'We're going to fit you with an IAD.'
'The whole department?' Kit asked, leaning away from Harry Costanzo and the sinister surgical implement he was waving around. She'd always thought Harry looked a little like Gregory Peck, but right now he looked like Gregory Peck auditioning for his role in The Boys From Brazil.
'I don't think he's talking about Internal Affairs, Kitty,' Marek snorted.
'Actually, I am in a manner of speaking,' Harry corrected him. 'This,' he added, holding up a very small something in a plastic bag, 'is an intra auricular device. A hearing aid, of sorts, because it will be aiding O'Malley to hear us from as far away as half a kilometre.'
'You're not really going to stick that in my ear are you Dr Mengele?'
'That is the general idea. And the beauty of this little thing is that even someone standing right next to you will not be able to see it, or hear what you hear.'
'I don't know about this,' Kit protested.
'I promise it won't hurt,' Harry insisted. 'It will however make you effectively deaf in whichever ear we put it in, which of course may have an affect on your sense of balance.'
'I don't have a sense of balance,' Kit stated.
'Good, you won't notice it then. I would avoid climbing on anything, however,' Harry said. 'Now sit still.'
'What I want to know is,' Kit said, screwing her eyes shut and trying to distract her own attention away from the sensation of a cold and foreign something sliding into her right ear, 'is...is why this van stinks of boys' socks. Don't you guys ever open it up and let some fresh air in?'
She was still cringing and jigging her knee up and down when Harry informed her that the procedure was complete.
'Is this when you tell me it requires major surgery to get it out again?' she asked.
Harry smiled menacingly and rolled his chair across to the console behind him. 'It's time for a sound check. Here Jenkins, take this outside and keep your voice low,' he ordered, handing Nick a personal communicator. 'Jonno, stand next to her and make sure you can't hear anything.'
'Hailing frequencies open,' Kit said, tapping her ear.
'You have no idea how long I've been wanting to get into your head.'
'Very funny,' Kit commented, surprised by the clarity of Nick's voice.
'If you're talking to Nick, he can't hear you yet,' Harry stated, his words echoing most peculiarly inside her head.
'Oh Harry, please,' she complained. 'I can hear you without the mike.
'Sorry, Honeylamb,' he said, flicking a switch on the console. 'Jonno?'
'I couldn't hear you or Nick but there's definitely something there, though I suppose it might be a flea nattering in her hair.'
Kit whacked Marek on the leg and turned back to Harry. 'How many voices am I going to have in my head?'
'Only one at a time. And no one at all unless it's necessary.'
'Good. I don't need to feel schizophrenic as well as unbalanced. What about the transmitter?'
Harry dragged a box across the bench and onto his knees, before swivelling his chair round to face Kit again. 'The choice is yours.'
'Well, this is a far cry from having half a recording studio taped to your body,' she said, marvelling at the selection of innocuous items that included a pen, a belt and buckle, a small torch, a cigarette case, and a lipstick.
'State of the art, Honeylamb, state of the art,' Harry said joyously, as if they were his very own inventions. Considering how hard it would have been to get the money for them out of the annual budget his delight was understandable.
'I'll use this,' Kit said. 'I don't want something they'll automatically take from me if I get caught.' She replaced her belt with Harry's hi-tech lifeline to the outside world, or rather the world inside this van. 'Does it have an on/off switch?'
Harry leant forward and turned the buckle over to indicate how to turn it on, while he tried to ignore Marek's outstretched open hand waving under his nose.
'Twenty bucks, Costanzo. No cheques and no IOUs.'
'What are you betting on this time Marek?' Kit asked.
'Detective Costanzo was convinced you'd choose the lipstick,' Marek explained.
'He obviously doesn't know you like we do,' Nick's voice echoed in her head again, making her jump in surprise.
