The bikie’s smile brightened. ‘Money’s good. How much we talkin’?’
Martin indicated the Land Cruiser behind him with his thumb. ‘There’s about a million in cash in my truck,’ he said.
The bikie looked impressed. ‘Jesus, a million cash? You must be one of them big-city coppers. In plain brown envelopes, is it, Sarge?’ he sneered.
Martin wasn’t quite sure the uniform was doing its job. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a movement. The bikie jerked suddenly as a shadow flashed over his face, and a moment later the pool cue slammed savagely across his mouth. Martin heard the crunch of shattering teeth, then the heavy baboom-baboom of a double shotgun blast, followed by the violent jerking of Colin’s pistol as it discharged.
So the safety was off after all, Martin noted calmly to himself, and then was mildly bemused by his calmness. There was a smell in the air that reminded him vaguely of double bungers on cracker night when he was a kid.
Except for a ringing in his ears and a horrible gurgling sound coming from behind him, it was suddenly very quiet. The bikie was spreadeagled, face up, on the ground near the motorcycle. A dark red stain covered the front of his shirt. The woman, holding the splintered pool cue and swaying slightly, stood over him. She was breathing heavily, gasping for air. At last she took a long, slow breath and seemed to steady herself. Kneeling down by the man’s side, she put her fingers to his throat and checked for a pulse. She looked at Martin and shook her head.
The gurgling noise behind him continued and he looked around. Steaming, lime-green coolant was spewing out of the Land Cruiser’s shattered radiator and soaking rapidly into the gravel roadway. Martin sighed. Every time he thought things couldn’t possibly get worse, they did.
He turned back to the woman. ‘Why did you have to go and do that? I was going to make a deal.’
‘Oh, come on,’ she said, ‘get real. The moment you mentioned that money in your truck, we were both dead.’
‘He wouldn’t have shot a police officer,’ Martin argued.
She looked at him evenly. ‘Yeah, right,’ she said. ‘Brown suede shoes, a shirt two sizes too small, and trouser-cuff alterations by stapler. He might have been a few sandwiches short of a picnic but even he wasn’t that dumb.’
Martin glanced down at his shambolic uniform.
‘That gravy stain on your chest is the only thing that makes you look anything like a real cop,’ she added.
Martin looked at the figure on the ground. He looked at his pistol, and back at the dark red stain on the front of the bikie’s denim shirt. ‘I killed him?’ he asked.
‘Could have been a dead heat,’ the woman said, ‘if you’ll pardon the gruesome pun. I think I might have snapped his neck.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘Some fucking birthday this turned out to be.’ She tossed the splintered pool cue into the sidecar.
‘Many happy returns,’ Martin offered.
‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ She turned and vomited into the bushes.
Martin was instantly on his knees, the contents of his own stomach mixing with the green radiator coolant on the gravel track. Funny, he thought, no matter what you’ve been eating, when you throw up there’s always some diced carrot in it. He felt a tightness in his chest and a roaring in his ears, and a fuzzy hollow blackness began closing in around him.
*
The next thing he was conscious of was sitting in the shade of the Land Cruiser, propped up against a front tyre. The woman stood next to him.
‘Here.’ She handed him the canvas water bag from the bullbar, which the shotgun blast had luckily missed. ‘Better rinse your mouth and have a drink.’
He swilled and spat, then took a long drink of the tepid, brackish-tasting water. The bikie lay on his back in the sunlight. Martin looked over at the body. ‘I guess he’s still dead then?’ he said.
‘What a team, eh?’ the woman said. ‘When we put ’em down they stay down.’
Martin put his head between his knees. ‘Jesus Christ, what happened?’ he groaned.
‘You blacked out,’ she said. ‘I was worried there for a minute. Me and two dead blokes on top of a mountain – kind of thing that can get a girl an interesting reputation.’ She leaned against the side of the vehicle, her arms folded. ‘Okay, you have any sort of a plan, Inspector Gadget?’
Martin looked up. ‘Not really, I’ve been sort of making it up as I go today. I’m new at this. I’m actually a bank manager.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Used to be a bank manager,’ he added.
