The Marvellous Boy (20 page)

“So, Mr. Kennedy, was it?”

“Hardy,” I said. “That was all a line. What did your husband say after our fracas?”

“Business trouble. But it's not is it?”

“No. It's family trouble, I'm working for your mother—I'm a private detective.”

She'd seen me flatten her husband and she'd found me trussed up like a chicken and covered in vomit. She knew I'd lied to her once; she drank some brandy and looked interested but sceptical. I got out the photoprints, unfolded them and passed them across. She took a quick look.

“A boy and a man,” she said. “Not bad looking. So what?”

“That's your son, Betty.”

“Don't call me that,” she snapped, and then the message reached her and she pulled hard on her drink.

“Ridiculous.”

“It's true. He's thirty-one years old. Take another look, he's the dead spit of your Dad.”

She looked, looked hard and nodded slowly. Her knuckles were white around the glass and beads of sweat broke out along her hairline. She reached for the bottle.

“Take it easy,” I said. “Try and face it. This should interest you, it's a change from booze and bad husbands.”

She smiled and that strength and intelligence that made her arresting shaped the planes of her face.

“I really gave you the business the other day didn't I?”

“You weren't yourself. I suppose you can guess what this's all about now?”

“Some of it. The old battle-axe wants to find him,” she tapped the pictures, “and cut him in.”

“I think she intends to give him the lot.”

Her eyes opened and she took a thoughtful, not desperate, sip of her drink. “How would you know that?”

“It's a guess really. There seems to be something strange about your father's will, or maybe your mother's. Your hubby's had a good sniff at that. Miss Reid is out for herself and there's someone else in there looking for an angle.”

She touched the pictures again. “Him?”

“Could be.”

I told her everything then, more or less the way it had happened. She took Henry Brain's demise without a blink and cried a bit over Nurse Callaghan. She asked me what I knew about her son.

“Nothing good,” I said. “He was a star athlete and pretty bright but he got lost somewhere. There was no serious score against him before all this that I know of, but he might have killed the old people. It's tricky.”

“I can see that. You want to deliver him all clean and shiny.”

“That doesn't look very likely now. Happy endings are hard to come by but you never know. Have you got a place on the river?”

“Yes, I mean . . .”

“Come on, it's out in the open, you've got to see it through now.”

She looked stubborn and we both drank some more and kicked it around for a while. She confirmed that her husband was keenly interested in her mother's property and had big plans for using it. I told her that it looked as if her
husband was trying to get control of it one way or another—through her, or Verna Reid or the grandson.

“That's the way he thinks,” she said, “he likes to cover all the angles.”

“He's doing all right isn't he?” I let my eyes drift around the gadget-laden kitchen.

“Yes, but he's ambitious, he wants to be big.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Don't know, something to do I suppose. He's not interested in me or the girls. What's your next move, Mr. Hardy?” She looked at the bottle and I had the feeling that she was the sort of boozer who rewarded herself with a drink before she tackled anything hard just in case she didn't make it. I moved the brandy out of reach.

“I'm going after them, it's time to break up their little game, get the thing running my way. Where's this river place?”

She looked at me with her mother's eyes, calculating.

“Would you like to go to bed with me?”

“Sure. Some other time.” I thought of Kay again as soon as I spoke. I was fifteen hours late with my call; I felt impatient, eager to get the Chatterton case wrapped up, anxious to get on with what might be called my life.

She sighed. “I thought you might say that. I'll take you to the river. If you don't let me come you can go to hell. It'd take you a while to find out where it is.”

True, I thought, and she might be useful. It was a hell of a situation, impossible to lay down rules for. I was going up against two men I didn't know. It was important that one of them didn't get hurt. To take the wife and maybe-mother along could be a good move, she could anticipate how Selby might behave. Or it could be a recipe for disaster.

“Are there any guns in the place?”

“Yes, a couple.”

