Make Me Rich (20 page)

“What's up?”

“Can't see, I need a light.”

He nodded and I opened the driver's door: it was lucky that the door-operated interior light hasn't worked for years. I got a torch from the glove box and my gun from the clip. The gun with the two inch barrel went down into the front of
my pants, where I prayed it would stay and not show. I flicked the torch on and off experimentally.

“Get on with it!”

I went back to the map and located the lane. Hayes held his hand up ready to shield his eyes against the torch beam if I'd decided to play that trick. His gun hand was rock steady.

“Short drive,” I said.

We went down a rocky side road that had been cut into a hill, and off that down a track; the long grass sticking up in the middle between the wheel ruts showed that it didn't get much use. I had the lights on high beam and it was a first-gear crawl along the track. The water was off to the left—a long, flat stretch framed by high, scrubby hills. The tide was low and the water looked like mud; maybe it was. The pylons of a couple of small boat jetties stuck up awkward and useless-looking high above the water line.

“End of the lane here.” I was whispering, for no good reason.

“Stay well back then, and turn the car around.”

I stopped, backed and filled and got the car turned about in the narrow lane. I'd seen the house in the last flash of the headlights—a narrow-fronted fibro job, just visible through heavy tree-cover. We approached it by going slowly along the side of the track where bushes and saplings offered irregular cover. Ten metres from the house, and to one side, there was a dark patch in the vegetation. I pushed at the low, light branches and they gave way; behind them I could feel, from a step or two taken, firm ground falling away evenly.

“Said to be a driveway down there,” I whispered. “Garage holds a couple of cars, store room, God knows what.”

Hayes nodded and gestured with the gun for me to come back up on the track. He stepped back to avoid the possible suddenly released branch: he wasn't such a city boy after all. He was a pro. When I was on the track, he grabbed a
handful of my hair and jerked my head down. His voice in my ear was hard and harsh: “Listen, Hardy, I've killed eight men. I don't mind killing people. I wouldn't mind killing you. Don't try anything clever. I won't give you a chance. If I get Collinson neat and clean, you've got a chance of getting out of this. Just a chance, get me?”

I nodded, torturing the follicles.

“Right. Now how the fuck do we get in there?”

It was 1.30 a.m. The half-moon went behind a patch of cloud and the scene darkened. The trees that hid the house from the road were thick and high; I could see more of the shack's tin roof from this point than its fibro walls. It was an unpretentious property. The trees on the block grew close around the house, loomed over it. A fire risk. I strained my eyes to see through the trees to what lay beyond the house. Darkness. Then I remembered the water and the jetties. I pointed with the torch butt.

“Looks like this place has got absolute water frontage. Must be a track down to the house from up here, path or something. What d'you reckon on using the torch?”

“Give it to me.”

I handed him the torch and he shaded the beam carefully as we picked out way along the track. Hayes stopped and made a pushing gesture. He clicked off the torch.

“Gate. After you.”.

I went through, inching my way, trying to feel the ground with my toes through the worn-down sneaker soles. I stumbled, flailed my arms, almost fell. Hayes hissed something behind me and I lurched sideways to grab a tree trunk. I poked my foot forward tentatively.

“Path. Goes down. Pretty steep—rocks and roots.”

“Go on.”

I edged down the path using the trees growing at the sides to steady myself. It was like walking into a downward sloping pitch-black tunnel. Sweat was trickling down my
neck, and I felt the gun in my pants move and settle into my crotch. I slid my hand down, pulled up the gun and my shirt front. I put the gun in my pocket, and let the shirt hang in front of it. I slid, bounced off a tree, and stopped.

“Easy,” he hissed.

We were at the bottom, standing on a concrete slab that jutted out for about three metres and ran the width of the house. The windows were set high up near the roof, and I thought I could see a gleam of light inside. Windows placed that high seemed strange until I realised that lower windows wouldn't give a view back up to the gate and the track. The house hadn't been designed to be snuck up on.

