Lugarno (19 page)

I seemed to be bouncing from one woman to another and not one of them having any interest in me or me in them, although I'd had some regretful moments about Tanya. With a ringing head and a dry mouth I went out to my car and contemplated what to do next. I didn't have enough to appeal to the police for help and they were probably keen to see me for their own reasons anyway. It looked as if I had to hope my guess was right and that Ramsay was in Strathfield. Prue Bonham had increasingly become an unknown quantity. In the end I'd thought she was okay, but that was before I'd heard about blackmail and I'd never liked that. She'd struck me as strong, but was she ruthless? Maybe it was because I was bruised and battered that I got the .38 in its light shoulder holster out of the glove compartment and put it under the driver's seat.

The run to Strathfield was slow because of roadworks and heavy Friday traffic heading God knows where for God knows what reason. I felt light-headed and woozy and had to fight to keep my concentration. A danger sign was that I started to find it amusing that I'd lost blood on one side of my head from glass cuts and on the other side
from a cutting board. A big four-wheel drive cut in, forcing me to swerve and control a skid. The adrenaline jolted me out of the mad mood and I found myself able to focus again on what I was doing and why.

As I was making a right turn into Henry Street, a car coming the other way, turning left but held up by a pedestrian, momentarily took my attention. It was past before I realised that the registration number had clicked. The car was the gunmetal Saab I'd guessed belonged to Lewis from Lord George and his heavy mate, Stivens. As soon as this hit me I realised that the car behind it was Ramsay's Mercedes but the driver wasn't Ramsay.

I made the turn and shocked two other drivers by throwing the Falcon into a U-turn that took me over the gutter, dug a groove in a manicured nature strip and put me in the right direction not more than fifty metres behind the two cars. I checked the time and tried to work out what could have happened. Poor old needy Ramsay must have done as I suspected—run to Prue Bonham, and she'd called in the heavy mob. Well, I knew where she stood now—she was all business.

Following cars is hard enough to do at the best of times. Following two is harder because there's always the possibility that they're going to diverge and leave you with a decision as to which one to tail. It's tough, but with a sore head and a raging thirst it becomes even tougher. After a while I was praying they'd stop and give me a chance to get a drink and some more pain-killers but I knew it wasn't likely. Also, I was out on a limb; I didn't know for sure that Ramsay was in one of the cars but it seemed likely. I convinced myself of that and, Pollyanna-like, gave thanks for the overcast day. With the headache, a strong Sydney glare would've been too much to take.

The Saab and the Merc bowled along at a good pace but it wasn't hard to keep up. What was hard was anticipating turns they might make, or stops. I couldn't get too close. Stivens, the body puncher, certainly knew my car and on reflection I decided that he was the driver of the Saab. I'd only had a quick glimpse of him, but the set of the head on the wide shoulders had a familiar look. I risked getting a bit closer to the Mercedes, but I couldn't
tell anything about the driver except that he was male and tall and fair-haired. One of the Lord George escorts?

We'd joined the Hume Highway and were heading south. I had hopes of a stop in Camden but I was harking back to the old days and the Saab and the Mercedes took the bypass. I cursed modern road builders as we turned on to the Razorback Mountain. The Falcon chugged a bit but did what it had to do. There was enough traffic on the road to keep me hiding a few cars back and occasionally I got good cover behind a truck, but I couldn't lose touch in case they took a turn-off. The longer the drive went on the more likely it became that I'd be spotted. If they'd been professionals they'd have picked up the tail by now. Evidently they weren't.

Mercifully, they made a stop in Mittagong. The Saab driver was indeed Stivens and he mounted a kind of guard while the other man fuelled them up and bought things at the service shop. I ducked into a milk bar across the road and bought the only pain-killers they stocked—soluble aspirin—and a couple of mid-sized bottles of Coke. When we were kids it was said that an Aspro and a can of coke could get you high. I'd tried it with no result and it wasn't what I was looking for now. My father and I used to pull my diabetic mother out of her hypoglycaemic episodes with Coca-Cola so I knew the sugar content was high. I needed the energy. I took the tablets dry with a slug from the bottle.

