‘That’s not the kind of word Ben likes to use. A bit too … concrete.’
They were in the centre of field operations, which, in this instance, was a front room of a double-fronted federation weatherboard in a quiet suburban street. It was a large room, a dining room intended for entertaining, but it didn’t look as if it had done much of late. It had the faint, musty aura of a tired museum showcase. The sunniest room in the house they had been assured, repeatedly, by the older Mrs Aldaker, who occupied the premises with the younger Mrs Aldaker, widows whose husbands, father and son, had been taken from them in the same misadventure some ten years before. Her assurances were redundant on a day like today. It was mid-July in Melbourne. If the sun’s rays penetrated the soggy, matted shag that slumped over the city, they would still drown in the grey, persistent drizzle. What’s more, the neat bungalow across the road was pregnant with a hazard that might remove the roof at anytime. The two Mrs Aldakers had been relocated to a safe distance protesting that they would be far more valuable making sandwiches and tea for ‘our brave young men’. And they had baked only the day before – Lamingtons and date scones!
The team was assembled around a large dining table, its area expanded to maximum by extension leaves. It had been stripped of lace cloth and flower vases and knick-knacks, and was now covered with maps and plans and laptop computers and binoculars and various kinds of communication device. Senior Sergeant Donald Collison stared at the man across the table. He was standing a little apart from the rest of the group, weight on one leg, hands in his trouser pockets, relaxed, just a pleasant afternoon with the boys. He’d removed the damp, police-issue waterproof and the armoured vest. He was wearing a cardigan for Christ’s sake. There was something vaguely distasteful about someone like him wearing a cardigan.
‘Let me get this straight,’ Collison said. ‘He said if you bring him someone’s head on a platter he’ll down tools and come out?’
‘He wants a promise.’
‘He wants you to promise to murder someone and he’ll come out?’
The man in the obscurely offensive cardigan nodded. ‘He was a tad circumlocutory, but that’s the gist.’
‘Believe him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you said?’
‘I’d think it over.’
Collison hooted quizzically. ‘Well shit, that’s big of you …’ he began.
Gareth Nile from the Behavioural Analysis Unit, the official police negotiator, interrupted. ‘I think he did the right thing, Don.’
Collison blistered him with a warning glare. Affable over a pot or two – at the pub later with the team he’d buy the first and last rounds – the sergeant was brusque and abrasive when he was at the business end of these situations. His subordinates suffered any collateral humiliation without grudge because he was organised, efficient and experienced and, perhaps more importantly, he didn’t take cover behind his desk every time the shit and the fan might intersect. But today he wasn’t just brusque: he was bristly. It was the presence of the man in the cardigan – simply because he was an outsider, or was there a history?
Gareth brushed back the thick, long tuft of black hair that sprouted from atop his forehead and nowhere else on the smooth crest of his cranium. Useless as a comb-over, but his kids liked to plait it into a unicorn’s horn. And he liked them to plait it. ‘Bovell,’ he ploughed on, ‘would be suspicious if anyone agreed too readily to what – no matter his present mental state – he must be aware is an outrageous request. His reluctance to speak plainly is a …’
He was ambushed by the sergeant’s reaction.
Collison’s eyes narrowed as if to conceal some illicit knowledge. His smile was brittle and biting. ‘Jesus, Gareth,’ he breathed, words dripping with condescension. ‘Why do you think Bovell will talk only to bugalugs here? Him and no one else?’ He turned to the subject of the discussion. ‘As Gypsy Rose Lee’s mum said, promise him everythin’ and give him nothin’, and let’s get the silly prick out of there.’
‘It’s not that simple,’ said the other. His pose didn’t change but his head moved in a leisurely arc as his eyes glided calmly over every face at the table and back to Collison’s. Their gazes tangoed for a few beats then Collison scanned the table in a swift mirror movement.
‘C’mon in here,’ he snapped, spun on his heel and strode to a door directly behind him. The other man smiled in brief apology to the room and followed.
In the electric hush of their wake a whisper was clearly audible. ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ breathed a young uniform. An older uniform craned towards his ear, one hand cupped to his mouth.
Collison, in the act of opening it, spun on them from the door. ‘The Senior Constable doesn’t know who he is, Constable. And if he ever did, he’s forgotten.’ His eyes flashed around the room. ‘What’s more, this man,’ hooking his chin at the passing cardigan, ‘is not here today. In fact his very existence is a matter for conjecture. Am I clear?’ He stared balefully at the targets of his tirade until he heard a chastened, ‘Yes, boss.’ Then he stalked through the doorway and closed the door, firmly, behind him.
They were in a bedroom. It was much darker than the room they’d left, its only window shadowed by the verandah. The dry musk of pot pourri struggled in the gloom with the cloying sweetness of perfume. They almost masked the faint, metallic sourness of urine. The older Mrs Aldaker’s room – arguably.
‘A bit hissy these days, Don. Gargling soap or just watching it?’
All Collison could see was the dark shape of the other man silhouetted against the muted light from the window. ‘I find it ludicrous that you, of all people, have scruples about this,’ he said. ‘Can’t bear to tell a fib? Or hate to break a promise? Cross your bloody fingers if it’ll make you feel better.’ He jammed his fists on his hips and breathed deeply. ‘What’s so bloody complex?’
‘If I promise to kill this person I’ll have to do it.’ It came flatly, matter of fact, out of the shadow. Collison was momentarily at a loss for words.
‘Why the fuck …?’ he spluttered eventually.
‘You said it yourself, Don. Why will Ben talk only to me? One: he believes I will do what I say I’ll do. Two: he believes I’m capable of doing what he wants me to do.’
‘So? Poor, old, disillusioned Benny can cry himself to sleep in his cell at night.’
‘Exactly. If I promise Ben and don’t keep to it, the entire prison population will know …’
‘Who’s gonna take any notice of a no-hoper like Benny …’ Collison began before the absurdity of their dialogue’s tangent struck him. ‘You arrogant prick,’ he spat. ‘This is about your precious integrity. Jesus Christ! What the fuck have you become?’
‘You’re snug in the citadel, Don. I’m out here where the wild things are.’
‘Buy a bumboy and move to Bali.’
‘My word’s my Kevlar: that’s all I’ve got. Bad faith’s bad for business.’
‘Business?’ Collison’s voice kangarooed in pitch. ‘Business …? There’s a four-year-old girl over there that …’
‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘Did you hear anything that was said?’
Collison shook his head. ‘Wire was lousy, we lost every second word.’ Now he suspected that wasn’t an accident.
The shadow turned toward the window and moved the lacy curtains with a fingertip; the planes of his face were marbled by cold,