Make Me Rich

by Peter Corris

  “You said you were under pressure.”

  “Impatient people,” Hayes said moodily. “Let’s go.”

  I turned around and started the motor. “I still don’t see why Collinson isn’t in Rio.”

  Hayes cleared his throat; it’s true that my car is a bit vulnerable to engine fumes. “Collinson’s not finished yet. He’s still trying to hang on and save his skin. He must have some supporters still. On the other hand, he’s worth half a million dollars to some others.”

  “Impatient ones.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure you’ll get the money?”

  “I’ll get it.”

  The roads were clear going south; we went over Tom Ugly’s bridge and I had to watch not to be taken off to the coast too early. Everything south of Rockdale is foreign territory to me. A pair of headlights sat squarely and unwaveringly behind me all the way. I played around with the idea of a wild goose chase on which I could lose Catchpole and Williams, and provoke Hayes into some kind of mistake. There were two things against it: I didn’t think Hayes would make any mistakes and my job was to protect Ray Guthrie. I was going where I had to go anyway. That Ray was going looking for a man who was worth a half million dead, and that I had the gun that might do the job pointing at the back of my head was just bad luck. Deep stuff, Hardy.

  As I drove, I thought about Helen Broadway and how she’d react to the call from Jess Polansky. If she was going to have anything to do with me she’d have to get used to such things. Was she going to have anything to do with me? Hi, Mike. How ya doing? I switched to thoughts of Parker and Hilde. Would Parker have displayed my calm, calculated resolve? No. But then, people might be dead who weren’t dead yet, including me. Thinking was getting me nowhere. If I wasn’t careful, I’d be having regrets.

  It was a very uncomfortable drive: the big man sitting behind me didn’t fidget, didn’t talk; I couldn’t hear him breathing. I must have slowed down unconsciously, trying to gain time, hoping for a miracle. He might have fallen asleep.

  “Step on it, Hardy. This bomb’ll do a bit more than that.”

  The traffic thinned further along, and the road widened—there was no excuse not to pick up speed. We started to reach dark, ill-lit stretches and curvy sections where a sharp braking might shoot him forward … He seemed to read my mind.

  “Undo your seat belt, Hardy.” He jerked at the fastening above my shoulder. “Any fancy stuff, and you’ll go first.”

  I undid the belt. “I thought we were sort of in this together now. Our interests are pretty much the same.”

  “Bullshit. My interests have never been the same as anyone else’s.” He gave a short, unpleasant laugh. “Ask my wife.”

  It was his only venture into humour, and there was nothing warning about it. I drove, trying to interpret his remark. Was he satisfied or dissatisfied with that state of things? It occurred to me that he might be something of a psychologist—here he had me interpreting his cryptic remarks rather than thinking about my own survival.

  I ignored a few signs to Sutherland and Cronulla, hugged the middle lane and thought some more about the .38 and its five cartridges and two inch barrel. A close range gun. I tried to stop thinking about it, in case he really could read my mind. He stirred in his seat.

  “Lose them!” he rasped.

  “What?”

  “Lose that rubbish behind us.”

  “Jesus, why?”

  “They’re both useless. Lose them!”

  I was getting down to the National Park turnoff and trying to remember its configurations from the one time I’d made the drive. I remembered it as an abrupt swing-off, not well lit.

  “Who’ll be driving?”

  “Liam.”

  “He any good?”

  “Ratshit!”

  The lights of Catchpole and Williams’s car were a good way back and I could see the trickle of traffic coming up behind them. I accelerated, doused my lights and swung into the left lane, fifty metres before the turn-off. The driver behind me became momentarily confused; I saw his lights waver and then he kept his course. I couldn’t look in the rear vision mirror anymore, because I had to concentrate on holding the road at speed with no lights. I took more road than I should and prayed for no on-coming traffic.

  I shot down the turn-off and passed the rangers’ booth in the middle of the road that marks the entrance to the park. Then the road started to wind and I turned on the lights. I wanted to look back, although the rear vision mirror was blank. Hayes let me feel the gun in the nape of my neck.

