'What made you think that?'

  'You didn't make waves about our boy grabbing the handcuffs and scaring the shit out of those guards.'

  'He did, didn't he?'

  'Sure he did. But he was under pressure. Look . . . we talked all this over. What's got into you? It sounded like you were trying to screw things up in here. You could make yourself very unpopular.'

  Dunlop's mind was racing. If the police or, more probably, the CCA did have some secret agenda for Loew he had to know what it was. Unlikely, on the face of it, that it boded well for P46, but you couldn't be sure. If it was going to put Loew back behind bars or eliminate him, he wanted to give it his full support. If it was sunny skies for Kerry, a big pay-off and a clean-up of all his enemies, that was something to put the kybosh on. How to find out? He wouldn't do it by fighting with Kimonides. The old sergeant's advice came back to him. The truth, with extras.

  'Being unpopular doesn't worry me,' Dunlop said. 'But okay, here it is. There's a bit of a problem with the wife.'

  Ruark cocked a leg over the corner of the table. 'Why didn't you say so? That can't be too hard to handle.'

  Dunlop looked at him and didn't speak.

  'With all the dirt in that bitch's background, there must be something to use on her.'

  Dunlop fought down the anger. 'She's protected. She's got agents, contracts, a studio. She's nervous. She doesn't know what to do.'

  Kimonides sipped some water. 'Is she still hot for Kerry?'

  Thin ice. Men were afraid of Loew, Cassie had said. We should use that. 'I'd say so, yes.'

  The conspiratorial glance Kimonides and Ruark exchanged was a mere flicker, but Dunlop caught it. He was almost certain now of the secret agenda. He rubbed his hand over his face, feigning weariness and puzzlement. 'Look, I think Loew's been lying to her about how things'll be after he gets out. Talking big. Big bucks, plastic surgery, all that.'

  'Arsehole,' Ruark said.

  Dunlop spoke quickly, improvising. 'She doesn't believe him. She thinks it'll be hard and she's right, of course. She goes for frankness, honesty, you know? I think you two should meet her. Tell her how it is, where the threats lie and the strength of them. She'll appreciate not being snowed, even though she doesn't like the police. I reckon she'll firm up.'

  Kimonides said, 'You're changing your tune again. You're a slippery bastard, Dunlop.'

  Dunlop shrugged. 'Have to be. I was worried about the wife angle, but I think this is the way to handle it.'

  Kimonides inclined his head towards Ruark. 'Paul?'

  'Sounds all right,' Ruark said. 'Better than us taking swings at each other. Okay. Is she as sexy live as she looks on TV?'

  'Too small,' Dunlop said.

  'Do I have to?' Cassie said.

  Dunlop was calling her at the studio from a public phone. 'Yes. I think they're conning me. I think they're conning Kerry. If so, they'll try to con you, but you say you can tell when men are lying.'

  'I didn't mean it literally.'

  'I know. But I have to get a line on what they're up to and this'll be a start. Maybe you can read their palms, do iridology on them.'

  She laughed and the sound made him catch his breath.

  'Luke?'

  'Yes, I'm here.'

  'I'm sore. I told you it had been a long time. I'm very sore. How are you?'

  'I've got shagger's back. I think I used muscles I've never used before. I want to use them again, too.'

  'When?'

  'Now.'

  'Hah. I'm about to film my piece on Cassie May's muesli recipe. You'd better go for a swim or something. God, I don't even know where you live.'

  'Marrickville. I didn't get as far from Clovelly as you.'

  'Is that meant to be nasty?'

  'No. I'm sorry, love. I hate bloody telephones. I like Marrickville.'

  'Call me love again.'

  'Cassie, love. Cassie, love . . .'

  'Okay, that'll do. Will I see you tonight?'

  'Yes. And we'll have to find some time to talk about this bloody meeting.'

  12

  Kerry Loew worked on the Nautilus until he was sweat-drenched and shaking. Those bastards, those fuckin' bastards. A sick judge. Shit! Still no letter from her, and that bloody answering machine. He levered himself up from the bench and moved towards the punching bag. P22 was lifting weights on a mat beside the bag. Loew was almost blinded by sweat, still fuming, anxious to feel his fists hitting the leather. He stepped forward into a paralysing, shattering pain that sucked out his strength and crumpled him to the gym floor.

