Bad to Worse Read online

  Worse acknowledged the point. Sigrid continued.

  ‘What reason do you think Thomas might have for expressing that concern?’

  ‘That’s not really been made clear to me,’ said Worse.

  ‘Why might that be?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe it’s not clear to him.’

  ‘Yes. An intuition perhaps, at this stage. If your cousin is anything like you, he would give value to intuition but want to establish the facts before arguing its case.’ Sigrid looked up from her meal. ‘Do you have any reason to suppose that Thomas is anything other than a competent, functioning law officer?’

  ‘None at all,’ said Worse.

  He was beginning to see what Sigrid might be thinking.

  ‘Then if he is a competent, functioning law officer, he is unlikely to hold an exaggerated or irrational view of what might be the case. In fact, such a person, by knowledge and training, would be among the least likely to err in that way.’

  ‘Except, for Thomas this is personal. Professional norms might not apply in that circumstance.’

  ‘Yes, that is true. But it’s also personal for you, Richard, and you aren’t developing a paranoia. Quite the opposite: you seem to be resisting ordinary caution, let alone paranoia. You are resisting a belief that is expressly tentative and doesn’t even belong to you; it belongs to Thomas. But you are resisting also the possibility that his intuition might have foundation, and the necessary facts might in future be adduced to support his belief and that it could prove to be anything but paranoid.’

  Worse felt himself being drawn reluctantly toward a shifted perspective by what seemed to be reasoning in a vacuum.

  ‘What about my intuition? My intuition tells me there’s absolutely nothing to worry about for me in Perth.’

  It sounded defensive, and he knew he was in for some kind of logic storm.

  ‘Richard. Your intuition is fine. It’s not the point. Let’s assume for a moment, in the absence of facts to the contrary, that you and Thomas have equivalent psychological health, identical skills of hypothesis formation, and don’t differ in your powers of intuitive reasoning. Then we observe that Thomas knows far more, far more, than you do about the vendetta thing and the whole Mortiss story. Including the feasibility and likelihood of it becoming international. Whose hypothesis in the matter, formed intuitively, would you give greater notice to?’

  Worse was going off his food.

  ‘You’ve turned quite Bayesian in the time I have known you,’ he said.

  ‘I have you to thank for that, Richard. Now look at it from the other side, the Mortiss side. For all you know, there may be a heap of paranoia there. Or spite, or insanity, or extremist bigotry, or financial incentive, or coercion or anything else that might motivate attacks on the Worse family, as it evidently has in the past.’

  Worse was deeply uncomfortable. He resisted the impulse to look at his watch. Sigrid’s tone changed to something softer.

  ‘Has anything odd been happening that you’ve noticed?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing at all. I mean, why would they target me? How would they even know about me?’

  ‘There are always possibilities. Thomas’s email links you to him. It may have been intercepted. They may have business interests in Perth for which you are somehow a threat. You may be unaware there’s a Mortiss connection to all sorts of matters. Then there was Darian’s book last year. Anyone who read that would find the Worse name and be able to piece together quite a lot about you. We tried to protect your identity, but he was very astute. Have you read it, Richard?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should. At the very least, for your personal risk management. There’s a lot of detail.’

  Worse could see a way of moving the subject in a different direction.

  ‘What was he like, Darian?’ he asked.

  ‘Interesting. Charming. You’re not going to want to hear this but he reminded me of you in some ways. Not physically. Intellectually. Read the book.’

  Worse wasn’t enjoying the digression any more than the safety lecture it was intended to evade. He adopted a defeated silence. Sigrid returned to lecturing.

  ‘Richard, I have learned valuable things from you over the years, and it feels tonight as if I need to repeat some back to you. One is to trust intuition. Intuition is valid, you say. And I might point out that trust can extend to the intuition of others. There was also something about anticipating adversity; that it’s better to deal with risk than realization.’

