The Big Ask (28 page)

But Inspector Voigt would not respond well, I imagined, to the suggestion that an amateur sleuth had discovered more in three hours than his crack team of Spider Webbs had brought to light in a month of flatfooted fossicking. Persuading the coppers would be a substantial job. It would take a substantial man.

I put Red's gunkoscope away, then went into my bedroom and began looking among my papers for One-Stop O'Shannessy's number. The phone rang. It was Ayisha Celik.

‘News from the battlefront,' she lilted. ‘With Lyndal out of contention, you are now the thinking woman's candidate of choice. Not that there's much choice. So if you want to reconsider your deal with Angelo, I reckon I can swing a fair few of Lyndal's votes your way.'

‘Angelo's a done deal,' I said. ‘The money's in the bank.'

Ayisha was undeterred. In an attempt to swing me across, she launched into an exhaustive analysis of the current factional fluctuations, with particular reference to the role of the rank and file.

‘It's Thursday,' I reminded her when I finally got a word in. ‘Two days before the vote. Even if I reneged on him, Angelo would still have it in the bag. But thanks for the offer.'

As soon as I hung up, the phone rang again. It was Agnelli's secretary, Trish, calling to confirm our regular Friday meeting at the Gardenview Mews. I didn't see much point, considering that Angelo's only genuine competition was now out of the race. Still, it was typical of Angelo to want his full pound of flesh. Only when the poll was declared on Monday would I be truly free of him. ‘Tell him I'll be there,' I said wearily. ‘Same time as usual.'

I hung up and dialled One-Stop's number. It was busy so I headed down the hall to my kitchen table crim-lab, wondering if I had a zip-lock bag large enough to hold the mobile. It occurred to me that Red would be home from school any minute.

Too late. He already was. And the moment I saw him, a chill ran up my spine.

Red was crouched over the kitchen table, his baseball cap reversed, spraying Farrell's phone with window cleaner and rubbing it furiously with a tissue. I rushed forward and snatched it from his grasp.

‘I've cleaned off all the crap,' he said brightly. ‘But the battery needs recharging. If you want my opinion, you haven't got a hope in hell of making this thing work.'

I thrust the phone into the beam of the reading light and stared at it. Farrell's Motorola was spotless. Not an iota remained of Darren's protoplasm.

‘Why are you wearing rubber gloves, Dad?' asked Mister Helpful.

‘So I can strangle you,' I cried, lunging for his throat.

Red scooted away, warily eyeing the flecks of white foam that had appeared on his father's lips. ‘It's not my fault,' he pleaded. ‘Whatever it is.'

I counted to ten. He was right. If a lad comes home from school and finds an item of gadgetry semi-disassembled on the kitchen table, the impulse to tinker is bound to be irresistible. ‘Sorry,' I grovelled. ‘I'm a bit pre-menstrual.'

Red got out from behind the couch. ‘It's the testosterone, Dad. You've really got to find an outlet for your male needs.'

I fed him a line about the phone being on loan from a friend, how I'd accidentally dropped it down a drain. Then I stashed it in my laundry basket, slunk down to Brunswick Street and sulked in a coffee shop, smoking cigarette after filthy cigarette. My thoughts tangled in the smoke. For a fleeting moment I'd held in my hand the Achilles heel capable of unlocking the tangled ball of wax that had led to Donny's murder. The missing link that would unravel the house of cards and blow the lid off the hidden hand of Bob Stuhl. But the possibilities that fate had dangled before me had been cruelly snatched away by the fruit of my own loins. Chagrin gnawed at my vitals.

Jesus, was I pissed off.

Nevertheless, the serendipitous discovery of Farrell's phone had raised hopes that could no longer be suppressed. The worm had turned and it was rearing up on its hind legs. If I couldn't use the fucking thing in the way I had intended, perhaps it might yet serve a useful purpose. But what?

I remembered One-Stop O'Shannessy's advice after my little chinwag with the cops at Citywest. No witness, no evidence, no admission, no case, he'd said.

The witness was dead, the evidence was disinfected, so all that remained was the possibility of an admission. Farrell had candidly admitted to killing Darren in our phone conversation on the night that I learned of Donny's death. Perhaps he could be induced to repeat the performance.

