Ecstasy Lake (17 page)

‘You're taking a risk, aren't you?' I said. ‘Leaving all these chemicals and equipment unguarded.'

‘Not really. The crew only left half an hour ago. They've gone to the pub for dinner and they knew I was coming. They'll be back soon. We're about to pack up. All this stuff will be gone by morning.'

‘Giving up the business?'

‘Har har, funny man. No, we just keep moving, is all, for security. It's part of the business model.'

‘You must give me the presentation on that some time.'

He looked annoyed. ‘Hey, I'm the guy with the fucken gun, arsehole.' He picked it up and aimed it at me, sighting along it. ‘Don't mock me, West. It only takes a little twitch. Bang. Right in the middle of your fore-head.'

‘It's okay, Coy, take it easy.' He put the gun back on the table. I thought maybe I should try to keep his mind on his business model. It seemed to calm him. ‘So you move around to keep ahead of the cops.'

‘Yeah, sort of, although cops are stupid. We got
rivals
, you know. We gotta keep ahead of them more than the cops.'

‘Mad Dogs?'

‘Yeah, Mad Dogs. And others.' He contemplated me and stroked his moustache. ‘I'm going to take a chance with you, West.'

‘Alright.'

‘But I advise you to hold your fucken tongue. I don't like it.'

‘Alright.'

‘I'm trying to be nice, but it's fucken hard. Do you know why I'm going to take a chance with you?'

I held my tongue and shook my head.

‘You hit Harlin, right? You knocked him out. My bet is you hit him with Numbat's gun.'

I held my tongue some more.

‘Don't be shy.' He leaned forward. His breath smelled very bad. ‘Let me make it easier for you. Harlin had it coming. I don't like what he did to Melody that night.'

‘He's been beating her for a long time.'

‘He has.'

‘So why didn't you do something about it?'

He picked up the gun again. He didn't seem able to leave it alone. He inspected it. He wafted it past his nose.

‘Harlin and me have made a shitload of money from this business. We're partners. We set the whole thing up together. It's a beautiful business model. It's been fun. But more and more I don't like Harlin. He scares me. He shouldn't treat women like that.'

‘Of course he shouldn't.'

‘I treat my woman with respect.'

‘What do you want, Coy?'

‘I want Harlin out of my life. I want him gone. You want him gone, too. Am I right?'

‘Sure.'

‘What if I told you he killed Hiskey?'

‘I'd ask how the hell do you know.'

‘You know how Hiskey died?'

‘He was beaten to death. Probably with a hammer.'

‘Correct. He was hammered to death. Like a nail, only it was a geologist's hammer. His own hammer, in fact.'

‘How do you know that?'

Coy leaned back, still holding the gun, resting it on the table again. ‘The night Hiskey died, Harlin came to me. I knew something was wrong because he was acting like a pussy, the way he always does after he's had one of his anger fits. He gave me a hammer, wrapped in newspaper. It had blood on it. A lot of blood. He told me to get rid of it.'

‘Where was this?'

‘At his place.'

‘At Globe Derby Park?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Did he tell you what happened?'

‘He mumbled something about Hiskey. It didn't make much sense at the time.'

‘Why didn't he get rid of the hammer himself?'

‘I don't know. He wasn't thinking straight. He'd just killed a man. He told me to throw it in the mangroves.'

‘And you didn't.'

‘No.' A smile played on his face, trying to hide a conceit.

‘So you're saying you still have this bloody hammer?'

‘Yeah. I've hidden it. It's safe.'

‘Why are you telling me, Coy?'

‘If such a hammer somehow came into your possession, what would you do with it?'

‘I'd give it to the cops.'

‘It's possible something may come into your possession, then. Just one thing.'

‘What?'

‘Don't mention my name, or this drug lab, or anything about the business. Not to the cops, not to anyone.'

‘I'm not going to promise that, Coy.'

He sighed. He started caressing the gun again, playing with the barrel.

