Peter Corris - Deal Me Out

‘Go away.’ She looked at me with pale, watery eyes across the top of a pair of half-glasses. ‘And take the little Chink with you.’

‘Easy, Glad. We’ve come to have another talk with Mai.’

‘Don’t you Glad me. If you want to see him you’d better ring up the bloody hospital.’

‘What?’

‘He’s got a broken leg and a broken arm, poor devil. He’s in St Vincent’s.’

‘What happened?’ Erica said.

She came to the foot of the stairs and gave us the whole show-hair, dressing-gown, sash and slippers. ‘They came and did him over in the early hours. I thought it mighta been you from the way you was chuckin’ punches last night.’

I shook my head. ‘Not me. What about Geoff?’

‘Him too. In the hospital.’ She nodded her head as she spoke and her glasses fell off. It had happened a thousand times before and she caught them deftly, without looking. Erica took out her cigarettes and went over to the stairs with the packet extended. Glad hesitated, then she took a cigarette and bent her head to the lighter.

‘Ta. I’m a bit shaky.’

‘Did you talk to Mai? Before he went to hospital.’

‘Couldn’t talk, they broke his teeth. He didn’t think I knew he had false teeth but I knew.’

‘I’m sorry. Glad.’ I said. ‘We’ll try to look in on him.’

She nodded, pushed up her glasses and slapped her way up the stairs.

‘It’s hotting up,’ I said.

Erica was getting the idea. She looked both ways before stepping out onto the pavement. ‘It’s horrible,’ she said. ‘Can you drop me at Bill’s place?’

We drove through the tight, late morning traffic, and I thought of broken bones and hospitals, of which I’d had a bit of experience, and of Australian Chinese families, of which I knew nothing. We passed a restaurant where Helen Broadway and I had eaten, and I thought about her being physical on the farm or talking wittily on the local radio where she had a part-time job. I wondered if she’d smoked her one Gitane a day yet, or was saving it for after dinner. I wondered if she was thinking about me and thinking, as I was, that six months is a short time to have something you want and a long time to be without it.

There was a mist still hovering over the park when we reached Mountain’s place. The air was nearly as cold as it had been up at Katoomba, but it had a very different flavour. Erica didn’t have to use her key on the front door: it had been jemmied open and pushed roughly back. It was held half-shut by the splinters.

I pushed past Erica into the front room. The furniture looked as if it had been attacked with a chainsaw-the couch had been up-ended and disembowelled. Stuffing and fabric lay around everywhere and broken ornaments and torn curtains littered the floor. Erica gave a little gasp and darted to pick something up off the floor. She clasped it in both hands and wandered through to the next room.

The chaos continued through the house and was worst in Mountain’s study, where books had been dismembered and papers torn and scattered like losing betting tickets. The search hadn’t been professional and the destruction looked to be the result of frustration and failure. Erica skirted around the messes-tumbled-out drawers, shredded clothes and torn photographs.

‘What’s missing?’ I said.

‘Not much. The shotgun and the car keys. Not kids?’

I shook my head. ‘The TV and the VCR rule that out.’

‘So it’s them?’

‘I guess so. Can we make some coffee?’ We rummaged in the kitchen and found two more or less intact cups. I put on the water and spooned in the instant. Erica sat at the table and lit a cigarette. She opened her hand and let a small, gold wristwatch drop onto the pine table. The glass was shattered.

‘It was mine. I left it here. Why’re you looking like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘Scowling.’

I poured the water into the cups and added a slug to each from a bottle of Suntory that had been opened and knocked on its side so that only an inch remained. ‘Bloody uninquisitive neighbours,’ I grunted. ‘This must have been noisy.’

Erica reached for her cup. ‘Never heard them when I was here. Walls must be thick or else they’re out a lot.’ She sipped and made a face. ‘That’s not what’s on your mind, Cliff.’

I drank some of the laced coffee thinking that it was a while since I’d done any spirits drinking in the morning. ‘You’re right. I just don’t understand this. I can see the car mob wanting to get hold of the Audi. They make an investment, and it has to pay off. But this leg-breaking and house-trashing looks like something else.’

‘You mean they might have found out about the man at Blackheath?’

‘Doesn’t seem likely. No, he must have done something to threaten them. Must’ve played a card of some sort.’

‘What?’

‘God knows. I’ve got to talk to Mai again.’

She nodded. She seemed to have lost drive and interest suddenly. She’d been disappointed at the pub, at Mai’s flat and Blackheath, and maybe she didn’t have the mule-like stubbornness it takes to keep going. Maybe it was the first violated house she’d seen; that experience takes some people hard.

‘Look, Erica. There’s still a job for you to do here, and I don’t just mean cleaning up. Someone was looking for something and they didn’t find it.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘I can read the signs. The destruction goes right through the place-they were angry to start with, they got angrier and they never got happy. That means they didn’t find it. Your Dad can spare you from the exporting business for a while, can’t he?’

She smiled. ‘Importing. Yes, of course.’

‘Then you can look through here inch by inch. See if you can find anything that might help us.’

‘Like what?’

That was harder, but I kept myself from shrugging and looking hopeless. ‘I don’t know. A diary, letters, maybe some numbers written down somewhere. A phone number-anything unusual that looks contrived or done for a purpose. The only thing that worries me is that they might come back. Is there anyone you can get to come and stay here with you?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I can bring Max.’

‘Who’s Max?’

‘He’s my German Shepherd. He stands so high and he weighs about a hundred pounds.’

‘Get him on the phone,’ I said. ‘He sounds like just the bloke you need.’

Erica said she could walk across the park to get Max. That sounded all right to me; I’d have preferred park walking to hospital visiting myself, but it seemed unlikely that the ducks and joggers would be able to tell me anything useful. I drove to the hospital and parked as near to the place as the able-bodied and non-medically-qualified could get. Then I negotiated the barriers they put between the sick and the well. They wouldn’t let me see Mai, registered as Malcolm Fitzwilliam, who was recovering from a severe concussion as well as his other injuries, but Geoffrey Stafford was visitable.

They wheeled Geoff into the waiting room with the tiny, dust-shrouded windows where I’d spent nearly an hour waiting. Geoff didn’t look pleased to see me; he had one leg in a cast, half an arm was in plaster and held crooked by a metal strut and both his eyes were bruised the colour of eggplant.

‘What do you want, Hardy?’

‘For openers, how do you know my name?’

‘I did a bit of ringing around after you split the other night. With the gun and all I reckoned you’d be a private licence.’ Talking was difficult for him; all facial movement would be for a while to come.

‘What happened?’

‘Three blokes-very quick and good, better than you.’

‘That makes them a hell of a lot better than you, son. Any talking?’