  “They’re gone,” he said. “Well done, driver.”

  18

  It’s hard to have a meaningful relationship with a man in the back of your car who’s holding a gun on you. He’d neatly disposed of some of the distractions—in the persons of Catchpole and Williams—I’d been half-counting on, and he seemed full of purpose and resolution. Unlike me. I asked him about the pair who’d chased me in Elizabeth Bay and his reply was an uninterested grunt.

  “Why’d you quit the force, Hayes?” I asked. “You were sitting pretty, weren’t you?”

  “This came up. One of the conditions was that I left the force. They saw me right, don’t worry.”

  “What will you do with the money?”

  Mention of money seemed to relax him a bit; he permitted himself the luxury of a scratch.

  “In Queensland you can turn a half million into a whole million pretty fast. And go on from there. If you know the right people. I do.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then the good life, and plenty of it. I’m fifty-four, plenty left in me yet.”

  “Your turn’ll come.”

  He gave that abbreviated laugh again. “You’re a funny bloke, Hardy. You remind me of blokes I knew in the army—shit scared half the time, but they’d still have a go.”

  There was nothing much to say to that; all I could think to do was keep the questions up to him, not be passive, and try to act before he decided I was expendable.

  “You weren’t scared, Hayes? In the service?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know Collinson was in Vietnam?”

  “Yeah, I knew. So was I. Never ran across him that I know of.”

  “What rank did you hold?”

  “Warrant Officer. You?”

  “Sergeant, briefly.”

  Lights were coming up behind us fast; Hayes was aware of them as soon as I was.

  “Could be them,” I said.

  “I doubt it. Liam thinks the world ends at Leichhardt—he’d be bushed out here.”

  “What about Dottie?”

  “Dottie only knows one thing. Let them pass and we’ll have a look at them.”

  I slowed and let the car pass; it was a nippy Japanese coupe, carrying two young women. The passenger had her arm around the driver’s shoulders. The driver lifted her hand to acknowledge my courtesy and I waved back.

  “Dykes,” Hayes said.

  “None of that in Queensland, eh?”

  He didn’t do it at once, he waited until a flat, straight stretch and then he clipped me on the ear with the automatic. I felt the flesh tear, and I swerved.

  “No more jokes. Just drive.”

  I drove. I put my hand up and felt the blood on the side of my face. When my ears stopped ringing and the pain had settled to a dull throb, I realised that the blow had had an odd effect on me—I wasn’t afraid anymore.

  The night was clear with a high half-moon; the park stretched away for kilometres on either side of the road. A lot of the growth was small, coming back after the big bushfires of a few years ago. I had the window half-down and was picking up bush smells strongly and, faintly, the smell of the sea.

  The sea smell got stronger after we made the first of the turns that would take us to Hacking Inlet. Fifty metres around the turn, Hayes told me to stop. I hit the brakes and pulled on to the gravel. He looked back at the main road and waited. After a minute or so, a car sped past the turn a
nd headed through the park toward the south coast.

  “Just making sure,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  The road ran flat and straight for a few kilometres, then there was another left turn and a winding descent to Hacking Inlet. The surface was rutted, and I had to grip the wheel hard on some of the turns. We bounced and I wondered if the Chief’s Special would fall out. It never had before. I wanted a drink very badly.

  The weekenders and holiday houses trickled out along the road from the main settlement, but Phillips was right, the place had none of the signs of being cut up into fish finger blocks the way most of the coastal towns are. Here the trees predominated in wide, deep, seclusion-giving belts between the houses. It was very quiet, and I imagined I could hear the beat of the sea against the sand over the car noise. I drove down until I reached the centre of the township—a general store-cum-petrol-station-cum-pub—a couple of hundred metres back from the beach. It was set in a clearing with a playground and picnic benches around it. A big aviary stood in the middle of the playground; dark shapes hopped and flapped behind the grill. I pulled up by a petrol pump and felt the cool metal on my neck.

