Blindside Read online

  BLINDSIDE

  JOHN R. CARROLL is the author of a number of thrillers, including Cheaters, The Clan and No Way Back. He lives with his wife in Melbourne.

  BLINDSIDE

  J.R. Carroll

  This is a work of fiction. All events, characters and institutions are fictitious and have no reference to any actual people, institutions or events.

  First published in 2004

  Copyright © J.R. Carroll 2004

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Carroll, John, 1945–.

  Blindside.

  ISBN 1 74114 206 7.

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  Set in 11.6/12.6 pt Bembo by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

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  1

  October 1992

  Mitch Alvarez pushed the electric blue aviator sunshades to the top of his significantly domed forehead, raised the Canon 12 × 50 binoculars, adjusted the focus and quickly pinpointed the imposing Petrakos residence. There she sat— one spectacularly grandiose pile couple of kilometres off, built into an excavated slope alongside a pretty little valley of velvet green pasture and a network of white fences surrounding a neo-colonial homestead and a complex of outbuildings and paddocks. On the homestead’s front fence he could read its name: Corringal Downs. There were various working vehicles and floats visible, and a sleeping brown dog on the front step, but no potential witnesses anywhere. Since it was one o’clock, Mitch figured they were probably in having lunch. In the paddocks he could see a horse grazing, its chestnut coat flashing in the sun, and a new foal on wobbly legs nuzzling its mother. This was prime stud country, home to the legendary former American stallion Express Train—sire to many a serious stake-winner over the years.

  Mitch Alvarez knew a thing or two about horses. There was a time when he’d been passionate about them. It had cost him dearly.

  Not any more, however. Shifting his gaze back to the Petrakos place he studied the three-metre high wall that enclosed the residence and its acreage. The main entrance was a formidable pair of high iron gates, on either side of which gold-painted bulls’ heads sat atop Corinthian stone columns. The gates were more suggestive of a sanatorium or mental asylum than someone’s home. Inside was a long, semicircular driveway of raked white gravel lined with cypress trees and roses of every colour in full bloom. Following its sweep with the binoculars led Mitch’s eyes to the house itself, and that was something else again.

  Built with large sandstone blocks from South Australia and designed in the style of a medieval castle, it featured a high central ivy-covered clock tower complete with ramparts and crenellations. Above it the Greek and Australian flags hung limply in the windless air. There were four levels, three wings and over forty rooms in the main building, most of which contained George’s vast collection of furniture, antiques, art works and all manner of artifacts from every corner of the world. In the grounds there was a moat and a complex system of interconnected waterfalls and cascading rock pools set amid a spectacular jungle habitat, complete with an array of exotic birds, including a pair of pink flamingoes. There was also a large pond fringed with bulrushes that was stocked with fingerling trout and perch. At horrendous cost, fifty mature palm trees had been flown down from Queensland and planted all over the property, just so George could pretend he was living in a tropical oasis instead of the rustic backblocks of Lancefield, in central Victoria.

  Mitch knew all this detail because the house—and its owner—had been featured in a popular glossy magazine a few months earlier. More recently he had also cropped up in a TV gardening program, which Mitch happened to see. George had taken the viewers on a guided tour of the mansion and its grounds, which had been most helpful of him.

  ‘All nice and quiet,’ Mitch said, and handed the glasses to Andy Corcoran, kneeling behind him, his arms folded over the front seats. Andy scanned the scene.

  ‘Idyllic,’ Andy said. ‘Perfectomento.’

  A third man sitting next to Mitch, name of Shaun Randall McCreadie, was moving his tongue around inside his mouth, making wet sucking sounds. When Mitch turned and looked at him his lean and still-youthful face creased into a slow smile, revealing white, level teeth that were slightly gapped. Shaun ignited a Lucky Strike, using his gold Zippo lighter with the Harley-Davidson insignia on it, and drew in deeply.

  ‘Okay,’ Mitch said. ‘Everyone clear on procedure? Go through it one more time?’

  ‘No need,’ Andy said.‘We-all’s ready to rock on down the road, baby.’

  Drumming the wheel with his fingertips Mitch said, ‘No problems, Shaun? No . . . second thoughts? Can’t go back after this, mate. This is where we cross the line forever.’

  ‘Already crossed it,’ Shaun said, blowing out smoke. He pointed to the side of his head. ‘Up here.’ Always a somewhat taciturn person, Shaun gave a convincing impression of cool confidence. He didn’t show it except in small ways, but Mitch sensed he was nervous and tightly coiled under that composed exterior. But why wouldn’t he be? It took a great deal to stir him up, to bring him to this point. Who’d have thought it would ever happen? Not Mitch. Even now he had trouble grasping the realities that had caused everything to converge here. It felt like someone else’s life now, not his. He was behind the wheel, but not driving.

