‘So you were the car with one headlight?'

‘Yeah.'

He laughed. ‘You see? You
are
a sneaky guy.'

‘How did you know I was here?'

‘I didn't. I just didn't like that there was a car behind me. This road is very quiet. I was just being careful. And then I thought I saw it pull off the road up here, so I came to check it out. Lucky I did, eh?'

‘Yeah. Lucky.'

He gave me back the keys and I started the car and drove us to the farmhouse. We pulled up in front, alongside Coy's car. He pocketed the keys, and when he was at the driver's-side door he told me to get out and I led him to the front door. The lights were already on and we went in.

It wasn't much of a place. There was rough, upturned linoleum on the floor, and the walls were made of fibreboard and hadn't seen new paint in decades. We were in an entranceway of sorts, and the light overhead was a naked low-energy bulb. Coy patted me down and directed me through a doorway protected by a heavy clear-plastic drape.

The room beyond had once been the living room, I guessed, but now it was a lab. It was well organised. There were several benches, most of them with arrays of chemical equipment, retort stands, glass tubing and round-bottomed flasks. In a corner was a shelf with large brown glass jars and a big roll of what looked like aluminium foil. On the bench nearest me were a coffee grinder and a paper shredder. There was a large chest freezer and, next to that, an ordinary fridge. On a wall hung several lab coats and breathing masks, and there were sets of thick rubber gloves and safety glasses on one of the benches. Fitted to the window was an extractor fan, like you might see in a joinery. There was a sickly smell in the air.

‘Ever seen a clandestine drug lab before, West?'

‘No.'

‘Now you have.'

‘I can cross if off the bucket list.'

He grinned, baring crooked teeth.

‘What do you make?'

‘Ecstasy, only ecstasy. We make the best product on the market.'

‘Certified organic?'

‘Fucken oath it's organic. As much as a synthetic drug can be.'

‘It's a very nice lab.'

Coy seemed proud. ‘We do things properly.' He was wearing a black, long-sleeved shirt, black jeans, a black belt with a silver buckle, and elegant black-leather boots with big heels. He might have been comical if it wasn't for the big silver pistol in his hand. The pistol tended to make him sinister.

‘What's in those?' I pointed to the brown glass jars.

‘Be my guest. Take a look.' He motioned towards them with the gun. I wandered over and read the labels, written neatly by hand: methanol, dichloromethane, xylene, hydrochloric acid. There were a number of smaller jars, too. Coy pointed to one of them.

‘That's the baby,' he said. ‘That's what makes the whole thing happen.' I read the label: safrole. ‘It isn't easy to get. Comes all the way from Cambodia. Best stuff money can buy.'

‘Of course.'

‘You may mock, West, but we only use the best ingredients. It's part of our business model.'

‘You have a business model?'

‘Of course we have. Why not? Just because it's illegal doesn't mean we're not professional. I studied business at TAFE, I've got a certificate.
And
an arts degree. This is a business, just like any other. It's just illegal, is all.'

‘And immoral.'

‘Immoral? Don't give me that shit. There's nothing wrong with E. Making it illegal,
that's
immoral. We only make high-grade gear. We don't want kids dying.' I had a feeling he was paraphrasing Harlin—Harlin the man with the social conscience, not Harlin the man who dragged women around by the hair. ‘We sell the best E in the country,' said Coy.

‘So you said.'

‘We've got a distribution network in every city and major town in the country. We could go international. You ever tried our E?'

‘I've never tried
any
E.'

Coy's eyebrows did a high jump. ‘Never tried it at
all
? You're fucken kidding me.' He looked around. ‘You can have one now. We've got a mountain of it.'

‘I'm good.'

‘Suit yourself. But there's nothing wrong with it. It's a therapeutic drug, for fuck's sake. Used to be used to treat depression, before a bunch of anals started getting uptight about the rest of us enjoying ourselves. Why not make money from it? We can all use a bit more euphoria, right?' He was scanning me with his crazy eyes. He looked like he could use more euphoria. ‘My old grandma died a year ago.'

The sudden shift in subject was almost as disconcerting as the shifting of his eyes. ‘Your grandmother?'

‘Yeah, Nonna, we called her. She was in pain, she was sad, she didn't want to die. So I gave her E. Blew her mind. Died a happy woman.'

‘Jesus, Coy. You gave your grandmother an ecstasy pill?'

‘I gave her several. I'd do it again.' He looked at his watch. Then he pointed to a door on the other side of the lab and waved the gun at me again. ‘Go through there. We can talk.' The door opened to an ordinary kitchen, sparsely furnished. There was a table and chairs and signs of occupation—empty beer bottles, cigarette stubs in an ashtray, a coffee machine, a half-full garbage bag. ‘Sit down. Just keep your hands on the table.' I sat, and Coy pulled out a chair and sat, too. He rested the gun on the table and kept hold of it. He dialled a number on his phone, and someone answered. ‘Where are you?' said Coy. ‘Fine. No hurry.' He looked at his watch again. ‘Yeah, I'm here. See you then.' He disconnected and contemplated me.