For an hour or so, I slumped in the armchair, drinking whisky, clock ticking somewhere in the pub, lulling sound, sad sound. Fire just a glow of gold through grey. Putting off reading Ian Barbie’s last testament in the same way I’d put off listening to Bianchi’s tape.
Berglin. I needed to talk to Berglin. I got up, stretched, moved my shoulders, pain from tackling Neckhead on the fire escape. I got out the mobile, switched it on, pressed the numbers.
‘Berglin.’
‘Mac.’
‘Mac, where the fucking hell have you been? Point of having a mobile is to have the fucking thing switched on.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Been busy. This line secure?’
‘Well, as secure as any fucking line is these days.’
‘Got a tape. Bianchi, Scully, Mance. Before Lefroy. Bianchi had a wire on him. Insurance.’
Berglin whistled. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Where are you?’
‘In the sticks. People are trying to kill me.’
‘Again?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Must be learners. I’ll meet you. Where?’
I thought for a while, gave him directions. It was as good a place as any.
I took cigarettes, matches from the bar and the bottle of whisky.
Back roads, route avoiding anything resembling a main road.
As I turned the corner of the drive, the clouds parted for a few seconds, the half moon lighting up the house at Harkness Park. It didn’t look ghostly or forbidding, looked like a big old house with everyone asleep. I parked around the side, settled down to wait. It would take Berglin another half an hour. I had a sip of whisky, hunched my shoulders against the cold. Tired.
I jerked awake, got out, yawned, stretched, lit a cigarette. It tasted foul, stood on it.
Car on the road. Berglin? Quick driving.
Stopped. At the entrance to the drive.
Typical Berglin. I’d told him to drive up to the house. But Berglin didn’t do the expected. He didn’t drive the same way to work two days running.
I went to the corner of house, looked out between the wall and the gutter downpipe. Hunter’s moon, high clouds running south, gaps appearing, closing, white moonlight, dark. Waited for Berglin.
He was no more than fifty metres from me when the clouds tore apart.
A coldness that had nothing to do with the freezing night came over me.
Bobby Hill, slim and handsome as ever, dark clothing, long-barrelled revolver, man wants a job done properly, has to go out and do it himself.
And behind him, a few paces back, another man, short man, wearing some sort of camouflaged combat outfit, carrying a short automatic weapon at high port, big tube on top.
Clouds covered the moon. Too dark to see the man’s face.
Moonlight again.
Beret on the second man’s head. Turned his head.
Little pigtail swinging.
Andrew Stephens. My visitor in the Porsche.
How did he fit in?
No time to think about that.
The car door was open. I found the box of cartridges under the front seat, moved into the heavy, damp, jungle-smelling vegetation beyond the rotten toolshed.
How many? Just Hill and Andrew Stephens?
It wasn’t going to be only two again.
Escape. Which way?
Down to the mill would be best. Cross the stream above the headrace pond, follow the stream down to the sluicegates. Go around behind the mill, up the wooded embankment. Places to hide there, wait for dawn, ring Stan.
The mobile. I’d left it on the passenger seat.
No going back. I was moving in the direction of the site of the house that burnt down, the first house. But the growth here was impenetrable, I’d end up like a goat caught in a thicket.
I had to veer left, pass in front of the sunken tennis court. But to do that I would have to cross the top of the area we had so painfully cleared. In darkness, that wouldn’t be a problem. But if moonlight persisted, I’d have to wait. And they’d be coming…
Steady. They didn’t know which way I’d gone. They’d have found the car by now. It was coal dark. I could be anywhere.
Scully’s words on the tape came into my head:
You don’t know this fucking El G, fucking mad. I know him from way back…
Way back? How far back? From Scully’s days in the country?
El G? El Torro, The Bull. El Greco, The Greek.
The Greek? Who had said something about a Greek recently? Greek. Recently. In the past few days. The past few days were blurred into one long day.
Frank Cullen, man of contraptions: Rick’s tied up with that Stefanidis from over near Daylesford. RSPCA went there, heard he was shootin pigeons. Bloke behind a wall throws ’em in the air, Greek shoots ’em with a twelve bore from about two yards. Sticks it up their arses practically.
Andrew Stephens. Andrew Stefanidis?