Hayes and I stood by the open window, breathing softly and adapting to the darkness. The moon moved into the clear and beams of light came through the glass-enough to show the outlines of the furniture, which consisted of a low table in front of the fireplace, an easy chair to the side of it and a hi-fi, radio and TV unit. A set of low shelves held records and cassettes, and there was a large bookcase, well stocked.
Hayes pointed and we moved across the carpet towards the back. The house had a simple lay-out; a galley- style kitchen ran along the whole length of the back section, and we didn’t bother to go down the three steps to look in. The single bedroom was off the large front room to the left. The door stood half-open and there was a soft light inside. Hayes moved the slide on the. 45 back, cocking it. The mechanism was oiled and smooth and the click was barely audible although I was only a few centimetres away from it.
‘Go into the bedroom’, he whispered, ‘and stand in the nearest corner with your face to the wall.’
My heart was crashing in my chest and I could feel the blood beating in my temples. The floor felt red hot. I could smell Hayes an arm’s length behind me. I went across and sidled through the door, knocking my elbow as I went. Hayes’ breath was sibilant by my shoulder. I moved towards the corner as instructed, but it wasn’t necessary to go all the way. The night-light was turned very low, barely lifting the gloom, but I could see that there was no one in the bed. I stopped at the foot of the double bed; Hayes stopped, too. The bed was rumpled and a pair of track suit-style pyjamas lay across the single pillow.
‘He’s not here’, I said, stupidly.
‘He was.’
My legs felt shaky, and I sat down on the end of the bed. Hayes moved forward, picked up an ashtray from the bedside table and looked at the half-dozen butts.
‘He was here tonight.’ He looked at the butts again and at the bed. ‘Alone.’
We prowled through the house and Hayes used the torch, still carefully, to find out what he wanted to know. In the kitchen there was evidence of an evening meal and some after dinner drinking. Collinson had a supply of everything, and all of the best quality. The refrigerator was full of food and drink- meat, cheeses, white wine, beer. The cupboards were stacked with packet and tinned food and everything necessary for successful cooking. There were several dozen bottles of red wine in a rack and a few more cases of the stuff along with spirits and mixers. I felt myself relaxing a little.
‘Crime pays’, I said. Hayes didn’t laugh.
‘Where the fuck is he?’
Under the house, reached from a set of steps in the kitchen, was the garage, storeroom, workshop and boat shed. The food supply was siege-worthy, as Phillips had said. There were two cars in residence-a Mercedes and a battered Holden panel van. Two wide benches held vices, clamps and the equipment for servicing cars and boats. We looked around, both trying to do the same thing-use the information this setup gave us to judge where he might be. My recent minor boat experience gave me the answer.
‘Here’s the boat stuff, I said. ‘Where’s the boat-speedboat, dinghy, whatever? There’s marks here’. I squatted on the cement floor, ‘that shows where he towed a boat up. Probably with the panel van. No boat now.’
He nodded. We went back into the house, through it, and out the front door. The water was still at low tide and the mud, or something under it, was making the sucking noise I had heard from the back of the house. There was a small patch of grass in front of the house with some beach scrub fringing it. A jetty, about twenty metres long joined the grassy bank, ran over a short belt of sand and stretched its length out over the moving mud.
Hayes never let his guard down; he dropped behind me and let me lead the way down the jetty. It ended in a wide-planked staging with a hand rail, and steps which would have reached the water at high tide. Now, they finished a metre or so above the heaving, dark mud. There was an almost-empty can of diesel fuel on the top step, and an oily rag hanging over the rail. Hayes, who was wearing his shoes again but had taken off his jacket, bent to examine these items after waving me to a safe distance. The moon was high now in a clear sky and visibility was good. I saw dark, moist circles spreading under Hayes’ armpits-his only indisposition; my shirt was a damp rag. He straightened up with clicking bones.
‘If he’s fishing, Christ knows when he’ll be back.’
I thought about the house and the garage, checking the items mentally.
‘No fishing gear anywhere’, I said. ‘No fish in the freezer. He’s not a fisherman. He’ll be back for breakfast. He likes to eat. Probably feeds the birds, too.’
Hayes turned to look back at the house. It was shadowed by the trees growing close to it and the foliage spread out unbroken to either side. There were houses further up the hill, but none so close to the water.
The shoreline was rocky for most of the cove and there were no other houses with such direct access to the water until further around the points off to the east and west. When Collinson came back he’d be pulling up to a private jetty in a semi-private setting. His tying-up point would be well below the main section of the jetty, virtually invisible to all except someone who cared to station himself in the scrub to the right. Such a person would be twenty metres from the boat landing, in concealment and unobstructed. If it happened like that, Collinson was a dead man. I took all this in quickly and Hayes obviously did the same. His usually grim expression-something like a cross between a headmaster’s and a bookie’s-relaxed a fraction. You couldn’t call it a smile.
‘Say he gets back at dawn’, he said. ‘When’s that down here, with your godless daylight saving?’
‘About five.’
‘Say, three hours to wait, bit less. I can wait that long for half a million bucks. Couldn’t you, Hardy?’
‘I’m never likely to get the chance.’
‘That’s right. You’re not. Did you enjoy hitting Liam with the bottle?’
‘Not really. A bit, I suppose.’
‘You should’ve enjoyed it a lot! And not given a bugger at the same time. That’s what being hard is all about.’
‘Psychology, now.’
‘We had lectures. Most of the dead-heads didn’t get anything out of them. I did.’
I didn’t have anything to say to that. We walked back along the jetty across the grass to the house.
Inside, Hayes undid his top collar-button and loosened his tie. He motioned at me to sit on the floor and he lowered himself into the easy chair.
‘I’m tired’, he said. ‘I’m bloody tired, but I can’t afford to drop off. I’ve learned a few tricks in my time-know the most important?’
I shook my head.
‘Don’t drink at the wrong time. I’d love a drink; and did you see all that good stuff he’s got out there?’
‘Yeah, I saw it.’
‘I’ll have one after he’s dead. At the right time.’
‘Like Jackie Gleason?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Jackie Gleason, in a movie called The Hustler. He plays this pool champ called Minnesota Fats, has a big game with Paul Newman. Newman gets pissed when he’s ahead; Gleason doesn’t drink, washes up in the break and creams him. Jackie Gleason’s fatter than you, but you’re getting there-six months of the good life should do it.’
‘We’ll see. I hope you don’t think of yourself as Paul-fucking-Newman?’
‘No.’
‘That’s good. Know another little trick? Keep talking when you’re tired. Keep your company talking You’re doing fine, Hardy. Keep talking. You’re a great talker, aren’t you?’
‘I’m a fair talker. Why did you bring Catchpole and his crowd into this?’
‘Useful. Dottie was supposed to get a girl for Ray. Ended up doing the job herself. She tried to get him to talk about Collinson, his real father.’
‘How did that go?’
‘Not good. Very cagey. He said he’d come across with things, like that photo. We told him we’d help him to locate his old man. ‘Course, it was the other way around. Liam’s got contacts in the New South Wales force, more than people realise. He did a bit of this and a bit of that. My turn-why d’you do this shit-kicking kind of work?’
‘It’s not bad. Bit dull at times.’
‘Not dull now, eh?’
‘No.’
