The Son (33 page)

I answered their questions as best I could, by sign language where possible, pushing my oxygen mask aside when I had to talk. They seemed satisfied with most of my answers, but the question they kept coming to was what I had seen when Truong Dzu was shot.

‘Who?' I asked.

‘Truong Dzu. The man who shot you. The tall Vietnamese. Did you see what happened when he was shot? What he was doing?'

‘No,' I said. By then I was flat on the floor, trying hard not to scream my head off. I thought I had heard shouting, and another shot, but I couldn't remember even that part clearly before I blacked out.

‘Who shot him?' I asked, but they wouldn't tell me.

‘That's still under investigation.'

They were about to leave when I pushed the mask aside again.

‘Why are you so concerned about how he was killed?' I rasped out. ‘That man Truong Dzu. Why don't you ask about the young man he killed?'

‘You mean Eric Tran? But he's not dead. We interviewed him last night. He's got a flesh wound in his arm and some bad bruising but otherwise he's fine. Sorry, we thought you knew.'

After they left I went back to sleep. This time there were no more dreams.

After that the visitors came.

The first was Eric, closely followed by Brian Considine. Eric was being released from hospital and the Considines were taking him in, until something more permanent could be arranged. We spent an emotional moment together. He wore his arm in a sling and had dark rings under his eyes, but otherwise looked unharmed.

‘I thought you were going to die,' he said, a glint of tears in his eyes. ‘I wanted to come in the ambulance with you but they wouldn't let me.'

‘I didn't look after you very well, did I.'

‘Commander Considine says you saved my life. He said if you hadn't come in when you did I'd almost certainly have been killed.'

He hadn't heard from his aunt, and didn't know how to reach her in San Diego. I told him Viv had the number, and suggested he get the key to the flat from her as well, so he could move in whenever he wanted.

‘Just one thing,' I said. ‘When you speak to her, don't tell her I've been badly wounded. Just say I'm OK, I'm recovering well.'

I wanted to ask what was happening in Cabramatta, but I was too tired, and it was Considine who brought me up to date, on his next visit. He was in uniform this time, complete with shoulder tabs and that broken down cap of theirs, which makes them all look a bit like thugs. He sat down next to the bed and took his cap off.

‘Was it you who shot Truong Dzu?' I asked. He nodded.

‘Gave me no choice. When I came through that door I told him to put down his weapon but he refused. Twice. I thought he was about to shoot you again, or one of my men. So I shot him.'

He shook his head.

‘First time I've ever killed a man. Over thirty years in the force. I know the bugger deserved it, but I can't say I enjoyed it very much.'

He ran his hand through his wiry hair. He looked tired too, and not very happy.

‘Now of course there's all hell to pay. It's standard procedure to have an inquiry when there's been a fatality during a police operation, but when a foreigner's involved, with diplomatic status … That's what the fuss is all about. That's why they wanted to interview you so soon. Fortunately Eric was able to tell them quite a lot.'

‘But what happened?' I asked. ‘What took you so long to get there?'

‘Oh, it's a long and sorry tale,' he said wearily. ‘As the senior man I should never have let things get to that stage. But there was nothing I could do! I wanted to put someone on that floor, take a room and stick a couple of my men in it, but Roger wouldn't allow it. Mustn't do anything which might tip them off, he kept saying, otherwise they'll abort and the whole exercise will have been in vain. We've got to catch them red-handed. Even went over my head. Special request from Canberra, straight to the Minister and the Commissioner. Highly sensitive political case, let our man on the ground have the final say. Fortunately Bob Maynard was more reasonable. His men had installed a hidden camera in one of the ventilation vents, thanks to him we were able to get video coverage. Otherwise we would have been blind.'

Gradually he filled in the picture. How Eric had turned up, carrying his pizza boxes. Considine had commandeered a room on the ground floor, as I'd suggested, and his men had taken Eric there, ostensibly to search him. Considine was there too and together they'd gone over the next stage. Considine told him they'd be watching him on CCTV, and they'd jump in at the first sign of trouble. They didn't talk long. Considine made him put on a flak jacket under his shirt – luckily it was a large size and the jacket didn't show. Then they sent him on his way.

‘Cool as ice, he was,' Considine said. ‘I could see he was tense, but there was no way he was going to back out. ‘Don't worry about me,' he said. ‘I'll be alright.' Of course what none of us had foreseen was that they'd pounce on him so quickly and block access to the floor.'

They had tracked his progress on a screen on the floor below. As soon as they saw the two men, Truong Dzu and his associate, move up and grab Eric they knew they had to act fast. They raced up the stairs, only to find the door locked and barred against them. By the time they broke the door down it was almost too late: I had burst in through the window, Eric and I had both been shot, Truong Dzu stood sneering at the big policeman. He had thrown the silenced twenty-two pistol at Eric's feet but kept hold of his own weapon, even raised it when Considine shouted at him to drop it, as if to challenge him – whereupon Considine had quite properly shot him.

‘We had it all on tape. Didn't see you coming in, the camera was pointing the other way, but everything else, when we played it back it was all there: how Truong Dzu took the pistol from Eric, loaded it, started down the corridor, turned round, started to panic … right up to the moment I shot him. But you know what? The tape's gone! Roger took it! Wanted in Canberra, he said, Top Secret Sensitive, the Minister needs to see it, can't leave it lying around, might fall into the wrong hands. I couldn't even use it in my defence when I was challenged to prove I had acted correctly. That's why Internal Affairs had to interview you, as well as Eric and the other cops with me. Fortunately it was all fairly straightforward.'