Hayes stood motionless and seemed to be sniffing the air. All I could hear was a low, sucking sound coming from beyond the front of the house and the soft brushing of bushes, rubbing against the fibro in the light breeze.

The Doberman came quickly and smoothly with a soft footfall and just a low growl. It sprang at Hayes, but he was like a good boxer—he seemed to have all the time in the world. He stepped back and chopped it across the muzzle with his gun hand; the dog yelped and faltered. Hayes pivoted and smashed the gun butt dead-centre on to the dog's skull. The animal quivered and sank and he hit it again, savagely. Its legs gave way and it twitched, heaved, and lay still.

“Had to be one.” There was a slight panting in his voice but that was all the effect the bit of action had on him. “Means he's here,” he said.

The hair was still sticking up on the back of my neck, but Hayes had moved on to the next step. He examined the back door, which was sturdy, set close in its frame, and flush with the wall. It had a newish Chubb Guardian lock.

“Alarm?” I said.

He shook his head. “No point. Don't like this, though. Side.”

We stepped over the body of the dog and went along the slab to the side of the house. The concrete gave way to wood—a narrow, slatted verandah, with the slats running at right angles to the house. Halfway along, a French window was being softly stroked by a tree branch. A dog's bowl and an old blanket lay on the slats in front of the window.

Hayes bent and slipped off his city shoes; he looked at my feet and nodded. We passed the heavily curtained section of the window, and Hayes picked up the bowl and laid it carefully down on top of the blanket. The menace and purpose of him had me almost mesmerised now. I forgot who he was and what he was doing—his meticulous, precise movements seemed to have a validity of their own that had nothing to do with law and justice. I felt as if I was watching a riveting film with a very good actor in the lead. I fought against the feeling, trying to define my own role. My battered ear was hurting as the cool air nipped at it, and I could feel the gun in my pocket.

Hayes tried the handle on the French window and it turned easily with a slight creak. He shook his head at the carelessness; but Fido was supposed to take care of this entrance, and he'd been taken care of. He opened the glass-paned door and looked in. I was close behind him, but my feeling was that he knew just where I was and what my hands were doing. There was light only at the back of the house; the room we faced was dark and still. Hayes eased the door open until it was at its full swing. He pinned it there with his stockinged foot and motioned me to go in. I looked at him: his face was set, but not tense. I couldn't see any sweat beads at the ex-hairline. His gun moved impatiently and I stepped into Peter Collinson's hideaway.

19

The room we were in seemed to take up about a third of the floor plan of the house. There was a deep carpet on the floor, and the walls were wood-panelled. A big fireplace divided the wall opposite the French windows, and there were heavy drapes drawn over floor-to-ceiling windows in the wall which formed in front of the house. The glass-paned front door was uncovered.

Hayes and I stood by the open window, breathing softly and adapting to the darkness. The moon moved into the clear and beams of light came through the glass—enough to show the outlines of the furniture, which consisted of a low table in front of the fireplace, an easy chair to the side of it and a hi-fi, radio and TV unit. A set of low shelves held records and cassettes, and there was a large bookcase, well stocked.

Hayes pointed and we moved across the carpet towards the back. The house had a simple layout; a galley-style kitchen ran along the whole length of the back section, and we didn't bother to go down three steps to look in. The single bedroom was off the large front room to the left. The door stood half-open and there was a soft light inside. Hayes moved the slide on the .45 back, cocking it. The mechanism was oiled and smooth and the click was barely audible although I was only a few centimetres away from it.

“Go into the bedroom,” he whispered, “and stand in the nearest corner with your face to the wall.”

My heart was crashing in my chest and I could feel the blood beating in my temples. The floor felt red hot. I could smell Hayes an arm's length behind me. I went across and sidled through the door, knocking my elbow as I went. Hayes's breath was sibilant by my shoulder. I moved toward the corner as instructed, but it wasn't necessary to go all the way. The night-light was turned very low, barely lifting the gloom, but I could see that there was no one in the bed. I stopped at the foot of the double bed; Hayes stopped too. The bed was rumpled and a pair of tracksuit-style pyjamas lay across the single pillow.

