“You must be Hardy. Is that right?”
The big man bending over me was breathing heavily and sweating. I’d seen him before-in Arundel Street in the company of the widowed Mrs Glover and her unpleasant son Clive.
I wriggled up into a sitting position. I had an aching head, a closing eye and pain almost everywhere. “And you must be Detective Sergeant Meredith. I’m very pleased to see you.”
“Yeah, I bet you are. Could you tell me what the hell’s going on here? I came looking for you and…”
“For me? Why?”
“You left your name at the morgue. I wanted to know why you were interested in Glover. Then I saw the sheet from the Woolloomooloo station that you were on the scene when another guy died, and in sight of the bridge. We have to talk, Hardy.”
“Sure. But how did you know to come here?”
“I put out a marker on your car. A cruiser spotted it up the road and called in. We’re pretty well organised these days.”
The flashing blue light had been turned off, but there was still a lot of commotion on and around the jetty and on the houseboat. The sorts of protesting voices that I’d heard before were being raised again and the cops were talking in their quiet, emotionless way. I’d really spoiled some folks’ night. Meredith took a look over my shoulder at the handcuffs.
“Can you locate a guy named Arch?” I said. “He should have the key to these bloody things. How come you piled in like this? I thought you just wanted a chat.”
“If you mean Arch Bailey, we’ve got him in custody. He’s wanted. That’s what I mean. I arrived and found all these bloody crims swarming around-Bailey, Fred Murdoch, Sammy Camarella. Couple of them ponced up in red jackets like they were in Las Vegas. All on the wanted list. I called in for support. What’s going on, Hardy?”
I grinned at him. “You just raided Barry Tobin’s gambling boat. You’ve probably got the odd magistrate and MP in chains down there.”
“Shit.” Meredith pushed his lank fair hair back from his eyes. He was younger than I’d thought, at least ten years younger than I. His bulk had misled me. In the dim light he looked almost boyish. “Who cares,” he said. “Those old pricks have had it coming for years. Their protection’s just about run out.”
“Good,” I said. I jiggled the short chain on the cuffs. “Arch?”
Meredith’s eyes went suddenly shrewd. “Still, I could be in the shit over this. You wouldn’t have anything else to tell me, would you, Hardy?”
“A lot, on this and the bridge business. But first you should send someone up to get a tape from the wheelhouse.”
“The what?”
“Up there!” I jerked my head to indicate the direction and then I saw Rhino Jackson. Two men, one in uniform, one in a dinner suit, were bending over him in attitudes that suggested he was a lost cause. Meredith gave urgent commands to a couple of the cops, and one returned with a key to the handcuffs. When I was free I moved across to where Jackson lay. They’d put a blanket over the lower part of his body. The policeman who had shot him was young, pale-faced and scared. He looked up and saw me.
“You saw it, didn’t you? You saw what happened.”
“Yes,” I said. “I saw it. It wasn’t your fault. Don’t worry, son.” I looked at the man in the dinner suit.
“I’m a doctor,” he said. “I’m afraid he hasn’t got very long. The bullet must have hit something vital.”
The young cop turned away, and I bent over Jackson. His eyes opened. “Hardy?” he whispered.
“Rhino.”
“Tobin.” The voice was a harsh whisper with no force behind it. “Get Tobin… kill Prue Harper.”
“Tobin’s going to kill her?”
“Has to. She knows…”
“Where is she?”
Meredith was beside me now. “What’s this?” he said.
“Shush. Where is she, Rhino?”
A trickle of blood came from Jackson’s mouth and his eyes closed.
“He’s going,” the doctor said.
Jackson’s lips pursed as if he was about to spit. I bent my head down. I could feel his breath, the faintest, sour smelling whisper, on my face. “Budget…”
“Budget…” I repeated.
The bloodless lips trembled, pursed, relaxed, then firmed up again. “Back… packer.”
“I know it,” Meredith said. “Budget Backpacker. Victoria Street. The Cross. Hardy…”
“I think he’s gone,” the doctor said. He checked Jackson’s pulse, shook his head and pulled the blanket up over the white, still face with the dark trickle running from the slack mouth.
The young cop jammed his hands in his pockets and stood like an actor on stage who didn’t know his next line. Meredith touched his shoulder. “Go and have a cigarette, constable.”
“I don’t smoke, sir.”
“Then go and have a bloody drink.”
