Peter Corris - Man In The Shadows

‘Take a look outside, Cliff,’ he said. ‘See what’s happening.’

Before I could move, Marriott breezed in with congratulations and talk of a re-match. Belfast barely spoke to him. When he left I looked out into the corridor. ‘Nothing. Getting quieter.’

‘Go and get Tikopia. Invite him to a party or somethin’.’

‘What is this?’ Spargo said.

I went around the slight bend in the passage and knocked at Tikopia’s door. Warner stuck his head out.

‘Yeah?’

‘Roy wants to see your boy.’

I heard the Maori say, ‘Tell him I’m comin’,’ over Warner’s protest.

I went back to Roy’s room and found Johnson and Lofty there. Johnson’s wizened monkey face was screwed up in anger; Lofty was impassive but a look of pleased anticipation showed when he saw me. I thought he was going to crack his knuckles but he didn’t. I wasn’t too worried, I had the. 38 in my back pocket. Then I saw that Johnson was holding a small bottle in his hands. Roy Belfast’s eyes were fixed on the bottle.

‘You didn’t come through,’ Johnson said.

‘It was a draw,’ Belfast said quickly. ‘All bets’re off. Your people didn’t lose anything.’

‘Roy?’ Spargo’s tone was incredulous.

‘You don’t think a bloody has-been like him could’ve got this match without arrangements, do you?’ Johnson said. ‘He was supposed to fold in the seventh. That was a good round for you, the seventh.’

Spargo looked at Roy. ‘You did a deal?’

Roy nodded.

Johnson moved closer to him and raised the bottle. Roy was braced, ready to move either way.

‘Put it down, Johnson!’ I had the gun out and levelled. Johnson’s arm tensed and he gave me no choice. I shot him in the right leg. He yelled and the bottle dropped. Belfast dodged. The bottle hit the wall, shattered and sprayed steaming liquid. Spargo yelled as some of it touched his arm. Belfast rushed towards him as he groaned and swore. Lofty growled and came at me with his big arms swinging.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Johnson reach into his pocket and pull out another bottle. He was lying on the floor only a metre from Roy and Spargo. Lofty lashed at me, caught my shoulder and I dropped the gun. I ducked under the next swing and tried to kick his knee out. I connected with his shin which only slowed him down a fraction. He bullocked me towards the wall and got set to spread me across it when Tikopia appeared in the room. He hammered Lofty in the kidneys. Lofty turned and Tikopia dropped him with a left hook.

Tikopia kept moving; he stepped past Lofty and gripped Johnson’s wrist. The bottle fell from his grasp and Tikopia caught it. Marriott poked his head through the door. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Bad publicity,’ Belfast said. ‘Keep everyone away.’

The promoter gaped at the two men on the floor and the third, Spargo, nursing his arm and swearing. ‘Sounded like a shot.’

‘Maori war dance,’ I said. ‘Plus champagne corks. Go and get a doctor who can keep his mouth shut.’

The door closed. Johnson dragged himself to the wall and whimpered; there was a lot of blood on his leg but it wasn’t spraying.

‘Shut up!’ Tikopia said. He looked down at the unconscious Lofty and nodded approvingly. Spargo pulled himself away from Belfast who was applying a wet towel to his arm. ‘Get off,’ he said. ‘It’s all right, burnt meself worse on the stove. What the hell’s going on here?’

Tikopia and Belfast looked at each other. The Maori nodded. ‘Tikopia’s been hooked up with some bad people,’ Roy said. ‘He wanted to get clear of them. I got the fight by agreeing to throw it but him and me did our own deal.’

Tikopia nodded. He picked up my gun from the floor and handed it to me. ‘We thought they’d pull something like this after the fight. Now we’ve got some evidence and witnesses.’

Tikopia held up the bottle of acid. ‘Bad news this,’ he said.

‘What about the fight?’ Spargo said.

Roy dabbed with the wet towel. ‘We agreed to a straight fight. If he absolutely had to, Tikopia was going to pay off any losing bets out of his end if I won.’

The Maori grinned. ‘Don’ have to now.’

‘Why?’ Spargo said.

‘Don’t you see it, Jack?’ I looked at the fighters-Tikopia’s right eye was almost closed but he was grinning, showing big white teeth. Belfast’s jaw was swollen from the right he’d copped in the eighth. ‘They both wanted to see if they were any good. Tikopia needed to know if he could take a heavyweight’s punch and Roy needed to know if he could still do it at all. This game’s full of bullshit. They could only trust each other.’

The boxers nodded and touched hands the way they do at the start and end of a fight. ‘That’s right,’ they said.

I want you to find my son, Mr Hardy,’ Ambrose Guyatt said to me. ‘He’s a soldier.’

An image from Rambo flashed before my eyes-gaunt men in rags screaming inside a bamboo cage. I’d watched the movie on a flight from Honolulu to Sydney because I’d finished my book and couldn’t sleep. I’m over forty and carry a few unhealed physical and emotional wounds which make me unfit for that kind of action.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

‘I should say he was a soldier. He went absent without leave.’

‘For how long?’

‘It’s not clear. Some weeks.’

‘Then he’s a deserter.’

Guyatt shifted his well-padded behind on the unpadded chair I have for clients in my office. What’s the point in making them too comfortable? They might decide that everything’s all right and go away. Guyatt didn’t. Technically, perhaps. ‘You were in the army yourself, I believe. Malaya. You don’t look old enough.’

‘It went on longer than people think. If your son’s a deserter, Mr Guyatt, the military and the police’ll be looking for him. I can’t see… ‘

‘Julian didn’t desert, or if he did he had a good reason. He’s not some little guttersnipe; he’s educated, he’s got background.’

I held the smile in; I’ve seen backgrounds fade into the far distance and guttersnipes come up with the goods. I got out a fresh note pad and clicked my ballpoint. ‘You’d better tell me all about it, Mr Guyatt.’

Like most people feeling their way into a subject, he found it easiest to start with himself. Ambrose Guyatt ran a very profitable business which had blossomed from paper and stationery into printing and copying. He told me that some years before he had worked twenty hours a day keeping abreast of things and making the right moves. ‘That was when Julian was growing up,’ he said. ‘Naturally I didn’t see much of him.’

I nodded and got ready to make my first note. ‘How old is he now?’

‘Twenty. He joined the army nearly two years ago. He was a champion athlete but he… didn’t finish school.’

Guyatt was a short, stocky man with a balding head and a high colour. I’ll swear he almost blushed when he admitted his offspring was a dropout.

I nodded again. ‘Didn’t finish the army stint either. Is that his problem, Mr Guyatt? That he can’t finish anything?’

‘I really don’t know. It’s a terrible thing to say but I can’t claim to know him very well. We hardly spoke in the last years he was at home. Well, he wasn’t really at home. He came in for clean shirts and money which his mother gave him.’

‘Would you have given them to him?’

‘He avoided me. Never came when I was going to be around.’

I sighed. Young Guyatt avoided old Guyatt; old Guyatt avoided questions; I wondered what Mrs Guyatt avoided. ‘Was he on good terms with his mother?’

Guyatt nodded.

‘What does she have to say about it?’