The All-Purpose Bodies: A Fast-Paced Thriller (Commander Shaw Book 11)

by Philip McCutchan

The woman in reception shook a head full of curlers. “No, dear, she ’asn’t, and all ’er gear’s still there, so she ain’t ’opped it without paying ’er bill either.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “When she does come in, would you tell her I had to go and if she wants me she knows where to get in touch?”

  I went back to the lounge and told Brett we were on our way. He seemed glad enough and I stifled my fears that, after all, something could have happened to the girl. But she wasn’t my business and her interest in Dunwoodie wasn’t mine; and I still didn’t want to get her angle mixed in too far with mine. My job had to come first and that was all there was to it. Yet when we got into the Land Rover and I started up and moved out from the shade of the trees I felt far more disturbed than I wanted to be. I drove along Darwin’s main street and headed south for the long haul down the Stuart Highway with many twinges of conscience and even of unexpected regret and it wasn’t until we’d gone quite a few miles along the highway that I stopped brooding about something that couldn’t be helped now. I drove fast down the bitumen, very fast in fact, through Rum Jungle and Adelaide River, on down to Pine Creek and Mataranka, and we were all of two-fifty miles down the track, with nothing suspicious sighted as yet, though of course I hadn’t really to be on the watch-out till after Newcastle Waters, when I heard a curious and unexpected movement in the back and something fell over and a voice called my name and when I jammed on the brakes and looked over my shoulder I saw Flair Dunwoodie grinning at me.

  She said brightly, “Sorry, but I decided to stow away and now I’m getting a bit sore from the motion.”

  6

  I stopped the Land Rover and said savagely, “You bloody little idiot.”

  “Why?” Her voice was cool and unrepentant and frankly I couldn’t think up a really convincing answer to that ‘why?’ Aside, that was, from the ever-present possibility of getting those wires crossed — and in my view that was still a good enough reason, so I repeated it once again and she said, “Phooey. Basically, we’re both after the same thing.”

  “No, we’re not,” I snapped, dripping sweat on to the seat-back. “I want to find your husband. You want to lose him.”

  “We both want to know what’s happened to him, though, don’t we?” She appealed to Brett. “Isn’t that right, Mr Cleland?”

  Brett’s good-natured face was broadly smiling; he was enjoying the situation. “Well, I’d say it’s right, yes. I don’t reckon she can do any harm, Commander.”

  “Don’t you?” I snapped. “Well, I do. And if —”

  “You’re not going to turn round and drive all the way back to Darwin, are you?” she interrupted. She sounded confident I wouldn’t do that and she was dead right.

  I said, “No, I’m not, but we’re not so far past Mataranka. It didn’t look exactly like Mayfair, but I dare say you could find a shake-down for the night.” Heat beat its way into the vehicle. “You had something to tell me,” I said pointedly, “when we were supposed to be meeting you. You never meant to keep that date, did you, except in the back of the truck?”

  “I’m afraid that’s true,” she admitted, and for the first time looked slightly guilty and ashamed. “I haven’t anything to tell you, actually. Only it seemed the only way. I knew you’d never take me if I asked.”

  That was so obvious I felt no need to confirm it. I asked, “Why did you want to come on a dusty ride like this, for God’s sake?”

  She said, more seriously now, “I’ve always believed in sticking close to the main chance. Just now, that’s what you are, whether you like it or not.”

  “And you,” I said cynically, feeling damned angry with her, “are a damn sight tougher underneath than you appear on the surface. Not to say brazen. I —”

  “Listen to me,” she said, and there was a note of pleading in her voice now. “I thought I could find out something about Jake on my own, but it’s beginning to look hopeless really. I doubt if I’m going to get there. And you strike me as the sort of man who does get there. In the end. That’s all.”

  “In the end,” I said grimly, “I will. But you may not like what I find. And I’m definitely not taking —”

  “Please,” she cut in again. “I know what you’re going to say, but please don’t. I don’t want to be marooned in Mataranka and I’m not going back to Darwin except to settle up with the hotel and collect my things, eventually. I can do that en route for London and that won’t be just yet. Please take me along?” Her eyes had filled with tears. “I promise I won’t be a nuisance.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said roughly. “Let’s have the rest and get it over.”

