Set Up Page 2

Loew didn't break rhythm. 'Shoulders got a bit knotted sitting in there,' he said. 'Tension knots. Tell me.'

  'Bloke does that in a Mexican cantina to win a bet. Says he can do a thousand. He's a bit slow and people drift away and the new barman comes on. He doesn't know about the bet and he says, "Senor, the Senorita, she's gone."'

  Loew stopped and stood up. He was flushed and his closely-cut fair hair was damp. He dropped into a moulded plastic chair and gazed up at Dunlop who was leaning against the window. 'A thousand's dumb,' Loew said. 'Impossible. The blood flow would fuck you.'

  'You've had the time lately to study it.'

  Loew nodded. 'Eight years.'

  'How old are you?'

  'Thirty-one.'

  'How long inside, all up?'

  Loew grinned. His teeth were good. 'I'm winning, fourteen.'

  'But you've had enough?'

  'That's right, mate. I've done Parramatta and Grafton and the Bay. I'm sick of kissing the screws' arses and protecting my arse from the faggots.'

  'It's not them you'll have to worry about after this little lot.'

  'I know.' Loew looked at Dunlop who was sitting now, relaxed with his arms folded. 'Where's the file?'

  Dunlop tapped his temple. 'Up here. Kerry Douglas Loew, thirty-one, five juvenile convictions, six adult. Armed robbery twice; wounding with intent to kill; escaping twice; assaulting a prison officer; currently serving twenty years. Probably got ten to go.'

  'If you knew all that, why'd you ask?'

  'Just wanted to see if you were a natural liar. Okay, let's get down to business. You're in the Special Purpose facility at the Bay.'

  Loew nodded. 'Fuckin' schoolyard.'

  'Don't like the company? I thought you'd be right at home with the other supergrasses.'

  'I want out. Right out. I'm on a promise.'

  Dunlop nodded. 'The trial'll go ten days yet, give or take a few. I'll drop in to see you here most days. Get acquainted. Wouldn't want to place you as a gardener in Mudgee and find out you didn't like flowers or the country.'

  'I hate the bloody country and flowers remind me of hospital.'

  'Me, too. Okay, Kezza, you can knock on the door and get your mate back.'

  Loew stood and took two quick steps towards Dunlop, who didn't move. 'Don't call me Kezza. No screw is my mate, and don't give me orders.'

  Dunlop sighed. 'You don't seem to understand what's going on here. If I don't do my job exactly right you'll be dead meat before the year is out. That'll be a black mark on my record.'

  Loew smiled, showing his perfect teeth and slightly crinkling his eyes. 'We couldn't have that. What do I call you?'

  'Don't call me anything.'

  Loew turned and moved towards the door. He rapped twice and spoke without turning around. 'Any more orders?'

  'Yeah. Quit smoking.'

  Dunlop drove his two-year-old Laser to Marrickville and circled the block before parking outside his house. Sometimes he circled to the left, sometimes to the right; sometimes he drove down the lane behind the row of houses, sometimes he didn't. Breaking habits was hard, not even forming them was harder, but it was what he instructed his clients to do and he did it himself for the same reasons.

  As he deactivated the alarm and let himself into the house he was thinking that there was some truth in what he'd told Kerry Loew. It wouldn't look good for a client of that importance to be burnt. No case officer remained in permanent control of a client; there were periodic switches and transfers to keep all aspects of the process—identities, locations, communications, payments—fluid. But the early stage, when the relationship was being built up, was when both officer and client were at their most vulnerable.

  The grey man, Peters, had appeared unexpectedly to deliver a pep talk towards the end of Dunlop's period of training. His message was simple: people are looking, asking questions, turning over rocks. They are police, lawyers, accountants, private investigators and criminals. They want information. They will pay for it, steal it or extract it in other unpleasant ways. Avoid them.

  One of the trainees had ventured a question. 'What if a client is looking for another client?'

  Peters had nodded gravely. 'Refer. There is a procedure to cope with that highly unfortunate development.'

  Dunlop had exercised his imagination about that procedure many times.

