The Real Thing Read online

  ‘There you are Les,’ said Eddie, pulling out the knife and showing Norton the dark red, almost black blood still clinging to the blade. ‘Dead as a doornail. Aren’t you Vince? Just like your silly fuckin’ brother.’ Eddie wiped the blood off on Rossiter’s coat, reset the blade and put the knife back in his sock.

  ‘Well, I’ll be fucked,’ said Norton. ‘He’s dead all right.’

  ‘They don’t come any deader Les,’ smiled Eddie.

  ‘What did you do to him in the first place?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in a minute,’ said Eddie. ‘I just want to check something out first.’

  He reached over and removed Rossiter’s horn-rimmed glasses, folded them and put them in the top pocket of his coat. A tug at Rossiter’s grey hair proved it to be a very expensive, well-fitting wig. Eddie left it sitting loosely on his head. He undid the buttons on Rossiter’s coat to reveal a gun in a shoulder holster tucked neatly under his left arm, and pinned with large safety pins to the inside of his coat were four hand grenades.

  ‘Phew.’ Norton let out a long, low whistle. ‘Have a go at that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Eddie carefully unpinned one of the grenades and held it in his hand. ‘M203 fragmentation grenades. US issue. Christ, I wonder where he got these.’

  ‘Jesus. Imagine what would have happened if he’d dropped one of them in the club tonight.’

  ‘You and I wouldn’t be here to worry about it, I’ll guarantee you that.’ Eddie unclipped the rest of the grenades, placed them gently on the floor of the car and covered them with a large beach towel he had on the front seat.

  ‘Will they be all right there?’ asked Norton, a little nervously.

  ‘As long as you don’t pull the pins out.’

  ‘Not much chance of that.’

  Eddie removed Rossiter’s gun which turned out to be a Walther PPK.32 automatic. ‘Well, well, well,’ chuckled Eddie, as he looked at the shiny, blue-black pistol for a moment then slipped it into his coat pocket. ‘Vince must’ve been watching some old James Bond movies on TV. Like a drink Mr Bond?’ said Eddie, slapping Rossiter lightly on the jaw. ‘Vodka martini? Twist of lemon, shaken not stirred?’ Rossiter sat staring obliquely into eternity. The only movement was his jaw, which had begun to drop slightly. Eddie slipped his hand into Rossiter’s inside coat pocket and came out with a rather fat wallet. ‘Hello, what have we got here? Some chops?’ He counted the money quickly. ‘Two grand. There you go Les. One each.’

  ‘Something,’ replied Norton, slipping the wad of notes into his back pocket.

  ‘Better than a poke in the eye with a broken coat hanger. Well that ought to just about do Vince,’ said Eddie, putting the empty wallet back in his pocket. ‘Shove him down on the floor and hop in the front, and we’ll get going.’

  Norton pushed Rossiter’s body, which had started to stiffen just a little, onto the floor then walked round and got in the front. As soon as he closed the door Eddie started the motor and the big Rolls cruised off majestically towards Mascot Airport.

  ‘Well Eddie,’ said Les, ‘I’ve got to give it to you. That was pretty neat whatever you did to him in the club. You gonna tell me what it was?’

  ‘Sure.’ Eddie loosened his tie and settled back into the plush driver’s seat of the Rolls. ‘I hit him with this.’ He reached down between the two front seats and showed Norton the circle of wood with the sharpened screw sticking through it wrapped in a hanky. Les went to take hold of it. ‘Hey, don’t go grabbing it,’ said Eddie quickly. ‘Just hold it by the wooden part. Don’t touch that sharpened bit or you’ll finish up like your mate in the back.’

  Norton held the strange little object delicately between his forefinger and thumb, examined it carefully then handed it back to Eddie who flicked the hanky back over it and replaced it between the seats.

  ‘What is it anyway?’ asked Les.

  ‘A punji stick.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A punji stick; or at least a Western version of it. It’s a little trick I learnt in Vietnam. The VC used to dig these little holes in the bush and they’d put sharpened bamboo stakes on the bottom which they’d smear with human shit then cover the holes over. Some poor mug’d come walking along, step into one of the holes and bingo, he gets a stake through his foot. The shit makes your foot blow up like a balloon and if “evac” unit doesn’t get to you, you can lose your foot, sometimes your leg.’

