‘Had ‘im twenty years.’
I was amused, despite myself. ‘Twenty years? A useless bastard?’
‘Well, he was a useful bastard, too. Yeah, Wally Bigelow, junior partner.’
‘How much would he know about the Keegan case?’
‘I’ve got no show of rememberin’ unless you let me have another drink.’
I nodded and he recovered the glass and tilled it; he had to use both hands to support the flagon and its neck and the top of the glass rattled like maracas. He transferred the two hands to the glass and got it up to his mouth where he held it, sipping. When he had drunk half of it I reached out and took the glass. I put it down on the table in front of him. He cupped his shaking hands around it.
‘Wally only knew about it in outline. He’d know the name, and he knew what sort of bloke this Keegan was. He didn’t do any of the work though, I did it all.’
‘Would he have known about the hide-out?’
‘No.’
‘Where is he now?’
His look was half-mournful, half-triumphant. ‘He’s dead. The business went to pot, Wally wasn’t any help. Bigger drunk ‘n me at the end. I found out he was sellin’ the stuff to the other side. Y’ know-wives an’ husbands and that. We split up. Sort of stayed in touch for a while; we were mates, really. Then he went to Queensland for his health. Then I heard he was dead.’
‘When?’
‘Oh, just recent, last coupla’ months.’
He lifted the glass and drank the rest of the sherry. I looked down at the money on the table and tried to calculate how many flagons it would buy him. Not enough. There weren’t enough. I stood up and he pushed the other can of beer across the table.
‘Never touch that stuff, he said, ‘doesn’t do you any good’.
16
They were waiting for me when I got home, and I have to admit they did it well, I pushed open the front door with the details of my interview with Phillips still being sorted in my head, half-expecting Parker and Hilde to be screwing on the stairs, and ‘Bully’ Hayes stepped out of the door immediately to the right of the front door. He slapped the side of my head with a heavy hand made heavier by the automatic pistol in it.
‘That’s for Tiny, Hardy’, he said. ‘And just an installment.’
My gun was in the car, and my wits were loose with surprise.
‘Nothing to say?’ His Queensland drawl was more suggestive of Boggo Road Gaol than Great Keppel Island.
‘I’ll listen, I think.’
‘That’d be smart for openers.’
Liam Catchpole and Dottie Williams came out of the front room into the hallway. Liam was still so slimy- looking you hoped he wouldn’t touch the walls. Dottie had got fatter; her thighs under her mini skirt were meaty, and her double chin creased as she bent her head to light a cigarette. She dropped the match on the sea grass matting.
‘You’ll start a fire, Dottie’, I said.
Hayes hit me again, same place, same way. ‘Manners’, he said. ‘Let’s go and sit down.’
I had my ears cocked for the familiar sounds of my house; Hilde’s radio, the shower she usually left dripping; the window in my room that rattles. Everything sounded reassuringly normal; there was no blood on the sea grass, no whiff of cordite in the air. I hoped Frank and Hilde were away somewhere, eating Italian.
We went to the back of the house, and Catchpole and Williams sat down at the table. They were quiet, as if they were depressed. Hayes backed me up against the sink and stood close, threateningly. He was a little taller than me and much broader. He was well groomed; shaved close and recently barbered; his business shirt looked expensive and had kept its creases that late in the day; his tie was carefully knotted, exactly centred. The down- turned mouth made him look as if he’d never been happy.
Catchpole picked up a knife and fiddled with it, excavating the grooves in the pine table. ‘You killed Tiny’, he said.
‘He fell. Accident.’
‘You took him away’, Catchpole said; he dug the knife in an inch and twisted. ‘You picked him up at the Crimea, you and some other cunt. You took him away in that fuckin’ bomb you drive.’
I didn’t say anything, on the principle that fear will find words to express itself. I was full of it. Catchpole levered up a long splinter from the table top, and worked at it.
‘To save time’, Hayes said. ‘I’m going to assume that you know who I am. That gutless wonder of a Tiny would’ve told you that.’
I nodded.
‘Good. Now, you’ve been working for Guthrie, and getting right in my way.’
Silence looks like fear, too, I thought. You can’t win. I shrugged. “Had to protect the boy. Trying to.’
‘You haven’t done much of a job. Know where he is now?’
I shook my head.
‘Neither do I. All I know is he’s no fucking good to me anymore. I’m under pressure all of a sudden. I don’t like that. I like to apply the pressure myself.’
‘We all do.’
‘Don’t be smart. We don’t think you’re smart. Liam and Dottie here want me to put you away for killing Tiny. They’re not smart, either.’
‘No quarrel with me there.’
‘You’re doing it again. Must’ve got you into a lot of trouble, that.’
Catchpole had worked the sliver of wood out and was digging in another spot. Williams smoked and patted her soft chin.
‘I am smart’, Hayes said. ‘I have to be. I’ve got a contract to kill Peter Collinson, and I want to collect on it. I don’t care about Spotswood, I don’t care about the Guthrie kid.’
I turned around, ran the water and washed my hands in the sink. Hayes looked surprised, but he let me do it. I flicked at the paper towel holder and pulled off enough to dry my hands. There were beads of sweat above the wrinkles on Hayes’ forehead, where his hairline would once have been. It was the only sign that he was in any way affected by the exterior world.
‘Why were you working on the Guthrie kids? What was the idea?’
‘Collinson kept his eye on his kids, right up to when the shit hit the fan. He worried about them. I’m one of the few people who knew that. Nobody else knew he even had any kids. I reckoned that by screwing up the kids I could get him to show himself, or give me a lead. I’m good at it-I wouldn’t need much, believe me.’
‘Didn’t work’, I said.
‘It would’ve. I had the time and, the people I needed. Had those Guthrie kids watched round the clock. Now the game’s all changed. You’re sniffing around, and the word is your mate Parker could be getting close to Collinson his way. I thought I could cancel him out, but it looks like he’s tougher than that. I want to know what he knows and what you know, Hardy. I don’t want to miss my chance at Collinson. There’s too much money at stake.’
‘You have my sympathy.’
‘Do you ever say anything that isn’t smart-arsed?’
‘I mean it.’ My mind had been roaring around the problem, looking for a way to handle it, and now I thought I’d found it. Selling anything to Hayes, though, would be a hard sell.
‘Look, Collinson’s nothing to me. I found out that he’s still married to the kids’ mother. No divorce. Paul Guthrie’s a jealous man. Collinson dead would suit him just fine.’
‘What’s he yapping about?’ Williams snapped.
‘Shut up, Dottie’, Hayes said. ‘Go on, Hardy. What about Parker?’
