Death by the Book

~21~

Peterson stood up. “What are you talking about?”

“He’s fucking onto us!” repeated Durst. He was wearing a thick black coat over a stiff-collared white shirt and designer jeans. And, courtesy of Jack, a black eye and a bruised cheek, too, both turning yellow. “He came around to my apartment asking questions.”

“About what?”

“You, for fuck’s sake! He wanted to know if I knew you.”

Detective Geoff Peterson looked at Jack, then back at Durst. “He’s fishing.” But his tone lacked confidence. “What did he say exactly?”

Durst walked into the room. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He lit up with a red disposable lighter and blew smoke with a long sigh.

“He said, So you know Detective Peterson? And I said no. Then he said, But you’ve met him before, and I said that I didn’t think I had. I couldn’t remember, maybe I had, you know. Then he nodded his head. Smug as all shit. The fucking cunt.”

Peterson stared at Durst and said: “He doesn’t know anything.”

“It’s fucking Celia,” said Durst, sitting down heavily on the couch. “She’s sniffed something and gone to Glendenning.”

“You wouldn’t be here if she had.”

“No, she has, I can sense it. She’s not talking to me … I can’t even touch her … She’s looking at me with those crazy fucking eyes of hers … I’m telling you, she knows.”

“Her old man’s just been murdered, for Christ’s sake! What do you think she’s going to do? Have a fucking party?”

Durst’s face brightened a touch. He looked at the detective for more reassurance but that was it for the day. His face went back to looking bleached. “So why does she keep asking me why I went to the apartment to meet her, instead of the shop? I keep telling her it’s because I fucked up the days, thought it was her day off, but she keeps asking …”

“It’s all in your head.”

“Bullshit.” Durst looked around nervously. “Anyway, she’s out in the car.”

“What? You fucking brought her here?” Peterson was not happy with the news flash.

“I don’t want her going anywhere near Glendenning. If she’s with me I know where the fuck she is.”

“Oh man, fuck me …”

“Don’t worry about it. She thinks I’m delivering a letter for a friend, to his grandmother.” He pulled an envelope from his back pocket. “There’s nothing in it.”

“Just like your fucking head.”

“Fuck off.”

“Amateurs. Always start cool and then lose it to paranoia.” Peterson put a finger to his forehead, leered at Durst like a school bully. “She’s got no idea about what’s going on, just stick to the fucking story. Kass was dead when you walked in and you struggled with Champion and the gun went off and that’s fucking it. Unless you talk in your sleep and told her that you hid in the bedroom and waited for Champion to do the deed and then shot him, she doesn’t know a goddamn thing.”

“Better safe than sorry.”

The detective shook his head, looked at the floor. “Glendenning’s just checked your record that’s all,” he said, his tone reaching for an ounce of conviction. “Saw my name as the arresting officer when you got done in the toilets last year with the coke and that slut.” The detective turned and looked through the curtains again. “Glendenning likes to be thorough.”

“How fucking thorough?” Durst flicked ash at the carpet.

“Don’t worry about it. I can handle Glendenning,” said Peterson. Nobody in the room believed him.

“Well, you’d better. And you’d better make sure no connections pop up with that scumbag idiot Rory Champion, either. If anybody finds out —”

“I told you to relax.”

“You fucking relax!”

Jack adjusted himself in the chair. “Not easy getting away with murder,” he said, as though to himself. “Even with a cop on your side.”

“What was that?” Ian Durst stood up and walked over to the chair. He slapped Jack across the face. “Every time you open your mouth, smart-arse, that’s what you get.” He slapped Jack again, snapping his head the other way. “That’s credit. Want to say something else?”

“Sit down, for fuck’s sake,” said Peterson.

Jack shook his head, rubbed his stinging jaw with his free hand. His brain ticked over, adrenaline-fuelled. He looked up at Durst and smiled. “So you’re the sucker with the gun.”

