spokes was propped up against the back of the house. The three or four wooden steps up to the door were rickety; the second one almost broke when I put an experimental foot on it. The door was even more decayed than the one in the front. The windows were yellow with dust and fly specks and the frames were dry and splintered like old paling fences. The grass was waist-high and big oleander and privet bushes grew, higher than the fences, along both sides of the backyard. The only thing that had stopped growing was the decrepit Hills hoist.
The door was locked. A little effort with the fingertips pulled the window catch away from the wood. I slid the lower section up an inch and felt the absence of a sash. I let it down, fossicked for a piece of wood in the yard and found one the right length. I propped the window open, moved the bike across, stood on the crossbar and climbed through.
12
It had been a long time since any fun had been had in that house, if you don’t count cockroaches. There was a thick film of dust over everything-furniture, books, crockery, glassware. The place looked as if it had been left suddenly, one busy morning maybe, and, had never been returned to. The covers on the double bed in the larger of the two bedrooms had been quickly pulled up. A single bed in the other room had been used as a linen store- sheets and clothes, roughly folded, were stacked on it. A man’s clothes and a woman’s, like those in the drawers and wardrobe of the other bedroom.
Dishes had been washed at the sink and left to drain. Dust settling on them when wet had formed a sludge that was now a thin layer of dried mud. It was an uncanny and uncomfortable feeling to go through the drawers and cupboards collecting papers and other scraps of the lives that had been lived here. The clothes were the firmest evidence: blue shirts, dark trousers, plain shoes. There were holes where a badge had been pinned. Among the man’s clothes there was also some beach gear and summer wear. I found a camera and light meter but no photographs. The woman’s clothes were the kind Tania Bourke would have worn when she wasn’t strutting her stuff in the city-still well-made, still man-attracting, but with some concessions to a relaxed life in the lower heels and more casual styles.
As the flat in the Greenwich Apartments had contained more of the woman’s things, this held more of the man’s. The paperbacks tended to be of the hairy-chested variety, Robert Ruark and co. There was a small collection of the sort of thing that had been contraband in Australia until the Whitlam enlightenment- Lady Chatterley, Portnoy, Henry Miller etc. Joe Agnew must have been assiduous in his duties, or perhaps the boys divided the confiscated hot stuff at the pub after work.
I worked through the house thoroughly as the light dimmed outside. The electricity and gas were connected. The water ran rusty, the colour of weak tea. In the end I could probably have filled another garbage bag with Agnew’s and Bourke’s significant effects. I could certainly have proved that the same two people had occupied this house and flat one at the Greenwich Apartments. Some newspapers and magazines indicated activity later than in the other place, up to about a year ago. Unusually for that sort of house, the front door had a letter slot. Mail had built up inside the door like an Aboriginal midden. Most of it was unsolicited junk, none of it was revealing, personal, or intimate, but receipted power bills indicated that someone was paying the way in a place where no- one lived. Again.
‘Where have you gone?’ I said to myself aloud. The sound of my own voice startled me. I was in the living room which was almost dark. I switched on the light and heard a scurrying behind the couch against the wall. A fully paid up house for mice, I thought. Wait till the news gets around. I turned on the three-in-one sound system and hit the AM button. After a few bars of music I got the seven o’clock news. They were shooting white people in the Lebanon, brown people in the Philippines and black people in South Africa. Petrol and unemployment were up, farm incomes and the dollar were down. Two Balmain players were suspended for head-high tackling and tomorrow was going to be wet. No comfort anywhere.
I left the radio on and wandered through the house wondering if I should make an attack on the floorboards. In the front bedroom the blind was torn at the side and I glanced through the gap.
A man was standing in front of the house; he was slightly bent to get some cover from a shrub and the way his right hand was positioned suggested to me that he was holding a gun. He squinted at the house and then turned and made a beckoning gesture with his left. I raced through the house to the back, turned the key and pulled the door open. I was reaching for my gun when a man who already had one out and at the ready stepped into view. He lifted the gun.
‘Stand right there.’
I froze; he moved forward and gestured for me to back away. I stood my ground; he was going to come up the steps and that was fine with me. When the second step took his weight it crumbled; he lurched sideways and I bulled forward straight into him. He lost balance and footing; his gun slammed into the side of the house and I was past him and running through the thick grass to the back fence. I think I would have tried to jump it if I’d had to, but a ten-foot section of it had fallen flat. I hurdled the remains and ran on.
The light was fading fast now and the going was difficult. I was in light scrub and heading upwards. A rabbit track zigzagged up the hill and I followed it as best I could. Zigzagging was fine if there was going to be any shooting from behind. I gasped and wheezed, grabbed at saplings to keep moving up in the rockiest and roughest bits, and I didn’t look back. You can tell when you’re being pursued; you feel it on the back of your neck like a cold breeze and I was feeling it now. Still no shooting though.
I realised that I was heading towards the park in the middle of the island and I tried to remember its layout. Too long ago, and they’d probably filled in the water holes and installed adventure playgrounds. It wasn’t the brightest prospect-in the gathering gloom with at least three men and two guns after me, I should have been looking for human support rather than a tree patch with possums.
I blundered on, tripping on tree roots and feeling branches cut my face. I tasted blood and almost fell when a branch hit my right eye solidly and squarely. Suddenly, I was half-blind. Everything to the right of centre was a blank. I felt a rush of fear and blinked frantically but the vision wouldn’t clear. I swung my head to increase the field of sight and almost fell. I felt useless all down the right side. I was barely moving when I finished the climb and reached a level, grassy stretch. I stood for a minute with heaving chest, blind eye and raw throat, trying to decide what to do next. I could see the lights of the houses below me and hear noises: with diminished vision, the noises were incredibly clear-birds, rustling animals, stealthy feet. I jogged across the clearing towards a stand of trees. The eye throbbed; I put my hand up to it and felt a blow on the back of my neck. I sagged, dug in my pocket for the gun and felt it again in the same spot but harder. I closed the other eye. I didn’t want to but I couldn’t help it. I fell forward, slamming my shoulder into the hard earth.
I didn’t pass out but I might just as well have. I had trouble getting the good eye open; my shoulder hurt and I had practically no breath in my lungs so I lay as if I was paralysed. Three men stood over me-the two I’d seen back at the house and one other. The two I’d seen before were breathing hard, the other wasn’t, but all six of their eyes were open and none seemed to have a mouthful of blood like me. I managed to turn my head sideways and spit out some of the blood.
‘Christ,’ the one I’d seen at the front of the house said.
‘He’s all right.’ This was from the third man who wasn’t out of breath, wore a smart, full-length coat in contrast to the casual clothes of the others, and seemed to be the one in charge.
The man I’d pushed past on the back steps rubbed his shoulder. One small score to Hardy. ‘Do we do it?’ he said.
The boss bent down and took my gun from the jacket pocket. He put it away in his coat. ‘That’s what they tell us.’
‘Do what?’ I mumbled. ‘Who are you?’
‘Shut up!’ The boss snapped. ‘Think you can walk?’
‘How far?’ I said.
‘Not far.’ He turned on his heel. ‘If he can’t walk, don’t try to carry him. Drag him!’
They pulled me up; everything spun and then settled down into a swirling mist. Maybe I walked, maybe they