But Frankie-boy hadn't been trading idle banter that night. His candour served a purpose. It cowed me into silence. If I wanted him to discuss the subject again, I'd need to provide some pretext. Some bait.

The phone was cactus as evidence, but Farrell didn't know that. Until the fix firmed on Donny, he must have been shitting himself that it would turn up. Well, now it had. Better late than never. I decided to call him. We'd bat the breeze about dear departed Darren. And I'd keep some record of the occasion for posterity. For the police. And for the moment when I told him I'd found his phone.

Now I was thinking fast. Farrell would wonder about my motive in drawing his attention to my discovery. What if I offered to trade the phone for something? Something a dickless pen-pusher like me would really be hot for, that would convince him I'd come to terms with what he'd done. Something suggesting a form of petty revenge to stroke my pomposity. Something plausible.

By the time I ran out of cigarettes, all this had begun to formulate itself into the inkling of a scheme. I paid the black-garbed waiter for my coffees and walked home to mend my fences with Red. The rain had cleared, the pavements were drying and the only clouds that remained in the sky were smeared in glorious technicolor across the western horizon. Shot with the beams of the lowering sun, they glowed yellow, purple and orange like crumbs from some gargantuan marble-cake. The boy will be wanting his dinner soon, I thought.

I found him with a mouthful of clarinet, his weapon of choice in the junior school band. While I made tuna casserole and encouraging remarks, he practised the first three bars of the Pink Panther theme. Over and over again. ‘Enough with the dead ants,' I screamed after half an hour. ‘Or I'll go back into strangulation mode.'

‘Shut up,' he retorted. ‘Or you'll damage my self-esteem.'

My bedroom ceiling copped a lot of staring that night. But when sleep finally came my scheme had firmed to a plan.

After Red left for school the next morning, I called the Haulers' office to check that Farrell was in town. No show without Punch. He was at the Mobil refinery, I was told, on a picket line of striking tanker drivers. He'd probably be there all day. But if the matter was pressing he could be contacted on his mobile.

‘I think I've got his number,' I said.

At ten o'clock, I strolled up the slope to the Carlton shops. It was a good day for it, fine and clear with a forecast top of eighteen degrees. Young mothers in skin-tight jeans and tattoos emerged from the Housing Commission flats to smoke cigarettes and push their offspring around in strollers. Blossoms were turning to mush on the gutters. Spring had truly sprung. There was no turning back.

My first stop was the office-supplies store in Elgin Street where I'd picked up the magnifying glass. This time, I bought a palm-sized microcassette recorder, batteries and a box of tapes. I only needed one tape, but they didn't sell them singly. I consoled myself with the thought that even if things didn't work out as I planned, the purchase was tax deductable for a man in the consultancy racket.

I stuffed the surplus tapes into my pocket, put the batteries in the recorder and walked back down to Rathdowne Street. As I went, I dictated to myself, getting the hang of the gizmo. Just after eleven, I arrived at the Gardenview Mews. The desk clerk, a thick-set young man with work-out shoulders and the cocky deference of a recent hospitality studies graduate, recognised me from my previous two check-ins.

‘We have your reservation, Mr Whelan,' he said. ‘But you're a little earlier than usual. I'm afraid you'll have to wait for a room to be made up.'

This meant that the place was fully occupied. Which was just the way I wanted it. I asked for the room I'd first had, if possible. The one at the end of the ground-floor walkway, right next to the ice machine. ‘Sentimental reasons,' I explained.

The clerk consulted his keyboard. ‘No worries, sir,' he confirmed. ‘Room 23. It'll be yours in a jiffy.'

During the jiffy I went into the parking quadrangle, soaked up some rays and admired the way the wisteria drooped from the cast-iron lacework around the balconies. Guests arrived and departed. Cars came and went. A tiredlooking housemaid dragged her trolley along the walkway, unlocked Room 23 and set to work. At a rough count, her arrival was visible from the doors of at least thirty other rooms. Excellent.

I was thinking about the set-up for the swap-meet. No clever-clever stuff this time, I'd decided. No Ferris wheels. No guns. Just a well planned, cautious exchange. That's what Farrell would expect and that's what I'd give him. And while we were swapping, we'd chat.