  It was late November and the evenings were mild. Dunlop put on shorts, sneakers and a T-shirt and jogged several kilometres. His favourite course was down Livingstone Road to the Marrickville Golf Club, where he was a member, and back along Illawarra Road to the Vietnamese section near the railway station. Here he bought the ingredients for the meals he favoured—stir-fries and soups, fish curries. But he'd done that run twice lately and he forced himself to take one of the less interesting routes—along Addison Road to Enmore Park. He circled the park ten times before heading back.

  He showered, prepared a noodle dish washed down with light beer, the only alcohol he permitted himself, and set himself up with a pot of coffee to review the preliminary file on Kerry Loew. Hitherto he had relied on his memory and a brief, coded outline for information on his new client. There was not a scrap of paper relating to Loew in the house. The file was stored in a data bank, accessed by Dunlop on his PC.

  Born in Newtown, Loew had been in trouble almost from the time he was able to walk—shoplifting, break-and-enter, car stealing, receiving stolen goods. After periods in juvenile detention he graduated to armed robbery and the violent, authority-defying career that had put him behind bars for most of his adult life.

  The convictions were only the tip of the iceberg— hidden were scores of robberies and assaults including one suspected murder. In a clash between the bodyguards of two leading Sydney criminal identities, one man had been savagely beaten to death. Loew was the most likely assailant but nothing had been proved. The criminal code of silence—the code he had now broken—had protected him. Inside, Loew had been known as 'willing', meaning unbreakable in spirit either by brutality or blandishments.

  In his police career Dunlop had come across dozens of such characters, and subsequently had encountered a few more, but certain things about Loew struck him as exceptional. He didn't use drugs or traffic in them. Before his recent recruitment, he had never done a deal with police to escape a charge or lighten a sentence. He had not sought the spurious media fame so cherished by some criminals and he wore no tribal badges—no earrings, no tattoos, no Rolex watch. Dunlop leaned back in his chair and thought about that. What did it mean? Absence of vanity? No, those teeth were capped.

  The media had tried to elevate Loew to mythical levels after the second of his escapes. The first run had been a spur of the moment affair from Goulburn. Loew had got over a wall, jogged for an hour, hidden for most of the night and walked slap-back into the arms of a police search party. He'd fractured a constable's jaw and suffered broken ribs. Got a kicking, was Dunlop's considered judgement. The escape from Parramatta had been an altogether different story. During a riot in the prison, Loew had led a party of four that had subdued three guards, secured firearms and used the guards as shields and hostages to drive away in one of the police vehicles that had brought reinforcements to quell the riot.

  Photocopies of the newspaper stories were included in the file: 'DARING BREAK'; 'LOEW BREAKS OUT'; 'POLICE VAN ESCAPE'. The police van took Loew and his partners clear of the Parramatta area. It also afforded them more firearms and, mysteriously, certain items of civilian clothing. The escapees abandoned the van in Penrith, leaving their hostages bruised but otherwise unharmed, and split into two parties. Bryant and McCausland went west, stealing cars and holding up petrol stations in a mad rush towards their inevitable capture in Bathurst three days later. Kerry Douglas Loew and Maurice James Boyd disappeared.

  Following the advice of the computer instructors, Dunlop pushed his chair away from the screen, stood and did some stretching exercises as he walked around the room. He blinked his eyes and looked up, down and sidewa
ys. He'd been on the force when Loew and Boyd were out and it had been an exciting period.

  'The cunts have to surface sometime,' had been the opinion of Sergeant Bartlett, his superior on the detective strength at Glebe.

  The police were under attack. Questions had been raised about the clothing in the van.

  Bartlett was disgusted. 'Do they think coppers sleep in their uniforms? Wear them to bed?'

  His wife Katarina had been known to wear his cap to bed in his uniformed days. She had pinned his badge to her silk nightgown. 'Some probably do, Sarge,' he had said.

  'Queers! Shouldn't be in the force. They'll turn up, mark my words. They'll be dipping their wicks somewhere like Ryan and Walker, or living on rabbits and shit in the bush like . . .'

  'Newcombe and Simmonds.'

  'You're a smartarse, Frank. Know that? If you're so fuckin' smart, why don't you go out and catch these cunts?'

  Like many a young detective, he had dreamed of doing just that. Of recognising Loew and Boyd in a supermarket car park and throwing down on them.

  'Police! Put up your hands! Don't move . . .'

