Master's Mates Read online

  ‘I’m not sure I want one of my investigations to become a high-profile test case, Hank.’

  ‘It’s months away, Cliff. Months away. We’ll have this thing unscrambled by then.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Sure. Here’s my mobile number.’ He recited it and I wrote it down in the notebook I’d had ready to make notes on the tape. ‘I’ll be watchin’ over your lady again tonight.’

  I asked him if he could recover the dinghy and deliver it back to Clive and he said he would.

  ‘Right, Hank. Thanks.’

  ‘Thank you! We’ll stay in touch, won’t we, Cliff?’

  He rang off. I put the phone down slowly. Was there some sort of threat, an implied pressure, in his last remark? No, not Hank. Surely not.

  I set the recorder on a brick and hit ‘Play’. There were some indeterminate sounds before a voice spoke clearly.

  Montefiore: ‘I’m getting so fuckin’ sick of this. How long does he say now?’

  Lewis: ‘You heard him. Stop whingeing. A couple of days.’

  Montefiore: ‘I could do with a drink and a fuck.’

  Lewis: ‘Yeah, that’d be right. In that order.’

  Montefiore: ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

  Lewis: ‘Just go to sleep.’

  Montefiore: ‘C’mon, Fay.’

  Lewis: ‘No, he’ll hear us. Anyhow, you should complain. I’m out of smokes and nicotine’s more addictive than alcohol . . . and heroin.’

  Montefiore: ‘Yeah, yeah. You can smoke yourself to death when we get the money. Shit, sorry, love. Didn’t mean that. This fuckin’ boat . . .’

  Lewis: ‘Is it any wonder I won’t tell you the name? How could I trust you?’

  Montefiore: ‘I could make you tell me.’

  Lewis: ‘No, you wouldn’t have the guts.’

  Montefiore: ‘You’re right, torturing women’s not my scene. Anyway, I know the name, so really you’re just along for the fuckin’ ride, aren’t you?’

  Lewis: ‘You don’t know it.’

  Montefiore: ‘Eastman, right? Frank Eastman. That’s when he wasn’t Phil West.’

  Lewis: ‘Wrong.’

  Montefiore: ‘I don’t think so. I talked to Rory, remember, before he went missing and you fucked that bastard?’

  Lewis: ‘Jesus, Jay. Let it rest.’

  Montefiore: ‘I’m getting most of that dough back from Reg.’

  Lewis: ‘You’re all talk.’

  Montefiore: ‘No, listen, I know this gay guy in Sydney. Just Reg’s type, looks ten years younger than he is. I’ll line him up with Reg and he’ll find the money and—’ Lewis: ‘Talk, talk, talk . . .’

  There was more—squabbling, bitching, contradicting each other, both on edge from withdrawal and tension. Eventually they went to sleep just before the tape ran out. I tried the reverse side but it was blank. I rewound the tape and played it again without learning anything more.

  A number of questions arose. Had Penny played the tape? Probably, although I hadn’t seen a recorder in my quick search. Perhaps he’d set the recorder up with a fresh tape to record more of the intimacies between his passengers. In that case the police were likely to find it and God knows what could be on it. If Penny had heard the tape, it was unlikely he would have allowed Montefiore to provide him with a playmate, however attractive. So the man I’d seen on the boat probably wasn’t Montefiore’s acquaintance. Was he Penny’s killer or had the Noumea mystery man done the wet work with a different MO? And where was the Noumea money, whoever had it? If it was on the boat or in the flat the cops would be back to me with more questions. Or playing a waiting game.

  I drained the coffee mug and realised that the afternoon had drawn in and was getting cool. My shoulder was aching and I took everything back inside and swallowed some painkillers with a weak scotch and water. I wasn’t happy. I was in illicit possession of evidence relating to three homicides; I’d involved two innocent people in dangerous situations, and my relationship with my client had been through some choppy waters and could go there again.

  I wandered around the house, thinking, until I heard noises from the front. I looked out and saw Hank Bachelor and Clive lift the aluminium dinghy from the Patrol’s roof rack and carry it into Clive’s front yard. Hank waved at Clive and drove away.