“I don’t…”
He was almost in shock. I steered him along the deck. “There must be a kitchen in this boat somewhere. You can probably get a cup of coffee or something. Hang on, son. You’ll be all right.”
“Hardy!”
I turned to see Meredith beckoning me. He was holding a. 38 Smith amp; Wesson that looked very like mine, also a tape cassette and the Polaroid photographs of me in blinking, blundering action. I approached him and held out my hand for the gun.
“Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “You’re a menace.”
“This was all a set-up, Meredith. It’s not the way it looks. But I’ll tell you one thing-Barry Tobin’s on his way to kill someone who’s supposed to be safe under a witness protection programme.”
“I don’t understand any of this. What?”
“There really isn’t time to explain. A lot of it’s on that tape. If we had time you could call Frank Parker and he’d vouch for me, but I reckon you should take a punt. You believe in the witness protection programme, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Then you’d better get to the Budget Backpacker before Tobin does, or witness protection’ll have about as much credibility as the weather bureau.”
Maybe it was because Meredith was young, maybe because he had imagination, maybe it was a rebellious streak, but he broke a lot of rules in getting himself, me and one of the constables away from the shambles on the Pavarotti in double-quick time. I sat in the back seat of the speeding police car cleaning myself up with bunches of tissues from the box Meredith handed me.
“You’re a mess,” Meredith said.
“So would you be if you had to do the sorts of things I have to do.”
“You must tell me about it sometime.
Right now, I could do with some back-ground on what we’re getting into now.”
I filled him in as best I could, remembering scraps as I went along and back-tracking to fit them into the story.
“Are you following this, Constable Moody?” Meredith said to the driver.
Peter Corris
CH13 — Wet Graves
“No, sir.” Moody’s voice had the harsh note characteristic of the city Aboriginal. I noticed that his hands and the back of his neck were brown. He drove with the economy and decisiveness of a professional.
“Me neither.”
“You would if you heard the tape. Have you got it safe?”
Meredith patted his breast pocket. “Yep. You saying Barry Tobin set up the hit?”
“Yes. And I don’t think it’s the only one he set up. This Prue Harper apparently knows a bit about it, so Jackson said.”
Meredith’s big head nodded. His hair was longish at the back, straggling over his ears and collar. My grandma used to say that untidiness was a sign of honesty. It meant you weren’t always out to make the right impression. On that score, Meredith was honest. “A dying declaration,” he said. “Pity we haven’t got it on tape.”
“Victoria Street, sir,” the driver said.
We’d approached from the Potts Point end of the street, leaving the water below and behind us. There was no telling what route Tobin would take and no knowing whether he’d get there before us or after. I shrugged out of the oilskin, which was making me hot, and finished dabbing at my cuts and abrasions. The aches in my arms and legs would have to take care of themselves. I remembered the last time I’d seen Tobin in action, when he was blasting away with a shotgun and I suddenly felt vulnerable and exposed.
“There it is. Pull over.” Meredith sounded edgy, too. He pointed through the windscreen at the big, three-storey terrace house which had a neon sign over the gate-BUDGET BACKPACKER. “Christ knows how they run these things,” Meredith said. “Do they just deposit the protected witness somewhere they consider safe and leave it at that? Or do they keep a watch?”
“Haven’t you been briefed?” I said.
Meredith glanced at the driver who was sitting rigidly, with his hands on the steering wheel. “I was busy,” he said. “Let’s take a look. You’d better check your weapon, Constable Moody, but for God’s sake don’t use it unless you have to.”
“What about my weapon?” I said.
“What about it?”
“Tobin’s got more reason to kill me than you or Moody. He might think I’ve got the tape.”
Meredith stared ahead at the street and didn’t reply. It was about two in the morning and fairly quiet. Not that it’s ever completely quiet at the Cross. There were people in the street, drifting along, getting close to the end of their day. The street was lined with cars; some of them, the Falcon and Holden station wagons mostly, the vehicles that Backpackers would try to sell the following day. There were cars with resident stickers and others belonging to the people who came to the Cross for alcohol, food and sex, or just to look.
Moody had checked his pistol and returned it to the holster. “I know Prue Harper, sir,” he said.
“Do you?” Meredith said. “That helps.”
“Do you want me to go in and bring her out, sir?”
Meredith opened his door. “It’s not a bad idea. Hardy, you stay here.”
I opened my door. “Not without my gun.”
