Tropic of Death (24 page)

Luker felt embarrassed. Of all the things Molloy had come up with, this was the most awkward.

‘I’m sorry, Rhett,’ he said, getting slowly to his feet. ‘And I mean no disrespect. But you see, I can’t. I don’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, actually, I’m a humanist.’

Molloy looked at him with something like pity, before turning to Demchak.

‘Kurt? I don’t see you as a humanist.’

‘And you’d be damn right.’

‘So will you pray with me?’

‘You’re outta luck, Molloy.’ Demchak pushed back his chair and stood up, loosening his shoulders. ‘I don’t do that sort of praying.’

32
Billy Bowers looked wind-blown and irritable as he hunched behind his desk, paying scant attention to Freddy’s complaint about the American brute who’d crushed his balls.

‘His fist was like a fucking vice!’ Freddy winced at the memory.

‘And he’s big and ugly, with a Neanderthal skull.’

‘For fuck’s sake, tell me something I can make sense of !’

snapped Billy.

Freddy looked at him resentfully and realised yet again how much he disliked the man. ‘Called himself Kurt,’ he added.

‘Ah, now I know who you’re talking about.’ Billy stretched out his limbs and slumped back in his chair. ‘He drinks in the bar downstairs. So he’s also after Stonefish, huh?’

‘What about my balls? He’s threatening to tear them off !’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Billy. ‘Your balls are safe while you know nothing about the whereabouts of that bastard Stonefish.

When you
do
find out, you tell me straightaway, and I’ll protect you and your balls. Got it?’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

‘No problem. Part of our business arrangement.’ Billy dumped his feet on the desk and glanced around casually at the boxing exhibits decorating his office. ‘We had a shit day out on the reef.

Weather was lousy and not one pissing marlin in sight. I won’t see that movie producer again.’

‘You after some Hollywood action?’ asked Freddy.

‘Don’t waste your brain cells trying to keep up,’ growled Billy. ‘Stick to what you’re good at. Hacking and jacking around.

Speaking of which, who’s the foxy piece of tail you were chatting up today?’

‘When?’

‘In the club, arsehole. My staff aren’t just loyal, they’re observant.

So who is she? Your new fuck-buddy?’

‘No, Billy. She’s a cop.’

‘A cop! What sort of cop?’

‘A profiler. Her name’s Van Hassel.’

Suddenly Billy was sitting bolt upright. ‘Van Hassel came calling on my club?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘She’s investigating Rachel’s murder. The local cops drafted her in.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘Nothing.’ Freddy didn’t hesitate, remembering his secret deal with Rita. ‘I don’t know anything, do I?’

‘Well, make damn sure you keep it that way.’ Billy ran a hand through his tousled hair. ‘That bitch is trouble. I should’ve turned her into dog food years ago.’

‘How do you know her?’

‘She tried to ruin me once, put me inside. I had to use up a lot of points to make the problem go away.’

For once Billy looked worried, something that Freddy found to be a pleasant change. Rita was going up in his estimation.

‘Well, she can’t touch you now,’ said Freddy.

‘Don’t you believe it. She’s the persistent type. I can’t risk her stirring anything up around here. I need to get rid of her, one way or another. Fuck it!’

Billy stalked over to his punching bag and started thumping it furiously. He was interrupted by his desk phone ringing. Still cursing, he leant over and hit the button.

‘Yeah, it’s Billy Bowers here.’ He whacked the punching bag again. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Nikki Dwyer,’ a woman’s voice came out of the speaker.

‘Reporter on the
Whitley Times
. I wonder if I can ask you about a couple of things.’

Billy stopped punching abruptly and softened his tone. ‘Of course, Nikki. Always happy to help the press.’

‘I’m doing a feature on local celebrities,’ she went on, ‘and naturally you’re prominent among them.’

‘We all do what we can for the greater good,’ said Billy.

‘Promote the town, boost its image.’

‘It’s your image in particular I’m concerned with,’ said the reporter.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve been given some disturbing information.’

‘Who by?’

‘An anonymous source.’

‘Then you should treat it with the contempt it deserves.’ Billy’s voice was getting less friendly by the second. ‘I’ve got no time for gutter journalism.’