  I heard the chirp of my mobile and went back to the kitchen where I’d left it beside the coffee mug and the dirty plate.

  ‘Hardy.’

  ‘Bryce O’Connor. I’ve been hearing things about your comings and goings, Hardy. I hope you’re not going to need legal representation.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘Stewart Master will see you tomorrow at 10 am. I haven’t quite put that accurately. In fact, he insists on seeing you.’

  20

  MASTER wasn’t the same man. He stalked across to the cubicle ignoring everything else until he was a metre from me, almost within punching distance, and he looked as if there was nothing he’d rather do than land one.

  ‘You cunt,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry you feel that way. You don’t think you’re possibly a bit to blame yourself?’

  He dropped into the chair across the table and some of the steam went out of him. ‘Yeah, in a way of course it’s all my fucking fault, but what sort of an idiot takes a woman into a set-up like that?’

  ‘She was looking at paying out a hell of a lot of money. I thought she should get a look at who she was paying it to and she could bail out if she didn’t want to go the whole distance. Also, I thought she was probably a good judge of character, with an exception in your case.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Fuck you. That should go for you as well. So you reckon she’s a good judge of character, do you? Been having little chats?’

  ‘Listen, Stewart, I don’t give a shit about you. In my book she’d be better to let you rot here for ten years and let your kids grow up without you. Better for them, better for everyone. But I know there’s some conspiracy here and you’re in the middle of it. Your wife and I have been shot at. Three of the blokes you had dealings with in Noumea are dead and—’

  ‘Three? Rory and Jay, who else?’

  ‘Reg Penny. I found him on his boat yesterday morning with four, let’s make that five, knife wounds in his chest. He’d been there a while. It didn’t smell good and it didn’t look pretty.’

  It rocked him. He leaned back in his chair and had trouble stopping himself from covering his face with his hands. Then he surprised me. ‘You’ve seen Lorrie,’ he said quietly. ‘How is she?’

  I’d thought he was the type to worry only about himself and he’d proved me wrong. It gave him points on my scorecard—not a lot, but some. ‘She’s all right, worried about the kids but that’s all in hand. She’s got a guard and there’ll be one when she goes home. She didn’t need major surgery or anything. I imagine she’ll have a scar of some kind, but . . .’

  He nodded. ‘How come you didn’t get hit?’

  ‘I pulled Lorrie down. He was mainly concerned to get Fay and Jay. By the time he got to us I’d grabbed a gun that was there and got off a couple of shots. Didn’t hit him but he took off.’

  He gave me a long, searching look. Had he picked up on my inadvertent use of ‘Lorrie’? Hard to tell, but it seemed like the time to put the question. ‘Who is he, Master? What’s it all about? Who’s Eastman, or is it West?’

  He sighed and leaned back in the chair. As before, there were other prisoners and their visitors in the room, but neither of us registered them or the guard. We were both closely focused. I waited while he seemed to turn things over in his mind, weigh them, decide. But he wasn’t quite ready. ‘Tell me what you know first.’

  I gave him Montefiore’s version more or less verbatim—that the reward for setting Master up was the green light for a major dope shipment into Australia and a share of the profits. I said that Rory McCloud had knocked it back and been eliminated and that Pascal Rivages was a main player.

  ‘And did you believe a
ll that?’

  ‘I didn’t know what to believe. I thought there was something in it, but I couldn’t see the point of dropping you in it, or why the prosecutor and the other people at this end would go along, or why you appear to have gone along with it.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I guessed there was something in it when I learned you’d put in a bid for the Atlas. You were looking to make big money somehow.’

  He grimaced. ‘And you told Lorrie that and she read me the riot act.’

  I shrugged. ‘I was trying to shake something up.’

  ‘You fucking did.’

  ‘It’s my job.’

  ‘Yeah. Everything’s changed now. Did he know the woman with you was Lorrie?’

  ‘I hate to say it but I think he could’ve. I found out later my phones were tapped. I was slack.’