  Worse was feeling exhausted. Sigrid seemed to be energized by concern for him. He hadn’t expected her to take the subject so seriously. Dante, Arizona seemed a world away. Vendetta talk was archaic, or at least peculiarly foreign. He wanted the evening to move on. He wanted to regain his appetite for palak.

  ‘Well, thanks for listening,’ he said, thinking that really he should be thanked for that. He had hardly eaten at all, and reached for a papadum, though more for its name than nutrition.

  He broke it in two and handed some to Sigrid.

  ‘Now, what’s been happening in your week?’

  14 FRIDAY LATEST

  Worse was meditative, and his walking slowed in step with the mood. The discussion with Sigrid had been disturbing. He knew from experience that her views were always well reasoned and presented with uncompromised directness. If Sigrid was not reassuring, it meant that she had determined there was insufficient reason to be.

  He had brought to their dinner a family curiosity to share, a divertimento, and she had changed it into something quite different, something heavier and absurdly operatic in its threat.

  Well, Sigrid alone hadn’t. She was more the facilitator in a process of assisted discovery. Worse understood that such a change, some rehypothesized reality perhaps, falls naturally and often unpredictably from the dialectic of any serious conversation.

  And Sigrid knew about realities. Distinguishing the sane from the not sane, the rational from the delusional, were tasks of daily clinical judgement. Worse trusted her unconditionally. But just now, tonight, he felt resistant to her analysis, and the weight of Famille Oblige that came with it.

  He turned into a smaller, deserted cross-street for a quicker way home. The right side was a construction site for the entire block, and the adjacent pavement and road lane were closed to traffic and littered with machinery, building materials, security lighting and debris. Signs instructed pedestrians to use the opposite footpath, but Worse ignored them. He found places of industry fascinating, and was quite content to negotiate any obstacles in order to see what was there.

  Then he heard the music. One bar repeated. A semiquaver of threnody, two bass fortissimo, closing with an outrageously intrusive audience cough. Every Seneca enthusiast, anywhere in the world, would recognize that sublime engine melody and wave the club sign. By tradition, every rider would return it and, whatever the urgency in their day, graciously pull over to display their machine and exchange motorcycle tales of the mythic.

  Worse was walking on the road, and he straddled the temporary bollard fence into the closed lane to avoid being hit from behind. He was half aware that what he heard was somehow imperfect, not in proper keeping with its cause. When he looked back at the bike’s headlight he realized what it was. Tempo. Even the meekest Seneca man or woman coming into that empty street would impulsively raise throttle uphill and to hell with it. Senecas were that type of machine.

  Both riders stared at him under helmet visors as they passed. Worse made the badge wave. It wasn’t returned. Worse now had two reasons to feel unsettled. Two ridiculously insignificant reasons, but they compounded on the agitation he felt since talking to Sigrid. Intuition is valid. He stayed inside the fence to watch them.

  Fifty metres on, the bike slowed and turned. Worse was now in no doubt that he was in trouble. He couldn’t imagine that they were coming back for some innocent chatter. Hey, man. What was that with the weird hand thing? Like our bike?

  Out of habit, he had taken
in his surroundings, noting defensive assets and escape lines. Across the road was glass-walled retail and office frontage. No protection. Ahead of him was a large refuse skip piled high with rubble. Not long before, he had passed a parked excavator. On his right was a wire-net security fence at the worksite boundary. The choice was uphill towards the approaching bike, or downhill away from it, and the merit of each depended on precisely how the others behaved. Better to be patient, read the enemy, and then make the optimal decision.

  The bike came at him, headlight high, the music louder and the tempo faster. He saw them adopt a classic attack manoeuvre and it determined how he moved. Simultaneously, the steer man leaned to his left and the pillion man leaned to the right. The effect was to maintain the bike’s balance while opening up a forward line of sight for the right-handed shooter at the rear.

