Tommy halted. There were two drawers in the desk stanchion, little brass handles, a keyhole in each, both locked. He siftedthe desktop and found a letter opener under a stack of sealed deeds, slid it into the first drawer and prized it, pullingthe handle gingerly with his left hand, until the lock popped and the drawer opened and Tommy peered inside. Again, nothing.Stationery, an address book, cigarettes, and a bottle of unlabeled liquor, for fuck’s sake. He slammed the drawer closed,gave the bottom one a try, and found on top of a stack of notebooks a little black snub-nosed revolver and a box of cartridges,half-filled.
Tommy slid over the desk chair, flopped down, mopped his brow with his cuff, the leather cold on his clammy shirt-back, thefabric soaked through with sweat. It peeled from the chair as he leaned to the drawer, fished out the revolver and cartridgesand placed them on the desk. The gun was already loaded. Not for protection, given the drawer was locked: the day when itall got too much.
Tommy pocketed the shells and sat looking at the chair opposite, across the littered desk. Billy must have sat there, maybeas recently as a few days ago. Cooking up their little scheme together, convincing each other they had a chance, Billy spillingall their secrets—Christ, had he told this lawyer where Tommy lived? Was that how Noone’s man had known?
He wrenched open the top drawer again and snatched up Wells’s address book. Flicking through one-handed until he reached theletter M, and sure enough there was an entry for McBride. But this was only Billy’s address: Broken Ridge Cattle Station, Bewley. Tommy snorted and shook his head. He still wasn’t used to it. This person Billy had become. Idly he flicked back and forth through the pages then froze with one half-turned. He opened it very slowly. Staring in disbelief at what he’d found. He smoothed down the spine and picked up the revolver, weighing it, toying with it in his hand, for the home address on the page before him belonged to Edmund Noone.
* * *
The sun was low and searing as he staggered along the road that wound sharply up the steep hillside, through a patchwork ofenormous mansions and empty building lots, views of the city in the west, the bend of the river below. All a blur to Tommy,his eyes fixed on the road, his bag slapping hard against his calves, breath seething, a struggle planting one foot afterthe next. Sweat poured from his hairline and dripped off his jaw and a rusty stain bled through his sleeve.
Finally, a set of black double gates, the last house at the end of the street. Ivy covered the walls on either side of thegateposts, save a cutout for the brass nameplate: yarraville. Tommy dropped the duffel bag, grabbed a railing, hung his head. He couldn’t get his balance; his heart pounded, his visionswam, like standing on that beach near Adelaide, seeing the sea for the very first time. He pressed his forehead against therailings and managed to focus on the house. It was grotesque. A sprawl of turrets and terraces, pavilions and verandahs andmismatched gable ends, a Frankenstein of a building, experimental, obscene, surrounded by a shingle driveway lined with saplingtrees, with a grand series of stepped and sun-bleached lawns sloping to the river below.
Tommy tried the gate but it was locked. Not too high, though, and neither were the walls, but he couldn’t climb either inthis state. He rattled the gate impotently and laughter sounded somewhere, like the house was mocking him, until across thelawns he noticed a group walking back up the hill: three women, a gaggle of children, servants carrying picnic things. Thechildren were running and playing, falling over each other as they went; the women smiling and chatting beneath the brimsof their sun hats.
Noone’s family. Wife, daughters, grandchildren. All of them happy as larks.
One of the children noticed him. He pointed with an outstretched hand. Over marched a butler, striding between the saplings, shoes crunching the shingle stones, Tommy all the while simply standing there, waiting, no thought in his mind to run.
“Can I help you?” the man shouted as he neared.
“This Noone’s house?”
“Police Commissioner Noone, yes.”
“He here?”
Scowling, the butler approached the railings. “And you are?”
“I need to see him. Is he here or not?”
“No, he’s—” Now the butler noticed the state of him. How he trembled, the untethered stare. “Are you unwell, sir? What areyou doing here?”
“I just told you, I need to see him . . . when you expecting him back?”
“Well, that’s hard to say. Particularly since—”
“He at work or something?”
“Particularly since you’ve not even given me a name.”
The women were watching from the lawn, shielding their eyes, the children running about their legs. Tommy butted his headagainst the railing, his and the butler’s faces only inches apart, and when Tommy looked at him again the butler asked, “Doyou know the commissioner from his service days, perhaps?”
“From his service days?” Tommy pleaded, suddenly close to tears.
“Only I thought, a little like Sergeant Percy, you might have . . .”
Tommy was no longer listening. He reached behind him, into the damp waistband of his trousers, felt the warm metal of therevolver, its deadly weight. Visions of sliding it through these railings, the butler going down, the entire family lyingslaughtered on the drive.
“I will kill the both of you and your families and anyone else you hold dear. There will be no warning. One day you will simply look upon my face and know what the other has done.”
Noone. In the Broken Ridge
