Peter Corris - The Dying Trade

Half an hour and two cigarettes later, a red Volkswagen turned into the street. It did a circuit of the block the way I had and stopped opposite Haines’ house. A girl got out. She was wearing pink slacks and shoes and had a lacey, fringed poncho affair over her shoulders. From where I was crouched I could see that her skin was the colour of polished teak and the inky frizz of her wig stood out a foot from her head. I started down the steps as she went through the front gate. I stumbled on a step and my jacket hit the metal rail with a terrific clang. I swore and crouched down but the sound hadn’t carried far enough to alarm Naumeta Pali. I crossed the street and went up the side of the house to the back stairs that led up to Haines’ door. I heard the door close above me and climbed the stairs quietly taking two at a time. I heard the sound of voices in the flat and then the ringing click of a telephone being lifted. The girl spoke again but what she said was inaudible. I pressed up close to the wall beside the door and tucked my ear into the doorframe. The receiver banged down and I heard the girl speak in her smoky, French accented voice.

“Come on, Rossy,” she purred, “we’re going to the mountains.”

I took the steps four at a time on the way down.

I was down behind a car parked twenty feet away from the Volkswagen when they came out. Haines was walking a little ahead of the girl with his hands in the front pockets of a windcheater jacket. Pali had her arms under her cloak but from the way it bulged out about waist high it was obvious that she was holding a gun on him.

There were a few people in the street but she ignored them. She walked Haines to the driver’s door and said something to him, emphasising the words by moving her hands under the poncho. Haines opened the door and got in, another gesture from the girl and he buckled on the seat belt. She moved around the front of the car with the gun held up chest high and levelled at Haines’ head through the windscreen. She’d handled a gun before. She opened the passenger door and got in. She sat slightly swivelled round. I heard the engine kick and saw a puff of smoke from the exhaust. The car started off in a series of kangaroo hops. Haines was nervous and who could blame him? I kept low and under the protection of other cars as much as possible and ducked and swerved my way back to the Falcon. I slung the jacket into the front seat, started the engine and was moving up the alley in time to see the VW making a right turn out of the street into the main road.

The mountains were probably the Blue Mountains which meant that we had a couple of hours driving ahead of us. The route the VW took along the roads in this part of the city seemed to confirm that destination. I had plenty of gas and plenty of gun, I should have felt reasonably confident but I didn’t. Pali’s phone call from Haines’ flat nagged at me like a hangnail. I supposed it was to Brave and it was reasonable to assume that he was coming to the party too. I was covered there to some extent, by Tickener, but I couldn’t be sure that the reporter would be able to control the junkie psychologist in a tight spot. Then again, Brave and Pali could have agreed on the meeting beforehand and the phone call could have been to a third party who I didn’t have covered at all. I couldn’t call for police help unless the VW stopped and even then my story was thin and only Grant Evans could help me. I didn’t even know if he was back from his enforced leave.

This potentially dangerous loose end kept worrying and distracting me as I drove so that I almost lost the Volkswagen at a three way junction. I pulled myself together and concentrated on keeping back and varying my lanes and position among the other cars in the traffic stream. Haines was driving better now, quite fast and tight and making good use of the gears. We hit the Katoomba road as the last flickers of daylight died in the trees beside the highway.

The easy time to tail cars is at dusk and later. There’s not much possibility of them spotting you or of you losing them if you stay alert, but there is a kind of lulling feeling about it which introduces the chance that you might ram your subject up the back number plate while in a hypnotic trance. I fought this feeling as I trailed up the hills and coasted down the “use low gear” grades. The traffic thinned after Penrith but there was enough of it to provide cover and the winding road and glaring oncoming headlights demanded concentration. We passed through Katoomba after eight o’clock; the real estate agents had closed so half of the town’s business was under wraps, only the usual pinball places and take-away-food shops kept the neon going in the streets. The pubs emitted a soft, alluring light through the lead-glass windows which reminded me that I hadn’t had a drink in hours and was heading away from sources of it fast.

After Katoomba it got harder. There was a little chopping and changing on the highway as cars peeled off to houses in the hills whence their occupants commuted to Sydney at the risk of their sanity. I’d taken a fix on the peculiarity of the VW’s tail light which was a bit brighter on the right side than on the left and I clung to it like a mariner to a beacon. I had my doubts about it twice, once after oncoming lights on high beam dazzled me, and again when a lighter coloured Volkswagen surged up in the right hand lane to pass everything in sight and I started to go with it. A truck coming round a bend lit it up as a grey or light blue job and I slipped back and picked up Haines and Pali who weren’t doing anything so fancy.

They pottered uncertainly along in the left lane for a while and I had no choice but to dribble along behind them. Cars sped past us and I was starting to feel conspicuous when the VW’s left indicator flashed and the car shot off up a steep road that left the highway at a forty-five degree angle. I looked quickly in the rear vision mirror. There was no one behind me so I didn’t touch the indicator arm, I just slammed the Falcon down into second, killed the lights and took the turn praying that the road didn’t fork three ways or end in a ditch. The lights ahead bobbed and danced in front of me; the road was rutted and lumpy and the Falcon’s springs and shockers took a beating as I ground along in second. At one point the road moved back close to the highway except that we were now above it. Cars scuttled along below like phosphorescent ants beating a path to and from their nest.

We were driving through thickly timbered country, still climbing steeply and following wide, looping bends to left and right. The nearly full moon sailed clear of the clouds and illuminated the classic Blue Mountains landscape — tall, arrow-like gums and sheer-faced ridges that had defeated a score of explorers until Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth had brought a little imagination to the job. The moonlight gave me a look at the road and allowed me to give the other car a bit more leeway. It also increased the risk of being spotted because moonlight can gleam on chrome like sunlight on a steel mirror. Fortunately, the Falcon’s chrome was rusted and dull. Then the Volkswagen disappeared. I hit my brakes and pulled up well back from where I’d last seen the lights. If I’d spotted someone tailing me up there in the mountains I’d kill my lights and engine and coast down a bit waiting for the bastard to come blundering through. I had to assume something like that was happening now, at least until I proved otherwise. I turned off the interior light switch that operates when the door is opened, slipped my arms into the service jacket and eased open the driver’s door. I dropped out and rolled under the car. Nothing happened so I worked my way back to the wheels, got my feet under me and scooted across to the other side of the road.