Peter Corris: Beware of the Dog

It was raining by the time I got back to Glebe, but I had everything I needed to cope with that. I changed out of the sort of clothes you wear to visit a lawyer into the sort you wear to go looking for a mad woman in the country-boots, thick socks, jeans and a sweater. The good quality parka I’d got from Terry Reeves had been reduced to a burnt ruin so I took mine, older, less padded, hoodless. I still had the leather jacket, except that it had lain as a soggy mess in the back of the Cruiser for a couple of days. I collected a few more items, like my antibiotic capsules, and then I had to ask myself the question: did I compound my law-breaking by taking the unregistered Colt with me? The thought of Paula Wilberforce’s blue eyes gave me the answer.

I left a note for Glen, including the car phone number, telling her that I could be away overnight. Through the kitchen window I could see that the rain was driving down hard and it was getting dark in the mid-afternoon. It didn’t matter, I’d have gone if it had been snowing.

On the road I was glad of the big vehicle’s tyre traction, powerfully sweeping wipers and sure handling. The rain was coming down in sheets from a leaden sky and I tried to remember the last weather forecast I had heard or read. Nothing had stuck. I turned on the radio and got one-rain, rain and more rain; flood warnings on the south coast, cold nights. Somewhere out near Campbelltown the cars with weak wipers and lights were pulling over to the side of the road. If I’d been driving the Falcon I’d have been with them. Better a wet distributor and a long wait than a pile-up in the mist. The rain didn’t slacken but the traffic adjusted to it. The trucks laboured along in the left lane, the speedsters curbed themselves and we 4WD men were the kings of the road.

Although the freeway was built years ago I still think of it as new because I drove the old road many, many more times. It bypasses all the towns, but I still measure the distance and know where I am in terms of them. It was somewhere past Picton that the blue and red flashing lights began appearing and the wail of sirens lifted above the noise of tyres and wipers. Every vehicle on the road slowed down to allow the ambulances and police cars through and we all drove circumspectly past the place where four cars had collided. They were slewed around on the road- headlights pointing crazily and rear bumpers and radiators crumpled and leaking plastic and metal.

People huddled by the side of the road, their faces white in the headlights; cops, with water sloshing off their yellow slickers were directing the traffic and paramedics, shielded by umbrellas held over them, dealt with the still shapes stretched out on the wet tarmac.

I stopped at one of the big highway service centres that have replaced petrol stations and truckies’ cafes. It was all neon and glass and aluminium-easy-to-clean surfaces that were still new and bright but would one day become as dull as the old cafe laminex. The place was doing good business. I suspected that a lot of the customers were drivers who were hoping for the rain to stop. Others, shaken up by the accident scene, needed to get off the road for the sake of their nerves. I wasn’t sure which category I was in. I ordered coffee and a hamburger from a uniformed girl behind the counter. No waiting. The stuff was hot and ready to go. I took the polystyrene box into a corner and sat with my back to the road. Maybe I was in category two.

As I sat there I examined my certainty that Paula Wilberforce was hiding at Fitzroy House. I decided that there was no basis for it in fact, just an enormously high probability. It felt right. On the other matter, whether she’d killed Patrick Lamberte and Karen Livermore, I felt no certainty at all. It seemed unlikely, but so did the deaths themselves. Halfway through the hamburger I realised I was hungry. I hadn’t had lunch. I was supposed to take the antibiotics before meals, but what if you didn’t have meals? I took a couple of capsules anyway and washed them down with a second cup of coffee.

I used the toilet and examined myself in the mirror. Pale from lack of sun, a bit hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked. No oil painting. No photograph. Back in the Land Cruiser with the rain still coming down, I phoned Glen using the gismo. No answer. I phoned the Wilberforce house in Randwick and got Mrs Darcy. I asked her how her patient was doing.

‘Not well, Mr Hardy. The doctor’s been and seems very concerned about him.’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Irregular breathing and pulse. He seems to be weakening.’

‘Is he conscious?’

‘Oh, yes. He’s reading and he demands whisky from time to time. The doctor says he might as well have it.’

That was a bad sign. I asked her if he’d mentioned me or Paula. ‘There was something he was trying to remember.’

‘He mentioned you only to ask if you had been in touch. I don’t suppose you have any good news for him? I believe it would help.’

I told her I didn’t, not yet, but that I might have soon. I gave her the mobile phone number and asked her to give old Phil my best wishes. Glen didn’t answer either at Glebe or Petersham. Well, why the hell should she? We were independent adults, weren’t we? Pursuing our own fates. I filled up with unleaded and got back out on the road. It was seven o’clock and the traffic was thinner. The rain slanting down through the beam of the headlights was steady and being moved around by a slight wind. The heater and demister were doing their jobs. I was doing mine, but whether coming up with good news was part of it or not I didn’t know.

As the road climbed the rain began to clear. A few kilometres out of Mittagong it was a drizzle, by the same distance on the other side of the town it had stopped. At Mittagong I turned off the freeway. The sky was clear and the moon was bright and almost full. Even the stars seemed to be giving out some helpful light, but that might have been my imagination-it was just so good to see the rain stop. I found Wombeyan Road at the mid-point of the old route to Bowral and turned off a reasonably wide, reasonably well-lit bitumen strip onto a narrow, rutted track from which the tarmac was fast falling away. After a kilometre or two it gave up trying and became a dirt road.

Tall gums growing along both sides of the road cut down the light and I had trouble locating the lot numbers. Why should the owners bother? Everyone who lived along Wombeyan Road knew who was where, others could please themselves. There was no traffic and I had the feeling that I’d entered an alien landscape and was all alone. City boy feeling. The glimpses I had through the trees of the properties behind them weren’t encouraging. A few dim lights in the far distance; dark shapes, probably cows, on gentle, moonlit slopes-good country for hiding, bad country for searching.

The 4WD’s strong headlights picked up the sign hanging lopsidedly from a tree branch. One of the chains supporting it had snapped and the board had dropped almost to the ground on that side. Years, weather and the Australia-wide rural habit of using signs as rifle targets had ravaged it, but something of its original charm was still visible-a dog and a cat stood nose to muzzle against a background of rolling hills. ‘Fitzroy House Kennels’ was written above them in a ye-olde-English script. The name of the proprietor and the telephone number had been obliterated by bullet holes.

The property had once boasted a white post-and-rail fence. This was now a rotted ruin, rapidly fading to a neutral grey and sagging back towards the earth. The gateposts leaned drunkenly inwards, leaving only a narrow entry. Wide enough for the Land Cruiser, but only just. I steered it through and ran down the eroded track for a few metres before pulling off into the shelter of the scrub beside it. I turned off the engine and the lights and stared out through the windscreen into the silent darkness. One fact about the place I had entered had registered strongly: although the track sprouted high weeds and was overgrown from both sides, other vehicles had passed down it recently.