A Dark Place to Die Read online

  He might as well; it may be the only thing he manages to accomplish in Liverpool. The fact is, sitting in The Phil with the two detectives, Koop is feeling more than a little foolish. Both carry that air of absolute professionalism that he remembers well and it reminds him forcibly that he's nothing more than an amateur now. He delivers coffee, for fuck's sake. He knows what he'd be thinking if he was at the other side of the table.

  Koop takes another drink and leans back, feeling the journey in the ache of his bones and the sand behind his eyes. He wants to take a long shower followed by an even longer sleep. He coughs, his throat dry from twenty-four hours plus inside a sealed metal tube.

  'So,' he says, his eyes on Em Harris, 'what can I help you with, officer?'

  'We heard you were coming.'

  'Passport control,' says Koop. It's a statement. It's what he'd have done in their position. For the first time since arriving, Koop feels a tingle as something dormant stirs. He hasn't been out of the game for that long. It's not much but it feels good.

  'We wanted to . . . to make sure you didn't do anything . . . rash, Koop.' Keane holds the gaze of his old boss. He taps his nail against the rim of his glass and Koop watches the small movement fixedly, Keane's words distant.

  'Why are you here, Mr Koopman?' says Em, cutting across Koop's jetlagged stare. She leaves the prefix in deliberately and Keane glances sideways at her. Em Harris does everything deliberately and Keane can see why she's being cagey. Menno Koopman may have been something in the city once, but as far as Em is concerned he's trouble. Harris has no illusions about the dangers someone like Koopman could pose to her investigation. And as much as Frank Keane likes to put himself about as top dog, Em Harris thinks of the case as hers.

  'Koop,' says Koop with a wry smile. 'Call me "Koop".' He knows why she's keeping an edge.

  'Why are you here, Koop?' says Harris, her voice business-like. 'You hardly knew your son. And your brother is still safely tucked up in Bowden.'

  Keane flashes Em a glance but Koop holds his hand up in a gesture of surrender. He takes another drink and leans forward, digesting Harris's welcome information that Carl is under lock and key. Coming from the patently reliable Harris, it's a relief. She's answered the question that's been at the front of his mind since the news about Stevie: was his brother involved?

  Koop relaxes.

  'Honestly?' he says. He feels a sneeze coming on, lifts a tissue from his pocket and blows his nose. Christ, he's forgotten how cold this country can be.

  'That would be best, Koop,' says Keane. 'Em has no patience with anything else.'

  'I don't know why I'm here, not really,' says Koop. He spreads his hands out, palms upwards; an oddly Italianate gesture. 'Back in Australia – back home – it just seemed like something . . . I don't know, something that I had to do. DI Harris, Em, is right. I didn't know Stevie, not even a little bit. But he doesn't have anyone else to . . . well, there's no-one else left for Stevie. Not unless there's some de facto who doesn't know he's dead. From what the Aussies told me, that's not the case. And Carl? Well, I don't really know about him either. I haven't seen him in more than ten years. Maybe that's got a bit to do with coming over too. Flesh and blood, y'know?'

  The two cops don't reply. Koop looks at them both and smiles. It's an old copper's trick: say nothing and they'll keep talking. He continues regardless, not feeling like there's much for him to reveal.

  'You don't have kids, right, Frank? Unless you've been busy over the past few years?'

  Keane shakes his head.

  'How about you?' Koop nods at Harris.

  'Not my thing. Not yet, anyway.'

  'Me neither,' says Koop, after a glance towards Harris. 'At least none since Sharon had Stevie. They just didn't come along for me and Zoe. Not after . . . well, it just didn't happen. I don't think I'm the fatherly kind, to be honest.'

  Koop looks up and taps a finger on the table.

  'But I was Stevie's father, at least technically. And since there's no-one else, it's up to me to see he's looked after. Even if it's just the funeral.'

  'That won't be happening anytime soon, Koop,' says Keane gently. 'It's still a murder investigation, remember.'

  'And that's all you're here for?' says Harris. 'No thoughts about taking things into your own hands?'

