Shoot Through Read online

  Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  SHOOT THROUGH

  J.M. Green is a crime writer based in Melbourne’s western suburbs. Her debut novel, Good Money, the first hardboiled-crime novel featuring Stella Hardy, was shortlisted for a 2016 Ned Kelly Award, the Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Award for best debut, as well as the 2014 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. She divides her time between writing in her backyard studio and working as a librarian. Shoot Through is the third in the Stella Hardy series, following Too Easy.

  Scribe Publications

  18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia

  2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom

  First published by Scribe 2019

  Copyright © J.M. Green 2019

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

  The moral right of the author of this work has been asserted.

  9781925713848 (Australian edition)

  9781925693676 (e-book)

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

  scribepublications.com.au

  For Heidi

  A dear friend

  And for Derryn

  A beautiful human being

  PROLOGUE

  HAVE YOU ever been on the run from the police and a mercenary assassin? No? Just me, then. Just me, standing here, with the wind in my hair, my life in tatters, and no hope of a good bún chả giò chay for hundreds of kilometres in any direction.

  How did I get into this pickle? For a while, I believed that the whole rotten business started with the death of Joe Phelan. But when I think about it, the trouble really started a week before, when my sister, Kylie, turned up at my flat, pounding on the door and brandishing a wad of documents.

  It was early — well, early for a Sunday morning — when Kylie woke me with her hammering. I was bleary-eyed and still half-asleep as she paced around my kitchen in clean, pressed moleskins, a check cowgirl shirt with pearl press-studs, and brand-new R.M. Williams riding boots. She seemed to be speaking in riddles, and I strained to make sense of the words. Phrases like virtuous circle and moral hazard made me wonder if she had joined a cult, but then she said something about tax minimisation and trust funds, and I thought she’d joined the Liberal Party. Very quickly, she lost her patience, took my blank look as a personal affront, and became enraged. She spun on her Cuban heels, walked over, and snapped her fingers in my face.

  ‘Getting any of this, Stella?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘But I explained all this at Christmas!’

  ‘You did?’

  In a huff, she dropped the pile of paper on my table. I noted the dozen or so sign here stickers protruding from the side. ‘Sign these. Then go to wherever Ben is and make him sign them, too. Make sure he does it properly. When that’s done, return them to me.’

  The door slammed, and she was gone.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I said to my empty flat.

  The whole encounter was completely baffling. With great effort, I thought back to Christmas two months earlier, held at the Hardy family farm in the dusty Victorian town of Woolburn. In the delirium of the forty-degree heat, the tepid beer, and the turkey roasting since nine in the morning, I’d nodded along woozily as Kylie had droned on and on about her plan to take over the farm from my mother and Ted.

  My mother, Delia, and my stepfather, the very Catholic retired real-estate agent, Ted, had been thinking for some time of selling up and retiring from farming. They’d even had a buyer — Shane Farquhar, my high-school tormentor, who was desperate to buy the land so that his adjacent farm would double in size. Kylie and her jack-of-no-trades husband, Tyler, had tried and failed at many get-rich-quick endeavours. But suddenly of late, cattle farming was all they could talk about. They had argued with Delia that the farm should stay in the family, although they couldn’t afford to buy it.

  Ted had loved the idea and had created a discretionary trust, a tax minimisation angle that really fluffed up his moustache. He would install Kylie and Tyler as managers and pay them a wage. But that was not how Kylie had envisioned things. She despised Ted’s version of the plan because it meant she wasn’t technically the owner of the farm. Consequently, she’d turned into a raging paranoid monster, terrified that Ben and I would attempt to unseat her.

  As I read through the papers, this all came back to me and things started to make sense. It appeared that my sister had had legal documents drawn up in which Ben and I swore that we would never ever attempt such a coup.

  Somehow, in the boozy, sweltering haze of that Christmas day, I’d missed the part about this apparently vital administrative step. But I knew all too well why Kylie had made it my mission to see it completed.

  Hardy family dysfunction was complex. I was willing to visit our brother, Ben, in prison, whereas Kylie was not. Kylie could spend entire days with our mother, whereas I lasted about twenty minutes.

  So, after signing Kylie’s papers myself without pang or hesitation, I was now left to face an inconvenient trip to the country prison where Benjamin Hardy was incarcerated. This was my punishment for being too slow-witted to understand I was being played. And too passive to react once the penny dropped. And for generally being too damn accommodating.

  I had no inkling yet of the unholy mess that was to begin with that visit, but as I contemplated the long drive ahead, it was my fervent hope that, at some point in the near future, it would be possible to have these faults surgically removed from my personality.

  1

  THE ENGINE struggled to climb the long inclines. The Mazda was capable, but becoming irritated. I knew the feeling. I passed Ballarat and continued on to higher altitudes. It was Sunday morning, a week after Kylie’s visit, and I’d left Ascot Vale before nine while nearly all of Melbourne was sensibly snoozing or just stirring — only farmers in utes and the occasional truck to contend with on the highway.

