‘Yeah... in a minute.’
‘Shall I cancel the ambulance?’ said the reception desk hopefully.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I think I’m bleeding.’
Alice Springs hospital, even on a Sunday, was as efficient as one would expect from a Flying Doctor base. They investigated and X-rayed and stitched, and presented me with a list.
One broken shoulder blade. (Left).
Two broken ribs. (Left side. No lung puncture).
Large contusion, left side of head. (No skull fracture).
Four jagged tears in skin of trunk, thigh, and left leg. (Stitched).
Several other small cuts.
Grazes and contusions on practically all of left side of body.
‘Thanks,’ I said, sighing.
‘Thank the tree. You’d’ve been in a right mess if you’d missed it.’
They suggested I stop there for the rest of the day and also all night. Better, they said, a little too meaningfully.
‘O.K.’ I said resignedly. ‘Are my friends still here?’
They were. In the waiting room. Arguing over my near-dead body about the favourite for the Melbourne Cup.
‘Newshound stays...’
‘Stays in the same place...’
‘Jesus,’ Jik said, as I shuffled stiffly in. ‘He’s on his feet.’
‘Yeah.’ I perched gingerly on the arm of a chair, feeling a bit like a mummy, wrapped in bandages from neck to waist with my left arm totally immersed, as it were, and anchored firmly inside.
‘Don’t damn well laugh,’ I said.
‘No one but a raving lunatic would fall off that balcony,’ Jik said.
‘Mm,’ I agreed. ‘I was pushed.’
Their mouths opened like landed fish. I told them exactly what had happened.
‘Who were they?’ Jik said.
‘I don’t know. Never seen them before. They didn’t introduce themselves.’
Sarah said, definitely, ‘You must tell the police.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But... I don’t know your procedures here, or what the police are like. I wondered... if you would explain to the hospital, and start things rolling in an orderly and unsensational manner.’
‘Sure,’ she said, ‘if anything about being pushed off a balcony could be considered orderly and unsensational.’
‘They took my room key first,’ I said. ‘Would you see if they’ve pinched my wallet?’
They stared at me in awakening unwelcome awareness.
I nodded. ‘Or that picture,’ I said.
Two policemen came, listened, took notes, and departed. Very non-committal. Nothing like that had happened in The Alice before. The locals wouldn’t have done it. The town had a constant stream of visitors so, by the law of averages, some would be muggers. I gathered that there would have been much more fuss if I’d been dead. Their downbeat attitude suited me fine.
By the time Jik and Sarah came back I’d been given a bed, climbed into it, and felt absolutely rotten. Shivering. Cold deep inside. Gripped by the system’s aggrieved reaction to injury, or in other words, shock.
‘They did take the painting,’ Jik said. ‘And your wallet as well.’
‘And the gallery’s shut,’ Sarah said. ‘The girl in the boutique opposite said she saw Harley close early today, but she didn’t see him actually leave. He goes out the back way, because he parks his car there.’
‘The police’ve been to the motel,’ Jik said. ‘We told them about the picture being missing, but I don’t think they’ ll do much more about it unless you tell them the whole story.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.
‘So what do we do now?’ Sarah asked.
‘Well... there’s no point in staying here any more. Tomorrow we’ll go back to Melbourne.’
‘Thank God,’ she said, smiling widely. ‘I thought you were going to want us to miss the Cup.’
In spite of a battery of pills and various ministering angels I spent a viciously uncomfortable and wideawake night. Unable to lie flat. Feverishly hot on the pendulum from shock. Throbbing in fifteen places. Every little movement screechingly sticky, like an engine without oil. No wonder the hospital had told me it would be better to stay.
I counted my blessings until daybreak. It could have been so very much worse.
What was most alarming was not the murderous nature of the attackers, but the speed with which they’d found us. I’d known ever since I’d seen Regina’s head that the directing mind was ruthlessly violent. The acts of the team always reflected the nature of the boss. A less savage attitude would have left Regina gagged and bound, not brutally dead.
I had to conclude that it was chiefly this pervading callousness which had led to my being thrown over the balcony. As a positive means of murder, it was too chancy. It was quite possible to survive a fall from such a height, even without a cushioning tree. The two men had not as far as I could remember bothered to see whether I was alive or dead, and they had not, while I lay half-unconscious and immobile, come along to finish the job.
So it had either been simply a shattering way of getting rid of me while they robbed my room, or they’d had the deliberate intention of injuring me so badly that I would have to stop poking my nose into their affairs.
Or both.
And how had they found us?
I puzzled over it for some time but could arrive at no definite answer. It seemed most likely that Wexford or Greene had telephoned from Melbourne and told Harley Renbo to be on his guard in case I turned up. Even the panic which would have followed the realisation that I’d seen the Munnings and the fresh Millais copy, and actually carried away a specimen of Renbo’s work, could not have transported two toughs from Melbourne to Alice Springs in the time available.
There had only been about four hours between purchase and attack, and some of that would have had to be spent on finding out which motel we were in, and which rooms, and waiting for me to go upstairs from the pool.
Perhaps we had after all been followed all the way from Flemington racecourse, or traced from the aeroplane passenger lists. But if that were the case, surely Renbo would have been warned we were on our way, and would never have let us see what we had.
I gave it up. I didn’t even know if I would recognise my attackers again if I saw them. Certainly not the one who had been behind me, because I hadn’t had a single straight look at him.
They could, though, reasonably believe they had done a good job of putting me out of action: and indeed, if I had any sense, they had.
If they wanted time, what for?
To tighten up their security, and cover their tracks, so that any investigation I might persuade the police to make into a paintings-robbery link would come up against the most respectable of brick walls.
Even if they knew I’d survived, they would not expect any action from me in the immediate future: therefore the immediate future was the best time to act.
Right.
Easy enough to convince my brain. From the neck down, a different story.
Jik and Sarah didn’t turn up until eleven, and I was still in bed. Sitting up, but not exactly perky.
‘God,’ Sarah said, ‘You look much worse than yesterday.’
‘So kind.’
‘You’re never going to make it to Melbourne.’ She sounded despondent. ‘So goodbye Cup.’
‘Nothing to stop you going,’ I said.
She stood beside the bed. ‘Do you expect us just to leave you here... like this... and go and enjoy ourselves?’
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid.’
Jik sprawled in a visitor’s chair. ‘It isn’t our responsibility if he gets himself thrown from heights,’ he said.