Two days later, Gregory responded to a request from Jacinta for weapons-firing practice by phoning Cavalier.
‘You playing golf at Mornington this weekend?’ he asked.
‘I was planning to, yes.’
‘Could you give Jacinta a lift to the range? Polly and I think it’s a chance for you to bond.’
Early on Saturday morning, Cavalier ushered Jacinta, casually dressed in a tracksuit and carrying a long bag, into his car for the trip. He drove to the Mornington range, taking the scenic beach road overlooking Port Phillip Bay. It was a clear, sunny midwinter’s day. Yachts and a few fishing boats were out.
‘You’ve had no more trouble from the Brunswick Gang?’ she asked.
‘No. I had one threatening phone call, but it may not have even been from them.’
‘Have you been sleeping well?’
Cavalier cleared his throat. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There was something else on my mind.’ He glanced at her. ‘But, I admit, I was worried they’d come back. I had a cricket bat by the bed, and a small mallet.’
‘They won’t come back.’
‘No, no not those four,’ he said with a quick grin, ‘but the gang could send another four.’
‘That gang will not return. They are marked now as your attackers. If you were attacked again, they’d be under suspicion.’
Cavalier wasn’t convinced.
‘Don’t you have a gun?’ she asked.
‘No, don’t use them,’ he said, as if he were talking about cigarettes.
‘You know that the gang lawyers want to have me charged with assault with a deadly weapon?’
‘But you weren’t carrying a weapon,’ Cavalier said, glancing at her as they reached the beach road. ‘Were you?’
‘They will try to make a case for my body being a deadly weapon.’
‘What?!’
‘Because of my Muay Thai expertise.’
‘They have a bloody cheek!’
‘Mr Gregory and Federal Police bosses don’t want the incident to go public. They won’t let me be charged.’
‘So, what will happen?’
‘I think the state police will probably drop all assault charges against the four thugs,’ Jacinta paused, ‘in exchange for me not being charged. What do you think about that?’
‘Hmmm.’ Cavalier drove on in silence for a minute before he said, ‘Given that they were well and truly beaten up, and I got a bruise on the back and nothing else, their lawyers could make a case that we assaulted them.’
‘They are claiming that they just went around to your house to put the record straight about a few matters relating to the murder of Labasta. They would claim that there is no proof that they were involved in it.’
‘And that you and I attacked them in front of my house?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Bloody cheek!’ Cavalier repeated, shaking his head.
When they stopped for drinks and snacks, Jacinta noticed a leather band on his right wrist.
‘Where did you get that?’ she asked.
‘It’s Thai. My daughter gave it to me. She bought me one for each day of the week.’
‘You wear a different one every day?’
‘They remind me of her . . .’ he said and tailed off.
Back on the road, Jacinta asked, ‘Why did you begin writing about drug crime?’
He glanced at her, a momentary slash of defensiveness on his face. ‘Did Gregory tell you to ask me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve read back copies of your articles. You had quite a bit to say about the Mexican drug lords.’
‘That was six years ago!’ Cavalier said. ‘He didn’t mention why I began reporting on drug crime?’
‘No. Why did you?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘But you did visit Mexico . . .’
Cavalier kept his eyes on the road. He pressed buttons on the car stereo. ‘You like jazz?’ he asked.
‘Some.’
‘Nina Simone?’
‘Oh, yes! I love her!’
The song ‘Strange Fruit’ began playing. Cavalier turned it off.
‘I love that song,’ Jacinta said, ‘let it play on, please.’
He pressed play again.
‘You okay?’ she asked.
He swallowed and nodded.
When the song had finished, he sipped from a can of V, cleared his throat and said: ‘Six years ago, my daughter went missing on a holiday in Mexico. She was twenty. She and a girlfriend were backpacking in the States and ended up in Texas. They . . . they . . .’ he cleared his throat again, ‘they decided to cross the border.’ He paused, in an effort to control himself.
‘Into Mexico?’
He nodded and added quietly, ‘She and her friend never came back.’
He swerved to avoid a vehicle that had veered too far into his path in the oncoming traffic and cursed.
‘Want me to drive?’ Jacinta asked.
Cavalier shook his head. ‘I tried to talk her out of it.’
‘Your daughter? What was her name?’
‘Pon. Her mother, my ex, is Thai.’
‘May I ask how you met?’
‘I was on assignment in the Golden Triangle. She was a medical student earning money as a tour guide. She drove me from Chiang Mai where she was at university.’
They drove on. It was not yet eight o’clock and the road was quiet as they approached Mordialloc, about halfway to the shooting range. Cavalier played Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘Love for Sale’.
‘Odd, isn’t it?’ he said finally. ‘Mexico, where millions flock to frolic; Americans to Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta; Europeans to Cancúnu; rich Asians from everywhere now. Yet, under the surface . . .’
‘The drug business?’
He nodded.
‘I have some idea of the problems there too,’ Jacinta said. ‘The army seems to have made inroads.’
‘Oh, it has. That’s the most positive thing yet.’ Cavalier told Jacinta about how they had started by nabbing Colombia’s number one drug lord, Pablo Escobar, and that then the Mexican cops and military, with a lot of intelligence help from the Americans, had snared El Chapo. He had run Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, which fed the hungry American beast over the borders with every drug under the sun.
‘Mendez has taken over,’ Jacinta said.
‘Yes, but he fears El Chapo who recently escaped from prison. Our American cousins have hinted to me that Mendez sold out El Chapo so he could take over the cartel. In the end, he created his own organisation. Now El Chapo wants it back. It’s another reason for Mendez to set up in Thailand.’
