by Peter Corris
She went into the house and came out with a shoulder bag. We went down the drive past the remaining imported cars to my honest Falcon.
“No car?” I said.
“Cab—expenses.”
She untangled the crescents and circuits for me and steered me towards the city. Otherwise she was quiet and didn’t volunteer much. I had to prompt her hard to find out that she worked two days a week at the university as a research assistant in Political Science and two days as a feature writer for The Canberra Times. She preferred the journalism but the two jobs complemented each other. We pulled into a big parking lot behind a department store and she stared out at the city lights.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not used to talking about myself.” “Okay, I’ll stop. One last question. What brought you to Canberra?”
“Marriage.”
We walked through the parking lot and down some streets and across a couple of pedestrian plazas. Canberra has scored a few points against the motor car in the centre of the city, but just a few. The closed-off roads with pot plants and painted barriers look as if they could be swept away easily enough if someone decided they should be. Kay led me to some steps that went down into a big, circular concrete cellar. There was enough light to see by and some kind of matting on the floor. The food was on a serve-yourself system. We got steaks and garlic rolls and salad on our plates and I got a couple of small carafes of white wine. There were about ten plain wooden tables which would seat a dozen people and the drill was to plonk yourself down wherever you pleased. I was surprised to see people choosing to sit near others, obviously strangers, rather than going off by themselves. Kay went over to where a hippie-looking couple were sitting: the woman, who wore a plaid poncho and jeans, was holding a baby on her knee. The man was dark-bearded and thin: they nodded as we sat down, pushed the pepper and salt along and went back to talking quietly about their kid. We started on the food.
“Good place,” I said.
She nodded and kept eating.
“Is there no no-talking rule?”
She shook her head and smiled. She had big white teeth and her smile was a fraction crooked. I looked at her hands—no rings. I drank the first glass of cold wine fast and poured another—she did the same. Then we both smiled and touched glasses. She put down her knife and fork.
“Ask,” she said.
“It’s a compliment really. What happened to the marriage?”
“It did what it was supposed to do.” She picked up her fork. “Then it finished.”
“What was it supposed to do?”
She shrugged. “Get him a Ph.D. and a couple of books.” She didn’t sound or look bitter, more amused. If it had scarred her she wasn’t letting it show. Then she went back to eating and kept at it until all the food was gone. She wiped her plate with bread and put that down. We started on the second carafe.
“God I needed that. I ran out without eating this morning and I don’t eat lunch. Sorry to be so incommunicative. I was just bloody hungry. Now, are you going to tell me what you’re investigating?”
I suppose I’d known all along that I would and that I’d be needing her help. The wine and food and her company had relaxed me. Little things that had come out in the interview with the Baudins were floating around in my mind, coming to the surface and forming a pattern. Something about this girl, which was how I thought of her although she must have been in her mid-twenties, and something about the ease we felt with each other made me trust her and want to try out the pattern on her. So I told her. I gave her all the details as far as I could recall them and put it all in order as it had happened. She looked concerned when I got to the bit about being bashed, but more interested than concerned. I’d obviously survived to do more sleuthing and that was what mattered to her. To me too. It took some time and the wine was finished when I got to the end. The hippies had melted away into the night early on in my exposition.
Kay toyed with her empty glass. “So you think Keir Baudin was lying. He knows more about his brother than he lets on?”
“Yeah, that’s how it looks to me. He hates Warwick and he reinforces his father’s disappointment with him. The old boy struck me as pretty tolerant so this Warwick must be a real bastard.”
“Mm, I’ve never heard of him, but I could ask a few people who might have. I could sniff around about Keir too, it sounds as if he’s got things on his mind. Tomorrow.”
“Yeah, tomorrow.” I was tired but not too tired, the wine had done me good and I could feel the juices flowing. I stroked her arm, raising the fine, light hairs and smoothing them down again.
“That’s nice,” she said. “What’s next Cliff?”