  At the opposite end of the spectrum to Shaun was Andy Corcoran. He was bullish, twitchy, pumped-up; right now there was a fine sweat film on his forehead, on which a swollen Y-shaped network of veins stood out, and he was constantly fidgeting with the binoculars or wiping his hand across his mouth. Understandably too, Andy was on a continuous slow burn nowadays, given to intermittent outbursts of white rage. The state of his veins sent a clear signal that a violent storm was on its way. He was a worry: he could tip over big time if things went pear-shaped, which could so easily happen today. It was Mitch’s responsibility to control him in that case.

  ‘All right, team,’ Mitch said. ‘Let’s hit it. The wife should have fucked off by now.’ He fired up the van, slipped it in gear and moved on, travelling north along the two-lane back road. They hadn’t gone far when a dirty white Ford Galaxie overtook them, screaming past flat chat, throwing up gravel and dirt on a section that was under repair—though no work was being done today. Graders and earthmovers sat idle, unmanned, on the
shoulder.

  ‘Book the bastard, Mitch,’ Andy said, and laughed at his own joke. Mitch stretched his lips in a grim smile, and Shaun didn’t respond at all.

  As he cruised along, Mitch thought about the Golden Greek, George Petrakos. He was going to get one hell of a rude shock very soon. George was a high profile, big-mouthed, controversial success story, a displaced victim and an orphan of World War II who stepped off the boat with nothing but the shirt on his back, a cardboard suitcase tied up with rope and an empty stomach. It was 1945; he was around fifteen years of age, alone except for an uncle, and didn’t know anyone in this distant, empty land. Because the village where he was born was largely destroyed in the war, George’s exact age was uncertain. It was a tragic chapter in the family history: both parents and his younger sister were tortured and killed by the Nazis, and George had only survived because he’d hidden down a well all night long, listening to their hideous screams. The way George told it, he could hear the soldiers’ voices and see the flashlight beams as they searched for him, laughing and calling his name. The horrors from which he emerged were unimaginable. The Petrakos family was from Crete, and George was always at pains to point out that he was Cretan, not Greek. ‘I am the Bull of Crete,’ he had repeatedly proclaimed on the gardening show, trying to sound like Mohammed Ali. For the benefit of the camera he’d then driven home the message with an upward-thrusting stiff-armed gesture.

  George Petrakos had gone into the used car business as a very young man, flogging cheap, worn-out bombs with blown differentials and transmissions that were stuffed with sawdust or banana skins, and always on the never-never. George famously called it ‘selling old problems to new owners’. He made his first million from the hire-purchase boom in the sixties before progressing to a second-hand prestige car dealership. That was when he really started raking it in, selling mostly European or British brands that were gleaming and magnificent on the outside, but grossly overpriced when the interest rate and future repair bills were factored in.

  As a matter of routine, George—like most used-car dealers at the time—doctored the odometres, reducing them to a fraction of the actual mileage. The cars came with a twelvemonth warranty that excluded almost every major component, once the fine print was examined. But of course the customers didn’t worry about that—until afterwards, when it was too late. The way George looked at it, the quality of the car’s finish, its gloss,was everything.It was the one thing that had to be perfect. He would repair a dented panel with filler or respray a whole car rather than spend a cent on any of its moving parts. He maintained that cars were like women—image is all;no-one worries about what they’re like under the bonnet.‘It’s the same as sex—if you’re getting into bed with a beautiful doll,you don’t care if she has brains or not,’ he had said in the magazine piece.

  It was a principle he applied to his personal life—George was currently married to Stephanie Small, the shapely, photogenic, social-climbing daughter of a retail baron. Stephanie was a former model/actress who,in her pre-George days,was forever displaying her impressive cleavage on magazine covers. She had once posed naked bar an unzipped leather jacket and some chains—sitting astride a motorcycle, a sliver of her dark beaver tantalisingly exposed—in a Penthouse magazine centrefold. One summer she was voted ‘Miss Wet T-Shirt’ at Coolangatta, and she’d also appeared in several soft-core porn movies in which her splendid talents were comprehensively showcased. At the height of her career she even scored a part in the fifth sequel of a Hollywood teen horror franchise, in which she was mostly required to remain in a state of near-undress—and scream the rafters off their joists.

  Stephanie’s love life filled the soap magazines: it was a case of one wild-spirited, substance-addicted rock star after another. Then, after she met and fell in love (‘for the first time’) with George, the supposed makeover was sudden and dramatic, as if she’d made a conscious decision to put the raunchy lifestyle behind her and devote herself completely to her husband. Sainthood in Stephanie’s case didn’t cut it with the tabloids, however, and there were veiled suggestions that she was also mindful of George’s fortune—estimated to be upwards of $100 million. In a post-wedding TV interview she made the announcement that, despite his ‘mature’ years, George had no need of Viagra, that he still ‘came up trumps’. According to the real lowdown, however, not nearly often enough: she had toy boys by the dozen on the side and paid them handsomely to keep their mouths shut.

  The wedding had taken place five years back amid a multimillion-dollar carnival of extravagance and razzle-dazzle in which inevitable comparisons were made with the union of Onassis and Jackie Kennedy. It was ‘The Fairytale Wedding of the Golden Greek and his Siren Goddess’, according to the magazine with exclusive rights to the big event. It was drawing a long bow, but George was impressed. These days the domesticated Stephanie gave the impression she was a different social animal altogether as she ingratiated herself into all the establishment families of the inner rural blueblood district: the Gisborne-Macedon-Riddells Creek-Clarkefield polo and dinner party circuit.

