Dark Country (35 page)

‘Too many clothes, Gillespie.’

‘Yeah.’ He peeled it off, dropped it on the floor, then hooked his thumbs back under her shirt, lifting it breathtakingly
slowly, watching her face as he did. She raised her arms, pulled it over her head, and let it fall on top of his.

‘Black lace,’ he muttered, running a single finger down the edge of her bra. ‘Have you got any idea what black lace does to
a man, Blue?’

‘I can take it off,’ she offered.

‘No. I will. Eventually.’

‘So, we’re doing slow, are we?’

‘Slow. Fast. Both.’

Slow
, and what his fingers were doing with it around the lace edges might have her begging, real soon now, for
fast
.

She hitched her fingers into the top of his jeans, drew him closer. ‘There’s still the clothes issue.’

His mouth – that delicious, kissable mouth – curved wickedly, and her heart did a slow-motion somersault.

‘Nothing wrong with this garment,’ he murmured, bending his head to her, setting his mouth to the thin lace, lips and tongue
skimming, tasting and sucking through it.

Nothing slow-motion about her heart rate, now, either. Need filled her, fractured her breathing, and she fisted her hands
in his hair to hold him there.

He moved lazily from one breast to the other, as if with no need to hurry, but his fingers quested at her jeans, unbuttoning,
sliding inside, stroking and discovering and lighting wild fires in her belly.

The muscles of his back rippled under her hands, hard and strong and beautiful to touch, and she wanted to reach more, find
more of him. She kissed his forehead and he raised his head, eyes dark with desire.

‘I think,’ she said against his mouth, ‘that we’re getting to a fast bit now.’

‘Fast, hey?’

She punctuated it with teasing kisses. ‘Jeans. Boots. Off. Fast. Now.’

Fast worked. They both discarded jeans, boots and underwear and in moments, were together again, how she wanted it, skin to
skin, without barriers. Except she’d never
wanted
quite this much, more than just an attractive man,
this
man, complex and challenging, drawing her heart as well as her desire.

She edged him backwards to the bed, and he dropped on to it, drawing her down so that she straddled him. His hands on her
shoulders, foreheads together, they both watched as she rolled the condom on him, and she could feel his pulse kick up another
notch, matching her own.

But when she would have moved, he held her still. For a long moment, they breathed together, ragged and uneven, and although
her blood pounded and every skin cell registered exquisite sensation, in a strange way the pause centred her, grounded her,
so that this was real, every timeless second significant and precious.

Gil took her face in his hands, his thumbs stroking her temples with devastating delicacy.

And into the silence, he said with simple honesty, ‘You scare the hell out of me, Kris.’

Kris
. Not ‘Blue’ or ‘Sergeant’ or any other distancing nickname, and the beautiful, soul-deep gift of his trust, moved her with
its intimacy.

She ran her fingers lightly over his lips.
‘We
scare me, Gil. But I’m still not running.’

She brushed his mouth with hers, kissed him with tenderness and need and all she wanted to give, until the heat spiralled
almost beyond bearing and her body, twined with his, demanded completion. She lowered herself onto him, held the searing connection
of his gaze, and made love with him, body and soul.

Gil lay awake for a long time, Kris’s head on his shoulder, legs tangled together, his arm keeping her close as she slept.

They hit the peak commuter traffic heading from the Blue Mountains in to Sydney.

She hadn’t missed this, Kris thought. City traffic, millions of people threading their way through dense, built-up streets,
packed in to suburbs and office blocks and shopping malls, open space and trees few and far between. And although she’d grown
up in the city, she was no longer at home here.

Gil rode carefully but used the relative freedom of the bike to weave between the cars when he safely could, and with no accidents
or delays on the M4, they made reasonable time into Sydney. He took them through the inner south suburbs, zig-zagging through
back roads, with frequent glances in the mirrors – making sure no-one followed them. He had to collect the key before they
went to the bank, he’d explained earlier.

