Cross Kill

Thirty-eight

Those early days, when she’d first started seeing Bax, had been great. They’d watch each other’s striving bodies in the ceiling and wall mirrors of her bedroom, their skin gleaming in the curtained afternoon light while Leo was out somewhere. Once she’d even tried a champagne bath; Bax liked to watch oysters slide down her throat; sometimes she splashed brandy around his groin. She’d laugh deep in her throat at times like that and Bax would grow hot-eyed, claiming it turned him on. There’d been no guilt or regret, only appetite. Bax would go home and she would shower and dress, feeling pleasantly battered, glad to be by herself for a few hours, disappointed if Leo came home.

But then it began to lose its spark. She watched the old man die, watched Victor come on the scene and work a hold over Leo, saw that she might lose everything. Also, where Bax had once seemed appealingly dangerous-something to do with his job, his corruption by the family, his wolfish looks-in the end he was just weak. She liked him enough when he was in a sharp frame of mind, working out the angles, but somehow, after the old man’s death and Victor’s appearance on the scene, Bax seemed to become less capable of following through with anything.

He’d seen easily enough how the raid by the man called Wyatt could be used to their advantage, but then at the last minute he had lost his nerve. He said Wyatt was too dangerous-Wyatt would want to shoot it out and everyone could get hurt. He said that if he shot or arrested Wyatt, there was no guarantee that Victor would be impressed. If anything, Bax said, Victor would argue that a raid on the compound showed up the family’s vulnerability and he’d be in a position to talk Leo around to his way of thinking, leaving Stella and Bax out in the cold. And there was still Coulthart breathing down Bax’s neck.

That’s how Bax saw it. As Stella saw it, the entire Mesic operation was up for grabs and just two things stood in her way-Victor Mesic on the inside, cops eager to break up the Mesics on the outside. The raid by Wyatt and Jardine could still be used. The firm could withstand the loss of two hundred thousand dollars. If Wyatt and Jardine were as good as Bax said they were, they’d never be found, never come forward, never say what state the household was really in when they left it.

The gun was a.22 target pistol. Bax had confiscated it when he’d worked with the Drug Squad, thinking he’d need it as a throwdown one day, something to cover himself with if he ever happened to shoot an unarmed man.

Wyatt and Jardine had come in, stripped the place, left again, and it had gone as Napper said it would go. Stella was alone with Leo and Victor for about two minutes, Victor spitting chips, Leo silent, then through the glass of the front door she had seen headlights. It was Bax. He came in through the front door, leaving his police car in the drive. He had a cover story ready to explain his presence in the house. He’d been following up a stolen car lead, had seen that something was wrong, had let himself into the house to investigate.

Bax had come in and Victor had said instantly, sharply, ‘Look who’s here.’ Stella knew from his voice that he was beginning to put it all together.

Bax crouched with keys and released her wrists. She stood, rubbing them. The strain showed in Bax’s face. She thought he might lose his nerve again, or change plans on her, so she’d put her hand on his wrist. Her grip was warm and strong, and for Bax everything in the world was reduced to a manageable size. She saw him begin to relax. ‘The gun,’ she said quietly.

His lean, handsome face wrestled with the notion of what she was about to do. He didn’t say anything, just reached inside the coat of his costly suit and drew out the pistol. He wore gloves. He gave her a large thick handkerchief to wrap around the gun. She jacked a round into the firing chamber. He’d already explained how the gun worked.

Leo hadn’t wanted to believe it was happening. He jerked the cuffs against the radiator and tried to stand. ‘Come on, Bax, Stel, undo the cuffs, will ya.’

‘Save your breath,’ Victor said.

‘You need me, Stel,’ Leo said.

‘Moron,’ Victor said, ‘can’t you see?’

Bax had turned away for the next stage. She shot each brother twice in the head and centrally in the chest, then dropped the gun on the floor and gave Bax his handkerchief back. ‘It’s done,’ she said, touching his arm. Then she’d sat on the floor and Bax, avoiding the bodies, the tremors passing through them, had cuffed her to the radiator again.

‘Bax,’ she said quietly, holding his eyes, ‘it’s working, all right? All you have to do now is call it in and have your story ready.’

