“What if it is?”
“Got a niece, Noni?”
“Yeah, you a cop?”
“You expect one?”
“Where Noni’s concerned, yes.” He beckoned me further into the workshop and peered over my shoulder as I came in.
“What’s wrong?” I said, turning to look out towards the street.
“Nothing.” He poured tea into the mug and sipped it. “Just looking. Abo hanging around earlier.” He blew steam off the tea. “Sorry I can’t offer you a cup, only got the one mug. A cop you said.”
“No, I didn’t. Don’t worry about the tea.”
He looked at me over the rim of the mug. His eyes were pale blue dots amid a mass of wrinkles and puckered flesh.
“If you’re not a cop what are you? Bookie’s mate?”
He was off on a new tack and sketching in areas of Noni’s past life. She was probably in trouble with the Commissioner of Taxation and hadn’t renewed her driver’s licence.
“Noni’s missing,” I said evasively.
He shrugged and finished his tea in a long gulp. He began patting his pockets in the age-old manner of the tobacco cadger. I handed him my packet, papers and matches. A cigarette took shape between his fingers; he didn’t look at what he was doing as if that was against the rules. He lit up and handed the makings back.
“Thanks, son.” His voice was friendly, almost wheedling but there was a guarded, semi-hostile undertone to it.
I let my eyes wander about the shed and spotted something in a far corner. He saw me looking.
“When did you last see Noni?” I asked.
“Years ago.”
I sauntered over to the rear of the shop and kicked at a tarpaulin-covered lump on the ground. It clanged and I eased the tarp away to show a cage of silver-frosted bars, the frame from Lorraine’s ute. I started to turn back and stopped when I saw that he’d moved across to the work bench. He fumbled behind him and his arm swept around but he was much too slow and I ducked to let the heavy spanner fly over my head and crash into the metal frame. I moved in on him fast and crushed him back against the bench. He wasn’t as old as he looked and he was quite strong but he had no confidence. He pushed against me briefly but I pulled him forward and then slammed his spine back against the bench and the fight went out of him. I slapped the side of his face lightly.
“Why’d you try that old-timer? What’s it to you?”
He didn’t answer so I slapped him again. I don’t like hitting people older than me, but then there’s a lot of things I do that I don’t like.
“Come on! What’s it to you?”
Still no answer. I hit him two jolting slaps. His face blotched suddenly and took on an unhealthy rubicund glow.
“You’ll have a heart attack,” I said. “Natural causes.” I pulled my hand back for another slap. He wriggled a bit but wasn’t really trying; his breath was coming in short, wheezy spasms like an emphysema case in the last stages.
“OK, OK,” he gasped, “you’re right, me ticker’ll give out. I’m too old for this. I can’t take this many frights so quick.”
“Noni’s bloke?”
“Yes. Shit, what a hard case. He dumped the frame and took some plates off a wreck out the back.”
“You let him?”
“He showed me the gun. That was enough for me.”
“Where did they go?”
An impulse to lie and a touch of fear came into his face. The fear won.
“Gone to see Trixie Baker.”
“Who’s she?”
“Woman in Macleay. She was in on some trouble Noni had a few years ago. Good few years now.”
“Tell me about it. Sit down.”
He sat on the bench and watched me while I made a cigarette. I got it going and put the makings away.
“You’re a sick man,” I told him. “It’s bad for you. Let’s hear the story.”
But I’d somehow lost the initiative. Perhaps he saw in my eyes that I wouldn’t push him into a heart attack or maybe he just didn’t care. He swore at me and told me nothing. I raised my voice and then thought of the dog outside the shed but he didn’t give the dog a whistle. He shut up and didn’t do anything, just put up a total defence of silence. Then I took another look at the Holden, it was an FX in the last stages of restoration. Repeated cutting and polishing had brought the duco up to a mirror finish and the chrome gleamed in the dim light like sterling silver. I pulled open a door and glanced at the upholstery; it was leather, flawless and luxuriant. Bert watched me as I circled the car. I came back to him.
“Just two questions Bert.”
Silence.
“Where does Trixie Baker live?”
Nothing.
“Tell me about the Abo?”
More nothing.
I swooped down and picked up a gallon tin which had fluid of some kind splashing about in it. I smelled it. Petrol. I pulled out my matches, jumped over to the car and held the tin and the matches up near the driver’s window.
“Hate to do it Bert.” I put the can on the car roof and struck a match. He jumped up and his mottled face was pale and working.
“No, wait…”
The passion was in his face and the truth would be in his mouth. I dropped the match and scuffed it out. The words came flooding out of him like extinguisher foam.
“Trixie’s got a farm, ten miles north. Sallygate road, first farm past the bridge, you can’t miss it. I don’t know what the old trouble was, I don’t honest.”
I believed him.
“The Abo?”
“Young bloke, tall, caught him in here early this morning. Scared the living shit out of me.”
“Was this before or after Noni was here?”
“After.”
“What was he doing?”
“Sleeping, back there.” He pointed to a heap of bags half-hidden by the side panel of a car at the back of the shed.
“Why so scared? Just a drunk or something.”
“Not him. No fear. Stone sober.”
“What did you do?”
“Told him to shoot through and he did, but like he was going anyway, you know?”
I put the can down and stuck the matches back in my pocket. I couldn’t waste any more time on Bert. Noni and her companion weren’t too far ahead. I asked him how far and he told me they’d left about four hours ago. He didn’t seem to object to the extra question. I rolled him a cigarette and lit it for him. He inhaled gratefully.
“Thanks Bert,” I said: “You’ve been a great help. Now, you’re going to drive me out to Trixie’s. You drop me there and forget the whole thing. OK?”
He protested but I overrode him. We went around the FX and out the back door to where an ordinary-looking Valiant was parked. Bert climbed in and started it up and it didn’t sound so ordinary. He’d modified it in ways that I couldn’t understand which had turned it into a high performance car. He explained this to me in taciturn grunts as we drove; cars were at the moral centre of his life and he was prepared to talk about them as about nothing else. I listened to his technical explanations in silence, thinking. Noni and the man had pushed hard to get this far and it seemed logical that it would be the last port of call but I had no idea what it added up to.
The driving seemed to relax Bert; he looked better somehow at the wheel, more physically in charge of himself and any nervousness he betrayed could easily be put down to uncertainty about my behaviour or that of the man with the gun. I put just one question to him on the drive and the answer was no, he’d never seen the gunman before.
Ten miles out from Macleay we passed over a wooden bridge and the metal road changed to dirt. Bert drove in second gear for a hundred yards and stopped where the road took a right-hand bend.
“Trixie’s place is just around this corner.” He jutted his bristled chin in the direction he meant. “If I was you I’d take it easy. That bloke with Noni looked jumpy and mean to me.” His eyes opened as he saw me pull the. 38 out of the coat pocket. “Jesus! You too. You said I just had to drop you here.” His hand was on the gear stick, ready to move.