Saving Billie

'How is she?' I said.

'Not bad. Coming down from the sedation. I'm a bit worried about how she'll be when she hits bottom.'

'I've got a doctor friend who'll give her something but probably not till morning.'

Billie mumbled something and Sharon shook her head. 'She could be bad by then.'

'I've got some Panadol somewhere,' I said. 'Might knock her out with the brandy.'

'She a junkie?' Tommy asked.

'Sort of,' Sharon said. 'Yeah, she's been getting treatment but she's had a shock tonight. We all have.'

Crouched as she was there in the half-light, Sharon's profile in shadow on the wall was slightly different with a hint of Aboriginality in her features.

'I've got a little bit of grass,' Tommy said. 'For emergencies. Hey, you a sister?'

'Back a bit. Thinned out by now.'

'Doesn't matter. You're welcome to the dope if you need it.'

'Thanks. And she's my sister by the way.'

Tommy let go with one of his grins. 'Hey, Cliff, you're the odd one out here.'

'Wouldn't be the first time.'

I took Sharon's keys and went outside to move the Falcon and get the brandy. There was no moon and the street lights barely reached the yard, but the wide gate came open without too much effort and I parked the car where a couple of tall she-oaks would give it some cover. The bottle of Remy Martin was almost full and I took a good swig before I went back into the house. It's not every night you deal with an abduction, plus a murder and go into hiding from two powerful enemies. I took another swig.

For all his brutality, Jonas Clement Junior had seemed to know what he was about when he checked Billie's vital signs. She was pale and shaky, still wearing a faded nightdress Sharon had brought for her in hospital, but she wolfed down a peanut butter sandwich made by Tommy, drank a cup of milky instant coffee heavily laced with brandy, took a couple of Panadol and was ready to call it a night. We bedded her down on the sofa with Sharon's jacket for a pillow, the sheet from the clinic, and an old rug from my car as extra cover because she was shivering slightly. She was snoring within minutes, but her breathing was shallow.

'I've gotta go to bed, guys,' Tommy announced. 'I start as soon as the sun's up. I'll try not to disturb youse.'

We thanked him and he left, padding barefoot down the hallway. Sharon settled herself in the only chair in the room, an old padded number leaking horsehair. 'I'm sleeping here.'

'Right,' I said. 'I'll see if I can find a sheet or something for you.'

I turned on the lights in the rooms Tommy hadn't dealt with other than replacing globes, and had to breathe shal-lowly against the smell of dead insects and stale air. Both rooms had a couple of mattresses, one on top of another, covered with thin grey blankets. When I shook out the blankets the rooms filled with dust and the blankets turned out to have been less grey originally. I took one through to Sharon who sniffed at it and sneezed.

'If I get cold,' she said. 'Right, Cliff, I guess we're safe here for now, but tell me what's going on.'

I laid it all out, as much to get it clear in my own mind as for her benefit. How Clement knew the whereabouts of Peter Scriven, the financier who'd absconded with multi-millions, how Barclay Greaves wanted to horn in on the blackmail and settle an old score with Clement. I knew that

Rhys Thomas, while on Clement's payroll, was actually working for Greaves and I guessed that Clement Junior was either tied in with Thomas or planning to go it alone, probably the latter.

'And all over what my junkie sister might or might not know?'

'Yeah. Eddie Flannery found out something he shouldn't, probably where Scriven is and what name he's going under and so on. Clement had him killed but they think he passed the information on to Billie.'

'What about your ex-client, Kramer?'

'Hard to say. She was being helped in her research into Clement by Greaves, but whether she knew what his real intention was I don't know. Somehow she got in the way and ended up dead.'

'Who did that?'

'At a guess a guy named Phil Courtney who works for Greaves.'

'But why?'

'You met her. She was a hard case. Maybe Greaves told her he didn't need her anymore after he thought he'd got control of Billie. Maybe she threatened him. Maybe she had something on him.'

'Like what?'

I shrugged. 'Who knows? Maybe he had Eddie killed, not Clement, and Lou knew about it.'

'Was she that hard a case?'

'She was pretty desperate. But, look, it all comes back to Billie-what she knows.'

The night had cooled down and Sharon pulled the dusty blanket close and tucked her legs up under it. The room had a fireplace and would be a nice, cosy spot in winter with a few logs burning. Sharon handed me her empty coffee cup and I poured her some brandy.

'If anything,' she said.

'How'd you mean? She said she knew plenty.'

Sharon sipped the brandy and let out a long sigh. 'The chips were down, or that's how it looked, and when the chips were down Billie'd always do the same thing-lie.'

Billie was on the sofa not far away and still emitting tiny snores. But then, she'd faked a kind of coma for a long time back in Manly. I glanced at her and Sharon followed the look.

'That's right,' she said. 'D'you know what David Niven said about Errol Flynn?'

'Remind me.'

'He said, "You could rely on Errol. He'd always let you down." That's our Billie.'

'Terrific.'

'Why? Were you hoping she'd tell you where this rich runaway is so you could grab some glory? Sorry, Cliff, sorry, that's unfair after all you've done. It's just that it's been a hell of a day, with guns going off and Sarah under threat and this old spooky house and everything.'

'It's okay, Sharon. But we've got two ruthless rich bastards to contend with and maybe the cops as well, depending on how Clement and Greaves play it. So I was hoping that we could use what Billie knows to get us out of this jam.'

She drained her cup. 'Well, we'll just have to wait, won't we? I'm going to try to get some sleep, but leave the light on, okay?'

20

Whatever the old mattresses were filled with, mine had set hard and lumpy. Sharon had taken the right option. I stripped, used my clothes as a pillow, and stretched out anyway with the dusty blanket over me, and all the guns to hand. I didn't expect to sleep with so many questions begging for answers inside my brain, but I did, fitfully. I woke up with light streaming through the many missing slats of a venetian blind. True to his word, Tommy was at work already, slashing and raking. It was close to 7 am with the sun well up.

Somehow I'd found, or engineered with my tossing and turning, a more or less comfortable niche in the decrepit mattress. I lay there, dozing on my back, until a fit of sneezing brought on by the dust in the blanket and the room forced me to get up. As I stood there, I had to laugh. I'd hated the discipline in the army and the routine in the insurance company work, but those jobs didn't involve standing around in my briefs with my nose streaming and blood-smeared guns on the floor. Say what you like about the kind of work you're in now, Cliff, I thought, but at least it's not predictable.

I looked in on the two sisters and both were asleep in a room kept dark by heavy curtains and with the doors to the kitchen closed. The light bulb had blown. In the bathroom I found a few scraps of soap and two old towels. I showered, dried off, took the damp towel out to the back porch and hung it over a rail. Tommy saw me and raised his hand but didn't stop working. I fetched my travelling kit-razor, lather stick, toothbrush and comb-from the car, shaved and tidied myself up. I made a cup of instant coffee, thought about the brandy but decided against it. As I put the bottle down Sharon appeared in the doorway.

'Do you usually drink with your morning coffee?'