The woman peered into the back of the Land Cruiser. ‘And you had your fingers in the till, did you?’
‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing,’ Martin said. ‘I just had a really bad morning.’
‘A million dollars cash, eh? And a man without a plan. My day just keeps getting better and better.’
She looked at him keenly. She looked at the dead bikie, the motorcycle and the cliff edge. Then she looked back at Martin and he knew she had come to a decision.
‘Okay, sunshine, on your feet. Let’s see what we can do about sorting this mess out.’
seven
Forty-five minutes later, Martin – now wearing the bikie’s boots and jeans and an old sweatshirt of Colin’s that he’d found in the Land Cruiser – was stuffing a third garbage bag full of cash into the sidecar. The woman had carefully slit open the side seams of the canvas money bags with her Swiss Army Knife – the professional model that Martin had always wanted. She had been very particular about not marking or scratching the padlocked metal bars sealing the tops of the bags, which, once empty, had been returned to the back of the police vehicle.
The bikie’s denim jeans were worse than Colin’s trousers, Martin had discovered. They stank as well as itched. He fidgeted and scratched as he gathered up the collection of guns from the passenger seat – the bank’s pistol and the guards’ revolvers. Heading back to the motorcycle, he was distracted by the woman bending over to pick up the empty cartridge case from his Glock. Her butt in those leather pants was a sight to behold. He stumbled in the bikie’s thick-soled boots and the guns fell out of his hands. As he bent to pick up the pistols, he heard a low wolf whistle from behind.
‘Nice arsenal,’ she said when he turned around.
Martin tried to read her expression. Her face was neutral but there was something about her eyes that bewildered him. And he liked it, which confused him even more. I’m really out of my depth here, he thought, and then wondered why he had thought it. Out of his depth? He’d robbed his own bank and now he’d killed a man. Out of his depth was a serious understatement. He stashed the guns under the seat of the sidecar.
‘Let’s get this over with,’ the woman said. She was standing over the body of the bikie, who was still lying where he had fallen but was now wearing Colin’s shirt and trousers. It had taken them nearly twenty minutes to strip the body of its rank clothing and dress it in the police uniform. ‘Okay, you get the shoulders and I’ll get his feet. I hope you’ve had your Weet-Bix.’
It took the two of them another fifteen minutes to drag the body across to the Land Cruiser and manhandle it into a sitting position in the driver’s seat.
‘Guess we just found out why they call it dead weight,’ the woman panted as they finally wrestled him into place. She patted a bulge in the dead man’s shirt pocket and pulled out Martin’s pills. ‘These yours?’ she asked.
Martin nodded. She looked at the labels and handed the packets to him. ‘You know, a man with your kind of money really should be taking better care of himself,’ she smiled.
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ Martin said. Then, as the woman slid Colin’s pistol into the holster at the bikie’s waist, ‘Lucky for us the safety catch was off.’
‘Glocks don’t have a regular safety. They’ve got something called safe action. You just have to pull the trigger, but you have to pull it pretty hard and in exactly the right way.’
‘Lucky for me I got it right then.’
‘Lucky for
both of us.’ She smiled again.
‘Should we put his seatbelt on?’ Martin asked, looking at the dead bikie slumped in the driver’s seat.
‘I’m afraid at this point in time a traffic accident is the least of his worries.’ She looked at Martin for a moment, then pulled the seatbelt around the bikie’s body. ‘However, since he’s now playing the part of a hypertensive, stitched-up bank manager, we’ll put on the belt. You would, wouldn’t you?’ she asked.
This whole thing was even stranger than the donut van, Martin decided. He sat on the sidecar and watched as the woman placed a large rock under a front tyre of the Land Cruiser. After putting the gear stick in neutral, she leaned over to release the handbrake. The vehicle lurched forward slightly, coming to rest against the rock. She walked round to the open rear doors and, working carefully, poured petrol from the jerry can over the empty canvas bags.
‘You wanna throw me the pool cue?’ she asked, turning back to Martin.
