7

Maria patted her greasy mouth with the last of the flimsy brown paper napkins and burped.

‘I have to say,’ she said with a contented sigh. ‘That beats tiku on a stick.’

‘Come again?’ Portillo said, suppressing a burp himself as he stuffed the used napkins in the brown bag, screwed it up and tossed it onto the back half-seat ledge.

‘One of my father’s silly sayings when us kids asked what was for tea. The kebab was totally worth waiting for.’

She upended the bottle of Fanta and drained it. There was more than one side-benefit to this side-street surveillance compared to crouching in that over-lit basement gawping at monitors. The lights were going off in the café opposite, where Portillo had got the pita pockets of roast lamb and the tomato and cucumber salad and parsley-heavy gunk he called tabouli, all of it smothered in a divine sauce a close cousin of peanut butter. She could now tick kebabs and Reschs off the Aussie wish list.

It was the last place open in this part of Oxford Street. The street cleaning truck had been through and the punters had moved on to the night clubs. It was past one on the dashboard clock, whose slight click she could now hear. What had not changed was the oppressive heat. If anything, it was up a few degrees.

‘Damn,’ Portillo said. ‘I hoped this wouldn’t happen.’

A figure was stumbling into the service lane alleyway, propped against the wall, fumbling and rocking back with a sigh of relief, letting go against the wall. He zipped up and stumbled back out, oblivious to the car and its occupants.

‘God,’ she said. ‘What a pong.’

‘At least,’ he said, reaching into his jacket, ‘it was not the police.’

She declined his offer of the flat half-bottle. He uncapped and took a good swallow, belched, said that felt better.

‘Having the soft-top folded back does have a downside,’ she said for something to say.

‘Actually,’ he said, clambering out, ‘I also need a comfort stop. Manage on your own for a bit?’

She didn’t deign to reply and he was not waiting for one, disappearing down the pitch-dark service lane. She heard a clank of bottles and a muffled curse. Peering across the road, she could see there was still a light on above the café, where the lawyer had his office. She had drawn a long bow from her sister’s account of the recapture of her injured boyfriend, specifically the comment about the yowling cat and the smell of roast meat Bradley remembered from his incarceration. Lawyer, cat, kebabs, it seemed initially like a reasonable punt.

Now she was not so sure. Her bright idea about staking out the lawyer’s building was dimming as the night life of the area shut down. Let’s face it, the day descended literally from talking with her distraught sister in her parents’ rooms to the basement boredom of looking at monitors and recapping with Downing and his team. The Australians claimed to have no knowledge of where O’Toole and his goons or Malone and his goons were. She didn’t believe this and said so to Portillo when she was alone with him at the coffee dispenser. They once again agreed that they were being side-lined.

‘It’s the new imperium,’ he said. ‘The nuclear superpower and its supplier of the vital uranium. We’re last century’s power and you are, well, just a little island far, far away.’

‘Huh,’ she grunted. ‘You’re getting a taste now of the way you used to treat us. We were your dairy farm, you supposedly protected us -- butter for guns.’

‘We only have each other,’ he said laconically. ‘The Yanks are not going to keep you inside their nuclear umbrella if you ban their ships from your ports. The cold shoulder is happening already, you and I kept out of the loop.’

‘We’ll see, I suppose, when my boss gets here and sits down with Hawke tomorrow. Bloody hell.’

‘Yeah, and there’s still this wild card out there. Any ideas about where Bonhoffer is and who has him?’

It was then she spoke aloud her hunch. He was keen. They had interviewed the lawyer Mavros hours ago. He showed them a second set of steps leading up from his floor to an attic he had used as a storeroom. Now the door was protected by a shiny and solid padlock installed by the new owner of the three-storey building, one John Patrick O’Toole. Mavros made the unlikely claim that O’Toole had bought the block to spite him and was already signalling a huge rent increase. Although, it did chime with O’Toole claiming large rent arrears from the late Frankie. It to launder his cash cows.

They agreed they needed to break into the attic. For over an hour they had been ensconced in this odoriferous alley, waiting for Mavros to either have a very late tryst or pack up for the night.

‘All quiet on the Oxford Street front,’ Portillo said, climbing back in. ‘I hope you appreciate my sacrifice making myself and my motor available for this doom watch.’

‘It got you out of that basement,’ she said. ‘There was nothing else to go on.’

Portillo nodded. ‘Yes, those bovver boys have done a damned good disappearing act. Still, hard to see Bonhoffer laying a golden egg, as your sister reported it.’

‘It seemed too much of a coincidence, O’Toole buying this block. Of course, Mavros could be lying and be donkey deep with O’Toole.’

‘Nothing would surprise me with lawyers.’

‘Or journalists.’

‘Nasty.’

‘No more than you deserve.’