  “The rest?” She gave me a quick look.

  “The threats. You obviously have pull in Canberra, and quite likely in London too. If you don’t get your ladylike little way right now, what are you going to fix for me?”

  She looked damned hurt at that. She said, “Oh, that’s nonsense,” and she drew away from the seat-back and began scrambling across the stores.

  Irritably I asked, “Now what’s up?”

  “I’ll walk back to Mataranka,” she said. “I don’t want to put you out.”

  “Oh, get back in,” I said angrily. “You win. But you’re a flaming nuisance and don’t expect me to treat you as anything but.”

  *

  She sat there between us quietly and she didn’t ask any awkward questions and neither did she butt into the few fragments of conversation that passed between Brett and myself as I sent the Land Rover on towards the township of Newcastle Waters, which was where the easternmost six-fold pipeline system from the north met the Stuart Highway, running more or less parallel with it from there down to around a hundred miles north of Alice Springs, where it diverged into two main sections of three lines each with the various branch systems coming off at intervals. As we drove south from Newcastle Waters Brett Cleland said, “I’ve been thinking. There’s a pumping station thirty miles on, that’s the first after the system meets the highway. Well now, I could be wrong, but I’ve a kind of feeling the station might be what Slattery wanted us to hit.”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “It should be safe ground. Safe for picking up orders, I mean. Anything he wanted to pass and couldn’t risk putting out over the air.”

  I was dubious about that. “Could be,” I said, “but it sounds a massively cumbersome way of getting in touch. Don’t tell me that’s the best 6D2 can do, out here?” I’d spoken irritably; I was still feeling ruffled at the way Flair Dunwoodie had fooled me and then made rings around my better judgment. It was bad to take it out on Brett but just then I couldn’t help it.

  Brett said, “We have problems out here you don’t have back in Britain. I said I could be wrong, too,” he added, but he wasn’t. He was dead right, or so we all thought to start with. The sun was going down the western sky over Sturt’s Plain when we drove up towards the squat shape of the booster station. Brett had told me the station was fully automated and therefore unmanned, being visited by a maintenance gang on routine weekly checking trips, or at once if the red indicator lamps went up in the control room at Cape Scott to indicate a fault. So strictly speaking there shouldn’t be anybody around, for the maintenance gang wouldn’t be at work at this time of the evening. But there was someone there, a man wearing a khaki shirt and a hat with its wide brim turned down all round. He got up from the ground where he had been lying with his back against the fence surrounding the station, and sauntered out on to the bitumen as we came up. He waved us down. He looked something of a hobo, with an unshaven, deeply sunburned face and faded tattoo marks all the way up his thick, hairy arms.

  I stopped. The man leaned in through the open window on Cleland’s side. I smelled beer. He said to me, “Commander Shaw?”

  “That’s me,” I said. “How d’you know my name?”

  “Bin some trouble,” he said, disregarding my question.

  Cleland asked, “What sort of trouble?”

  The man jerked a stubby
thumb backwards. “Back there, behind the station. There’s a bloke bin shot.”

  “Bad?”

  “Dead. I come up here from down Helen way, on me flat feet. Couple of hours ago, I reach here and I find ’im. ’E was alive when I come, see. Couldn’t talk much, but ’e did say ’e was sprung by a couple of other blokes when ’e left ’is truck. They took the truck.” The man’s black eyes were fixed in a stare at me. “’E said ’e was expecting yer and would I watch out and stop yer.”

  Brett and I were already climbing out of the Land Rover. I asked, “How did the other men get here?” There weren’t any vehicles around that I could see.

  “Can’t tell yer that, mate. This bloke, ’e didn’t say.”

  Brett and I went quickly round the side of the station, making for the back. The station was built in a large L-shape. As we moved along the surrounding stockade-like fence I saw the rotors of a helicopter standing in the lee of the back of the building. I stopped and as I did so the man, who was behind us, called out, “Come on, Bushy,” and at the same instant I felt metal trying to make a hole in my back. The man I took to be Bushy, since he was wearing a thick brown beard, came fast around the corner ahead with two other men and they all carried guns. We hadn’t the ghost of a chance. The man behind urged us on round the corner and of course there was no body.

