Why, then, was a slick, jet-setting Euro clubber and curvaceous assassin after a small, rusted tin box in Brisbane?
‘You kill Dill?’ I asked. It was time to get to the point.
‘Who Dill?’
‘The priest. My friend. Cut into tiny bits?’
‘Oh yeah. That’s what happen when you don’t hand over box.’
‘Why did you have to cut him up so ... so roughly? Without dignity or mercy?’
‘I test myself. Keep sharp. Sometimes I use just what’s at hand.’
‘What was at hand?’
‘Piece of sheet metal.’
Poor Dill, I thought.
‘Please, please explain to me why you want this box so badly. I’ve seen the contents. I know what’s in there. It was under the ground for almost 150 years. Why now?’
She puffed away on the cigar. It was getting shorter. So was my time to wriggle out of this pickle.
‘Zere is group, around long time, who don’t vant to see more saints. Naming of saints very political. Naming of saints offend lots of countries. Naming of saints upset governments and peoples. I paid to stop saints. I paid to destroy evidence. You get?’
I was agog. I no get. Whose sensibilities could the Blessed Mother offend? More than a century after her death? In Australia? At the bottom of the world?
I politely asked my assassin.
‘So many saints. Too many for my bosses to pick and choose, you understand? My bosses go after all saints. I hired. Is just job.’
‘To get to the evidence first?’
‘Now you understand.’
‘And kill anyone who gets in your way.’
‘Sure. Is nothing personal against this Meery. She good lady. Is only job for me. I like. I travel. Get paid lot of Euro. Is good. I do lot of southern-hemisphere saints. I working my way up. Top guys do China, important places. Very political, saints. You understand? Now where box?’
‘Why don’t you just ding-dong the Pope?’
‘Zere vill be another Pope.’
‘And there’ll always be saints,’ I said proudly.
She tapped a long nail on her wristwatch. ‘Time run out. Nearly time for ding-dong. No box, I turn clock back on. Peoples in Breesbane waiting for New Year clock, yes? For ding-dong.’
‘Why don’t you just use bang-bang and get it over with?’ I asked.
And at that precise moment I could have sworn that I heard a horse whinny echo up the clock tower. And I could have sworn I heard a deep, guttural, Texan-style yahoo that would have scared the britches off Tonto. And I could have sworn I heard the lift in the tower shaft stop and the old concertina cage doors open.
Seems Vampira the saint killer had heard it all too, because she let off a single shot from a tiny handgun. The muzzle flashed. The bullet ricocheted. I closed my eyes, waiting for a hit. I heard a bell sound a delicate ting, like someone tapping a champagne flute with a knife handle. Then, before I’d opened my eyes again, I heard an almighty crack, then a thud. I opened my eyes, and there below me was my lady killer, sprawled out and unconscious. Beside her was a chunk of sandstone the size of a large bread bap. It had cracked off part of the tower above her head. This beautiful, crumbling, deteriorating iconic landmark of the city of Brisbane had saved my life.
Tex Gallon appeared, unsteady on his feet with the plaster encasing his broken ankle. ‘Holy cactus, pardner! What you doin’ up there?’
I had to wait ten minutes for the blood to finally re-enter my feet. Then I had a New Year drink with Texaco Gallon and Bingo in the crowded press room while the cops took my little European killer friend away. (Tex would be arrested for DUI while riding Bingo home to Red Hill, I would discover the next day.)
I hopped into the Kombi, drove over several fresh lines of red paint around Edward Street. I was caught in some drag-racing-induced traffic jam at Yatala. I didn’t arrive on the Gold Coast until dawn. As the sun came up over the Pacific, and threw a veil of blush over the coast, I felt cleansed. Almost forgiven of my sins. It gave me added comfort to think of the precious little tin box I had stashed under the Kombi seat, and all the good it would bring to the world when I finally placed it in the right hands.
Peg was asleep. I hauled my sore and sorry self out to the back patio and eased into my faithful old banana lounge. I opened a warm beer I’d retrieved from the laundry tub full of melted ice water, and popped a small party hat on my head.
‘Happy New Year,’ I said to myself.
I fell asleep and, as Peg was to tell me later, my cracked tooth happily tweeted and twittered like a nightingale.
~ * ~
FIVE
THE GOOD
MURDER GUIDE
~ * ~
1
In all my long years as a homicide detective, there were few sadder murder scenes than the homes of middle-aged bachelors.
I’m not trying to be cute. I saw it all. Anything to do with children was tragic, your greatest nightmare — and believe me some of those cases still stalk the dark corners of my substantial skull.
And there was the usual gamut of horror — the revenge slaughterhouses, the messy suicides, the blood-drenched domestics, the gob-smacking intestine-draped altars of psychotic religious messengers. I studied death by gun, knife, vehicle, drug, fire, poison, wrench, paper spike, sword and, once, an expensive Mont Blanc rollerball pen.
When it comes to murder, I’ve been everywhere, man.
Perhaps it’s an ageing guy thing with the bachelors. The pitiful bachelors. Not tragic. Just sad. The older I became, the more I understood, and the more they got to me. Theirs — before death set them free, of course — were the parallel futures of all men. One misstep, a card not played right, and woeful bachelor country awaited all of us.
Some of these men were — to use a polite, old-fashioned newspaper euphemism — confirmed bachelors. Not, as they say, that there’s anything wrong with that. I found, in my ceaseless snooping about the dwellings of the dead, that confirmed bachelors by and large kept a well-ordered house, and were beyond reproach when it came to tidiness, cleanliness, and their taste in, for example, obscure thirties West Midlands pottery.
No, the men I am recalling now, from the comfort of retirement and my sagging banana lounge on the Gold Coast, are those men who have savoured all the glories of family life, and for one reason or another have been cut adrift and cast onto the craggy, lonely shoals of late bachelorhood. The scant wardrobes with their profusion of ill-shaped wire hangers. The negligible toiletries in the bathroom. The bare refrigerators, uncleaned and stained with the sepia leakage of food long gone. The one, worn armchair in front of the television set.