It was a good, clear day and the traffic moved easily; a secret boyfriend seemed like a promising new factor in the situation, especially one behaving suspiciously. I didn’t feel confident though. Leaving the city always made me uneasy and now there was the background buzz of tension from the fight with Cyn. We headed west at an unspectacular pace and the Blue Mountains got closer and the air heated up.
In Emu Plains we turned off the highway down the Old Bathurst Road and past the prison farm.
We travelled five miles towards the mountains until the van turned off down a bumpy dirt track where I couldn’t safely follow. I went on a bit and tucked the Falcon away off the road under some trees. I took the Smith amp; Wesson. 38 out from under the dashboard, checked it over, and walked back. Half a mile along the track dropped sharply; at the foot of the hill there was a tree-fringed clearing and the van was pulled up in the middle of it. Short was mounting a camera in a tree on the left. I watched from cover up above the clearing. He fiddled, went into the clearing, went back and then he got a second camera and stuck that in a tree on the other side. Next he took a carbine from the van, checked its action and hung it over his shoulder. He took out a small box, flicked a switch and counted to ten. His voice boomed out over the grass and set birds fluttering in the trees. He leaned back against the van pulled down his goggles and looked at his watch.
Ten minutes later a green Holden came over the hill. It pulled up on the edge of the clearing and two men got out; they wore business shirts and ties, and looked bulky and tough. Short’s voice crackled out towards them.
‘Stop’, he said. ‘Cameras on the right and left, take a look.’ Their eyes swung off and Short unslung his carbine.
‘The cameras are filming. There’s a third one somewhere else.’ He lifted the rifle. ‘I used one of these in Vietnam. You get the picture?’
One of the men nodded and held up a manila envelope.
‘Right’, Short said. ‘Give it to your mate. You, bring it here.’ He pointed with the rifle to a spot on the ground in front of him.
The envelope changed hands and the shorter of the two men came forward and held it over the place Short had indicated. He said something which I couldn’t hear. Short spoke into the box again: ‘Back on the right hand side of the road, three tenths of a mile back you’ll see a kerosene tin. It’s in there.’
The man shook his head; Short fired a quick burst at his feet; he dropped the envelope and jumped away. Short swung the muzzle slowly in an arc in front of him. The noise of the shots was still echoing. ‘.. not a trick. Go!’
They walked back to the Holden, talking intently; they got into the car and drove off. Short stayed where he was, very alert. He ignored the envelope. He waited ten minutes then he relaxed, picked up the envelope and opened it. He let the two or three bundles of notes slide out into his hand, slipped them back and stowed them away in a pocket. Then he uncocked the rifle, put it against the wheel of the van and strolled across to the right-hand camera.
While he was working I crept down through the trees and sprinted to the van, bent low. He got the first camera down and for an awful second I thought he was going to bring it back to the van, but he put it down and moved across towards the other tree. He was whistling. I reached around for the carbine, worked the action loudly and stood up with it pointed at the middle of his back.
‘Short.’
He stopped whistling and swung around. I moved towards him keeping the rifle pointed at his belly. There was no self-satisfaction now in his high-coloured, handsome face. He lifted the goggles; they pinned back his hair, and I could see that it was retreating high on his temples.
‘Surprise’, I said.
‘Smart’, he said. ‘I suppose you want the money?’
‘I might’, I said. ‘But I really want the girl.’
‘What girl?’ He took a few steps and I moved the gun.
‘Easy.’
He ignored me and kept coming. ‘What girl?’ he shouted. Despite the gun I’d lost the authority and stepped back. I said ‘Selina’, and he swerved to one side and swung a long, looping punch at my ribs. A gun you’re not going to use is useless; I dropped it and tried to punch him in the belly, but he moved and I hit his shoulder. We circled and shaped up like schoolboys; he rushed me and tried to tear my head off with a swinging right. I stepped under that and got him quick and hard in the ribs. He tried to kick but then I grabbed his leg and flipped him over. While he was wondering what to try next I got out the. 38 and pointed it at his knee.
‘Behave yourself, or I’ll cripple you.’
He nodded and sagged back on the ground. ‘Don’t hurt Selina’, he said.
‘We’re not communicating.’ I moved the gun a fraction in conciliation. ‘Selina was abducted this morning. I’ve been hired by her agent to find her. Do you know what I’m talking about?’
He sat up a bit straighter, but all the combat toughness had left him; he was pale and the hand he put up to pull off the goggles was shaking.
‘I don’t know’, he said.
‘You know something, sonny. This is a nice, quiet spot. Something nasty could happen to you here, and there’s enough evidence about for me to fix it any way I like. D’you see what I mean?’
He nodded.
‘Right. Now this was a pay-off you set up here. You’re a photographer, I assume you were selling pictures, right?’
Another nod.
‘You did a good job.’ I squinted along the line of the. 38. ‘Who was in the pictures.’
‘Xavier Carlton.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Carlton was a big-time businessman and sportsman with criminal and political associations, which every journalist in Sydney knew and kept quiet about. He was also a pillar of the Church. ‘Who else?’
‘A girl.’
‘Selina. You bastard. How much?’
‘Thirty thousand.’
‘For what?’
‘Prints, negs, the lot.’
I had no time for Carlton, he was a corrupt and vicious hypocrite but blackmailers are a low breed too, and this one had put his supposed girlfriend right in the shit. It was hard to understand.
‘How did you set it up?’
He spoke slowly and carefully, editing as he went along. ‘Carlton was celebrating his Golden Slipper win, we latched on to him. He got amorous and I got some pictures.’
I was sure he was lying; the careful preparations I’d seen suggested that he would have planned his move in detail-maybe down to dropping Carlton a hint or putting something in his champagne.
‘You realise what you’ve done to the girl don’t you?’
He looked away from me. ‘I put a note in with the film telling him she knew nothing about it. That’s the truth.’
I snorted. ‘Carlton wouldn’t give a fuck. He’s grabbed her and he’ll break bits off her.’
‘She was supposed to be going away. I thought…’
‘That he’d cool off? You picked the wrong boy. Carlton’s crazy, he won’t take this. He’ll grill Selina till she tells him about you and he’ll come after you.’
‘I was planning to get her away somewhere safe when I got through here. I thought she’d be okay at work today.’
‘You must have sent Carlton a sample. You might just as well have cut her throat.’
‘Oh God, what can I do?’
I was thinking fast. How to get to Carlton? He’d committed himself by taking the girl and his natural inclination would be to clean up. He wouldn’t take his money back and go home. What did we have? I looked at my gun and then at his gun and then at the cameras.