Dead Point Read Online Free Page A

say goodbye. Time would heal. Or not. At the door, turning the big fluted brass knob, I heard Wootton clear his throat.
    ‘In his own vehicle,’ he said, ‘in his own garage.’
    I continued on my way. As I passed Mrs Davenport in the anteroom, her nostrils contracted fractionally. ‘This has been prepared for you, Mr Irish,’ she said.
    I stopped. She held out a hand, pearl-coloured nails, perfect ovals, and young hands, hands far too young. What secrets had this woman learned during her long stint in the pay of a specialist in sexually transmitted diseases? I shuddered inwardly, took the envelope she was offering and left the premises.
    On the tram, enjoying the presence of a few teenage drug dealers heading for Fitzroy, I opened Mrs Davenport’s envelope: a cheque for three days’ work at the usual rate.
    Out loud, I said, ‘Cyril, oh Cyril.’
    One of the adolescent drugporteurs not on his mobile heard my utterance, misunderstood completely, turned, made the selling signal.
    I gave him the look and the continental flicking fuck-off sign. Although he was probably untravelled, he got the message.
    As I had received Cyril Wootton’s message. That he behaved honourably even when I did not.

Detective Sergeant Warren Bowman had the good-humoured manner of a man in sales, not any old sales, specialised sales, motor spares or plumbing supplies or bearings, some secure line of work where the pros know stock numbers off by heart and the customers expect them to say things like ‘Almost got me there, mate’ and ‘We have the technology’.
    ‘They’re sayin it’s an ordinary OD,’ he said.
    We were sitting in the Studebaker Lark just off St Kilda Road, the day turned irritable, periods of sunshine, sudden snarls of rain. Detective Sergeant Bowman was speaking to me courtesy of another policeman, Senior Sergeant Barry Tregear, someone I’d known since I was a boy sent to fight abroad for my country. At the request of some other country, the way it had always been for Australia.
    ‘Family doesn’t want to know that,’ I said, lying.
    Warren turned his long head and appraised me. He had bushy black eyebrows that he brought together and parted: quick, slow, slow, quick, an eyebrow Morse code.
    ‘Yeah, well, not always your best judge,’ he said, dot, dot, dash. ‘The family.’
    ‘No. Funny place to OD.’
    Dot, dash. ‘Well, they don’t set out to OD.’
    ‘Shooting up in his garage? Be more comfortable in his unit.’
    Dash, dot. ‘No knowin. It’s like suicide. Go a long way, some of em. Mountains, some, they like to go to high places. But there’s others want to creep away. Toppin’s a bit like hide and seek, know what I mean? Some kids always go for the wardrobe.’
    Expertise in dark matters. Warren knew these stock numbers.
    A couple walked by, young, handsome in black clothing, arguing, heads flicking, spurts of words. He stopped, she stopped, he raised a hand, inquiring. She knocked it away in contempt, walked. The man waited for a few seconds, turned and came back towards us, jaw moving, small chewing movements.
    ‘He’s bin screwin around,’ said Warren. ‘Some blokes got no idea when they’re lucky.’ There was a stain of resentment on his tone.
    ‘So Robbie went into his garage, locked the door, got into his car, shot up, that’s it?’
    He nodded.
    ‘The fit’s there?’
    A nod.
    ‘Tracks?’
    ‘Yeah. User.’
    ‘User ODs alone in his Porsche parked in his garage. That would be unusual, wouldn’t it?’
    Warren shifted in his seat, looked at me, dash, dot, dash, took his lower lip between thumb and forefinger, gave it a tug. ‘I’m in the box here, am I?’
    You forget that people are doing you a favour, at some risk to their careers.
    ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Get carried away.’
    He kept looking at me, a long dash.
    The angry young woman in black was coming back, in a hurry, full of regret, hoping to catch the man. Her calf-length coat was unbuttoned and it flapped open at