left a message.”
“What?”
“Something about helping Gino tonight.”
“What?”
“Gino. Don’t you know a Gino?”
“No. Did she leave her name?”
“No. Said she thought you’d be here. And just to tell you about Gino.”
“Are you sure it was for me?”
“That’s what she said.”
“I have no idea what it’s about. Maybe it’s for Greenie. I’ll let him know when I get to Mornington.”
“When you going?”
“Later.”
Barron sat at his desk, switched on the computer, entered his password and checked his electronic mail.
*******
Ron Taylor was having a pretty good day and he’d also managed to stay in the inner city area. He’d just dropped his last passenger at an office in Burke Road, Camberwell and he was heading back towards the city along Toorak Road when the call came in.
“Call for you, Ron,” the dispatcher said. Sam had worked for the taxi company for almost ten years and Taylor knew him well.
“Okay.”
“A lady called Turner. Didn’t catch her first name. Said it was urgent and to call her back. Said you had her number.”
Turner? He was about to question the dispatcher when he remembered.
“Thanks, Sam. See ya.”
He passed through the traffic lights on Williams Road and stopped at the next phone booth he saw. Taylor was a big man - tall and broad across the shoulders. He wore light grey slacks and a light blue open-necked shirt. He walked with a spring in his step and carried himself erect, like a man who keeps fit, despite the years. His hair was black, cropped short, a few strands of grey at the front. His moustache, people told him, made him look like Tom Selleck. His eyes were clear and grey, but for those who bothered to know the man and to see deep into his eyes, they saw something of the pains of the past.
He’d written the number on a piece of paper and slipped it into his wallet. He pulled it out now and dialled the number. He straightened up his shirt and tucked it into his trousers. She answered immediately.
“Miss Turner?” he asked.
She could sense the smile in his voice.
“I’m on La Trobe Street.” She explained the location.
“I know it,” he said. “Ten minutes.” And he hung up.
*******
Taylor parked the taxi in a nearby parking spot and walked up to the small coffee shop she had told him about. She was sitting at a table at the window, sipping a cup of coffee and keeping her eyes on the building across the street.
“The place across the street,” she said as he pulled up a chair.
“Australian Federal Police,” he replied.
“He went in about twenty minutes ago.”
“You can recognise him?”
“Yes.”
“Through a car window?”
“Yes. But we don’t know if he has a car under the building.”
He nodded. “But if he has got a car there and he comes onto the street in it, can you identify him through the windscreen?”
“I think so. I can’t get much closer. Where are you parked?”
“There,” and he pointed. “I’ll wait there for you.” The street did not provide many places for parking and keeping an eye on the building without being seen from the building itself. The street itself was relatively quiet, with little traffic and few pedestrians. Taylor left the coffee shop and she ordered another coffee.
*******
They waited for almost ninety minutes. In that time she realised that if Green did come out in his car, that it would not be easy to identify him. There had been two cars emerge from the underground parking area and she had had to strain to clearly see the faces of the people in them.
He was driving a dark blue Nissan and had the driver’s window down as he waited for the stream of traffic on his right, so that he could turn into the street. She could see him clearly. He drove up the street away from where Taylor had parked his taxi and she hurried from the cafe.
“Blue car,” she said as she slid into the front seat beside Taylor. He already had the engine running.
“Nissan. Saw it. EWP 886.”
He pulled out into the stream of traffic and followed. The Nissan was already a block ahead and Taylor ran a red light to keep it in reach. She looked sideways at him and he said, “I have done this before, you know,” without taking his eyes from the road in front of them.
Green broke away from them at the next set of lights and there was nothing Taylor could do. He waited impatiently for the lights to change and then she saw him smile.
“What is it?”
“Bit of a bottleneck up ahead,” he said. A large removalist’s van was halfway across the road and had stopped the Nissan. “Take your time, buddy,” Taylor muttered. “Take your time.”
The traffic lights changed and the car in front stalled. Taylor hit the horn and the driver in front half-turned in his seat and gave him a sign with two upraised fingers. He re-started the car and they were on their way again.
The removalist’s van was still blocking the road and Taylor stopped in the line of traffic. There were six cars between his taxi and the blue Nissan. He always knew, when she had first explained this to him yesterday, that getting out of the city and keeping in contact with the car - all without drawing attention to themselves - would be the most difficult part of the operation. Traffic lights, policemen, pedestrians, traffic jams. Everything worked to make keeping the tail almost impossible. Professionals used multiple car teams. They couldn’t do that.
At Spencer Street Green turned left. There was more traffic now. Traffic lights at the end of Bourke and again at Collins. On their right the building that had once been the Railway Administration Offices and were now inner city luxury apartments. Ahead of them, at the Flinders Street intersection, the traffic was bunching up. Taylor knew he could lose Green here.
But they got through and they followed the Nissan across the Spencer Street Bridge over the Yarra. They continued down Clarendon Street and through South Melbourne and then south-west, under the bridge that had once carried the trains and which now carried the tram, and along Canterbury Road to St