  'Oh, Christ! Hey, hey, get a doctor!'

  'Jesus, look at the blood. What the fuck happened?'

  'I was lifting and he walked right into the end of the bar. Where's the fuckin' doctor?'

  Loew lay moaning as the doctor examined him briefly, applied a pressure pad and signalled to the paramedics.

  'Bad. Close to the eye. Get him to the hospital, on the double.'

  Loew was lifted onto a stretcher. 'Quickest through the yard,' one of the paramedics said.

  The doctor nodded. 'Do it!'

  Three armed guards escorted the stretcher from the Special Purpose prison to the hospital. They had to traverse an area that was protected from a part of the general exercise yard by only a heavy mesh fence. Prisoners rushed to the fence to watch the procession.

  'Who's the dog? Who's the dog?'

  'Bow-wow. Bow-wow.'

  'Bleed, you fuckin' dog, bleed!'

  Loew's wound was cleaned and stitched. The eyelid had been torn and he had suffered a fracture of the eyebrow ridge but, in the opinion of the senior hospital doctor, his sight was not threatened. 'Still,' he said, 'better get an ophthalmologist out.'

  Loew was sedated and placed in the protected prisoners' ward. At first his sleep was troubled and he had to be prevented from thrashing on the bed. His arms and legs were restrained and he was further sedated.

  'Strong bastard,' the nurse commented.

  He fought against the restraints before falling into a deep, exhausted sleep. He drifted and dreamed, bumping down from time to time—montages of Grafton 'tracs' and beatings by the screws and slow motion images of Cassie drifting lazily through her stretching routines. She was naked, ivory-tinted and glistening with sweat. Then it was Morrie Boyd, dressed in the David Jones suit, looking like shit and nearly throwing up on the suit in the taxi on the way to the airport. Morrie in police uniform—Sergeant Boyd. You bastard, Morrie. You put me in it. Nearly. Nearly. He clean-and-jerked a hundred kilos and it felt like nothing, nothing at all. As he set the bar down he saw Cassie bench-pressing, being spotted by Dunlop. He waved at them and they didn't see him. Judge Hambly winked at him and he tried to wink back but he couldn't do it. Then he was adrift again in thick, billowing clouds of sweet-smelling smoke that hurt his eye, his eye . . .

  'Loew, Kerry Loew.'

  Loew swam some of the way up out of the mists. The dream images pulsed and fused and faded, leaving him disoriented, in pain and jangled. 'What,' he said thickly. 'What?'

  The hospital orderly bent close to the bed and whispered, 'Fats says hello. Got it? Fats says hello.'

  Afterwards, Loew could not be sure whether he'd dreamed the message or actually heard it. He felt tides of anger rise when he discovered the restraints. He strained against them until the effort sent shafts of pain into his eye. He lay still and endured the medical procedures—the examination from the ophthalmologist, the monitoring of blood pressure and temperature, the indignity of the assisted walk to the bathroom. The ward spooked him. There were only two other patients—a prison drug-dealer who'd been savagely beaten by an irate client and a baby-raper who'd been castrated with a blunt shank.

  'I want to go back,' he told the doctor two days later. 'I'm okay. Some rest and I'll be okay.'

  His next visitor was Dr Hammond, the psychologist.

  'Jesus,' Loew said. 'You again.'

  'Me again. How are you?'

  'Mending. Fucking eye hurts but it can see. What else matters?'

  'Right. It was an accident.'

  'Yeah.'

  'You agree?'

  Loew nodded and the movement sent waves of pain through his skull. He closed his eyes. That hurt, too. He felt the sweat break out on his forehead. 'How's the judge? When does the trial get going again?'

  'Day after tomorrow.'

  'I'll be ready.'

  'Do you really care about the judge?'

  Loew grinned. Less pain in that. 'D'you reckon he cares about me?'

  'Probably not.'

  'Well, then. He showed some guts when the gun went off though. Have to give him that. If I ask you a question will you give me a straight answer, doc?'

  'If it's within my field of competence.'

  Loew grimaced. 'You're fuckin' dodging it already.'

  'Not really,' Hammond said. 'Just a bad habit. Ask away.'

  'Was my wife notified about the . . . accident?'

  'Yes.'

  'What did she say?'