‘Careful, it might get excited and go off,' I said. ‘I'm sure there's a mutual attraction. Is that a .45?'

‘It is. It's a fucken cannon.'

‘I can see you love it dearly.'

He grinned suddenly. ‘You are a twat, West.'

‘Why did Harlin kill Hiskey?'

‘Hiskey owed Harlin money.'

‘But as Harlin pointed out, killing Hiskey wouldn't get his money back.'

‘It wouldn't, but you already know Harlin has an evil temper. He just lost it. You were right, the other night in the car.'

‘How much money was it?'

‘Nearly two hundred K.'

‘Harlin would make more than that in a month if your business model is so shit-hot. I wouldn't have thought it was worth killing him for.'

Coy looked coy for a moment. ‘Okay, there was another reason. What the hell do I care?' He stood and pointed the gun at me again. ‘Don't move.' He went back to the lab and returned in a few seconds, carrying one of the chemical bottles. ‘This stuff is the reason.' It was the bottle of safrole. He uncapped it and gave me a sniff. It smelled like sarsaparilla. ‘I told you this is precious. It has to be imported. Hiskey offered to smuggle a consignment in for Harlin, to pay for his drugs. He said he could bring it in with some parts he'd ordered for his drilling rig. It was arranged. And then the consignment went missing.'

‘And Harlin thought Hiskey had stolen it.'

‘Right. He thought Hiskey had stolen it and sold it to the Mad Dogs.'

‘Had he?'

‘Probably. Hiskey was in debt to all sorts of people. He needed the money, so he doublecrossed Harlin. He had a relationship with Harlin; Harlin can be human; Hiskey thought he could bluff his way through. The consignment had been missing for weeks, and Hiskey kept stalling Harlin, saying it was held up in customs. But Hiskey was a pathological liar, and meanwhile the Mad Dogs were offloading freshly minted E on the market, shitloads of it. Harlin put two and two together.'

‘And that made Harlin angry.'

‘It made him very angry. It wasn't so much the value of the safrole, although it's expensive shit, it was the betrayal. It was also the fact it put our production back weeks and gave the Mad Dogs a bigger slice of the market. They can't match our national distribution, not yet, but they're catching up.'

There was a lull, Coy seemingly lost in thought. His face was never quite still, though. His eyes moved back and forth.

‘What happens now, Coy?'

He brought himself back. ‘The other night, Harlin said you have a reputation for being solid,' he said. ‘I've shown you stuff and told you stuff tonight expecting you're going to be discreet. I'm betting on it, but I do have a plan B. Give me your word, and you can leave right now.' He rubbed his cheek with his gun and then looked at it. ‘This is plan B, by the way. Up to you.'

‘Don't be so melodramatic, Coy.'

‘You ought to take me seriously.'

I stood, and he stood up with me. I was tired, I didn't like the smell of the house, I didn't like the way Coy kept making love to his gun. I didn't like being this close to him.

‘I take you seriously, Coy. You're very scary. And you have my word. I'll keep you out of it. My only concern is Harlin. I don't care about your drugs. I hope your business model wins an award. I hope you get your own reality show. “A Drug Lord Needs an E Cook” or something. I don't care. I just want Harlin out of my life.'

He stared at me for a long time. Then his moustache twitched and some of the muscles in his face relaxed and there was less tension there. ‘I wouldn't mind being in a reality show.'

‘You've got the moustache for it.'

‘We have a deal?'

‘We have a deal.' I wasn't sure anymore what the deal was, but he could have whatever he wanted. I wasn't sure he was even sane. He moved the gun to his left hand and offered me his right and I shook it.

‘Let's go.'

Outside, the air was still. A mopoke was calling in its droll monotone, a strange, lonely tolling of the dead minutes of the night. Coy held the door of my car, preventing me from shutting it. He handed me my phone and keys. Then he leaned towards me and grabbed me by the hair. He tickled my ear with his moustache and I smelled his foul breath again. ‘I'm not a man you want to doublecross, West.' He touched my face with the gun, lightly, and let me go. The mopoke tolled again.

