27

COLIN SLADE, BlackTack operative and man who’d tried to kill me earlier in the day, hobbled through the swinging hospital doors. He was on crutches, with one leg in a moon boot and one knee heavily strapped. Band-Aids criss-crossed his face and forearm.

‘You waited,’ Colin said, amazed.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘We have a lot to talk about. How about a drink?’

We went out into the warm afternoon. It was an easy five-minute walk on flat roads to the Horsham International. For Slade, on crutches, it took twenty minutes. While I went to reception to book a room for Loretta and me, Slade went into the bar, or Baa, as it was called.

I found him settled on a stool, staring out at the steady flow of cars, utes, and trucks on the Western Highway. Ballarat to the left of us, Adelaide to the right.

The place was unusually quiet for a Sunday afternoon, with only two other people in the place, a grey-haired man and a younger woman. He was doing all the talking, and her only contribution seemed to be an occasional nod.

‘Beer?’ I asked Slade.

‘And a whiskey.’

I ordered two beers, a whiskey, and some sweet-potato chips and garlic bread. Slade drank the whiskey in one shuddering gulp. I sipped my beer, and we both stared out at the street.

‘When do the cops show up,’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t call the cops on you.’

He let out a deep breath, picked up the beer, and drank half. ‘What do you want?’

‘Information.’

‘You’ll get me killed.’

‘No one will know I’ve spoken to you.’

He grimaced into his beer. ‘They’ll know.’

‘Colin, what are you doing here? Not you personally, I mean. BlackTack. What are you here to do, exactly?’

‘The syndicate hired me. Their operation had been compromised. The prisoner with the phone, the recording. It had to be shut down. It was an unacceptable risk.’

Shut down? Quite the euphemism. ‘So you killed the prisoner?’

‘No.’ He looked up at me, squinting. ‘I advised against it until we had the phone. We still don’t know who did that. After he died, I was ordered to find the phone. Destroy it.’

‘You killed Velvet Stone. You admit that?’

‘Yes. She knew of the phone’s existence. I doubt she knew what was on it. But she had to be neutralised.’

If only Bunny Slipper were here, listening to all this eye-witness evidence. Slade casually admitting to killing Velvet Stone. Perhaps he was telling the truth about not killing Joe Phelan.

‘That night with Velvet Stone, when you took me back to my apartment, you could have killed me, but you didn’t. Why?’

He shrugged. ‘There was a pathetic attempt at blackmail using the recording. The syndicate believes someone working on the inside was conspiring with the prisoner. They thought you might help to uncover who it was. You gave us the phone, said you didn’t know what was on it. I believed you. And so did my contact. They let you have another chance of finding the infiltrator. Not anymore — now you’re a liability.’

‘You called me at the Woolburn Hotel. How did you know where I was?’

‘Went back to your apartment: old bloke with a dog out the front says you’re at your boyfriend’s. Just offered it up.’

Brown Cardigan, for a paranoid security-conscious wimp, he sure was a blabbermouth. ‘So then what? You don’t know who my boyfriend is.’

‘Old bloke said he’s an artist, lives in Footscray.’

I needed to have words with that gossipy man. ‘But you don’t know which artist.’

‘Bloke goes, Peter Brophy, aged forty-eight. Lives above a shop, calls his place the Narcissistic Slacker. Which is a laugh.’

I felt a chill. ‘You spoke to him?’

‘My word. And he gave you up easy, too. Said you were in Woolburn with your mum.’

I was too stunned to speak.

‘I’ll tell you something else for free, he’s not a well man, your artist friend.’

‘He has a cold,’ I said.

‘Yeah. That’s it,’ he said dryly. ‘He’s so thin he’s transparent, a sorry sight.’

‘He told you where I was?’ I asked, ignoring the awful implications of that description.

‘I said it was urgent, and he gave me the lot, even your car registration.’ He drank some beer.

I sat in stunned silence. A stranger asks for your personal information and your significant other just coughs it up. It wasn’t a betrayal, per se; it was really bad judgement. I knew Brown Cardigan was a fool and a jerk, but I thought Brophy was more canny than that.

