My rubber soles squelched on the wet path as the darkness of the park closed around me. I stared hard ahead of me and around but there was nothing moving that shouldn’t have been. The path sloped down slightly to the basin occupied by the rotunda. I could sense eyes on me and the wind seemed to be carrying the sound of harsh breathing and the smell of fear. I went up the steps to the rotunda. It hadn’t changed, except to be even more dilapidated. A crazy network of slats hung down from the roof and one of its brick pillars was now a pile of rubble spilling out towards the centre of the concrete floor. A pool of water about six feet across and a few inches deep gleamed in the middle of the circular space. I set the bag down in the centre of it and straightened up slowly.
“Very funny mate.” The voice was harsh and thin like a fingernail across a blackboard. “Take the hand out of the jacket and keep it in sight.”
I did what he said. The voice seemed to be coming from the front of the rotunda, low down, beneath my eye level. There was a gap between the floor and the railing with plenty of space to see and to shoot through. I held my hands out wide and empty.
“OK. Out you go and walk down to the water. Don’t look back or it’ll be the last thing you do.”
The voice, still harsh and tight, was steady and sounded as if it meant what it said. This was the part I didn’t like. I backed out, walked around the side of the structure and started down to the harbour. I thought I might have a chance at him when I’d moved down a bit because it was too dark for good shooting and there was some cover beside the path. The idea died when I heard the voice again. It was much closer. He’d moved around and stood at the top of the path, positioned where he had me in a shooting gallery for a hundred yards, targeted against the lights where the peninsula begins to narrow down. He said “Keep going” and I did, concentrating on getting to the lights without any bullets in my hide. I’d gone about forty feet when I heard a noise like a scuffle behind me and I instinctively dropped down. A muffled shout and a sharp crack and a bullet whined off the concrete ahead of me and to one side. I pulled the gun out and started to crawl to a tree. A bullet thudded into the trunk I was headed for and I twisted round and fired back at the rotunda, aiming low. For no reason I could think of I shouted a word:
“Berrigan!”
The response was a hissing curse. A shape loomed up at the centre of the rotunda, a dark menacing shape that flashed fire at me. I felt leaves and dirt kick up into my face and I fired again and there was a scream and metal rang on concrete.
I rolled off the path and crawled behind a tree. I screwed up my eyes and strained them through the darkness but I couldn’t see any movement up ahead of me. The park had swallowed up the sound of the shots and the whisper of the trees and the wash of the sea took over again and restored the quiet, normal rhythms of the night.
I got to my feet and approached the rotunda, keeping off the path and using the trees for cover. Moon and park light gleamed on metal. I looked down at the big gun and left it where it lay. I hoisted myself up over the railing and came into the circle from the rear. A man was lying on his back in the middle of the pool of water. Water had splashed out all around from the impact of his fall and a section of the pool was nearly dry where the water had seeped into the man’s clothes. I put my fingers on his wrist and waited to hear the blood pumping through, but there would never be long enough to wait. He was dead. There was no sign of the airline bag. I lit a match and held it up to make sure. The flickering light caught and danced over his face; the skin was stretched tight over the sharp, hawkish cheekbones. Bony, bat-winged ears stuck out from his close-cropped skull. The coat of his suit had come open and exposed his tiny bony chest covered by a woollen shirt. I struck another match and bent over him. The shirt front was a sodden, oozing mess that glistened thick and oily in the match-light.
I walked up to the road feeling only marginally like a member of the human race. Each killing of another person diminishes your share in the common feeling that unites civilised people and my stocks were running low. Military service is supposed not to count in this process but for me it did. As I walked I realised that my hand was clenched tight around the butt of the Smith amp; Wesson and I recalled other pistols I’d fired at other men in this city and other guns, all shapes and sizes, growing hot in my hands as I pumped bullets at human flesh. Small soldiers, their hats festooned with jungle camouflage, danced before my eyes and I sweated as freely as I had back in those Malayan (angles.
I found a phone booth and called Ted Tarelton and told him what had happened. I couldn’t tell him anything about the girl except that I’d have to report the whole thing to the police now and her name would come out. He accepted it better than I expected. He didn’t try to talk me out of it and I wondered what he felt now about the girl. His wife had answered the phone and handed it straight to him without comment; even over the impersonal wire I could sense their reconciliation and maybe that’s what mattered most. The money certainly didn’t matter a damn. With Saul James it was harder; he showered me with abuse and almost broke down. When he recovered he put one question coldly:
“She’s dead, isn’t she Hardy?”
I still didn’t think so and that’s what I said but it made no impression on him. He hung up on me. They had one thing in common – neither of them cared a hoot how many men I shot to death.
The Balmain police station is tucked up next to the town hall like a bedmate. I parked the Celica outside, went in and asked for the duty officer. A uniformed constable with pimples asked my name, inspected my licence and wanted to know what it was about. I told him briefly and he showed me through to a cold, cream-painted room with a table and two chairs. I sat down, rolled a cigarette and waited. I stuck my head out of the door to ask for coffee but there was no-one to ask. I memorised the cracks on the walls and the cobwebs hanging from the roof. I took my gun out and put it on the table in front of me. I swore at it and the little black hole at the end of its muzzle stared me down. I put it away.
After fifteen minutes the door opened and two men came into the room. One of them was the new style of copper with a modish, broad-lapelled suit, collar-length hair and a Zapata moustache. His type imagines it can efface itself at a rock concert but it always sticks out like a bull’s balls and never gets offered a joint. The other man was cast in the traditional mould; his face was shaped by grog and collisions with fists and the cut of his hair and clothes owed nothing to vanity. He spoke with the rasping whisper that comes from years of hushed conversations in pubs and stilted evidence-giving in court.
The young one stationed himself by the door, the other swung his leg up and perched on the end of the table across from me. His eyes dropped to my trousers and stayed there. I noticed for the first time that they were smeared with blood. For no reason my reaction to this inspection was cheek.
“You better go down to the park. Someone might take him home as a souvenir.”
The older man turned around to grin at his mate.
“Pathetic isn’t it? Give them an investigator’s licence and they all think they have to be smart.” The younger cop nodded on cue. The veteran settled himself more comfortably on the table.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Hardy, I’m forgetting my manners. My name is Carlton, Sergeant Jim Carlton and this is Sergeant Tobin.”
I said nothing and re-lit my cigarette, which had gone out.
“Yes, well, now that we’re all introduced I think we’d better get on.” Carlton’s voice was friendly in a dangerous way. I prepared myself for the boot that would knock the chair from under me or the slap that would send the cigarette flying, but nothing like that ha ppened. Carlton went on, showing his great weakness; he loved to talk. I relaxed.