around after dark. It looked as though Hank and I would have to stake out the place from about eight o’clock to a bit before dawn.
‘Jesus,’ Hank said when I told him. ‘I came to this country to be warm. Now you’re talking about down jackets, gloves and earmuffs.’
‘You came here because you couldn’t bear to live in the same country as George Bush.’
‘That’s true, but I wasn’t figuring to freeze my butt camping out.’
‘All good experience. I once spent a night in a car with no blanket halfway up Mount Kosciuszko.’
‘You better lay on the coffee and bourbon.’
On the first of the favoured nights we took up our positions, checked our equipment and waited. And waited. We worked our way through two thermoses of coffee and a good bit of Jack Daniels. It was dark and cold and a bit creepy with things rustling in the trees and the scrub. Nothing happened.
We arrived a bit after eight the following night to find what turned out to be four men in two teams. One pair spread out just inside the patch of scrub. Hank’s eyes are sharper than mine; he spotted them first and pulled me down.
‘Two guys up ahead,’ he whispered, ‘and I can see two more-one on the left and one on the right.’
‘What re they doing?’
‘Watching.’
‘Think they’ve seen us?’
‘Can’t tell, but they’ve got weapons. Baseball bats, maybe.’
‘What about down by the trees?’
‘Could be a faint light showing, not sure. What d’we do, Cliff? Call the cops?’
‘They’ll be gone before the police could get here.’
‘Wait up,’ Hank said. ‘I can hear something.’
Oh to be that young. His ears picked up the soft hum of a drill. He demonstrated the action.
‘Shit,’ I said, which wasn’t much help.
After a couple of minutes a voice cut through the night loud and clear: ‘Keep your distance and you won’t get hurt.’
Hank poked his head up. ‘They’re in a group heading off towards the road up thataway. Think I see four. Taking their time. Reckon we should follow?’
I stood, easing stiff muscles and joints. ‘They’ll split up. No point.’
For what it was worth, Hank filmed the departure of the men. Not my finest hour.
The hardest part was telling Young and Ivens.
‘That’s bad, Cliff,’ Ivens said. ‘They’ll only need another couple of treatments and the next one’s not due for a month or so.’
We were in Youngs flat and he was looking pretty deflated. ‘They must’ve been watching,’ he said, ‘and they saw you and Chester sniffing around.’
‘My fault,’ I said. ‘That was careless of me, but I think I’ve got an idea.’
‘What?’ Young said.
‘It’s to do with the number of people they had on the job, and something I spotted the other day just clicked in my head when I arrived this morning.’
‘Care to elaborate?’ Ivens said.
‘I’d rather not in case nothing comes of it and I look silly, again.’
The two men exchanged glances. ‘We have faith in you,’ Young said.
That didn’t make it any easier.
One householder wanting a better water view doesn’t employ four men. Someone had a big stake in the poisoning. The thing that had been niggling me for the past few days was triggered into clarity when I took a closer look at the properties affected by the killing of the trees. I’d thought of them as a cluster, perched up in a series of interlocking cul-de-sacs, and that was accurate. The houses in what might be called the front line were all substantial, well-maintained residences, obviously their owners’ pride and joy. So were most of the places further back, but off to one side in the third street was a row of houses showing wear and tear. I’d noticed them almost subliminally at first, because my house has some of the same signs-shaky guttering, overgrown garden, faded fence. Now I drove up to take a closer look.
There were five houses, freestanding brick and tile bungalows on quarter-acre blocks. They were far from derelict and were obviously occupied, but there was enough neglect in their appearance for them to stand out. I took note of the street name and the numbers of the houses. One displayed a ‘For Lease’ sign and I wrote down the agents name. Any one of them afforded a perfect view down to the parkland, the scrub and the trees. With four or five of the trees dead, the vista of the Pacific Ocean would open up nicely. Perfect development site. Low rise, but you could fit in quite a few townhouses.
Then it was time to visit the council office to check the titles of the properties. Over the past two years a development outfit by the name of Todd Holdings Pty Ltd had acquired the five houses in question. I was beginning to enjoy myself. I kept a discreet watch on the houses for the next few days. Two were occupied by families; one by a gay couple; the other two by men without women, men who wore overalls and went to work at a couple of building sites where Todd Holdings was doing the honours.
I phoned Hank. ‘Tell me you kept the video of the guys on the retreat.’
‘Sure I did.’
‘Any chance you could blow up and identify an individual?’
‘Did it already. Got a reasonable shot of the guy carrying the can.’
Being American, irony and puns aren’t Hank’s strong suit. I suppressed a laugh. ‘Want to do some more filming?’
‘Sure.’
There was a good deal of weed to clear at one of the Todd Holdings building sites and one of the Dover Heights tenants was clearing it. Hank and I parked advantageously and Hank captured him on film-or tape, or disk or whatever it is.
Hank closed off as the poison treatment stopped. He examined his digital result and nodded. ‘It’s him. So it ain’t over?’
‘We never say die,’ I said. After a bit of web research I had what I needed and called a meeting with Young and Ivens.
We met in Young’s flat again. My phone call had bucked them both up.
‘D’you reckon the stuff would be stored at one of those houses?’ Young asked.
I nodded. ‘Probably.’
‘Wish I wasn’t in this bloody chair. I’d like to come on the raid with you and your mate. You’d be in that, wouldn’t you, Chester?’
Ivens smiled. ‘I think Cliff’s got something else in mind.’
I said, ‘We’d have trouble proving that any given poison had been used in any given case. It’s not against the law to own it, or a hand drill or a torch.’
Young looked puzzled. ‘But you’ve got the man on tape.’
‘But not committing the act.’
Ivens grasped it. ‘The thing to do is go to the top, to whoever put them up to it, and that’s this Todd Holdings mob, right, Cliff?’
‘Right. I don’t know the ins and outs of the law, but I imagine that the penalty for causing that kind of environmental damage in the interest of a property development would be severe. I’d guess any development approval would be withdrawn. The company’s name would be mud.’
‘I get it,’ Young said. ‘Who’s the boss?’
Just to look professional I got out my notebook. ‘Guy called Peter Todd.’
‘Hey, I know him,’ Ivens said. ‘State Liberal candidate.’
‘Wannabe,’ I said. ‘He challenged the sitting member. Didn’t quite make it but he might next time.’