The blond guy was taking his time in the shop
and I watched Stivens smoke a cigarette and then reach into the Mercedes and pop the boot lid. He went back, took a look and slammed the lid down. That was enough. I took hold of the .38 and was almost out of the car when the other man came smartly up, tossed a few things through the open window of the Saab and started the Mercedes. Stivens gestured angrily at him but jumped in the Saab and they were off again before I even reached the street. I swore and got back behind the wheel. For all my dislike of Ramsay, I wasn't happy about him being dumped in the boot of a car heading towards a few million hectares of bushland. Was he dead or alive? The stakes had risen and there was no way to tell about the odds.

We went through Berrima where I'd spent some time as a guest of Her Majesty not so long back. It hadn't been too rough, but the place looked a lot better from this side of the walls. Further south I saw a sign and I suddenly knew where we were going and why. The Belanglo State Forest stretched away to the west. It was the place where Ivan Milat had buried the backpackers he'd murdered between 1989 and 1992. There was plenty of room for one more body and if it lay there long enough it was possible it could be taken for another of Milat's victims. The police were convinced that he, and possibly an accomplice, had killed more people than had come to light.

The realisation immediately presented me with a problem. Tailing on a highway is one thing, doing it on back roads or bush tracks is quite another. The Saab slowed and the Mercedes
followed suit and I hung back as far as I could while still keeping them in sight. I came over a rise and they were no longer on the road. The turn-off, onto a gravel road, came up fast and I slowed down to take it as quietly as I could without throwing up dust. Luckily the road bent sharply within a hundred metres of the turn and the cars were out of sight. I could see dust rising up ahead and estimated the distance between us at about half a kilometre. I couldn't afford to let them get any further away than that. The road kept twisting as it descended and I blessed every bend. Stivens looked like a city type to me; with any luck he wouldn't go any further into the bush than he felt he had to.

I finished one bottle of Coke and started on the other. The headache was down to a dull throb and I felt alert enough to tackle Stivens and his mate. I'd knocked him about once and this time I had a gun. But Milat had shot the backpackers with a rifle. I wondered how far Stivens intended to imitate him and if he had the equipment. That thought made the .38 less of a comfort.

A couple of kilometres in and the dust cloud disappeared. Had they spotted me? I drove cautiously with the gun to hand. I'm no tracker but the two cars travelling in tandem had left discernible marks on the gravel surface and I could see where they'd turned off down a fire trail. After making the turn I could see the dust in the air ahead again but this track was running straighter, making the job that much harder. I crawled, ready to stop at any moment. At least they weren't
mounting an ambush. Straining my vision I caught a glimpse of a colour that stood out against the green and brown of the bush. Silver or nearly. The Saab.

I eased off the track on firm ground under the shelter of some trees. I took a last swig of the Coke, grabbed the gun and got out of the car, easing the door to. The trees and scrub beside the track were sparse but gave me enough cover to feel safe. I moved as quickly as I could, consistent with not sounding like an elephant crashing through the jungle. I could see the two cars now. They were drawn off the track and I saw Stivens and his fair-haired mate lifting something heavy out of the boot of the Mercedes. They stood it against the car and pulled away what looked like a lot of taped garbage bags. Ramsay Hewitt, with his hands tied behind him and his eyes and mouth taped, sank to his knees. Stivens went to the Saab and reached into the back. I expected to see a rifle but instead he took out a long-handled shovel. They pulled Ramsay up but he collapsed again and became a dead weight. They dragged him towards the bushes.

I was still almost a hundred metres away with less cover to work with. I moved forward, scuttling, bent low. The two men got tired of hauling their burden and stopped on level ground just short of the tree cover. They heaved Ramsay up to his knees where he swayed but stayed upright. Fair-hair lit a cigarette and turned away, Stivens took up a sort of baseball stance with the shovel gripped in both hands.

I ran until I was only ten metres away and shouted, ‘No!'

