Something Fishy (17 page)

I sank back down, immersing myself in the pool of darkness on the floor of the dinghy. My shirt and shorts were soaked with bilgewater and sweat, and a plague of mosquitoes was gorging on my skin. I didn't dare swat them but I managed to get the life-jacket under my head, ease the crick in my neck. Ears cocked for Syce, I could hear nothing but the drone of the predatory mozzies and the back-and-forth of Jake Martyn and Tony Melina as they talked about their deal.

As far as I could make out, a company owned by Tony, incorporated in the Cook Islands, was buying a half share in Gusto. This was somehow concealed as a loan to a company registered in Panama, a Chesworth Investments. The entire exercise was doubtless a means of concealing the transaction from the scrutiny of corporate regulators and the tax man. Was the Senate estimates committee aware of this, I wondered?

‘Sign here, here and here,' said Martyn. ‘X marks the spot. This authorises the transfer of funds from your account with the Farmers Bank of Thailand to Phil Ferrier's account with the National Bank of Cartagena.'

I cupped a hand around one ear, fingers splayed, fending off an insistent anopheles, straining to hear what they were saying. Who was this Phil Ferrier that Martyn kept mentioning? A faint bell rang in the west wing of my mind. It rang, but nobody came.

‘Take no notice of the repayment schedule,' Martyn was explaining. ‘As per our understanding, the debt is purely nominal. On receipt of your $750,000, Phil's company transfers its ownership of a fifty per cent share of the restaurant to you. As you see, he's already signed the relevant documents. Trust, Tony. Like I said, this is all about trust.'

‘Yeah, yeah,' said Tony. ‘No need to labour the point. Just show me where to make my mark.'

‘Here and here.'

‘And that's it?'

‘Signed, sealed and delivered. Here are your copies. And here's your passport, your credit cards and the other ID that Phil needed to set up the relevant accounts. Congratulations, mate. You now own a half share in Gusto and the land on which it stands. And you're getting a bargain, if you don't mind me saying so. And all that dough you made selling my abalone is now nicely laundered.'

‘Yeah,' said Tony drily. ‘It's a real steal.'

‘Don't be like that,' said Martyn. ‘You'll be well looked after, I promise you. Now, if you don't mind, perhaps I can get back to our restaurant, schmooze our guests. I'd invite you to join me, toast our partnership, but you're not really dressed for the occasion, are you?'

I heard the snap of a briefcase closing, then the zip of the door flap on the screen tent.

‘You there, Mick?' called Martyn. ‘A quick word before I go.'

‘Here.'

The response startled me with its proximity. It came from right beside the dinghy. Without my noticing, Syce had stepped into the gap between the boat and the shed. The slightest move and he would have heard me.

Martyn's footsteps approached and two men conferred in hurried whispers.

‘You still up for this?' said Martyn.

‘Leave it to me.'

‘The places for him to sign are marked in pencil. Make sure he signs them all.'

‘I'm not fucken stupid, you know,' hissed Syce. ‘You sure his wife still hasn't reported him missing?'

‘She's telling anyone who'll listen that he's fucked off overseas. It's perfect.'

‘What about the plane ticket and the fifty grand?'

‘I'll be back with them mid-afternoon. I can pick up the signed documents, shave back your hairline, trim your beard into a dapper little goatee, dab on a bit of grey.'

‘You sure this'll work?'

‘I guarantee it. You'll be a dead spit for his passport photo. Seven tomorrow night you'll be on a plane to Bali, just another tourist, fifty grand in your pocket. They won't look twice at you, I promise. And Tony Melina will have left the country.'

‘Okay, leave it to me. See you back here tomorrow arvo.'

‘Just one more thing. Make sure you don't get any blood on the documents, okay?'

Blood? What the hell did that mean?

The rest was clear enough. Aided by Jake Martyn, Rodney Syce was planning to leave the country the next day, using Tony Melina's passport.