‘What about the man with the knife?' I asked.

‘Oh, he dropped it quickly enough! I arrested him and we took him into custody. But he refused to answer any questions and we had to release him less than an hour later. Diplomatic immunity again. Seems you can do anything when you have a diplomatic passport and not be held to account. The best we could do was kick him out of the country. PNG'd, as Roger put it. Persona non gratis.'

‘
Non grata
.'

‘What?'

‘
Persona non grata
. It means he's no longer welcome.'

‘Too right he wasn't! That was the one thing that gave me pleasure. Putting him on the next plane to Hanoi without letting him go home to change. His consulate kicked up a fuss but there was no way we were going to show him any favours! Almost made me wish I'd shot him as well.'

‘Where was Loc during all this?'

‘In his room, at the other end of the corridor. Where Truong Dzu was heading when you broke in so rudely. Locked in his bathroom. Seems someone in Roger's mob had got word to him earlier, said they thought there'd be an attempt against him that evening, asked him how he wanted to play it. ‘Go ahead,' he said, ‘Let them go ahead with their plan, if you think you can stop them in time – I want them caught too.' Another one with ice in his veins. When it was over he came out, not a drop of sweat on him. Called his embassy, and his government too I think, told them what had happened, helped us sort out the mess. Postponed his departure for New Zealand by a day to do it. A tough one, no doubt about that. I wouldn't want to be in his enemies' shoes when he gets back to Hanoi.'

It had gone pretty well as I had expected, give or take a few details.

‘One thing I don't understand,' I said, ‘is how they managed to fix that pizza delivery. They were taking a big chance, weren't they?'

He laughed curtly.

‘They'd worked that out as well. Seems Loc has a craving for pizzas. Well known in his entourage, it seems. Whenever he travels abroad he has to have one. Can't get the real stuff at home apparently. Odd, isn't it. What some of these people need to keep 'em happy. At least he didn't ask for a woman, the way some of them do. That would have complicated matters.'

As we reconstructed it, someone in Loc's group, perhaps Truong Dzu himself, had rung a local pizza shop to place an order that evening, about an hour after they came home from the reception. Asked for it to be delivered to the apartments. Then soon after someone else had rung – the pizza shop thought it was the same man, but they couldn't be sure, more likely it was someone working with Bach, maybe Bach himself – said forget the delivery, they'd send someone to pick it up. An Asian man had come in, the pizza shop staff said, well-dressed in a dark suit, had paid for the order in cash, and taken the boxes. They didn't think they could recognise him. Eric was waiting in a car nearby, already dressed for his role in a red and white shirt and a cap, complete with the shop's logo – they'd even thought of that. The man had handed the pizzas to him and he had gone on his way.

‘They must have been planning it for months. God knows what would have happened if you hadn't put a spoke in their wheels. They might have got away with it.'

I thought about that too, then and later. Something I never really discussed with Eric. Would he have gone through with it, if the plot had been left to take its course without interference from me? I remembered how hard I'd had to work to turn him round, convince him that he was not on the side of the angels. But I also thought of him, as I had got to know him. He had never been meant to pull the trigger, of course – that was Truong Dzu's job, all that was required of Eric by then was to let himself be conveniently killed. Even so, had it come to the crunch I couldn't see him willing to shoot down a defenceless man. If he'd really been required to do it, instead of merely playing a (deadly) role of make-believe, I was sure, I believed deep inside me that he would have balked, found a way out, refused to become a cold-blooded killer.

At least I very much hoped so.

‘And the others involved? Bach Ho? Vo Khanh and the Mad Buffaloes? What's going to happen to them?'

‘We've rounded up most of them. The small fry anyway. Raided that farm up in the hills, took the owner in as well. We'll have to let most of them go, with a caution. They didn't have much of a clue, all they did was take part in the demonstrations in Canberra. But as for the top guys … we caught Vo Khanh too, as he was about to leave. But with Bach Ho I'm afraid we were too late. Him and his offsider, that young man Binh, who you think committed the earlier murder – they'd disappeared. They won't get far. We'll catch them eventually. But right now no one knows where they are. They must have prepared their escape in advance.'

‘All this is strictly between us,' he went on, still sounding bitter. ‘Canberra wants to put a lid on it! I'm not sure if it's Roger's idea or comes from higher up. But they want to put it out that it was just an amateurish assassination attempt by a group of lunatic extremists among the Vietnamese community, that Truong Dzu and his friend were only doing their job defending their leader, and you and Eric were innocent bystanders who got caught in the cross-fire. Perpetrator or perpetrators unknown, apparently broke in through a window at the end of a rope, tried to shoot their way through, failed but escaped the same way, whereabouts currently unknown … We know it's bullshit, Roger says, and they know that we know it's bullshit, but this is the best way to help them save face, let them wash their dirty linen in private …'

He stood up, screwed his cap down on his head, tilted it at a rakish angle.

‘Nasty business, politics. Makes police work look like kinder-garten stuff. Now I'd better go. Got to face another hearing. When's that woman of yours coming back?'

‘I'll tell you when I know,' I said.

‘Nice homecoming she'll be having. At least you're still alive. The both of you.'

He leaned over, gripped my right hand in his, in a brief, oddly touching gesture. Then he left.