  I said, “Well, what d’you want?”

  Bushy grinned in a nasty kind of way and said, “You, mate. And yer cobber.”

  “What d’you want us for?”

  “Wait and see.” The three men came up close to form an escort. “Get in the chopper,” Bushy said, and nudged me towards the helicopter.

  “There’s a woman,” the man behind said. “What do we do with ’er, eh?”

  Bushy said, “Bring ’er, what else, fer Christ’s sake, why didn’t yer say! Go back and get ’er. We’ll see to these two.”

  The gun left my spine and I heard the man behind me moving back for the road. I yelled out as loud as I could, “Get to hell out, Flair, this is a trap,” and then a gun butt slammed me in the mouth and I felt the blood run. That maddened me. I threw myself at the man who had hit out at me and I got him round the legs. He crashed and his gun went off. Brett, as I saw from the corner of my eye, had lashed out with a knee at another of the men, had taken him by surprise too, and the man was doubled up, clasping his hands tight between his legs and moaning. By this time I was up again, but so was Bushy and he and his other pal were coming for me. Once again it began to look hopeless but there was a diversion that I certainly hadn’t counted on or even thought of. I heard the Land Rover start up and then there was a shot and I thought, Flair’s had it now and it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have told her to move out. But I was wrong, because just as those two men got their hands on me there was a scream from the far side of the pumping station, a scream that ended very suddenly, and I heard the Land Rover moving fast. With Flair at the wheel and with its windscreen shattered it zoomed dangerously around the corner of the fence, made a tight turn and came straight for us. The three men beat it fast. So did Brett; so did I. Bushy didn’t quite make it. The Land Rover took him fair and square and he went down beneath a wheel that not only broke his back but damn nearly disembowelled him as well. He squelched; guts flew in a jet like a full cockroach that has been stepped on. The other two opened up with their guns but by this time they’d kind of lost the initiative and both Brett and I were firing back. One of them went down with a bullet smack between the eyes and another dropped with a wing shot in his shoulder — but not before he’d got Brett in the stomach.

  It was like a battlefield and it wasn’t quite over yet. Flair wasn’t too good with that Land Rover, or maybe she was merely shaken up from having run over Bushy and — as we found a little later — the man who had stopped us in the first place. Anyway, she carried on going, though fortunately more slowly, and she didn’t stop till she’d smashed right into the helicopter. Then she did stop, rather suddenly. The steering wheel knocked the breath out of her but didn’t do any serious damage. I dragged her out and felt her all over and she got her breath back and started crying.

  I said, “There’s no need for that, Flair. You’ve done wonderfully. Thank you.”

  She went on crying, so I gave her face two stinging slaps that stopped her. She looked shocked. She said unsteadily, “I never thought I could do anything like that.”

  “Don’t worry too much about it,” I told her. “It’s a pity about the chopper, that’s all.” I got into the Land Rover and put her in reverse and she came away nicely so that was all right. I rummaged around in the back for the medical stores and I opened the brandy and passed the bottle to Flair. I said, “Take a good swig and you’ll feel fine,” and then I ran over to Brett. He had passed out and he’d lost rather too much blood to make me entirely happy about him and he had to be got to a doctor. After this I got the man with the winged shoulder on to his feet and told him to get himself across to the Land Rover, which, making a lot of fuss about it, he did. I picked Brett up in my arms and carried him over and made him as comfortable as I could in the back. Flair was badly shaken up and kept asking what she could do, and I told her to keep wetting Brett’s lips with brandy and keep the blood mopped up as best she could. I didn’t see how you could put a tourniquet on a man’s stomach, after all. I handed her Brett’s gun and said, “There’s something else you can do, Flair — guard that other bastard. While you’re doing that I’ll be driving us into Newcastle Waters.” That was rather nearer than going on to Helen Springs and I wanted that doctor fast. “Can you cope?”

  Her mouth was loose and wobbly and she was almost green now but she nodded and said tonelessly, “Oh, yes, I’ll manage.”

  *

  “There’s something I have to do, Flair,” I said after a while. “Take over the driving, will you. It’s easy enough on the bitumen.” I stopped and we shifted over.

