Peter Corris: The Marvellous Boy

I let the gun drop and turned slowly. The man holding the shotgun was nearly as tall as the one dabbing at his bloodied face. He had an enormous ballooning belly and three chins. His face still wore the idiot grin I’d seen in the health studio when he was cleaning a mirror but the light was better and my eyes were ready to see whatever there was to see — under the fat and behind the grin and the vacant, crazy eyes was Warwick Baudin.

He still wore the battered T shirt, he had old sandshoes on his feet and his jeans were unfastened at the waist to give extra room to his vast gut.

The room was dead quiet. Having made his entrance, the fat man didn’t seem to know what to do next; he looked at Selby and James who appeared to be as scared as I was.

‘I heard the noise,’ he said. His voice was slow and thick as if his tongue was too big for his mouth. He was in a bad way, his hair was lank and greasy and his skin pale and puffy. There was dirt in the folds of flesh on his neck and his pale grey eyes were bleary and rimmed with scum. He didn’t look much like a Chatterton now.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ I said quietly and I put out a tentative hand towards the shot gun.

He threw back his head and let out a high, giggling laugh, but the double barrel stayed where it would cut me in half. Selby who’d nominated himself master of ceremonies a minute ago had lost his confidence; he moved back behind the table and looked as if he’d have liked to crawl under it.

‘He’s ripped out of his mind,’ James said. He looked down at my Colt on the floor which was closer to him than me.

‘Easy,’ I said, ‘he could blast us both. This isn’t worth dying for.’

It was a crazy situation, like being bailed up against a wall by a child with a bazooka. Bettina and Verna Reid seemed almost uninterested, reserving all their attention, packed with malice, for each other. With an effort I called the old training into play and looked at his hands; in contrast to the rest of him they were clean and well maintained. It was a nice, sleuthly point but not of much use just now. Then I noticed something else and my breath started to come a little easier: only one of the hammers on the old gun was cocked and his finger was on the wrong trigger. That gave me all the time in the world.

Baudin turned his head a fraction to look at Bettina. ‘Who’s she?’ he said thickly.

I moved fast and punched his upper left arm and swooped on his right wrist with my other hand. The barrels swung down to the floor and his finger clawed convulsively: the gun roared and pellets sprayed up at us from the floor. I wrenched the shotgun free and dug Baudin hard with it in the belly. He went down with a grunt. I bent for my gun and then I was holding all the aces again. Also I was one of the three people not bleeding: Baudin had taken some pellets in the legs, Selby in the shoulder and James had both hands over his face and was moaning quietly. It was a bad day for James.

Bettina got busy. She dumped her bag and helped her husband and James into chairs. Baudin was shuffling back towards the wall and I let him get there and prop himself against it. I told Bettina to get some water and look for something to use as a bandage. I stood by the window and made and lit a cigarette. I wanted a drink. Bettina came back with a basin and a bottle of disinfectant and a shirt. She ripped and dabbed and swabbed and the wounded bore it stoically. Baudin had a few pellets embedded in the pudgy flesh of his right leg; Selby was only nicked; Russell James had taken a pellet in the face — it had ploughed up his cheek and veered off along the side of his head before reaching the eye. Lucky.

When she’d finished ministering, Bettina picked up her bag, opened it and pulled out the brandy. She cocked an eye at me and I nodded. She came back from the kitchen with five glasses and poured a generous slug into each. I hooked up a chair and sat in it with the shotgun across my lap and the handgun on the edge of the table. No one had spoken for some time and the grunters and moaners had fallen silent.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘All this is nasty but nothing fatal. I think it’s time we sorted this mess out.’

I looked across at Baudin who was staring down at his glass; he picked it up and drained it straight off. I motioned to Bettina to pour him another and he did the same again. He seemed uninterested in the proceedings, just keen to get as much alcohol inside him as was allowed.

I drank some brandy. ‘What have you got to say Russ?’

He sipped his drink and didn’t answer.

‘No, well you wouldn’t want to say too much because you’re the boy who’s really in trouble.’

‘Why?’ There was a whining tone in his voice now and all the polish had rubbed off him.

‘Henry Brain, the old man in Darlinghurst. You hit him. He died.’

‘I didn’t hit him. We struggled and he fell.’

‘You sure as hell didn’t send for a doctor. Look, maybe you’re telling the truth. There’ll be a medical report that might bear you out but either way you look bad — hitting or struggling, what’s the difference. It depends how we play it. Have you got a record?’

‘A bit, not much,’ he said sullenly.

‘But you see my point don’t you? My client carries a fair bit of weight still and I want to keep her happy. I might leave you out if I get co-operation.’ I drank some more brandy and looked down at the sad fat man with the empty glass on the floor. ‘He’s the grandson, right?’

‘Don’t tell him, Russell,’ Verna Reid barked, ‘don’t tell him a thing.’

James looked down at Baudin who was playing with the glass in his big, meaty hands.

‘We think so,’ he said slowly. ‘It was all Richard’s idea.’

Selby opened his mouth to say something but I waved my glass at him and he shut it.

‘The way I see it,’ I said, ‘is that Brain spotted fatty here and blabbed something to you about his long-lost son. He told you that he’d been married to Mr Justice Chatterton’s daughter and you knew Selby here was married to her now and you thought he might be interested.’

James nodded and put down half his brandy. Bettina looked interested and hadn’t touched her drink yet.

‘That’s right,’ James said. ‘Richard took over then. We… he sent old Henry up to pressure the old lady but he made a mess of it. Then Henry dropped out of sight for a while, Richard had given him some money. Then the Judge died. We didn’t know what to do after that. Then Richard…” He stopped and took a nervous sip of his drink.

‘Richard came up with the idea of you latching onto Miss Reid,’ I said. ‘Dirty trick.’

Verna Reid’s face lost its boldness, her hands flew up and fluttered like the wings of a bird beating against bars. ‘I thought you…’ she said, ‘I thought that we…’

‘Charades, Verna,’ I said. ‘All charades. Do you know what Lady Catherine planned to do with the estate?’

‘Not really, she’s mad. One time she told me she’d leave it to me, another time she said she’d leave me nothing. She hinted that there was someone else, I knew she didn’t mean her.” She shot a look at Bettina who was nursing her drink and leaning forward as if she was watching a good play.

‘Just what did you have in mind then, Miss Reid?’ Bettina purred.

She didn’t answer; she looked at James who was staring down into his glass and at Selby who avoided her eyes. She seemed to know that she’d reached the end of things — a relationship, prospects, a job. Her eyes were empty and dull.

‘I slaved for that old bitch. The wages are a joke. She was always promising things, promising. Well, the place is pretty run down and she hasn’t got any money to speak of. The way things were going she’d have had to sell it sometime.’