The Tower (15 page)

‘You need to do some exercise, mate,' Jamal said. He looked around and lowered his voice. ‘We went into Bazzi's place this morning. Early. Never guess what we found—ten grand hidden behind a panel in the bathroom.'

‘The police missed it?'

‘Cops hadn't been there yet. They had a car outside, but we got in the back. Someone knocked on the door after our blokes had been there for half an hour, they had to get out quick. They were almost finished, they'd been careful. No one will know we were there.'

‘So he was into something?'

‘Fucking oath. And too scared to go back and recover his dough.'

‘He's probably left the country.'

‘I'm looking into that.'

Randall had a thought. ‘What have you done with the money?'

Jamal pulled a fat envelope from the inside pocket of his coat and thrust it at Randall, who took it automatically and then stopped walking.

‘No,' he said, trying to give it back.

Jamal had his hands in the air, smiling. ‘Mate, it needs a home. You don't get four grand for nothing every day. Don't wave it around on the street like that.'

Randall put it in a pocket, said, ‘Four?'

‘Two for the blokes who went in there. Four for me.'

‘They probably found more than ten, kept some of it back.'

Jamal shrugged impatiently.

They walked a bit further. Randall thought about Wu and Taylor.

‘We need something to give them,' he said.

‘I don't reckon on seeing Bazzi again. The prick.'

‘What about this other one, Asaad?'

‘Couldn't get into his house, he's got family. But I got hopes for him. Man's your more typical criminal. Stupid.'

He'd been smart enough to get through Tryon's vetting process, Randall thought. But this was not the time to go into that.

Twelve

W
hen Troy reached Bazzi's small house in Leichhardt, Ryan and Bergman were waiting outside with a uniformed inspector and a police cameraman. They all introduced themselves, and Troy asked where the locksmith was.

‘He's just coming,' said Ryan. ‘The neighbours say Bazzi keeps to himself, works long shifts, the occasional male visitor.'

‘No wife or girlfriend?' Troy said, as he saw a small van come around the corner and drive slowly by, looking for a parking space.

‘No. He goes to a gym almost every day, drives a Golf, which isn't anywhere around. We've put out an alert on it. No one here's seen Bazzi in over twenty-four hours.'

The locksmith came walking down the road carrying a toolbox. Troy sent Bergman around the back and waited impatiently while the man opened the front door. He stood back as the others went inside, and took out his notebook and recorded the time and the people involved in the search. The paperwork, he thought as he replaced the book in his pocket, always the paperwork. This was really what his job was like, the flavour of it. What had happened last night had been so unusual his memory of it was confused; sometimes when he recalled it there was a stab of terror, but other times it was as though he was thinking about a film he'd seen and already half forgotten. But the paperwork, that was real enough.

He went inside, and saw the semi was neat and painted in pale colours of sage green and faint brown.

‘Trendy,' Ryan said nervously.

It was bare, but a quick tour convinced Troy this was a matter of personal taste, and not an indication Bazzi hadn't lived here all the time. The house contained plenty of food and clothes. The small second bedroom had an exercise bike in it and little else. When he returned to the lounge he found the inspector laughing over a magazine, looking around to make sure he wasn't being captured on video.

‘Guy's a shirt-lifter,' he said to Troy, showing him a picture of two muscular men engaged in an intimate act. ‘Magazines, DVDs too.'

Ryan called from the bathroom and Troy squeezed in. A wooden panel had been removed from the wall next to the toilet, and was leaning against the glass front of the shower stall.

‘Like this when we came in,' Ryan said. ‘He was in a hurry.'

Troy nodded. Bazzi must have come back last night before the police arrived. It would have taken only a few minutes to put the panel back on. Like leaving his mobile back at The Tower, it suggested Bazzi had panicked. He wondered what he'd been after.

Back in the lounge room, Bergman showed Troy some papers he'd found. ‘Bank statements and pay slips but they don't seem to say much. Only five grand in his account. Nothing personal at all, no letters, diary, address book.'