I headed straight to Chris and Paul's, and Melody seemed pleased to see me. I took a shower because I felt grubby, and then Melody and I chatted and drank tea. Her bruises were still showing, but she was starting to look better. I told her so.

‘I'm feeling stronger.'

‘I'm glad. What do you think of Peter Coy?'

She shuddered. ‘I don't like him.'

‘Why not?'

‘Just the way he poses, always playing with his gun. Still lives with his mother.'

‘You're kidding. He lives with his mother?'

‘Yeah. Harlin's always stirring him about it.'

I asked her if she wanted to go on a boat cruise with me, Tasso and Fern. She said she loved the sea and that her father had loved boats and she had learned to sail when she was a teenager, and a couple of times Harlin had hired a boat to please her and they'd cruised down to Kingscote for dirty weekends. That caused a pause in the conversation and I was almost ready to tell her to forget about the boat trip. Then she said she wished she hadn't said that and now she needed a fucken drink and what the fuck sort of people didn't keep a drop of liquor in their place. Then she said sorry and that sometimes she hated herself and she cried on my shoulder for a bit.

25

There was a package on the driver's seat of my car the next morning. It was in one of those green, flat-bottomed, recycled-plastic shopping bags that may have been an Adelaide invention, the logo of one of the major supermarket chains on the side. Inside the bag was an object wrapped in clean butcher's paper and secured with duct tape. I pulled the tape away and removed the butcher's paper. Under that were several sheets of newspaper, and inside those was a hammer that was tapered at both ends: a geologist's hammer. It was caked in what looked like dried blood, almost black. I was careful not to touch it, but I noticed that the newspaper was dated the day of Hiskey's murder.

I made three calls. The first was to Tasso to let him know what I'd found. The second was to Bert. I asked him to get in touch with Chris and Paul and tell them what to say. Third, I called Tarrant.

It didn't take long for him to turn up with his sidekick Senior Constable McGarry. Neither was in the mood for smiling. Tarrant in particular looked parched and bitter.

‘Where is it, West?'

I gestured towards my car. ‘On the passenger side.' I had left the driver's-side door open, and he looked in from there, not touching the car.

‘So it was there when you came out this morning?'

‘That's right.'

‘Just appeared?'

‘Almost miraculously.'

‘Was the car locked?'

‘It was locked last night. I don't know if it still was this morning. I just clicked the remote. I wasn't paying much attention.'

‘And you don't know who put it there.'

‘No.'

‘Fuck me, West. Somehow everything happens around you but you never see anything, hear anything or know anything. You must be deaf, dumb and blind. And brain-dead.'

A marked police car arrived with a couple of marked middle-aged policemen in it. They donned white overalls and hairnets and took photos, first of the car, including the door lock, and then of the hammer and its wrappings. Tarrant put on a pair of disposable rubber gloves and picked up the hammer by the middle of its shaft. He looked at it closely and gave it to the forensic boys, who put it and the wrappings in clear paper bags and started inspecting the car.

‘We can go now,' said Tarrant.

‘Goodbye.'

He laughed, not pleasantly. ‘You're coming with us.'

We drove to the police station on Wakefield Street, neither Tarrant nor McGarry saying anything. We parked under the building and took the lift to the ground floor. They made me wait a while and then ushered me into a surprisingly pleasant interview room with comfortable chairs and cream-coloured walls.

‘What time did you get home last night?' Tarrant said when we were all settled.

‘About two.'

‘Where had you been?'

‘Visiting friends.'

‘Who?'

‘Just friends.'

‘I want their names.'

‘Chris and Paul.'

‘Their last names?'

‘I don't know their last names.'

‘Good friends, are they?'

‘Becoming so.'

‘We will need to contact them.'

I looked at my phone and gave Tarrant their number.

‘Did you notice anything unusual when you got back to your place?'