  ‘Sounds lovely.’

  ‘Yeah. Anyway, the second time I went back to ‘Nam, working with the CIA and the US 101st Airborne, I was up in a place called Cheo Reo. It’s an old Montagnard tribe district. I ended up pretty good mates with the Monts and they showed me another variation of it. They’ve got this little plant they call “the cobra’s heart”. It grows near ponds in the jungle and funnily enough it grows over here too — if you know where to look. Anyway the root contains one of the most deadly poisons on earth. It causes instant paralysis. Just like you were a car and someone switched the motor off. We used to use it if we had to waste someone on the sly, like an ARVN informer or a VC sympathiser. You just crush the root up, smear it on a punji stick and jab ’em with it. The trick is, though, to get them right in the spinal chord. It stops them dead but you can generally walk them along a few metres then put them down somewhere and they just sit there, all nice and quiet, just staring into space. But dead as a doornail.’

  ‘And that’s what you used on Rossiter?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Norton looked at Eddie for a moment, with the lights from the dashboard reflecting on his face, and couldn’t help shuddering slightly at the matter-of-fact manner in which the deadly little assassin discussed one of his sinister killing methods — like he was talking about a new way of changing an oil filter on a car.

  ‘But how did you know for sure it was Rossiter?’ he asked. ‘I thought I saw you say something to him when you stepped up behind him.’

  Eddie laughted softly. ‘Well, when I saw him coming up the stairs, I thought this bloke’s in pretty good shape for an old fella.’

  ‘Yeah. I thought that myself,’ said Norton.

  ‘I couldn’t quite see his eyes but as he started walking towards Price I sprung that dip in his shoulder. So I walked up behind him and said, “Hello Vince, wish your brother a happy birthday for me.” He gave himself away then, and that’s when I hit him.’

  Norton shook his head slowly. ‘Well fuck me.’

  Eddie looked at Norton and smiled. ‘Not particularly thanks Les.’

  By now they were about halfway along General Holmes Drive, going past the airport heading towards Brighton-le-Sands. It was getting on for 1.30 and there weren’t a great deal of cars on the road as Eddie slowed down the Rolls and had a look in the rear-vision mirror. ‘I hope there’s no cops around,’ he said, as he spun the big car up over the median-strip and did a quick U-turn to bring them over on the side of the freeway facing back to the city. He cruised along a few hundred metres, driving slowly and looking out Norton’s window. ‘Here it is,’ he said. He pulled the car up off the road and switched off the motor.

  Norton put his head up against the window and peered out into the darkness; all he could see was mangrove brush and other scrub growing up against a corroded, cyclone-wire fence which ran off in the shadows on either side of the car. Just in front of his face the brush cleared away to reveal a cyclone-wire gate with a chain and padlock holding it.

  ‘Righto Les,’ said Eddie, pointing out the car window. ‘You see that gate there? I’m going to go and open it — I’ve got the key. You get Rossiter out and drag him over, then we’ll both drag him off into the bush. You right? Let’s go.’

  Eddie got out and trotted over to the gate. By the time he’d got the lock open Norton had Rossiter out of the Rolls and, after a quick check for passing cars, took Rossiter firmly by the collar and dragged him across to where Eddie was waiting with the gate open. He whipped the body straight through as Eddie closed the gate and draped the chain loosely round the
bolt.

  ‘Righto Les,’ said Eddie, taking a grip on Rossiter’s collar alongside Norton, ‘up this way — there’s a bit of a path. I’ve got a torch.’

  Eddie switched on a small torch and, with Rossiter between them, they started dragging him toes-up along a narrow, sandy trail which led off into the bush.

  After about a hundred metres of half-stumbling, half-jogging in the darkness, lit faintly by the bouncing beam of Eddie’s tiny torch, the bush started to clear. About the same distance in front of them Norton could make out a group of construction workers pouring concrete underneath a bank of arc lights; their voices and the sounds of cement mixers and other heavy machinery were quite audible in the still of the night. They proceeded about another fifty metres and Eddie called a halt. ‘Okay. Just wait here a minute,’ he said quietly.