‘Computer?'

‘Nothing except a manual for a laptop in the wardrobe.'

Ryan said, ‘His toiletries are still here, shaving stuff and so on. I guess he had a cunning kit somewhere.'

Troy smiled. A cunning kit was the name given to the cash reserve some detectives carried on their persons for emergency situations, such as a night away from the wife.

‘I think it was in the bathroom,' said Troy, wondering why Bazzi hadn't gathered his toiletries too. ‘Is there a phone in the house?'

‘No. Must have relied on his mobile.'

The inspector said, ‘Seems like your bloke's shot through.'

Troy gave him a straight face, said, ‘You reckon?'

On the way to Punchbowl, he called the hospital, using the hands-free facility for his phone. McIver was stable, but they weren't letting him use the phone yet.

‘Thank you, God,' Troy said when he'd hung up.

Asaad's place was a fibro cottage that had been added to over the years and now contained a large family. There was a big yard, in contrast to the few square metres of sandstone paving at Bazzi's.

The search took a long time but it produced nothing much. There were the registration papers of the Harley in Asaad's name, a leather jacket with the word
WOLVES
across its back, and a few grams of ice and two thousand dollars in cash in a tin above a rafter in the garage. It looked like Asaad hadn't made it home on Sunday night. His wife and mother screamed at the police as they conducted the search, and Troy went outside to avoid a headache. He was writing in his notebook when Little joined him and fired up a cigarette.

‘Bazzi was a Lebanese Muslim. Asaad's a Christian. Unusual for them to work together on something like this.'

‘It's a great big melting pot,' Troy murmured, recalling the chorus from a song his mother had been fond of. It had been on an old cassette she'd had, the greatest hits of some long-gone year. ‘And business is business.'

‘You think the Wolves are in on this?'

In recent years the city's biker gangs had become more criminalised. With the exception of the Logan family, they were the closest thing Sydney had to a mafia. But still.

‘Not their line, labour rackets,' he said. ‘I'd guess Asaad was moonlighting.'

It was a short drive from Punchbowl to Villawood. Troy knew from previous visits that the European backpackers who overstayed their tourist visas were kept in a different part of the complex to the more serious illegals from Asia and the Middle East, often entire families without papers who could spend months behind the high mesh fences before being deported. The place was in the news from time to time, when human rights lawyers and migrant groups brought controversial cases to the attention of the media. Troy imagined Little had strong views on what went on here, but the sergeant was keeping them to himself as they walked across the gravel car park towards reception. It wasn't much of a place, Troy thought: cheap brick accommodation and lots of temporary admin buildings with air conditioners hanging off their windows.

They were met near the interview rooms by a fat Immigration official who introduced himself as Damien Cowen. After asking about McIver's condition, he said, ‘There's been an incident with Qzar. He was beaten up in the bathroom late this afternoon.'

‘You mean they're all being kept together?' Troy said with surprise.

Keeping his eyes on Troy, Cowen said, ‘Qzar says he gave sensitive information to your colleagues this morning and asked to be put in protective custody. This request wasn't passed on.'

Little was shaking his head. ‘That makes it sound like a deal. There was no deal.'

‘Qzar says there was and you broke it. And you told the other illegals he'd given you certain information.'

‘Ask your colleague, the bloke who did the interview with me,' Little said in disgust. He turned to Troy and said, ‘This is bullshit.'

Troy stared at Little, who looked away, and said to Cowen, ‘Is he okay?'

‘Black eye. It wasn't much of a beating,' Cowen said, looking from one detective to the other. He didn't seem too worried. ‘He's waiting for you in room three. I want to sit in on the interview.'

Qzar was a plump man of medium height, with a neat black moustache. Troy recognised him from the car park of The Tower the night before, but he looked different, washed and in clean clothes. The skin around his left eye was purple, and when he saw Little he scowled and started to complain about the day's events. His accent was thick, but Troy could make out what he was saying.