Slade was opening up. Perhaps the beer and the whiskey had gone to his head, because he started telling me about how he’d flown in a light plane to Mildura and driven a hire car to Woolburn. He’d asked around in the pub, and a bloke told him he’d seen me getting petrol in Sea Lake.

Tyler. He probably thought he was being helpful. That was three men who’d freely offered information about me to a BlackTack operative. What was the world coming to? And Slade said they regarded me as a liability to be neutralised. They were coming for me. I needed to know my enemy. I needed to come for them.

‘Tell me about the syndicate, who are they?’

He sighed, like it was inconsequential. The topic seemed uninteresting to him.

‘Who’s in the syndicate? Enrique Nunzio?’

‘Yeah, him.’

‘And Pugh and Allyson Coleman?’

‘Probably.’

‘What about Ranik, the prison manager?’

He shook his head and drained his glass.

‘Some BS12 people at the prison are not in on it?’

‘I suppose. Look, Hardy, it doesn’t matter. I’m already dead, we both are.’ He stared into his empty glass. Something had changed, perhaps the painkillers were wearing off. He was retreating into himself. ‘Fuck this,’ he said abruptly. ‘Call me a taxi.’

I pulled out my phone. ‘Going to?’

‘Mildura airport.’

It took a bit of convincing to get the taxi company to believe that Colin wanted to travel three hundred kilometres. But he had the dough. After many assurances that this was not a prank, I was told the driver was on his way.

‘What’s the plan? Back to the UK? Get a job doing something less risky, North Sea fisherman or something?’

Dead bat, not even a smile. ‘For what it’s worth, my contact in the syndicate is Paul. No last name. Calls me Harry.’

‘Did you ever meet Paul in person?’

‘Yes, once. When I first arrived. The bar of the Darwin Hilton, a month ago.’

‘Darwin?’

He nodded. ‘This assignment, the client comes from Darwin.’

Allyson Coleman drove her Karmann Ghia around the streets of Darwin. Darwin’s a main port. Ships out of Darwin went to Egypt, Jakarta, Tripoli.

Slade coughed loudly, finished his beer. ‘I’m off.’

‘Wait, tell me about Paul. What’s he look like?’

‘Mid-forties, average height, thinning auburn hair, auburn moustache, freckled face.’

‘What about Nell Tuffnell?’

‘Who?’

‘The prison guard. You drove her car that night with Velvet Stone. And again the night you came to my flat.’

‘You say so. I was told to use that car, not a rental. Keep the operation untraceable.’

We stayed silent as a woman came from the kitchen carrying a tray. She placed the chips and bread on the table without a word. I picked up a garlicky triangle.

When she’d gone, I said, ‘What’s next? What’s the syndicate planning? Any hints?’

‘Hints?’ He held my gaze. ‘Take a guess. You’re still alive.’

He gathered his crutches and, without a word, began making slow progress to the exit. The automatic door parted, but he turned and came back, dropped one of the crutches, and put out his hand. ‘Thanks for … the drink.’

I shook his hand. ‘Don’t mention it.’

‘I mean, for everything. Considering …’

‘Considering you were trying to kill me? Forget it, people try that a lot.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ He tucked the crutches under his armpits.

An uneasy feeling descended upon me.

I took out my phone to call Brophy. Minutes passed. I stared out the window without seeing, phone at the ready in my sweaty hand. More minutes passed. I couldn’t make the call.

A man in a blue shirt with insignia on the shoulders walked into the Baa.

‘Someone call a taxi to Mildura?’ he shouted.

‘He’s out the front,’ I said. ‘The bloke on crutches.’

‘No one’s there. No crutches.’

‘Maybe he flagged down a passing cab,’ I said.

‘Knew it was a prank,’ he said and marched out.

Colin Slade was no longer my concern. The syndicate, the new threat to my life, none of it mattered. Brophy was all I could think about. But I couldn’t talk to him. I put my phone away, noting a change in my mood. Dark thoughts and a sense of impending failure, of inevitable shitty arguments, of a return to loneliness. Familiar, business-as-usual, dreadful loneliness.

I blinked back tears and finished the garlic bread.