Les Norton and the Case of the Talking Pie Crust Read Free Page B

find his missing MG. He gave Menny the details then left him to it. Later that evening, as Les was getting ready for work, Bodene called round Chez Norton, thanked Les and slipped him five thousand dollars. Les hid the money in his room and drove to the club, keeping what happened to himself. The following day, Les was having a coffee with the morning paper and on page three was an article. A house in Glenayr Lane Bondi had burned down and two bodies had been recovered. Les never mentioned this to Menny when he eventually showed up at the club and Menny never gave Les so much as a second look. But after that, Menny was very friendly towards Les and showed him a lot of respect.
    Les finished his water and stared into the empty glass. Well, if I’m fartarsing around with the Albanian Mafia, I’d better fartarse around very carefully, he thought. Not that I can see myself getting into too much trouble looking fora missing film script. It’s not like a suitcase full of dope or a box of machine guns. And finding it won’t be like fluking a car sitting in a garage. But, concluded Les, for fifty grand it’s certainly worth-having a look around and asking a few questions. Les stood up and took his empty glass out to the kitchen, then changed into a clean grey T-shirt with CANADIAN PANORAMA on the front, a pair of blue cargoes and his Balance trainers. Five minutes later he’d locked the house, and after adjusting his sunglasses under a white baseball cap, was strolling down Cox Avenue towards the corner of Hall Street and Glenayr Avenue with his mobile phone stuffed in a side pocket of his cargoes.
    Hall Street was buzzing when Les crossed over into Glenayr Avenue, and by the time he reached Curlewis Street, he’d passed half-a-dozen coffee shops packed with the local café society. Further down he could see the shops at Seven Ways, and on the Warners Avenue corner was Azulejos.
    Les had only ever been in there a couple of times. Originally, it was an old butcher’s shop and still had the rough, patchy yellow concrete floor, glass showcase and meat rails hanging from the ceiling. There was a magazine rack on the left when you walked in, alongside shelves oforganic and imported food, and high up in an opposite corner, looking down on the chairs and tables, were two framed posters Les would have loved to have had in his loungeroom: a Muslim woman with an AK-47, and a North Vietnamese girl cradling an MAT-49. The café still had the large bay windows and the doorway faced a small park, where two gum trees edged by sandstone blocks took pride of place. There were chairs and tables on the footpath and people would sit around under the trees, often on their own fold-up chairs. An empty shop stood next door and alongside that was an old shop that sold recycled designer clothes. Further round was another al fresco style restaurant, the Sonata.
    Azulejos appeared to be thriving when Les reached the corner of Warners Avenue and punters were either standing around or filling the chairs and tables in or outside the café. At the same time, the council was ripping up the road and had most of the area cordoned off; a concrete truck was pouring slurry, there were workers in green fluoro vests everywhere and a young girl from the council was frantically running around amongst the noise and confusion with a STOP and GO sign trying to divert the impatient Saturday morning traffic. Lesducked between the girl with the STOP and GO sign and a VW Golf and started to cross the road. As he did, he spotted Bodene with a man and two women, all sitting beneath the trees in fold-up chairs, next to two shiny Harley Davidsons. One of the women was Bodene’s girlfriend, Barbara Beauty Spot.
    Barbara’s surname was Lewis and she got the nickname Beauty Spot because she had a mole on her neck shaped like a pineapple. She had worked at the Kelly Club prior to leaving for London, where she got nicked for fraud and did a year in a women’s prison before they