There was a distant popping and rumbling, from beyond the harbour heads.

‘Night exercises?’ she suggested.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know, the American warship and its Aussie buddies firing off a few rounds.’ guests disturbing their beauty sleep. More likely to be hoons letting off a stash of left-over fireworks.’

‘The whole situation is unlikely. I don’t get why the Americans – if Malone does represent them and is not on a rogue mission – are so bitter and twisted about Bonhoffer.’

‘Nor me. Brad baby’s just one of many Americans who did a runner from Vietnam service. I suppose what really worries the Yanks is the possibility of another attempt to sabotage one of their warships during the joint exercises here. And that’s all the more reason to find Bonhoffer and those Aussie thugs.’

‘Tell me. Do you think my sister was involved?’

‘In the failed bombing of the Buchanan. I doubt it. I suspect Bonhoffer played her.’

‘She tends to the naïve. Um, do you like her?’

‘Bit of a leading question. As it happens, yes. Pity Bonhoffer came on the scene.’

‘Really.’

She thought to but refrained from further questions about his private life. She had him down as gay. Whether he was or wasn’t was none of her business.

Her sister was her business. She had never thought of Ali as particularly attractive to men, but here she was with two interested in her. Both were personable, one especially so.

Ali had always come across as a shy wallflower, a good convent girl. Maria didn’t even know if she had been with a man or was that interested. Her study had always been her priority. Was it her brains? Or was she sexy with her glasses off? She vaguely recalled in some women’s magazine the claim that short-sighted actresses were considered hot, but only when they were without their glasses.

Brad did worry her. He was essentially a root rat, up for it, so to speak, at any and every opportunity, even when there was no opportunity, in her case. The Aussies had a phrase for it: He’d poke the hairs on a barber’s shop floor. Maybe this was the x factor, Australia. It certainly made mum frisky. Even dear old dad seemed to have a bit more pizzaz in the Sydney situation.

‘If you’re wondering, yes,’ he interrupted her familial reverie, ‘I am a kosher columnist with the National Times. And,’ he continued before she could say she was not wondering about him, ‘your sister has a future at the mag, if she is not brought down with Bonhoffer. I don’t agree with Ali on all this nuclear protest, we all need the American nuclear protection, but I share a lot of her concerns. That’s why I’m working for Fairfax and not Rupert Murdoch.’

‘He’s pretty tight with Bob Hawke, isn’t he?’

‘Murdoch? They are as thick as thieves, emphasise that last word. Murdoch’s media empire gets preferential treatment from the government, as do some of these mining czars like Alan Bond. Incredible that a Labour administration defies its own base and denies Aboriginal land rights, in favour of uranium extraction. It’s a helluva story, and I am sure Fairfax would grab it with both hands, but I know my other employers would not wear it. Hawke you no doubt know is very cosy with our prime minister and the cowboy president.’

‘Sounds like you might have a conflict of interest with your two employers. Which one is going to win?’

‘You ask quite curly questions, don’t you? Why don’t we concentrate on the matter in hand -- if there is one?’

His turn to be snarky. She had obviously touched a raw nerve. She shut up asking questions.

Her shoulders were beginning to ache from the long period of inertia in the bucket seat. She leaned back, lifting her hands above her head and stretching. The stars were out big time. ‘There’s the Southern Cross,’ she said, pointing.

‘I can see six of them,’ he said. ‘That must mean the Aussie flag got it right. Can’t you Kiwis count?’

‘We don’t,’ she responded, ‘include the pointers in our flag.’ He had lowered the temperature between them, if not the actual temperature of the night, which was getting hotter and more stifling, as if the very air was being invisibly vacuumed up. It was surely building to breaking point.

She was almost instantly proved right, for in the mere blink of her eyes the six stars shut down, and indeed the entire star power that was so extravagantly decorating the Sydney sky. A cold breeze made her shiver. She rubbed her bare arms, about to say that was sudden when lightning slashed across the city and before she had counted a one-second interval there was a cataclysmic collision of thunder over the harbour. It was not warship exercises, but nature’s own far more potent fire power.

Her ears were ringing from the deafening sound and she could not hear what he was saying. Large drops of water were hitting her head.

‘Quick!’ he shouted, adding something about the roof as the heavens opened and the weather tank was upended all over them. He was gesturing at the windscreen as he struggled to lift the sagging canvas roof. They were drenched and now the lightning stitched up the city. Already the gutters were overflowing with raging streams, a significant tributary swirling down the lane. Lightning momentarily revealed cabbage leaves, cauliflower fragments, loose flower stems, pineapple heads, squashed tomatoes and black bananas and bottles and cans and plastic cups and food wrappers and whatever else had not been sucked up by the cleaning truck or properly secured in the flood path.