Ian Durst glared down at Jack.

“Glendenning went to see you because he didn’t believe a word.” Jack stared coldly into Durst’s eyes. Doubt flashed across them like a flock of startled pigeons. It was worth risking another punch. “You sure you told your story the same way each time? Remember the order of things?”

“He’s just fucking with you,” said Peterson.

Durst lifted his chin. “When are they picking him up?”

“Later. George and Red are coming. Remember them, Susko?”

Jack looked at Peterson.

Durst grinned, his confidence returning. “Yeah, that’s right.”

George Papatheophanous and Red Sneddon. Two hundred and twenty-odd kilos between them. Each had the muscle-to-brain ratio of a brontosaurus. Ziggy’s broom boys for cleaning up messes.

“They’ll be by in a little while.”

Jack had heard better news. But he smiled. Rubbed his jaw some more. Don’t worry about the boys. Think. Peterson and Durst had Glendenning on their minds.

“Hope you know what you’re doing,” he said, looking at them both and massaging his cheek. “George and Red hate complications. They’re easily confused. Can’t handle corners. Might be a good idea not to mention Detective Sergeant Glendenning going round to see Durst here. Remind me to keep my mouth shut.”

Peterson sat down on the couch, leaned his head back and hoisted a foot onto his knee. He stared at the ceiling and sighed. “Sorry, Jack,” he said, amused. “You’re out of my hands. But good luck with everything.”

Jack looked at Durst. “You do Kasprowicz as well as Kass? That wipe your slate clean with Ziggy?”

Durst’s eyes widened a fraction: the whites were bruised and bloodshot.

“Sucker with the gun,” said Jack. “Where’d you put him? One of Ziggy’s construction sites? That place at the bottom end of George Street? Or the one on Castlereagh? Or did you go all the way out to Parramatta, use one of the new apartment developments he’s got going out there?”

Peterson stopped staring at the ceiling, levelled a hard, dirty look at Jack. Durst glanced at the cigarette in his hand and dropped it to the carpet, extinguished it with his foot. Nobody said a word. The roof creaked.

“It’s a good plan,” said Jack, as though he meant it. “Kasprowicz kills his brother and does a runner. That’s what you said, wasn’t it, Detective? But instead of Hong Kong he’s in ten metres of concrete foundations, under twenty-five floors of first-home buyers being smart with their money. Gone for a hundred years.”

“You read too many books, Susko.” Peterson stood up, slipped his hands into his pockets and assumed his natural arrogance. “Made your brain soft.” He turned his back on Jack and walked over by the front window. Durst remained in front of the chair, arms stiff by his sides.

“What did Kasprowicz do to Ziggy?” said Jack. “Shaft him on a deal? Or just beat him on the richest one hundred list?”

“You can ask Mr Brandt yourself, soon,” said Peterson.

“That was a handy little family feud, the two famous brothers hating each other. Was Kasprowicz really burning those books and sending them? Wonderful touch if he wasn’t. Adds a nice bit of psychological complexity.”

Peterson smiled, flattered. “It was perfect. The sick bastard had been collecting the books for years. Who wouldn’t believe he’d put a match to them?”

“What about my shop?”

“Not quite pulled off.”

Jack spoke almost to himself. “Kasprowicz didn’t want to kill his brother.”

“Not in one go. Just wipe him off the face of the earth, slowly. Book by book. The prick.” Peterson screwed up his mouth in distaste, as though trying an oyster for the first time in his life.

“Just because Kass did his wife?”

“More than that, Jackie boy. More than that.” Whatever the more was, Peterson was not saying.

Jack sorted events in his head. “Who came up with the idea of setting me up?” He nodded at Durst. “Einstein over here? ’Cause it’s all a bit on the vague side, don’t you think? After what, twenty, thirty years, why would Kasprowicz suddenly decide to take his brother out by hiring me to do the job? The details seem a little rushed. Not thought out.” Jack rubbed the side of his jaw. “And I can get character witnesses, you know. I’ve been a model citizen lately.”