He cruised past some old terrace houses, unrenovated and long past their best years. Kris kept an eye out, checking that
everything appeared okay, and that no-one, as far as she could tell, was watching for them. Gil clearly knew the place and
the area, and he turned into a lane, then back along a narrow alleyway to pull in to the small backyard of one of the houses.

‘It’s a hostel, for homeless men,’ he explained to Kris as they got off the bike and removed their helmets. ‘A priest called
Simon Murchison has run it for years. A good bloke. The pub is a street over that-away.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

Two men sat out in the morning sunshine on the back steps, one of them breaking into a grin when he recognised Gil.

‘Hiya, Gil.’

‘Hiya, Phil,’ Gil said, with a rising, sing-song intonation and an answering grin, as though the rhyme was a regular greeting.

Phil’s grin grew broader still, with the eager, child-like friendliness of intellectual disability, and Kris noticed again
this gentle side of the usually taciturn Gil, not often seen.

The other guy hardly looked at them – drugs, or alcohol, or mental illness taking its toll, she figured, like so many of the
men who found their way to hostels like this.

‘Is Father Simon in?’ Gil asked Phil.

‘Yeah, Gil, he’s inside. He’s got plaster on his arm.’

Kris didn’t like the sound of that, and neither did Gil, from the worried look he threw her as he hurried in the door. He
knew his way through the house, and she followed him down a passageway and into an office – where the jeans-clad priest, his
left arm in a sling and bruising on his face, sorted one-handed through papers and files strewn all over the floor. A couple
of broken wooden chairs were piled in a corner and a damp, blackened patch on the carpet still gave off a smoky scent.

Probably well into his fifties, with dark hair speckled grey, the priest greeted Gil warmly and rose, obviously with some
pain, to his feet.

‘Excuse the mess. We had some visitors on Saturday night.’

‘Are you okay?’ Gil asked.

‘Yes.’ Despite the pain, his eyes lit with humour. ‘The intruders and I had a meaningful discussion involving some solid objects
and a certain amount of yelling and thumping until some of the residents heard and came to dissuade them from staying. My
arm and a chair had a close encounter, but they’re both broken cleanly.’

Gil indicated the files and papers on the floor. ‘They were looking for something?’

‘So it seems.’ Simon cast a questioning glance at Kris.

‘This is Kris,’ Gil introduced her, making no mention of her surname or occupation. ‘She knows what’s going on.’

The priest shook her hand firmly, with a friendly, curious smile that said he’d noticed the omission, too. But there was clearly
liking and respect between the two men, and trust enough that he let the omission pass.

He beckoned them to sit on an old leather sofa, and propped on the edge of his desk.

‘I left you a couple of voice mails yesterday. I presume you’ve heard about Vince Russo?’ he asked Gil.

‘Yes, I know. My phone’s been off the past day or so. Have you heard anything more about Vince, beyond the official line?’

‘Not much. Rumour has it he was shot from some
distance, twice in the chest. Police searched a nearby building, apparently.’

‘A planned assassination, rather than an argument, then,’ Gil observed.

Which made Kris wonder why Joe Petric hadn’t shared that piece of information – and to wonder why a priest knew more than
she did.

Simon tilted his head slightly. ‘If the rumour’s true.’

‘Had you seen him, lately?’

‘As it happens, yes. He called in a few times a year. The last time was only a couple of weeks ago.’

Simon knew Vince? Kris glanced between the two men, saw that this was no surprise to Gil.

Gil stayed focused on the priest. ‘And?’

‘We talked a while. He made a generous donation to the hostel. Then he asked me for a favour.’ Simon looked directly at Gil,
spoke candidly. ‘He gave me a document envelope, asked me to make sure you got it if anything happened to him. Suggested that
I might know somewhere secure to put it. But he stressed it might be safer for you if you didn’t know of its existence until
… necessary.’