  'Listen, I was a copper for longer than you can imagine and I might have cut corners from time to time, but I never went vigilante. Never. And I don't intend to start now.'

  Another wave of fatigue sweeps over Koop. He isn't sure if it's the effect of the flights and the beer, or the fact that he's just lied through his teeth to people he respected. But it can't be helped. If there's one thing he's going to do back in the city, it's find whoever did this to Stevie.

  He forces a smile onto his face.

  'Do I look like a vigilante to you?' he says. 'I deliver coffee.'

  He sees them relax a little. Koop sips his beer. There's a pause.

  'Of course, I used to be a pretty good copper,' says Koop with a glance at Keane. 'Who knows? Maybe I could spot something that might have slipped under the radar?'

  Keane looks dubious. Harris folds her arms across her chest. The movement attracts the attention of a couple of nearby drinkers who cast an appreciative eye over the DI. She's exactly Zoe's type, Koop can't help himself thinking, and a series of flash-frame images surge erotically through his head.

  'Not a chance, Koop,' she says, and for a moment Koop is flustered, until he realises what she's talking about. She might be a good copper but she's not a mind reader. Thank God.

  'Wait,' says Keane. 'Maybe it's worth a shot, Em. Koop knows plenty and he could be right.'

  Harris drains her drink and stands. 'Nice to meet you, Mr Koopman. Sorry for your loss,' she says, as brisk as January. She shakes Koop's hand and flashes a meaningful glare at Keane. 'I'll see you back at the office.'

  'How am I going to get back?' says Keane. 'You've got the car keys.'

  'Get a cab,' says Harris. 'You can drop Mr Koopman wherever he's staying and carry on from there.'

  Keane rolls his eyes but does nothing to stop his partner leaving. Both men watch her weave her way through the tables to the door, her passage leaving a procession of rubbernecking men in her wake. As the door to The Phil swings shut, Koop looks at Keane and lets out a long sigh.

  'I know,' says Keane. 'Have you any idea what it's like working with a woman like that every day and remaining sane?'

  Koop sucks his lower lip. 'Smart too,' he says. He smiles at Keane. 'You always do as she says?'

  Keane holds up a finger in warning.

  'Don't come that one, Koop. It's the oldest trick in the book. Divide and conquer.'

  'You know she's wrong, though, don't you, Frank? About me, I mean. I could be useful. You of all people know I could.'

  Keane pauses before reaching into his inside pocket and taking out a folded A4 brown envelope.

  'That's why I brought this.' He hands the envelope to Koop and glowers at his drink as if it has somehow persuaded him to do something he'll regret. 'Not a fucking word.'

  Koop puts the envelope on the table and pats the top of it.

  'My lips are sealed. Thanks, Frank.'

  'You might not thank me after you've seen it, Koop. The medicals are in there too.'

  Keane leans forward and drums his fingers on the scarred wooden tabletop. 'I'm going out on a limb here, Koop. You're not going to screw me around on this, are you?'

  'Cross my heart, Frank. I wouldn't dream of it.'

  Keane gets up from the table and drains his glass.

  'Why does that do nothing to reassure me? C'mon, let's get you to a hotel before you fall asleep in your beer.'

  26

  The first stop Warren Eckhardt makes after looking in on Max Kolomiets's corpse is the nearest newsagents to grab a fresh pack of smokes. The day is on its way to becoming a real bruiser, only just ten and already the mercury pushing thirty. By noon it'll become one of those heavy Gold
Coast afternoons, the thick dark clouds boiling up from the west behind the hills and the threat (or promise) of rain later. In the meantime it'll be hot as Hades, and for someone like Warren Eckhardt that means trouble.

  He makes a mental note – like he needs it – to stay inside air-conditioning all day like humans were supposed to do. If God had meant us to stay outside he wouldn't have invented the fucking Gold Coast on a sticky October afternoon. And it isn't even summer.

  Eckhardt cranks up the air-con in the Commodore and lights up. He lets the car cool until it's ice and feels himself relax. Smoke and cold air. Nothing like it.

