Tony Pascoe’s breathing stabilised and the colour returned to his face. Emergency over, Swann told Tremain to bring him the phone. The businessman looked stunned, shook his head.
‘I’m not going to ask you again.’
Tremain reached under the desk and Swann’s gun-arm made ready. Tremain stood holding the phone, whose cord had been ripped from the wall, presumably by Gooch as he lay in wait outside.
‘Where’s the nearest phone?’
Tremain put the handset on the desk, planted his palms flat and took a deep breath. ‘The shopping centre. Five-minute drive, end of the street. Outside the deli.’
Swann wanted to bring in Cassidy, the only way he could maintain some control of the situation. Cassidy was no friend, but would play it straight. Swann had done nothing wrong. The death was an accident.
Swann didn’t know what Tony Pascoe’s involvement was in Tremain’s problems and he didn’t want to know.
A hand reached for his wrist. Pascoe’s grip was surprisingly strong. He pulled the gun toward his face and Swann didn’t stop him. ‘You may as well shoot me now.’
Swann twisted the gun away, stood above Pascoe, who gripped his ankle.
‘Get talking,’ Swann said. ‘The gunshots could’ve alerted someone. I might not need to make a call.’
Pascoe nodded. ‘And what are they goin to find? You with a pistol, and a dead copper.’
‘It is what it is.’
Tremain had picked up on something in Pascoe’s voice. He came around the desk, stood behind Pascoe, and looked Swann in the eye. ‘Listen to him, Mr Swann. Please. It was an accident.’
‘I was here too. That’s why we call it in.’
‘No.’
Tremain’s voice, finally, had gravel in it. ‘He was going to shoot you dead. He made me call you. He even dug a grave out there, in the courtyard.’
Swann stepped around Pascoe, looked out through the smudged windows in their blistered frames. Against the far wall of the courtyard was a long-neck shovel, beside a hole that looked deep. Big mound of grey sand piled at its head. Tremain was telling the truth. Swann’s fingers clenched on the pistol grip as the anger rose in him.
‘He deserved what he got,’ Tremain said to Swann’s back. ‘It was him and Page who’ve been standing over me. I told you about it. Page does what he does because Gooch protected him. Without Gooch …’
Tremain’s voice trailed off. Swann shook his head. ‘You think Gooch is the only one Page’s kicking up to?’
‘Yes, I do. They went to school together. Page told me that. Boasted about it. How he used to make Gooch fight for him, right back to primary school. Gooch won’t be missed. I followed him one night. I fantasised about killing him. He lives alone. No wife or kids.’
Swann watched the sun rise through the higher branches of the tuart outside the office wall. Three crows sat in the tree, watching him.
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Tremain. Gooch will be greatly missed. He’s a CIB bagman. You know what that means?’
‘So he’s disappeared, taken some money and run away?’
The growing desperation in Tremain’s voice didn’t betray the truth of his words. It was a plausible scenario.
‘Who knew that Gooch was here this morning? Who knew that he was standing over you?’
Swann assumed that the order to run a play on Tremain had come from higher up in the CIB, but he could be wrong. It could have been Page. It was possible that Gooch wasn’t kicking anything back.
‘Nobody knew. It was Page who put Gooch onto me. It’s Page who wants my lease, my gold.’
Swann listened for sirens, or a helicopter. The sound of TRG boots on the gravel outside. Nothing.
‘You know he’s right.’
It was Pascoe, standing now, one hand supporting him on the desk. The oxygen mask was off, a thin red spittle on his lips.
Tremain was right. Swann could call it in, bring Cassidy to the scene. He would be cleared of any involvement. But he wouldn’t be clear. Gooch’s colleagues in the CIB, the remnants of the old purple circle, they would believe what they wanted to believe.
Pascoe could be trusted. Tremain was the problem. If he ever talked, then it would be even worse for Swann. Concealing a murder. Disposing of a body. It would mean years in gaol.
Swann was exhausted. He pointed the pistol at Pascoe, indicated for him to move closer to Tremain. ‘Start talking,’ he said, but his eyes were on Tremain, who was staring back defiantly, eager to prove himself. For the first time in many months, perhaps, Tremain was seeing a way out.
Pascoe spoke in a clear, even voice. The story of breaking out of gaol to execute Jared Page was believable. Tony Pascoe was a dead man walking, and had no reason to lie. He had just saved Swann’s life, and it nearly cost him his own.
‘I remember you,’ said Swann. ‘You ran with my stepfather, Brian Hardy, back in the day.’
‘He was no friend of mine. We drank together. He was my inside man on the docks. We did some jobs, until I found out he was a dog. Why he was never sent down.’
Swann nodded. His stepfather had boasted that Tony Pascoe was his friend, but when Brian brought Pascoe home with him one night, both of them drunk, Pascoe hadn’t been impressed when Brian started ordering Swann’s mother around, demanding that she fix them dinner. Pascoe was a wanted man, named as a suspect in an armoured car robbery out on the Great Eastern Highway, another thing that Brian boasted about – how Pascoe was sheltered by the community that he’d grown up in. How he still drank in the local pubs, went to watch the Bulldogs play on Saturday afternoon, right outside the walls of the prison where he spent so much of his life.
But now Tony Pascoe was dying, warily watching Swann, free for the last time.
Tremain pointed to the desk and Swann nodded. Tremain opened the Gladstone bag, heavy with ingots. He said to Pascoe, ‘Take it. For what you just did. Pay off your man’s debt. Plenty more where that came from.’
Pascoe shrugged, looked at Swann, waiting for his decision. Swann looked down at Gooch’s corpse, his arms spread out like he was falling, needing to break his fall. Outside, the three crows in the tuart began to caw. Swann glanced a final time at the grave Gooch had dug for him, nodded to Tremain. ‘He needs to be buried. Then his car needs to be driven to the airport, parked there.’
‘I can do that,’ said Tremain. ‘I’ll do it right away.’
Swann stared hard at Tremain, saw that he meant what he said, some wire in his voice. He turned the safety on the Browning, stowed the pistol in his jacket.