She couldn’t hear what Portillo was screeching, but she could see he was trying to clamp metal catches to the top of the windscreen. He nudged her out of the way, his face garish and ghoulish in the lightning flashes, and all to no avail, the torrential rain crushed the flimsy roof. Would locals have noticed any warning signs and at the very least secured the soft top?

The force of the water astonished her. She had never been in a storm like this, so sudden and so apocalyptic. Auckland storms were teacup level by comparison. She could hardly see despite the spectacular overhead light display and the explosive thunder was deafening. The street was being Niagara-ed by a continuous sheet of demonic water.

It stopped, as if God had switched off the rain machine. Only the retreating rolls of thunder and lightning flashes indicated the front was heading away.

Portillo was brushing at his sodden clothes. She didn’t bother. She could replace T-shirt and shorts come morning in any of the clothes shops not flooded out. The problem was seeing anything, the streetlights blown along with every other artificial source of light. Sydney was back in colonial gloom.

There was an exception. An explosion was quickly followed by flames shooting up out of the kebab house, providing an alarming source of light and heat. Her first thought was that the storm blowing the power had generated a short circuit which ignited wiring, and if there was fat lying around or a gas source it would have caused the explosion. Somebody was inside the building, probably Mavros.

‘Portillo!’ she yelled. ‘Get your arse into gear.’

She squelched across the road in sodden sneakers. It was the side entrance she made for, ignoring the kebab house in flames. It was dark but she felt for the door and mercifully it opened. She could feel the heat, but it had not yet breached the porch wall. A small shape yowled and streaked past her, a clue surely confirming where Bradley had been held. Was he there now? It was not too late to save him.

‘This will help,’ Portillo said. ‘My car’s fire extinguisher and jack handle.’

‘Against this,’ she started to say, but he had pushed the handle into her hands and climbed past her up the stairs. A figure was swaying on the landing.

‘Mavros?’

‘The attic,’ he gasped. ‘I heard something.’

Portillo told him to get out as he took the second set of stairs, with Maria close behind. Smoke was filling the stairwell, the heat intensifying. Portillo was coughing and cursing, but finally managed to activate the fire extinguisher. Its burst of white foam had momentary impact.

‘Jack,’ he croaked.

She had to find the padlock by feel, getting the handle under the bolt and heaving. It held. She heard a faint thumping from within and leaned into the jack, Portillo’s hands joining hers. There was still no give in the bolt. The heat and the smoke were getting worse. They rocked and strained and wrenched on the jack handle and the bolt popped, Portillo falling against the wall. He squawked and she heard more foam fizz out of his extinguisher, about as useless a bucket of water on a bush fire. The flames were roaring below and there were further explosions as the flames found more fuel.

They pushed the door and crawled inside, into dense, blinding, choking smoke. She swept one hand about the floor while holding her steaming T-shirt across her face. Behind there was a strange shaft of fogged light revealing a dim hump on the floor. She heard Portillo grunt as he pulled at the hump. She joined him. The light was closer. A slumped person was strapped to a chair. They took the arms of the collapsed figure and dragged backwards on to the landing. Flames were making exploratory darts up the stairs. The torchlight quivered to little effect into the dense smoke. They dragged their charge and the awkward chair at a terrifyingly slow pace, having little choice, she could scarcely breathe. The sound of sirens approaching encouraged her to increase her effort to tug chair and person towards safety.

It took an agonising sequence of spasmodic bumps to reach the bottom of the steps. Maria could hear the sirens fading, panicking at the thought they were going to some other emergency and they were abandoned to a fiery fate. The useless torch was waving about. She made a final desperate effort to get out, tumbling against somebody as she collapsed. She was being lifted but she thought it was too late, the heat was so ferocious she was surely being shovelled into a pizza oven or the hellfire barbecue for all eternity promised so lasciviously by the nuns. She wanted oblivion, and she got it.

Maria came to choking on a mouthful of soot. She was swaying about in a vehicle with sirens parping. She struggled to sit up. Somebody removed an oxygen mask and strong arms assisted, then water was being dribbled into her mouth. She coughed and spluttered.

‘Take your time,’ the woman said. Maria could see the white uniform with a red medal dangling from the breast area.

‘What?’

‘Easy now. You’ve had quite a little adventure.’

That got her focus. She hated being patronised. She took the water bottle and sipped.

‘The others?’

The nurse pointed. Portillo was sitting up, and next to him the lawyer, Mavros. There was no sign of the chair, but a male paramedic was working at an oxygen mask over a prone figure, who had to be Bradley.

‘You okay?’ she managed in a voice that was filtered through a metallic lining of her throat.

‘Speak for yourself,’ Portillo said. ‘Mateo here helped.’

‘The torch, right?’

The nurse advised them not to speak until they were properly checked at the hospital. ‘Smoke inhalation,’ she added smugly, as if they would not have known what it was called.

