8 Hours to Die

by JR Carroll

  Cornstalk lounged back in his chair and gave the cop a surly look.

  ‘Come on,’ the cop said. ‘Let’s do this the quick and easy way. Then you’re free to go. Where do you live?’

  Cornstalk thought over the question. ‘In my britches,’ he said.

  The cop sat back, folded his arms across his chest. ‘Not for much longer,’ he said.

  Cornstalk sat up a bit straighter in the chair. ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘You’ll find out, you keep dicking me around,’ the cop said. He leaned right over the table and gave Cornstalk the hard stare. ‘Listen to me, Mister Smartarse with no name and no address. Keep on with this attitude, and I’m really going to fuck you up. Fair enough, you pinched a bike. Everyone’s entitled to go off the rails now and then. I’ve seen lots of young pricks like you, all full of moxie, never back down, stand by your mates—all that street gang bullshit. But you know what? No one knows and no one cares. No one’s impressed. You’re a hero in your own tiny mind, and that’s all. Far as I’m concerned, you’re nothing but another snot-nosed little arsehole. OK, you can do it the hard way. And we’ll get to that very soon, I assure you. But I’m a bit of a softie, so I’ll give you one last chance to do yourself a good turn. Tell me your name—or we’re through with talking.’

  Cornstalk thought about it for maybe five seconds. He wasn’t sure if he believed the cop would let him go if he cooperated, but a little voice in his brain told him not to trust this mongrel.

  He said: ‘You can go and fuck yourself, you fat pig.’

  They took him out the back of the cop shop to a red-brick laundry with a concrete floor and stone troughs along the rear wall. Soon as they were inside, they shut the door and the sergeant ordered him to undress. Cornstalk refused. One of the cops punched him in the stomach with tremendous force. Cornstalk doubled over, and the same cop pulled him up by the hair and gave him another one, same place. Then they threw him against a wall. He hit one of the troughs and came crashing down. Then they dragged all his clothes off and started putting the boot in.

  When they’d tired of that game they unwound a fire hose reel and turned on the tap, full blast. It took the three of them to hold onto the hose. The water cannon hurled Cornstalk all over the room, smashing him into walls and troughs. They were laughing themselves silly and having a hell of a time. It seemed a long time before they turned it off, but eventually they left, locking the door and leaving him in there for another hour or so.

  Cornstalk’s entire body was racked with pain. He struggled into his wet clothes and waited. Finally the sergeant came in and told him to get his arse into gear. Cornstalk wondered what was next.

  ‘All right, tough guy,’ the sergeant said when they were back inside. ‘You can fuck off now. Don’t come back here. I see you again, I won’t be so nice.’

  As Cornstalk was leaving, the cop said, ‘One more thing, sonny. You were never here. I’ve never clapped eyes on you. Try spreading any lies about what happened here, you’ll go down good and proper. Remember: you want to play hardball like a grown-up, you suffer like a grown-up. So just get on your way and keep your mouth shut.’

  Cornstalk never did tell anyone what those cops did to him. It wasn’t because he was scared of retribution—there was simply no point. Back in the seventies, cops ruled. Besides, if he’d told his old man, he probably would’ve got a belting from him, too. Even at his tender age, Cornstalk understood the laws of the jungle. The cop was right. You got what was coming to you and you took it and you didn’t whinge about it. You didn’t run to your mummy and daddy; you didn’t give up anyone, even those filthy swine. You lived in your own head and you copped it sweet. But he never did forget about that laundry. He remembered every detail. He thought of it as a torture chamber.

  You’re a hero in your own tiny mind, and that’s all.

  Cornstalk moved into more organised petty crime. At night he and his crew would roam the streets, breaking into cars and stealing radios. In those days cars didn’t automatically come with built-in factory radios. Like heaters and air-conditioners, they were an optional extra. A vacant slot was left in the dashboard for a radio to be fitted by the owner. Car radios were big business; some of the best hi-fi models with quadraphonic sound cost a motza. They had to be specially installed.