‘So you put it in the safe deposit box.’ Gil’s voice was even, controlled.

‘Yes. It seemed the most sensible thing to do. He assured me that the documents couldn’t harm you.’

Kris made the connections. Simon had the key. Simon was the person Gil had been relying on to circulate the incriminating
information about Vince, if anything happened to him. Except Vince had either known that, or guessed it.

She couldn’t quite work out the relationship between Simon and Vince, but at some level at least, the priest trusted Vince
enough to accede to his wish without telling Gil.

‘You accepted his word?’ she asked him.

‘Given the nature of our conversations over the years, yes, I believed him. But I can see you find that puzzling. You know
something of Vince’s reputation, then?’

‘A little.’ Like murder. Like drugs and extortion. Like fathering a child and allowing her to grow up abused. Not things Kris
regarded as forgivable.

Simon shifted a little on the desk, took some of the weight of his broken arm with his good hand.

‘There’s a lot I can’t tell you about Vince. Some things he told me in confidence, some things I truly just don’t know. But
I do know that he was a complex man. He grew up in a world that you and I could probably never understand, with its own moral
structure and beliefs about strength and power. It’s not the kind of world that encouraged conscience or compassion, but Vince
gradually developed both. So he faced a choice: denounce what he knew, become an exile – more likely a corpse – or work from
within, using his strength and power to ameliorate the excesses and slowly change his world. He chose the latter.’

‘That doesn’t make him a frigging saint,’ Gil said, with a sharp bitterness.

A sad smile crossed Simon’s face. ‘No argument on that from me. But nor was he quite as black as his reputation. He cultivated
that, to appear strong and invincible. It worked – at least for a time.’

‘Until Sergio Russo arrived,’ Kris observed, putting more puzzle pieces together.

‘He didn’t mention names, but I hear talk out there, and there’s been an increase in activity. And while it seems that there’s
more drugs on the street, it’s also more tightly controlled – more professional and hardline. There’s a lot more fear now
than there was this time last year. Vince had concerns about the future – including his own.’

‘Do you know what’s in the envelope?’ Gil asked.

‘No. But I can guess. He felt it time to put some matters right. And he had a great deal of respect for you, and faith in
you.’

Simon went to an old metal filing cabinet in the corner, pulled out the top drawer, and reached in with his right arm, groping
on the inside of the cabinet top at the back.

After withdrawing his arm, he tossed something to Gil, who caught it with one hand.

‘I put a small magnet on it. No-one ever thinks to look up,’ he said, with a cheeky schoolboy grin.

He saw them out, and they found Phil admiring the bike. While Gil spoke with him for a few minutes, Kris hung back.

‘How did you two meet?’ she asked Simon, quietly.

‘I found him on the streets, when he was out of prison with nowhere to go. I knew Digger at the pub around the corner needed
help, so I introduced them. Gil made a good job of the pub, Kris. Turned it from a total dive into a great venue and a good
business, with a responsible alcohol policy and no gaming machines.’

‘So I gather.’ She’d heard similar from Deb and Liam, and the fact that he’d sold the hotel for so much, without it having
a gaming machine licence, testified to the soundness of the business.

‘You’ve not known him long?’ Simon asked, with that same restrained curiosity he’d shown earlier.

She considered a vague answer, then dismissed the idea. ‘A very long, intense few days,’ she said honestly. ‘I’m a police
officer, from his old home town.’

‘Ah. I did wonder.’ He took a business card from his shirt pocket and passed it to her. ‘If you need me for anything, please
don’t hesitate to call. Kris …’ He paused, watched Gil for a moment, both respect and affection showing on his face. ‘Gil’s
had to be hard and tough to survive. But there is a great deal of compassion and gentleness in him, too, and I hope some day
he finds a way to express it.’

Compassion and gentleness – yes, he had those qualities, and she’d seen glimpses of them. How to get through his armour remained
a challenge, though, and would be at least until the current threats were overcome.