It was a risky proposition, but not without a fair chance of success. Tony was ten years older but the two men shared certain general characteristics. Both had egg-shaped heads, for a start. Thick necks. Facial hair. Beyond that, the differences could be fudged with judicious tinkering. Australian passports do not specify the height or eye colour of the bearer. And a Bali-bound tourist was unlikely to get the fine-tooth-comb treatment from the overworked guy behind the outbound desk at the airport, not at the height of the holiday-season crush.

Spotting Syce was a lucky break. Spotting him in the process of leaving the country was even luckier. But my luck wouldn't be worth a pinch of shit unless I could raise the alarm. I shrank down into the hull of the dinghy, silently urging them to hurry up and go.

‘Mick'll see you out of here,' Martyn was saying, his voice receding towards his vehicle. ‘Pleasure doing business, Tony.'

The vehicle started up, backed away, beeping as it reversed. I risked a quick look and glimpsed a dark 4x4, a Range Rover or Landcruiser, tail-lights flaring as it angled down the slope to the creek bed. One down, two to go.

Syce was standing at the screen tent, watching Tony Melina pulling clothes from a plastic garbage bag, replacing them with documents scooped from the table. ‘Let's get out of here,' said Tony. ‘Sooner the better.'

Amen to that, I thought. Tony tugged a tee-shirt over his head and emerged from the tent, garbage bag in hand, clambering into a pair of pants.

‘One more thing.' Syce brandished a document. A4, longwise fold. ‘Jake needs a couple more signatures.'

‘On what?' said Tony, irritably. ‘Jesus, what a fucken shambles.' He snatched the papers from Syce's hand and turned them to the light. ‘Why didn't he say so while he was here?'

The dog got up, yawned and trotted to Syce's side. Syce bent and scratched its ears, his eyes never leaving Tony Melina.

Tony moved closer to the light, lips moving as he read, brow furrowing as he flipped the pages. ‘This authorises the transfer of my half of the business to some offshore company I've never heard of.'

‘So?' said Syce.

‘So it was never part of the deal,' he said. ‘I've just forked over three quarters of a mill for a half share in Martyn's restaurant with fuck-all prospect of a return on my investment. Sign this, I'm out of the picture entirely.' He ran a cupped hand over his glistening scalp, then tugged at this goatee. His eyes darted nervously towards Syce. ‘Must be some sort of mistake,' he said. ‘Tell you what. Get me to a phone, I'll give him a call, clear it up.'

Syce took a step forward. ‘He was pretty clear just then,' he said. ‘Told me to make sure you signed before we left.

Very specific, he was.' He took another step.

The tip of Tony's tongue flitted across his lips. Then he bolted for the trees. He hadn't gone three steps before Syce slammed into him, knocked him to the ground and snatched the papers from his hand.

The dog started yapping again, but Syce was too busy to notice. He had Tony in a head-lock, hauling him across the clearing. Tony flailed, bare heels scuffling as he tried to writhe free. With a sickening thud, Syce rammed his bare head into the trunk of a tree, the one Tony had been pissing against.

Tony slumped, stunned, the wind knocked out of him. You could almost see the little birdies twittering around his cranium. Syce propped him against the tree, legs splayed, and stuffed a rag into his mouth. Scooping up the chain, he passed it under Tony's arms and ran it around the tree. In a matter of seconds, Tony was trussed like a turkey.

‘Go,' screamed every sentient atom in my body. ‘Run, now, while Syce is looking the other way. Fuck caution, just run.'

Hands pressed against the sloping sides of the boat, I bore down, knees bending as I came into a coiled crouch.

Knees not bending. Legs not responding.

I'd been lying there for so long, body contorted, hugging the bottom of the dinghy, that my ambulatory extremities had gone to sleep. Dozed off, like the Minister for the Arts at the opening night of
Götterdämmerung
. I pounded my thighs with a balled fist, felt pins and needles. I sent jiggle messages to my toes and instructed my knees to bend, frantic to get going, desperate not to reveal my presence prematurely.

At the far edge of the pool of light, muffled protests were leaking through the gag in Tony's mouth. He writhed and thrashed, eyes rolling in his head. Syce kicked him in the ribs. He made a noise like a chihuahua being dropped down a lift-shaft, then went quiet.