'Welcome to the party Nick.' Kit picked up the lipstick and shook her head. 'This was designed by a yobbo, Harry. A clever yobbo undoubtedly, but a yobbo all the same. Even if I did wear this stuff, Flaming Sheila would not be my colour. And could you please turn Nick down a bit, he's going to make me deaf if he keeps cackling in my ear like that.'
The back door swung open to reveal Nick looking apologetic, a hand over the mike on his headset. He stepped aside to usher Liam and Sargent into the van ahead of him.
'The boat's waiting,' Liam stated, straddling the one remaining stool. 'Are we going to do this or not? It's nearly 7.30.'
'We're almost ready,' Marek stated.
'Oh, I nearly forgot,' Liam said as he pulled out his mobile. 'A call for you Girl Scout. It's our surfing friend.'
'Surfing? Oh,' Kit said, taking the phone. 'Hello Hector. Hello. I think you lost him Liam.'
'Try your left ear, Kit. I'm in this one,' Nick whispered helpfully.
Kit rolled her eyes at him and put the phone to her other ear. 'Hector. What have you got for me?'
'It's about time! And it's nice to talk to you too, O'Malley,' Hector grumbled.
'Sorry, but we're on a tight schedule here mate. I hope you're going to tell me that Maggie Easton also goes by the name of Adele Armstrong.'
'I sure am,' Hector confirmed cheerily and, quite oddly Kit thought, without even a trace of disappointment that she already knew.
'So which name is the alias?' Kit asked.
'Neither. O'Malley, you're going to love this.'
'Hector, I'm only going to love it, if you can manage to tell me sometime this side of my sixtieth birthday.'
'That's gratitude for you. Do you have to take all the funmacadamia? Dunnowha...' Hector's incomprehensible words degenerated into a splutter of static.
'Shit!' Kit shook the mobile uselessly. 'Harry, I hope we're not going to have communication problems like this.'
'Not with this technology, Honeylamb.'
'Which just leaves good old human error, or oversight.' Liam pointed at Harry's console. 'Doesn't that little green light indicate an incoming call?'
Harry grunted, flicked a switch and then handed a spare headset to Marek.
'O'Malley,' Hector's voice sang out from the phone in her lap.
'Hector where the hell are you? And what were you saying about fun and macadamias?'
'I said 'fun out of it' O'Malley. And I'm in, um, I'm in a friend's car. I was saying that I don't know why that feral Fed couldn't find this out.'
'Find out what, Hector?' Kit said through clenched teeth, trying not to lose her patience, or at least sound like she wasn't.
'Armstrong is her married name. The name Margaret Adelaide Easton got when she married Bruce David Armstrong, a small-time drug dealer and pimp from Sydney.'
'Great Caesar's bloody ghost!' Kit exclaimed. 'She's Edwina's daughter. You're right Hector, I do love it.'
'That's not the best bit O'Malley.'
'It's not? What on earth could top that?'
'Maggie stroke Adele divorced her husband in 1989, a year after he got out of Long Bay where he'd done three for manslaughter. She came to Melbourne. He disappeared, went underground for two years. That is until he resurfaced, publicly at least, in Melbourne in 1991. He's the one with the alias, O'Malley.'
'Hector, please don't play games.'
'Three words O'Malley,' Hector teased. 'Ian Munro Dalkeith.'
'What? Well...I'll be a,' she couldn't think of anything. 'Well, fuck-a-duck!'
'That's charming O'Malley.'
'Hector you're a genius.'
'I hope you remember that when you're considering what sort of bonus I get for all this work.'
'You bet. Tell me though, how did you know about Edwina? I mean why weren't you surprised when I made the connection?'
'Oops, converging trams O'Malley. Gotta go.'
Trams? Kit stared suspiciously at the mobile until she realised Marek was grinning at her like he'd just eaten the cat that had swallowed the canary. 'What?' she asked him.
'We have a match.'
'The fingerprints? I knew it!' Kit declared, clenching her fists in victory.