  Norton let go of Rossiter and got down on his haunches noticing they’d stopped up against one of four wooden piers, formed up with scaffolding, ready for pouring. They were a little wider than a phone booth and a couple of metres higher, but went down another six metres into the sand and were to be part of a row of concrete piers supporting a new air-strip running out over Botany Bay.

  As they squatted there Eddie produced a small beeper from one of his pockets. He pressed a button and Norton heard a voice boom out from among the workers barely fifty metres in front of them. ‘I’m just gonna duck over for a piss. I’ll be back in a minute,’ said one of the construction workers who detached himself from the others and started walking towards them. Crouching low, Eddie moved to the furthest pier and waited for him, hiding in the shadow from the others.

  As he approached Les could see he was a big, bull-necked construction worker wearing a pair of blue overalls and a red safety-helmet. He stood next to the pier Eddie was hiding behind, unzipped his fly and started to let out a great torrent of urine which splashed and bubbled in the sand at his feet. In the distant gleam of the arc lights Norton could just make out JW. Foreman, on the front of his safety helmet. Still hidden from the others, Eddie stood up and whispered something to the man who banged the pier next to him with his fist. A wad of money changed hands then the man zipped up his fly and without saying a word turned and walked back to the others.

  ‘Okay, everything’s sweet,’ said Eddie, returning to Norton. ‘We’ve got to dump him in that pier I was sitting next to. You right?’

  They took Rossiter by the collar once more and dragged him over to the pier where they stood him up against the scaffolding, keeping it between them and the workers. Rossiter’s body had stiffened a little more by now and in the moonlight his face had turned a ghostly, chalky white.

  ‘I’ll climb up on the scaffolding,’ said Eddie, ‘and you pass him up to me.’ Eddie clambered up the metal pipes a few metres, reached down and took Rossiter by the collar. ‘Okay. Pass him up Les.’ Norton bent down, got a firm grip on Rossiter’s ankles and lifted him up to shoulder height. ‘Okay, now give him one good shove.’ Les switched his grip to beneath Rossiter’s feet, got his chest under him and heaved him straight up. Eddie tilted Rossiter’s head back over the side of the empty scaffolding and gravity did the rest. Vince Rossiter’s body tumbled down the shaft to land with a dull splash in a couple of metres of muddy rainwater.

  Eddie jumped down and they ran back and hid in the darkness at the edge of the last pier. ‘Just wait here a minute,’ he said, spitting out a few grains of sand.

  They crouched in the shadows, silently wiping sand and picking twigs from their clothes. Before long a huge, rumbling cement truck, its load spinning slowly round on the back, led by the man with JW. Foreman on his hat, started backing up to the pier containing Rossiter’s body. When it got close enough, the foreman blew his whistle, the truck stopped and two men came round and unshackled a short metal chute from the back of the truck which they swung over the empty shaft. A third man wet the chute with a hose then at a signal from one of the other men, the foreman blew his whistle again, the truckdriver waved his arm out the window, hit the tilt button and fifty tonnes of wet, blue-metal-thickened cement splattered down on top of Vince Rossiter entombing him there forever.

  Eddie slapped Norton on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s piss off.’ He picked up the trail with his torch and they headed back for the car.

  ‘I might give Price a call,’ said Eddie, picking up the radio-telephone from between the two front seats of the Rolls. ‘Better let him know everything’s sweet.’

  ‘Yeah righto,’ replied Norton gruffly, his door still open. ‘I’ll get some of this bloody sand out of my shoes. You’d think I just come through the Simpson fuckin’ Desert.’

  While Les removed his shoes and socks, Eddie hit the buttons and got through to the Kelly Club. ‘Hello George. It’s Eddie. Is Price there?’

  ‘Hold on a sec mate. I’ll get him,’ replied George Brennan. In a few moments Price was on the phone.

  ‘Hello Eddie. How did it go? Everything sweet?’ His voice was quiet but it was obvious he was in a state of great excitement.