A divisional van had arrived first, followed by an ambulance, a second ambulance, several police cars. A policeman removed her cuffs, poured her a brandy. She was numb and grieving and robotic. Crime scene officers photographed the bodies, the safe, the open drawers. They dusted for prints. The ambulance officers got restless, said in future call the pathologist before you call us. The pathologist when he got there was irritable, methodical, a white coat over his dinner jacket. Homicide detectives took her to the kitchen, a policewoman made a pot of coffee, they said, ‘A few questions, if you don’t mind.’ They questioned her, questioned her again. Armed robbery detectives questioned her. Homicide again, the same questions worded differently. Finally she said, ‘This is intolerable. I’ve told you all I know,’ and put her head in her hands. She didn’t see Bax again.

It was ten o’clock before they let her go. They wanted to know where she’d be staying, a number where she could be contacted. She gave them the South Yarra apartment, let a woman detective take her there. It was curious: she was scum in their eyes, the family was scum and the world a better place now, but once or twice the police seemed to remind themselves that her husband and her brother-in-law had been executed before her eyes and that she must have looked death in the face, for they showed her little kindnesses, which she gravely accepted.

She fitted the role to herself like a cloak and it stayed with her even when the detective was gone and she was alone in the apartment. She felt sombre, reflective and tragic. She poured Scotch over ice in a glass, put Marianne Faithfull on the stereo and pictured all the lonely women driving through Paris in sports cars.

Bax dissipated all that soon enough. He showed up just before midnight, standing white and agitated outside her door. She took him into the main room and pushed him down onto the sofa. He was like a clockspring ready to break and there it was again, questions, questions.

‘I told you not to come here,’ she said. ‘It’s too risky.’

‘No one followed me, Stel.’ He leaned his face toward her imploringly. ‘I had to find out what they said to you, what they wanted to know.’

‘What do you think? They wanted to know did I get a look at the two men? Could I describe them? Did I have any idea who they were? Did I think robbery was the motive here, or was it murder made to look like a robbery gone wrong? What enemies did the family have?’ She laughed. ‘I told them yeah, sure, only the entire police force. They wanted to know how much was in the safe. Did the two men say anything? Etcetera, etcetera.’ She stopped. ‘What about you? Did they swallow your story?’

‘A stolen car inquiry. They bought it.’

‘They weren’t curious as to your timing on the scene?’

Bax rubbed his face with his hands. ‘They were, but I told them the evenings were the only time I’d find the Mesics at home, I gave them Coulthart’s name, told them I’d been working your case for a couple of years.’ He stopped dry-washing his face and said, ‘God, I can’t believe it, you were so cool.’

Stella looked at him, wishing he would go away.

‘The investigation will drag on for a while,’ he said. ‘It will be a few weeks before they stop sniffing around. Meanwhile we’ve scared off the opposition and we can quietly put the firm back together again.’

The apartment lighting was turned low. Beyond the thick curtains the night was black. Bax, sitting stiffly at the far end of the sofa, edged imperceptibly along it. Stella backed away until her spine was against the arm rest. She tucked her legs under her and clamped a cushion to her chest, body language aimed at telling him to keep his distance. There was a vast gulf between them and it wasn’t only the empty space on the sofa. ‘I don’t know, Bax,’ she said finally.

He pricked up at that. ‘What do you mean?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I just feel different, things have changed. I feel I could pack it all in, sell up and go overseas or something.’

He looked away and there was a catch in his voice. ‘Where does that leave me?’

‘The Mesics are finished now. That should get your boss off your back.’

‘I don’t mean that. I mean me and you,’ Bax said.

Somehow she didn’t have the energy for this. There was silence and she let it lengthen, waiting for him to find the answer in it.

‘I’d better go,’ he said at last.

She nodded.

He got up, seemed to wrestle with the idea of kissing her, and said, ‘I could call in tomorrow afternoon.’

‘I might not be here.’

‘I’ll give you a ring,’ he said.

She nodded.

At the door he said, ‘I’ll let myself out.’

When he was gone she realised that she should have asked him to return her key. She unplugged the telephone, got ready for bed. She didn’t want hassles with him, she didn’t want to see his pained face or see him maudlin or violent or however it would affect him, so when she heard his key in the lock a short time later, real anger flared in her. She marched out to confront him.

But the man standing in the main room was one of the men who’d robbed her, and the look he directed at her was full of hard and unnerving intelligence. Bax and two strangers were with him. He pushed them toward her. ‘Your new partners, Stella,’ he said. ‘Meet Mr Towns and Mr Drew.’