Peter Corris - The Marvellous Boy

‘You should be.’ I heard sounds, voices, feet on the stones, and judged that people would be coming out of the cinema for a smoke. I moved Albie away from the rail keeping a strong grip on his arm and walked him down towards the car park. He was shaking and his colour was bad. We walked down between the ranks of cars and I backed him up against a VW Kombi van in a shadow.

‘Have a smoke, Albie.’

He got out his cigarettes and lit up. The flame jumped around his hand and his eyes were pin-pointed with fear or drug need or both. He blew the smoke towards me and quickly fanned it away with his hand.

‘Albie, this is a rough game you’re in. Two people are dead before their time and your mate with the bandages hit me over the head from behind a few nights ago. So I’m not happy with him and I’m not happy about a dirty little creep like you following me around.’

He drew nervously on his cigarette and didn’t say anything.

‘Now you are a lucky man,’ I went on, ‘because you are fat and short and I don’t feel like belting you. I suggest you go on an interstate run tomorrow and then take your holidays or something. If I hear you’re in Sydney I’ll make a couple of phone calls and you’ll be out of a job and the narc squad’ll be picking your teeth for you. Clear?’

‘Sure, sure.’

I shovelled the tie and handkerchief into the front of his coat. ‘Piss off, Albie.’

He sidled along, keeping his back to the van until he was clear of it and then he took off fast towards the comforting lights of the Quay. I made a cigarette and smoked it slowly while I pieced things together — Henry Brain, the Noble Briton, Russell James (as he called himself), Honey Gully, Richard Selby and Verna Reid, all interlocked in a pattern of calculation and deception. It looked as if Brain had run into Baudin in the Cross, noticed his powerful resemblance to the Chattertons, and spilled some of the story to him. Baudin could have known Selby through the Spartacus Studio and together they could have sent Brain up to Lady C to gauge her reaction. Getting nothing they switched to working through Verna Reid in some way. It fitted a lot of the facts; Russell James told Verna Reid he was a property developer; Keir’s $1,500 could have been used to finance that, either for real or as a front. Whatever the tactic my turning up must have thrown them into a spin — exit Brain and Callaghan. It had holes in it: if James was Baudin why didn’t he just declare himself and claim the loot? But there was a possible explanation for that — Lady Catherine’s wish to find the grandson might be a secret she’d confided only to me. Selby’s involvement could be complex, he could be in collusion with Reid and James or be playing another angle — in the normal course of things his wife was in line for a big slice of the pie anyway. Then there was the mystery of the Chatterton will, there could be something in that which necessitated a waiting game.

I finished the cigarette and looked out across the water in a mood of mild self-congratulation. I checked back over my reconstruction and didn’t find anything too inconvenient although the Chatterton heir’s character was looking blacker every minute. I walked quickly back to the restaurant and suddenly I was breaking all my own rules, moving hastily and obtrusively for cover at the foot of the steps — under a harsh neon light the big man with the bandaged face and his dark-eyed friend were stepping it out towards their car.

Verna Reid and Russell James were quarrelling; they kept well apart and their heads jerked as they snapped and snarled. Watching them, I dodged about on the other side of the road like a boxer trying to stay out of trouble on the ropes. James slipped quickly into his mildly aggressive driving style. The Toyota took the corners with practised ease and pulled familiarly up into Richard and Bettina Selby’s driveway. I skulked on for a hundred yards before killing the lights, putting the keys under the seat, arming myself and heading up the street to do some genuine, in the field, sleuthing.

No front gate, no alert dog in the front yard, no kids’ toys to trip over. I padded up past the Toyota; the Honda Accord was missing but a Chev was there instead. Lights were on in the back of the house and there was a soft, green glow from the pool which looked cool, inviting and uncomplicated. A heavy thumping, like a fist beating on tin, caused me to duck down into the shadows near the garage. I poked my head around the corner and saw the man in the fawn suit knocking his knuckles on the back door.

‘Richard!’ His voice was high and urgent. ‘Richard, where the hell are you?’

Where indeed? It hadn’t looked like a chance call and I’d expected to find them cosy over a beer with their ties loosened.

He kept on knocking and nothing kept happening, then he started to swear rather nastily and display a considerable bad temper by kicking the door. The gun. was biting into my gut and I was getting cramped in the squatting position; I uncoiled cautiously and inched along trying to get a better view of the man assaulting the door. It ail happened very fast — a car door slammed and I spun around and then something hit me in the stomach very hard. It bent me over and I had an impression of a wide, light shape near me and then my upper right arm was stinging like hell and I was throwing a long punch that went on and on to nowhere.

I was only a quarter of a man or less after that: the two of them dragged me into the house. I couldn’t move but I could hear all right.

‘She’s away with the kids,’ Selby said.

My head bumped against something as the other man spoke.

‘Easy,’ Selby grunted. ‘Albie phoned, I was ready for this bastard half an hour ago.’

Albie, I thought. Rotten little Albie, fucking Albie…

They let me down roughly onto carpet that felt like marble.

‘How long’ll he be out?’

‘It varies,’ Selby said. ‘That stuff puts some people under for hours and others hardly go out at all. Let’s have a look at him.’

The smart thing seemed to be one of the susceptible; I let my eyelids drop and my head loll. I felt hands grab bits of my face and then I was on the carpet slab again.

I didn’t have to act too hard: I was lying still but felt as if I was swimming and there was a roaring in my head like an eternal wave breaking over me. I heard snatches of their conversation through the foam.

‘What are we going to do with this character?’

‘You were supposed to find out tonight,’ Selby said.

Then Verna Reid chipped in: ‘He tried but I just don’t know! She’s kept it all to herself.’

I snuck a look through a shuttered eye; they were in armchairs but tense and nervous. Verna Reid was wearing her basic black which suited her fierce, hostile mood. Selby was wearing jeans and a white shirt, his face was scarlet above the snowy cloth. He was drinking what looked like scotch and the other man clinked bottles and ice and made himself something, too. I was parched and hearing a howling wind now along with the boom of the surf. I was slipping under and coming up, hearing words and missing some, and I was suddenly cold from my scalp to my big toes.

‘We have to settle it,’ Selby was saying. ‘Is he up at the river?’

‘Should be by now. But what if…’

‘It’s all ifs. We have to make a move, we have to find out.’

‘What about him?’

The roaring and booming blotted out the rest of it and I felt them take hold of me again and move me. I summoned up everything and tried to fight them but for all the difference it made I might have been a butterfly. They dragged me easily with their weight-lifters’ strength and they didn’t care when parts of me hit things. I didn’t care much either. I wanted to sleep, to curl up in a ball and sleep, and then I remembered Kay and that I hadn’t called her and I heaved and strained at them and said uncomplimentary words that felt like stones in my mouth. They must have bumped me into something then or hit me because it all slid away; the noises stopped and I tobogganed down into darkness and silence.