I laced my fingers through hers. “I want to go back to my motel and go to bed with you. Then I want to get up at 4 a.m. and break into Keir Baudin’s house with you keeping watch.” I took out my licence and put it on the table; the younger, smoother Hardy face mocked up at my battered mug. I wasn’t sure why I’d put it there, unless it was some sort of personal commitment. But to what?
“That doesn’t license you to break and enter.”
“No, rather the reverse. They come down hard if they catch you at anything fancy.”
“Ever been caught?”
I grinned. “Yeah, once or twice. The trick is to come out smelling clean at the end—I’ve done that so far.”
She looked at me and the photograph and back to me. We were thinking the same thing—was there a story in it for her and under what terms? That accounted for some of her interest in me I knew, but how much? I thought bleakly of the house in Glebe with nothing waiting for me but the dust and yesterday’s papers and realised that I didn’t care about the percentages. If she was ten percent interested in me that was fine, twenty percent would be a jackpot. If we had an unspoken semi-professional relationship in the making what the hell did it matter? I squeezed her hand confidently.
“Come on, think about it on the way. If you’re against it I’ll just drive you home. Of course I’ll have to tie you up with knots that’ll hold you till dawn.”
She laughed. I paid the bill and we went out. The air was cool and we drew close as we walked. I put my arm around her and suddenly we were in a shop doorway kissing hard and fierce as if we’d invented it. I took her head in my hands and held it in close; she flicked her tongue into my mouth. We pressed together from knee to nose and I liked it, then we broke apart, both breathing hard.
“Yes then,” she said. “Yes.”
I didn’t say anything, just kept close to her all the way back to the car. I kissed her again before I started up and she let her long legs slide down in front of her. After a few minutes she fumbled beside her on the seat and came up with one of the bottles of Irish. I’d told her about Brain but not about the whisky.
“Do you drink this stuff much?”
“Not usually. It was to oil Brain’s tongue. I hope he died easier for it.”
She glanced sharply at me and it occurred to me then that this was confirmation of a sort of what I’d told her. I hadn’t thought until then that she might not have believed me—it was pretty weird for a pick-up story though.
She sat quietly with the bottle in her lap, then she said: “We’ll have a sip before we go to bed.”
The motel room was dingy and smelled of my washing but it didn’t matter. I could taste the sweet spirit in her mouth when we kissed and I pressed down on her and we connected. She thrust hard back up at me and dug her fingernails into my shoulders; we threw ourselves into it for a while and then she groaned and relaxed and I came hard and she hung onto me with her hands gently now on my back.
We rolled apart and I reached for the telephone and booked the morning call. We pulled up a sheet and wrapped ourselves together and went to sleep. I woke up a bit later and disentangled; I put out the lights all but one and made a cigarette and looked at her while I smoked. She was lying curled up on her side; her face was hidden by the dark blob of hair; the sheet was down around
her waist and her breasts were high set and pointed. Her skin was a faint amber colour like a faded summer tan or an early summer tan or an all-year tan. She slept still and quietly; I finished the cigarette, lay down, and curved in beside her.
Post-coital sleep is deep and a few drops of wine and whisky help things along. I was well under when the light came on and the radio started blaring. Baudin’s secretary or bodyguard or whatever he was stood near the bed. He had a big chrome-plated gun in his hand and although Kay was sitting up bare-breasted his eyes were only for me. He lifted the gun a fraction.
“Disgusting,” he said. “You’ve only just met.” Kay pulled the sheet up, her eyes were wide and frightened and she looked at the gun as if she’d never seen one before.
“Then again,” he drawled, “maybe you have met before. That’s a thought.”
I pulled myself up and tried to get some balance and possible leverage in the bed. It’s not a good place to launch an attack from.
“You better know what you’re doing,” I said.
