Pride's Harvest

by Jon Cleary

  “No,” said Waring slowly, “there are no problems.”

  “Just minor ones?”

  “Such as?” Then Waring nodded, pushed the gate wide open. “Oh, you mean finding the murderer?”

  “Did you discuss that this evening?”

  “Of course.” But somehow Waring made it sound as if the discussion had been perfunctory. “Are you any further advanced than you were at my office this morning?”

  “Of course . . . There’s one thing, Trev. Curly Baldock says he’s found someone who saw you driving through town last Monday night, going east. Did you go out to the gin?”

  “What time is this supposed to be?”

  “Around seven o’clock.”

  Waring fiddled with his bow-tie; it suddenly came loose and he let it hang down his shirt-front. “Well, yes. Yes, I did. Perhaps I should have mentioned it, but you know how it is . . .”

  “How?”

  “It—” Waring sounded as if he were trying to choose his words carefully; but the right ones wouldn’t come. “It would only have added suspicion to me. I was there twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, no more. That was when Ken Sagawa showed me the latest letter he had received. I didn’t kill him, Scobie. He was alive when I left him. He said he’d think about my advice about going to the police.”

  It was simple enough to be believable. “Did you notice if he had a business diary on his desk?”

  Waring frowned, then nodded. “Yes, he did. I made a date for Gus Dircks, who was coming up from Sydney, and I to meet him out at the gin Friday evening. He wrote it down.”

  “Doc Nothling wasn’t to be there at the meeting? He’s a shareholder.”

  “No,” said Waring, choosing his one word carefully this time.

  Malone said nothing, letting his silence say it for him.

  Waring waited; then he said, “I’ll back my car out of the way. Thanks again for bringing Ida home. I hope you all had a good time.”

  Malone nodded, turned to walk back to the Commodore in the moment that, right in front of him, one of the headlights went dark with a shattering of glass. Instinctively he dropped flat in the dust, shouting, “Get down!” as a second, ricocheting shot went whining away into the darkness. He crawled up beside the car, reached up through the open front door, switched off the headlights and fumbled for the keys. Then, still flat to the ground, he snaked his way to the rear of the car, flinching as another bullet thudded into the fender right above him. He unlocked the boot lid, pushed it up, rose to his knees and groped frantically in the darkness for one of the guns. A fourth bullet hit one of the tail-lights and he felt a piece of the red plastic bite into his hand. Then he had both guns, had dropped flat again and rolled over, looking for the flash of the next shot.

  He called out: “Are you all right, Trev?”

  “I’m okay.” He didn’t know why, but he was surprised there was no hint of fear in Waring’s voice. Unless he knew who was shooting and knew, too, that he was not the target . . . “Where is he?”

  Malone didn’t reply at once; he was trying to stifle the doubts that kept recurring about Waring. He was becoming paranoid about him, as he had been about Hardstaff. Then he called out, “I’m not sure. Somewhere over to the right. Have you got a gun?”

  “There’s a Twenty-two in the boot. I don’t know if I can get to it—”

  “Leave it there.”

  Then he saw the flash out in the scrub an instant before the bullet thumped into the car right above him. He brought up one of the S & Ws and fired two quick shots, then he rolled away from the car, fearful that another shot might explode the petrol tank. He lay waiting for another flash in the darkness; the seconds seemed to turn into minutes, time stretching out like a rubber band; but he knew only a minute at the most could have passed before he heard the car start up out on the highway. He stood up, but he could see nothing through the trees that bordered the road. He heard the car accelerating, the hum of it coming distinctly on the still air; then he saw its headlights in the distance, the arrow of their beam growing thinner and smaller as the car, its sound now gone, sped away.

  Waring, dusting himself down without looking at himself, staring off into the darkness, came up beside him. “Is it any use going after him?”

  “Forget it. Are there any back roads that’ll take him back to town?”

  “There are a couple. You think that’s where he’ll head?”

