Headhunters Read online

  The cab arrived. Milton opened the door for Matilda, got inside himself, and told the driver to head for St. Kilda. He had visited the area before and remembered that it was the kind of place where he would be able to get what he needed, but it was a long time ago and he had no idea how much things had changed. Melbourne was as prone to gentrification as any other big city, and he knew that there was a good chance that the streets had been cleansed and the red-light district relocated to another area. But he had to start somewhere, and, at least as far as his memories went, this was as good a place as any.

  The driver slowed the car as they reached Greeves Street. “This is as far as I’m going to go,” he said. “You know this is the red-light district, right?”

  “Thank you,” Milton replied, giving the man a twenty. The fare was ten and, instead of leaving the change as a tip, Milton waited for him to give it back before peeling off two dollars and passing them back to him again. The man shrugged, neither overly grateful at his generosity nor annoyed at his parsimoniousness; Milton was satisfied, since he didn’t want to stand out either way.

  Matilda and Milton stepped out of the cab and waited as it drove away. Milton looked around and assessed. Greeves Street was mixed use, with low-rent accommodation and business premises vying for space. They were opposite a meat wholesaler’s, the only operating business in a line of vacant and boarded-up factories and warehouses. There was a clutch of women on the street corner, dressed in cheap and revealing outfits, all of them displaying the emaciation of dope fiends. A car rolled slowly down the street and then, as they set off to the north, it passed them again. Milton watched as it drew to a halt, coming to rest adjacent to the women. One of the group peeled off and, clacking on scuffed heels, she crossed the pavement and leaned down with her arms on the sill of the open window so that she could speak to the driver. A transaction was discussed and agreed on, the woman went around to the passenger side and got in, and the car drove away.

  “Lovely places you bring me to,” Matilda said.

  Milton stayed close to her as they continued along the street. There was a pub five minutes up the road, with no sign above the door. Milton examined it from the other side of the street. More working girls congregated around the picnic tables that had been arranged in the concrete space that served as the garden, and pimps and pushers hovered menacingly, their faces lit by the red glow from their cigarettes and joints. There was no sign of the police. Milton had visited before and knew that law enforcement would treat the pub with kid gloves. Better, they would say, for the dregs of society to be drawn to one particular place where they could be monitored, rather than closing it down and dispersing them so that it would be more difficult to keep a tab on them. No effort had been made to tidy the place up, and that, they would hope, would be enough to steer the unknowing to another street and another place to get a drink.

  Milton crossed the road and, with Matilda behind him, went inside.

  There was a single low room with a bar at one end and the start of a corridor at the other. Milton checked for ways in and out, as was his habit, and saw only two: the way that they had entered and, provided it was unlocked, the door at the end of the corridor. There were open windows, too, wide enough to serve the purpose if it became necessary. It could have been worse.

  He felt the baleful eyes of the regulars on them. They regarded them with unhidden hunger. Most likely they thought that they were easy marks, maybe tourists who had wandered in the area looking for Melbourne’s boho quarter, ready to be ripped off or rolled. Milton had the Glock shoved into the waistband of his jeans, the butt hidden by the untucked tails of his shirt. He felt secure enough, even in a room like this, but that didn’t mean that he was relaxed. He was confident that he would be able to protect them both, but the last thing he wanted was a confrontation that might attract the attention of the police.

  “What a dive,” Matilda muttered.

  There was a table at the far side of the room. It was away from the door, which did not please him, but it was arranged so that he could see all of the room if he sat with his back to the wall. Milton guided Matilda to the other chair and then asked her if she wanted a drink.

  “Do I have to?”

  “No. But I’m thirsty.”

  “Bottle of water.”

  He nodded and went to the bar. The bartender was a big man, with a furze of rough black hair down his arms and disappearing beneath the folds of a sweaty and torn Hells Angels T-shirt. His biceps bore a sleeve of prison tattoos and his nose had the flattened aspect of one that has been broken a few times too many.

  “What do you want?” he asked as he turned to address Milton.

  “Two bottles of water.”

  “You serious?”

  Milton held his eye. “Two bottles of water.”

  The man shook his head, reached down into a below-counter fridge, and took out two cold plastic bottles. Milton took the moment to look over his shoulder. There was an open door behind him that looked like it led into a stockroom. Milton saw a man in the doorway with a crate of beer in his arms. The man was skinny and tattooed and Milton recognised him at once. Their eyes met. The man looked confused and then, as realisation dawned, he looked frightened.

  “Five bucks.”

  Milton paid the barman. “Could you get Walter for me, please?”

  “Who?”

  “Walter,” Milton repeated. “The owner. Get him for me.”

  The man squinted at him. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Smith.”

  “That right?”

  “John Smith. Walter knows me.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Smith. No one called Walter here.”

  The man turned to serve another customer, but Milton reached out quickly across the bar and took his wrist. The man turned back to him again, a threat ready on his lips and anger wrinkling his brow, but Milton dug his thumb and index finger into the man’s pressure point and the anger warped into a blast of pain.

