I came wide awake with Warren Bradley’s words sounding inside my skull:… Stuff flying everywhere — barrier posts, branches, you know? Door wide open… What sort of stuff? And why had the door been open?
Felicia sat up beside me ‘What is it?’
I didn’t answer. These sorts of insights are fragile things; they can disappear like dreams if you don’t consolidate them quickly. I put my arm around Felicia’s bare shoulders and held her. Our bodies were warm from the bed and the contact. She nuzzled into me, and I stroked her hair while I thought it out. No reason for a door to fly open. The Calais might have been rammed by a heavier vehicle travelling faster, but that wouldn’t do it. What if Barnes had opened the door? And thrown something out?
‘What time is it?’ I said.
Felicity checked her watch. ‘Nearly five-thirty.’
‘When does it get light?’
‘In about an hour. Why?’
‘I have to go looking for something.’
‘God, are you always like this in the morning? Up and running this early? I don’t think I could bear it.’
I laughed and kissed her, but I got out of bed too. ‘No. I can sleep in with the best of them. Want some coffee?’
‘Tea,’ she said.
I got dressed and made the drinks. She was only half awake when I brought it to her, but she made an effort to sit up and drink it. I reminded her about the evidence O’Fear had referred to- a heavy bag-and our search for it in Botany. Then I let her in on my inspiration.
‘I suppose it’s possible,’ she said. ‘What could be in the bag?’
I sipped my coffee. I was drinking it strong and black and it was a bit of a jolt to what had been a very relaxed system. Excitement over the chance of finding the bag made me incautious about the other matter. ‘No idea. Tell me, Fel, what do you know about Barnes and a woman named Eleni Marinos?’
She spilled half of her tea on the sheet. ‘Shit! Why do you ask me that?’
‘Is that a problem for you?’
‘Very much so. I don’t want to hear her bloody name, much less talk about her. Is she involved in this?’
‘Could be.’
Her face, which had been sleepy and relaxed, went tight. I could feel waves of hostility coming from her. She mopped vigorously at the wet sheet with her T-shirt which had been lying on the bed. ‘Christ, am I never going to get clear of that woman?’
Light was showing at the bottom of the half-drawn blind and the birds were starting up in the trees. It should have been a good day for us, but suddenly it wasn’t.
I touched her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, love. I should have felt around it a bit more first before opening my big mouth.’
‘Bullshit! That’s bullshit! I’m not a child. I can face facts. I bet you’ve been talking to Deborah.’
‘Yes, but the name came up in Sydney first.’
‘I bet. Her name comes up all the bloody time. Deborah thinks I don’t know about Barnes and… her, but I do. I did. Oh shit! Why did you have to…?’
‘That’s the nature of this business, Fel. It often comes down to this-the awkward question, the unwelcome name.’
‘I suppose you’re going to tell me they had a love nest in Elizabeth Bay or something?’
‘No. Nothing like that. I’m really interested in the business dealings-Barnes Enterprises and Athena Security.’
She shook her head miserably. ‘I don’t know about that.’
‘This isn’t really the time to talk about it, but I don’t think you need to suffer. I don’t know anything that suggests Barnes was seriously involved with Marinos after he met you. And some things point the other way.’
‘What do you mean, seriously?’
‘Can we leave it until I get back?’
‘Sure, sure. Let’s leave it, period.’
She flopped down on the bed and rolled over, burying her head in the pillow. I’m a combative person by nature and life and my trade have made me more so. I wanted to tell her that I knew about her deception with the photographs and paintings. If things had got sticky enough, I might even have said something about how Todd had saved his arse in Korea. But, painfully, I’ve learned to cut the connection between self-justification, my anger and my vocal cords. I tiptoed out of the bedroom, which was starting to fill with light.
I got the car as close as I could to the place where Todd’s Calais had gone off the road. I had to walk back through some lantana and scrub and scramble up a steepish slope to reach the actual spot. I was breathing heavily when I got there. The day was clearing fast; a little mist hung around the top of the scarp but, from this height, the ships on the horizon were sharp-etched and the headland to the south was like a giant knife blade thrusting into the sea.
Just beyond the restored section of barrier, the damage started. Some saplings had been scythed through, and the path taken by the car was visible through the undergrowth and light timber, down to the blackened area where it had burned, a hundred metres or more below the road. I tried to take a bearing from a post on the angle the car had taken. I imagined myself in the driver’s seat… opening the door… throwing something out as the car lost traction and the engine screamed. Not a pleasant process. The ferns and bracken were thick and still wet from the dew. I trampled them down, wishing I’d brought a bush knife or a scrub hook.
Cars and trucks hummed on the road above me as I slowly worked my way along to the likely points of landing. I looked back and up through the misty air and could just make out the balcony of Warren Bradley’s house. I adjusted a little to the left, but the first promising clump of bushes held only a couple of beer cans, thrown from vehicles. My jeans were sopping wet to the thighs and I reopened the cut on my hand bending back branches and breaking bushes. Further down the slope, the trees shut out some of the light and made the search harder. There was no way to calculate how the bag would behave. Would it rip and distribute its contents? Would it bounce?
I slogged on, bleeding, sweating and running out of chances. The bushes became hard and spiny, the earth underfoot was soft and I was aware that I was approaching a sizable drop. The slope was gullied by run-off water that had exposed the roots of some of the bigger trees. I caught my foot in one of the roots, fell over, swore and found the gar-bag. It was wedged in under a fallen branch; leaves and sticks and small stones carried by the run-off water had half-covered it and I had to tug it free. In so doing I ripped the plastic bag but that didn’t matter because it wasn’t a single bag but three or four heavy duty jobs enclosed inside each other. The other layers had been torn in various places, but not seriously. It was tied tightly with heavy twine at the top, and whatever was inside had been well protected.
I stood with the bag in my hand, half-expecting someone to give me a round of applause. It was moderately heavy and bulky. It clinked and clunked when the contents moved inside. It didn’t tick or hum, and there was no tinkle of broken glass or rustle of paper. It seemed to have something firm, like plywood or heavy cardboard, as a base. I slung it over my shoulder and worked my way back across the rough ground and up the slopes. My fall had jarred my right arm slightly and I had to hold the bag in my left. As I swapped it over, I noticed I’d got blood on it. Tampering with the evidence.
Back at the car, I opened the boot and cleared a space for the bag. The twine was thick and the knots had hardened. I cut it with a pocket knife. My burglar’s kit includes a pair of rubber gloves; I pulled them on and reached into the bag. In a couple of seconds I had fifteen objects spread out in front of me: pieces of wood and pieces of metal-the stocks and lengths of the barrels of seven Winchester double-barrelled shotguns. The wood was chipped and the metal was rubbed and scratched, but the cuts were fresh. As well, there was a set of blown-up photographs enclosed between stiff cardboard and tightly sealed with heavy masking tape.
I put the stocks and barrels back in the bag and slit the tape that held the photographs together. The bag had hit hard, bounced and fallen a fair distance so that the cardboard was bent and creased. The photos likewise, but they were clear enough. The six glossy black-and-white shots had been taken at night. They showed shadowy scenes, from slightly different angles, of men unloading objects from a van. Some of the men wore silver jackets. Some of them carried automatic rifles. The faces of several of them were plainly visible.