  Cornstalk had it down to a fine art. It was simply a matter of forcing the little corner window, pushing your arm inside and lifting the button. Once inside the car, he could remove the radio, speakers and aerial in two, maybe three minutes. They’d carry a couple of travel bags to hold the night’s ill-gotten gains. Next day he’d sell them at a second-hand shop for twenty bucks apiece, more for a really top brand. The guy who ran the place said he’d take as many as Cornstalk could deliver, so it became a steady source of income.

  All this time he was still going to school. Not that he attended very often—he slept in a lot, especially after a long night on the job. He would tell his mother he was sick, and she didn’t seem to care. She’d even write him a note so as not to stir up any trouble. But one day his old man came home early and caught him watching TV.

  ‘Why aren’t you at school?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got a stomach ache,’ Cornstalk said—the tried-and-trusted standby; no one could prove you didn’t have a guts ache.

  ‘Stomach ache,’ his father said.

  ‘Yeah. Really hurts.’

  His father gave him a searching look. ‘Listen, son, I know what you’ve been up to of a night. Found your stash in your wardrobe.’

  Cornstalk suddenly went cold. He hadn’t got around to selling the last batch of radios—and now his old man had sprung him.

  ‘Possession of stolen goods,’ his father said. ‘That’s a serious crime. You could go to a juvenile detention centre for that.’

  ‘They’re not mine,’ Cornstalk said.

  ‘I know,’ his father said. ‘You stole them. Let’s see … Breaking into cars, stealing radios, handling stolen goods—Jesus, you’re a one-man crime wave.’ And he laughed. Then he turned deadly serious. ‘Get rid of that stuff—today. Don’t bring stolen goods here. You could get your mother and me into trouble too. You have to unload these things straight away. Once you’ve sold ’em, they can’t prove anything. And I don’t want cops coming around here, understand?’

  Cornstalk nodded. He was quite stunned and amazed. His old man was giving him the green light to carry on with his life of crime.

  ‘I’m going to the pub,’ his father said. ‘When I come back, I want to see those radios gone.’

  Soon as he was out the door, Cornstalk scrambled.

  One bright, sunny day when he was sixteen, Cornstalk had his first major run-in with the law. He and his mates were fooling around at a shopping mall—on a school day—when a security guard told them to cut it out and behave. Cornstalk responded by punching the man in the face several times, knocking out some teeth and breaking his jaw. At his trial at the Children’s Court, he was asked why he attacked the guard without provocation. Cornstalk replied that he didn’t know, but was feeling bored that day. He was put on probation for six months. But in the next year he got into trouble a couple more times, fighting again, and finished up doing a stretch in a juvie detention centre.

  When he got out of there, his father announced that the family was moving once again, this time to a place called Queanbeyan. Cornstalk had never heard of it. His father told him it was more or less a part of Canberra, but in New South Wales, not the ACT. Apparently housing was cheap there, and plenty of factory-type jobs were on offer. They settled in one of a number of run-down workers’ cottages that dated back to the mining era, when there was gold and silver in Queanbeyan. This one wasn’t big enough for their tribe, but somehow they all managed to squeeze in. Cornstalk was not impressed with his new environment, which was one of the rougher areas of a working-class city. It looked to him like they’d reached the end of the road; not until years later did he come to appreciate the rugged beauty of the Sout
hern Tablelands.

  He enrolled at the local high school and kept his nose clean for a term or so, then broke out again, bashing a boy for making a smart remark. For that he was suspended. His father gave him a decent cuff over the ear and impressed upon him the need to behave—word got around in a town this size. His father had a good, steady job, and didn’t want to lose it.

  ‘Do the right thing,’ he told his son. ‘You can leave at the end of the year and get a job.’

  ‘I hate school,’ Cornstalk said. ‘I want to leave now.’

  ‘You can’t leave now. You’re too young. Just do as you’re bloody well told for once in your life.’

  Cornstalk didn’t push it any further: his old man was drunk and in a dirty mood. But even Cornstalk could see that in a small, self-contained town he wouldn’t be able to run wild the way he was used to doing.

  Towards the end of that year, Cornstalk got it into his head that he wanted to join the army. He’d seen some ads on TV, soldiers jumping out of choppers wearing camouflage gear and cutting loose with machine guns. This was appealing, but he saw himself driving a tank. His father thought that was an OK idea if Cornstalk reckoned he could take the discipline.