'You looked mighty pleased with Surfer Boy's news too,' Liam commented.
'Oh mate, my day just keeps getting better,' Kit said with a grin. 'Twist number 22 in this sordid little soap opera is a doozey.
'Margaret Adele Armstrong, nee Easton, is the daughter of Edwina Barnes, Melbourne's most famous Madam. This explains why Edwina's name is on all their books even though she's been stuffed away in an exclusive sanatorium for several years. The same luxury nuthouse, I might add, where one Shirley Smith, sister of Captain Malcolm, has spent the last nine years probably doped to the eyeballs to prevent her from doing the community a great service by bumping off her ex-husband Geoffrey Robinson.'
Liam swivelled on his stool to let Detective Sargent know that the scowl on his face was meant for him and him alone.
'That's not all guys. Twist number 23, parts A and B are the icing on the cake. Adele's ex-husband used to be a piece of lowlife scum from Sydney called Bruce Armstrong. We, however, know him as a hotshot property developer and glamour-boy-from-Nowhere, and believe me there really is such a place. He's our very own drug smuggler, nasty piece of work, and all-round respectable businessman Ian Dalkeith.'
'Shit,' said Marek.
'That is an understatement if ever there was one,' Kit pronounced. 'How come you couldn't find this out Alan? Or did you?'
'Me? I don't even know who you're talking about. Who is this Adele anyway?'
'Geoffrey Robinson's secretary. Celia Robinson's murderer,' Kit stated.
He still looked blank.
'Robinson's bimbo,' Liam said. 'The one you said checked out as just some slut on the make.'
Sargent's expression was as plain as recycled toilet paper as he rolled his paranoid little head around on the chip on his shoulder. It was hard to tell whether he was trying to work out how to get out of this one, or whether he really had no idea why everyone was staring at him.
'You got someone else to do the background check for you, didn't you?' Liam asked.
'Yeah. So?'
'We're not treading on someone else's turf here are we?' Marek asked. 'I hope we're not going to find out that our sharks are just little fish in an even bigger pond being watched by some of your colleagues from head office.'
That would certainly explain why someone bearing Sargent's particular brand of toady ineptitude would have been assigned as Liam's liaison officer, Kit thought. No doubt he could be relied upon to liaise his little balls off, exchanging reliable data for misinformation without ever knowing the difference.
'No way,' Sargent was saying. 'I have complete authority in this; it's my case.'
'So who goofed on the Easton broad?' Liam asked.
Sargent shrugged. 'An old friend from St Kilda CIB ran her name for me.'
'We're dealing with local, interstate and international drug dealers here,' Marek stated. 'You have Federal resources at your disposal yet you get some mate from the local cop shop to check her out?'
The disbelieving 'oh sure' tone that had invaded Marek's comment suggested he too was thinking what had just occurred to Kit, that Sargent had been mighty quick to suggest the drugs had already been moved.
'You know I've heard this nasty and probably unfounded rumour,' Kit said lightly, as if she was changing the subject, 'that if you don't want the crooks to nick off with the goods an hour before a raid goes down then you don't give the Feds the time of day, let alone anything more specific.'
'What the hell are you inferring?' Sargent asked defensively, looking a lot like someone who'd just stepped in something sticky and on close examination of his shoes discovered it was his own brains.
'You really wouldn't want to know all that I'm inferring, but you obviously got the gist of my implication,' Kit stated, at the same time realising it was a pretty dumb theory because if Sargent was bending the rules in the wrong direction then Dalkeith and his cronies would have pulled up stumps weeks ago.
Liam obviously wasn't quite so ready to dismiss the possibility. 'Just what are we going to find in that warehouse tonight Alan?'
'How the fuck should I know?' Sargent protested. 'You're the one who's been inside. You and your sidekick Tonto the dyke here.'