  “The only other likely place out in that direction, other than your father-in-law’s, is Noongulli. I don’t think Chess Hardstaff or anyone working for him would be stupid enough to head straight for home.”

  “Oh, for Chrissake! Chess? Shooting at you?”

  Malone tried one for size: “He could’ve been shooting at you.”

  Even in the dimness of the starlight he saw Waring jerk. “Me? Why me?”

  He changed tack, another shot in the dark: “Have you seen young Phil Chakiros since this afternoon?”

  “Phil? You mean about the doping of my horse? Yes. But he’s not a—”

  “Killer? What did you tell him when you spoke to him?”

  “I sacked him, told him he was on his own if there was an inquiry. If he’s found guilty, then I’ll sue him for the value of the dead horse. He has nothing, but his father can pay—he pays for everything for him. It’s not the money I’m after . . . Jesus, do you really think Phil was out there in the scrub shooting at me?”

  “I don’t know. Him—or it could’ve been two or three other people.”

  “But they were shooting at you. There wasn’t a bullet came near me—” He stopped. “You’re having me on. What’s the point of this, Malone? You’re still trying to tie me in with the Sagawa murder, aren’t you?”

  “Forget it, Trev,” said Malone wearily, all at once wanting to be rid of the doubts; at least for tonight. “Why did you have anything to do with Phil Chakiros in the first place?”

  “He’s a good trainer, he really understands horses. That’s what he wants to do eventually, go down to Sydney, take out a licence for city tracks.”

  “He can say goodbye to that ambition. Righto, move your car, Trev. Will they be worried if they’ve heard the shots up at the house?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so. „Roo shooters often come out here at night. Saturday nights, too, we sometimes get the local louts, they drive out along this road shooting at the road signs. I’ve appeared for some of them in court.”

  “Don’t say anything, then. Lisa worries enough about me.”

  “All right.” He went back to his car, stopped by its open front door. “You still think I had something to do with the murder.”

  “Did I ever say I thought that?”

  “You implied as much. But maybe that’s the lawyer in me. We’re always looking for implication and inference.”

  Waring got into his car and drove past the Commodore and up towards his house, out of sight behind the black screen of trees. Malone stood in the darkness, listening to the receding sound of the car till there was only the silence of the bush, that heavy hush in which any noise, the snapping of a twig, the call of a bird, is only an accent of the stillness. He felt himself tightening, the flesh contracting on his bones; he backed up against the car and looked around. He was used to the dark of city streets; his ears were attuned to city sounds. But there was a menace to this stillness, the aboriginal threat that the first explorers and settlers had found so unnerving, something primeval that the country’s civilization had yet to conquer. Suddenly he felt his hands, each still holding a gun, begin to tremble.

  He heard a rustling on the other side of the car and he swung round, both guns coming up. Then a kangaroo came out of the scrub and loped across the drive; then another and another. A dozen or more of them came out of the scrub and disappeared again into the darkness, ghostly and silent but for the faint thump-thump as they hit the ground in their unhurried rhythm, arrogantly unafraid of the threat of him.

  III

  Though it was one
o’clock in the morning, the lights were on in the Chakiros home. It was a large one-storeyed house, built perhaps twenty years ago and undistinguished in style, the sort one saw in developers’ brochures, stamped out like biscuits from a tract of dough. There were three cars in the driveway, Chakiros’s Mercedes and two Fairlanes. Malone felt the bonnets of all three; they were barely warm, almost cold. Then he went up the three steps to the wide front veranda and rang the bell on the front door.

  Philip Chakiros, in a fancy rollneck cardigan and jeans, came to the door. “Yeah?”

  “Could I see you out here, Mr. Chakiros?” Malone could hear a chatter of voices back in the house, mostly male ones amplified by drink, and he didn’t want to face a platoon of Ray Chakiros’s mates from the Veterans Legion. With the enemy out here on the garden path, they might think they were back on the Kokoda Trail or the Mekong Delta.

  Phil Chakiros hesitated. “What d’you want?”

