Cross Kill

Thirty-one

The Mesic woman had suggested to Napper that she hand him the ten thousand bucks in the family compound in Templestowe, but Napper had told her, ‘No way.’ He’d been there once, and once was enough. What if the Feds or the CIB had the Mesics under surveillance? They’d have his picture by now, plus the registration of his ute. Just in case, he’d constructed a story to cover himself, half based on fact, about following a lead in his own time concerning a kid he’d arrested for spraypainting used cars in a yard owned by the Mesics back in Richmond. He’d be pushing his luck trying to justify a second visit to the Mesics in his own time. Not even a constable fresh out of the academy would believe that.

So, he’d suggested his place, maybe get in a bit of mattress time with Stella Mesic, but she’d laughed in his face. ‘Me in a cop’s house? No way.’

So they settled on somewhere neutral, the car park next to the boathouse on the river in Fairfield. The Infectious Diseases Hospital was close by. Napper pictured invisible organisms floating in the air, hooking themselves to his lungs, showing up as ulcers and cancers on his dick five years, ten years down the track. He parked the ute and waited, windows wound up, watching the flowing waters, the avaricious mutating ducks, the hospital just breathing distance away.

5.15 Wednesday afternoon and Stella Mesic was late. Maybe she’d been caught in traffic. Cyclists and joggers skirted the edge of the car park. There were other vehicles there, cars, a couple of vans, but everyone seemed to be interested in his ute for some reason, he saw their grins in the rear view mirror as they approached from behind. Sure the ute was old and rough, and the exhaust pipe showed through a hole in the floor, but it wasn’t so bad that you’d want to laugh about it. He shrugged, found some drive-time music on the radio, watched a yuppie towel off sweat and get into his Porsche and drive off. He snorted. Last night Tina had told him the one about the difference between a Porsche and a cactus, how with a Porsche the pricks are on the inside.

5.20. A big XJ6 slid into the car park, Stella Mesic at the wheel. Napper watched for a while. She was alone. No one followed her in. He got out, crunched across the gravel, opened the passenger door and enveloped himself in soft leather.

She didn’t smile, say hello, or look aggrieved, just gave him a formal nod. Napper could smell perfume, something discreet and expensive. Then the Mesic woman twisted her body in the seat until she was facing him. He heard the slide of silk along her thighs.

She said lightly, ‘Well, Sergeant Napper, Fairfield boathouse car park, 5 pm Wednesday, sorry I’m a bit late.’

‘No worries.’

He waited, but she failed to speak again, so he said, feeling awkward about it, ‘Did you bring the money?’

‘I want to be clear about this. You told my husband and me that armed men intend to hit the Mesics soon. You said if we paid you ten thousand dollars, you’d give us the full details, is that correct?’

She was going to play games with him, and Napper didn’t like it. ‘That’s what I said. Are you trying to wriggle out of it now? Fine. Suit yourself. I’m not the one who has to wait around to be attacked, wondering when, wondering who, wondering the best way to stop it happening. If you want that kind of grief, that’s your business.’

She seemed to think about it, frowning now, looking uncertain. She began to touch herself, something Napper had seen her do before. He pressed on, sensing his advantage. ‘If, on the other hand, you want to protect yourself against these hoods, and if you want someone on the force who can do you some good now and then, well, I’d say that was worth ten thousand bucks, wouldn’t you? Another way of looking at it, if I was in your position I wouldn’t like knowing I had a cop as an enemy, causing all sorts of grief for me all the time, kind of thing, just because I’d reneged on a deal.’

Stella Mesic looked rueful and nodded, taking his point. ‘I just wanted to be clear, that’s all. I’m scared, I admit it. The thought of armed men coming into the house scares me. You scare me.’

She swallowed, her eyes wide with what he might do to her, and it stirred in Napper’s groin. His hand crept out, found her knee, the minute gridweave of her stocking. ‘I won’t hurt you so long as you don’t cross me,’ he said. His chunky fingers tightened, her face went white. ‘Cross me, I’ll ruin your day.’

She was breathless. ‘I understand.’

Napper released his grip, gave her leg a quick slide and pat a short distance under her skirt. ‘See? Simple. Now, did you bring the money?’

‘I did.’

She was wearing a waist-length black suede jacket, padded as if she’d strapped a fence post across her shoulders. She reached inside it, brought out an envelope, tossed it in his lap.

The money was in hundreds, so it wasn’t long before he looked up at her and said, ‘There’s only two and a half thousand here. That won’t buy you shit. You’re short seven and a half thousand grand.’

She was hard and sharp, her thick hair tossing. ‘How do I know this isn’t some scam you’re pulling? After all, you haven’t told us anything new. We know the firm is vulnerable at the moment. We know different people have been thinking of hitting us.’

Napper blinked. ‘You do?’

‘So that’s why at this stage you only get two and a half thousand. That’s all your information is worth. Give us a name, a date, the time and method, and you’ll get your seven and a half.’

Napper had more or less expected this anyway, so he said, ‘Fair enough.’