The sound of a pin dropping was disturbed only by Nick's barely audible 'uh oh' in her right ear. Kit seriously contemplated shooting the stupid prick right where he stood, using Marek's gun which he'd subtly offered by sweeping his jacket back off his hip, but she decided now was not the time. She wasn't worried about the four witnesses, in fact she had the feeling they'd probably help get rid of the body, she just didn't want to owe that many favours.
'So,' she said, inhaling deeply as she sent out a mental sheepdog to muster up her self-control before turning away from Sargent towards Marek and Harry, 'do we have the entire Victoria Police Force ready to secure this beachhead or is it going to be a nice intimate little commando raid?'
Harry Costanzo couldn't answer because he was busy trying to get his Zippo to light the cigar he'd stuffed in his mouth. Harry hated not knowing stuff and Kit knew he was wondering whether Sargent's insult had simply been the best thing he could think of at the time or whether it explained how Marek knew he'd win the Flaming Sheila bet.
Kit smiled and gave him a slight nod because she knew that despite his age, which was pushing him towards retirement, and his sturdy working class background, Harry didn't have an ist or phobic bone in his body, and if he found one he'd probably have it voluntarily replaced with something more ideologically sound. Sargent on the other hand, she decided, would benefit greatly from a compulsory and complete skeletonectomy.
'Are you listening?' Marek asked.
'What?' Kit asked.
Marek rolled his eyes. 'We're keeping it small and personal. Counting you, for some strange reason, there's twelve of us. Boscoe is already on the ground with Dipper, Robbo, and Smasher.'
'Sounds like the cast of a Warner Brothers cartoon,' Kit interrupted.
'Do you want to know this or not?'
'Yes Jonno,' she said sweetly.
'Harry, Sargent and I will also be on-site, working from the van. You, Nick and Liam will go in the boat with Tony McCoy and Jenny MacKenzie. They'll take you up river and drop you and Nick at the back door.'
'Oh great,' Kit said. 'I haven't seen Macka and Macka for ages.'
In reality Kit didn't know the detectives Macka from Adam or Eve but they welcomed her onto their plain-clothes police boat just the same. The Mackas, like their boat, were also disguised for an undercover mission, in garb appropriate for a leisurely cruise or a spot of after-dark bream fishing on the Maribyrnong on this perfect Melbourne summer night.
With daylight saving still in effect, and still fading curtains in the homes of people all over the country who had no conception of what actually happened when they turned their clocks forward one hour, the sky low to the west was a pale, blue-black reminder that Old Sol was probably only just now setting 700 km away in Adelaide.
Overhead was a Star Trek Universe of infinite suns and possible worlds although Kit had to admit that from where she stood, rocking around in the back of a boat on the narrow river that separated the city from the western suburbs, the celestial bodies in this neck of the galaxy were having a hard time competing with the millions of incandescent filaments throwing their artificial light willy-nilly out into the heavens.
Splendidly insignificant, Kit thought, admiring the sight that was Melbourne at night. Her gaze was drawn away from the illuminated heights of the city's skyline to the twisting span of the West Gate Bridge which arced over the Yarra and seemed to hover way, way above the upper decks of a super tanker that was being tugged up the river by a boat one-hundredth its size.
Speaking of insignificant, she thought, as her attention was brought back to the here and now by the sound of Detective Alan Sargent doing the standard public service abdication-of-responsibility-but-only-in-the-case-of-something-going-wrong routine. He was stating for the record, for the thirteenth time, his objection to Miz O'Malley's involvement, and was therefore categorically dissociating himself from the fallout from any stuff-ups that may occur as a result of no one taking his objection seriously.
'Fine,' Liam said. 'In that case, when everything goes according to plan we'll make sure that O'Malley gets all the credit for busting an international drug ring.'
Sargent looked fleetingly horrified until he rearranged his body into a semblance of macho posturing - chest out, shoulders back, one foot up on the edge of the boat, the other still on the jetty. 'I was merely making it clear,' he said, shoving his hand in his pocket to make sure he was still wearing his penis, 'that I refuse to be held accountable for the thousand and one things that could go wrong because of the involvement of a female civilian in a police operation.'
