Dead Point Part 31

Someone who wanted the matter of Marco to stay closed.

Would they try again? They'd have to find another hit man.

Perhaps they had a supply of hit men. Hardly likely.

Who?

The same people who'd murdered Marco?

It was almost certain that WRG had used Bergh to attempt the blackmail of Susan Ayliss. In that case, he'd hired Marco. But the bid had failed, leaving Bergh and Marco as potential embarra.s.sments. Now they were both dead.

And then I came along, asking questions about both men.

Bergh had held the key to everything. He talked to Doyle, to Mick Olsen, drug scam mastermind...

I needed to look at Bergh's phone bill again.

No.

I needed to do nothing. This wasn't worth dying for.

Colin Loder would recuse himself from the cocaine jackets trial and, with luck, never hear anything more about his missing alb.u.m. As for Marco, his death was of no personal concern to me. I had no interest whatsoever in Marco.

Send a message to WRG that I was no longer interested in Bergh or Marco, that was what I needed to do.

Go away for a while. Go far away. Leave now. That would convey the message that I had disengaged from anything that annoyed them.

Ring Cam, ring Linda, ring Wootton, ring Colin Loder on his borrowed mobile. Ring Stan and tell him to pa.s.s the message on to the Youth Club that I'd gone away, wouldn't be picking them up on Sunday. Ring Gus and leave a message for Charlie. Enzio. I'd have to get hold of him.

A life to run away from.

I could do that. I could spend a few weeks with Claire.

No, I couldn't do that. They might not accept my gesture of submission and send someone to Claire's house to look for me. I couldn't go near anyone I knew.

I couldn't run away from this. There wasn't any way to backtrack, to undo.

Bergh's phone bill. Another look at it.

The city hadn't fully woken yet, only those without a choice were astir: the greengrocer on the corner, the newsagent, dry-eyed shiftworkers going home. I was opening my office door in ten minutes.

There hadn't been any malice in the job they'd done, but they didn't care who knew they'd been there.

My one filing cabinet had been emptied, every file taken from its folder and dropped to the floor.

My old Mac's hard drive was gone.

The in-tray where I'd carelessly tossed Bergh's phone bill was empty. So was the out-tray.

There was the faintest glow of light from the back room.

I went to the doorway. The door of the small fridge was open and a rectangle of pale-yellow light lay on the floor.

I switched on the light.

Everything had been taken out of the small sink cupboard ancient dishwashing liquid, a tin of drain cleaner, a few scouring pads, a bar of yellow soap I'd never seen before, two rolls of paper towels, a box of tea bags, the jar of sugar.

They'd looked in the old microwave, left the door open. I went to the steel back door. It was open. They'd left that way, down the lane, carrying the hard disk.

I locked the door, looked around, feeling light-headed, queasy in the stomach.

What else had been in here?

Robbie's suitcase. I'd put it between the fridge and the sink.

Gone.

If things had gone to plan, I would be dead now, lying in the park, dragged into the bushes, blood seeped into the tanbark, waiting to be found by some early walker's dog. And there would be nothing in my effects to connect me with Marco or Bergh.

I went to the front room, willed myself to tidy up, failed. What was the point?

Eric the Geek had done the Bergh reversedirectory for me. Would he have kept a copy of his findings? Possibly. There was something distinctly retentive about Eric. I got out my wallet to find the card with his number, searched through the pockets, couldn't find it. In exasperation, I pulled out half-a-dozen cards.

A small dark-blue object. For a moment, it meant nothing. Then I remembered.

The small plastic torch-like device from Robbie's jacket, found in the inside key pocket. The device without hint of function.

I held it between finger and thumb, pressed the b.u.t.ton, looked at the red light it emitted for a second or so, turned it over. Something had been scratched into the plastic. I held it to the light. Numbers: 2646.

I thought I knew what this thing did.

The Cathexis carpark was in the bas.e.m.e.nt, entered from a concrete driveway on the eastern side of the building. I found a park two blocks away and walked back, a cold wind opening my jacket, no-one in the streets.

I didn't turn in when I reached the driveway. I walked to the far side, then turned right and stayed close to the wall as I made haste to cover the 50 metres to the carpark entrance. The camera above it was stationary, looking down on where drivers would activate the door-opening machinery by communicating with a steel pillar.

Robbie's device was in my hand as I walked. At the carpark's huge door, I did a right-angle turn, went up to the pillar, saw the eye set into it, pointed the small torch and pressed the b.u.t.ton.

The carpark door made a noise and began its rise. I was inside long before it reached my height.

No more than two dozen cars were in the brightly lit chamber. Quality not number, all foreign: Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, Saab, Audi, an Alfa, a yellow born-again VW Beetle in the corner.

I looked around. In the centre of the s.p.a.ce, a glowing green arrow on a concrete shaft pointed upwards. I was there in seconds.

Another eye.

I pointed and pressed.

The lift door opened.

A big stainless-steel box, carpet on the floor, deep plum-coloured carpet. No ordinary lift. No floor b.u.t.tons to press, just a keyboard, an eye and, above it, a green screen. Beside that, two large red rectangular b.u.t.tons said a.s.sISTANCE and EMERGENCY.