  Now he can concentrate on the job in hand; finding out who wanted Max Kolomiets dead, and why. The second part might turn out to be something or nothing. But Eckhardt hopes it will be something. Not because he has any great burning ambition at this stage of his career, more that he plain and simple likes following something to the bitter end. I may be slow, he likes to say, but I'm steady, and I always arrive at the destination.

  Yeah, like a fucking old Volvo, Nick Matui had said. And about as good-looking.

  Eckhardt picks up The Russian's file and, engine running, sits in the car park outside the newsagents flicking through it once again.

  The file tells him Macksym Kolomiets arrived in Australia more than twenty-five years previously, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall and at a point in time when the West was still handing out permanent residency status to anyone who managed to get across the borders. Australia, keen as always to help their friends in Washington and London, followed suit and Max Kolomiets washed up here. The first few years, as far as Ekhardt can glean, he kept his head down. He worked a few menial construction jobs on one or two big-scale projects in Tasmania and in the Kimberleys before falling off the grid for a few years. Eckhardt figures that he must have spent those years honing his criminal talents, because the next time his name crops up it's as part of a pretty serious Melbourne-based drug operation. Kolomiets wasn't charged but was interviewed as a potential witness. He didn't testify. From that point, his criminal record – at least the official one – grew steadily, the level of the charges tracing his progress upwards through the ranks. His most recent was a fraud investigation into dodgy land deals on the Gold Coast. Naturally, he walked from that one.

  So much for the facts.

  Warren Eckhardt knows a great deal more about Max Kolomiets that hasn't made the book. You can't survive as a cop in a place like the Goldie without knowing who does what and when and to who. You don't need to know all the details – although, given a choice, that's the way Eckhardt would prefer it – but you do have to know the big players.

  Kolomiets was one of the very biggest.

  Eckhardt knows he was hugely profitable, not just for himself but for those who worked with and for him. His profitability made him one of the untouchables.

  Which makes his death all the more intriguing.

  Eckhardt turns to the witness statements from the soccer field. He was in on most of the interviews, but reads through them again anyway. Although accurate descriptions are so far sketchy, all agree that the killer was a 'Lebanese-looking' character. As all the witnesses have an Anglo background, Eckhardt privately expands this description to include all races who aren't white-skinned. The tendency for racial simplification is one he resists at all costs. Not because of any liberal leanings in his make-up. It's because those kind of prejudices can lead to a lot of wasted time and effort. The killer on the soccer field could turn out to be almost anything: Greek, Italian, Indian, indigenous, or Pacific Islander.

  Eckhardt hopes it isn't the last group. Some of those guys are hard work, even when they haven't done anything.

  Next, Eckhardt goes over what he knows.

  For Kolomiets to be killed like that there are only two explanations: someone bigger than him was unhappy with something he'd done, or someone smaller than him is making a step up.

  Eckhardt favours the second option, mainly because Kolomiets clearly had no inkling he was being targeted. As far as the other soccer boys could judge – the key witness not having so much as opened his mouth – Kolomiets greeted the killer warmly. He certainly didn't make a run for it, or produce a weapon of his own. There were no raised voices. The killer just walked up and shot him. This was an extremely useful bit of information. In Eckhardt's experience, when someone like Kolomiets allowed people to get near enough to shoot, it meant only one thing: the Ukrainian knew whoever killed him. Which helps to narrow the field and at least gives Eckhardt something to start on. The connection between killer and victim might be thin but that one exists at all is useful.

  Another thing.

  The killer let the boy go.

  Eckhardt considers that for some time. It could have been a practical decision, the killer's thinking running along the lines of least resistance. Offing a known criminal was ballsy. Killing an unarmed thirteen-year-old would have brought a lot more down on the shooter than Warren Eckhardt and his meagre team.

  But Eckhardt also reckons leaving the boy alive shows at least a trace of sentimentality. In his practical, non-PC, real-world stereotyping experience, that usually meant a Mediterranean.