Great. They already had one of mine, I assumed, and there was the drug angle to think about. Who was using the stuff—Selby, Baudin, both of them?

“Maybe we should get the police,” Bettina said.

That decided me. The police were out, the last thing Lady C. wanted was the prying eye of officialdom—there'd be no bonus for Hardy in that event.

“No police,” I said. “Let's keep it in the family. You can come but you do exactly as I say. Right?”

“All right. D'you want to go now? I'll change.”

I nodded. She got up with the grace I'd noticed before—when she wasn't drunk or traumatised, she moved like a dancer. When she'd gone I grabbed a phone and dialed Kay's home number; it rang and rang hopelessly. I hung up feeling numb and empty, also resentful—the Chattertons with their dynastic ambitions and hang-ups and middle class boredoms were a pain in the arse. I felt like a mercenary, disaffected but with no other side to switch to. I was in the mood for Baudin and Selby, guns and all.

Bettina came back wearing jeans and a white Indian shirt; her hair was pulled back and tied and her make-up was subdued. She carried a big leather shoulder bag and looked ready for action.

I picked up my tobacco and other things while she waited; I was still stiff and my arm hurt where the syringe had gone in; otherwise I was in fair shape.

“Is there much grass up there?” I asked her.

“Plenty, why?”

I grabbed the brandy bottle. “We'll take this for snake-bite.”

I got my other gun, the Colt, from the Falcon. It's an illegal gun but a good one. We took the Honda north. The Selbys' weekender was at Wisemans Ferry, Bettina told me, but that's all she'd say. She drove well; there wasn't a lot of traffic but there were a few curly spots and she put the Honda through them with style. As we went I tried to reconstruct what I'd heard while the drug was working on me, but I was aware of gaps. ‘Up the river' was clear and the intention to come to some decision about things, but not much more than that. I had a feeling that another person was involved—Leonidas Green? Albie Logan? I hoped it was Albie.

Bettina was quiet for a while, concentrating on her driving, and then she started spewing questions at me—about her mother, Henry Brain, Blackman's Bay. I had a sense of someone pent-up and thirsty for self-knowledge. One thing was clear, she knew that this was a crisis in her life and that the old round of booze and parties and battles with her husband over trivialities was over. I asked her what she'd do with the Chatterton estate if it came to her.

“I'd like to set up somewhere in the country,” she said. “A farm, you know? Horses . . . it'd be good for the girls
and might straighten me out. I don't suppose it'll happen.”

“Hard to say. It's your son she's lining up for the dough.”

“He could hardly be expected to care about me, I only saw him once.”

I shrugged. “He might be tickled pink to meet his Mum.”

“That isn't funny,” she snarled.

“Sorry, just trying to keep it bright.”

She slammed the Honda through a corner using gears and engine, no brake. “Are you ever serious, Hardy?”

“Nup, I meet too many crooks and liars to be serious.”

She sighed. “I think you carry on like that because you're nervous and don't know what to do.”

“That's what I said.”

We left the highway and began the descent to the river which is big and bold the way rivers ought to be. The Hawkesbury is tidal, salt-water a good way up and has lots of sharks in it—there are also fashionable islands and a prison farm island where they send fashionable offenders like defaulting solicitors. We crept down the road to Wisemans Ferry—the place has been going for about 150 years but still consists of only a few stores and petrol pump. She turned left before the run down to the township and we bounced along a couple of hundred yards of track before she stopped and set the handbrake. We were on a steep hill running down to the river.

“We're close,” she said.

I looked out across the river to the rugged cliff face on the other side; we were only about ninety kilometres from Sydney but it wasn't too hard to imagine an Aborigine sneaking along that cliff hoping to spear his lunch. I tried to remember all the guff in the instruction manuals they'd
thrown at us in Malaya: study the topography, high points, cover, look for exits—it all mattered, but what counted in the end was luck and guts. “Where's the house?”

She pointed down to where two tin roofs glinted in the sun through a canopy of gum leaves.