  George had two sons from a previous marriage: the firstborn, George junior, had suicided by plunging his throat onto a power saw at the age of twelve; the second, Stan, was a convicted cocaine dealer and standover merchant—an enforcer, as he preferred to describe himself. His idea of a fulfilling life was to hang out all night with mid-level criminals and nightclub proprietors, deal and use hard drugs, plan violent crimes, flash inch-thick wads of cash, carry guns in his car and, in general, behave like a man without a future. In underworld circles it was commonly believed that Stan Petrakos was on a hit list drawn up by certain detectives—although, to balance that, he was also allegedly friendly with one or two well-placed plainclothes officers, to whom he paid kickbacks in exchange for favours—including protection.

  On top of all that, George’s first wife, Iris, had her life tragically shortened in a helicopter crash back in 1973.Questions were raised as to whether it was an accident—the marriage was under stress at the time—but the burnt-out wreckage and incinerated remains scattered in the North Warrandyte hills provided no answers one way or the other. So, for all the untold wealth, Gulfstream jet, fleet of Ferrari cars and his cutting-edge Swedish whitegoods,George’s life hadn’t exactly been a fairytale journey. And now it was about to take another left turn.

  Mitch steered off the main road into a narrow lane that ran behind the Great Wall of the Petrakos place, where they could not be seen from the stud farm. Here at the rear of the property there was a modest tradesman’s entrance alongside a pair of iron gates and sculpted bulls’ heads that were identical to the ones at the front. A HAZCHEM sign was fixed to the wall, as well as another sign that said NO HAWKERS OR CANVASSERS. Scattered about inside were gardening and tool sheds, hothouses for the propagation of seedlings, a conservatory, a row of stables and, some distance away, several garages. The rear gates were mainly there for the convenience of Stephanie whenever she went off to point-to-point meetings in nearby Clarkefield. Stephanie was big on Country Club, dressage, the hunt and point-to-point; she had some wonderful ponies and certainly looked the goods in her tight vermilion jacket, tan corduroys and shiny black boots. During the season, meetings were held on the first Wednesday of every month, and today being Wednesday, October 3rd, she would definitely be gone—leaving George alone in the house. Stan lived in a Carlton penthouse, and at this time of day he would be snoring in an alcoholic or drug-induced stupor. There were plenty of part-time gardeners, grooms, mechanics and whatnot, but no live-in servants. And the team of house cleaners came on Mondays and Fridays.

  The thing about George Petrakos was, he was a caveman when it came to managing money. From an early age he had largely avoided banks and financial institutions, firstly because he mistrusted them; then, as he became richer, to conceal income and so avoid paying tax. Apart from cars he made money from all kinds of suspect activities, and used a variety of legitimate fronts—flower shops, a vineyard, a
video store franchise, a cheap mail-order jewellery and cosmetics business—to process the flow of cash. He was known to keep large—very large—amounts on the premises, inside the walkin strongroom, like a bank vault, next to his billiards room. According to Mitch’s information there could be upwards of seven figures sitting in that strongroom at any time—all used, untraceable bills waiting to be knocked off. According to his research, the alarm system was ultra-sophisticated, but at present deactivated during the day because there were always tradespeople or deliveries coming and going in this constantly evolving grand folly of his, this ‘San Simeon of Lancefield’, as a back-page newspaper columnist had called it. Strangely, no guard dogs either: just some small, yapping poodle-type creatures belonging to his wife. It seemed a brilliant set-up, really, and Mitch sometimes wondered why it hadn’t been done before. It seemed too good to be true.

  Mitch parked the van, switched off and reached around to the back seat for the canvas Country Road bag sitting next to Andy. By now there was a palpable atmosphere of nervous anticipation inside the van. He unzipped the bag, revealing a silver, long-barrelled .357 revolver, a snub-nosed .38, a Beretta .32 semi-automatic and a sawn-off .410 shotgun with its stock fashioned into a pistol grip. There were also speed-loaders, clips and boxes of ammo, loose shotgun cartridges, three rubber ski masks, three pairs of black kid leather gloves, some knives, a set of amethyst-encrusted brass knuckles, rolls of insulation tape and three other Country Road overnight bags, to hold the cash. He gave the .357 to Shaun and the snub-nose to Andy; then he rammed a clip into the .32, slid one into the chamber, set safety and shoved it into his back pocket. Then he loaded a couple of shells into the .410. He also pocketed a flick-knife and the brass knuckles. Shaun opened a box of Winchester ammo and loaded five into his piece, slipping some extra rounds into his pocket; then he spun the cylinder, drew back the hammer and sighted across his forearm, out the van window. Andy used a speed-loader for the .38 and stuck it down the front of his pants, pulling his shirt out over it. Then they each took a ski mask and pair of gloves.