Though he slept well and hated being woken in the night, no news could have been more welcome to Richard Cody than the phone call that woke him shortly before midnight.
“I know it’s late but I wanted you to be the first of our media friends to hear,” said Siv Harmsen.
Richard Cody got up, and went out to the stairway landing.
“We’ve found Tariq al-Hakim,” said Siv Harmsen. “Neat as a felafel in a roll, dead and stuffed into a car boot.”
“My God,” said Richard Cody, not because he was shocked, but because there was significance to this news and to the call that in his sleepy state he didn’t fully understand, and which he needed to draw out of Siv Harmsen. “Any leads?”
“There’s a long way to go with the homicide investigation.” A short silence followed. “You know how it is.” Richard Cody waited. The air con sounded like the gentlest rain. “Completely off the record …” said Siv Harmsen finally. “Look, we share an understanding, don’t we, Richard?”
“Completely,” echoed Richard Cody.
“Well,” said Siv Harmsen, “they’re taking seriously the idea that it might have been another terrorist.”
“That doesn’t make sense, though,” said Richard Cody. “Why would a terrorist kill a terrorist?”
“Well, it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?” said Siv Harmsen. “He’d become too public, too well known, and therefore a liability. These people are ruthless, even with their own. What’s that phrase I heard you use this morning on tv?—‘the unknown terrorist’. It’s them, the unknown ones, that can get away with the bombings. They’re the ones to fear.”
Rather than presenting a problem, the death of Tariq al-Hakim solved one of Richard Cody’s key dilemmas. Jerry Mendes had gone cold on the Bonnie and Clyde title. As no one had yet come up with anything better, the special had only been promoted generally as “a chilling exposé about home-grown terrorism here in Australia”. Jerry Mendes would, he knew, now agree to the special being focused on Gina Davies. And Richard Cody felt he had a new and perhaps vital element in his story. For what does a Black Widow do but slay her partner?
Richard Cody thanked his ASIO contact for having personally phoned, and was about to hang up, but Siv Harmsen was oddly talkative for such a late call.
“All this garbage about truth being suppressed with these new terrorism laws,” Siv Harmsen went on, “you know we want the public to know certain things. And that’s not me saying that, Richard. That’s people much higher up than me.”
“I’m glad,” said Richard Cody. “We all need to pull together at times like this.”
“Dead right,” said Siv Harmsen. “You get it, you see, Richard. But a lot of people don’t. And we need them to. My bosses like your boss, Richard,” he added. “My bosses want us to help Mr Frith and you all we can.”
As his wife grumbled at the disturbance so late at night, Richard Cody lay back on his pillow, feeling vaguely triumphant. Now his special had just about everything. He could even see the title that had come to him after Siv Harmsen’s call. It would dramatically top and tail the ad breaks, backed by a deep voice announcing his comeback:
“THE UNKNOWN TERRORIST returns after this break.”
It was enough. It had to be. How he wished he could hold his son. Nobody knows what moves anybody.