“He's not here,” I said, stupidly.

“He was.”

My legs felt shaky, and I sat down on the end of the bed. Hayes moved forward, picked up an ashtray from the bedside table and looked at the half-dozen butts.

“He was here tonight.” He looked at the butts again and at the bed. “Alone.”

We prowled through the house and Hayes used the torch, still carefully, to find out what he wanted to know. In the kitchen there was evidence of an evening meal and some after-dinner drinking. Collinson had a supply of everything, and all of the best quality. The refrigerator was full of food and drink—meat, cheeses, white wine, beer. The cupboards were stacked with packet and tinned food and everything necessary for successful cooking. There were several dozen bottles of red wine in a rack and a few more cases of the stuff along with spirits and mixers. I felt myself relaxing a little.

“Crime pays,” I said. Hayes didn't laugh.

“Where the fuck is he?”

Under the house, reached from a set of steps in the kitchen, was the garage, storeroom, workshop, and boat
shed. The food supply was siege-worthy, as Phillips had said. There were two cars in residence—a Mercedes and a battered Holden panel van. Two wide benches held vices, clamps and the equipment for servicing cars and boats. We looked around, both trying to do the same thing—use the information this setup gave us to judge where he might be. My recent minor boat experience gave me the answer.

“Here's the boat stuff,” I said. “Where's the boat—speedboat, dinghy, whatever? There's marks here,” I squatted on the cement floor, “that shows where he towed a boat up. Probably with the panel van. No boat now.”

He nodded. We went back into the house, through it, and out the front door. The water was still at low tide and the mud, or something under it, was making the sucking noise I had heard from the back of the house. There was a small patch of grass in front of the house with some beach scrub fringing it. A jetty about twenty metres long joined the grassy bank, ran over a short belt of sand, and stretched its length out over the moving mud.

Hayes never let his guard down; he dropped behind me and let me lead the way down the jetty. It ended in a wide-planked staging with a hand rail, and steps which would have reached the water at high tide. Now, they finished a metre or so above the heaving, dark mud. There was an almost-empty can of diesel fuel on the top step, and an oily rag hanging over the rail. Hayes, who was wearing his shoes again but had taken off his jacket, bent to examine these items after waving me to a safe distance. The moon was high now in a clear sky and visibility was good. I saw dark, moist circles spreading under Hayes' armpits—his only indisposition; my shirt was a damp rag. He straightened up with clicking bones.

“If he's fishing, Christ knows when he'll be back.”

I thought about the house and the garage, checking the items mentally.

“No fishing gear anywhere,” I said. “No fish in the freezer. He's not a fisherman. He'll be back for breakfast. He likes to eat. Probably feeds the birds, too.”

Hayes turned to look back at the house. It was shadowed by the trees growing close to it and the foliage spread out unbroken to either side. There were houses further up the hill, but none so close to the water.

The shoreline was rocky for most of the cove and there were no other houses with such direct access to the water until further around the points off to the east and west. When Collinson came back he'd be pulling up to a private jetty in a semi-private setting. His tying-up point would be well below the main section of the jetty, virtually invisible to all except someone who cared to station himself in the scrub to the right. Such a person would be twenty metres from the boat landing, in concealment and unobstructed. If it happened like that, Collinson was a dead man. I took all this in quickly and Hayes obviously did the same. His usually grim expression—something like a cross between a headmaster's and a bookie's—relaxed a fraction. You couldn't call it a smile.

“Say he gets back at dawn,” he said. “When's that down here, with your godless daylight saving?”

“About five.”

“Say, three hours to wait, bit less. I can wait that long for half a million bucks. Couldn't you, Hardy?”

“I'm never likely to get the chance.”

“That's right. You're not. Did you enjoy hitting Liam with the bottle?”

“Not really. A bit, I suppose.”

“You should've enjoyed it a lot! And not given a bugger at the same time. That's what being hard is all about.”

“Psychology, now.”