He smiled. He’d taken his tie off and he needed a shave which made him look even tougher. I searched my mind for his name—Reynolds? Rawson? Rogers, that was it, but it was one of those useless, irrelevant thoughts that come along at times like these. I should have been thinking about how to get his gun and put it down his throat.
“I know what I’m doing,” he said. “I’ve come here to ask you a few questions. If I’m satisfied with the answers I go away. If I’m not people start getting hurt.”
“Ask away,” I said.
“Who are you working for?”
“No comment.”
“Where is Warwick Baudin?”
“I wish I knew.”
He sighed. He was a bit stagey in his role but still efficient. “It looks like some pressure is needed.” He held the gun very steady, pointed it at my belly, and hit me on the ear with a short, hard left hand chop. He knew how to hit. I went back and heard a harsh ringing start up inside my head. He moved around the bed, reached down and grabbed one of Kay’s breasts and twisted. She screamed and he slapped her hard, twice.
“You won’t use the gun,” I said. “Too much noise.”
He flexed the fingers of his hitting hand and pointed the pistol at my groin. “You’re wrong there. I’ve done it before. I really don’t mind doing it, you know. A private detective and a journalist, dead in bed, who’d care?”
Kay covered herself again and massaged her breast. “Cliff, I’m scared.”
“So you should be,” he said. “That was just a start, the possibilities are endless.” She drew in a breath and Rogers moved a little closer to her.
“If you scream,” he said softly, “I’ll knock out a few of your teeth.”
My mind was racing trying to think why Keir Baudin had need of this animal. It had to be Keir; Rogers acted like an instrument—he was Keir’s malevolence and cruelty put into action. He had good control but he seemed to like uttering the threats and inflicting petty violence a little too much to be first class at his trade.
“I’ll ask you again Hardy—who and where?”
I said nothing.
“I think you’re going to have to come along with me Miss Fletcher,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll be more reasonable.”
“Touch her again and I’ll kill you.”
He gave a short laugh and reached for Kay’s neck. I pushed up off the bed and went for his wrist with both hands. I got it and twisted my whole weight against it; he yelled and dropped the gun but his recovery was quick. He hit me hard in the ribs as I came flailing to my feet naked and vulnerable. His eyes searched for the gun and I swung a roundhouse punch that got him high on the head and didn’t hurt him much. He chopped at my neck and I took more of the weight of it than was comfortable. I hit him again, low down but it was too light to bother him. Then he spotted the gun and bent for it; I rushed him and jerked a knee up under his chin. He grunted, went down and got a hand to the gun but he was hurt; I took hold of his arm, twisted it round and and broke it. The snapping sound was nearly as loud as his yell and I clapped my hand hard over his mouth. He sagged down with his good arm on the bed. Little moans ebbed from his mouth along with spittle.
Kay was sitting up with her knees drawn up protectively in front of her. She was looking at me but there was terror in her eyes and I knew that things wouldn’t be quite the same between us again. I grabbed a handful of tissues and crammed them into Rogers’s mouth, then I pulled off his jacket and wasn’t gentle. Blood was seeping through the sleeve of his elegantly striped shirt. I ripped the sleeve from cuff to shoulder: the bone had broken a little above the elbow joint and a white splinter was showing through the skin which was discoloured. Rogers turned his head to look at the injury, his eyes wide in shock. I removed the tissues from his mouth.
“Hospital,” he croaked.
“Yeah.” I picked up the gun and put it on the bedside table before pulling on my pants. Kay crawled across the bed towards me and I put my arm around her and stroked her hair. I lowered the sheet; a big purple bruise spread around the nipple of her breast. The whisky bottle wasn’t far away and I reached for it and took a swig. Kay shook her head when I offered it to her and I ignored the plea in Rogers’s eyes.
“Get dressed, love,” I said. “We’re going visiting.”
“I need medical attention,” Rogers yelped.
“That’s right,” I said. “That’s a nasty wound, gangrene’s a distinct possibility. You might bump it too. I’d say you could lose that arm.”
