‘Shit, yes!’
He gave it to me. ‘How’d he get it off you?”
The relief I was feeling almost made me giggle. ‘He asked me nicely. I’m telling you, Frank, this guy is good. He’s got a perfect setup out there for blowing Collinson away.’ I got off the bed and swore as my calf muscle cramped.
‘You okay? We’d better get out there.’
‘Right.’ I rubbed the leg and hobbled. ‘Have you seen the kid?’
Parker shook his head. He had his gun ready, and mine in my hand felt huge. Bloody guns. I thought, but the time had come now. We went into the front room: the pre-dawn light was lifting in the sky, visible through the uncurtained front door. The water level was up; the jetty looked solidly based now, ready to serve its purpose.
‘Can’t go through here’, I said. ‘He could be keeping an eye out..’
Parker nodded, and moved towards the side door we’d all used. We edged along the verandah to the front of the house, but it was hard to get far enough forward to look along the scrub without being seen.
We crouched behind a bush, maybe ten feet from where Hayes would be, maybe closer. The water lapped at the narrow strip of greyish sand, slapped at the jetty pylons. Parker shook his head.
‘We step out there, and we’re dead. He’d see us long before we’d spot him. We’ll have to wait for Collinson to come before we can move. Hope for some confusion, or start some.’
‘He’s not the easily confused type. Did you see the dog.’
‘Yeah.’
I mimed the three chopping blows Hayes had used on the Doberman, and Parker sucked his teeth.
There was nothing in the clear, pale sky to impede the flood of light as the sun came up. The dull, leaden look of the water receded towards the shadows on the far side of the cove, and a deep green spread across the surface.
The sound started as a dull hum, scarcely audible above the noise of the water and the busy birds. The boat appeared from around a headland, perhaps a kilometre away and it came in rapidly, skipping slightly in the light waves, headed directly towards the jetty. Parker tensed beside me and we both edged forward, almost breaking cover, straining to see the man sitting in the stern of the boat.
He cut the motor a few metres from the jetty and let her drift in. He looked huge sitting there, and I realised he was wearing a life vest and a quilted jacket over that. As a target for Hayes, it couldn’t have been better. The boatman had just begun to gather himself to stand and throw a rope to the jetty when a shout came from the scrub away to the right.
‘Hey! In the boat!’
Parker judged it exactly right: the voice was light, he must have realised it wasn’t Hayes, and he moved out fast with his gun up. I was a beat behind him and my eyes flicked along the scrub line, trying to see Hayes. Further along, Ray Guthrie had taken several steps out on to the sand. He lifted his hand to wave and he yelled again. The man in the boat ducked down and scrabbled for something at his feet. Then I saw Hayes; he was on his feet with his pistol up and levelled.
Parker shot him: Hayes spun around at the impact of the first shot, but Parker adjusted instantly, and got him twice more as he was going back and down. Ray Guthrie stood stock still on the beach as the sound of the shots crashed across the water.
It was a trick of the light or a moment in history or whatever you want to call it, but with his hand up in alarm near his face and with his head half-ducked away from the shots, Ray looked uncannily like the Digger in the faded photograph of thirty years before.
I sprinted down the jetty to the landing; Collinson had pulled up a carbine from the bottom of the boat, but the drama on the beach had distracted him. I pointed the. 38 down at his padded chest.
‘That’s your son Ray on the beach’, I said. ‘He just saved your life. Put the gun down, it’s over.’
He was bigger than he looked in the photograph with a craggy, sun-tanned face and strong white teeth Hilde would have admired. He was looking at Ray and scarcely seemed to notice me. But he put the carbine down.
‘Out!’
His boat was still drifting. He looped a rope over a short post on the staging and pulled her in. He was wearing khaki pants and thong sandals which slapped the steps as he came up. We went along the jetty to the grass. Ray Guthrie had scrambled up there from the sand. His father walked towards him. They looked at each other and I stood back to let them have their meeting.
‘Ray’, Collinson said.
Ray nodded.
Collinson clapped him on the upper arm. ‘You look good. We’ll talk.’
Ray nodded again. Collinson dropped down on to the sand and walked over to where Parker was standing, looking down at ‘Bully’ Hayes. I followed Collinson.
Hayes was on his back. Parker’s head shot had wrecked one side of his face. He’d done up his collar again, and pulled up the tie-the formality looked odd on a corpse. The expensive shirt had a big, ochre-coloured stain from armpit to waist on one side, and the convulsive twist he’d given when he went down had pulled half of the tail up out of his pants. His belly swelled under a cotton singlet. There was nothing menacing about him now, nothing special. He looked ordinary.
Ray Guthrie had followed us over and I turned around to look at him. He’d shaved off the drooping moustache, and that had restored his youth to him; he was dirty, his face was scratched. He looked at me puzzled, trying to place me.
‘Saw you in Brisbane’, I said. ‘I didn’t do anything to your brother.’
He drew in a deep breath; some of the weight had gone off him quickly, and his cheeks were hollowed by strain and fatigue. ‘All right’, he said.
Collinson heard this and jerked his head at me. ‘The other boy, Chris, he’s not part of this bloody shambles, is he?’
‘He is’, I said.
‘What’s happened to him?’
‘He’s all right. His mother’s with him now, so’s his stepfather. You’ll hear all about it.’ I looked down at Hayes again. ‘It was worth half a million dollars to him to kill you.’
Collinson sniffed loudly and rubbed his hand across his grey-stubbled face. ‘Getting a cold. That much, eh? Who was he?’
‘Name’s Hayes’, Parker said. ‘Henry Hayes, from Queensland.’
Collinson sniffed again. ‘And who’re you?’
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Frank Parker, Homicide Division, and I’m arresting you for the murder of Charles Barratt.’
Collinson didn’t waste breath or movement; he twisted suddenly, like a cat. He jerked my gun away and tipped me off balance. He levelled the gun at Parker.
‘Come on, Ray’, he barked. ‘Let’s go!’
Ray stared at his father who’d dropped into a semi-crouch; with his face grey and grimacing he looked like a cornered animal. Ray slowly shook his head.
Collinson straightened up and backed off towards the house. I took one long step towards him.
‘Stop!’ He moved the gun like an expert.
I ducked and dashed forwards. The flash and crack were very close but I rammed into him with my shoulder dropped and elbow digging in. He fell hard; Parker kicked the gun away and we held him down while he struggled, briefly.
‘Okay’, he said. ‘Okay. Get off me.’
We all stood up and Parker covered him carefully. I picked up my gun and flicked sand off it.
‘Bloody fool’, Parker said.
I grinned at him. ‘No risk. This thing shoots high and a mile right. If you don’t know that you can’t hit a house with it.’
21
I stood guard over Collinson and Ray Guthrie, although they didn’t need much guarding. They talked quietly the whole time. I caught snatches of the conversation-the topics included boats, Chris and Pat Guthrie and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. I got Ray aside briefly and he told me that he’d followed the same route to Hacking Inlet as me-via Ian Style and Joshua Phillips. It’d been a good day for Phillips, because Ray had given him forty dollars. A stolen car had brought him from Sydney and he’d spent most of the night in the scrub wondering at the goings on.