  'See those flowers?'

  The flowers had been placed on the left side of the bed—his bad eye side and where the light came from. Loew hadn't looked that way at all. He slid a cautious glance. 'Yeah.'

  The psychologist found the card. 'They're from her.'

  'Thank God,' Loew said.

  Kimonides and Ruark left the restaurant together. Dunlop and Cassie sat with the remnants of the meal—Vietnamese, eaten in one of the places in Illawarra Road favoured by Dunlop. He poured tea into Cassie's cup and wine into his own glass. The strain of treating Cassie with the right degree of formality had told on him. He'd drunk several glasses of wine, Cassie only one. Ruark and Kimonides had drunk Crown lager.

  'Well?' he said.

  'Touch me.'

  They were sitting side by side. Dunlop put his hand on her thigh and moved it up, pushing her skirt, sliding inside it and coming to rest in her crotch. He could feel the lace edge of her panties; his fingers probed inside.

  'Ah, yes,' Cassie whispered. 'Jesus. You'd better stop or I'll come right here. What was the question?'

  Dunlop moved his hand back to her knee. She wore a black silk blouse and a white skirt. They'd met at the restaurant and he was surprised at the difference created by the three-inch heels. The extra height gave her a rangy look, more the sprinter than the gymnast. He noticed that she wore a wedding ring and couldn't remember if she'd worn it before. Good touch for the occasion. 'Are they lying?'

  Cassie sipped her tea. 'Hard to say. At a guess, Ruark is playing it straight. The other one, Kimonides, he's lying about something.'

  'You said you could read men's minds.'

  Cassie laughed. 'I was getting a lot of static from you. I could read your dirty mind, loud and clear.'

  'I was a model of professional decorum.'

  'Yes. You weren't bad. Well, they've laid it out. Queensland for Kerry, sorry, Arnold. Dye job. Partnership in the fitness centre. Flat. Passport. Sounds all right. I doubt if it's what Kerry had in mind.'

  Dunlop said, 'It's pretty well thought out. Visits from you make sense personally and professionally. Plenty of reasons for you to go there. You get to meet a couple of times a year in New Caledonia and Vanuatu. I think I can sell it to him. And a six month Bundaberg posting for me. That's pretty sweet. Ordinarily, I wouldn't mind.'

  'I hate this.'

  'I know. So do I. But it's not going to happen.'

  'What is?'

  Dunlop shook his head. 'I don't know. Something else. Let's get back to Kimonides. You don't think he's genuine about these arrangements?'

  Cassie drank her tea and didn't speak. Dunlop considered the program Kimonides and Ruark had laid out. He was surprised at how detailed it was but they told him it had been in the works for a while. It allegedly had Canberra's approval, checkable because they'd given him the access code. 'A barnyard job,' Ruark had called it. Cassie had asked what that meant.

  Ruark grinned. He'd drunk three beers quickly and eaten little. 'You hide shit in the barnyard. No offence.'

  Kimonides stepped in quickly. 'You put people into environments they can handle and look natural in. Your husband would look badly out of place in a shoe shop.'

  'Isn't it where people would look for him, though, Inspector?'

  'Call me Greg. No tracks to follow,' Kimonides said. 'Right, Mr Dunlop?'

  'Right.'

  Cassie hadn't had to pretend to dislike Kimonides or to feign indifference to Ruark's obvious interest. She'd been blunt to the point of rudeness, showed weariness, hesitation, finally indicated a willingness to be persuaded.

  'Kimonides is a bastard,' she said. 'That was a horrible thing he said—about Kerry's injury making him a more sympathetic witness. I . . . I sent the flowers and the card.'

  'Good.'

  '"Call me Greg." Ugh. I knew plenty like him back . . .'

  'Yeah. Me too. I might've been a bit like that myself.'

  'No. It's a quality you can't take on and leave off. He's bloody ambitious, I'm sure of that. Going places and not caring how he gets there. Notice how he didn't smoke?'

  Dunlop hadn't, and was annoyed with himself for missing it. 'You're right, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Maybe he's given up.'

  'Don't get shitty, Luke. No. I could still smell it on him. He didn't want to get me offside. He knows how I feel about it. That takes control, to make a difficult pitch like that and not need your usual props.'

  'What are you saying, love?'