After introducing himself, Troy said, ‘Who did this to you?'

‘You think I'm stupid? You punish someone and my family back home will suffer.'

Troy listened as the man went on for a while. Occasionally he nodded. He had to establish a simple relationship. After a bit, he interrupted the flow of complaint again and said, ‘I'm responsible for this investigation. Sergeant Little said you wanted to make a deal. I'm here to listen to what you have to say.'

‘So you must be an inspector?'

‘I'm the senior officer in the homicide investigation.'

This seemed to be good enough. Qzar said, ‘The woman who fell from the building. That is very sad.'

‘So what can you tell us?'

‘What sort of deal are you authorised to make?'

‘Deals like this are unusual,' Troy said slowly, aware that although the conversation was not being taped, Cowen was in the room. ‘I'm going to have to talk to my superiors.'

‘Then why am I talking to you at all? I told Sergeant Little I wanted to talk to the organ grinder, not the monkey.'

Troy felt the urge to smile but held it in. Qzar was upset now, almost jumping around in his seat, consumed by anger. It must be terrible to have all your dreams of a new life collapse in a moment, as had happened when the police came charging into the car park last night.

‘Would you like some tea?' he said.

Qzar calmed down, said he would. Little took the order and went out to get it, knowing the drill. They needed to get the Pakistani feeling more in control of his circumstances.

Qzar said, ‘I was sorry to hear about your colleague, the one who was shot.'

‘He wasn't just a colleague,' Troy said gravely. ‘He's a friend.'

‘Is he well?'

‘He's probably going to die,' Troy lied. ‘So you understand we're pursuing this case with particular vigour.' Qzar nodded. ‘Not that any of that excuses what happened to you this afternoon.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘But you understand my desire to find the man who shot my friend.'

As they waited for Little, Troy asked Qzar to tell him his story, and the man explained he was an engineer in his late twenties, married with two children, and his family lived in Islamabad. He had paid a businessman ten thousand dollars to get him to Australia and into a job. He had travelled by plane to Sumatra, where he'd been told the planned final leg, by air to Sydney, was no longer possible because the Australian government had just tightened up a particular regulation. So he'd been brought to Brisbane on a container ship and transported to Sydney in the back of a truck.

The job in The Tower was not what he'd been promised. The work was hard and dirty, and the hours long. But he'd received two letters from his family, sent via a friend in Sydney, to say the agreed wages had been transmitted to them regularly. Troy thought Qzar's experience was similar to that of many illegals, maybe better than most. Until last night.

‘Which floors have you worked on?' he asked.

‘We are on one-oh-five at the moment,' Qzar said proudly. ‘I started on fifty.'

‘You've done them all?'

‘Of course not. The company has other employees we never see, we work on different floors.'

‘Have you ever seen a woman up there?'

‘Never, sir.'

Little returned with the tea and set the plastic cups on the table. Qzar added two sugars to his and sipped it, wrinkling his nose. Troy picked up his own cup to be sociable, and stared at the brown liquid dubiously.

‘You're obviously an intelligent man,' he said, ‘and a well-educated one too. Did you ever see anything on the building site you think might be relevant to the identity of the men who attacked Sergeant McIver?'

Qzar frowned and placed his cup on the table. He put his hands up to his forehead, giving the question the consideration it deserved. Overdoing it maybe just a bit. Troy put the cup to his lips and breathed in the steam.

‘No,' Qzar said at last. ‘This is my considered opinion.'

He sounded slightly regretful. Troy wondered what sort of a deal he was hoping to get, after an answer like that. Maybe he was just wasting their time.

‘You've never seen them?'

‘No.'

‘What about the people smugglers, the men who transported you and brought you food?'

‘They were different men.'

‘Tell me about the man with the gun.'

Qzar brightened up. ‘No, sir. First we have to make a deal.'

‘Let's be clear about what you're offering. It is about Khan and the gun?'

‘I need to be clear about what you are offering too, sir,' Qzar said, and went on at some length about his expectations in the matter.