  Eckhardt stubs out his cigarette and lights another. He notices a man in a suit pass him on the way into the Greek restaurant adjacent to the newsagent and shoot his smoke-filled car a disgusted glance.

  What? Are the smoke Nazis going to take that away now? Soon he'd have to travel to the motherfucking moon for a drag. He inhales deeper and turns back to the Kolomiets file.

  So who was locally in a position to make the step up to take over from Kolomiets? There aren't many candidates that Eckhardt can think of, but a few names pop into his head, Jimmy Gelagotis being one of them.

  Eckhardt puts the car into drive and heads towards Surfers. He'll see if he can find Gelagotis, take a look at him and watch what happens. It isn't what you might call a scientific approach to policing but it will do for now. Besides, whoever said policing was a science?

  27

  Koop hasn't cried once since hearing about Stevie's death. It was like hearing about a distant relative. Sad, certainly, but not close enough for it to make much of a dent in his armour.

  After reading the autopsy results and seeing the SOC photos, Menno Koopman lies on his hotel bed and weeps.

  Some of it may simply be the effects of jetlag working their way through his system, but a big chunk of it is pure sorrow. As a copper, Koop thought he'd seen everything. This, though – what happened to Stevie – is in another realm. A dark knot of hatred sits in Koop's belly.

  The images that are troubling him most are the SOC photographs from inside the container. That braced steel pole, the ground dark with blood – blood that contained his own genetic material – has the brooding presence of Warhol's 'Electric Chair' series that he saw at Brisbane's GOMA when accompanying Zoe on one of her frequent visits. The sense of extreme violence etched into the banal surroundings like acid on metal.

  Koop rises from the bed and moves unsteadily to the bathroom. He runs cold water into the basin and washes his face. He brushes his teeth, looks out of the window and tries to regain some equilibrium. His room at one of the new hotels that has sprung up like steel mushrooms along the waterfront looks out across the Mersey towards Birkenhead and the Wirral beyond. The grey-brown river is the same as always but Koop hardly recognises parts of the city, even after only a two-year gap.

  He breaks his gaze and returns to the bedroom. He collects everything Keane has given him and spreads it out methodically across the bed. It's time to forget about what he is now, and remember what he used to be: a copper, a good one.

  With the contents of the file spread out, Koop organises it into chronological order beginning with the witness statements given by the art students who discovered Stevie's body. He lifts a pad of hotel notepaper from a desk drawer and begins making notes. As he does, details glossed over on first reading tingle with possibilities.

  Ar
t students.

  The Gormley sculptures.

  The arrangement of the body. Of Stevie.

  The public display.

  Koop moves on to the autopsy. He reads dispassionately the details of Stevie's torture and death. He brings a policeman's mind to it and now it reads differently.

  The peeling of the skin.

  Burnt alive.

  The unburnt skin on Stevie's lower legs.

  Koop reflects on that last note. The killers – there was obviously more than one – went to considerable trouble to set the victim on fire while he was in the water, albeit only at knee height. This would do two things: it would make any access to the victim more difficult by, say, the fire service or by a passing good Samaritan, thereby ensuring Stevie did, in fact, die. The second and potentially more revealing point to Koop is a visual one. In his mind's eye he sees the burning man – his son – and the fire dancing across the waves, reflected in the rise and fall of the ink-black water.

  It would have been artistic, striking.

  The site of Stevie's death has been chosen for visual effect. Koop pauses to let that sink in.

  Next, Koop moves on to the site of the torture – the container.

  The scaffolding pole has revealed little to forensics. It's generic, one of millions used all over the country, no handy manufacturer detail linking it to a particular yard or supplier. No unusual metals used in its construction enabling the investigation to pinpoint it as coming from one place.

  The position of the container is more interesting.

  The most obvious fact Koop notes is that it's close to the site of the iron men. Among other things, this would have made transportation easier. But offsetting that advantage, the Freeport is reasonably well protected. The old docks running all the way from Seaforth into Liverpool, and then south to Speke, were once a thieves paradise. Entire family dynasties were raised and nurtured on the bounty that could be shaken out of the docks.