He tossed it to her. She smiled her thanks and began wrapping the bikie’s bloody shirt around the splintered wooden shaft. When it was tightly tied she dribbled some petrol from the jerry can over the fabric. Something seemed to occur to her and she walked over to Martin.
‘Open your mouth,’ she said.
Martin looked warily at the pool cue in her hand.
‘Hey, c’mon,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to make you eat it, I just want to check out your teeth.’
Martin opened his mouth and she peered in. ‘My goodness,’ she said, ‘amalgam city. The fifties really were the glory days of Australian dentistry. No dentures, though, which is lucky for us.’
Back at the Land Cruiser she prised open the bikie’s shattered mouth and forced it over the rim of the steering wheel. She slammed the driver’s door and then reopened it, removing one of Martin’s suede shoes from the corpse and turning the ignition to on.
Martin looked at her questioningly.
‘Leaving the ignition off is always a dead giveaway when you stage a car accident,’ she said. ‘Just remembered in time.’
Martin smiled and nodded in agreement, though he really had no idea what she was talking about.
‘You wanna stick that empty jerry can back in the rack for me?’ she asked.
Martin did as she requested.
The woman carefully surveyed the vehicle, then turned and studied Martin intently. She looked at his hands. ‘Bugger,’ she said softly.
Martin looked down.
‘You very attached to that ring?’ she asked.
He shook his head and pulled the gold wedding band from his finger. Probably about time anyway, he thought to himself, since his wife had stopped wearing hers a couple of years ago. He tossed the ring to her and watched as she put it on the bikie’s left hand. After further careful study of the vehicle and its occupant, she finally seemed satisfied.
‘’kay,’ she said, ‘now all we need is a light. Got a match?’
Martin reluctantly felt inside the bikie’s grimy pants pockets and produced a battered Zippo lighter. She picked up the pool cue and held it out to him. Martin lit it, jumping back as the petrol-soaked shirt flared up.
‘Grab the rock,’ she ordered.
Martin stared at her, unsure of what she meant.
‘Grab the rock from under the front tyre,’ she yelled.
He pulled the rock clear and the vehicle rolled towards the cliff edge. The woman threw the burning pool cue into the open rear door and the Land Cruiser burst into flames with a savage whoomp and toppled lazily over the edge. Tumbling through the air – almost in slow motion, it appeared to Martin – the blazing mass left a smoky trail before it smashed into the ground far below. A moment later, the burning wreckage was suddenly engulfed in a gigantic fireball.
‘Jesus!’ Martin gasped, stepping back involuntarily as a wave of heat reached him.
‘Fuel tank ruptured when she hit,’ explained the woman. ‘Bastard got himself a Viking’s funeral, which is a hell of lot more than he deserved.’
*
Martin watched the plume of black smoke climbing slowly into the clear sky. The woman held up his left shoe and sadly shook her head.
‘Didn’t your wife ever tell you brown suede doesn’t go with anything?’ she asked. She casually tossed the shoe over the cliff, in the direction of the burning Land Cruiser. ‘An extra clue to your untimely demise in a tragic single-vehicle accident,’ she explained to his questioning look. ‘They need to find something not burned up down there that’s personal and identifiable as yours.’
Martin nodded mutely.
‘The smashed teeth and the fire will mess up any chance of forensics matching the dental records for a while,’ she continued. ‘It should look like he smashed his face into the steering wheel on impact. That covers up the damage I did to his not-so-pearly whites with the pool cue.’
He could only stare at her in amazement.
‘And since the bullet from the Glock went straight through him, it won’t show up in a post-mortem X-ray and start alarm bells ringing,’ she said. ‘Plus those padlocked moneybag seals in the back will make it look like all that cash went up in smoke.’
Martin felt himself sweating, but when he put his hand to his forehead it was dry. He looked at his hand. Every line and mark on his palm and the whorls of his fingerprints stood out in startling clarity.