  Worse ran forward. In doing that, he frustrated their battle plan by putting the front man between himself and the shooter, who needed seconds to raise his right arm over the head of his accomplice. That action required communication and both to readjust their postures in unison. Four shots ricocheted from the edge of the steel as Worse disappeared between the refuse skip and the security fence. Keeping down, he reached the far end and slipped around its corner.

  The bike stopped near where Worse had been standing just downhill from the skip. He could hear it idling and see lights reflected in the office building opposite. Worse anticipated their game plan. The steer man would stay with the bike, covering that escape. The other would walk up the road, jump the bollards, and force Worse to retreat along the security fence. What they might not be expecting was that the man in their pincer was armed.

  The immediate threat was the pillion man. Worse followed the figure’s distorted reflection in the window across the street, and had a very good idea of his location. In contrast, his stalker could only know that Worse was somewhere between the fence and the skip or at the forward end. In Worse’s profession, this was referred to as a tactical asymmetry. Its effect was that when Worse suddenly stood up, he had the milliseconds advantage for targeting, enough to place a shot through the visor before the other could respond.

  Worse stepped sideways as he panned to the man at the front, and fired. The visor shattered and a pistol jerked upwards, discharging into the air. The body collapsed sideways to the road with the bike gently reclining on top.

  Still holding his weapon, Worse crossed over the bollard fence and checked the pockets of the pillion shooter. Then he walked down the road and searched the front man. He stood there for half a minute listening to the idling Seneca, wondering if he could ever love that sound again. When he touched his gun muzzle to an ignition short, the melody briefly surged, then stopped on the threnode.

  15 MONSIGNOR PAPADUOMO

  Dear Worse

  You were right about Glimpse. He followed Paulo and me to the cave and surprised us. He was about to shoot us when we were saved by a big cave crab that came out of nowhere and attacked him. The police have been across from Madregalo to remove his body.

  Paulo and I later had a look inside his truck. We found he had been collecting josephites. There was a hand-drawn map that suggests he found them in a volcano on the plateau. We’ve never heard of volcanoes here, but we think we will go exploring to look for it.

  Well, thanks for the warning about him. He never told us why he planned to kill us, but I’m sure from the way he behaved that I was the one targeted and Paulo was just unlucky to be with me.

  I hope you are doing well.

  Regards

  Nicholas

  The next morning, Worse checked local radio and online news sources. There was one brief reference to an overnight motorcycle accident involving two deceased males, with no mention of gunshot wounds or the finding of firearms at the scene. Investigators had not ruled out alcohol and speed as factors.

  Indeed. Zero speed. Had they not stopped to attempt murder, they would not be dead on the street. Worse smiled at the subterfuge: truth, but not the whole truth, allowing predictable human supposition to manufacture the desired false belief. Clearly, the police—Victor Spoiling, probably—had effectively concealed proceedings from press and public behind a cloak of the implicitly mundane.

  Worse had spent some hours in the night examining two smartphones taken from his attackers. As he expected, they were prepaid with no contractual records identifying their owners. But they were informative. The stored number registers and call histories were dull, in that the two mostly phoned each other, except for two calls to the steer man from a silent US number. But the location data were valuable. Using dynamic mapping software, Worse could clock their movements over several days, compare the two profiles, and be reasonably confident that they both slept at the same location. Moreover, both phones had an integrated activity monitor that recorded in background mode the times of flights climbed, and these were correlated in place each evening.

  At 6.00 am, Worse walked out on his level 33 balcony, holding a mug of coffee. He was about to make a call on his mobile, when it rang.

  ‘Worse? Was that you?’

  ‘Yes, Victor, this is Worse.’

  ‘Worse. I am European. I once had an umlaut in my name. Plus a j. I do not mistake tenses. Was that you?’

  ‘I apologize. Yes. I was about to phone you with a sensibly redacted confession. Why ever did you think of me?’

  ‘Because whenever a person unknown vanishes intact leaving every perpetrator with a centred head shot, I am reminded of your preternatural skills in self-preservation. Tell me what happened, Worse.’

