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I raised my hands to shoulder height.
A man’s voice said, ‘Put your hands down by your side. Keep your eyes forward. Don’t turn your head. Stay casual.’
I did as he said, and he patted me down all over.
‘Give me the knucks and take three steps back.’
A thick left hand came into view, palm open. I slipped off the knuckledusters and placed them in his hand. He bored the gun into my side as I walked backwards, then stopped. He rapped on the door four times.
After a minute, the door opened, and Poulson stood with his arms crossed tight over his sunken chest, with a weary expression on his face. ‘What’re you doin’ with ‘im?’
‘I’ll take him out on the highway for a drive. We need to know what he knows.’
Poulson rocked from foot to foot. ‘You gonna shoot the cunt or fuck ‘im?’
‘Language, please. I’ll be back in half an hour. Man the room. Screen phone calls and divert door knockers.’
‘Bullshit. I’m comin’, Malone.’
‘Gavin, I will handle it.’
‘Fuck that. There ain’t no one around. I’m fucken followin’ you cunts.’
Before Malone could say anything further, Poulson slammed the door closed and jogged to the black Corolla in the car park.
Malone exhaled. ‘Advanced primate, my foot.’
He firmly drove the gun into my ribs, as if he’d done it hundreds of times before. ‘We’ll start walking to the Hyundai now.’
We walked side by side to my rental. I took the opportunity to glance at my assailant, who stood around one seventy-five. He had a shaved head except for the top middle section, which was slicked back. He had a thick, dark goatee and bright blue eyes. A scar cut through one of his eyebrows. Everything about him was stocky: thick hairy hands, broad shoulders under a leather jacket, motorcycle boots, and thickly suntanned.
‘You drive,’ he said, and used the gun to punctuate his words. ‘Not too slow. Go with the traffic.’
He watched as I climbed in, and slipped into the passenger side. He held the gun at a relaxed angle aimed at my stomach.
I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the same gun that killed Warwick Fripp in Knox Street.
‘Pull out onto the highway. Do not draw attention to yourself.’
As we pulled out, rain started to spatter against the windscreen, and thunder rumbled louder than the last one. Poulson followed close behind in the Corolla. I followed the Captain Cook Highway south out of Port Douglas, past dense rainforest on either side.
‘That looks like the gun that killed Warwick Fripp,’ I said.
‘I am not talking to you.’
‘You don’t deny it.’
‘I am not talking to you.’
‘Who paid you?’
He squinted through the windscreen.
I tried to join the dots in my head, based on what I knew. Maybe someone had paid Malone to kill Fripp, and now Malone was sitting next to me, no doubt thinking about doing the same to me, and possibly about killing Tamsin Lyons.
‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘Did you take Fripp out because he talked about the book? If so, how did you know he spilled anything?’
He gently placed the barrel of the gun against the side of my knee. ‘Just... drive.’
I considered my options for overpowering him, but let them go. If Malone was the assassin who shot Fripp, he proved well enough that he had no reservations in using a gun.
We drove in silence, with only the sound of the wipers scraping the glass, until we came across a line of cars stopped in front of a lolly pop man as a grader levelled the shoulder of the run. Road workers directed northbound traffic through one side of the highway, and it was our turn to wait as oncoming traffic fed through at a crawl.
‘Ease back,’ Malone said. ‘Turn into this dirt road.’
A laneway disappeared into foliage on the left.
I took it.
In the rear-view, I saw that Poulson also took the turn. I followed the muddy thoroughfare through dense forest on either side, until it ascended into a clearing where earthworks were being carried out by a recessed riverbed. Large mounds of river sand had been dumped at the northern end of the worksite, surrounded by dense tropical rainforest. Graders, bulldozers, and bobcats sat idle around the fringes like silent monoliths.
Malone said, ‘Pull up and park. Turn the engine off and leave the keys in the ignition.’
As I parked the car, I considered running the both of us over the edge of the embankment about twenty yards in front of us, but thought better of it and turned everything off. We sat in silence as rain drummed against the roof. I took a breath, then stepped out into the rain.
Malone stepped out in one move and brought the gun up in the classic aggressive Weaver stance you see in cop shows, one hand under the other for support. His right eye stared at me through the rear-sight notch as he rounded the front of the car.
Poulson pulled up in the Corolla, got out, and joined Malone about ten yards away.
‘What’d you two talk about?’ Poulson said.
I took a punt, nervousness forcing words out of my mouth. ‘Nothing. Malone mentioned the money, that’s all. I had a feeling there was something more behind it.’
Malone shot me a confused look, but before he had a chance to do anything, Poulson screamed and plunged a knife twice into the side of Malone’s neck.
Malone put a hand over the wound and stared at me, wide-eyed. He gulped for air and staggered forward with small, shaky steps as blood gushed from between his fingers and flowed down the front of his jacket. The blood appeared shiny and black in the dull light.
His eyes, surrounded with white, met mine. ‘Help me.’
A wet gurgling sound rose up from his throat as the gun slipped out of his grip and cracked against the rock-strewn ground. He managed to cover another ten meters, then fell to his knees.
Poulson charged forward and collected the gun, then stood and watched nonchalantly as Malone struggled for air.
Malone’s head lolled forward against his chest and stayed there. ‘Not now,’ he murmured. ‘Not now. Not now. Not like this.’
He fell forward onto his chin, with one arm crumpled under his body and his eyes open. Blood pooled in the puddles around his head and made pinkish swirls in brown water.
Poulson stared at me, a knife in one hand and the gun in the other.