‘It’s lucky for us that you and shit-for-brains down there are both pretty porky,’ the woman said. ‘They’ll need to run a DNA match to be a hundred per cent certain it’s not you. Which will buy us a little more time. It’s not like it is on television,’ she continued. ‘DNA testing actually takes longer than a three-minute ad break.’
Martin looked at the billowing column of smoke and slowly shook his head. He’d just shot someone who had been about to shoot him and now he was helping a complete stranger incinerate the body in a faked car crash. And apparently DNA testing didn’t really happen in the ad breaks. Plus he was pretty porky. ‘What the hell is happening to my life?’ he said quietly. ‘I think I’m going out of my mind.’
She put a hand on his shoulder and he stiffened. It had been a long time since a woman had touched him.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said gently. ‘It’s probably just an adrenalin rush, mixed in with a fair bit of shock.’
‘You reckon?’
‘It’s understandable. Take some really deep breaths and try to calm down. None of this is your fault,’ she said firmly, ‘it’s just fate. Someone was going to get killed on this mountain today. Luckily it didn’t wind up being either of us.’
Martin looked at her hand on his shoulder. She had long, elegant fingers. She took her hand away. He immediately wanted her to put it back. She smiled at him.
‘And on a brighter note,’ she said, ‘congratulations. You are now one very rich dead man, Mr ….?’
‘Carter,’ he said. ‘Martin Carter.’
She held out her hand. He took it and the same tingle shot through his body. Her grip was firm, the skin soft, even silky.
‘I’m Faith Chance. Pleased to meet you. Can you handle a motorbike, Martin Carter?’
‘Sorry. Led a bit of a sheltered life, I guess.’
She laughed. It was a nice husky laugh. ‘Well, you seem to be making up for it today. Looks like I’m driving then.’
She picked up the newer leather jacket from the ground and slipped it on. ‘There’s no windscreen on the sidecar, so you’ll have to wear this disgusting object,’ she said, holding up the bikie’s tattered jacket. ‘But at least you’ve got all that lovely money to keep your tootsies warm.’
On the back of the jacket were marks where a fabric logo had been roughly unstitched. Someone had crudely lettered a new one in white paint.
‘Hells Angles? I know you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,’ Faith said, passing over the jacket, ‘but God, what a dope.’ She pulled on a pair of leather gloves she’d taken from one of the helmets. They were clean, so Martin guessed they
were hers, along with the helmet. He put his right arm into the sleeve of the foul jacket and shuddered.
‘C’mon, Mr Carter,’ Faith laughed, ‘be a man.’ She slipped the helmet over her head.
As he squeezed into the cramped seat of the sidecar, Faith handed him the German coalscuttle helmet. He put it on. It was way too big. ‘I must look like a dick in this,’ he said.
Faith swung her leg over the motorcycle and settled into the seat. She looked down and studied him for a moment. ‘I could say no to be polite,’ she said seriously, ‘but I always say you shouldn’t start a relationship on a lie.’
Martin decided she was the strangest person he had ever met. But on the other hand she was most definitely good-looking, which was the only positive thing about his day so far. ‘So you’re okay on a Harley then?’ he asked.
‘It’s not a Harley, and yes, I know what I’m doing, so don’t worry. Anyway, with all your weight in that sidecar for ballast, we don’t really have to worry about tipping over.’
Martin wondered if he should be offended, but she was smiling warmly and there was that look in her eye again.
‘Should still be warm,’ Faith said after checking the bike’s gauges, ‘so let’s prime this baby and give it a burl.’ She adjusted some controls, then stood up and pushed down twice, slowly, on a foot pedal on the right-hand side. ‘Electric starters are for girls,’ she said, kicking down hard on the pedal this time. The engine coughed once, rattled and stopped. She leaned down to fiddle with something on the left side of the machine.
‘How do you know all that stuff?’ Martin asked. ‘I mean, what to do with the … you know, the clues and things? Faking the accident? And the teeth? And the safety on the Glock?’
‘Easy,’ she replied, smiling, ‘it’s my job.’ She kicked down hard again. The engine missed for the second time.
Fat, Fifty & F<li><li><li>ed! Page 5
