“The what?”
“Up there!” I jerked my head to indicate the direction and then I saw Rhino Jackson. Two men, one in uniform, one in a dinner suit, were bending over him in attitudes that suggested he was a lost cause. Meredith gave urgent commands to a couple of the cops, and one returned with a key to the handcuffs. When I was free I moved across to where Jackson lay. They’d put a blanket over the lower part of his body. The policeman who had shot him was young, pale-faced and scared. He looked up and saw me.
“You saw it, didn’t you? You saw what happened.”
“Yes,” I said. “I saw it. It wasn’t your fault. Don’t worry, son.” I looked at the man in the dinner suit.
“I’m a doctor,” he said. “I’m afraid he hasn’t got very long. The bullet must have hit something vital.”
The young cop turned away, and I bent over Jackson. His eyes opened. “Hardy?” he whispered.
“Rhino.”
“Tobin.” The voice was a harsh whisper with no force behind it. “Get Tobin… kill Prue Harper.”
“Tobin’s going to kill her?”
“Has to. She knows…”
“Where is she?”
Meredith was beside me now. “What’s this?” he said.
“Shush. Where is she, Rhino?”
A trickle of blood came from Jackson’s mouth and his eyes closed.
“He’s going,” the doctor said.
Jackson’s lips pursed as if he was about to spit. I bent my head down. I could feel his breath, the faintest, sour smelling whisper, on my face. “Budget…”
“Budget…” I repeated.
The bloodless lips trembled, pursed, relaxed, then firmed up again. “Back… packer.”
“I know it,” Meredith said. “Budget Backpacker. Victoria Street. The Cross. Hardy…”
“I think he’s gone,” the doctor said. He checked Jackson’s pulse, shook his head and pulled the blanket up over the white, still face with the dark trickle running from the slack mouth.
The young cop jammed his hands in his pockets and stood like an actor on stage who didn’t know his next line. Meredith touched his shoulder. “Go and have a cigarette, constable.”
“I don’t smoke, sir.”
“Then go and have a bloody drink.”
“I don’t…”
He was almost in shock. I steered him along the deck. “There must be a kitchen in this boat somewhere. You can probably get a cup of coffee or something. Hang on, son. You’ll be all right.”
“Hardy!”
I turned to see Meredith beckoning me. He was holding a. 38 Smith amp; Wesson that looked very like mine, also a tape cassette and the Polaroid photographs of me in blinking, blundering action. I approached him and held out my hand for the gun.
“Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “You’re a menace.”
“This was all a set-up, Meredith. It’s not the way it looks. But I’ll tell you one thing-Barry Tobin’s on his way to kill someone who’s supposed to be safe under a witness protection programme.”
“I don’t understand any of this. What?”
“There really isn’t time to explain. A lot of it’s on that tape. If we had time you could call Frank Parker and he’d vouch for me, but I reckon you should take a punt. You believe in the witness protection programme, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Then you’d better get to the Budget Backpacker before Tobin does, or witness protection’ll have about as much credibility as the weather bureau.”
Maybe it was because Meredith was young, maybe because he had imagination, maybe it was a rebellious streak, but he broke a lot of rules in getting himself, me and one of the constables away from the shambles on the Pavarotti in double-quick time. I sat in the back seat of the speeding police car cleaning myself up with bunches of tissues from the box Meredith handed me.
“You’re a mess,” Meredith said.
“So would you be if you had to do the sorts of things I have to do.”
“You must tell me about it sometime.
Right now, I could do with some back-ground on what we’re getting into now.”
I filled him in as best I could, remembering scraps as I went along and back-tracking to fit them into the story.
“Are you following this, Constable Moody?” Meredith said to the driver.
Peter Corris
CH13 — Wet Graves
“No, sir.” Moody’s voice had the harsh note characteristic of the city Aboriginal. I noticed that his hands and the back of his neck were brown. He drove with the economy and decisiveness of a professional.
“Me neither.”
“You would if you heard the tape. Have you got it safe?”
Meredith patted his breast pocket. “Yep. You saying Barry Tobin set up the hit?”
“Yes. And I don’t think it’s the only one he set up. This Prue Harper apparently knows a bit about it, so Jackson said.”
Meredith’s big head nodded. His hair was longish at the back, straggling over his ears and collar. My grandma used to say that untidiness was a sign of honesty. It meant you weren’t always out to make the right impression. On that score, Meredith was honest. “A dying declaration,” he said. “Pity we haven’t got it on tape.”
“Victoria Street, sir,” the driver said.
We’d approached from the Potts Point end of the street, leaving the water below and behind us. There was no telling what route Tobin would take and no knowing whether he’d get there before us or after. I shrugged out of the oilskin, which was making me hot, and finished dabbing at my cuts and abrasions. The aches in my arms and legs would have to take care of themselves. I remembered the last time I’d seen Tobin in action, when he was blasting away with a shotgun and I suddenly felt vulnerable and exposed.
“There it is. Pull over.” Meredith sounded edgy, too. He pointed through the windscreen at the big, three- storey terrace house which had a neon sign over the gate-BUDGET BACKPACKER. “Christ knows how they run these things,” Meredith said. “Do they just deposit the protected witness somewhere they consider safe and leave it at that? Or do they keep a watch?”
“Haven’t you been briefed?” I said.
Meredith glanced at the driver who was sitting rigidly, with his hands on the steering wheel. “I was busy,” he said. “Let’s take a look. You’d better check your weapon, Constable Moody, but for God’s sake don’t use it unless you have to.”
“What about my weapon?” I said.
“What about it?”
“Tobin’s got more reason to kill me than you or Moody. He might think I’ve got the tape.”
Meredith stared ahead at the street and didn’t reply. It was about two in the morning and fairly quiet. Not that it’s ever completely quiet at the Cross. There were people in the street, drifting along, getting close to the end of their day. The street was lined with cars; some of them, the Falcon and Holden station wagons mostly, the vehicles that Backpackers would try to sell the following day. There were cars with resident stickers and others belonging to the people who came to the Cross for alcohol, food and sex, or just to look.
Moody had checked his pistol and returned it to the holster. “I know Prue Harper, sir,” he said.
“Do you?” Meredith said. “That helps.”
“Do you want me to go in and bring her out, sir?”
Meredith opened his door. “It’s not a bad idea. Hardy, you stay here.”
I opened my door. “Not without my gun.”