  The fantasy went no further and the event never happened. Loew and Boyd staged a series of high-yield robberies in the week leading up to Christmas. In those prosperous, less security-conscious times, payrolls were fat, club takings were virtually unprotected, even banks were lightly guarded. Loew and Boyd struck fast and hard. They made a practice of breaking noses to produce blood and of humiliating whoever was in charge.

  'LOEW AND BOYD STRIKE'; 'LOEW AND BOYD!'; 'LOEW AND BOYD — WHO NEXT?'

  Kerry Douglas Loew and Maurice James Boyd were arrested on Christmas Eve as they were about to board a plane for New Zealand. They were respectably dressed and had been politely behaved up to the point of their capture. In their luggage were found two handguns, two shortened shotguns and $20,000 in cash. To the policemen who gripped him and bore him to the ground, Loew said four words that passed into folklore after they were published: 'Nearly, you bastards. Nearly.'

  Boyd testified that Loew had coerced him from the moment of escape to the instant of capture, and in return he received a surprisingly light eight-year sentence. The criminal fraternity was surprised that Boyd had had the guts to put Loew in. But he did. Loew said nothing and his next offence was an attack on a prison guard who had attempted to plant drugs in his cell. Loew had severely injured the man, received a brutal bashing in return but emerged from the official inquiry with a certain amount of credit and renewed media interest.

  Dunlop sipped his coffee as he scrolled through the official reports, prison assessments, legal depositions and newspaper articles. Loew had never encouraged the newshounds but he seemed to attract them nevertheless. He's an egotist who's not a show-off, Dunlop concluded. An attention-getter who doesn't seek it. The headlines of two years ago were large and strident: 'KERRY "NEARLY, YOU BASTARDS" LOEW TO WED!'

  Dunlop read the articles carefully. As a consequence of his partial vindication after the drug-planting episode and his subsequent compliant behaviour, Loew had been granted certain privileges—extra recreational periods, educational facilities, extended visiting rights. Enjoying these expanded horizons, he had met Cassandra May Daniels, former prostitute turned physiotherapist and aerobics instructor. During a brief liberal period in prison administration, Loew had been given permission to marry.

  Dunlop turned the computer off. Later he would delve into the detailed file on Loew covering his family, his associates and contacts from childhood, movements plotted as close to day-by-day as possible and the lists of possible and probable enemies and allies. But for now Dunlop had an intriguing question: 'How did you turn a man into a dog, Cassie?'

  3

  'So why the change of heart? You didn't get born again, did you?'

  Loew shook his head and studied his hands. The backs were tanned, the palms were callused from hours on the exercise bars and weight machines. He spread his arms out to their fullest extent and looked from one fingertip to the other. 'Did you know that Les Darcy's reach was greater than his height by a good few inches? He only stood five-foot-eight, but he had the reach of a six-footer.'

  'Must've looked strange,' Dunlop said.

  'Made him a hard man to hit. Never knocked off his feet. Me, I'm normal—183 centimetres, up, down and sideways.'

  'You don't look that tall.'

  'That's the weight training. D'you know they once had me in cuffs for a month? At Grafton. My shoulder muscles started to waste.'

  'You haven't answered the question.'

  'I was trying to think of a way to say thanks for getting the cuffs off me while we have these sessions. I appreciate it.'

  Dunlop nodded. 'You still haven't answered the question.'

  'I told you the first time—I got fuckin' sick of it all.'

  'Must be more to it than that.'

  'Men change jobs,' Loew said stubbornly. 'You haven't done this since you left school, have you?'

  Dunlop wondered how he'd go in a fight with his client if it came to it. Loew had a height advantage of about three centimetres and looked to outweigh him by around ten kilos, all of it muscle. It would depend on what tricks he knew and how serious they both were. Loew stood suddenly and walked to the window. He stared down at the traffic in Macquarie Street, looked across at the sandstone buildings opposite and turned his head in the direction of the park. He rocked back and forward slightly and traced something on the glass with his forefinger.

  'What're you thinking?' Dunlop said.

  'That it won't be long now. What was it you were saying before?'

  'What changed you? Was it Cassie?'

  Loew drew a deep breath and went back to his chair. 'I had my first fuck when I was thirteen. You?'