What did he expect was going to happen? Kit wondered. A niggly little worry worm uncurled itself in the back of her head. Did he know something they didn't? Was his paranoia contagious?
'O'Malley is a highly trained and experienced ex-member of the Victoria Police Force,' Marek was saying. 'She is not a hairdresser from Chapel Street or my elderly aunt from Wandiligong East. Nothing is going to go wrong.'
Oh yeah? Kit thought, making a list of the things that could. She could get caught, for instance. She could get killed. That wouldn't worry Sargent one little bit, but how would she explain it to Lillian?
'Ex-member,' Sargent sneered. 'I think...'
Kit grabbed him by his supercilious shirt front and held him precariously off-balance between the boat and the jetty. 'We don't actually give a shit what you think Alan,' she snarled, invading his personal space by pushing her face close to his. 'And by the way, don't ever call me Tonto again. OK?' She let him go, and watched with dismay as he recovered his balance and didn't fall in the river.
'I've got to hand it you Girl Scout,' Liam said, as Jenny Macka piloted the boat northwards. 'You showed admirable restraint. Wasted but nonetheless admirable.'
'Well, you must be a paragon of all things virtuous to have put up...' Kit began, and then remembered she was wired for sound. She touched Jenny on the arm and pointed to the pontoon dock at the rear of the Freyling Imports Storage Company's main warehouse and drug distribution centre, about a hundred yards ahead. The back door to the loading bay was closed and there didn't appear to be a soul in sight.
'This would be a good place to drop us, Jenny,' Kit suggested, indicating a section of embankment where the boat could get close enough to allow them to jump off.
'Batgirl to the Batvan, come in Alfred,' Kit called, bending unnecessarily to speak into her Batbelt buckle.
'Stop mucking around O'Malley,' came Marek's voice, as clear as a Telecom-connected call from his elderly aunt in Wandiligong East.
'I am not mucking, Marek. Nicholas and I are about to leave the relative safety of the Batboat and we would like the latest situation report please.'
Marek put her on hold while he called for the troops to report in, so Kit ran an equipment check to make sure she had everything she needed. It didn't take long. She was only carrying a torch and a picklock, and they were still where she'd put them in the pockets of her army pants.
Despite being a highly trained and experienced ex-member of the Victoria Police Force it was the ex bit that Marek emphasised when he refused to lend her a 38 Police Special for the night. He'd given her Nick instead, which was actually a lot more reassuring because he was packing a 357 Magnum and a very attractive Armalite, complete with nightscope. Not only was the lightweight automatic rifle the police sniper's weapon of choice, but this one was in the hands of an expert marksman.
Marek came back on line to report that: Dipper, hidden somewhere in the underbrush, had the police boat in view and there was no other activity on the river side of the warehouse; Robbo was on the roof (Kit wondered how the hell he managed that); Boscoe and Smasher on the north side counted one vehicle in the carpark and one man from the opposing team on guard inside. 'And so far there's no traffic or other movement in the street out here,' Marek concluded.
'Great,' Kit said. She grinned at her bodyguard. 'Lock and load Nick old buddy, it's time to go.'
'This is a quick trip Kitty, OK?' Marek reminded her. 'Just get in, check that the stuff's still there, and then get the hell out again.'
'No worries,' Kit replied, as she grabbed hold of the canopy, hauled herself up onto the side of the boat and leapt towards dry land. She landed neatly on two feet, turned quickly to witness the Maribyrnong River apparently leaving town in a surging hurry, and then fell backwards on her arse. 'Ow! Don't climb on anything?' she exclaimed under her breath, shaking her head to clear it. 'Harry you should have told me not to jump off anything either.'
