‘He ID us?’ the middle-aged cop said.
‘This light?’ Neckhead said. ‘No fucking way. He gets round the bend, buzz this cunt.’
Flannery revved his engine.
Hope gone.
And then Flannery’s ute was coming at us in reverse, engine screaming.
‘Jesuschrist!’ the cop standing on me shouted.
His foot came off my spine.
I tucked my legs in, rolled to my right, heard Flannery’s ute hit flesh and bone, brakes squeal, shouting.
I got around the front of the Land Rover, stood up. Flannery in first gear, coming back past me.
The cop he’d bumped was up, walking towards the police car, holding his left arm up by the elbow, screaming, ‘Kill the fucking cunts!’
Neckhead, where?
I was backing off in Flannery’s direction.
Neckhead popped up behind the Land Rover tray, revolver combat grip, two-handed, steadied himself to shoot me.
The dog jumped three metres onto Neckhead’s outstretched arms, jaws lunging for his throat, silent.
Neckhead made a shrill sound, went over backwards, rolled, knocked the dog off with the revolver barrel, tried a shot at it, two shots, missed, lead singing off the tarmac.
I screamed for the dog, ran for Flannery’s ute, wrenched open the door, ute moving, half-in, foot dragging, heard the dog land on the back.
Flannery put his foot flat.
There was sound like a hard doorknock on the back window, followed by a smack on the roof above the rearview mirror.
I ducked, looked at the window: neat bullet hole, spider-web of cracks around it.
‘Fuck,’ said Flannery. ‘Couldn’t they just give you a ticket?’
I breathed heavily for a while, got my breath back. ‘One tail light out,’ I said. ‘Attracts the death penalty. They coming?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Reversed over, attacked by dog, probably think, shit, let him off this time.’
I got out the mobile phone Berglin had insisted on leaving with me, found the number he’d written on a blank card, punched it in. Berglin answered immediately.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘that loop you were talking about.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Count me in. Two blokes in cop uniforms just tried to kill me. Told me Bobby said to say goodbye.’
‘Bobby? That’s our Bobby, is it?’
‘I only know one Bobby.’
‘Yeah. One Bobby’s enough. Bears thinking about this. Good timing though. We’ve found the lady in question. Today. This afternoon.’
‘Far?’
‘From you? Five, five and a half hours.’
‘Let’s have it.’
When I’d put the phone away, Flannery said, ‘What was it you said you did before you took up the metal?’
You couldn’t lie to a man who would reverse over a policeman for you.
‘I didn’t say. Federal cop. Drug cop.’
‘That’s was, is it?’
‘Very was. But there’s stuff left over, unfinished stuff. Some stuff’s never finished. Glad you came along then. Thanks.’
‘Done it for a blind bloke,’ Flannery said. ‘What now?’
Home wasn’t safe anymore. The only real home I’d ever had. My father’s house, his workshop, his forge, his tools. The only place he’d ever felt settled, his demons banished. For a while at least. And bit by bit, over the years I’d lived there, I’d banished my demons too. Found a life that wasn’t based on watching and lying and plotting, on using people, laying traps, practising deceit. But I’d brought a virus with me, carried it like a refugee from some plague city, a carrier of a disease, hiding symptoms, hoping against hope they would go away. And for a time they had. And I was happy.
But that life was over. Men in police uniforms came to execute you on the roadside beside dark potato fields. That was a definite sign the new life was over.
‘Reckon you could drive me and Lew over to Stan’s? I want him to stay there. We can pick up the Land Rover on the way back?’
‘If I get a drink after that.’
‘For you, Flannery,’ I said, ‘it’s a possibility. I’m considering rewarding you with a few bottles of Boag’s. Tasmania’s finest.’
‘Foreign piss,’ Flannery said.
I didn’t go into the house until I’d stood in the dark and watched Lew moving around, making supper, normal behaviour. Then I went in and made the arrangements.
Beachport in winter would be a hard thing to sell: dirty grey sky, icy wind off whitecapped Rivoli Bay whipping the tall pines, seven cars, two dogs, and a man on a bicycle in half an hour. But no-one had to sell the little boomerang-shaped town to Darren Bianchi’s widow. She chose it.
I slept in a motel in Penola, little place out on the flats, vine country, turning on the too-soft mattress, half- awake, feeling the gun behind my ear, hearing the man say
I got up early, feeling as if I’d never been to bed, put on a suit and tie, ate eggs and fatty bacon at a truck stop, got to Beachport in time to see the former Cindy Taylor, former Mrs Cindy Bianchi, present Marie Lachlan, open her hairdressing salon. It was called Hair Today and it was a one-person show.
Marie was dressed for the climate: red ski pants, boots, big red top with a hood. I gave her twenty minutes to settle in, walked across the road, opened the door.
It was warm inside, clean-smelling, hint of coffee. Marie was in a sort of uniform now, pale pink, talking on the phone, back to me, didn’t seem to hear me come in. She put the phone down, half turned and caught sight of me in the mirror. Her head jerked around. She was in her late thirties, short dark hair, pretty in a catlike way, little too much make-up.
Her eyes said
She was going to say no but she hesitated, changed her mind. ‘Sure do,’ she said. ‘Come and sit down at the basin.’
I went over and sat in a low chair, back to a basin.
‘You’re out early,’ she said.
‘Too early. Drove from Geelong yesterday, stayed over in Mount Gambier. Thought I’d come down, have a look at the coast along here. First time I’ve been this way.’
‘Pretty ordinary in winter,’ she said. ‘Lean your head back.’
She wet my hair with warm water, began to shampoo it, a kind of scalp massage with fingertips, soothing.
‘Mind you,’ she said, ‘it’s pretty ordinary in summer too.’
She was relaxing. I could hear it in her voice. People who come to kill you don’t take time out for you to give them a shampoo and haircut first.
‘So what do you do?’ she said.
‘Liquor rep,’ I said. ‘Well, wine rep these days. Mostly wine. Like wine?’
‘Don’t mind a few wines,’ she said, fingers working in my hair. ‘Like champagne. You carry champagne?’
‘We’re agents for Thierry Boussain, French. Terrific drop. No-one’s ever heard of it, small firm. All people know is the Moet, Bollinger, that stuff, produce it in the millions of bottles. Thierry’s exclusive, few thousand
