10

Tasso’s office was on the thirtieth floor of the city’s only thirty-floor building. The entrance was grand enough. It had a large glass door that opened automatically, and on it were the words ‘Goanna Mining’ and a logo involving a big lizard astride a bent grid that was probably meant to represent the curving earth and to show the way that mining can get its claws into anything, anywhere. The foyer was spacious, too, made more so by a general lack of furniture, except at the far end, where there was a reception desk, a reception chair and a receptionist. I made the trek across blue-grey carpet. Fern, the receptionist, watched me with the same interest with which she probably watched the carpet when I wasn’t there.

‘I must be early,’ I said, after the usual greetings. ‘A few weeks early, by the look of it.’

‘It does look a bit bare, doesn’t it?’

‘No furniture, no lights.’

‘No action.’

‘No staff?’

‘Just you, me and Tasso.’

‘I like the logo. I guess we’re planning to take over the world. You, me and Tasso.’

‘Something like that.’ Her hair was tied back in an efficient bun.

‘Where’s Tasso?’

She shrugged. ‘You tell me.’ It was barely eight, so it wasn’t so strange that he wasn’t in yet. But it was a little strange she was put out because she didn’t know where he was. ‘I’m sure he’ll be in soon,’ she said. ‘He has several meetings scheduled. No doubt he’ll call you when he needs you. In the meantime I can show you your office.’ She patted a laptop computer. ‘This is yours.’

Goanna Mining seemed to occupy the entire floor. It was a wasteland of empty offices. There was a meeting room with no furniture and a large kitchen with no food, although it did have an industrial-sized espresso machine. An office had been designated for me with a large window looking out towards the spreadeagled southern suburbs. A chair and a landline phone sat on the floor.

‘Your desk is arriving today,’ said Fern. ‘And your laptop is already logged into the network.’

‘We have a network?’

‘Sure. You, me and Tasso.’

She returned to her station and I looked at the view for a while. I had done my share of paperwork in my time, and putting together a proposal for an exploration licence was not so hard. I phoned the Department of Mines and requested an application form. The friendly woman on the other end of the line said that everything I needed was on the website and good luck. So I spent an hour on the website, downloading forms and miscellaneous other materials. I created a file on the laptop, in which I wrote questions I needed to ask Tasso. I wandered into the meeting room and found a large map on the wall showing exploration licence areas and applications in South Australia; virtually the entire state was a mosaic of hundreds or thousands of irregular-shaped licence areas. The map showed the Woomera Prohibited Area, Aboriginal lands, national parks and a number of other types of reserve, and licence areas seemed to straddle them all, goanna-like. I wasted an hour peering at the map and wondering where Hiskey had made his find. Fern poked her head in and told me Tasso had arrived and wanted to see me.

His was a corner office with large windows facing north and west; the western window had a vertical blind that could be closed to ward off the worst of the afternoon sun. In front of it was a large black desk and a leather swivel chair. A three-piece leather lounge suite formed a squared-off U, in the middle of which was a glass-topped coffee table. Tasso was seated on the one-seater, looking relaxed with his legs wide apart. A man was sitting on another of the lounges, dressed in jeans and a light-blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms.

‘Steve, do you know Phil Goldsworthy?’ said Tasso.

Goldsworthy stood up. He was a big man; he had a barrel chest you could have gone over Niagara Falls in. His forehead went all the way to the top of his head at an angle of about forty-five degrees. It looked as hard as a rock face, and straw-coloured hair ran up on either side of it towards the summit, like summer grass on Willunga Hill.

‘No,’ I said, offering him my hand. ‘I reckon I saw you at Hiskey’s funeral yesterday, though.’

‘I knew Mick well,’ said Goldsworthy. ‘We worked on a couple of projects together, back in the day.’

Goldsworthy had big, meaty hands and a firm handshake that went on for too long. As he held me close he studied the details of my face as if he would have to repeat them one day in court.

‘Phil is the CEO at Solid Gold Security,’ said Tasso. ‘He’s going to provide security for our operation. We just agreed on terms.’

Goldsworthy nodded, still memorising my face.

‘I’ve known Phil for years,’ said Tasso. ‘His mob does good work. I’ve been telling him that the biggest threat to us at the moment is industrial espionage. We can’t afford leaks.’

‘So we will sweep the offices for bugs and cameras, and we will do it twice a day,’ said Goldsworthy, finally releasing my hand. ‘We will monitor phones, including the mobile phones of all employees.’

‘All three of us,’ I said.

‘We will scan all phones twice a day. We will have security staff here twenty-four hours a day to guard against intruders. We will set up a card access system for these offices.’

‘We will fight them on the beaches.’