  “Well?”

  “This is Hacking Inlet. I’ve never been here before. The Gregory’s doesn’t cover it, and I’ve only got the name of a lane, not a detailed map.”

  “So?”

  “So we look for the town map or we find someone to ask.”

  We got out of the car; I’m a city man, but I felt like a country man beside Hayes. I was wearing jeans, a collarless ex-navy shirt and sneakers, he had on his business clothes and business shoes. Dry leaves crackled loudly under his feet as he walked across the clearing.

  “Map might be up by the store there,” I said.

  He judged the distance; a wide verandah ran along the front of the building which was built up on high brick foundations. From where we stood its whole length was visible, framed against the pale moonlit sea. He smiled and lifted his gun.

  “Go ahead, Hardy. Go on up and look—I could put one in your ear from here.”

  I walked over, and climbed the wide wooden steps up to the verandah. It would be a nice place to sit and have a quiet drink in pleasant company, now it felt like a rifle range. My foot hit a beer can lying on the verandah and sent it clattering over the edge. I froze, then looked back at Hayes. He wasn’t doing anything stagey; he wasn’t standing with his legs spread and his gun out supported by the other arm. He was just there and watching.

  There was a big, white-edged town plan covered by a cracked sheet of glass mounted on the wall near the door of the shop. I squinted, but I couldn’t make out the details. I went back down the steps and over to the car. Hayes lifted his gun and I stopped.

  “What’s up?”

  “Can’t see, I need a light.”

  He nodded and I opened the driver’s door: it was lucky that the door-operated interior light hasn’t worked for years. I got a torch from the glove box and my gun from the clip. The gun with the two inch barrel went down into the front of my pants, where I prayed it would stay and not show. I flicked the torch on and off experimentally.

  “Get on with it!”

  I went back to the map and located the lane. Hayes held his hand up ready to shield his eyes against the torch beam if I’d decided to play that trick. His gun hand was rock steady.

  “Short drive,” I said.

  We went down a rocky side road that had been cut into a hill, and off that down a track; the long grass sticking up in the middle between the wheel ruts showed that it didn’t get much use. I had the lights on high beam and it was a first-gear crawl along the track. The water was off to the left—a long, flat stretch framed by high, scrubby hills. The tide was low and the water looked like mud; maybe it was. The pylons of a couple of small boat jetties stuck up awkward and useless-looking high above the water line.

  “End of the lane here.” I was whispering, for no good reason.

  “Stay well back then, and turn the car around.”

  I stopped, backed and filled and got the car turned about in the narrow lane. I’d seen the house in the last flash of the headlights—a narrow-fronted fibro job, just visible through heavy tree-cover. We approached it by going slowly along the side of the track where bushes and saplings offered irregular cover. Ten metres from the house, and to one side, there was a dark patch in the vegetation. I pushed at the low, light branches and they gave way; behind them I could feel, from a step or two taken, firm ground falling away evenly.

  “Said to be a driveway down there,” I whispered. “Garage holds a couple of cars, store room, God knows what.”

  Hayes nodded and gestured with the gun for me to come back up on the track. He stepped back to avoid the possible suddenly released branch: he wasn’t such a city boy after all. He was a pro. When I was on the track, he grabbed a handful of my hair and jerked my head down. His voice in my ear was hard and harsh: “Listen, Hardy, I’ve killed eight men. I don’t mind killing people. I wouldn’t mind killing you. Don’t try anything clever. I won’t give you a chance. If I get Collinson neat and clean, you’ve got a chance of getting out of this. Just a chance, get me?”

  I nodded, torturing the follicles.

  “Right. Now how the fuck do we get in there?”

  It was 1.30 a.m. The half-moon went behind a patch of cloud and the scene darkened. The trees that hid the house from the road were thick and high; I could see more of the shack’s tin roof from this point than its fibro walls. It was an unpretentious property. The trees on the block grew close around the house, loomed over it. A fire risk. I strained my eyes to see through the trees to what lay beyond the house. Darkness. Then I remembered the water and the jetties. I pointed with the torch butt.

