I got up and peered through the gunsmoke, but I couldn’t see anything. I’d dropped my gun. I bent over, feeling for it as much as looking. Suddenly, Tobin was there-wide as a house with his breath coming in wheezy gasps and his chest heaving. He pointed a pistol at me and I froze.
“Fuck you, Hardy. Fuck you…”
I could see him getting up the will to shoot me, and I couldn’t move or speak. The shotgun was on the road but it was a mile away. Tobin shuffled forward, making sure…
I waited for the explosion, but instead I heard a sound no louder than a whisper. Moody rose up from the shadows and chopped the pistol from Tobin’s grasp with a blow that cracked the bones in Tobin’s hand. Moody grabbed Tobin’s arm and jerked it up behind him. Tobin resisted, straining to use his bulk against the lighter man. As I moved forward to help, a car swung into the lane and hit us with its headlights. Moody rammed his gun into Tobin’s ear.
“Give it up!”
Tobin jerked his head around and saw the dark intense face close to his own. “You black cunt! You fuckin’ boong…”
Moody jammmed his gun in harder. “Sticks and stones, gubbah” he said. “Sticks and stones.”
13
Having my bacon saved twice in the one night by policemen was an unusual experience. I thanked and complimented Moody, but there was no way to communicate with Meredith. Barry Tobin had shot him twice, in the chest and in the leg, and while I was being interviewed, cross-examined and warned, Meredith was in St Vincents fighting for his life.
Eventually, with the help of Frank Parker, I got things sorted out. The police had the tape and the film and the photographs, and a statement from me which probably didn’t make a lot of sense-it was 3 a.m. and I’d suffered a fair amount of personal abuse-but laid emphasis on my innocence. With my battered head, torn pants and shotgun pellet-ripped jacket, I had credibility as the victim of a conspiracy. Parker assured me that if I had to appear in the magistrate’s court it would only be to receive an apology. I would have been feeling more or less cheerful if it hadn’t been for Meredith.
“He’s pretty tough,” Parker said. “Used to play hockey, they tell me.” Frank was driving me home. It was 3.45. His wife wouldn’t be happy at my keeping her man working so late, but, as my former tenant, she knew my erratic habits.
I was so tired that forming words felt like building a brick wall but, after all the trouble Parker had gone to, it would have been bad form to just nod off there in the car. “Is hockey a game for tough guys?”
“Ice hockey, in Canada.”
“Oh. Yeah. I’m with you.” I’d seen North American hockey games on TV. I remembered watching one with Helen Broadway. She called it an abattoir on ice, which was about right.
Frank turned into Glebe Point Road. Tired as I was, I still instinctively helped him to drive the car, checked the oncoming traffic and mentally changed down. Even crazier in this instance, because Frank’s car was an automatic. Parker glanced at me as I twitched in the passenger seat. “Meredith’s a bright man. Did a postgraduate degree in criminology at McGill University. He’s a bit of a hothead but he had… he’s got a bright future.”
I nodded and wished I hadn’t. Inside my head little popping noises were getting louder and louder. I could hardly hear what Frank was saying, and my own voice sounded thin and far off. “He saved my arse back there on the houseboat. That’s for sure.”
“Care to tell me how he came to be there?”
“Missing persons case,” I said. “We’re working on parallel lines. I mean our lines of inquiry intersected… Shit, Frank, I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Parker pulled up outside my house.
“It’s all right. I’ll have Meredith’s number two give you a ring. Bloke named Wren, Ralph Wren. He’s OK.”
“Make it the day after tomorrow,” I said. “I’m knackered.”
“Right. Need a hand?”
I opened the car door and almost fell out onto the pavement. Parker moved as if to get out of his seat, but I shook my fist at him. “I’m OK, Frank. Thanks for every-thing. Go home to Hilde. I’m OK. I’ll try to see Meredith tomorrow.”
Parker reached over and closed the door. The window had been open because I’d wanted the cold air on my flushed face. “Get some sleep, Cliff,” he said, “and don’t do anything on your case until you talk to Wren.”
I saluted and lurched towards the front gate. I didn’t have my gun or my oilskin any more. I’d lost some brain cells and several inches of skin from various parts of my anatomy. But I had my key. I scratched and scraped until I got it in the lock and turned it. I was thinking of a hot bath. Maybe a hot drink as well. Rum and hot water. It’d probably knock me out and I’d drown in the bath. But the bath leaked and if I had one I’d have to mop up the water in the morning. I couldn’t face that. Not a wet mop! Not ever again! I went into the musty, closed-all-day, no-fun-being-had-here-smelling house, turning on lights and trying to feel human.
The daybed in the sitting room beckoned me, but I made it to the kitchen and a tap. I washed my face at the sink and dried it on a dishcloth which smelled of cat food. Where was the cat? I looked around and called out to him in a voice I hardly recognised. If I’d been a cat I wouldn’t have come to that voice. The cat didn’t. I drank two cups of water, staggered through to the day bed and lay down. I jerked up like a marionette to pull off my jacket and thought about turning off the lights. Thought about it, didn’t do it. I passed out into a black and grey zone of sonar booms, drifting smoke and bright flashing lights that made sounds like the little, ten-for-a-penny Tom Thumb firecrackers I used to let off when I was a kid.
When I woke up, somewhere around eight a.m., I knew I should have had the bath, plus a massage and a long sleep in a soft, warm bed. The daybed is a hard, unyielding structure that Helen accused me of installing to deter casual, stopover visitors. Maybe she was right; she often was. I levered myself off the thing and moved towards the shower, bent over like a bell-ringer, hoping the hot water would help me to straighten up. In the kitchen the cat confronted me and demanded that I straighten up sooner, preferably with a can opener in my hand. I told it to get lost and went through to the cold, draughty bathroom to get myself some steam.
It took about an hour-steam, coffee with rum toast with honey and a feeding of the cat-but eventually I felt better. Well enough, anyway, to sit down by the telephone and think about what to do next. It would have been nice to just sit there with my second rum-laced coffee and drift for a while. Let things sort themselves out in my mind, wait for connections. Instead, I rang Louise Madden in Leura and asked when I could see her.
“Why?” she said.
“To talk. I might be onto something, but I need to talk to you.”
“Why can’t we talk now? We are talking now.”
“I think my phone might be tapped. Nothing to do with this matter, but…”
“My, my. You are the man of mystery, aren’t you? I’m working on a garden in Castlecrag today. That any good to you?”
It was; it was even a connection of a kind. I arranged to meet her at the address in Castlecrag in mid afternoon. My next call was to Paul Guthrie at Northbridge. Castlecrag and Northbridge, not bad. It could just have easily been Northbridge and Chipping Norton. I told Guthrie that the information Ray had given me had been very helpful, and that I needed Ray’s help again.