I put the gun on the table and hooked my hands under the woman’s shoulders. She was a dead weight like a sack of grain. I dragged her across the room, kicked one of the chairs out from under the table and dumped her into it. She didn’t move except that her head slumped across the other side. I pushed her hair aside. There was a long jagged tear near her ear and a deep oozing cut on her mouth, the sort of wound the foresight and backsight of a pistol make across a face. There was a lot of blood on her face and on the floor but there didn’t seem to be any other injury to her and this one wasn’t fatal. The dishtowel on the sink gave off a stomach-turning smell but I ran water on it, screwed it out and dabbed at the blood. She flinched as the water went into the cuts and her eyes flickered open. I pressed the wet cloth against her forehead. Her head tried to slide away to the right but I held it steady. Her eyes opened into dark slits and stared fixedly at the bottle on the table.
“Are you Lorraine?” I asked.
She nodded. The action must have sent waves of pain through her because she shuddered and slid lower on the chair. I hoisted her up.
“Water?”
She made a sound that could have meant yes, so I rinsed one of the dirty glasses, half filled it and held it to her lips. She sipped a thimbleful then shook her head. On a close look her Chinese ancestry was apparent. Her eyes were jet black and sloped a bit and although there was practically no flesh on her face the bone structure was broad and oriental. She picked up the damp dishcloth from where I’d dropped it in her lap and mopped at the slash beside her mouth.
“Did Noni do this to you?”
Her mouth twisted into a grin, the movement brought flesh blood out of the cut and she checked it.
“Not likely,” she croaked. “I can handle Noni any day.”
“Who then?”
“Guy with her. Dunno his name.”
“What happened?”
“They got here late this arvo – no, a bit later. Noni said she wanted to stay the night, her and him. I said alright and gave them the room. Then they went out for a while, came back with the booze.”
She nodded at the bottle on the table and immediately regretted it. I gave her another sip of water. She held on to the glass and some colour came back into her face making it grey like old, stained china. I waited.
“I made them something to eat, we had a few drinks, friendly like. Then the bloke started to talk about him and me swapping cars. I’ve got a Holden ute – bomb, but it goes. I said alright. I thought he was joking. I asked him to throw in the rest of the gin. He said OK and to give him the keys. I thought he was joking. When I wouldn’t he smashed me.”
“With a pistol.”
“Yeah. Big bastard.”
“The man?”
“No, the gun.”
“What did he look like? What did the girl call him?”
She handed me the glass. “Get me a drink and a smoke and tell me who the hell you are and I might say some more.”
I tipped the rest of the water in the glass into the sink and poured in a slug of gin. I looked around for something to put in it but she snapped her fingers and held out her hand.
“Put that much in again and give it here.”
I did and rolled her a cigarette. I lit it and she drew it down half an inch and pulled the smoke deep into her lungs.
“Thanks, that’s better. Now, who’re you?”
I told her the story quickly, suggesting that the man travelling with Noni had probably killed Ricky Simmonds.
“Jesus,” she said when I’d finished, “I was lucky; he might’ve done me.
“That’s right. Will you answer my questions?”
“Yeah, what were they?”
I repeated them and she drank some gin and smoked while she thought it over.
“I can’t remember that she called him anything,” she said at last. “They weren’t getting on too well seemed to me. You know Noni?”
I shook my head and produced the photograph.
“That’s her, the slut. Well, the bloke’s not big, about five foot six or seven, not more. He’s thin but sort of flabby thin, you know?”
I said I didn’t know.
“Well, there’s not much meat on him but what there is looks sort of soft. His chest’s sort of slid down to his gut. Can’t make it no clearer. Gimme another smoke.”
I got out the makings and started to roll one but she reached over impatiently and took the packet away. Her fingernails were black-rimmed and the thin skin on her hands was stretched tight like the fabric on a model plane. She made a fat cigarette and twisted the ends.
“Anything else about him?”
“You mean clothes and that?”
“Anything.”
“He had an old suit on, blue with a sort of checked shirt under it, like tartan. Looked a bit funny with the suit. He was real pale, like he’s been in hospital. Oh, and his ears stuck out, like this.” She fanned her ears out from under her lank, greasy hair.
“What did they talk about? Did they say where they were going?”
“Let’s think.” She put a black fingernail through the black hair and scratched. “He didn’t say much but Noni blabbed a bit. She was pissed and I reckon she was taking something else as well. You know?”
“I know. What did she say?”
“Well, I went out to do somethin’ and I heard her say, when I was coming back, that it was a long time ago and he should forget it and it was only money.”
“What did he say?”
“Told her to shut up. Then she said something about Macleay and he told her to shut up again. Listen, did they take the car?”
“Was it parked out front?”
“Yes.”
“They took it.”
“Fuck ‘em. They leave the big one?”
“The Chev? Yes.”
Her thin, ratty eyebrows went up. “Is that a fact? Reckon I can keep it?”
I thought of Ricky Simmonds, slumped down dead in a ditch around a fort built to repel invaders of an already invaded land. Crouched over like an Aboriginal warrior buried with all ceremony as in the time before horses and guns and arsenic and venereal disease.
His car had been his shield and his weapon and now it was discarded beside a house where black men were banned by a yellow woman. Australia.
A man in a dressing gown and three days of stubble came through the passage door before I could answer about the car. He shuffled into the kitchen and stopped short when he saw the gin.
“Piss off, Darby,” Lorraine said sharply.
The man looked at her with bleary eyes that sagged down into deep pouches about his cheekbones. With the eyes and the stubble and the grizzled grey hair poking through the top of the dressing gown he looked like a tired old owl who’d lost his way.
“Go on Lorraine,” he whined. “Just a small one.”
She shrugged and nodded at me. I poured some gin and handed him the glass; he didn’t seem to notice me, just lifted his hand and let the liquor slide down his throat. His neck convulsed once and he set the glass down carefully on the table. He let it sit for a few seconds, then tilted it again and got a few drops on his tongue.
“Right, piss off,” Lorraine snapped.
He pulled the dressing gown around him and dragged himself out of the room. I looked at the woman.
“A bum,” she said. “Probably came out to piss in the sink. Now, about that car?”
“Not up to me. Give me the details on the ute.”