  A mildly ingratiating voice told me the exit was coming. I changed lane accordingly.

  I’d had to cancel a weekend with Brophy to make this trip, and I wasn’t happy about it. Peter Brophy was a spunk, who happened to be my boyfriend. We’d been together for about four years now, and I never got tired of saying that: my boyfriend. Sure, we had some issues. When we’d met, at an exhibition of his paintings in his Footscray studio, he had been on methadone for many years. Before that, he’d been an intravenous drug user, with all the lifestyle complications tha
t go with that. Now he was a clean but impoverished artist, with little prospect of a regular income. Actually, that last part didn’t bother me. I admired his commitment to his art. And besides, I had a regular income. So we were sitting pretty.

  Our only real problem lately had been finding time to be together. We’d been talking about a getaway for a while: staying in a rural B & B, eating, drinking, lounging around. Something to put the mango chutney back on our relationship samosa, which, to my distress, was going a bit cold of late. We’d found a suitable date, but Kylie had found a way to snatch it away. So Brophy and I had now rescheduled our date to the Labour Day long weekend. He had been his usual very accommodating self, but I seethed. I cursed my sister, my brother, and the whole Hardy family for good measure.

  When Brophy had told Marigold, his pre-teenage daughter, that I was going to a prison, she’d been curious to know more. Prisons were magical places, invisible to regular folk, and she’d wondered aloud if they really did exist. I told her they certainly did exist, but that I thought her observation was wise beyond her years. The system worked best when good citizens lived in blissful ignorance of prisons and what went on in them.

  Personally, I’d seen the inside of a few. I’d taken clients to visit family members in immigration detention. And there were a couple of memorable times I’d joined Phuong Nguyen at Barwon Prison when she questioned a witness. Phuong was my long-time best friend and also happened to be a police officer. She wasn’t any old cop. She’d reached the rank of detective senior sergeant, and she liked to remind me of that.

  So, I was not blissfully ignorant, nor a good citizen for that matter, but this was my first visit to this particular minimum-security prison farm — the Sir Athol Goldwater Prison. Ben was eighteen months into a two-year stretch there, and yet, somehow, I hadn’t got round to making the three-hour drive to pop in to see him. These privately run places were supposed to be the last word in well-managed institutions. But I was sceptical.

  According to the website, the Sir Athol Goldwater Prison housed roughly three hundred inmates, whose crimes were mostly of a nonviolent nature, though there were some child sex offenders. There was a list of visitor rules, including a cruel proclamation that no visitors were allowed in any Victorian prison on Christmas Day. Rocking up unannounced on any other day was not advisable, and I had booked the visit in advance. I was a properly registered visitor and had ID of all kinds at the ready.

  It was just before noon when I turned onto a road barely better than a dirt track. The bitumen covered a central section just wide enough for the Mazda. Another car was approaching, going in the opposite direction, and we both moved to the edges, tyres flinging up stones and dust. Once the other car had passed, I returned to paved road and checked the basket on the seat beside me. At the request of the prisoner, it contained Finest Balsamic Vinegar of Modena, wasabi-coated peanuts, Verjuice, kalamata olives, Egyptian dukkah, and a ‘decent’ spatula. It was more like an executive Christmas hamper than a food parcel for a convicted criminal. My delinquent brother was not letting prison get in the way of his gourmet aspirations.

  Beside the basket sat a manila folder containing Kylie’s papers for Ben to sign.

  Here the road was flanked on either side by high fences, behind which a herd of cud-chewing cattle peacefully observed the Mazda pass. They must be part of the three thousand Angus stock I’d read about on the prison website. It was a going concern, the Sir Athol Goldwater Prison, and cattle were fetching a good price. Prisoners received training in agricultural work, the locals had employment — everyone was happy. Except me, but I was rarely happy.

  The road ended at the entrance to the prison. It was a proper, security-conscious facility, with a series of gates and guards checking IDs. This impressed upon those visitors who may have found the grazing cattle charming not to mistake this place for a regular farm.

  I parked in the visitor car park, making sure I left my mobile in the car. I went through the sign-in, the metal detector, the bag search, and the usual palaver. The checking of registration took a good twenty minutes. The sun was still climbing out of the valleys, but was already intense, and the day was starting to heat up. Other families had already arrived and were setting up food on picnic tables for an early lunch. The electric barbecues were built into a brick housing. A jack was cleaning one of the hotplates.

  A crowd of men in green t-shirts and shorts were milling about near the visitor area. Ben was not among them, and I was starting to worry. We had discussed my visit on the phone; he should have been waiting. Knowing Ben, he’d done something stupid, on a dare or bet, been caught, and had his privileges revoked. Naturally, he had forgotten to inform me.

