Peter Corris - White Meat

“Just two questions Bert.”

Silence.

“Where does Trixie Baker live?”

Nothing.

“Tell me about the Abo?”

More nothing.

I swooped down and picked up a gallon tin which had fluid of some kind splashing about in it. I smelled it. Petrol. I pulled out my matches, jumped over to the car and held the tin and the matches up near the driver’s window.

“Hate to do it Bert.” I put the can on the car roof and struck a match. He jumped up and his mottled face was pale and working.

“No, wait…”

The passion was in his face and the truth would be in his mouth. I dropped the match and scuffed it out. The words came flooding out of him like extinguisher foam.

“Trixie’s got a farm, ten miles north. Sallygate road, first farm past the bridge, you can’t miss it. I don’t know what the old trouble was, I don’t honest.”

I believed him.

“The Abo?”

“Young bloke, tall, caught him in here early this morning. Scared the living shit out of me.”

“Was this before or after Noni was here?”

“After.”

“What was he doing?”

“Sleeping, back there.” He pointed to a heap of bags half-hidden by the side panel of a car at the back of the shed.

“Why so scared? Just a drunk or something.”

“Not him. No fear. Stone sober.”

“What did you do?”

“Told him to shoot through and he did, but like he was going anyway, you know?”

I put the can down and stuck the matches back in my pocket. I couldn’t waste any more time on Bert. Noni and her companion weren’t too far ahead. I asked him how far and he told me they’d left about four hours ago. He didn’t seem to object to the extra question. I rolled him a cigarette and lit it for him. He inhaled gratefully.

“Thanks Bert,” I said: “You’ve been a great help. Now, you’re going to drive me out to Trixie’s. You drop me there and forget the whole thing. OK?”

He protested but I overrode him. We went around the FX and out the back door to where an ordinary-looking Valiant was parked. Bert climbed in and started it up and it didn’t sound so ordinary. He’d modified it in ways that I couldn’t understand which had turned it into a high performance car. He explained this to me in taciturn grunts as we drove; cars were at the moral centre of his life and he was prepared to talk about them as about nothing else. I listened to his technical explanations in silence, thinking. Noni and the man had pushed hard to get this far and it seemed logical that it would be the last port of call but I had no idea what it added up to.

The driving seemed to relax Bert; he looked better somehow at the wheel, more physically in charge of himself and any nervousness he betrayed could easily be put down to uncertainty about my behaviour or that of the man with the gun. I put just one question to him on the drive and the answer was no, he’d never seen the gunman before.

Ten miles out from Macleay we passed over a wooden bridge and the metal road changed to dirt. Bert drove in second gear for a hundred yards and stopped where the road took a right-hand bend.

“Trixie’s place is just around this corner.” He jutted his bristled chin in the direction he meant. “If I was you I’d take it easy. That bloke with Noni looked jumpy and mean to me.” His eyes opened as he saw me pull the. 38 out of the coat pocket. “Jesus! You too. You said I just had to drop you here.” His hand was on the gear stick, ready to move.

“That’s right.” I opened the door and stepped out. “You wouldn’t be the sort of man to go to the police telling tales would you Bert?”

“Not me.”

“One thing interests me. You don’t seem concerned about the girl. She’s your niece isn’t she?”

“Not really. I was married to her mother’s sister once. She doesn’t mean anything to me.”

I nodded and stepped back. He put the car in gear, U-turned neatly and drove off. I held the gun under the coat and moved along the side of the road. She didn’t mean anything to me either, but here I was with a loaded gun going up against another loaded gun and not a friend in sight. I had the negative, defeated feeling that I wouldn’t like to die up here, in all this lush vegetation and so far from home. I fought it down and turned the bend.

The farmhouse was set back about a hundred yards from the road at the end of a dusty drive. Some straggly gums grew along one side of the track and I came up through these to within spitting distance of the house. It fell short of colonial elegance by a long way, being basically a one-pitch wooden shack that had been added to by side and back skillions. What paint was on it was white. There were wheelmarks on the drive but no car in front of the house where the drive ended. I skirted around the house, keeping under the windows and close to the walls. No car. Behind the house, about fifty yards back was a big iron shed. A road ran up to it from the eastern boundary of the farm. There was no cover between the house and the shed so I dropped the coat, took a grip on the gun and ran, weaving and keeping low.

I made it in creditable time and circled the shed. Plenty of wheel marks, old and new, but no car. The shed’s sliding door was half open and I went in. There were a couple of long trestle tables and lots of wire netting racks suspended about head high from the roof. Over in one corner there were a dozen or so big green plastic garbage bags, bulging full. I went over and untied the top of one. There was enough grass inside to turn on every head between Bermagui and Byron Bay.

I worked my way carefully back to the front of the house. There was no bell and to use the knocker I would have had to step inside because the door was standing open inside a fly wire screen. I rattled the screen and waited. A fly battled against the wire trying to get out. I let it out and went in myself. The house had the low hum – made up of refrigerator motor, dripping taps and the ghosts of voices – that all empty houses have. I walked through the nondescript rooms and passages on the way to the kitchen which was poky and dark with blinds drawn and flies buzzing. The buzzing was loudest over in a corner near a walk-in pantry.

A foot and half of a leg in a pale beige stocking were sticking out of the pantry. I went across and crouched down. A woman was lying with one leg extended and the other tucked up under her. One side of her face was a dark, crumpled ruin. Flies were gathering around the dried blood. Her features were reconstructable from the undamaged side – thin mouth and high forehead. She wore a severe blue linen dress that looked expensive. As I reached for her wrist I heard a noise behind me and I turned bringing the gun up but I was too slow and the business end of a thin-bladed knife was tickling my ear while the gun was still pointing nowhere.

“Drop the gun.”

Two men with swarthy complexions, Italianate suits and stockinged feet were standing over me. They looked strange in the neat suits and socks but I didn’t feel like laughing. One of them, the taller, said something in Italian and his mate moved back out of the kitchen. He returned with their shoes and they slipped them on, the taller guy still holding the knife close to my head. My joints were creaking and I made to straighten up and felt the knife go into the ear flesh a fraction. I sank back.

The Italians had the build of men who knew how to move and what to do when they got there. Ideas of taking them were out of the question. They conferred in Italian and weren’t talking about pasta. I pointed at the woman.

“She’s dead,” I said stupidly.

They didn’t even look at her. The knife artist retracted the blade with a click and while I was listening to it the other one stepped forward gracefully and clouted me on the side of the head with something thick and black and hard. I slid down and then he hit me again and a bright flare of pain went through my skull and spread and took away the light.