  'Later.'

  'Most of the sex I've had, and there hasn't been much of it the way life's been, I've paid for. The free stuff hasn't meant a thing. You married?'

  'No.'

  'You mightn't understand then.'

  Dunlop stood. 'That's okay, I don't have to understand everything. I just wanted an answer.'

  Loew shrugged. Dunlop knocked on the door. The guard opened it and beckoned Loew out. He went, giving Dunlop a brief nod. When the door was shut Dunlop went to the window. He breathed on the glass and saw what Loew had written in the thin film of dust: 'CML'.

  'I've been spotted. You have to help me.'

  Dunlop's hands gripped the wheel as the breathy voice, harsh and broken with fear, filled the car. Jack/Judy had been patched through to his mobile phone by a relay of paging systems. Dunlop was driving to Bondi after the session with Loew, intending to have a swim and lie in the afternoon sun to plan his next move, although he'd almost decided what it should be.

  'Where are you?'

  'In the Harmony Inn at the Cross. Room 10. I went to ground in the first place I could think of, like you told me. Please . . .'

  I didn't tell you to go to the Cross to score, Dunlop thought, in fact I told you to stay on the north side. It was a strange fact of life in Sydney that, despite the sixty-year-old bridge, the city was really two separate places. Although many individuals crossed the water to work and play, the networks of obligation and information, the complex systems of patronage and back-scratching that made up the criminal milieu tended to be separate. Dunlop slowed to allow a truck to pass and began mentally plotting a route back to the city.

  'Please!'

  'I'm coming. Lock the door. Don't let anyone in.'

  'I'm with a friend.'

  'Jesus, get rid of him, her or whatever it is.'

  'Bastard!'

  Judy hung up and Dunlop concentrated on getting to Kings Cross in the shortest possible time. Judy's information had led to the conviction of Victor Best, one of the largest brothel owners in Brisbane, for tax evasion. As Jack, she had been the bookkeeper for the operation with special responsibility for Best's several homosexual houses. With loyalty and skill, Jack had kept two sets of books until he simultaneous
ly got hooked on heroin and became a radical transsexual. Best's exploitation of the male prostitutes sickened Jack as he progressed a few steps down the path that changed him to Judy. His counsellor stressed the need for a mental and psychic scouring for the success of the sex reassignment, and Jack blew the whistle on Best. He testified as a male and then disappeared into the centre of the spider-web world constructed by Dunlop and others.

  Dunlop jumped the lights at the Crown and William Street intersection. Mentally, he criticised his performance: You antagonised her; and were there cameras back at that corner? You didn't even look. He turned into the all-too-familiar streets. This was the territory that had done for him in his last occupation, was it going to win again? Sydney was a mistake. She should have been in Hobart or Adelaide. But the right doctor was here, and the political stuff. Why did the stupid bitch have to come to the Cross? Weren't there other places to score? He knew the answer to that and should have allowed for it. Judy was attracted to the life, to the danger.

  He parked illegally and took the .38 Terrier from the concealed compartment in the driver's door. He put the gun in the pocket of his beach shorts, carried loosely in one hand, with a towel over his shoulder. The Harmony Inn was a small motel which had been disfavoured by changes in the traffic pattern a few years back. It was a two-storey red brick structure with a narrow entrance and cramped parking. The shrubbery was neglected and withered; rubbish moved by the wind had accumulated around the bases of the plants and gateposts and garden furniture. The small swimming pool had an oily sheen. Dunlop knew the place from his cop days. Nine units on the ground floor and nine above. At least she had the brains to go upstairs. He ignored the ramp leading to a door marked Reception and moved past the four cars parked in numbered bays to the concrete steps that led to a narrow walkway running in front of the rooms on the second level.

  Dunlop sweated, although the steps weren't steep and he was fit. He recognised the signs: the city noises seemed to have dropped a few decibels and he was conscious of his own sounds—the scrape of his shoes on the cement, the faint whisper of his pants, his own breathing. This was what it had been like back in his uniformed days and when he was a D at Glebe. Going in where there might be a gun or a knife in the hands of a distraught father or lover or a brain-blasted junkie . . . No feeling like it, and with the circumstances the training came rushing back: don't damage civilians, other officers or yourself . . .