Meredith hesitated. We were parked about fifty metres from the gate of the house. The street was well lit and the pavement, looking back towards Darlinghurst Road, was like a shooting gallery.
Meredith shook his head. “If you see anything, Hardy, turn on the siren. Show him how it works, constable.”
Moody showed me the switch. I nodded. “Great. I’ll tackle him while he’s suffering temporary blindness and hearing loss.”
“Look,” Meredith said. “Tobin won’t know that Jackson told us anything. He’ll be counting on confusion and delay. It’s very unlikely that he’ll show. We’ll go in and get the woman. That’s it.”
“There’s a lane at the back,” Moody said. “Bound to be another way in.”
“Shit,” Meredith said. “All right, Hardy, here’s your bloody gun. You stay here. I’ll go around the back and check it. Then the constable and I’ll go in the front door. Before sunrise, I hope.”
Meredith retreated around the nearest corner. I sat in the passenger seat next to Moody. I was tense, he seemed relaxed. “How d’you come to know Prue Harper?” I said.
Moody stared ahead. “I know lots of people.”
“What’s she like?”
“Foolish,” he said.
A clutch of people came down the street-three large, blonde young men and a couple of women of the same stamp. They separated. A couple went into the house we were watching; the others crossed the road to the HOTEL CALIFORNIA-BACKPACKERS WELCOME.
“Lucky buggers,” Moody said. “Where do you reckon they’re from?”
I shrugged. “Germany, Sweden.”
“Wouldn’t mind going there myself.” Suddenly, he leaned forward. I tried to see where he was looking.
“What?” I said.
“Look there.” He pointed. “The Tarago.”
A large van was moving slowly towards us. I couldn’t see the driver or anyone else in the van, but Moody could. He gave me a shove which hurt one of the ribs Arch had kicked. “The driver’s checking the place out. Get down!”
We slumped down and the van cruised past. Moody sneaked a look in the rear vision mirror.
“What’s it doing?”
“Stopping,” he said. “Two guys getting out. Skinny bloke and a fat one, real fat. That him?”
“Could be.”
“They’re going around the back.”
“Can’t sit here,” I said. I opened my door and eased out, keeping low. The street was empty now; Moody ran for the corner and I limped after him. The street we turned into was narrow and dark. I could just glimpse the entry to a lane which ran behind the terrace houses fronting Victoria Street. Moody disappeared into the lane. I followed him after looking cautiously around the corner first. I saw shapes moving ahead, darting from one side of the lane to the other. I moved ahead slowly, pressing back against a brick wall.
Two shots, clean and sharp like whipcracks, sounded in quick succession, then I heard Meredith shout. “Stop! Police!”
A third shot, with a heavier note, boomed out, and the lane was suddenly full of echoes and swearing and the sounds of running feet. A figure loomed up in front of me, running fast. Too tall to be Moody, too slight for Meredith. I stepped out and tried to raise my gun, but he arrived too soon. Too soon for him as well. He swung something short and stubby at me; I ducked under the swing and dived forward, hitting about knee high and sending him thumping hard onto the ground, head first. There was a roar as the shotgun he had been carrying hit the brick wall and went off. Pellets flicked around, ricocheting from the bricks and roadway. They missed me. He didn’t move.
I got up and peered through the gunsmoke, but I couldn’t see anything. I’d dropped my gun. I bent over, feeling for it as much as looking. Suddenly, Tobin was there-wide as a house with his breath coming in wheezy gasps and his chest heaving. He pointed a pistol at me and I froze.
“Fuck you, Hardy. Fuck you…”
I could see him getting up the will to shoot me, and I couldn’t move or speak. The shotgun was on the road but it was a mile away. Tobin shuffled forward, making sure…
I waited for the explosion, but instead I heard a sound no louder than a whisper. Moody rose up from the shadows and chopped the pistol from Tobin’s grasp with a blow that cracked the bones in Tobin’s hand. Moody grabbed Tobin’s arm and jerked it up behind him. Tobin resisted, straining to use his bulk against the lighter man. As I moved forward to help, a car swung into the lane and hit us with its headlights. Moody rammed his gun into Tobin’s ear.
“Give it up!”
Tobin jerked his head around and saw the dark intense face close to his own. “You black cunt! You fuckin’ boong…”
Moody jammmed his gun in harder. “Sticks and stones, gubbah” he said. “Sticks and stones.”