The emergency waiting room at the hospital was full. Every one of the rows of uncomfortable metal chairs was occupied by people of all age groups in various stages of slump, groaning or wailing or whingeing. Triaging, as the nurse insisted on explaining to them, meant their more severely injured friend was prioritised at the head of the queue, and they might have a long wait. She left them to enjoy it.

Portillo went looking and returned with three of those flimsy beige plastic cups allegedly containing tea, disguised as used bath water. Despite the racket around them, they managed a revealing chat.

Mateo Mavros was least affected by smoke and seemed hardly affected by his loss, speaking cheerily of the end of his practice, there was no back-up for the paper files and briefs. He was insured, he said, and he was free to take his mother on a long cruise on the Pacific Princess.

‘But didn’t those briefs require your attention?’ Maria asked. ‘There must be your fees?’

Mavros laughed. ‘People expect to see those manila fold-ups. Give the client what he expects.’

‘What about O’Toole?’ Portillo asked in a bland voice. ‘Did you handle his accounts after he took over Frankie’s business? You knew every last detail of the Frankuvich empire.’

Mavros shook his head. ‘Everything was off the books with Yucca.’

Portillo gave him an appraising look. ‘Except for the debt he claimed from the deceased Frankie? Did you cross him over that?’

Mateo shrugged. ‘It wasn’t hard to upset Yucca. And I imagine arson was part of his armoury. He has to be the leading candidate for torching his own property.’

Maria sipped the vile tea and looked at Portillo. He lifted his right eyebrow. ‘There is a problem there, Mateo, old bean.’

Mateo blinked owlishly and used his handkerchief to clean his glasses. ‘You mean I suppose Mr Bonhoffer.’

‘Did you know he was there, in the attic?’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘There is only one paramount concern at this juncture,’ Maria said, glaring at Portillo, wanting him to dial down on the aggressive questioning. ‘And that is figuring out who would want to kill Bradley. It would not be O’Toole. He regarded Bradley as valuable to him.’

‘Unless he was past his use-by.’

Brian Portillo put his cup underneath his chair. ‘Perhaps you were the target, Mr Mavros?’

Mateo concentrated on polishing his glasses, held them up to the light. ‘Possibly. But the only enemy I could propose is O’Toole, and I don’t have what he wants, yes? Money, lots of it. I gather he has overextended on his property purchases and cannot service his mortgage repayments. I cannot help him. In summation, I am pretty harmless.’

‘Somebody on the losing end of one of your cases?’

‘I don’t think so. No. Nobody comes to mind. Wills can upset folk, but they take out their feelings on their relatives or somebody they think should not inherit what they feel entitled to. They don’t usually apportion blame to the attorney.’

‘Do you always work this late?’ Portillo demanded, as if thereby implying guilt in the very act of working late. His interview style struck Maria as inherently accusatory, no attempt to win the trust of the subject. Typical arrogant upper-class Pom.

‘No, not at all,’ Mavros said calmly. ‘I was trying to make sense of the accounts -- if you must know. There is – or at least was -- O’Toole’s rent rise to consider.’

‘Mr Port-illy-oh!’

The nurse was looking around the room. She had a fine pair of lungs, suited to the job at hand.

Brian Portillo stood. ‘Age before beauty, I’m afraid.’

Maria stood too. She was feeling better for the dreadful tea. ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she said to Mavros, ‘I have a call to make.’

Her father answered. She told him she had used her last coin and could he be a good Samaritan and collect them from the hospital. She assured him it was nothing to worry about, except for the condition of Ali’s friend. When she got back to her seat, Portillo was standing there, no sign of Mavros.

‘Our legal friend getting medical attention?’

‘Don’t know. But we need not worry about him. Bradley is the problem.’

‘You think he is still the target?’

‘I can’t see Mavros as worth extreme sanction.’

‘Odd. Brad is rated both valuable and disposable.’

‘Not by the same folk. At least I don’t think so, unless O’Toole got a better offer to dispose of Bradley. Then there is Malone, he might have decided to cut his losses and get rid of Bradley. And we probably should not rule out our legal eagle. Let’s get back to base before the cops get the word from Emergency and are here wanting statements. Never mind the hour, we need Teddy boy to sort things, including requiring the Americans to back off and providing police protection for Mr Bonhoffer, while we figure out what the hell is going on.’

‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘Brad is not going to recover if he keeps being kidnapped and assaulted. My family are on the way, you want a lift?’

‘Not a prob,’ Portillo said, tapping the side of his nose with a knowing smirk. ‘I made a call. My tame towie is picking up my car as we speak, and then me.’

‘At three in the morning.’

‘Exactly. I make it worth his while. If I left the car there, the tyres and wire wheels would be long gone by morning, and the cassette player and anything else of resale value.’