Sensation was returning to my legs. I eased myself into a low crouch, levered myself up and down on the balls of my feet. Up, down. Up, down. Toe aerobics.

Syce planted a booted foot on Tony's knees and dropped the lid from a cooler into his thighs. He twisted his captive's right arm free of the encircling chain and shoved a pen into his hand. ‘Do what you're told, stupid cunt.'

Tony tossed the pen away, flung it right across the clearing. It bounced off the side of the aluminium dinghy. Ping. As Syce turned to find it, I dropped back onto the stinking floor of the miserable, shitty little boat.

Light bobbed as Syce picked up the Primus and came towards the dinghy. Tony spluttered and coughed, spitting out his gag. ‘I'll double it,' he gasped. ‘Whatever he's paying you, I'll double it.'

He should have screamed at the top of his lungs, not wasted his breath trying to negotiate. Syce didn't bother to reply.

Tony started babbling, pleading, saying he wasn't going to sign anything. The light went back towards him and he made a gurgling noise as the gag was shoved back into his mouth.

‘You'll sign, nice and proper,' said Syce. ‘Even if it takes all night.'

I peeked over the gunwale, preparing again to make my escape. What I saw was a tableau from Hieronymus Bosch. A hallucination straight from hell.

The lantern sat on the ground beside the tree, hissing, pounded by kamikaze moths. Syce had one foot planted on Tony's chained legs, the other braced against the ground.

There was a blade in his hand. Short and blunt. An oyster knife. He was sawing at the side of Tony's head with it.

A keening was rising from Tony's throat, a guttural groan of despair and pain. A combination of muffled scream, prayer, wail and whimper.

The dog growled, straining at the end of its leash. Moths battered the light. Shadows jumped in the leaf canopy. Syce's arm sawed back and forth. Tony moaned.

Then Syce stepped back. The side of Tony's head was red raw, a blood-gushing wound. Syce held the knife in one hand, Tony's severed ear in the other. He held it up, dripping, then tossed it to the dog. Fido rose and its jaws clamped around the tasty titbit before it could hit the ground. A chomp, a snuffle and the gory morsel was gone.

The mutt licked its chops and stared expectantly at Syce.

But Syce was bending again to Tony. ‘What next, you reckon? Other ear? Nose? Fingers? What about your dick? How about I cut off your wedding tackle?'

I shuddered and felt myself sink backwards onto the floor of the dinghy. My legs had again turned to jelly. But it wasn't poor circulation that was stopping me from moving. It was fear. Sheer, nameless, gut-wrenching dread. A kind of shame, too, as if my failure to intervene in what I was witnessing somehow made me complicit in it.

For more than a year and a half, I had fantasised about coming to grips with the man who killed my Lyndal. This scum-sucking piece of shit, Rodney Syce. This despicable, gutless loser. And now he was within reach, not more than ten metres away.

And me? What was I doing? I was cowering in the dark, watching him torture a man, feed the poor bastard's ear to his dog, for fuck's sake. If only I could get my hands on the shotgun. But I had no idea what he'd done with it. If only I could be sure that my legs would do what I told them, when I told them. If, if, if.

The dick threat had done the trick. Tony's hand was fluttering, signalling surrender. Syce pulled the plug from his mouth long enough for him to gulp down a lungful of air, then jammed it back. Tony was limp, a rag doll, the fight gone out of him, blood squirting from the side of his head. Syce ripped a strip from the towel, pressed the balled wad against the gash where Tony's ear had been, tied it in place. He tore Tony's tee-shirt from his torso, drenched it with water from plastic jerrycan and wiped Tony clean of blood. I caught the glint of a small gold crucifix in the dark mat of Tony's chest-hair.

Syce acted quickly, a man who knew what he was doing. He tilted the jerrycan, cleaning himself, then dried his hands and arms. Then he replaced the lid of the cooler on Tony's thighs, fitted the pen into his fingers and guided it towards the paper. ‘Do it properly,' he commanded, holding Tony's head back. No blood on the documents, as per Martyn's instructions.