Peter Corris - O'Fear

Just beyond the restored section of barrier, the damage started. Some saplings had been scythed through, and the path taken by the car was visible through the undergrowth and light timber, down to the blackened area where it had burned, a hundred metres or more below the road. I tried to take a bearing from a post on the angle the car had taken. I imagined myself in the driver’s seat… opening the door… throwing something out as the car lost traction and the engine screamed. Not a pleasant process. The ferns and bracken were thick and still wet from the dew. I trampled them down, wishing I’d brought a bush knife or a scrub hook.

Cars and trucks hummed on the road above me as I slowly worked my way along to the likely points of landing. I looked back and up through the misty air and could just make out the balcony of Warren Bradley’s house. I adjusted a little to the left, but the first promising clump of bushes held only a couple of beer cans, thrown from vehicles. My jeans were sopping wet to the thighs and I reopened the cut on my hand bending back branches and breaking bushes. Further down the slope, the trees shut out some of the light and made the search harder. There was no way to calculate how the bag would behave. Would it rip and distribute its contents? Would it bounce?

I slogged on, bleeding, sweating and running out of chances. The bushes became hard and spiny, the earth underfoot was soft and I was aware that I was approaching a sizable drop. The slope was gullied by run-off water that had exposed the roots of some of the bigger trees. I caught my foot in one of the roots, fell over, swore and found the gar-bag. It was wedged in under a fallen branch; leaves and sticks and small stones carried by the run-off water had half-covered it and I had to tug it free. In so doing I ripped the plastic bag but that didn’t matter because it wasn’t a single bag but three or four heavy duty jobs enclosed inside each other. The other layers had been torn in various places, but not seriously. It was tied tightly with heavy twine at the top, and whatever was inside had been well protected.

I stood with the bag in my hand, half-expecting someone to give me a round of applause. It was moderately heavy and bulky. It clinked and clunked when the contents moved inside. It didn’t tick or hum, and there was no tinkle of broken glass or rustle of paper. It seemed to have something firm, like plywood or heavy cardboard, as a base. I slung it over my shoulder and worked my way back across the rough ground and up the slopes. My fall had jarred my right arm slightly and I had to hold the bag in my left. As I swapped it over, I noticed I’d got blood on it. Tampering with the evidence.

Back at the car, I opened the boot and cleared a space for the bag. The twine was thick and the knots had hardened. I cut it with a pocket knife. My burglar’s kit includes a pair of rubber gloves; I pulled them on and reached into the bag. In a couple of seconds I had fifteen objects spread out in front of me: pieces of wood and pieces of metal-the stocks and lengths of the barrels of seven Winchester double-barrelled shotguns. The wood was chipped and the metal was rubbed and scratched, but the cuts were fresh. As well, there was a set of blown-up photographs enclosed between stiff cardboard and tightly sealed with heavy masking tape.

I put the stocks and barrels back in the bag and slit the tape that held the photographs together. The bag had hit hard, bounced and fallen a fair distance so that the cardboard was bent and creased. The photos likewise, but they were clear enough. The six glossy black-and-white shots had been taken at night. They showed shadowy scenes, from slightly different angles, of men unloading objects from a van. Some of the men wore silver jackets. Some of them carried automatic rifles. The faces of several of them were plainly visible.

Felicia turned over the photographs, straightening and smoothing them, laying them out on the kitchen table. She glanced at me uncertainly. It didn’t seem like the time to tackle the question of the authenticity of the photographs I had delivered to Piers Lang. These weren’t in the same class. ‘Pretty rushed work,’ I said. ‘Still, some of these faces are sharp.’

‘Mm, some kind of infrared system,’ she said. ‘I don’t know much about that sort of thing.’

I pointed to one of the gun-toters, a pudgy, pale-looking individual with a vacant expression. ‘I feel I know this one, but I can’t place him.’

‘Barnes was killed on account of these photographs?’

‘I guess so.’ I opened the bag and exposed a couple of the sawn-off stocks and barrels. ‘And for these.’

‘Ugh. What are they?’

I told her, and voiced my suspicion that the guns had been shortened on the Athena Security premises. ‘That in itself is a very serious offence.

Barnes must have got wind of it somehow and acquired this evidence.’

‘God,’ she said, ‘That sounds serious.’

‘It’s dynamite. Athena’s a very big business, and it’s growing. The right connections, very important contracts. A thing like this could lead anywhere.’

She was standing close to me and she put her hand on my arm. ‘I’m sorry about this morning. I haven’t sorted myself out yet.’

I’d been wound up tight, trying not to say the wrong thing, watching the implications of every word. Now I relaxed a bit. ‘It’s not surprising. A hell of a lot’s been happening very fast. And it’s all confusing.’

‘Yes, it is.’ She dropped her hand but perhaps it didn’t matter. Maybe we were on the way back to harmony. ‘Tell me everything,’ she said. ‘What d’you know about Barnes and Eleni Marinos?’

I retied the bag and collected the photographs. I knew I’d be spreading them out and getting tired eyes from staring at them and feeling the frustration mount as I struggled to put a name to the face. I didn’t want all that to start yet. I remember thinking when I found it that the bag hadn’t ticked; it was starting to tick now. ‘What about some breakfast?’ I said.

She smiled. ‘You’re stalling, but okay.’

She cut a grapefruit and made coffee while I toasted bread and boiled the eggs. We bumped into each other moving around in the small kitchen. That was nice. We took the food out onto the deck. The sun was well up, but there was a light cloud cover and no wind. The sea was serene; a pale, rippling grey.

Clambering around on a hillside at dawn had made me hungry. I wolfed down the grapefruit. I cut an egg in half, scooped it out and spread it on the toast. Then I shook salt and pepper over it. Felicia scowled at me.

‘Too much salt. Much too much. Your arteries’ll be like cement pipes.’

‘I gave up tobacco and cut down on alcohol,’ I said. ‘Please leave me my salt.’

She shrugged. ‘Your arteries. Tell me about it, Cliff.’

‘I can’t tell you much. I’m mostly guessing. It looks as it Barnes became suspicious of Athena for some reason, did a bit of checking and investigating, and he really came up with something. The men in the photos are unloading a security van at night. They all look pretty edgy, and I’d say they’re handling the proceeds of a robbery. As for the shotgun bits-seven shortened shotguns were used in a big payroll holdup earlier this year. It can’t be a coincidence.’

She stopped chewing her unsalted egg and unbuttered toast. ‘Athena Security men are armed robbers?’

‘That’s the way it looks.’

‘What about her?’

‘It’s hard to know what to think. O’Fear was very vague about where and when Barnes collected the stuff in the bag, and we’ve got no idea of the date of the photos, or of where they were taken.’

‘At the Athena place, surely?’