Des frowned, sniffed, brightened. ‘Oh yeah, gold tooth here.’ He pointed to his right canine. ‘And he’s got a big ring, gold ring, on the little finger.’ He held up the large pinky of his left hand. ‘They haven’t found a body, have they?’
‘No. Just curious.’
34
The day was raw, heavy cloud churning in off the ocean, spits of rain driven near-horizontal by a wind that was headbutting the weary windbreaks that defended almost every farmhouse. We drove around the backroads for almost half an hour but failed to find anywhere from which we could get a sight of Gary’s inheritance.
‘He’d be alone you’d expect?’ asked Cam. We were parked at the side of the road. I’d told him the whole story on the way down, cruising lawlessly at one-fifty in the muscular Brock Holden.
‘As I understand it.’ Which was imperfectly to say the least.
Cam lit a Gitane, studied the herd of Friesian cows eyeing us, looked around at the wet landscape. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘he’s there, you sit tight, I’ll have a yarn with him, give him my real estate agent card.’
He reached over for a laptop computer on the back seat, opened it, then fiddled with the sides, took off the keyboard. An automatic pistol and about twenty rounds of ammunition lay snug in grey foam. He extracted the weapon, handed it to me.
‘What happened to the Ruger in the little aluminium briefcase?’ I asked.
‘Today it’s all computers,’ he said. ‘Just pull the slide back and aim. See if you can miss me.’
‘Shouldn’t I be doing the talking?’
Cam glanced at me. ‘You sold any real estate?’
I shook my head.
‘There you are,’ he said, started the engine, a muted, powerful growl. We went to the intersection, turned left into Sligo Lane. About three kilometres on, we turned left and went through an open gate onto Gary’s late aunty’s farm, onto a rutted track.
Just below the brow of a small hill, the track turned left. We went over the top and a collection of battered farm buildings in a hollow came into view.
Cam said, ‘Make a fire on a day like this.’
‘No vehicle.’
‘Round the back, in a shed. Might take a drive around there, do that, your rep, don’t bother the missus, know where the man on the land’s to be found. Out in the shed, worryin about cockchafer, ryegrass.’
The track turned into a trident, the middle prong running to the house, the outer paths going around it to outbuildings. Only its chimney was giving the small tilted weatherboard the strength to deny complete victory to time and the prevailing wind. The roof was rosy with rust. Side weatherboards had fallen off the house, revealing rough timber studs, dark with age, and laths oozing plaster. Two verandah posts dangled uselessly, bases succumbed to wet rot.
Cam took the left fork. We went around the house. Sheds, sheds large and small, some weatherboard, some corrugated iron, all sagging, senile, close to shot.
‘Quiet here,’ Cam said.
We completed the circuit, Cam did a U-turn, stopped passenger side on to the front gate. He reached into the back for his sportscoat. ‘Seriously in hiding this would be,’ he said. ‘Any shit at that front door, I’m goin right rapidly. Small edge on goin left, they say.’
I swallowed, full of fear. ‘Who says that?’
He looked at me, the sallow, impassive face, Australian minestrone of genes, dark and dangerous broth. ‘The livin, they’d know. Put a few into the doorway. Anywhere. Make a noise.’
He got out, put on his nubby sportscoat, adjusted his collar, took his time, gave an exaggerated shiver, went through the open gate and onto the concrete path bisecting an abandoned garden once loved by someone.
I pressed the button. The window slid away. Astringent polar air came in, wet, stung my lips, my eyes. I had the automatic in my hand, deadly and comforting extension of the arm, pointing at the floor between my knees, unsteady knees, the weapon perfectly balanced, silky smooth and sexual to the hand, to the web between thumb and forefinger.
Cam was at the front door. He knocked.
I turned my body, brought the automatic up to just under the windowsill. Why should Cam do things like this? What made me think it was acceptable to drag him into my sordid affairs? How was it that I could accept his offer to go to the door with only a whimper of protest?
Waiting. I’d forgotten to pull the slide back, Jesus Christ. I pulled it, precise slippery sound of oiled metal parts machined to impossibly small tolerances.
Cam knocked again.
Waiting. Cold. A tractor far away, sound borne on the winter wind.
Cam scratched the back of his neck and knocked again.
Waiting.
He turned his head, put up his right hand and beckoned me with the index finger.
Relief.
I got out, walked up the path, pistol behind my back. Cam was putting on thin black gloves. At the front door, I handed the weapon over.
Cam held the killing wand at the end of a slack arm. ‘Don’t think there’s a party on here,’ he said. ‘Want to go in?’
I nodded.
Cam tried the doorknob. The door opened, unhappy on its hinges.
Passage, dark, narrow, faded peeling wallpaper, doors right and left. The smell was of damp, of decay, of the secret earth beneath the house deprived of sun for a hundred years, of the smoke from trees beyond number reduced to ash, of meat roasted, boiled, fried.
We went from room to frayed room. Everything of value had either been sold or pilfered. Deep impressions on the carpets showed where a double bed, wardrobes, chests of drawers or dressing-tables, armchairs had stood. There was no fridge, two mantelpieces and cast-iron fireplaces had been ripped out, even the bath in the lean-to bathroom was gone. All over the house, cigarettes had been ground into the carpets, empty Vic Bitter stubbies lay in corners, broken in the fireplaces.
I went over to the kitchen window over the sink and looked out. Rain, wind lifting the corrugated iron sheets on the roof of a shed. On the highest point behind the outbuildings, a grey fibreglass tank stood in a space cut into the hillside. Presumably to stop it being blown over when empty. Rainwater would be pumped up to the tank, flow back by gravity. I turned on the sink tap. A rusty trickle came out.
Out the back door, a relief to get into the light, the wind. In the open space behind the house, water lay in pools reflecting the moving sky. We inspected the big shed first. It was the milking barn, concrete floor, milking stalls, wide gutters. The back door had blown off and the wind was threatening to lift the roof.
Next door had old oil stains on the packed-earth floor, probably the machinery shed, empty now except for unidentifiable bits of metal lying around.
Two smaller sheds, one too dangerous to enter, had no obvious purpose. The large feed barn was holding up reasonably well. Inside, two stacks of hay bales down the sides had toppled inwards, obliterating the central aisle.
I looked around for tyre tracks. Hopeless. It had been raining here for weeks. No track would last more than a few hours.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it had to be done. Let’s go.’
We walked around the house, through a grove of dying fruit trees, packed the pistol away and left Gary’s aunty’s farm.
Twenty minutes later, on the highway, Cam said, ‘Locals picked the place pretty clean.’
‘Probably the neighbours,’ I said. ‘Surprised they didn’t take the fibreglass water tank. Newest thing on the
