Free Faces in the Rain by Roland Perry Page A

you don’t report me for pulling a gun on you,’ I said, still with the weapon in my hand, but not pointed at him.
    â€˜Aw, no worries,’ he stuttered, ‘I tell no one. Promise, mite, promise.’
    I waved the family photo at him and tossed it in his lap.
    â€˜If you do,’ I said, mustering new-found menace and feeling a heel, ‘I’ll come after you. Got that?’
    Taki paled and his forehead stretched. He nodded. My lack of trust in humanity at that moment made me unsure about Taki yet I had little choice but to wave him on his way. He burnt rubber escaping.

TEN
    W HEN THE TAXI was round the corner leading up Caroline Street away from the river, I began to walk the other way and turned right into Lawson Grove. A little way into the street was a general store for the locals who were isolated from the fashionable shops on Toorak Road. I bought a newspaper and a Mars Bar, which I devoured in a few seconds. Apart from a guzzled cup of office plunger coffee, I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. I wrapped the Heckler in the paper and stuffed it back in my jacket pocket.
    Number five was at the end of the cul de sac, and the night was quiet apart from the occasional vehicle swooping down Caroline Street and the drone of traffic on Alexandra Avenue.
    A fog was settling in early over the city. I surveyed the block where Cassie Morris lived. It was a 1930s apartment building and would not have been out of place inHollywood, San Francisco or even a Greek island with its stucco, campy architecture – early picture theatre. There was a concrete walk up outside staircase with landings at each level. Cassie’s apartment was on top. The handrail was slippery from the fog’s moisture as I stepped under a light at a wire door entrance, which led to another flight of stairs and her place. I looked back. The pea souper had crept over the river like a slow gas attack and was beginning to blanket buildings, but the Nylex clock could be just seen on the tower across the river. It said eight twenty-six. A second later the temperature flashed a chilly eight degrees, which I hadn’t noticed until now, because I’d been too busy getting hot running and dodging.
    I pulled up my coat collar, and pushed the button to number five at the wire door. It snapped open and there was movement at the top of the staircase leading to Cassie’s apartment. Seconds later she appeared at her front door.
    â€˜Come on up,’ she said, ‘I’m just watching Peter on TV.’
    Walters was being interviewed on a news program. I stepped in and was enveloped by the warmth from a wood fire of split Mallee roots as she closed the door behind me. The walls were book-lined, and the the books were catalogued into medical and non-medical, the latter being again split into fiction and non-fiction. Signs of a tidy, well-read mind. Cassie had on a tight-fitting crimson dress and she wore black high-heeled shoes. Her hair was still down and she had put on red lipstick.
    She was having trouble keeping her eyes off the screen. She apologised, offered me a glass of champagne from a bottle already opened, and a seat. I sat watchingher new lover. I didn’t know her well enough to be jealous. But I was envious. Walters looked handsome in a conservative, tailored charcoal-grey suit and his lean face was made for television. He didn’t have a dark hair out of place. When he smiled he could have been a mature model for denture paste, and he handled himself well answering questions about Cancer Week in Australia. The only sign of nerves came when he played with a large, ornate cufflink attached to a starched cuff. Walters was speaking about the chances of a breakthrough in cures for brain tumours.
    â€˜We’re not there yet, but we’re close,’ he said. ‘We can retard their progress if we reach them early enough.’
    Morris was smiling approvingly and nodding.
    â€˜He’s good,