‘We heard that rumour too.’
‘Mendez is younger; what, thirty-eight? He’s more worldly. His father and mother were powerful lieutenants under El Chapo. They made sure their six children were educated in the US. Mendez went to Harvard business school. But he got bored and left after a year. He’s built up the empire by laundering money and buying into legitimate businesses. Now, I hear, he’s shifting his base to avoid arrest in Mexico or the States. They still do massive business in the States, but Mendez is thinking globally.’
‘He learned something at Harvard then.’
‘Oh yes. He would have made good contacts—future business stars and international lawyers.’
‘He bought them.’
Cavalier glanced at her and said with feeling, ‘I believe he’s the most brutal and deadly of the lot, if such things can be measured.’
Cavalier parked in the firing range car park, which overlooked a remote beach. He led Jacinta to a plain, unprepossessing building that, from the road, looked like a warehouse shed. After Cavalier pressed a button and asked to see Ms Georgina Parker, they had to wait outside a thick iron door. Soon, an attractive gym-fit redhead in her twenties appeared and led them to the anteroom of an underground bunker manned by two armed guards.
‘I have to inspect your weapons,’ Parker said, gesturing at Jacinta’s long carrier bag, which she placed on a counter and unzipped. ‘Ah! A Tikka M55!’ she continued, handling the weapon. ‘Did you ask for it?’
‘I asked for a sniper’s rifle,’ Jacinta said, glancing at Cavalier.
‘They’ve given you a standard SAS jobby. Not the best, but still bloody good. The Fins make ’em solid—rubber, steel and wood.’ Parker ran her hands lovingly over the barrel, bolt and detached night scope. ‘What are you practising for, Ms . . .’ she glanced at a sheet, ‘Cin Lai?’
Jacinta frowned and looked at Cavalier, who gave a slight nod. ‘She just wants to keep her eye in,’ he said with a smile.
‘I’m under orders to ask. Could I see the handgun?’
Jacinta unzipped a smaller bag inside the long one.
‘Hmmm!’ Parker said approvingly, ‘the SIG-Sauer P226. Bit old-fashioned now, but I use it myself. The US army recently knocked it back when they were looking for a nine-millimetre sidearm. I reckon they made a mistake.’
‘How long do I have?’ Jacinta asked.
‘Stationary or moving target?’
‘Both.’
‘Ninety minutes for each. Maximum range for the Tikka?’
‘Two hundred metres.’
‘Okay. That’s the limit of our bunker’s range. Handgun maximum range?’
‘Thirty-five metres.’
‘May I observe?’ Cavalier asked.
‘You’re not authorised,’ Parker said, running her finger down a list, ‘Mr . . .?’
‘Cavalier. Vic Cavalier.’
‘Ah, yes,’ she said, referring to a computer screen.
‘Mr Gregory told us you’d be coming with Ms Cin Lai.’
‘I thought you were going to play golf,’ Jacinta said.
‘I start in half an hour. Only doing nine rounds. I’ll just see you start, okay?’
‘If you are staying, why don’t you have a practice?’
‘Me?’ he said. ‘No, I’m as blind as a welder’s dog.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘My eyesight is not good.’
She kept staring softly at him, in a way that was more concentrated than intimidating.
‘You don’t wear glasses,’ she observed.
‘That’s just vanity. I use magnifiers to read in bad light.’
‘That’s nearsightedness, not far—’ she began but was interrupted by Parker, who swivelled in and gave her earmuffs.
‘Don’t need them,’ she said, ‘I’ll use the silencer.’
‘Afraid you have to wear them,’ Parker said. ‘Others’ll be firing close by in another booth. Not good for the eardrums.’
Jacinta accepted the earmuffs and they were ushered downstairs to a long subterranean shooting area. The five booths, each running to two hundred metres and about seven metres in width, were dimly lit. A thin mist from gas-driven weapons and cordite created an eerie atmosphere. The odour of cordite from two of the booths was suffocating, causing the shooters in them to wear face masks. The intermittent crash and rat-tat-tat of semiautomatic weapons was ear-splitting in the confined space. Each booth had a technician assisting the shooter, in front of whom the shooter would have to unload their weapon before their scores would be checked. Cardboard targets in human form were slid out at fifty, one hundred, one hundred and fifty or two hundred metres from the rifle shooters, and could be made to slide towards them at any pace they wanted.
Cavalier sat in a glass-panelled gallery to watch. Jacinta wasted no time, loading up, affixing the sights, calibrating and then firing first at a target a hundred metres away. Cavalier stood up to leave. Parker showed him out.
‘Sir, I see you were booked in for practice yourself.’
‘I changed my mind. Ms Cin Lai has taken my booking.’
‘There’s been a cancellation. You can have an alley in half an hour.’
‘No, I’m playing golf instead. And I’m not “Sir”. Vic is the name. Ask her to ring me when she’s finished, please. Oh, and could you make a note of her scores? I want to know how good, or otherwise, she is, but don’t let her know I’m interested.’
After six holes, Cavalier broke club rules and phoned Parker.
‘She’ll be through in about twenty minutes,’ she said.
‘How’d she go?’
‘Very, very well. On moving targets at fifty metres, it’d be a kill nine from ten. At a hundred metres, a kill eight from ten.’
‘And stationary targets?’
‘A hundred per cent kill ratio.’
‘Hmmm! How’d you rate her overall?’
‘Very high. In fact, I checked the record. One, maybe two, other shooters have a better one.’
Cavalier remained silent.
‘You were one of them,’ Parker said.