‘Names first.’

‘Wyatt and Jardine, no first names. The one to worry about is Wyatt, but they’re both pros, both hard, never been arrested.’

‘Are they violent?’

‘Depends on how brave you’re feeling. What they’ll do is tie everyone up, rob the place, and disappear. If you give them a hard time, they’ll bang you around a bit. If you pull a gun on them, they’ll kill you.’

‘When do they intend to do it?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow? Doesn’t give us much time. When tomorrow?’

‘They’re not likely to go in during daylight hours. It’ll be some time in the evening.’

‘How do you know all this, Napper? Have you worked with them before, set jobs up for them?’

Napper was affronted. ‘You get that sort of thing happening up in Sydney, not here. No, I got a contact.’

‘Can I speak to this contact?’

‘No way. A good cop protects his sources, you know that.’

‘One thing puzzles me,’ Stella said, getting comfortable in the driver’s seat, giving him a flash of inside upper leg. ‘You say they’re going to rob us, yet I keep hearing whispers about rival firms who want to take us over, steal our records. So, are you sure that robbery is all they’ve got in mind?’

‘All I know is what I’ve told you,’ Napper said. ‘These boys are not mob, they work alone, they don’t want to be businessmen. Now, how about the other seven and a half?’

He saw Stella Mesic reach forward and do something with the array of switches on the dash. What happened then told Napper that he could wave goodbye to the seven and a half. The rear doors of a nearby van opened and the woman’s husband stepped out, a video camera in his fist, a Nikon fitted with a telephoto lens around his neck. He looked big and fit and sure of himself.

Stella said, ‘Napper? Look at me.’

Napper looked. She was waving a microrecorder at him. ‘You’re on tape, Sergeant. Sure, you can make things hard for us, but think of the grief we can cause you. Derryn Hinch, Truth, not to mention the cops whose job it is to investigate other cops. I know who’s going to come off worse. The thing is, you’ve got nothing to offer us. You’re strictly small time.’

‘Fucking slag,’ Napper said.

Stella Mesic turned the ignition key. ‘Well, I won’t keep you. The two and a half thousand is yours, by the way. Fair’s fair.’

Fair’s fair. Napper got out of the Jaguar. He got into his ute and started it. Fair’s fair. He inched into the peak-hour traffic on Heidelberg Road and the words kept repeating themselves. Fair’s fair. He felt dazed. Everything had turned around on him and he hadn’t been ready for it.

The traffic was worse on Hoddle Street, bumper to bumper. Napper rode the clutch. He was low on fuel. Trouble was, the gauge was broken and he was in an inside lane. Heat shimmers disturbed the oily atmosphere outside, and hot air, smoky from the exhaust pipe, reached him from the hole in the floor. The cars in his lane were stalled for some reason. The other lanes moved, but his didn’t. There was a wog car next to him, all thick duco, chrome and full-volume stereo. Napper longed to turn the wheel hard, knock the little shit into a bus.

The thing was, people seemed to be looking at him. The wog car crept past, then a Silver Top cab, a furniture van, two or three of your average family rustbuckets, a couple of flat-faced Asians in a brand-new Volvo, all those faces peering at him in the ute, a suggestion of a snigger on their faces.

He wound down his window, leaned out and waved his fist at an elderly woman in the back seat of a taxi. ‘What are you staring at, you old slag?’

The woman shrank away from her door. She looked straight ahead. Soon the taxi was gone and he had a Renault-load of dykes next to him. Cropped hair. Singlet tops. Underarm hair. This bunch was actually laughing and pointing. Napper waited for the Renault to pass, but it didn’t. He craned his head-an ambulance was backing into the traffic ahead. All lanes were stalled now.

He half-opened his door and leaned out. ‘Help you molls with anything?’

The women in the Renault wound up their windows, locked their doors, but even though they were huddling together, leaning into one another, Napper knew he hadn’t won a victory over them.

So he opened his door and got out. He kicked the side of the Renault and tried to tell the women all the things that were crowding his head. But the words refused to come out clearly. There was only flooding hate and rage. He felt he could tear through the metal and glass. People around him were locking their doors, saying, ‘Don’t look… ignore him,’ to one another.

‘Eh?’ Napper shouted. ‘Help you molls with anything?’

Then the Renault jerked forward half a metre and Napper stepped away from it. The ambulance was gone and the traffic was moving again.

Napper turned to get back into the ute. What was eating these people? The ute looked all right. No flat tyres. Then he went around to the back of it and the rage hit him again.

The poster was the size of an opened-out newspaper and his bitch of an ex-wife had pasted it across the tailgate. You could read it a mile off: ‘WANTED: FOR FAILURE TO PAY CHILD SUPPORT’ screaming above a blowup shot of his head and shoulders. There was a bit more at the bottom, a catalogue of his crimes probably, he didn’t wait to find out. The lousy cow. He tried jerking at a corner of the poster. She’d used a powerful glue. Behind him, drivers were leaning on their horns and some of them were even laughing.