  ‘It was unexpected. I was targeted. They did a U-turn for a look at me with the headlight. That gave me some time to react.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘I’ve really no idea.’

  ‘Well, who have you been annoying since we wrapped up that Humboldt matter, other than everyone who knows you?’

  ‘No one. I’ve been nice.’

  ‘Mm. You don’t sound very changed. Worse, it’s really very difficult when you thoroughly kill everybody. We’re left with no one to interview.’

  ‘It’s elementary risk management, Victor. Plus it has proven counter-recidivism value. Your force should adopt it, like they have in other states.’

  ‘Very droll, Worse.’

  ‘What about the bodies?’

  ‘Not yet identified. I’ve just left the coroner. Some interesting details that I will think about sharing with you. Did you see anything else?’

  ‘No handler’s car, no second bike. No loiterer on a mobile.’

  ‘Did they speak to you?’

  ‘Nothing. Professional. Did you recover two weapons?’

  ‘More than two. There was a sawn-off in a pannier.’

  ‘Really? No class after all. Have you traced them?’

  ‘That is in progress. Worse, did you remove anything from the scene?’

  ‘Two mobiles and a sentimental note. You’re looking for a third floor accommodation in Fremantle, somewhere in the block bordered by these streets—Hold on.’ Worse walked through to his workshop and read the names off a screen. ‘That’s the best resolution I can give you. Neighbours might have heard their arrivals and departures. Speaking of which, is there anything on the bike?’

  ‘Not a scratch.’

  ‘Victor. Anything on the bike?’

  ‘Expensive. It was purchased new from a city showroom four days ago. The buyer was a male, almost certainly one of your two. We have CCTV. Paid for on a shell company account. We are investigating. Worse, what were you doing there at that time of night?’

  ‘Walking home after a meal out with a friend. It’s a regular beat on a Thursday evening.’

  ‘Then be sure to vary your habits. I take it the friend was not with you when the attack happened?’

  ‘No. She drove from the restaurant to her home, as usual. I have told her what happened in case her security is implicated. Also, she’s a reliable source of sympathy in difficult times.’<
br />
  ‘Sympathy? For you?’ Spoiling paused. ‘What did you do after the shooting?’

  ‘Continued walking home. More briskly.’

  ‘What is your friend’s name?’

  ‘Sigrid Blitt. She’s a psychiatrist. Lapsed Freudian. She could help you. You are European.’

  ‘Mm. I will have more information this afternoon. Come to my office at four o’clock. Bring the mobiles, please. You will need to make one of your usual brief and irritatingly guileless statements. Goodbye.’

  ‘Victor. Wait. The Seneca sales people. Do they remember an accent?’

  ‘Worse. You are holding something back. Yes.’

  ‘American?’

  ‘Four o’clock.’

  ‘Hello, Worse. Close the door please.’

  Worse complied, then sat down across from Spoiling, who omitted niceties.

  ‘This is very unusual for Australia: an open street attack using a pillion shooter. More often, it is: find address, ring doorbell, and, surprise!’

  ‘I don’t have a doorbell for that reason,’ said Worse.

  Spoiling was seated behind his desk. Worse passed across his signed statement, completed in an outside office.

  ‘And under what name do you masquerade on this occasion?’ Spoiling asked, glancing at the signature before consigning the sheet to a document tray.

  ‘Very amusing. Who will believe that a Monsignor would carry a weapon and dispose of two killers with such alacrity? You know, Worse, one day I will have to pull you in on the felony charge of mockery of convention.’

  ‘And who else but you would be my companion on the scaffold, Victor?’

  ‘Mm. Just when I was looking forward to a quiet working week to attend to more elevated business, you have to interrupt my train of thought.’

  ‘What other business? Maybe I can help.’

  ‘Thank you, but it’s not in the specialty of justifiable homicide. An Academy lecture. On validity problems. Confession and denial, witness testimony, DNA match, application of precedent, that sort of thing.’