  ‘You have to do what you’re told in the army,’ he said, ‘or they throw you in the stockade.’ But Bruno had no military experience. What did he know?

  ‘I won’t be going to no stockade,’ Cornstalk said. In truth, he didn’t really know if he could put up with being ordered around all the time, whether he could hold back from throwing a punch if some sergeant was shouting in his face.

  He applied shortly after he turned seventeen. It was 1976 and unfortunately the war in Vietnam was over. He thought it was just a matter of fronting up and passing the physical and they’d welcome him with open arms, give him a uniform and a rifle on the spot. He had no trouble passing the none-too-exacting physical, but bombed out on the written tests. Because he’d missed so much school, he was barely literate. He couldn’t spell, was unable to string a proper sentence together; his basic arithmetic was poor and his general knowledge scant. He couldn’t even name one of the countries on the blank map they put in front of him. The army’s standards were pretty low, Form 3 standard, but Cornstalk wasn’t even up to that.

  In the end he drifted out of school without officially leaving. After staying away three or four days one time, he decided to extend his absence for another week, then another and reached a stage where there was no point in going back to school. Later he could never remember when he cut his ties for good, or when his last day in class was. School could never teach him anything—at least anything he was interested in.

  By this time he had a girlfriend, a dim-witted skank named Cherie who enjoyed sex as much as Cornstalk did. She was also over-fond of alcohol, but had no tolerance for it, and when she was drunk she was very nasty indeed. Cornstalk had to straighten her out now and then when she turned on him in her drunken rampages, screaming at the top of her lungs over some minor bullshit. When she became pregnant, Cornstalk didn’t want to have anything to do with the kid—he was only a kid himself, and he didn’t love her anyway. Another mighty blue ensued—objects and abuse hurled, terrible scenes—and in the end he told her to take a hike. She disappeared from his life, and he never did find out if she had the baby. He hoped not. Who would want Cherie for a mother?

  Finished with school, Cornstalk couldn’t help but carve out a full-time career in crime. Since his old man was a lifelong thief and grafter, it was in his DNA. Despite the limitations of living in Queanbeyan, he resumed stealing from cars, did occasional burglaries and committed random acts of vandalism. He had a gang of several other dropouts; their headquarters was a disused mine, where they would drink beer and plot their escapades.

  Cornstalk was still bitterly disappointed at not getting into the army—it seemed so unfair when he was such a willing and able fighter. Why was it necessary to know all that other stuff?

  It was a blow he never got over.

  3

  The dirt road that ran from Gus’s store went for about sixteen kilometres, right to the boundary of the South East Forest. Along the way there were numerous turn-offs, tracks barely wide enough for a vehicle. They all led to the remnants of people’s dwellings from years ago. The odd rusted-on bushie or hermit still lived out there somewhere, though the only sign of life was the smell of woodsmoke or the sound of an axe or chainsaw now and then.

  A distinctive feature of the Pericoe Valley was the fact that it was off the grid as far as all public utilities were concerned. That meant no mains electricity, water supply or telephone lines. It was also a dead zone for mobile phones—no signal in or out. That last feature was the clincher for Tim. Out here he was absolutely incommunicado.

  Tim first heard about the valley while he was on a deep-sea fishing trip off Eden with a group of lawyers. One of them told him about this remote area that used to be a hippie commune where there were stunning views once you got deep inside it. Tim investigated and discovered a derelict farmhouse on the edge of the South East National Park that he bought for a song, along with a dozen hectares of bushland, then set about fixing the place up.

  That was ten years ago. The old farmhouse was still a work in progress. Most of the basic renovations Tim did himself, buying the necessary tools and learning the skills as he went along. He discovered early on that tradesmen didn’t travel this far—certainly not without a sizeable financial inducement, and even then it was difficult to get them out to the farmhouse. Delivery of materials was also a big problem. It took a whole year for the Colorbond roofing iron to arrive, then six months longer to engage the services of a roofing crew who were prepared to do the job instead of going fishing or surfing. It went on and on: carpenters; plumbers to install water tanks; glaziers—everything was a long wait. His original plan was to install solar panels on the roof, but the restricted access, plus the fact Tim could only be there on weekends, put that in the too-hard basket. Nobody wanted to work on weekends. Even finding the place was a major issue, since it didn’t have a postal address. And no phone signal meant tradies couldn’t call for directions, even supposing they were prepared to accept the challenge.