Fair-hair spun around towards me, but Stivens had taken the shovel back and didn't look as if he could stop his swing. I propped, levelled the pistol and shot him. He staggered but the shovel was moving and I shot him again, hitting him lower this time, around the ribs. All the power went out of him and he flopped like a puppet with snapped strings. The shovel hit the ground, bounced and struck Ramsay on the back. He fell forward and lay twitching and weeping. Fair-hair didn't move a muscle except for letting the cigarette fall from his fingers. I pointed the gun at him. I was sweating and shaking and his solarium tan faded as he opened and closed his mouth without any sound coming out.

‘Lie down on your belly,' I said. ‘Spread your arms and legs and don't move or I'll put a bullet in you. Do it!'

He dropped down as if he was glad to and spreadeagled himself—ruin for his trousers and cashmere sweater. I ignored Ramsay, who was still crying, and examined Stivens. He was alive but only just. Both bullets had hit vital organs and his breath and pulse were fading whispers. He jerked three times, blood gushed from his mouth and he died as I crouched there.

I looked across at Fair-hair who'd lifted his face from the dirt. He was sheet-white. ‘He's dead,' I said. ‘Down!'

I moved across to where Ramsay was now lying still and silent on the grass. ‘It's Cliff Hardy,
Ramsay. You're all right now, son. Rough on you, but you're all right.'

His voice was a whimper. ‘Hardy?'

‘Yeah. I'll get you a doctor soon. You'll be okay. It's over.'

‘Prue,' he muttered.

‘That's right,' I said. ‘Prue.'

I unslung the mobile from Fair-hair's belt and after that it was cops, cops and more cops. They came from all over the place. They put my gun in a plastic bag but they didn't have one big enough for the shovel. Ramsay was a mess, barely coherent and unable to confirm my story. They took him away to Mittagong Hospital in an ambulance. I told them he had information about some serious crimes and had come close to being murdered himself and they said they'd keep an eye on him. It didn't help that I admitted he was the brother of the woman I was involved with—gave it a domestic feel.

Simon Talbot was the name of Stivens' accomplice and with dirt and grass stains down his sweater and pants he didn't quite measure up as a Saab driver. He was scared but, give him his due, he kept his mouth shut apart from stating his name and saying he wouldn't answer questions without a lawyer present. A car took him away and he didn't look at me once.

A senior sergeant talked to me while the scene-of-crime people got to work around the
body. He wasn't friendly.

‘You had a gun, he had a shovel.'

‘He was going to bash the bloke's brains in, or decapitate him, or both. What was I supposed to do—throw rocks?'

‘You shot him twice.'

‘He was a big man and he had some momentum up. It took two bullets to stop him and even then …'

‘What?'

‘He wasn't quite dead when I got to him.'

‘Try to revive him?'

I shook my head.

‘Why not?'

I haven't shot very many people apart from in Malaya—a handful, less, and it's not like in the movies. It affects you and it was starting to get to me now. The headache kicked back in strongly and I had to massage my temples. I knew I was sweating and not making anything like a good impression. Also I was angry.

‘I felt his pulse,' I said. ‘It was just there. Then he vomited a bucket of blood and that was it. What would you have done, Sarge?'

He left me alone and I sat on the ground and wished I'd never heard of Martin Price or Ramsay Hewitt. That led to complicated thoughts of Tess. Ramsay looked as if he could be heading for some sort of breakdown. Would Tess blame me and did I care? It was a low point—one of those moments when I wished I was someone else doing something else. Waste of brain power.

Eventually they bagged the body and took it
away. I'd given the sergeant the names of Stankowski and Hammond at Hurstville and he'd contacted them. He came over to me, snapping his mobile shut.

‘Hurstville wants you, Hardy.'

‘I'm fucked,' I said. ‘I'm not up to driving there.'

‘Not an option. One of our blokes'll drive you. Nice city trip for him.'

‘Why not make it a her?'

‘You're an arsehole. I've checked on you. You were in the service and you've been in this game for fuckin' years. You could've fired over his head, but I reckon you wanted to kill him.'

I stood up and every bone from ankle to neck creaked. ‘I shouted,' I said. ‘Pity I didn't have a video camera and I could've filmed it so you might just possibly understand.'