‘The thing is,’ said Nikki, ‘I’ve already followed it up and the information checks out. Are you prepared to deny it without hearing what it is?’

Billy tensed, his body arched over the desk, fists clenched, realising he’d been ambushed.

‘What have you been told?’ he demanded.

‘First, that you threatened environmental campaigner Rachel Macarthur.’

‘Rubbish!’

‘She was organising a protest against your rainforest development,’

Nikki went on. ‘And she confronted you at your club. A witness has contacted me.’

‘What witness?’

‘One of your associates, actually. I won’t reveal the name but I can assure you his account is reliable.’

‘Whatever you’ve been told, I was trying to talk sense into her.

Get her to drop her opposition to what’s going to be a five-star resort complex. Something that will put Whitley well and truly on the international tourist map.’

‘You said you’d kill her.’

‘Bullshit!’

‘Your exact quote was: “I’ll rip your head off.” Do you deny it?’

Freddy sat forward, his pulse quickening.

‘I didn’t mean it literally,’ said Billy, with a swift glance at Freddy. ‘It’s just a figure of speech!’

‘But that’s what literally happened to her. Were you being prophetic?’

‘Don’t be a smart-arse!’ Billy shouted at the phone. ‘And don’t try to publish any of this.’

‘Would you like to comment on the other bit of background I’ve looked into - your arrest in Melbourne for sexual violence?

And the real meaning of your nickname, “The Beast”?’

‘That’s enough!’ snarled Billy. ‘Now listen carefully, I’ll only say this once, and you can read into it any damn thing you like: back off, or you’ll regret it!’

He didn’t bother to hang up the receiver. Instead, he wrenched the phone from its mounting and hurled it against the wall.

Freddy said nothing as the phone scattered in pieces and Billy’s face flushed red with rage. He just watched him with a mixture of suspicion and hate.

33
The Falcon’s headlights cut through the semi-darkness as the pale glow of a half-moon settled on the coastal ranges. Rita turned off the Bruce Highway onto Mountview Road and climbed past rocky outcrops towards a plateau bearing the US satellite tracking station. As she drove alongside the perimeter fence, the giant white spheres gleamed in the moonlight. They sat on the landscape like unnatural visitants.

Beyond the US post the road across the upland wound towards mountain peaks shrouded in low cloud. Rita followed its course carefully across the dark spread of the land, rough and inhospitable.

Uneven ridges were lined with brushwood thickets and the humps of boulders. She’d psyched herself up for the encounter with Paul, but the remoteness was beginning to worry her.

As the scrubland fell behind, the car climbed a slope through an increasing density of gum trees. The steeper the incline, the damper the air became and the thicker the foliage. Rita got the wipers going. Soon the road was twisting around massive eucalyptus trunks and under the fronds of tree ferns, streams spilling through gullies along the verge, their banks a tangle of tropical vegetation.

She was now driving through the ancient rainforest and, despite the signs for campsites and picnic grounds, it had a feeling of untamed nature.

She found the T-junction that led to Paul’s house, and swung off to the right. The Ridgeway turned out to be a side road that followed the rim of the forest, with spectacular views over the ocean. The air was clear here. She switched off the wipers and took in the vista. Far below, the lights of the town and port clustered along the shoreline. Further out to sea the dark humps of the Whitsunday Islands were outlined in the moonlight.

Rita drove past a scenic lookout point with its eco-friendly cafe and, a kilometre down the road, a building site covering several hectares, ringed with a chain-link fence. A swathe of apartment blocks and landscaped swimming pools were under construction amid a muddy scar in the side of the mountain where bulldozers stood in silence, waiting to resume their excavations. She slowed down as she passed the padlocked gate. A hoarding advertised the future five-star resort - the Whitley Ridgeway - proprietor: William Bowers. This wasn’t just a holiday spot: it was a battlefield.

The most dangerous threat to the ecosystem of the rainforest was tourism, and the damage from this development was already plain to see. No wonder Rachel Macarthur had launched a campaign against Billy, thought Rita as she accelerated away. And to protect such an investment, he’d want to stop her dead.

