There was a big, white-edged town plan covered by a cracked sheet of glass mounted on the wall near the door of the shop. I squinted, but I couldn’t make out the details. I went back down the steps and over to the car. Hayes lifted his gun and I stopped.
‘What’s up?’
‘Can’t see, I need a light.’
He nodded and I opened the driver’s door: it was lucky that the door-operated interior light hasn’t worked for years. I got a torch from the glove box and my gun from the clip. The gun with the two inch barrel went down into the front of my pants, where I prayed it would stay and not show. I flicked the torch on and off experimentally.
‘Get on with it!’
I went back to the map and located the lane. Hayes held his hand up ready to shield his eyes against the torch beam if I’d decided to play that trick. His gun hand was rock steady.
‘Short drive’, I said.
We went down a rocky side road that had been cut into a hill, and off that down a track; the long grass sticking up in the middle between the wheel ruts showed that it didn’t get much use. I had the lights on high beam and it was a first-gear crawl along the track. The water was off to the left-a long, flat stretch framed by high, scrubby hills. The tide was low and the water looked like mud; maybe it was. The pylons of a couple of small boat jetties stuck up awkward and useless-looking high above the water line.
‘End of the lane here.’ I was whispering, for no good reason.
‘Stay well back then, and turn the car around.’
I stopped, backed and filled and got the car turned about in the narrow lane. I’d seen the house in the last flash of the headlights-a narrow-fronted fibro job, just visible through heavy tree-cover. We approached it by going slowly along the side of the track where bushes and saplings offered irregular cover. Ten metres from the house, and to one side, there was a dark patch in the vegetation. I pushed at the low, light branches and they gave way; behind them I could feel, from a step or two taken, firm ground falling away evenly.
‘Said to be a driveway down there’, I whispered. ‘Garage holds a couple of cars, store room, God knows what.’
Hayes nodded and gesture with the gun for me to come back up on the track. He stepped back to avoid the possible suddenly released branch: he wasn’t such a city boy after all. He was a pro. When I was on the track, he grabbed a handful of my hair and jerked my head down. His voice in my ear was hard and harsh: ‘Listen, Hardy, I’ve killed eight men. I don’t mind killing people. I wouldn’t mind killing you. Don’t try anything clever. I won’t give you a chance. If I get Collinson neat and clean, you’ve got a chance of getting out of this. Just a chance, get me?’
I nodded, torturing the follicles.
‘Right. Now how the fuck do we get in there?’
It was 1.30 a.m. The half-moon went behind a patch of cloud and the scene darkened. The trees that hid the house from the road were thick and high; I could see more of the shack’s tin roof from this point than its fibro walls. It was an unpretentious property. The trees on the block grew close around the house, loomed over it. A fire risk. I strained my eyes to see through the trees to what lay beyond the house. Darkness. Then I remembered the water and the jetties. I pointed with the torch butt.
‘Looks like this place has got absolute water frontage. Must be a track down to the house from up here, path or something. What d’you reckon on using the torch?’
‘Give it to me.’
I handed him the torch and he shaded the beam carefully as we picked our way along the track. Hayes stopped and made a pushing gesture. He clicked off the torch.
‘Gate. After you.’
I went through, inching my way, trying to feel the ground with my toes through the worn-down sneaker soles. I stumbled, flailed my arms, almost fell. Hayes hissed something behind me and I lurched sideways to grab a tree trunk. I poked my foot forward tentatively.
‘Path. Goes down. Pretty steep-rocks and roots.’
‘Go on.’
I edged down the path using the trees growing at the sides to steady myself. It was like walking into a downward sloping pitch-black tunnel. Sweat was trickling down my neck, and I felt the gun in my pants move and settle into my crotch. I slid my hand down, pulled up the gun and my shirt front. I put the gun in my pocket, and let the shirt hang in front of it. I slid, bounced off a tree and stopped.
‘Easy’, he hissed.
We were at the bottom, standing on a concrete slab that jutted out for about three metres and ran the width of the house. The windows were set high up near the roof, and I thought I could see a gleam of light inside. Windows placed that high seemed strange until I realised that lower windows wouldn’t give a view back up to the gate and the track. The house hadn’t been designed to be snuck up on.
Hayes stood motionless and seemed to be sniffing the air. All I could hear was a low, sucking sound coming from beyond the front of the house and the soft brushing of bushes, rubbing against the fibro in the light breeze.
The Doberman came quickly and smoothly with a soft footfall and just a low growl. It sprang at Hayes, but he was like a good boxer-he seemed to have all the time in the world. He stepped back and chopped it across the muzzle with his gun hand; the dog yelped and faltered. Hayes pivoted and smashed the gun butt dead-centre on to the dog’s skull. The animal quivered and sank and he hit it again, savagely. Its legs gave way and it twitched, heaved and lay still.
‘Had to be one.’ There was a slight panting in his voice but that was all the effect the bit of action had on him. ‘Means he’s here’, he said.
The hair was still sticking up on the back of my neck, but Hayes had moved on to the next step. He examined the back door which was sturdy, set close in its frame and flush with the wall. It had a newish Chubb Guardian lock.
‘Alarm?’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘No point. Don’t like this, though. Side.’
We stepped over the body of the dog and went along the slab to the side of the house. The concrete gave way to wood-a narrow, slatted-verandah, with the slats running at right-angles to the house. Halfway along, a French window was being softly stroked by a tree branch. A dog’s bowl and an old blanket lay on the slats in front of the window.
Hayes bent and slipped off his city shoes; he looked at my feet and nodded. We passed the heavily curtained section of the window, and Hayes picked up the bowl and laid it carefully down on top of the blanket. The menace and purpose of him had me almost mesmerised now. I forgot who he was and what he was doing-his meticulous, precise movements seemed to have a validity of their own that had nothing to do with law and justice. I felt as if I was watching a riveting film with a very good actor in the lead. I fought against the feeling, trying to define my own role. My battered ear was hurting as the cool air nipped at it, and I could feel the gun in my pocket.
Hayes tried the handle on the French window and it turned easily with a slight creak. He shook his head at the carelessness; but Fido was supposed to take care of this entrance, and he’d been taken care of. He opened the glass-paned door and looked in. I was close behind him, but my feeling was that he knew just where I was and what my hands were doing. There was light only at the back of the house; the room we faced was dark and still. Hayes eased the door open until it was at its full swing. He pinned it there with his stockinged foot and motioned me to go in. I looked at him: his face was set, but not tense. I couldn’t see any sweat beads at the ex-hairline. His gun moved impatiently and I stepped into Peter Collinson’s hideaway.
19
The room we were in seemed to take up about a third of the floor plan of the house. There was a deep carpet on the floor, and the walls were wood-panelled. A big fireplace divided the wall opposite the French windows, and there were heavy drapes drawn over floor-to-ceiling windows in the wall which formed the front of the house. The glass-paned front door was uncovered.