“Christ,” he moaned.
I got into my clothes; some of them were tangled with Kay’s and we exchanged smiles as we sorted them out. I was dressed and just taking another slug of the whisky when the early morning call came through. We all jumped and Rogers’s face contorted with the pain of the movement. I answered the call and then bent down close to his ear.
“Listen you bastard, you’re taking us to Keir Baudin and you’re going to be happy to do it. One wrong move from you and you can forget about your arm. Understand?”
He nodded.
“We don’t have to break in now Cliff?” Kay’s voice was shaky but she was pulling herself together fast. I considered persuading her not to come, or trying to, but decided against it. She’d had some of the pain and deserved some pleasure; I also thought it might be useful to have a member of the fourth estate along.
“Right,” I said. “Change of plan. Are you up to it?”
“Yes.” She straightened her crumpled clothes and moved around towards me, taking care to keep well clear of Rogers. “I’m worried about him though. That arm looks bad.”
It did, and Rogers was showing strain and the effects of shock. He probably didn’t have very long before the injury would crumple him mentally and physically. I remembered his face when he hurt Kay though and I was all out of sympathy.
“He’s a tough boy,” I said. “He’ll last until we do what we have to do, then I’ll get him to a hospital. Come on, let’s go.”
I put Rogers’s gun, a business-like Harrison & Richardson Defender, in my jacket pocket and we went out as a threesome. A white Honda Civic was parked handily in the motel drive. Rogers stumbled and swore as we walked across the dark, quiet parking strip to the Falcon. I opened the back door and he scrambled in cradling his arm and muttering quietly. I asked Kay if she thought she could drive the Falcon.
“Drive anything,” she said.
I got in the back next to Rogers, pushing aside the clothes, tools and other junk I keep there. I got out the Defender, broke it and checked it. It was clean and fully loaded.
“Nice gun,” I said. Kay climbed into the driver’s seat and tugged at the seat adjustment lever.
“Shit,” she said.
“Sorry love, it hasn’t been moved in ten years, you’ll just have to reach a bit.” She shuffled her feet and jiggled the gearshift.
“Not much,” she said. “Give us the keys.”
After a few blocks Kay and
the Falcon sorted out and she handled it well through the empty crescents and avenues. The dark blue of Rogers’s stubble showed against his white face as if it had been applied with burnt cork; he winced and swore with the movement of the car and his hair was wet and matted from sweat.
“I could get an infection from this shit-heap,” he said.
“Could be,” I said. “But for now just shut up and do what you’re told if you don’t want to drive that Honda with special fittings for the handicapped.”
Forrest was quiet and still under a bright moon; the road outside the Baudin house shone under the moon and street light like the centre court at White City. I told Kay to drive a little further to where some trees on the nature strip gave us some cover. She stopped and opened the door.
“I think you’d better stay here.”
“I’m coming,” she said sharply. “You might need a witness.” She put her hand on the front of her dress and pressed. “I’m involved, remember?”
I couldn’t argue with that. I held the door open for Rogers and we made our way slowly back to the house. Rogers took a step on the path that led up to the front door but I jabbed him with my finger.
“Around the back,” I whispered.
“Why?” Kay was close but keeping clear of the pocket that held the gun.
“Who knows, this assassin here might have a mate. Did you see any signs of a dog when you were at the party?”
She thought. “No.”
“Me neither, but let’s have a poke around.”
The only car at home was a nice, conservative white Volvo. That probably meant Keir was on his own; Baudin senior wouldn’t drive himself and I hadn’t seen any cars out on the street that might belong to any extra muscle. We went around the back to where the memory of the party lingered on. One of the barbecues still emitted a dull glow and a few paper plates floated on the surface of the pool like pale lily pads. There’d been a clean-up; bottles and glasses had been collected and there was no food lying about but it looked as if the work had been interrupted.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go in the front door.”
“My arm feels stiff,” Rogers moaned.