‘Anywhere they go,’ said Goldsworthy, with no change of expression on his rocky outcrop.

‘He can also help us gather information,’ said Tasso.

‘Sweet,’ I said.

‘Only to the extent it is legal,’ said Goldsworthy.

‘Of course.’

‘We don’t do illegal.’

‘Of course not.’

Goldsworthy still hadn’t smiled. I glanced at Tasso, who winked at me.

Fern came in and announced that the police were here.

‘What are their names?’ said Tasso.

Fern looked at a card in her hand. ‘Detective Superintendent Tarrant and …’ she looked at a second card, ‘Senior Constable McGarry.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Tarrant told me to let you know he’d be round.’

‘Show them in,’ said Tasso. ‘You might as well stay for this, for your sins,’ he said to me. ‘No need for you to stay,’ he said to Goldsworthy, who showed impressive exit speed for such a big man.

Tarrant wandered his way in, followed by a youngish woman in a police uniform. Tasso introduced himself and turned to introduce me.

‘Mr West and I are acquainted,’ said Tarrant.

‘We go back a long way,’ I said.

Tasso asked Fern to take coffee orders.

‘We’re here about Michael Hiskey’s murder,’ said Tarrant.

‘Of course,’ said Tasso. ‘But I spent several hours on Thursday talking to your colleagues at the station. I don’t think there’s anything new I can tell you.’

‘I know, and I’ve read the transcript of your interview,’ said Tarrant. ‘It’s because you’ve already done a formal interview that I didn’t ask you to come in. But I’ve just been assigned to the case and I want to hear it again, directly from you. Apologies for making you relive the ordeal.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Tasso. ‘I want you to find the fuckwit who killed him.’

‘We will do our best, Mr Tasso.’

‘Just call me Tasso. Everyone else does.’

‘But it’s your surname, right?’

‘Yes, it’s bloody impolite, but that’s the way people are.’ He laughed, looking at McGarry. She smiled, just a little, out of politeness.

‘So let’s talk about last Wednesday morning,’ said Tarrant. ‘You said Mr Hiskey was due to meet you in your office. That was here, right?’

‘Yes, we’d just moved in a couple of days before.’

‘What was the meeting about?’

‘He was down on his luck. He wanted work.’

‘Did you give him any?’

‘Yes, I was about to put something his way. It had taken me a while to organise it. He wasn’t reliable. I liked Hiskey, but he was flawed.’

‘In what way?’

‘He was a heroin addict. I assume you know that.’

Tarrant didn’t give any sign that he knew anything. ‘So on that morning, what time had you arranged to meet with Mr Hiskey?’

‘We were going to meet at nine.’

‘And when he hadn’t shown by ten, you decided to go personally to his depot at Buckland Park?’

‘Yes. I tried calling him on the landline at his office and also on his mobile. Both rang out. Well, actually his mobile just went to voice mail. I assumed the battery was flat.’

‘Was it unusual that he didn’t answer? You said yourself he was unreliable. What made you so worried?’

Tasso shrugged. ‘I was about to give him a project. He was desperate for it. If ever he was going to show up for something, this was it.’

‘I thought he had his own company.’

‘He did. He was a part-owner of Black Hill Exploration. But it was a lean time for them.’

‘Why is that?’

Tasso shrugged again. ‘That company is not well managed.’

‘You say he was a part-owner. Who are the other owners?’

‘Frank Hardcastle was his business partner.’

‘You know him?’

‘I’ve met him.’

‘Like him?’

‘No.’

‘Did Hiskey?’

‘Let’s just say they hadn’t been speaking much lately.’

Tarrant paused as Fern came in, carrying a tray loaded with four coffees, glasses and a jug of water.

‘Why not?’ said Tarrant after Fern had left, closing the door behind her. ‘What was the issue between Hiskey and Hardcastle?’

Tasso leaned forward. ‘Hardcastle was fucking his wife.’ He started dumping sugar into his coffee.

‘Hiskey’s wife?’

‘Yes. Would it be news if he was fucking his own wife? Then again, I’m not married.’ He smiled and looked at McGarry. I was pretty sure he winked at her.

‘So you were worried you hadn’t heard from Hiskey because he was desperate for work. There must be more to it than that. People miss meetings all the time, even important ones.’

‘I was concerned about him.’ Tasso leaned back, cup and saucer in his hands. ‘He was not in great shape, he was depressed, his health was poor. He was an addict, for Christ’s sake. I was worried he wasn’t going to pull through.’

‘Did you think he might have been suicidal?’

‘I don’t know about that, but he wasn’t a happy man and he wasn’t particularly healthy. So considering the importance of this work to him, I was concerned. He was a mate. I wasn’t just going to sit around here and wait.’