  'It's only a guess, but I'd say he's got his sights on something else, something bigger than Kerry Loew. What are we going to do?'

  'I know what we're going to do now.'

  'Yes.'

  'I like the heels.'

  'Want me to keep them on?'

  'Do you mind?'

  'No. I told you, I like games.'

  They were in his bedroom. She was the first woman to enter the house. He liked that. He kissed her. Her eyes were closed. He kissed her eyes. She undid his belt and pulled his trousers down, thrust inside his underpants and cupped his balls. He felt himself stiffen and tried to move her hand.

  'No,' she said. 'I'm not going to touch it. Take your shirt off.'

  He shrugged out of the shirt and she lowered his underpants. Her fingers were lightly stroking back towards his anus. He was hard.

  'Get your shoes and socks off. That'll give you something to do.'

  He sat on the bed and yanked at his shoes and socks, fumbling in the dim light. When he looked up she'd removed her blouse and was stepping out of her skirt. She threw the blouse at him. He caught it and inhaled her smell. She wore a front-fastening half-bra that pushed her breasts up. Her nipples were covered by a wisp of black lace. She kicked the skirt away and stood in her high heels looking down at him.

  'Lie back.'

  He slid back on the bed. She joined him, legs spread, crawling on top of him. He felt for the waist of her knickers.

  'No. No hands.'

  She leaned forward and took him in her mouth. The touch sent a shock through him and he reached for her. She slapped his hands away, slipped forward and eased herself down on his erect cock. The black pants had an opening in the crotch. He felt the lace edges caress him as he entered. She let him go deep. He heard the shoes hit the floor.

  'Now, you be a good boy and stay there.'

  She began to move, to grind herself onto him, adjusting slightly, finding the place and the rhythm she wanted.

  'Jesus, Cassie.'

  'Me first, Luke. My turn. Keep your hands off. Think about your golf swing.'

  Golf swing? What's she talking about?

  She moved faster and her breathy voice was harsh and urgent near his ear. 'There it is, darling. There it is. Oh, yes. Now! Now!'

  He felt her shudder and then he was coming in a long, sweet, hot rush that ran up his legs and flooded through him. He yelled and rolled, clutching her and pressing deeper and deeper inside her.

  13

  The computer confirmed Kimonides' statement about the arrangements for the client. Dunlop accessed the highly secure file on the relocation, new identity, passport allotment and financial provisions. Arnold Crane (Cassie had only been told the first name) would have a 50 per cent share in the Bundaberg Squash and Fitness Centre, hold Australian passport number G550654, issued Brisbane 2/2/90 . . . The file, containing inbuilt codes preventing it from being copied or printed, held details of Crane's Medicare enrolment, tax file number, marital status (single, no children), education and work history. He held a driver's licence and cards to two Bundaberg video outlets.

  'I wonder if they got the dental stuff right,' Dunlop said. He read the file several times, memorising the details. It appeared to be completely genuine, more elaborate and tighter than most, but convincing. His attempt to call up close-focus, time-plotted particulars on the procedures that would transform P46 to Arnold Crane failed: NOT AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME.

  He exited from the file and pushed back from the VDU. He was unshaven, wearing a T-shirt and underpants. Cassie had left only an hour ago after they had made love three times and slept for less than three hours. He could taste her now, feel her. He was ravenously hungry, thirsty, too. Every sense was tuned-up. He walked around the room, swinging his arms, and did deep knee bends. The aches and pains were sweet reminders. He'd meant to tell Cassie she'd have to see Loew one more time, but the moment to do it hadn't come. He felt guilty about that. He went back to the computer, intending to see if he could find out anything about Kimonides. When he logged on, the pinging sound told him an item of electronic mail was awaiting collection.

  A message from Burton, transmitted once and only to his terminal. He was advised that there was no reason to have doubts about CCA integrity or to suspect the involvement of other agencies. All possible checks had been made, all systems vetted. He was to proceed according to instructions to be relayed after the receipt of this message.

  Checks, systems, Dunlop thought. Computer shit. Has anyone actually talked to anyone? He sent the message into electronic limbo and his screen cleared before giving him the code to access the information which had previously been unavailable. Dunlop recalled the incident in the training course when this part of the program had been reached. One trainee had scribbled down the code number.

 

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