Lugarno Read Online Free Page A

Peter.’
    â€˜It sounds more like law manipulation than law enforcement.’
    â€˜Right, such as a barrister or a solicitor might do.’
    He laughed again. ‘Point taken. Is the person your client is trying to protect worth protecting?’
    â€˜I can’t afford such fine ethical distinctions. I just don’t know. It’s early days.’
    â€˜You haven’t met her?’
    â€˜Did I say her?’
    â€˜Balinese intuition plus observation of your body language.’
    â€˜I’m just sitting here.’
    â€˜That’s what you think.’
    This hadn’t gone as I’d hoped. Of course I hadn’t expected to learn anything about a Mr Big supplying drugs in the area. What I was really fishing for was the police take on dealers there and specifically Danni Price. But Lo’s acuteness had put him closer to my intention than was comfortable. I shrugged, meaning for me—
not important
… God knows what it meant to Peter Lo.
    â€˜Wes thinks a lot of you. He was giving me one of his bloody excruciating deep tissue massages and he told me how you’d saved his son from big trouble. I like that. I’ll talk to the drugs boys and see what I can find out. When’ll you be here again?’
    â€˜Day after tomorrow.’
    â€˜Bludger. If I help, you can buy me a drink.’
    â€˜Sure. What d’you drink?’
    â€˜Dom Perignon.’
    The address Tess had given me for her brother was near the border between Strathfield and Enfield. Like all of the inner city the property values have skyrocketed here and I was surprised that there was a house neglected enough to havebecome a squat. But there are always deceased estate houses or places with some fatal flaw even in the high-price districts. I expected one of the sorts of places Ramsay had always lived in so far as I knew—a semi with a rusty roof, blotched bricks and a gap-toothed fence with the railway line running a stone’s throw away. Instead I pulled up in a quiet street outside a smart Federation number with a brick and iron fence in good repair, a neat front garden and all the trimmings—tiled path, deep verandah running across half the front and around the side and fresh colonial green paint on the guttering.
    The block was wide enough to permit a later modification—a driveway leading to a garage, tastefully blended in to the side of the house.
    Squat my arse,
I thought, and my dislike for Ramsay Hewitt went up a notch. If there wasn’t a phone inside that house, and more likely a couple of them, I’d take up macramé. Thinking about how Ramsay had lied to Tess made me angry at first and then forced me to reassess my strategy. I’d been expecting to deal with young people scraping along in the social shallows, possibly drug-affected, possibly ideologically driven, possibly hostile. This was a different proposition. I was wearing drill trousers and a faded denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up; I felt I should have been in my best blazer and pleated slacks.
    I walked up the pathway, admiring the fancy tiles along the edges, to the mock marble steps leading to the tiled verandah. I was spared the house name on the brass plaque but not thecoachman’s lantern. The windows featured elegantly curved steel bars and you’d have needed an oxyacetylene torch to get through the screen door. I pressed the buzzer and waited … and waited some more. If there was anyone home they weren’t answering the front door. I’m not proud; the back door’ll do me any day. I retraced my steps and walked past neat garden beds along a cement path, this time running along the side of the house. But only so far. About two-thirds of the way down I encountered a fence that I hadn’t seen on account of some shrubs branching over in front of it. Some fence. It was thick wire mesh, three metres high with a stout-looking gate, and met the neighbouring house fence which was