pyjamas. He wanted to make a phone call. I let him and then I told him to piss off.’
‘Brotherly love. Who did he call?’
‘I dunno. STD. He had the number in his head, then he wrote it down in the book and rang it.’
I picked up the directories and thumbed through them. Numbers were scribbled at random in the margins and over the type. The only STD number was written in a childish pencil scrawl on the inside flap of the A-K volume-the prefix was 045.
I read it out. ‘This it?’
George shrugged and flicked more ash. I wrote the number in my notebook. ‘Did Jason say anything to you about setting fire to a school?’
George sneered. ‘He wouldn’t have the guts.’
‘Did you tell this to the police?’
Alarm flared in George’s bloodshot eyes. ‘I wasn’t here when they came.’
I went past him, closing my nostrils against his frowsy, sweaty stink. ‘Why don’t you have a shave and a shower and go and see your mother.’
‘Why?’ he said.
You can trace names from telephone numbers if you’ve got the right connections. I put through a call and got the information I needed. I knew from the prefix that the service was to the Richmond district-the subscriber was Mark Scammell of Lot 1, Brewer’s Lagoon Road, Richmond. If I hadn’t encountered the SOS woman at the school gate an hour earlier, the name wouldn’t have meant a thing to me. I dug the pamphlet from my pocket and confirmed my recollection that Scammell was named as one of the property developers intensely interested in the asphalt and bricks the Education Department was putting up for sale.
It was mid-afternoon and warm. Driving west for a couple of hours would be no fun, but following a strong scent is fun in itself. I went home, showered and changed and did some quick research on Scammell. He operated two real estate agencies in Sydney, one in the Blue Mountains, another on the south coast, and was the managing director of Atlas Properties Inc.
The sun was low in the sky when I set off. I stopped at a service station for petrol, a detailed map of Richmond and the paper. The headline was: ANOTHER SCHOOL GOES UP IN SMOKE! The sketchy report said that an inner west infants’ school had been severely damaged by a fire which bore resemblances to the one thirteen days previously. I put the paper in the glovebox on top of my. 38 Smith amp; Wesson and headed for the Hawkesbury.
City people hide in the country and country people hide in the city. Who said that? Maybe I did. Anyway, I’d played enough big-time hide-and-seek to believe that it was true. The commuter traffic, with its share of Brocks and Gardiners, kept me from thinking much about the connection between Scammell and the kid until I reached Blacktown. After that, on the Windsor Road, it should have been easier to think but a succession of trucks interrupted the process. Result was, I reached Richmond as the last of the daylight died, and located Brewer’s Lagoon Road without doing any significant analysis or planning. What the hell. As Jack Dempsey said, ‘Don’t think, punch.’
I pulled off the road and into a dip about a hundred metres from the house lights. There were never going to be a lot of lots in Brewer’s Lagoon Road. In fact, indications were that Scammell’s place was the whole story. Mark seemed to have found himself a couple of acres wedged in between Commonwealth land, an agricultural college and a bit of national park He had a lake about a good tee shot from his oiled teak front door and a river view from the brick patio at the back. Toss in a lot of grass, a tennis court, pool and three-car garage and you have some idea of the place.
I put the gun in one jacket pocket, the keys in the other, opened and closed the car door softly and moved towards the house. The nearest lights from other houses were a long way off. I picked up a solid bit of wood as a dog persuader and began a careful perusal of the waist-high drystone fence that ran along the eastern border of the property. When I was sure it wasn’t wired or sensored, I climbed over it. I steered clear of the gravel driveway and the lights that picked out attractive features of the garden and aimed for the steps that led up to the patio. Patios have glass windows that are often left open and have crummy locks anyway. You can look through them, slide them open or break in, whatever.
The patio and the back of the house were dark. I picked the lock on the glass door and slipped into a room big enough to play touch football in. The hallway was wide and short. I nipped down it towards the front of the house where I could hear voices.
A woman said, ‘You wouldn’t dare say that if Ralph was here.’
A man said, ‘I would.’
I crept into a huge tiled kitchen. There was a serving hatch in one wall and I peeked through it into a big room with chairs and couches on a deep pile carpet square with polished wood surrounds. A stereo with about a hundred compact discs in a rack stood beside heavy drapes covering a window, and there was a TV set with a screen the size of a bedsheet. The voices were coming from the TVs hi-fi speakers. Jason Wishart was sprawled in a chair sucking on a can of Fosters. Three crumpled cans lay on the floor beside him. A man sat opposite him watching the TV.
Suddenly, Wishart moved his hand and the screen went blank.
‘Fuck you! I was watching that!’ The man moved smoothly across the room. He belted the boy in the face and swooped on the remote control. Wishart tried to lever himself up, but he got a jab in the ribs and sank back.
‘I want to get out of here, Brian.’
‘When he says so, not until. Relax and watch the show. Have another beer.’ The screen came alive again. I’ll keep the remote. You don’t seem to know how to use it.’
I waited until the talking heads had got back into affirming and denying things before I came up behind Brian. He was a tall, skinny type with thinning hair brushed back. With the muzzle of the. 38, I tapped him on the head where the scalp was showing through.
‘Put your hands up there, Brian, and cover your bald spot.’
He pitched forward into a dive roll, twisted as he came out of it and somehow pulled a gun. He got off one shot which went high and wide. I went down behind the chair.
‘This is crazy,’ I yelled. I sneaked a look around the chair. Maybe Brian was crazy-he was certainly trying to line up another shot. I braced myself and rushed at him, using the chair as a battering ram and shield. Brian fired again but missed by an even wider margin. The chair hit him in the knees and shins and he went over. I gave him another jolt with the chair before I left its cover. He’d dropped his gun and was scrabbling for it so I kicked it across the carpet into the corner of the room.
Brian was keen. He came up off the floor like a thin lion after a fat Christian. I sidestepped and tripped him as he went past. He cannoned into a stand that held a five-litre bottle of Johnny Walker scotch. The bottle hit the wall and broke and the room suddenly smelt like a distillery. I was getting set to issue orders when Jason Wishart picked up a box of matches from the floor, struck one and tossed it onto the scotch-soaked carpet. A sheet of flame leapt up and enveloped the heavy drapes across the windows. The fire licked at the oiled and polished woodwork, caught and jumped to the over-stuffed furniture and racks of compact discs. Bits of flaming plastic spat out around the room.
I rushed at Wishart, hit him low and let him collapse onto my shoulder. I took him towards the door in a fireman’s lift.
‘Extinguisher? Where’s the fuckin’ extinguisher?’ Brian yelled.
He was mobile and had enough breath to shout so I left him to it. I went out through the kitchen, across the patio and down onto the grass. Wishart couldn’t have weighed much more than forty-five kilos and in my adrenalin- rushed state he was no burden. I made it to my car and folded him into the front seat. I took a look back at the house before I drove off-Brian needed more than an extinguisher now, he needed four brigades. The place was burning like Dresden.
I got the story from young Wishart as he sobered up on the drive back to Sydney. He hadn’t torched the school, but he had been in trouble earlier as a member of a graffiti gang that had broken into one of Scammell’s properties and caused some damage. Scammell’s security men had caught Wishart but Scammell had let him