Tarrant raised his cup to his lips but didn’t bother trying to hide his scepticism behind it. He took a sip. ‘Alright, so you decided to go to his depot. Had you been there before?’

‘Yes, once or twice.’

‘Once? Or twice?’

‘Twice, not including that morning.’

‘For what purposes?’

‘Once I picked him up there because we’d arranged to have a drink. That was a couple of months ago, when I was still living in Perth. I’d come over for a couple of days. We were just catching up.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘We went to the St Kilda Beach Hotel. Down there by the mangroves.’

‘And the second time?’

‘The second time was to take a look at his set-up. That was three or four weeks ago, I guess, when I was thinking about giving him work.’

‘Last Wednesday, what time did you arrive at the depot?’

‘About eleven.’

‘You drove yourself?’

‘No, my driver drove.’

‘His name?’

‘Albert Parker. Bert, we call him.’

‘I’d like to speak with him in due course.’

‘Be my guest. Fern can give you his details.’

‘Describe what happened when you arrived.’

‘Bert drove us into the compound. The gate was open. I knew from previous experience that Hiskey locked the gate at night. Hiskey’s truck was there, so I assumed he was there, too. Which I thought was weird because I had kept trying his landline on the way out there and got no response.’

‘Did you notice anything else out of the ordinary?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, so you arrived at the depot with Mr Parker. What did you do then?’

‘I went to the office.’

‘What did Parker do?’

‘He came with me.’

‘What did you see when you approached the office?’

‘I saw the office. Nothing out of the ordinary. It’s an old ATCO transportable. You know, one of those white ones with the yellow trim at the top, the natural habitat of the mining industry. It’s got a door and a window and an air-conditioning unit out the back, if you’re lucky. No frills. The door was shut.’

‘What did you do? Describe everything in as much detail as possible.’

‘Everything?’

‘Yes. I apologise again.’

‘It’s alright.’ Tasso took a deep breath. ‘So, okay, the door was locked. I knocked on it and called out. There was no answer. I knocked again, and still no answer. I went to the window and peered in. It had a steel mesh over it, so I couldn’t see inside all that well. The place was messed up. It always was, but it seemed worse than I’d seen it before. And then I saw Hiskey.’ He had been looking directly at Tarrant and occasionally at McGarry, but now he looked away, towards the western window. ‘He was sitting on a chair. He didn’t look good. His head was leaning to one side.’ Tasso looked back at Tarrant. ‘He looked bloody, but I was hoping it was just because I couldn’t see clearly. Bert got the tyre lever from the car and we used it to prise open the door.’ He absently mimed a prising action. ‘It was blood, and it was obviously Hiskey’s.’ Tasso looked at me, his eyes raw. ‘Jesus, Steve, there was a lot of blood. There were spatters on the walls behind him, but mainly it was on him or on the floor. It was almost black. A hard black puddle of blood on the floor. Hiskey was tied to a chair with duct tape. His arms were taped to the armrests of the chair and the fingers on both his hands had been smashed to a pulp. With a hammer or something, I suppose. There was duct tape around his chest, holding him upright in the chair. He was barefooted and his ankles were taped to the legs of the chair. Several of his toes had been smashed. Worst of all, though, was his head. The side of it had been smashed in. I felt for a pulse in his neck but I couldn’t see how he could be alive, not with the side of his head smashed in.’ Tasso looked away again and shook his head. ‘I reckon he’d been hit in the face a few times. Someone had been angry with him. It was terrible, terrible. I’d give anything not to have seen him like that.’

Tasso poured himself a glass of water and offered the jug around. He poured me a glass. The jug must have been heavy because he had to use two hands to keep it steady.

‘What did you do then?’ said Tarrant.

Tasso sipped his water. ‘I called triple zero, and waited in the car until your mob arrived.’

‘With Parker.’

‘Yes, we both waited in the car.’

Tarrant let moments go by. ‘When was the last time you saw Hiskey alive, or spoke to him?’

‘I spoke to him the afternoon before. By phone. He was on the road, returning from a trip up north. I think he was this side of Port Wakefield. We arranged the meeting.’

‘How did he sound?’

‘He sounded alright. But, as I said before, he was not a well man. It was always hard to tell how much of what he said was just bravado. About anything.’

‘Where had he been up north?’

‘Somewhere past Port Augusta.’

‘Anywhere near Parakilla, by any chance?’

Nothing about Tasso’s expression changed, but I sensed his surprise at the question.

‘Possibly,’ he said.

‘Because that’s where you were early last week, wasn’t it?’ said Tarrant.

