23
I got up and went past Penny, out the back door and through the I once and the shop. The Datsun started like a dream and I swung it around in the quiet street and headed off after the throbbing, roaring truck. I scrabbled on the seat beside me and got the gun out of the parka as I drove. I put it on the floor on the passenger side. That way I’d have to think for a second or so before I could use it. The gun made me feel better. It shouldn’t have but it did.
We were in a wide street and the Bedford was bucketing along ahead of me scattering the few cars around in front of it. They pulled over to the sides of the road haphazardly and I had to drive dodgem style to avoid them. A man jumped out of his car and made flagging motions. Maybe he wanted to make a citizen’s arrest, make a hero of himself. I cursed him through some broken teeth with all the foul vocabulary I had picked up from school, army, pub and married bliss. He jumped clear. A quick look in the rear vision showed me what I should have expected – a yellow Mini burning along behind me just close enough to be a nuisance.
The truck was blowing thick, rich, blue smoke but going well, heading west, into the sun. We thrashed past the houses and the shops and the factories where people were pursuing their legitimate and illegitimate ends. We slewed around the corners and I could see the petrol drums bouncing just slightly on the tray of the truck; they were anchored well enough and were giving the Bedford stability. It had a big, strong engine for pulling loads and now it was just pulling Ricky, Noni, a hundred and five thousand dollars and the fuel. I could catch it, but Ricky drove like an angel and I couldn’t pass him. We left the wide, sealed road and got onto a thin ribbon of bitumen flanked by ten feet of gravel on each side. The wheel base of the truck could hold the bitumen but Ricky moved off and on it just enough to throw up a screen of dust and slow me down.
The road started to climb and wind and I could get a look ahead as far as a hundred yards; the sides of the road were baked clay now and Ricky threw up less dust. Twice vehicles came from the other direction and Ricky barrelled straight at them, forcing them off the road. For a minute I thought the shape I could see up ahead of us was just another citizen, then the Bedford picked up speed and seemed to be driven with some mad purpose. I strained my eyes and was able to make out the distinctive shape of a police wagon. Ricky drove straight at it but the wagon veered off the road onto some cleared space and I could see the driver fighting to turn the thing as the Bedford rocketed by.
I braked and the cop was back on the road and giving the wagon all he had. It was probably the most excitement he’d had in years. The pace picked up and I stayed a bit back of the police vehicle, letting him do the work. James stayed back of me. The cop was pushing Ricky to the limit and I caught a glimpse of the Bedford swaying as she went round a bend, then we were on a long, straight stretch, climbing hard.
The grey truck dipped on one side and started to go into a slide. Ricky fought it and stopped the thing from turning over but he went into a sideways spin that took him off the road and ran the front of the truck into a clay embankment. I braked and stopped fifty yards short of the truck. The police wagon shot past and the driver plastered rubber on the road getting it to stop. Two cops jumped out and started to run the thirty yards or so back to the truck. I heard a sharp crack and they stopped, turned and raced back to the wagon. I got out of the car after grabbing the Colt and saw Ricky on the running board sighting along his rifle. With a shriek a bullet whipped off the hood of the wagon.
One of the cops rested a rifle on the mudguard of the wagon and opened up. A window shattered in the cab and Noni climbed down and started to run back towards me. She dropped the airline bag in the first stride and half-turned back for it. I screamed at her to keep coming and sprinted towards her. I reached her and thumped her hard onto the road. We were twenty yards from the truck when a bullet went into the petrol drums. A thousand heavy guns went off and a fiery wind blew over our heads. My eyeballs were scorched when I raised my head to take a look – the Bedford was a dark, ghostly shape inside a bright, dancing ball of yellow and orange fire.
James was standing beside his car and I lifted Noni up and half-carried her back to him. She collapsed into his arms and started to cry into his shoulder. He lowered her into the car seat and crouched by her, stroking her hair and murmuring in her ear. I started to walk towards the cops when one of them dropped to one knee, brought up a pistol and pointed it at me.
“Drop the gun,” he yelled.
I looked at my hand, the Colt was still in it. I dropped it and came on.
Petrol had leaked from the truck and the ground around it was a pool of fire, somewhere in the middle of which was the money. Pity. One of the cops was inside the wagon frantically using the radio; the other held his gun shakily on me while I talked. He let me show him my documents but he was too nervous to take in much of what I said. I tried to keep out of direct line of the pistol while reinforcements arrived. What had happened on the road was going to take some explaining. Other things would take even more explaining. It was going to be a long night.
24
It was. They bundled us into police cars and took us into town. I told them about the garage and who Noni and James were. They let Noni clean herself up a bit but she needed much more than a bath, she needed a lot of expensive medical treatment. I hoped she wouldn’t talk too much but she let James protect her and she scarcely said a word. With luck, I thought, I’d be able to get her out of this and back to her father fairly clean. Maybe that wasn’t letting all the cards show but I recalled what someone had once said to some cops: “Until you guys own your own souls you don’t own mine. Until you guys can be trusted every time and always, in all times and conditions, to seek the truth and find it and let the chips fall where they may – until that time comes, I have the right to listen to my conscience, and protect my client the best way I can.”
That’s how I felt. The cops sure as hell didn’t seem too concerned about an incinerated black man and another the same colour with ho head to speak of. That’s how I thought I’d play it, but Penny threw a spanner into the works, or tried to.
They picked her up in the garage. When she came to see us in the police building she’d washed the blood off and was wearing some kind of policewoman’s smock. They’d told her about Ricky. It didn’t seem to touch her. Then she told me that she’d given the cops who came for her something to take with them and be careful of the fingerprints – a crank handle. Her eyes glittered maliciously when she told me this. Noni was within hearing but it was wasted on her. She was burying herself in James’ warm solicitude, a good beginning for the attitude she’d have to take up when all Ted’s money started working for her.
It was very complicated and I didn’t help by refusing to tell them anything until the lawyers got there. Cy Sackville came up the next day and some smoothie Ted got to handle Noni’s part in it. Sackville spoke for James, too, but he was pretty much in the clear. The cops didn’t like it one bit. There was nothing in it for them but trouble. They tried to stick me with various things from conspiracy down to dangerous driving, but their hearts weren’t in it and Sackville brushed them aside. Penny they didn’t even hold and she stayed for a few days with relations in town, then she left without contacting me.
The lawyer took Noni back to Sydney and I never saw her again. I heard later from Cy that Ted’s lawyers had headed off any charges connected with Bert’s death. The crank handle held her fingerprints alright but she claimed that Bert had tried to rape her. If his body had been in the state it was when I saw it, the coroner might have wondered how many blows with a crank handle to the head it took to prevent a rape, but the truck wheels had passed over Bert’s head, front and back, making a mess that no-one could interpret. I was pretty sure she’d been in on the kidnap idea with Ricky, but there was no way of proving it and it wasn’t in my interest anyway.
I saw a fair bit of Saul James in the few days I spent in Macleay straightening things out. After they pried him loose from Noni he seemed to have no direction, no purpose and sort of attached himself to me. I asked him about his part in the play.
“Gone,” he said wryly. “The understudy was too good, he filled in on the first rehearsal I missed and now he’s got the part.”