  “He’s in the back,” Milton said, nodding his head to the open door where he had seen the other man. “I just saw him. Tell him I don’t want to have to go in there and bring him out.”

  Milton released his hand. The man’s anger was exchanged for unease, badly masked with feigned annoyance. He took his wrist in his other hand and massaged it.

  “Now,” Milton said.

  He took the bottles back to the table.

  “I’ve been in some dives,” Matilda said when he sat down, “but this…”

  “Not the most pleasant,” Milton agreed as he twisted off the lid of his bottle and took a long draught. He was taking a second drink when he noticed that Walter had come out of the storeroom. He was watching him. Milton set the bottle on the table and looked over Matilda’s shoulder at the man, holding his gaze.

  “What is it?”

  “The man we’ve come to see is about to introduce himself.”

  Walter started across to them. He didn’t look like very much at all. He was tall and slim, wearing a dirty pair of jeans and a muscle top that exposed skinny arms that were decorated from wrist to shoulder with a sleeve of lurid tattoos. More prison ink. His hair was thinning, pink stretches of scalp catching the harsh fluorescent light overhead, and his attempt at a moustache was an embarrassing wisp of fluff. Genetically, he had been dealt a very disappointing hand.

  “Hello, Walter.”

  “Mr. Smith.”

  Milton nodded.

  “And Mrs. Smith?”

  Matilda turned so that she could look at him, and Milton caught the sneer of disgust on her face. Now that he was closer, Milton could see the tracks on his arms and the unpleasant welt that had developed in the crook of his elbow. That was a new development. The vascular damage and the weeping wound were the unmistakeable badges of an addict who couldn’t hide the evidence of his addiction any longer. Milton had expected that this might be unpromising, but it was worse than he had feared. If he had a choice, he would have stood up and led the wa
y out of the bar. But he didn’t have a choice. If they wanted to get out of the country, this was about as good as it was going to get. Walter was their main hope.

  “Didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  “Sit down.”

  Walter did as he was told. Milton knew that Walter was frightened of him, and that was with very good reason.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I need your help, Walter.”

  “I ain’t into that business any more.”

  “You can get back into it again. One-time deal.”

  “No,” the man said. “This is my business now. The bar. Look around. Going well.”

  “Come on, Walter.”

  “No, Mr. Smith, I’m serious. I don’t do none of that no more.”

  He started to stand.

  “You really want to annoy me, Walter? How short is your memory?”

  The man lowered himself back into the chair again, his resistance gone. Milton had known that he would only need a little prompting. He had been in the passenger seat of the car that afternoon, down by the docks, and had ended up with the blood of his charge sprayed all over his face and a close-up look at the business end of Milton’s pistol.

  “What do you need?”

  “We need to get out of the country.”

  “So go to the airport. I’ll call you a cab.”

  “I’m not in the mood for jokes, Walter.”

  “You want me to help you? After last time?”

  “That wasn’t your fault. He was careless.”

  That seemed to give the man a small jolt of confidence. “Yeah,” he said. “It wasn’t my fault. I told him to stay in the hotel and he didn’t.”

  “No,” Milton said. “He didn’t.”

  “And you clocked him.”

  “We did.”

  He scrubbed his fingers through his thinning hair. “So why can’t you use the airport?”

  “No questions, Walter. You know better than that. Do you still have a hook-up at the port?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “And the paperwork?”

  “What do you need?”

  Milton reached into his pocket and pulled out the passport photos that he had prepared earlier.

  “Everything. Passports for both of us, anything else you think we might need.”

  They had moved on from their unfortunate beginning, and now Walter was telling Milton what he needed to do. He found a little assertiveness in a topic he knew well, and Milton, hiding his irritation, knew it would be better to give him his head.

  “You’re an ugly bastard,” the man said, glancing down at the strip with Milton’s likenesses. He turned the page and angled his head to Matilda. “But you’re as pretty as a picture.”

  “How soon can you do it?” Milton asked, intervening in an attempt to save him from the denunciation that he could see Matilda was about to deliver.

  “Usually takes a week.”

  “We don’t have a week.”

  “So it’ll cost more, then. When do you need to go?”

  “Tomorrow. How much?”

  “Two grand for the passports. Twenty to get you out of the country.”

  “Twenty?”

  “Each.”

  He felt Matilda prickle.

  Milton let it ride. The money didn’t matter. They had enough. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll give you fifty if you can get us out tomorrow. And that’s for the premium service. Full discretion. You understand, Walter? What happened before—he was careless, but I’m very, very good at what I do. You remember that, don’t you? You know I’m good at finding people, and what happens when I find them.”

  Milton was keenly aware that Matilda was beside him. He didn’t want to threaten Walter in front of her, but it was important that the man understood the consequences of disappointing him. Milton needed him to be on his game. Walter did understand, and his new-found assertiveness drained away as quickly as it had come. Milton could see that the memory of their last encounter was still fresh.

  “You don’t need to tell me twice, man. I understand.”

  “That’s good,” Milton said. “Where do you want us to come?”

  “Here. Tomorrow. Six in the morning.”