  ‘You were. All right, I’m going to have to trust you, and that goes against the grain. If this goes any further, I’m dead in here. I’ve asked around. A few blokes say you’re a complete prick but you’ve got some balls and you’re not a talker. This is how it was. I was approached to be an inside man in the prison system to track how the drugs were getting in. I was supposed to be convicted of a medium level import, get five years, be out in under three. They were going to move me around and I’d report to them how the system worked. The conviction was going to be overturned and I’d be paid a big compensation with a lot more under the counter.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Why’d you agree to that?’

  ‘A couple of reasons. One, they were going to do me for a fraud thing and put me inside for a stretch anyway if I didn’t play. Two, I couldn’t stand being second fiddle to Lorrie. Running that gym was something straight I could do and enjoy and make money at.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘They double-crossed me or fucking triple or quadruple.

  First, my contact, Eastman or West or whoever the fuck he is, wasn’t a federal cop at all. He had been, but now he was a go-between for federal and state cops and some prison officers looking to make a pile. They’d set up the customs blokes and the trial people and that. Two, they planted a shit-load on me and I got what I got. Three, forget about dope. This is about heroin.’

  He paused, as if revealing all this that he’d kept secret had taken his breath away. Heroin made sense. Big money. Three dead people—small price to pay.

  Master smiled and there was a variety of different emotions in the smile—guilt, shame, anger, even amusement. ‘Here’s number four and it’s the clincher. I’m going to be the way in for the smack. It’s all arranged. If I don’t do it I serve the ten, probably more. Extensions are easy to arrange.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like such a booming market.’

  ‘You don’t understand. Get a lot of these kids hooked, blokes in for short stretches, Abos and Viets especially, and then when you’ve got them on the outside you’ve got a market and people to exploit. All sorts of things an addict’ll do for you if you’ve got what he wants. How does that grab you, Hardy?’

  A jackhammer started somewhere close by and its clatter was unnerving. It was my turn to sit back and think. The visiting time was coming to an end. Everyone’s heard of deals like this, usually when they go wrong, and Master’s had gone wrong in the worst way. He seemed almost to enjoy it except that his capacity for enjoyment had pretty much left him.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ he said.

  ‘It wasn’t really a question.’

  He shook his head. ‘No. It’s a fuck-up.’

  ‘Right. I’d have to say it’s one of the biggest fuck-ups I’ve come across.’

  His lean features hardened; he didn’t look so youthful and there was a pent-up force in the way he shifted slightly in his seat. ‘You haven’t just come across it, Hardy. You’re fucking involved.’

  ‘Time’s up.’ The guard advanced towards us.

  ‘Stay in touch through O’Connor,’ Master said as he acknowledged the call.

  ‘You trust him?’

  He laughed as if what I’d said was the funniest thing he’d heard all week.

  Jumpy wasn’t the word for the way I felt as I collected my stuff from the locker. Master had said the drugs operation had required the cooperation of people inside the prison system as it always has. Was someone at Avonlea aware of my visit? Watching me now? On his mobile to someone outside? It didn’t make for steady hands and good driving. It made for high-alert tension, keyed-up responses, adrenaline-fuelled reactions and increased perspiration levels. I worked my way back to the main road by a circuitous route. Anyone following me would have stuck out like a frisbee on a golf green.

  To clear my head I played a country music station for the first few kilometres back to the city. Robert Johnson’s thin but resonant vocals and guitar ripped in. Thanks to a couple of visits to the Blues ’n’ Roots festival at Byron Bay where Tess Hewitt, a former girlfriend, lived, I knew a bit about Johnson, the ‘king of the Delta blues’. I was reminded of a line about him in the film Ghosts of Mississippi—‘If I was goin’ to sell my soul to the Devil I’d want a lot more than some guitar lessons.’ Stewart Master had done something like that and the deal was turning very sour on him. Robert Johnson hadn’t lived very long after the supposed deal to exchange his soul for the ability to play delta blues better than anyone ever had.