  My entire day wasted when you factored in the travel. I was furious. And I was not the only one left waiting for a prisoner who failed to show up.

  An older woman — short, intelligent brown eyes, grey hair in a clip — was leaning on a walking stick. She was with a younger woman, mid-forties, possibly her daughter. The younger one seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place her. She was wearing dark jeans and a blazer and had a plastic lemon on a strap over her shoulder — some kind of novelty handbag. The two women shared a strong family resemblance and the same defiant bearing. Their inscrutable expressions were likewise identical. The prison officers seemed to be wary of them both and studiously avoided eye contact.

  I caught the daughter’s eye and rolled my own, to convey my frustration at our ordeal. Also, I hoped she would remember me, because it was annoying me that I couldn’t recall how I knew her. But she looked through me, and I looked away. After a while, the older woman called to a prison officer.

  ‘I’m sick of this. Where’s Joe?’ she demanded.

  Good on her, I thought. I looked to the daughter: she had the tiniest hint of a smirk, causing a fragment of memory to surface. A work function — no, wait — a training day. She was a youth worker. She clocked me, and this time we acknowledged each other without speaking. This place wasn’t conducive to social niceties.

  The prison officer — a woman, early fifties, maybe older, with perfect eyebrows and acrylic nails — gave a weary sigh.

  ‘Joe’s finishing a job in the metal shed, Mrs Phelan. He won’t be long.’

  ‘He’s expecting us,’ Mrs Phelan said. ‘We have things to discuss. Get him down here, now. This is our time, and I don’t want to spend it being fobbed off by some painted fart of a jack.’

  The officer put a placating hand up. ‘I need you to calm down. Take a breath.’

  This instruction had the opposite effect. ‘Patronising me? Jumped-up door bitch.’

  The officer’s other hand went to her utility belt, ready to employ some pre-emptive capsicum spray. Mrs Phelan scowled and backed off. I got the impression she was not accustomed to backing down. The prison officer turned to me. I glimpsed the name tag: Nell Tuffnell, Operations Manager.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Stella Hardy.’

  She checked her list. ‘Hardy, Benjamin. I saw him in the greenhouse this morning. He’s around somewhere.’

  This vague account of prisoners’ whereabouts was not reassuring. Even for a lax prison farm.

  She addressed all of us now. ‘Wait here. I’m sending two officers to fetch them up. I would appreciate your patience.’

  ‘Oh, do fetch them up,’ Mrs Phelan echoed. I was a little intimidated by her.

  We waited for another ten minutes — the limit of my patience. Mrs Phelan and her daughter fell into a whispered debate.

  Ben was never going to show, I decided. Bugger this for a joke. I pulled out my car keys. And, of course, that was when Ben came ambling along in his green tracksuit, a big smirk on his face, holding a tray covered in a tea towel.

  ‘Glad you could come,’ he said, like this was a normal family lunch.

  I followed him over to a picnic table.

  ‘Of course I came, Ben.
I do what I say I’m going to do. I show up. On time. Where the hell have you been?’

  He seemed sincerely wounded. ‘I was getting everything ready.’ He put the tray on the table, then noticed the basket I was holding. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The stuff you wanted.’ I handed him the shopping bag.

  ‘Brilliant.’ He leaned in to give me a hug, which I allowed.

  ‘I’ll fire up the barbie. Been marinating tofu — I know you like it.’

  I began to thaw a little. ‘Is it that mix of yours with the ginger?’

  ‘No, this one’s new. You’ll love it.’ He touched an ignition button, and gas erupted under the cooking surface. ‘I’ve been experimenting with lemon myrtle.’

  He lifted the tea towel. Tofu on skewers with zucchini, onions, capsicum, and — oh dear — pineapple pieces. He put them on the hotplate. There was bread and butter and a large bowl of salad greens. I set out cutlery and plates while Ben put salad servers in the bowl and started shaking a jar of dressing.

  ‘It’s all from the garden. We sell the excess at a farmers market once a month.’

  I was proud of how proud he was. ‘Even the coriander? That’s very cool, Ben.’

  ‘Joe grows all the herbs. Sells them in pots — you can buy one today if you want.’

  I figured I may as well get the documents signed and out of the way. ‘Ben, we need to talk about the farm — this family trust set-up. Kylie’s —’

  Ben cut me off. ‘Can we just enjoy our lunch? Let’s discuss all that later.’

  ‘Sure.’ I watched him work a pair of tongs, turning the skewers. ‘Is everything okay?’

  He shook his head, looking troubled. ‘I’m worried about my girlfriend.’

  ‘Since when did you have a girlfriend?’

  ‘She’s struggling on the outside without me.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll manage.’

  ‘Nah. She’s broke, and the landlord wants her out.’

  ‘She’ll find something.’

  ‘She’s not working. Her situation is pretty desperate …’ He grimaced. ‘Stella, please. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’