  “Who is it, Phil?” His father came lumbering down the hall, dinner jacket and bow-tie now discarded, a beer can in his hand. “Ask „em in—Oh Christ, it’s you! What the hell d’you want?”

  “Just a word with your son, Mr. Chakiros. Don’t let me interrupt your party.”

  “Come back at a decent hour. Shut the door, Phil!”

  Malone, foot ready, waited for the youth to make a move. But young Chakiros just shrugged and stepped out on to the veranda, “It’s okay, Dad. Go back inside.”

  “No, you come inside—” Chakiros was all belligerence, stoked by the drink he had had, ready for a small war right on his own doorstep. “Come on—”

  “Dad.”

  Chakiros stared at his son, as if disbelieving that he had been given an order; then, like a good soldier, if a poor father, he turned and stomped off down the hall. His son stepped out on to the veranda and led the way down the steps and path to the front gate.

  “Just in case he comes back. Dad’s still a Wog father in lots of ways—he thinks he rules the roost.”

  “Who does? You?”

  “My mother.”

  “You’re not a Wog?”

  The boy gave him a sharp glance. “No. D’you think I am?”

  “I don’t put labels like that on people.” It wasn’t always true; his own father, with his prejudices, sometimes spoke through his voice. “Phil, where have you been all evening?”

  “Oh Jesus! What am I supposed to have done now?”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  Young Chakiros leaned against the brick gate-post. It was not an arrogant pose, but rather one of weariness. Gone was all the smart-arse defiance of last night. “I’ve been at the Legion club all night, till I came home about an hour ago. Dad and Mum called in there and picked me up. Why, what am I supposed to have done this time?”

  “Do you have anyone who’ll vouch for you having been at the club all night? Don’t suggest any of your mates from last night. They’d bounce the truth around like a rubber ball if I questioned them.”

  “You’re like everyone else, you’ve got the wrong idea about „em. They’re a bloody sight more honest and law-abiding than some of the shit you have down in Sydney. They don’t go around beating up old ladies, for one thing . . .” Then he sighed, as if he were weary, too, of defending his mates. “Okay, ask the bar stewards, they’ll tell you where I was. And some of Dad’s mates. They’re inside now, them and their wives. They didn’t go to the ball, not the older ones.”

  “Name one.”

  “There’s George Gillies—”

  “Could you go in and ask him to step out here a minute?”

  “Dad’s not gunna like it.”

  “I’ll put up with that. I’ve put up with a lot worse since I landed here in Collamundra.”

  “Okay, I’ll get him.” He straightened up, walked a few paces back towards the house, then stopped. “You still haven’t told me what this is all about. I think I’m entitled to know.”

  “Someone tried to shoot me tonight.” He decided, on the spur of the moment, not to mention Trevor Waring. Let Waring himself broadcast that he might have been the intended victim.

  “Jesus!” His shock was genuine; there was no doubt of that. “You mean you think I tried to do it?”

  “Phil, you were carrying a gun last night that was fully loaded. You tailed me and Sergeant Clements for something like ten Ks. You told us you’d been out shooting kangaroos, but the gun hadn’t been fired. You’re an intelligent kid. Wouldn’t you put yourself on the list of suspects when someone has a shot at me the following night?”

  The boy had turned back to face Malone. “No. You just said I’m intelligent—I am. Too intelligent to be that fucking stupid.” He was growing angry, genuinely so; Malone was sharp enough to recognize that it added weight to the boy’s argument. “I don’t like you, Mr. Malone, but you’re wrong about me wanting to kill you. We had the gun in the car last night because we were gunna shoot out some road signs—we do it all the time.”

  “Very intelligent.”

  “Okay, so it’s fucking dumb. I know that. But you get bored in this town, especially if you’re as intelligent as you think I am. I can’t wait to get out of the fucking place, but, I dunno, I get just so far and then I come back . . .”

  Malone made a guess: life here as the spoiled son of one of the town’s wealthiest businessmen, dull as it might be, had its easeful comforts.