  She asked, “What are you going to do?”

  “I have to question that wounded bum in the back and I’m not going to be too gentle.”

  “Do you really have to?”

  “Yes,” I said curtly, “I really have to. I have to do it now, too. Once he’s in the hands of a doctor I’m obviously not going to be able to use the methods I mean to use to make him talk. If you take my advice, Flair, you’ll shut your ears tight and concentrate on your driving.”

  I got in the back and Flair started up. Brett was still unconscious and was lying on the floor, propped up by our stores and with soft clothing beneath his body. The other man was sitting up with his back to the vehicle’s near side and his shirt was stiff with drying blood. “Let’s have your name,” I said.

  He hesitated a little, then shrugged, winced at the sudden pain, and said, “Brady.”

  “Okay, Brady,” I said as we moved on for Newcastle Waters, “let’s have the whole story.”

  Brady said, “Get stuffed.”

  “Think again,” I suggested.

  “I don’t know any bloody thing,” Brady said.

  “I’m not quite grass green,” I pointed out, “and I don’t want to be a bastard, but if you make me I will be and that’s a promise. So?”

  He said again, “Get stuffed,” and I didn’t like what I did but I had to do it. I reached out for the wounded shoulder and I wrenched it sharply. Brady screamed. The Land Rover swerved as Flair reacted. Sweat seemed to gush down Brady’s tanned face and the eyes looked maddened but he didn’t utter anything beyond the scream. I tightened my lips and hardened my heart and brought my gun barrel down on his upper arm and he screamed again and this time he passed right out. I used some of the water on him, douching his face, and he came back in again. I found I was sweating as much as he was, by now.

  “You filthy rotten bastard,” he said thickly, and passed out again. He didn’t talk when he came round; he had plenty of guts. But when I searched his pockets after he passed out once more and stayed that way they talked for him — just a little, anyway. I found the
carbon duplicate of a one-way air ticket — from Sydney to Brisbane. Brisbane again. It kept on cropping up. I made a guess and decided those stick-up men had intended to use that chopper to fly us into Brisbane.

  It began to look as though that was where I ought to be heading after all. And I wondered how Slattery had come to let us in for this little lot.

  7

  In Newcastle Waters I drove up to the constable’s house. He didn’t like us at all but once he’d phoned the Darwin police all was well. Soon after his call the doctor and ambulance arrived and Brett Cleland and Brady travelled up north under a police guard. The doctor told me Brett would be okay once the lead was out of him. When all this was settled I had another talk with the constable and then I drove the 170 miles south to Tennant Creek. I still had Flair with me; I was getting used to the idea now and anyway she’d proved she could be worth having around. Besides, I would have missed her company now. We had to wait around a bit at the airfield at Tennant Creek but the following afternoon we touched down at Brisbane.

  *

  On the way in I’d discussed my plans, such as they were, with Flair. All I could do in fact was to try to find this lubra, Lily Earring, and get her to talk. That, of course, suited Flair as well. She wanted badly to talk to that woman; she seemed pretty confident of getting the evidence she wanted against her husband, though I’d warned her not to build her hopes too high.

  And in the event Lily Earring didn’t talk at all.

  Flair and I found the Cowrun Road district and after a while we found the house called Leehop as well. Also Lily Earring. Lily was young, thoroughly sexy, and she had a very beautiful body that was currently entirely naked and was something else as well: dead. When we first found Leehop there had been no answer to my knock and after knocking twice more I’d given the door a shove with my foot and it had gone inwards. No-one had come and I’d put my head in and called and it was then that I’d seen the body — I didn’t, of course, know right away that it was Lily Earring, but a passing neighbour had heard Flair’s sudden high scream and had come in before I could stop her and she had made the identification quite positively. Lily was lying on a sleazy divan in the front room with her eyes wide open and her face showed no pain or fear and in fact she simply looked as if she were waiting for a client. When I turned the body over I realized she’d probably been with what she’d thought was a client but had turned out to be her murderer, for right between the shoulder blades there was a small humping of the dark skin round what had been a puncture. Something long and sharp had gone in there, something long and sharp and thin — something, perhaps, like a filed-down carving knife. There was a good deal of blood underneath her and the body was still warm.