There were a few other human incursions along the road, signs pointing to hiking trails, cabins partly hidden among the trees, but mostly The Ridgeway was fringed by the overhanging canopy of the forest, with its mass of vines and ferns. At last she reached a house set back in a clearing, number seventeen, and she pulled up at Paul’s front gate. The setting was isolated but compelling, with the primeval wilderness looming behind it and a panorama of coastal valleys stretching below. Beyond that the dark expanse of ocean swept to the horizon. While the location was enviable, the wrought-iron nameplate beside the gate struck her as a little obvious. The place was called Eden.

She got out of the car and shivered. It was cold up here.

The two-storey villa rose behind its high stone wall, secluded and imposing. Its Federation-style exterior was mostly intact - red brick walls, bay windows, heavy gables - though it had undergone renovations, both architectural and technological. The porch and balcony had been enclosed, with metal-framed portals, and a layer of solar panels adorned the terracotta roof tiles. Masts and dishes sprouted beside the chimney pots. Smoke was rising from one of the chimneys and the smell of burning eucalyptus wood hung in the air.

The path lamps were lit, awaiting Rita’s arrival, but the array of security devices was uninviting. She glanced up at the armoured camera casings and sprigs of razor wire as she pressed the buzzer beside the tubular steel gate. A moment later, it glided open. She walked through with senses alert. The gate closed automatically, sealing her in.

Something intuitive, a vague awareness of malevolent intent, warned her to tread carefully. Adrenalin pumping, she walked up the garden path. Either side of her, the flower beds were untended

- rhododendrons gone wild in a tangle of lantana, lopsided hibiscus bushes in need of pruning. A jacaranda tree had collapsed under its own weight and bindweed smothered a birdbath. She took it as a further sign that something was wrong. A once-attractive garden was withering from neglect.

The porch door opened as she approached. Paul stood in the doorway, looking even more pallid and youthful than he had at the base, dressed now in jeans and a Cambridge T-shirt.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said.

Rita paused, trying to read the uneasiness in his face. ‘It was hardly an invitation I could ignore.’

‘Well, now you’re here, come inside.’

She walked up the steps, through the double security doors of the porch and into the hall, without turning her back on him, an instinctive reflex.

He was clearly nervous. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘That’s not what I’m here for,’ she replied.

‘Break the ice?’

She nodded, ‘Okay,’ and followed him down the hallway. It led to a central living space where the middle of the house had been gutted and remodelled in a style that was part up-market
,
part cyberpunk.

‘Radical conversion,’ observed Rita. The decor was hi-tech and heavy metal, with walls of polished brass. Their metallic shimmer reflected the furnishings - sofa, chairs, table - all in matching chrome. ‘Must have cost a bit.’

‘Part of the package,’ explained Paul. ‘The transfer from NATO.’

The electronics included a games computer, a music deck with recessed quadraphonic speakers and a brow-level television on an articulated metal arm. It was tuned to MTV. Industrial glass shelving was lined with DVDs. A metal-grid stairway led up to a balcony and glass alcoves beyond.

‘The Pentagon footed the bill for all this,’ added Paul.

Strangely, the overall effect was somehow chic - and not masculine. The curtains and upholstery were a soft mauve, with cream rugs on the floor. The lighting was dimmed to highlight the glow of a wood fire, the flames flickering in what must have been an original fitting, a white marble hearth. And one wall was dominated by the shifting colours of a holographic projection - a scene depicting a woman among spring flowers.

‘Scotch?’ asked Paul.

‘With ice,’ she told him, and watched him pour their drinks from the same bottle, before turning to admire the 3-D image.

He came over with the glasses.

‘It’s the most expensive thing in the house,’ he said, ‘after the research computer.’

‘What is it?’

‘A laser version of a Pre-Raphaelite painting -
Persephone’s Return
from the Underworld.
‘

‘Well, you’ve certainly got a unique place here,’ Rita commented.

‘I don’t know what’s more impressive, the makeover or the location.’

‘The house has an interesting history,’ said Paul. ‘It was built a century ago by a German botanist who spent years documenting the species of flora he discovered.’

‘Did he name the place Eden?’

‘Yes. It’s how he saw the biodiversity of the rainforest - all that primeval creation, parts over a hundred million years old. Mind you, it acquired a certain irony when he died from snakebite.

When we found the villa, it was unoccupied and dilapidated.’