“Down there, the house back from the road.”

There was a proprietorial note in her voice and I squinted to get the layout clear. One of the houses did sit a few yards further back from the road and apparently such details counted up here; me, I'd have called it the one with the fibro cement painted white rather than green.

She watched me nervously while I checked the Colt and attended to the basics, like tucking my trousers into my socks and making sure I wasn't going to lose a shoe heel at a crucial moment.

“What are you going to do?”

“First, make sure I don't get hurt, second try not to hurt anyone else. Try to give them a hell of a fright if I can. Anyone likely to be home next door?”

“No, they're real weekenders.”

“Okay, where would the cars be?”

“On the other side. We're sort of near the back here.”

“Can you show me the way in and let me get a look at the cars as well?”

She nodded. Her lips were tight and she'd lost a bit of her high colour but she looked determined rather than afraid.

“Let's go. Remember our deal—you do what you're told.”

I reached over, took out the keys and dropped them into the door pocket; we got out and I motioned at her not to slam the door. We walked down the road a bit and then took a rabbit track off into the trees. It was steep and Bettina
steadied herself expertly on the slim-trunked gums as we went down.

The back fence of the Selbys' lot was three strands of barbed wire strung on half a dozen rough posts. The words of the old World War I song rang through my mind—‘hanging on the old barbed wire'—nasty stuff, anti-people. The scrub came up to within a foot of the fence and afforded cover along its length. I pulled Bettina down.

“The cars?”

She pointed and set off, bent double, towards the other side of the lot; for a big woman, past her youth, she bent well. I followed and grabbed her arm.

“You're enjoying this,” I said.

“Yes.” Her breathing was hard and short—exertion and excitement.

“I hope you don't tear your slacks on the wire.”

“Fuck you.”

Through the feathery leaves I could see the cars parked beside the house—the Chev and the blue Toyota. The house was well maintained, good roof and guttering, fresh paint. I focused on a window and could see a moving shape inside.

“Richard,” Bettina whispered.

“What's he doing?”

“Preparing food by the look of it—that's the kitchen.”

“This is as good a time as any,” I said in Bettina's ear. “I'm going in the front and try to catch them with their faces full of food. Give me fifteen minutes and come on in if you don't hear more than one shot.”

“What if I do hear shooting?”

“Is there a town cop?”

“I think so, yes, there is.”

“Get him and anyone else useful you can find.”

“Good luck,” she said, then she giggled: “Wish I had my camera.”

Christ, I thought, that's all I need, candid shots of Hardy creeping about in the scrub, gun at the ready. The idea relieved some of the tension though: it was a tricky situation going up against armed men I didn't know, but it wasn't full-scale war. I moved down the side of the lot towards the front. Beside the house and fifteen feet away was a thick screen of trees: a bird hovered and then dropped in a long, streaking dive behind them. I was snapping, scraping and tearing things as I moved, but I was doing the best I could. I worked down to the cars which had their windows open and the keys in the ignition—the way people leave cars in the country. I put the keys in my pocket.

The Selbys' cottage was as simple and unpretentious as their suburban house was the opposite. It was a square fibro bungalow set up on brick piers with a deck running along the front. It was also hemmed in with trees so that I had cover up to the deck. I never saw a weekender yet with a decent lock on the door and this was no exception; the man who taught me could have opened it with his thumbnail. I used the stiff plastic and the lock slid in; I held it there, eased the door open, and then freed the lock slowly and without a sound.

The interior was painted cream and there was sea-grass matting on the floor; a door at the end of the passage led to the rooms at the back of the bungalow and, as I stood looking at it, it opened. The man with the bandages and sticking plaster on his face came through and turned his head back to say something in the direction he'd come from and then he became aware of me and his jaw dropped.

I lifted the Colt and put a shot into the wall about a foot above his head; the sound was like thunder in the enclosed space and he stood rock still. I bustled up and stuck the gun in his ribs.