Peter Corris - Forget Me If You Can

‘When did you find this thing, Bert?’

He removed the old hat he had put on and scratched his head where hair hadn’t grown for many a long day. ‘I dunno. Couple of weeks ago?’

The lid opened easily and there they were- bars of dull, yellowish metal the size of cigarette cartons. They were irregular in shape and it was no use looking for serial numbers-this wasn’t bullion in the accepted sense. I hefted a bar and couldn’t guess at the weight.

‘You didn’t take them out to weigh them, did you?’

‘No fear. I know weights, but. It’s like I said, round about 60 kilos. Take a look at the other stuff.’

What I took to be the Colt was wrapped in chamois. The photograph was in a plastic sleeve of the kind used to hold bank passbooks back when people used such things. I took both items out of the box and handed them up to Bert. ‘Got a tarp or something? Wouldn’t want all this to get wet.’

Bert looked up at the cloudless sky, laughed, and tramped off towards his storage area under the porch. I opened the sharpest blade on the knife and took a long, thick paring from one of the gold bars. I wrapped it in a tissue and put it in my pocket. Then I closed the chest after moving several of the bars and feeling around to make sure there was nothing else inside. Bert came back and we threw a tarpaulin over the whole patch and weighted it down at the corners with chunks of firewood.

‘You’re a trusting soul,’ I said to Bert as we moved back towards the house.

‘How’s that?’

‘What’s to stop me bashing you and taking off with the lot?’

He grunted. ‘If I was that bad a judge of character I’d bloody deserve it.’

Good point, I thought.

We went into the house through the back door to the cool, dark kitchen. Bert lifted two holland blinds, turned on an overhead light and put the pistol and photo under it on the kitchen table. He opened the fridge and took out two more light beers. I was sweating after the exertion and swigged the drink gratefully. We sat down and I unwrapped the pistol. It was the standard, slide-action model and still had a very slight oil sheen. The magazine and breech were empty.

‘Old?’ Bert said hopefully.

‘Can’t tell.’ I picked the gun up and looked it over. ‘Serial number’s gone, of course. That’s the best way to tell. The thing is, a well-maintained weapon like this can be quite old and a neglected one can be new but look like shit. An expert’d be able to tell, maybe.’

‘What about the picture?’

I slid it out of the sleeve. Again, it had been carefully looked after. There was nothing written on the reverse. The photo showed a youngish woman, dark with big eyes and bold, handsome features. My research into female fashion had done no good at all. The hairstyle was a short crop and there was no way to date her clothes because she wasn’t wearing any. She was quite naked apart from a wide black ribbon with a pearl set in it around her neck.

Her figure was good, neither trained-down thin in the modern manner nor robust as in days gone by. Her expression was amused and there was something about the pose and attitude that was hard to grasp. There was something sexually ambiguous about it-or was there? Who or what was she looking at? I tried to imagine the photographer and couldn’t. I sucked down the rest of the beer.

‘How old?’ Bert said. ‘The photo, not the girl.’

‘Jesus, Bert, how can you tell? She’s not holding up a copy of the Telegraph.’

‘Good-looking sheila.’

‘Right. Someone must know who she is, or was. That’s a start.’

‘Reckon she’s a pro?’

‘Could be.’

Pros, guns and gold. Doesn’t look good, does it?’

I knew what he was thinking but my mind wasn’t running on the same track. I’m as keen on money as the next man and always in need of it, but this matter was intriguing me in an almost disinterested or theoretical way. Who was she and why did she matter so much to someone? And who was that someone? The beer suddenly had a sour taste in my throat as I considered the possibility that the woman could also be buried out in Bert’s backyard. I rejected the idea, but it nagged at me.

‘What d’you reckon, Cliff?’

I rewrapped the pistol and put the photo back in its sleeve. ‘I reckon I’ll have a swim, do some thinking and then start work, probably after those flathead.’

In the afternoon, I strolled around the locality, checking on the other residents who had a view of, or were likely to have spent any time close to, Bert’s place. Apart from anyone staying in the boatsheds, they all had their own tracks to the beach and the trees very deliberately gave each block a good deal of privacy. I told the young couple in the pole house that I was looking for a property to buy in the area. They had sussed the place very thoroughly before making their own purchase, and they were happy to pass their information on. This block was swampy, that had a dodgy title, another had been the site of a council rubbish tip in the Fifties. Bert’s block was the best of the lot.

‘We’d have bought it if we could, wouldn’t we, darling?’ Greg said to Fiona.

‘Oh, yes. But Mr Russell didn’t want to sell.’

I told them I was staying with Mr Russell. I didn’t tell them what he thought about their pole house.

The house behind Bert’s was unoccupied and had a ‘For Sale’ sign with a ‘Sold’ sticker across it. The place wore an air of neglect and disappointment and I went along with Greg and Fiona’s suspicion that the sale had fallen through. Bert was right about the increase in value. This house, not as big or as well-placed as Bert’s, had fetched two hundred and twenty thousand, theoretically.

The boatsheds were set into the rock behind the dunes and comprised every kind of building material known to Australian man-galvanised iron, weatherboard, flattened kerosene tins, masonite and malthoid. They had the look of structures built during the Great Depression when people found and made shelters wherever they could. These were classics, with slipways down to the water made from railway sleepers and hooks cemented into the rocks that had evidently supported blocks and tackle.

Two men were sitting on the rocks in the thin shade provided by a spindly banksia. They wore singlets, baggy shorts and grey stubble. One of the men was scrubbing at a pair of once-white, now-grey sandshoes with a piece of soap-impregnated steel wool; the other was smoking and looking at the water.

‘Gidday,’ I said.

‘Gidday, mate,’ the smoker said. ‘Want a beer?’

‘No, thanks.’ I squatted down, took off my Sydney Swans cap and used it to dry the sweat on my face. ‘Mind answering a few questions?’

‘Shit,’ the smoker said. ‘You from the Council?’

‘Private detective. No trouble for you and your mate.’ I took out two twenty-dollar notes and fanned myself with them. ‘You blokes been coming down here long?’

The scrubber looked at the money and put his ratty bit of steel wool down on a rock, anxious to please. ‘Fuckin’ years, mate. In the nice weather. Mind you, it’s good weather here most of the time.’

I pointed back behind the rocks. ‘You come through Bert Russell’s place to get here?’

The smoker butted his rollie, got out his tin and prepared to make what was probably his millionth cigarette. He coughed cavernously as he did it, but his fingers were rock steady. ‘That’s right. Good bloke, Bert. He doesn’t mind. Slings us the odd can.’

‘Did you ever see anything unusual going on up at Bert’s place when he wasn’t there?’

‘Whaddya mean, unusual?’ the scrubber said.

I shrugged. ‘People around. Cars you hadn’t seen before. Anyone scratching about.’