  ‘Good as gold,’ replied Eddie. ‘Your friend is resting well and I don’t think he’ll be bothering anyone for quite some time.’

  ‘Good on you. By Jesus that was smooth work son,’ Price chuckled into the phone.

  Eddie glanced at Norton hunched in the car door, banging his shoes on the ground. ‘I couldn’t have asked for a better back-up.’

  ‘He’s a good, staunch man Les.’

  ‘One of the best Price.’

  ‘I know. So listen, there’s a briefcase in the boot with twenty-five grand in it. Give him that when you drop him off home. In fact, why don’t you both take the rest of the night off, get a couple of sheilas and go and have a blow out somewhere? Take the Rolls and bridge up a bit. Charge it all to me.’

  ‘Righto. We might just do that. You sure you can afford it?’

  Price burst out laughing. ‘Can I afford it? Eddie you’re not going to believe this. You know Jilly Mantella who runs the Touch of Style?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, her and one of her best girls walked in here just after you left with two Arab oil sheiks. Prince Waddi someone or other and his cousin.’

  ‘Yeah, go on.’

  ‘They haven’t been here an hour and they’ve just dropped about half a million.’

  ‘Fair dinkum?’

  ‘Oh mate, you’ve got no idea. And they’re laughing their silly bloody heads off. I’ll end up taking these two glorified bowser-boys for a million before the night’s out.’ Price burst out laughing again. ‘Steve Rossiter’s birthday and I get all the presents. Happy birthday to you — happy birthday to you.’

  Eddie laughed and shook his head. ‘You’re not bad Price.’

  ‘I know. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to keep at these two camel drivers while they’re on the boil. Say hello to Les for me, and tell him I’ll give him a call tomorrow. In fact I’ll probably call round. And I’ll see you when you bring the car round. Okay?’

  ‘Righto, see you then. Goodbye Price.’

  ‘Goodbye Eddie. Thanks mate.’ They both hung up.

  ‘How was Price?’ asked Norton, closing the car door.

  ‘Good as gold. He said to take the rest of the night off and have a drink on him and there’s a nice bonus for you when I drop you off — and he’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh beauty.’

  ‘Well, where do you fancy going?’ said Eddie, starting the car.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind goin’ home and getting changed first.’

  ‘All right.’ The big Rolls rejoined the traffic on General Holmes Drive and they headed towards Bondi.

  They cruised along silently for a while each man immersed in his own thoughts as they absently listened to some music on the car radio. Norton was still slightly bewildered by the speed and deadly efficiency of the night’s events. After all, it isn’t every day, or night, you help to murder someone with poison in an illegal gambling casino, whisk his body halfway across town
in a Rolls Royce, then, after robbing him, bury his body in tonnes of concrete underneath an international airport — all more or less with the cooperation of two detectives. Even now Norton still found it a little hard to believe it had all happened.

  Finally Eddie reached over and slapped Les on the thigh. ‘Listen mate,’ he said ‘I want to thank you, too, for tonight. You were terrific all the way.’

  Norton shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s all right Eddie. It’s part of my job anyway.’

  ‘Yeah, there’s a bit more to it than that though,’ smiled Eddie.

  ‘Maybe. These Rolls Royces are all right, aren’t they,’ said Norton, changing the subject and easing himself a bit more luxuriously back into the seat.

  ‘You like toffing up Les?’

  ‘Oh yeah. Why not?’

  ‘Well here you are, grab one of these.’ Eddie produced two large, expensive Havana cigars out of a compartment from somewhere under the radio-casette player. He put one in his mouth and handed one to Les then pressed the lighter on the dash. Within a few seconds they were puffing away ostentatiously. ‘Well, what do you reckon?’ said Eddie, grinning as he let out a great cloud of blue smoke.

  ‘Not bad. Be better if I smoked,’ laughed Norton, coughing slightly.

  They went along a bit further, quietly, comfortably, up Darley Road past Queens Park, puffing away at the two huge cigars when suddenly the headlights picked up two young girls hitch-hiking along the side of the road.

  ‘Hello,’ said Eddie, slowing down. ‘Two young spunks lookin’ for a lift. We throw ’em in?’