  “Where were you last Monday night? You didn’t go to that concert at Bathurst, did you? Were you out shooting up road signs again that night?”

  “No, we were over at Bathurst, like I said.” He sounded dogged now, as if he had made enough admissions for the night.

  Malone let that one alone for the time being. “Who sent you out to tail us last night?”

  Phil Chakiros hesitated. “Nobody. We just picked you up by chance.”

  “You’re lying, Phil.”

  The boy was silent for a long moment; then he shrugged once more. “Look, don’t take this any further, okay? I don’t think he meant any real harm. It was my father. He’s—well, he doesn’t like anything going on in this town that he doesn’t know about, that’s all.”

  Maybe. “What he knows—who does he pass it on to? He just doesn’t bring it home and you all sit around the dinner table and discuss it.”

  “My mother wouldn’t allow it. She hates gossip.”

  “She sounds a nice lady. How does she feel about the mess you’ve got yourself into with doping that horse this afternoon?”

  “She belted me.” He said it without smiling, a twenty-three-year-old who thought it the most natural thing in the world for his mother to hit him for doing wrong. “She’s old-fashioned.”

  I wonder what you’d think of me? But would he belt Tom when Tom got to be twenty-three? “She sounds nicer by the minute. Give her my compliments. You’re going to be rubbed out, you know, despite anything your father might try to do for you.”

  “I know. That’s why I didn’t go to the ball tonight—my mother wouldn’t let me. She said she was too ashamed to be seen with me in public.” He turned towards the house again. “I’ll get George Gillies.”

  “Never mind, Phil. You’ve cleared yourself.” Malone opened the front gate, went through and closed it behind him. He was aware of the smell of mulch on the garden and even in the starlit darkness he could see that the lawns were neatly mowed and trimmed. He wondered if Mrs. Chakiros, an old-fashioned mother, made her son work around the house for what indulgences his father gave him. “Good night. Pass up the road signs, Phil—there are better things to aim at. Oh, one more thing. When your father hears everything that goes on in town, does he pass it on to Chess Hardstaff?”

  “Yes. How did—?”

  “How did I know? I think I’m like your dad, Phil. I’m getting to know everything that’s going on in this town.”

  IV

  Sunday morning Malone went to Mass with Lisa and the three children. She had brought them in in the Warings’ Land-Rover; thou
gh Sean Carmody had once been a Catholic, it seemed that none of the Warings was. The church for the eight-thirty Mass was only half-full; some of the congregation, especially the men, also seemed half-full from last night’s binge. The priest, an understanding young man whom Malone had seen at the races yesterday afternoon helping attend to the injured jockeys, kept his homily short and his voice low out of sympathy for the soft, sore heads in the pews. Malone had half-expected him to mention the Sagawa murder, at least to offer a prayer for the dead man’s soul; but all the priest asked for was a prayer for the recovery of the injured jockeys; Sagawa was beyond recovery, being dead and a Buddhist. Malone waited for him to pray for the souls of the dead horses, being a true-blue Aussie, but no mention was made of them, though some of the congregation, being bereft owners and out of pocket too, looked disappointed. Malone’s thoughts, as usual, wandered a long way from the purpose of the Mass. He was sure, however, that God didn’t mind. He sometimes wondered if the Lord ever grew tired of the constant demands on His own attention.

  As the collection plate was coming round, Lisa whispered, “What’s the matter with your hand?”

  “I thought you were going to put something in the plate.”

  “Not that, stupid. We all know how you can’t put your hand in your pocket.” He was notorious for his careful approach to charity; he had once suggested that Peter’s Pence should be split into farthings.

  Maureen, leaning forward to hear this, nodded emphatically. “Tightest fist in the West.”

  Her mother clipped her, without taking her eyes off the Band-Aid on Malone’s hand. “How’d you do it?”

  “I knocked it on the car door. It’s nothing.” He had no intention of telling her of the shooting last night, and he hoped Trevor Waring would keep his mouth shut.