point.’
‘That must be it up ahead,’ Linda said. She’d fallen asleep a few times on the trip, head lolling on to my shoulder.
The shack was old, just a big room and a lean-to, probably a timber-getter’s humble home. It was made of timber slabs, weathered to a light grey, but still solid. The whole place was leaning slightly, held up by a huge brick chimney.
We got out, stretching stiff limbs. The air was cold and moist. Far away, we could hear a vehicle changing gear on a hill, then silence. The birds were quiet at this time of day.
The front door was padlocked, no more than a gesture considering the condition of the door and its frame. I opened the lock with the key Judith Vane had given me.
Inside it was dark, almost no light coming through the dirty panes of the two small windows. To my right was the fireplace, a huge red brick structure, the front blackened almost to the roof by thousands of fires.
You couldn’t light a fire in it now. The opening, about the size of two fridges side by side, had been closed in with fibreboard. Some kind of wooden frame had been built in the opening and the fibreboard nailed to it. This work was recent compared to the age of the shack.
‘It’s in there,’ I said, pointing at the chimney.
‘There’s a crowbar in the ute,’ Cam said. He went out to fetch it.
Linda and I looked at each other.
‘So, Jack Irish,’ she said. ‘This is it.’
I nodded.
Cam was in the doorway, a weary little smile on his face. He didn’t have the crowbar.
‘No crowbar?’ I said.
He took a step into the room.
There was a man behind him holding a pump-action shotgun. It was Tony Baker, with a big plaster on the side of his face where I’d hit him with the steel pipe.
‘Move along, coon,’ he said.
Cam came into the room. Baker came in too, a safe distance behind Cam. He’d done this kind of thing before.
Another man, in an expensive camelhair overcoat, came into the doorway. He was tall, somewhere beyond fifty, that was the only safe guess: full head of close-cropped silver hair, narrow tanned face with a strong jaw and deep lines down from a nose that had seen contact. He had a young man’s full, slightly contemptuous mouth. In one hand, he held a short-barrelled .38. In the other, he had the crowbar.
‘Jack Irish,’ he said. ‘I’m Martin Scullin. You’re a fucking pain in the arse.’ His voice was as flat and his diction as slow as Barry Tregear’s. Country boys both, grown old in the city. Or maybe it was the standard issue voice in the old Consorting Squad.
‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ I said. To my surprise, my voice sounded normal.
‘Where’s the stuff?’ Scullin said. He didn’t sound particularly interested.
‘I don’t know. We’re just looking.’
Scullin looked at Tony Baker, no expression on his face.
Baker clubbed Cam across the jaw with the shotgun barrel. Cam went down like a suit slipping off a clothes hanger. He fell to his knees, tried to stand up.
Baker stepped over and hit him in the face with the barrel again. Twice.
Blood spurted out of Cam’s nose, turning his shirt black.
Baker turned his bull-terrier head and looked at me. Even in that light, I could see the gold fleck in his eye.
‘I’m going to kill this coon,’ he said. ‘Then I’m going to kill that bitch.’
He kicked Cam in the ribs, a short, stabbing movement, full of power. Cam shook his head like a swimmer trying to clear water from his ears.
Baker kicked him again, harder. Cam put his hands on the floor, got into a sitting position, looked up, eyes closed. His mouth was wide open, a cave streaming blood.
Baker hit him under the jaw with an upward movement of the shotgun butt. Cam fell over sideways.
Baker stepped back, readying himself to kick.
‘Leave him,’ I said. ‘It’s in the chimney.’
Baker looked at Scullin.
Scullin said to me, ‘Get it.’
Baker pointed the shotgun at me. Scullin passed me the crowbar.
I looked at Linda. She was kneeling next to Cam, holding his head, blood all over her arms.
The fireplace cover came off easily, nails squeaking. In the fireplace was an old stove, a Dover, filthy with soot, stovepipe rusted.
‘Get up there,’ Scullin said.
There wasn’t room for me and the stovepipe. I took it in both hands and worked it loose. It came off and fell behind the stove with a crash. I got on the stove awkwardly, kneeling, bent over, and looked up the chimney. Soot fell on my face. Dark. I couldn’t see anything.
‘Get up there,’ Scullin said again.
I pressed my hands against the chimney sides, got on one leg, then the other. I was in the chimney from below my waist up.
I put my hands up and began to feel around.
Nothing. Just flaking soot. I reached higher. A ledge. The chimney had a jink.
My fingertips touched something. Smooth. Cold. I felt sideways, found an edge.
A box. A metal box. Felt up. A projection. The lid. Ran my fingers left and right.
‘What the fuck you doing up there?’ Scullin said. ‘Is it there or what?’
There was something on top of the box.
‘It’s here,’ I said. ‘It’s here.’
I bent my knees slowly, got the right one on the stove, turned my body to the left, arms above my head.
‘Get a fucking move on,’ Scullin said.
I ducked down, came out of the chimney, soot falling like a curtain, bringing my right arm down and around my body.
‘Here,’ Scullin said, ‘give it to me.’
He was just a metre away.
I shot him in the chest, high, right under the collarbone. He went over backwards.
Baker was looking at me, a little smile on his face.
I shot him in the stomach. He frowned and looked down at himself.
I got off the stove and shot Scullin again, in the chest.
Baker was bringing up his shotgun, slowly. He was looking at the floor.
‘Steady on, Jack,’ he said thickly, like a very drunk man.
I shot him again, in the chest. The impact knocked him up against the wall. Then he fell over sideways.
‘Stop now,’ Cam said. ‘I think they understand.’
35
We were going through Royal Park, Linda driving Scullin’s dove-grey Audi, Cam in the back, strapped up and stitched and plastered by the doctor in Geelong. I came out of my reverie. No-one had said anything for eighty kilometres.
Something flat, that’s all. Ronnie’s friend Charles’s words. Ronnie had brought something small and flat to Melbourne.
‘Ronnie’s evidence,’ I said.
Linda glanced at me. ‘What?’
‘I know where Ronnie’s evidence is,’ I said.
I gave her directions.
Mrs Bishop took a long time to open her door.