‘Yes, I took a quick trip to Parakilla,’ said Tasso. ‘I flew up. I have an interest in the area.’

‘And you met Hiskey there?’

Tasso took another sip of his water. ‘Yes, I met him there. As I say, I have an interest in the area. I thought he would be able to help me with it.’

‘How long were you up there?’

‘Three days.’

‘I see.’

‘Parakilla’s an old goldmining town, isn’t it?’ This was the first time McGarry had spoken.

‘That’s right. It’s not much of a town, I’m afraid.’

‘What is your interest there, Mr Tasso?’ said Tarrant.

Tasso smiled for the first time, it seemed, in a long while. He leaned back in his chair. ‘Look, I appreciate that it’s your job to know everything, but you’re starting to go beyond what I would consider pertinent questioning. My interest in the area is commercial, and confidential. I can assure you it has nothing to do with Hiskey’s death.’

‘Okay, let’s leave it,’ said Tarrant, ‘for now. What did you know about Hiskey’s heroin addiction?’

‘Only that he has—had—one, and that he’d had it for a long time. In the last few years he didn’t really try to hide it.’

‘Do you know where he got his supply?’

‘No. He wasn’t quite as open about that.’

‘Any suspicions?’

‘Yeah. A guy called Harlin. He and Hiskey were pretty chummy, and Hiskey told me he was a dealer.’

‘Think Harlin could have killed Hiskey?’

‘I have no idea. It’s possible. Drugs and murder go together, don’t they?’

‘Do you know how Hiskey paid for his drugs?’

‘No, but I expect most of his friends stopped giving him money long ago.’

Tarrant changed tack again. ‘Are you living in Adelaide now, Mr Tasso?’

‘Yes. Moved here about a month ago.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m an old Adelaide boy. I’m fond of the place. I want to invest in it. I’m planning to stay.’

Tarrant looked at his watch. Then he looked at McGarry and raised his eyebrows at her. She gave a short shake of her head. ‘Thank you for your time,’ Tarrant said to Tasso, starting to rise. McGarry closed her notebook and stowed her pen.

‘Hang on,’ said Tasso. ‘I want to know about the autopsy. What was he killed with? It was a hammer, right?’

‘I’m sure you’ll appreciate that we can’t divulge information like that during an ongoing murder investigation.’

‘Do you have any suspects?’

‘Only everyone, at this stage. I’m sorry, Mr Tasso, I really can’t tell you anything about the investigation at the moment.’ He paused. ‘If it’s any consolation, he had a considerable quantity of heroin in his system when he died. It’s possible he wasn’t feeling much pain. Please keep that information confidential.’

‘Sure.’

‘We’ll be in touch,’ said Tarrant. He nodded to me and left with McGarry.

I looked out the window. People were walking on the street below, faceless and nameless and perhaps aimless. We had a fine view of the railway station and Parliament House, the Festival Centre, Adelaide Oval with its new grandstands, the half-built hospital the state couldn’t afford, Saint Peter’s Cathedral, Montefiore Hill. The pleasant inner-north suburbs, beyond which the wealth and beauty ran out of steam and the northern badlands—as they were known unofficially, at least to those in the south, east and west—began. A thin black column of smoke was rising in the distance.

‘I assume your visit to Parakilla was in regard to that matter we were talking about the other day,’ I said. Tasso was still in the one-seater, doing some thinking.

‘Yes.’

‘How can you be sure it has nothing to do with Hiskey’s murder? It seems a strong possibility to me.’

‘Of course it’s possible. Except that nobody knows about it.’

‘As far as you know. Hiskey might have let it slip. The guy was a heroin addict. Maybe he traded the information for a fix.’

‘Maybe.’ Tasso was still thinking his own thoughts. ‘Maybe.’ He tapped the arms of his seat and refocused. ‘But I’m sure about one thing, Steve. We don’t tell Tarrant about it. Or anyone.’

‘What about Goldsworthy?’

‘No, not even Goldsworthy. All he needs to know is that we are preparing a proposal for an exploration licence. His brief is to protect us against espionage. He doesn’t need to know about Hiskey’s find. Which let’s call the honeyhole.’

‘The honeyhole? That’s our code word?’

‘Can you think of something better?’

‘Nah, honeyhole is fine. But there’s something else you need to think about, Tasso.’

‘What’s that?’

‘If Hiskey was killed because of the honeyhole, you better start watching out for hammers yourself.’

Tasso rubbed his face. It was something he did from time to time. Maybe it helped him dispel bad thoughts.

‘We have to consider it,’ I said.

‘You’re right.’

Fern came to the door again. ‘There’s someone else to see you, Tasso,’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘Hardcastle. And Sonia Hiskey.’