  As things stood, Stewart Master wasn’t looking at a long and happy life either. According to his own assessment, if he didn’t go along with the arrangement he was dead. If he did, what guarantee did he have that the result wouldn’t be much the same? Master, in my revised estimate of him, struck me as tough, possibly fatalistic. There was a chance he’d tell the manipulators to go to hell and take the consequences. Unless extra pressure could be brought to bear on him. That hit me the way the smelling salts do when the trainer puts them under your nose between rounds and tells you what you have to do when you’re out there again.

  The power of that thought had blotted out Robert Johnson and the phoney stuff that had followed—Waylon Jennings, Garth Brooks. I held the old, wavering car steady in the middle lane with one hand on the wheel as I jabbed at the buttons on my mobile.

  ‘Mrs Master has left the hospital, Mr Hardy.’

  ‘What?’ The car swerved as I shouted into the phone. ‘What d’you mean she’s left?’

  ‘I’m not prepared to be shouted at over the telephone.’

  I fought for control. ‘I’m sorry. I visited her the other day. I’m helping her with a certain matter. Please tell me what happened.’

  The hospital official told me that the police had interviewed Lorrie in the morning and that she had seemed undisturbed by their visit. The doctor had said her progress was satisfactory and she had walked about a little with her arm in a sling. A bit later she had called a person from her office who had brought in some clothes. She’d dressed and checked out of the hospital, signing a waiver form releasing the hospital from any responsibility for her condition and paying her bill in full.

  ‘This person. A young Asian woman?’

  ‘Yes. We’re very worried, Mr Hardy. What is happening?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Did she leave with the Asian woman?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘I’m on my way to the hospital now. Could you please check on that and see if there’s anyone who actually saw her leave.’

  ‘This is very alarming.’

  I tried for a non-alarming tone. ‘I think there’s an explanation but I’d just like to get things straight. Please do as I ask.’

  Then I rang Fiona at the office who confirmed that Lorrie had asked her to buy her some clothes and bring them in.

  ‘Buy? Not get from home?’

  ‘No. She was very clear about that, so I did it. I bought her underwear, a blouse and a skirt. She said she had shoes and a jacket. I took them in and she told me to go back to work, so I did. Is there something wrong?’

  I smoothed her down as well, and made two mor
e calls, breaking the law by talking as I drove. One was to the Double Bay house where Britt reported that all was well with both children safely home from school and the guard O’Connor had hired in place. Britt sounded shaky, as if being an au pair in Australia suddenly wasn’t the safest job in the world as it would’ve been a short while back. Couldn’t blame her.

  My next call was to O’Connor, who wasn’t available. I left a message for him to contact me on my mobile and to be ready to meet me wherever and whenever I said. The person who took the message made me repeat it three times before he could believe what he was hearing.

  At the hospital I was shown straight to the administrator’s office. She had another woman with her, a nurse.

  ‘Mr Hardy, I’m Felicity Warwick and this is Nurse Havel. I’m very concerned about your telephone call and its implications.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s anything for the hospital to worry about at this stage,’ I said. ‘I understand Mrs Master received a telephone call today.’

  The administrator checked a sheet. ‘In fact she made two calls. One to a taxi company, although we would have happily done that for her.’

  ‘And the other?’

  ‘Yes, before the call to the taxi.’

  I recited my mobile number and she nodded. ‘I wouldn’t have told you of course, but since you appear to know . . .’

  I’d left the mobile in the locker at Avonlea where it could ring till its batteries died. The sinking feeling I’d had since I’d phoned the hospital got deeper but I tried not to show too much alarm. Like all bureaucrats, she didn’t want any problems and any she had she wanted to go away. The bullet wound, the guard, the police and me all spelled trouble she didn’t need. It wasn’t hard to jolly her along.

  ‘Thanks for your cooperation, Ms Warwick. I—’

  ‘Mrs.’ She smiled. She could see relief in sight.

  ‘Mrs Warwick. I’m sure things can be sorted out. I take it Nurse Havel here saw Mrs Master leave?’

  The young nurse almost bobbed her head as Mrs Warwick indicated that she could speak.

  ‘Yes, sir. I saw the lady leave.’