  “Looks like this place has got absolute water frontage. Must be a track down to the house from up here, path or something. What d’you reckon on using the torch?”

  “Give it to me.”

  I handed him the torch and he shaded the beam carefully as we picked out way along the track. Hayes stopped and made a pushing gesture. He clicked off the torch.

  “Gate. After you.”.

  I went through, inching my way, trying to feel the ground with my toes through the worn-down sneaker soles. I stumbled, flailed my arms, almost fell. Hayes hissed something behind me and I lurched sideways to grab a tree trunk. I poked my foot forward tentatively.

  “Path. Goes down. Pretty steep—rocks and roots.”

  “Go on.”

  I edged down the path using the trees growing at the sides to steady myself. It was like walking into a downward sloping pitch-black tunnel. Sweat was trickling down my neck, and I felt the gun in my pants move and settle into my crotch. I slid my hand down, pulled up the gun and my shirt front. I put the gun in my pocket, and let the shirt hang in front of it. I slid, bounced off a tree, and stopped.

  “Easy,” he hissed.

  We were at the bottom, standing on a concrete slab that jutted out for about three metres and ran the width of the house. The windows were set high up near the roof, and I thought I could see a gleam of light inside. Windows placed that high seemed strange until I realised that lower windows wouldn’t give a view back up to the gate and the track. The house hadn’t been designed to be snuck up on.

  Hayes stood motionless and seemed to be sniffing the air. All I could hear was a low, sucking sound coming from beyond the front of the house and the soft brushing of bushes, rubbing against the fibro in the light breeze.

  The Doberman came quickly and smoothly with a soft footfall and just a low growl. It sprang at Hayes, but he was like a good boxer—he seemed to have all the time in the world. He stepped back and chopped it across the muzzle with his gun hand; the dog yelped and faltered. Hayes pivoted and smashed the gun butt dead-centre on to the dog’s skull. The animal quivered and sank and he hit it again, savagely. Its legs gave way and it twitched, heaved, and lay still.

  “Had to be one.” There was a slight panting in his voice but that w
as all the effect the bit of action had on him. “Means he’s here,” he said.

  The hair was still sticking up on the back of my neck, but Hayes had moved on to the next step. He examined the back door, which was sturdy, set close in its frame, and flush with the wall. It had a newish Chubb Guardian lock.

  “Alarm?” I said.

  He shook his head. “No point. Don’t like this, though. Side.”

  We stepped over the body of the dog and went along the slab to the side of the house. The concrete gave way to wood—a narrow, slatted verandah, with the slats running at right angles to the house. Halfway along, a French window was being softly stroked by a tree branch. A dog’s bowl and an old blanket lay on the slats in front of the window.

  Hayes bent and slipped off his city shoes; he looked at my feet and nodded. We passed the heavily curtained section of the window, and Hayes picked up the bowl and laid it carefully down on top of the blanket. The menace and purpose of him had me almost mesmerised now. I forgot who he was and what he was doing—his meticulous, precise movements seemed to have a validity of their own that had nothing to do with law and justice. I felt as if I was watching a riveting film with a very good actor in the lead. I fought against the feeling, trying to define my own role. My battered ear was hurting as the cool air nipped at it, and I could feel the gun in my pocket.

  Hayes tried the handle on the French window and it turned easily with a slight creak. He shook his head at the carelessness; but Fido was supposed to take care of this entrance, and he’d been taken care of. He opened the glass-paned door and looked in. I was close behind him, but my feeling was that he knew just where I was and what my hands were doing. There was light only at the back of the house; the room we faced was dark and still. Hayes eased the door open until it was at its full swing. He pinned it there with his stockinged foot and motioned me to go in. I looked at him: his face was set, but not tense. I couldn’t see any sweat beads at the ex-hairline. His gun moved impatiently and I stepped into Peter Collinson’s hideaway.