  *

  THEY LEFT the bar and walked back to more civilised streets.

  “You know him?” Matilda asked.

  “Unfortunately.”

  “How?”

  “He’s a smuggler. Contraband, mostly. But he’ll move anything if it pays well enough.”

  “People?”

  “Yes.”

  “So?”

  “Three years ago, when I was… working for the government.” He paused for a moment before choosing the verb, unwilling to be more graphic, but knowing at the same time that she would know exactly what he meant. “There was a man in Australia who was involved in Islamic terrorism. A recruiter. He was responsible for several British Muslims going to fight for al-Qaeda. I was given orders to find him and… stop him.”

  “Stop him?”

  Milton bit his lip to stop from wincing. “Neutralise him.”

  “And?”

  “This man knew that he couldn’t use the airports. He knew he would be found. So he used Walter. He was going to smuggle him out aboard a ship. It might have worked, too, but he got sloppy and we saw him outside his hotel. We followed him to the docks. That’s where I met Walter.”

  “When you shot the other man?”

  “Yes.”

  “But not Walter?”

  “It had nothing to do with him. He was just a third party.”

  It wasn’t quite as cut and dried as that, although Milton didn’t elaborate. But he remembered that his first instinct had been to shoot Walter, too. He had seen Milton’s face. Milton had aimed the pistol at his head, ready for the instinctive double tap into the head and body. If it had been at the beginning of his career with the Group, he would have followed through with it. The rules of engagement were clear: headhunters left no witnesses. But he wasn’t at the beginning of his career, fortunately for Walter, and he had begun to develop the burden of guilt that would eventually become too heavy for him to bear.

  They crossed onto Nicholson Street. The area was more smartly bohemian now, away from the grit and squalor of the red-light district. Milton saw a taxi waiting at a nearby junction and flagged it down. The cabbie flashed his lights to acknowledge him.

  “Is that how we’ll leave the country?” Matilda said as the cabbie pulled up next to them.

  “Yes,” Milton said.

  “And you think he can do it?”

  “What I said to him was true: what happened before wasn’t his fault. It would have worked. The guy came out of his hotel and he was spotted. We’ll be more careful.”

  He hoped that he was right. Milton knew he was gambling. Walter had allowed himself to slide into squalor in the time since their paths had crossed, and Milton would not have trusted him as far as he could throw him. Then, too, he suspected that the police would circulate his picture from the bank’s security cameras. What if a reward was offered? What if it was more than the fifty thousand that Milton had offered Walter? What then?

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  THEY WERE back at the bar at six, just as Walter had instructed. The sun was just appearing over the tops of the low buildings and the streets were quiet. The bar was empty and had yet to be cleaned from the night before. There were empty glasses on the tables and spilt beer on the floor.

  Walter was waiting for them.

  “Well?” Milton said.

  “It’s been arranged. You need to leave now.”

  He took them outside and around to the back of the bar. There was a large dusty square of ground that had once, from the look of the charred debris that remained, accommodated another building. A tractor and semi-trailer had been parked in the space. A freight container had been loaded onto the trailer.

  “Your ticket out of Australia,” Walter said, indi
cating the container with a sweep of his hand.

  Matilda stopped in her tracks. “You’re kidding.”

  “What?” Walter said, confused.

  “I’m not getting into that.”

  Milton understood her reaction. Her memory of the trip across country in the back of the van had probably not lost any of its edge.

  “That’s how you’re getting out of Australia, darling.”

  “No. Find another way.”

  “How long do we need to be in it?” Milton interceded.

  “The container gets loaded, you wait on board, the freighter sails.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  There were no two ways about it, Milton thought: it was going to be unpleasant. The container would collect and amplify the heat, and Walter wanted them to stay inside it all day. They would cook.

  “We don’t have a choice,” he said to Matilda. “We need to leave. This is the safest way.”

  She held his eye, sighed, and shook her head. “This is ridiculous. All day, in there?”

  “I know. It’s not going to be much fun, but there’s no other way. We can’t stay.”

  “We can’t fly?” She spoke with resignation, already knowing the answer to the question.

  “They’ll be covering the airports. They might be covering the ports, too. This way, there’s no way they’ll see us. We’ll be invisible.”

  “And cooked half to death.”

  “There are holes drilled in it,” Walter offered, “for ventilation.”

  “Praise be,” Matilda said, turning her back to him. She looked at Milton, shook her head and mouthed, “Fine.”

  Milton turned back to Walter. “What happens then?”

  “The crew will get you out when you’re at sea. You’ll have a cabin.”

  “Where’s the freighter headed?”

  “Auckland. Six days.”

  “Documents?”

  “Here.”

  Walter took a large envelope from his pocket. Milton opened it and took out the two passports inside. They looked legitimate, with the simple dark blue covers embossed with the Australian coat of arms. The photo page was microprinted with horizontal lines of text drawn from the lyrics to Waltzing Matilda. Milton’s name was David Anderson. He opened the other passport and flipped through it. Matilda was Miriam Shepherd. They would serve, he thought.