‘No, nothing.'

‘Did you hear or see anything or anyone during the night?'

‘No.'

‘What about this morning? Notice anything?'

‘The first time I noticed anything out of the ordinary was when I saw the shopping bag on the seat of my car.'

‘Do you have any idea who put it there?'

‘None.'

‘Any idea why someone might have put it there?'

‘I suppose they wanted me to give it to you.'

‘Why you? Why not one of the other one point three million people in this city?'

‘No idea. As you say, things just seem to happen to me.'

‘Maybe it's because out of everyone in this whole damn city you're the person least likely to notice anything out of the ordinary.'

‘That could be it.'

‘Jesus, West. If this wasn't all going on a tape that one day a jury might have to listen to, I would swear my fucken head off at you, I'm that fucken annoyed.'

‘I don't see why you're annoyed. Maybe this is the hammer that killed Hiskey.'

‘Why do you say that?'

‘Well, it's a hammer. It's got blood on it, or something that looks like blood. I'm just putting two and two together.'

‘You should be a detective.'

‘Maybe I should be. And maybe you should be thanking me rather than having a crack.'

‘The reason I'm annoyed, West, is that I don't believe a fucken word you say.'

I was there for three hours, and never once did Tarrant bother to hide his annoyance. Eventually he stopped asking about the hammer.

‘There was a disturbance at a Mexican restaurant the other night,' he said. He looked at his notes. ‘Tuesday night. It took a while for me to hear about it because I'm a homicide detective and no one connected it to this case. It may not be connected. Apparently a woman was dragged out of the restaurant by her hair, and two men were injured. One of them had a pencil stuck in his leg and another was knocked unconscious by a blow to the head. Know anything about it? We have eyewitnesses who identified you.'

‘Yes, then.'

He looked up sharply from his notes. He was surprised. No doubt he had been expecting another prevarication.

‘Who was the woman?'

‘She doesn't want to press charges.'

‘Who dragged her out?'

‘She doesn't want to press charges.'

‘Who stuck a pencil in the guy's leg?'

‘Does he want to press charges?'

Tarrant looked at me for a long time. Then he stood up and motioned to McGarry with his head. They both left the room. A few minutes later McGarry came back.

‘He's not happy with you,' she said.

‘I can understand that, I guess.'

She sat looking at me.

‘Can I tell you something off the record?' I said. ‘By which I mean, can you turn off the video?'

‘Wait a moment.' She left the room and was gone for about five minutes. When she came back she said, ‘The video's off, we're not recording. But Tarrant is listening.'

‘Fine. All I wanted to say is that the woman is okay, she's safe. She was badly beaten but she is being cared for and she is recovering, and it's true that she doesn't want to press charges. She's been in a bad place but I have hopes she will recover, mentally I mean, and physically she'll be fine. With all due respect, what she doesn't need is to be interviewed by the police. Have you ever been in an abusive relationship?'

McGarry looked surprised at the question and took a moment to respond. Then she shook her head. I wasn't entirely sure it was the truth.

‘It might be hard for you to understand, then,' I said. ‘I can't quite comprehend it, either, why she would stay for seven years with a guy who beat her up every second weekend. But now she's out of it. And I truly believe that this episode had nothing to do with Hiskey's death.'

‘You should let us be the judge of that.'

‘Maybe, but my first concern is for the woman. She's been through hell for seven years. Can you understand that?'

‘Yes, I can understand.'

‘No one is pressing charges. Am I being charged with anything?'

‘No, not at the moment.'

‘So I can go.'

‘Yes. I'll see you out.' She walked me through the automatic doors at the front entrance of the building. Before I left she said, ‘I think I can see why Tarrant likes you.'

‘Likes me?'

‘Yes, in an irritated sort of way.'

‘The feeling's mutual, then.' We grinned at each other and I left.

Back in the office, Tasso had written comments on the exploration licence application, so I made a few adjustments and by the end of the day the application was ready to be submitted.