Peter Corris - Open File

‘I see. Then you told him and persuaded him to take the rap.’

‘No. He volunteered. That’s the sort of father he is. He’s giving up everything to protect me.’

Tania’s terror had given way to wide-eyed fascination. Ireland Senior was shaking his head, muttering, pleading for his son to stop talking.

‘That’s bullshit,’ I said. ‘You’re a mug if you believe that. This government’s been on the skids since Nifty resigned. The two blokes after him have been hopeless. They’re on the nose. You know as well as I do that Rex Jackson-the minister for prisons, for Christ’s sake-is on the way to jail. Wayne here could easily be next. It’s a corruption charge he’s worried about. A conviction for that and they go after the assets. He’s giving up less than he’s protecting.’

‘That’s not true. Anyway, you’re not going to be around to see how it plays out.’

Ireland shook his head. ‘You can’t kill them, son. There’ll be people who know where they were going.’

‘They never made it, Dad. They had an accident at Skinner’s Leap. I’ve got a few mates coming up to help me with that.’

‘No!’ Wayne Ireland half rose from his chair and then sank back, gasping for breath and clutching his chest. He slid down and sideways and hit the floor, grunting and shaking.

‘Dad!’ Damien yelped. I was up and on him in three strides and laid the best tackle since my school days. He was so big he stayed on his feet but stumbled and I drove him back with my bare feet slipping on a rug but still getting traction. His back slammed into the bar hard and the gun fell from his hand. I scooped it up.

‘Go and help him,’ I said. I pulled out my gun in case his was a replica or unloaded-a bluff.

Damien lurched over to where Tania was trying to administer mouth to mouth resuscitation. Damien pushed her aside and took over. He was vigorous and seemed to know what he was doing. He was close to the fire and sweat poured off him as he pumped. He kept it up longer than I would have and was exhausted when he finally sat up.

‘He’s gone,’ he moaned. ‘Oh, God.’

He got to his feet, looked around wildly and began to cry. Tania tried to comfort him but he shoved her away and shambled out of the room.

Tania had had a couple of shocks too close together. Her face was white and she just managed to get back to her chair.

‘Heart attack?’ she said.

I nodded. ‘He was holding a full hand for it.’

‘You’re a cold-blooded bastard, aren’t you? Where’s Damien?’

The roar of a motor answered the question. I went to the deck and saw the Land Rover ploughing through the mud, slewing and skidding as Damien gunned it harder than he should. I put my socks and boots back on and went inside. Tania had a cigarette going and she’d been to the bar for a stiffener. I poured myself some scotch and looked around the room. I straightened the rug that I’d budded up. The tape-recorder had become a mass of molten plastic well on the way to being charred out of recognition. Ireland’s cigar had landed on the brick hearth and was still burning. The only thing to suggest that Wayne Ireland hadn’t simply suffered a heart attack when being interviewed was Damien’s Beretta in my hand. It was loaded.

I went back to the deck and threw it as far into the bush as I could. I’d had a fair arm as a schoolboy cricketer and it disappeared deep into the misty greyness.

Tania joined me on the deck. ‘What now?’

‘We call an ambulance. This can’t cause us any trouble. No suspicious circumstances.’

She was recovering fast but still wasn’t quite there. ‘What about Damien?’

‘Nothing we can do there.’

It took an hour for the ambulance to arrive and the paramedics read it the only way they could. As they were placing Ireland on the stretcher one said, ‘We were held up. A car went over the cliff at Skinner’s Leap. Came from this direction.’

‘Oh my God,’ Tania said. ‘Damien.’

The paramedic looked at her.

‘Mr Ireland’s son,’ I said. ‘He was very upset at the delay. He went for help, not that there was anything to do except just what you’ve done.’

‘You’d better check in with the police at Katoomba about that, and we’ll need your names and contact numbers and some ID.’

We showed them our drivers’ licences, gave them the numbers and said we’d stop at the police station. They carried the heavy body from the house and loaded it into the ambulance. Dense rain was falling and the mist seemed to be rising up from the valley. We stood on the deck and watched the ambulance leave, the driver taking much more care than Damien had.

‘Are there other houses further up the track?’ I asked.

‘Maybe one or two but they’re weekenders. Wayne and Damien had their privacy. That had to be Damien who went over the edge. He was revving like crazy as he went. What are we going to do, Cliff?’

‘Nothing. If they’re both dead what does it matter who did what?’

‘This didn’t work out anything like the way we planned.’

‘Could’ve been worse. Damien could have shot us both.’

‘Oh, so you saved my life? Was he serious?’

I shrugged. ‘The gun was loaded and he’d already killed one person.’

‘Jesus, what about those friends Damien talked about?’

‘With ambulances and police cars around, I don’t think we’ll be seeing them. Still, we’d better leave. Better to go to the cops than have them come to us.’

She gathered her bag and scarf. ‘This is terrible.’

‘Look on the bright side,’ I said. ‘You’ve got the scoop.’

The fence at Skinner’s Leap was a tangled mess of wire and broken posts. We were waved down by the police stationed there and made a brief statement. We said we were going to report in at Katoomba and the office radioed that in.

‘How far is the drop here?’ I asked.

‘Far enough,’ the cop replied.

At Katoomba we gave a heavily edited version of what had happened at the Ireland house. The officers who took the statements didn’t like the look of either of us, especially Tania, who was showing the effects of stress and alcohol. They kept going in and out of the room and conferring in private.

After we’d been there an hour the vehicle that had gone over the drop had been identified and was in the process of being recovered.

‘You say he went for help,’ one of the cops said, ‘but the man was dead.’

I said, ‘He’d busted a gut trying to resuscitate his father. The ambulance was a long time coming, he thought. He was upset and confused.’

'Drunk?'

'No. We-Ireland, Ms Kramer and me-had had a drink or two but he hadn't. Not that I saw. Tania?'

She shook her head. 'Can I smoke?'

The cop pushed an ashtray across the table. 'Sure.'

Tania fished in her bag and came up with an empty packet. The cop gave her one of his and she favoured him with one of her you're-the-only-person-in-the-world smiles. It was a bit lopsided and didn't work.

They got our details down in every last particular and let us go. Tania rushed to the nearest shop for cigarettes. I steered her to a coffee place and made her sit, eat a sandwich and drink a heavily sugared flat white.

'I have to admit,' she said, you handled that okay.'

'I've had the experience. We'd better get back so you can write your article.'

She was almost herself again now. 'Fuck that,' she said. ‘I'm phoning it in to the copy-takers.'

Tania’s story made a big splash in the afternoon edition and she strung it out over the next few days. Her articles were mostly factual with some speculation and some uncheckable lies. She didn’t name me so I had no complaint. She’d cornered the market on the Ireland-Pettigrew story and I had to admit that she treated Justin’s disappearance and Sarah’s circumstances with discretion-no mention of paternity doubts. Damien’s death was provisionally declared accidental and Tania presented herself as the last person to see him alive, leaving me out of it.