The green screen had a message: Welcome to Cathexis. Please enter your code Welcome to Cathexis. Please enter your code.

Point and press.

The screen said: Thank you. Please enter your pa.s.sword Thank you. Please enter your pa.s.sword.

My pa.s.sword?

I hadn't thought about a pa.s.sword. Ah, the numbers scratched on the torch. I managed to read them, typed them in: 2646.

The screen said: Error. Please re-enter pa.s.sword Error. Please re-enter pa.s.sword.

Time to leave. I was turning when I remembered. The apartment was in a company name. The woman at reception had said it. It had crossed my mind that it was an anagram of Rosalind.

Dalinsor Nominees.

It was worth a try. I typed in Dalinsor.

The screen said: Thank you Thank you.

The lift was moving. I breathed again. Numbers blipped on the screen, stopped at 12. The door opened.

A foyer with a pale rose carpet. Soft lighting came from wall sconces beside four doors. Number 12 was on my right, a security camera set into the wall above it. Plus another electronic eye, another keyboard. How did the residents put up with this? Better to risk burglary.

There was a b.u.t.ton. I pressed it. If anyone was home, I had explaining to do.

No response. I pressed again, waited. Then I gave the eye a beam with the torch.

The keyboard lit up and a voice said: 'Entry code, please.'

If the number scratched on the torch didn't work I was going to be trapped up here on the twelfth floor, waiting for security to arrive.

I tapped in 2646.

The voice said: 'Thank you.'

My shoulders sagged. Bolts slid.

I went into a long hallway, unfurnished, looked around for the alarm system. It was behind the door, a steel box with a green light glowing. The entry code had deactivated the alarm.

An open door from the hall led into a huge sitting room, empty except for two leather chairs and a sofa. Outside, on a balcony, the wind was whipping the bare branches of trees in pots. I walked through into a kitchen, stainless steel and granite, sleek, no visible appliances, no signs of habitation. From the sink, you could look out over the city, blurred by the wet gla.s.s.

I went back to the hall, found the main bedroom. The bed was the size of a Housing Commission bedroom, bedding on it, striped sheets stripped back.

Facing the bed, a home-cinema-size screen was built into a wall of cupboards, record and stereo equipment beneath it.

Was this where Susan Ayliss had seen herself on screen? Live in action with Marco.

A dressing-room led off the bedroom. I had a look in the cupboards. Two held women's garments, after-dark wear at a glance, and there were underclothes in drawers and women's shoes in a rack. Ros Cundall obviously used the place occasionally.

Beyond the dressing-room was a bathroom that was also a gym and spa and sauna, an antiseptic Nordic-looking place. In a gla.s.s-fronted cabinet, gla.s.s shelves held cosmetics jars and tubes, bottles of all shapes and sizes containing pale liquids and golden vials three perfumes, atomisers, cologne, cottonwool b.a.l.l.s, ear buds, mouthwash, toothpaste.

Nothing. I was wasting my time.

I went back to the kitchen, sighted along the granite countertop, saw the faint trails. It took a while to find the fridge but it was empty except for a bottle of Perrier water.

I opened another door off the hallway. A study, built-in shelves along one wall, a modern desk and a chair, nothing in the desk drawers. Tall and narrow cabinets flanked the doorway. On the way out, I opened the door of the right-hand one. Empty. I tried the other one. Empty.

Time to go, to end this trespa.s.s.

But I was reluctant to leave. I went back to the sitting room, looked around, walked around the kitchen again opening doors, checked the other bedroom, the main bedroom again, the dressing-room, the bathroom/gym/sauna.

I was turning to leave, leave the room, the apartment, the building, when I saw, on a shelf behind a chrome-plated exercise bicycle, a bag, a leather-look bag, the size of a small toilet bag.

I went over and picked it up, opened it.

It held a camera. A small digital video camera.

The camera that filmed Susan Ayliss?

Now it was time to go.

Leaving Cathexis didn't require any codes. In a few minutes, I was on the wintry street, curiously elated for someone who only hours before had been running for his life in a public park.

The woman at Vizionbanc in South Melbourne took the camera away and when she came back her tone was apologetic.

'Only one image on it is retrievable,' she said. 'Sometimes everything isn't completely wiped. A beach. Want to see?'

I followed her into a room lit by the glow from half-a-dozen monitors on one wall. She took me to the end one. It showed a beach, a featureless and windy beach by the look of it, sea to the left, low dunes to the right, scrubby vegetation. There were two sets of marks in the sand, possibly footprints. In the distance, at the right of the frame, on the dunes side, there was something solid, just a dark blob.

'What's that?' I pointed.

'Vehicle,' she said. 'Old Land Rover, Land Cruiser, something like that. The boxy shape.'

'That's good,' I said. 'That's a gift.'

'Trained at huge expense by the Defence Department,' she said. 'We pa.s.s the savings on to our clients.'

She went to a work station and fiddled at a console. The dark blob now filled the screen. It was a fuzzy image but it was a vehicle, not quite side-on to the camera, definitely a four-wheel drive, grey.

'Land Cruiser,' she said. 'Short wheelbase.'

'Is that the date the picture was taken? On the bottom.'

'Yes.'