Which wouldn’t start. They heard it grinding away, tireder and tireder. ‘Fuck!’ Jolic slammed his palms on the wheel.
‘Jol, look.’
A Falcon ute, hot lilac paint job, chrome roll bar, fat tyres, smoky glass all round, towing a covered trailer in the same paint job, marked Steve Pickhaven, Farrier. By now there was smoke leaking from the house, and flames behind the glass as the curtains went up. They saw the guy get out, his bottom jaw dropping in disbelief as he put two and two together. Then he was digging in his top pocket for a mobile phone and punching at the keys.
Jolic was calm now, thinking, a dangerous condition in him. ‘Got a hankie? Quick wipe of the car, dashboard, door handle, window, everything. Forget the stereo, we’ll take the smaller stuff with us.’
‘On foot?’
‘Got a better idea?’
Within one minute they were through the railing fence and cutting across a paddock, past a horse trough and skirting a dam and losing themselves in a small wooded area on top of a rise. Here they had a view of the approach roads. Danny groaned. He went behind a tree and lowered his jeans and jockeys and felt it slide out of him, quick, soothing and perfectly formed. He fastened his jeans again, spat on his hands and rubbed them on his shirt, and felt unclean, the stink of defeat sticking to him.
But Jolic was more intent on their predicament. ‘Didn’t take the bastards long. Look.’
Pursuit cars, red and blue lights flashing, a distant wail of sirens. They were coming in on the house from both directions. And now a fire engine. It was doubtful, Danny thought, that he and Jolic would have made it even if the Fairmont hadn’t given up the ghost. Roadblocks, the police helicopter, they’d have been caught like rats in a trap.
Jolic watched avidly. He looks like he wants to be there, Danny thought, fighting the fire from the back of the Waterloo CFA truck. After a while, Jolic backed away, turned, began to cut through the trees, the garbage bag of stolen items bouncing over his shoulder. He didn’t say anything to Danny. What was Danny supposed to do? What was their plan? Was Jolic abandoning him? He ran, hard at Jolic’s heels.
‘Where we going?’
Jolic panted, ‘We pinch a car, right?’
Around the edge of the Waterloo racecourse, to a roundabout, then along the side of a housing estate, new houses cheek to jowl behind a high wooden fence. In at the first entrance, then along a couple of winding side streets, to a maroon Mitsubishi Pajero, sitting in the driveway of a house, dripping water on to the forecourt, keys in the ignition.
Sirens in the distance.
There had been a flurry when Jane Gideon’s body was found, but the investigation had stalled, so an aggravated burglary was good for sweeping the cobwebs away.
Ellen Destry parked the white Commodore off the gravel drive. The ambulance and the fire trucks and most of the police cars had come and gone. It was up to CIB now, and the fire inspectors, and the forensic crew dusting the Fairmont for traces of the burglars.
According to the farrier, the owners of the property had been called back early from holidaying in Bali. The stud manager had been worried about the condition of a pair of three-year-old mares, potential champions, particularly given that a January heatwave was expected.
The wife: severe concussion. The husband: groggy, but able to say that two men were involved, which was backed up by the farrier. Basically, they were looking for a small skinny guy and a tall, athletic guy.
Ellen wandered through the house. An odour of wet ash and dampened carpets, scorch marks on the walls and ceilings, some quite major fire damage in the front room, a sitting room, which had been torched first. ‘Check it out,’ Challis had said. ‘We haven’t got the resources for a major investigation. Bring in the arson squad if it looks big.’
Big meant over two hundred grand’s worth of damage, and this wasn’t two hundred grand’s worth. But it was messy. Arson, aggravated burglary, theft of a motor vehicle-two motor vehicles, if the Pajero reported stolen over in the housing estate was involved, and Scobie Sutton and Pam Murphy had been sent to investigate that. Ellen pulled on latex gloves and began to go through the house room by room.
She was standing in the study, doing what Challis often suggested, thinking her way into the case, when she saw a heat-buckled cashbox in the charred remains of the desk. She poked at the lid with a ballpoint pen. Five hundred dollars, in a paper band from the Commonwealth Bank, and it fitted as slim as a wallet into the inside pocket of her jacket.
At the same time, but some distance away, a horn sounded behind Stella Riggs again, but she refused to slow down, accelerate or pull over. Really, Coolart Road was the worst road on the Peninsula for incidents of bad driving: cutting in, overtaking on blind stretches, tailgating, speeding, impertinence and just plain anger. And a worse class of driver in respects other than manners. They were rougher to look at. They drove wrecks. And the number of times she’d had to brake for the oncoming garbage truck as it veered across in front of her, collecting the rubbish from both sides of the road. Why couldn’t it simply go up one side of Coolart and back down the other? Because those men wanted to work the shortest day possible for the same wage, that’s why. Rough, blue-singleted, jeering men.
She glanced again in the rear-view mirror. That idiot was still trying to pass, sitting just metres from her rear bumper, and she was going a hundred! What if she had to brake suddenly? The fellow was a fool. Look at him, darting out, seeing that it wasn’t clear, darting back again.
She began to organise her thoughts, to write a report in her head, if ever one was needed. The incident had begun where Coolart Road crosses the Waterloo Road. She’d been driving home in her Mercedes, turning left into Coolart, and a Mitsubishi Pajero had approached the intersection at the same time, from the direction of Waterloo. The time had been two o’clock in the afternoon. She had the right of way, and had begun her turn when she noticed that the Pajero was also turning, no indicators on, threatening to cut her off. On snap consideration, she had accelerated, so as to complete the turn first. She had the right of way, after all, not the other fellow, and that needed to be demonstrated clearly to him. Besides, there were other cars behind her. It would have caused unnecessary alarm if she’d braked suddenly. So, she sailed through, completing her turn with inches to spare.
The look on that man’s face!
Description. More of an impression, really, for the side glass was tinted. He looked lean and tough, with close-cropped hair and the suggestion of tattoos. Aged in his late twenties? The other fellow, the passenger, well, he looked to be full of alarm. He was much smaller in build, with quite long fair hair. Also in his twenties. Neither man looked to be particularly intelligent. Blue collar, she’d say.
Odd that they should be driving a Pajero rather than a more common sort of car.
Anyhow, after the incident at the corner they had tailgated her Mercedes as if they wanted to run her off the road. She could see a fist shaking at her. Horn blaring. Right down the length of Coolart Road. At Chicory Kiln Road she turned right, and-and this was something she’d not tell the police, if she ever reported the incident-extended her arm out of the side window and stuck her index finger into the air as she turned, making sure they saw her do it.
And now…?
Stella swallows. The Pajero has overshot the corner, but now it’s backing up and turning into Chicory Kiln Road and coming up hard behind her. She can’t drive any faster, for Chicory Kiln Road is in a terrible state of repair, soft and treacherous at the edges, badly corrugated in the middle. And dusty! She has no hope of shaking the men off-all they have to do is follow her dust.