‘Yes, I’m all right.’ He turned to me. ‘I have to thank you, mate. You were bloody useful.’ He looked to be about fifty or a bit older, with the crinkly hair, dark skin and wide nose of the Aboriginal. He had boxing scars around his eyes and when I shook his hand I felt the lumpy knuckles of the ex-fighter. ‘Who are you, brother?’
‘Cliff Hardy. If you’re Bob Mulholland, I was coming to see you.’
‘That’s me. Yeah, Mike Hickie told me. Excuse me a minute. Geoff, will you do something about the petrol? You’ll need a hose and some sand. Col, can you take a look at the tyres?’
The men nodded. Col was the sniffer. He sniffed again. ‘Great throw with the Stillson, mate.’
‘Lucky,’ I said.
Mulholland brushed dirt from the knees of his grey pants. He wore a white shirt, no tie. Grey hair sprouted at the neck. ‘All in a day’s work. This is Mrs Carboni, Mr Hardy.’
‘Anna,’ she said.
‘Cliff,’ I said.
Mulholland mimed a short left jab and the solid right he had thrown a few minutes before. ‘Let’s go inside. I could do with a cuppa tea.’
We went up a short flight of concrete steps into the brick building which turned out to be the office. There was no air conditioning or interior decoration; it was a large work space with three desks, two computers, filing cabinets and notice boards covered with bits of paper. A couple of big maps of Sydney and suburbs hung on one wall; on another was a large blackboard with times, dates and numbers scrawled on it in chalk. Anna Carboni asked whether I would rather have tea or coffee. I plumped for coffee the way I do a hundred times out of a hundred.
Mulholland settled into a chair and put his feet on the desk quite close to a computer. He gestured for me to pull another chair across. The computer screen was full of figures.
‘Mike said you wanted to know a bit about the business. What you’ve just seen isn’t typical.’
‘I’d be surprised if it was. But you’re not interested in calling the police?’
He shrugged. ‘I didn’t see the number of their truck, did you?’
I tried to remember. ‘I don’t think it had one.’
‘There you are. The cops couldn’t help even if they wanted to, which is only even money. I blame myself. Things’ve been very quiet and I got slack. I should’ve kept a look out. Barnes would have roasted me for leaving those bloody gates open.’
Anna came back from the sink and urn at the far end of the room with three mugs. She gave me mine, Mulholland his and sat at one of the desks. She tapped computer keys.
‘Thanks, Anna, you make a great cuppa.’ Mulholland said.
She smiled. ‘For a wog.’
‘You can’t help being a New Australian.’ He grinned at me, which puckered the smooth scar tissue and made slits of his eyes. ‘Neither can you.’
‘Right,’ I said. Through the window I could see Geoff, Col and another man working in the yard. The big gates were closed. ‘How much did Michael Hickie tell you?’
Mulholland sipped his black tea. ‘About you? Nothing. Just said to help you any way I can.’
‘Barnes thought someone might try to kill him,’ I said. Anna Carboni’s head jerked aside, but she kept her eyes on the screen in front of her. ‘What do you think of that?’ I was addressing both of them, but Mulholland answered.
‘I warned him a coupla times that he was taking too many bloody risks, cutting corners, going at it too fast. But… did you know him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he did what you’d expect. Tightened the security around here and other places and made sure the accident insurances were paid up, but he didn’t do a bloody thing about his personal safety. What brings you into it?’
I told him while he finished his tea.
‘Drink your coffee before it gets cold.’ His voice, gruff and harsh, as it is with most older Aborigines, sounded almost hostile. ‘I wish he’d told me he felt that way. Maybe I coulda helped him. Given it a bloody good go, anyhow.’
I drank the coffee. Anna Carboni had stopped working; she gazed across the top of the computer monitor. ‘He was a strong man,’ she said. ‘The best I ever worked for.’
Mulholland nodded. I told them that Felicia Todd was having discussions with Hickie about the future of the business. They listened and seemed comforted. Anna was in her forties-these were not good times for people at their stage of life to be thrown out of work. I explained that I wanted a rundown on the business: number of employees and details about them, long-term contracts, new jobs, sub-contracting, competition.
‘Do you know who your visitors today were, for instance?’
‘I’d guess they were from Riley’s,’ Mulholland said. ‘Just a dumb stunt to keep us on the ropes.’
‘Who’s Riley?’
‘Big operator. One of the biggest, before Barnes came along and undercut him and provided a better service right across the board. Riley had a big slice of trucking, storage and house removal, all dovetailed but bloody expensive and ratshit managed.’
‘What’s house removal?’
‘It’s all the go. People want old houses off their land to build new things, other people want houses already built. We cut ‘em in half and move ‘em on low loaders. Supply and demand.’
‘Sounds tricky.’
‘It is, but there’s money in it. Riley had councillors in his pocket all over the state. Coppers too. Big kickbacks all round. You need council approval, see? And police co-operation on the roads. Barnes went to the local MPs and the straight councillors and got the game cleaned up. Riley didn’t like it.’
‘This seems like a pretty crude operation for a big wheel.’
‘Riley’s like that. We’ve lost a lot of business since Barnes died. I’ve had to put people off. Riley’s picked up our crumbs, but I think he wants to wipe us out altogether.’
‘So this wasn’t the first trouble here?’
Mulholland firmed his jaw muscles and shook his head in the way fighters do to loosen up. ‘First in daylight. There were a couple of pathetic goes at the office a while back. A shot at burning down a shed. Nothing we couldn’t handle.’
‘What sort of money’s involved?’ I said.
‘If you mean what’s up for grabs between Barnes Enterprises and some of the other big operators, it’s fairly complicated,’ Anna said. She touched the computer screen. ‘I could prepare a breakdown for you, but it’ll take me a few days. Do you happen to know how Mrs Todd is?’
‘She’s fine,’ I said. ‘Well… picking up.’
Mulholland seemed to be having trouble controlling a hostile spasm. ‘How come she’s taking an interest all of a sudden? That your doing?’
I shrugged. ‘I might have helped a bit.’
The scar-puckering grin again. ‘You’re all right, Cliff. Anna, you want some overtime?’
She nodded eagerly. The working relationship between them seemed to be excellent, and it is axiomatic that a good boss gets and keeps good workers. All the signs were that here at least Barnes Todd was surrounded by loyalty and efficiency.
‘Get the stuff he needs together.’ He took his feet from the desk. ‘Fancy a walk? I’ll show you over the place.’
For the next hour we walked from shed to shed, looked over the storage and maintenance areas, loading and unloading docks. We talked in bursts, frequently interrupted by the noise of the planes.
‘Pretty big show,’ I said.
‘Was getting bigger.’ He rubbed the back of his neck where he had taken the hard rabbit punch.
‘Sore head?’
‘Nah. Just a tap. Had ‘em harder than that, as you can probably tell.’
‘Where did you fight?’
‘Everywhere. Fought for the state welter title. Lost on points. But I won a few.’
I pointed to three identical gunmetal blue Ford Lasers parked in the shadow of a container. ‘What’re they for? Staff cars?’
Mulholland laughed. ‘They went out with the FBT tax. No, Barnes was pretty pissed off with the security service we were using. He was playing around with the idea of setting up his own.’
We were back at the office. Anna was about to start work on compiling data for me. She flourished a floppy disk. ‘How do you want it, Cliff? On disk, tape, paper, what?’