  Tim took the second-last turn. The road was so narrow in parts that the shrubbery brushed the sides of the Kluger. How the Colorbond guy got through was a mystery.

  This part of the valley was known unofficially as Black Pig Bend. According to local folklore, black feral boars, fearsome tusked monsters weighing up to 300 kilograms, ranged through this neck of the woods. They were apparently offspring of the original pigs released into the bush by the hippies. Tim had never seen one—didn’t want to—but he had noticed enough signs, such as rooted-up soil, trampled vegetation and half-eaten carcasses of a variety of smaller animals, to convince him they existed.

  Half a kilometre down the track, the house came into view. It was a traditional weatherboard farmhouse with a front and side veranda. Most of the exterior was in its original state except that the white paint had been scraped off and the timber stained. Tim had added an extra level upstairs, accessed via a steel spiral staircase, leading up to the master bedroom and a study, or spare bedroom. It seemed an extravagance at the time, but when you opened the curtains in the golden sunlight of early morning, the view was stunning. The mist-layered paddocks were dotted with kangaroos and the air was clean, occasionally ringing with birdsong. That made it all worthwhile.

  He pulled up and stared at the house. Everything was intact, which was a relief. There had been severe storms in the area since he’d been here last, with reports of some damage.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Come on, then.’

  They got out of the car. Tim went ahead, unlocking the steel security door and then the front door before entering the kitchen. A quick inspection assured him all was OK. No animals nesting in the rafters or rat or possum droppings on the floor. Amy followed, a decent-sized travel bag slung over her shoulder. She dropped the bag on the polished pine floor
boards. Tim gave her a hug. She didn’t exactly recoil but she didn’t warm to it either. He gave her a peck on the cheek and a slap on the backside anyway.

  ‘I’ll bring in the rest of the stuff,’ he said.

  ‘All righty,’ she said, picking up the bag again and heading upstairs to the bedroom. As he went out he heard her whistling. That was a positive sign.

  Outside in the late afternoon light, Tim paused to gaze at the bush. He always felt so much at peace with the world here. Nobody around for miles. He’d never met, or even seen, the handful of people scattered through the bush. Nor did he wish to. All he wanted, the very reason for coming here, was the peace and quiet of nature. He listened: nothing. Then a bird warbled somewhere nearby. It might have been talking to him.

  As he unpacked the car, he thought about Amy. When he’d suggested the weekend away she wasn’t interested at first, but then had a change of heart. She liked the place well enough, or seemed to, but it was definitely out of her comfort zone. He assumed that she wanted time to themselves after a difficult period. His fellow lawyers laughed off his concerns—they were more than happy to section off their own ball and chains. Your wife won’t walk, mate. She likes the money too much. But they weren’t married to Amy Hightower.

  A chilling thought suddenly hit him: What if she’d agreed to come here because she’d decided to tell him it was over? That would explain her behaviour, snapping at him for things that weren’t his fault.

  Bullshit.

  First he carried in the Esky containing ice-cold beer and white wine, along with meat for the barbecue, wrapped in silver foil. Then he returned for a box of groceries and other items, including the bread from Gus’s store. He was about to lower the rear door when his eyes fell on his briefcase. It contained $48 000 in cash, paid to him that day at lunch by a client, a wealthy businessman who owned a chain of restaurants. This was part payment of an account that would be worth much more by the time the case was over. The client paid for everything in cash, even his cars and the light plane he flew to his country property. Apparently he did not wish to leave a paper trail, for reasons Tim didn’t want to be told. The man had been charged with conspiracy to murder a business associate in connection with the purchase of racehorses. Tim believed he was guilty, but the police case was flawed and there was a good chance of an acquittal.