“It ain’t about details.” Peterson’s voice was level, businesslike and cool. He knew what he was talking about. “It’s about confusion. Leaving a mess. Nobody likes cleaning up a mess.”

“Except lawyers.”

The detective managed a grin.

Jack smiled up at Durst. “And you got all the dirty work. The most talented ex-gynaecologist in the universe with an IQ of three.”

The punch was not as hard as it could have been. Durst’s fist slipped across Jack’s cheek. He should have stepped into it: instead he had to reach and over-balanced slightly. Jack put his free arm across his face, expecting more. He watched Durst’s nostrils flare as they juiced the stale air in the room for oxygen. It was another one of those times in Jack’s life when he should have kept his mouth shut. But his mouth never listened.

“When you get done for all this,” said Jack, “You can tell your daughter you’re going to be the new butt boy in section D.”

Durst cocked his arm. Jack flinched, turned his head away. The punch did not come. He turned back to see Durst laughing, silently. Then he stopped laughing: his face snapped instantly into an angry, twisted mask. This time Durst stepped into the punch. Jack’s bottom lip swelled up like a rubber dinghy.

“Enough of that shit.” Peterson walked over and pulled Durst away by the arm. “You need to get out of here.”

“Just one more time.”

Jack swallowed a little blood. He ran his tongue over his teeth, checking for anything loose. They all appeared to be in place.

“Make you feel like a man, Durst?” he said. It hurt to talk.

“Take his handcuffs off.”

Peterson pushed Durst stiffly in the chest. “Settle down, you fucking idiot.”

Jack said: “You think a couple of tapes are going to keep Annabelle quiet after she finds out you killed her father?”

“What tapes?” Durst looked over at Peterson, frowning. He turned to Jack again and then back to Peterson. “What tapes?”

The detective stretched thin lips across his small, pointy, tightly packed teeth. “Annabelle isn’t going to say a fucking thing.”

Durst ran a hand through his hair. Then he walked up close, bent down and put his face an inch from Jack’s. “Oh, I get it. Poor little boyfriend! Did the sexy lady tell him she loved him?”

Jack stared at Durst. Noticed the blue of his eyes. The ironed-out wrinkles. Smelt the expensive aftershave. “Don’t you know about the tapes?” said Jack.

Durst grinned. “Sucker without a gun,” he whispered.

There was a noise in the kitchen, a rattling cutlery drawer. Peterson, Durst and Jack all looked up. Celia Mitten walked around the corner. Her hair was pinned back, her face grim and threatening even though her cheeks were flushed with morning cold. She wore a long, pale purple jumper over a long black skirt. The hem was wet in patches and smeared with mud. She was holding something behind her back.

“You killed my father!”

Durst looked alarmed. “I thought I told you to wait in the car.”

“You bastard!”

She ran at him. She was surprisingly quick. Her hand came out from behind her back. There was a steak knife in her fist.

Durst leaned backwards, put his hands up as Celia lunged at him screaming. The knife stuck in his shoulder, in the soft flesh just below the collarbone. He groaned and then fell back onto Jack, still handcuffed in the chair. The white painted cane broke beneath them and they collapsed to the floor.

Celia managed to keep hold of the knife. It came out of Durst’s shoulder, after she had twisted the steel in there for a bit. It had missed the padding of his thick black coat — blood was steadily staining the white shirt underneath. Celia writhed on top of him, trying to re-insert the serrated blade. Durst grabbed her throat.

“Get her off me! Get her off me!” His eyes were wide with shock.

“Bastard!” screamed Celia.

Jack rolled clear. The handcuff on his right wrist was still attached to the armrest; he dragged a large piece of smashed chair with him as he moved. His eyes were fixed on the doorway leading out of the living area. He commando-crawled towards it as fast as he could.

He was halfway across when the gun went off.