'I assumed if you didn't do one you wouldn't need to do the other,' came Harry's voice.
Nick helped her to feet and dusted her off. Liam, who'd been having a good chuckle, slapped his hand over his own mouth when Kit glared at him.
'Go catch some fish, you guys,' Kit said dismissing them with a wave. 'And don't get too engrossed in what those boys in their pyjamas are doing with that silly little ball,' she added when she noticed that Tony McCoy had set up a portable TV, tuned into the cricket, in the back of the boat.
Kit supposed she should have been grateful that it wasn't winter because if the stakeout team was watching a night footy match, then all hell could break loose around them and they probably wouldn't notice. She'd always thought that the most extraordinary thing about cricket was that, despite the fact that it was game where nothing at all could happen for hours and days on end, people actually watched it for hours and days on end. Thank god Liam was with them, he'd probably find the blank walls of a darkened warehouse a lot more exciting to watch than a boring bloody Test Match from Brisbane or Barbados or wherever.
'Don't do anything stupid in there Girl Scout,' Liam said, as the boat pulled away and headed to the other side of the river.
Kit led Nick down the bike path, up over the rocks and under the ramp from the loading bay. No one, it seemed, had checked the perimeter as the section of fence she'd cut was just the way she'd left it on Wednesday night.
God, that was only two nights ago, Kit realised with amazement. It seemed as remote as that first, civilised breakfast meeting with Celia which, even right now as she scrambled around in the dirt under the dock and waited for Nick to follow, seemed the least likely thing to have gotten her into a fine mess like this, let alone to have contributed to Celia's untimely demise.
Just you wait Adele Armstrong, she thought as she picked the lock on the side door of the warehouse. Nick, the Armalite slung over his back and the 357 in his hand, was a lot less distracting than her last accomplice on this breaking and entering lark.
Alex. Wow! she thought mushily, and then felt a twinge of guilt at being pleased that something good had come out of this fine mess.
Before Kit opened the door, Nick checked in with Marek that all was still as it had been the last time they'd communicated, and then they slipped into the quiet, darkness of Freyling's probably never-used lunch room. Kit headed up the first hallway and glanced around the corner. The one man on guard inside had his feet up on the desk in the office upstairs and was reading a newspaper. Once again the only light in the place came from the office and the fluorescent strip over the staircase.
She gave Nick the signal to follow her dash for the stacks of crates on the right and when they were safely out of sight again she indicated the direction in which they were going to head. As agreed he kept her in sight but stayed one row behind her as she weaved her way down and across the dusty aisles to the place where, she hoped, the offending crate would still be sitting.
Kit stopped dead, as did Nick, when she heard an 'um' in her ear. 'Two cars just pulled in, a Mercedes and a BMW. Hang on,' said Marek. A couple of seconds later he continued. 'It's Dalkeith, Whitten and Grainger. If they're here the stuff must be too so get out, now.'
Kit shook her head at Nick, who waved his hands in objection but followed her anyway. Kit had to make sure. For all she knew Geoffrey's cronies might just be here to do a bit of bastard rat catching.
She reached the last row of crates near the centre of the warehouse and took a quick look back towards the office just as the exterior door at that end slammed shut behind Whitten and Grainger. Dalkeith was already half way up the stairs.
Kit motioned to Nick to join her and then stay put, under cover, while she ventured out into the empty half of the warehouse. Even in the dark she managed to find the crate. Well, she found a crate. She could only assume it was the right one.
She positioned herself so that the crate was between her and the office, lifted the lid enough to squeeze her hand in and then switched her torch on just long enough to verify the presence of several boxes marked Toshiba before easing the lid down again.
In the following nanosecond Kit registered three things happening - all of which she wished she hadn't still been around for. The spot in which she stood was suddenly awash with light; Nick muttered 'oh shit' in her ear; and someone was striding towards her.
She blinked. Davis Whitten was nearly on her and she had absolutely nowhere to go.