Taking the tape recorder from my pocket, I pushed the record button and laid the device on top of the ice machine. It didn't stand out a mile. It didn't stand out at all. ‘One, two, three,' I said, stepping out the paces to the open door of Room 23. ‘The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things.'

The housemaid looked up from her bed-making. ‘Can I help you, sir?'

‘Just thinking out loud,' I said. ‘Thank you very much.'

I pocketed the tape recorder and walked up the steps to the balcony rooms. At the first landing, I replayed the tape. It wasn't going to win an Emmy, but every word came back at me crisp and clear. When I got back downstairs, the housemaid had trundled away. I collected my key, walked home through the gardens, made myself a cheese and pickle sandwich and rehearsed what I'd say to Farrell.

I imagined the picket at the gate of the Mobil refinery. Twenty or thirty shuffling tanker drivers. Hand-lettered signs flapping on the mesh fence. Shoulders hunched into windbreakers. A fire burning in a forty-four-gallon drum. A radio turned up loud. Thermos flasks and cut lunches. Boredom the main enemy. Frank Farrell prowling the perimeter, on stand-by in case of rough stuff. Or maybe sitting in a folding chair, awaiting developments, his phone in his lap.

Just after 2.30, I crossed my fingers and made the call.

‘The mobile telephone you are calling is switched off,' announced a Telecom robot. ‘Please try again later.'

Shit. I was ready to rock'n'roll. Farrell was being inconsiderate, fucking with my schedule. I mopped the kitchen floor, watched it dry, then tried again. Same message. I vacuumed the living room, then went into the backyard and smoked a cigarette. Somehow I was back up to twenty a day. Not in the house, of course. I tried Farrell's number again and got a busy signal. Progress. I started working the redial function.

Twenty minutes later I got the ringing tone. Then Farrell barked his name.

‘It's Murray Whelan,' I said. ‘How are things at the barricades?'

‘All quiet on the western front,' he said. ‘What is it this time, Whelan?'

‘The same matter as we last discussed, Frank. Seems you mislaid your mobile phone that morning. After you decked Darren with it, I mean. Anyway, I thought you'd like to know that I've managed to lay my hands on it.'

‘You're breaking up,' he said. The signal was crystal clear. ‘Give me your number, I'll call you back on a land line.'

I recited my number and hung up. So far, so good. Since he was taking precautions against eavesdropping, I'd definitely found his frequency. I went into the backyard and stared up at the wild blue yonder. That was where I was headed, flying solo. Flapping my arms and hoping I didn't fall. Flap, flap. Ring, ring.

I went back inside and picked up, hoping nobody else had chosen this exact moment to call. Farrell's breathing was laboured and traffic roared in the background. Now I could see him in a payphone beside an arterial road, rigs whizzing past, phone pressed to his ear.

‘What are you crapping on about, Whelan?' he said. ‘I didn't mislay any mobile phone.'

‘Suit yourself,' I said. ‘My mistake. Sorry to disturb you.'

I hung up and started counting. I got to nine. This time, Farrell's voice had a steely edge. ‘This phone you reckon you've got,' he said. ‘Where'd you get it?'

‘I saw you throw it away,' I said. ‘Lucky for you it took me so long to put the pieces together. You took a big risk tossing it away like that. Darren's blood in its tiny crevices. A quick wipe with a hankie just doesn't do the job in the face of modern forensics, Frank. You must've been feeling pretty confident, I guess.'

A long silence came down the line. It did not sound like a denial. I swung into the pitch. ‘Naturally my first impulse was to go to the police,' I said. ‘Good citizenship and all that. My credibility might be shaky on the hearsay front but physical evidence cuts a lot of ice. Particularly if it happens to be the murder weapon. But dealing with the cops can be very timeconsuming. And as you know, they're not always as fast off the mark as they should be. On top of which, once the wallopers get in on the act, who knows what other sleeping dog might get woken up, eh? So I've decided to offer you first option.'

Farrell didn't say anything. I gave him all the time he needed not to say it. ‘Go on,' he grunted, eventually.

‘I've taken on board what you told me last time we spoke,' I said. ‘What's done is done. Let the dead bury the dead. I've come around to your point of view, Frank. I don't like what you did, but I don't think that should stop us doing business.'

‘What sort of business?'

‘A trade,' I said. ‘It so happens that I'm in urgent need of a job at the moment. And you're just the man to help me get one.'