The All-Purpose Bodies: A Fast-Paced Thriller (Commander Shaw Book 11)

by Philip McCutchan

  Flatly I said, “Jake Dunwoodie has disappeared,” and I watched his face closely, and I’m pretty certain he’d had no whisper of the facts — or maybe he was just a good actor; I couldn’t really have been totally certain at that time.

  He said, “Look, you playing some bloody stupid game, because if —”

  “No games,” I said. I gave him the whole story. He stared at me like a landed fish, while a small vein pumped away in his right temple and his face went a deeper and deeper red till I thought he was about to have himself a stroke. I could tell from the way Brett Cleland kept sucking in little hissing breaths between his teeth that he thought I was being dangerously indiscreet but I’d formed the impression that Learoyd could be got at, penetrated, only by shock tactics. And I could see something else, this time in Learoyd’s face: the Lifeforce boss was reliving something of his own past experience and wondering if he was going to get caught up messily in this. Just to drive his anxieties right home I said, “You’ll note Dunwoodie disappeared from Brisbane, Mr Learoyd?”

  “Well, so what?” he said, still with a note of arrogance. “Given he disappeared, it had to be from somewhere, hadn’t it?”

  “True enough,” I said, “but what interests me is that you disappeared from Brisbane as well, Mr Learoyd.”

  Suddenly he lost his colour, going very pale and blotchy. Then the redness came back, suffusing his whole face and neck. He moved backwards towards his desk and rested his rump on the edge of it. “What the flaming bloody hell are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” I said. “I wouldn’t try to deny it if I were you. Let me repeat — Dunwoodie’s disappeared. He has to be got back. He’s already been gone for longer than you. You may be able to help us.”

  “Me? How the can I? I don’t know anything about this!”

  “I’m not necessarily suggesting you do, but you may be able to give us a lead — by telling us where it was you spent that last night before you had that lapse of memory.”

  Quickly he said, “Yes, that’s all it was, a lapse of memory, that’s the truth.”

  “Again, I never suggested anything to the contrary, did I? I’m perfectly prepared to take your word for that, Mr Learoyd. It doesn’t matter — to me, anyhow. If you’ll just tell me where you’d been that night, that’s all I want to know for now.”

  Learoyd’s tongue came out and he licked at his lips. “I don’t remember,” he said.

  “No?”

  “It’s part of the memory gap.”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s too bad, it really is. If you can’t remember, Mr Learoyd, I’ll have to pass a little information on to the authorities in Canberra about that absence of yours. You’re not going to like that, I know, but it really can’t be helped as things are. So far, you’ve managed to cover up, haven’t you — or Dunwoodie has, for you?”

  He stared at me, hating my guts. He opened his mouth and the obscenities came out thick and fast. I swear if he’d had a gun in his hand he’d have used it there and then without a moment’s thought. When he stopped cursing me I didn’t say a thing, and then he licked his lips again and because, I suppose, he saw he’d no real option he said in a hoarse croak, “All right. But I’m going to get you for this, Shaw, you lousy pommy bastard.”

  “I can look out for myself,” I said. “Just tell me, that’s all.”

  He said, “There’s a woman in Brisbane.” He hesitated and I saw the look he gave Brett Cleland. “In Cowrun Road.”

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “Lily Earring,” he told me. “House called Leehop. I was with her that night and that’s all I know. And I hope the knowledge flaming rots your bloody guts.” He was panting a little now, a curious sound. And his hands were shaking badly. He said, “It’s a total blank. I’d been on a fourteen-day leave and I’d gone to Brisbane, where my sister used to live. That was home, after my wife died. Then my sister died and I kept the place on as somewhere to spend my leaves. I spent a pretty quiet time. Had the odd drink — you know how it is on your own. I woke up one day and found it was six days later. The last night I c’d remember … I’d been round at Lily’s place. I went round to see her, but there wasn’t any flaming answer. When I got back here, I got the MO to run me over. He said there was nothing wrong. Just that I had a sort of amnesia.”

  *

  When we were alone in the car I asked Brett, “Why was he in such a stew — apart from any medical worries, I mean? I thought Australia was broad-minded enough these days. Can’t a man, especially a widower, have a woman on the side without getting in such a tizzy when he has to confess?”

  “Sure,” Brett answered, grinning, “but not an abo. Not even now. Cowrun Road isn’t strictly a road, it’s a district outside Brisbane and it’s where the abos mostly live. And going with abo women carries a certain connotation in the minds of the respectable matrons and dignitaries of this here Commonwealth of ours!”

  5

  Back in Darwin there was a message from the police that they wanted to see us at the station as soon as we came in. “Learoyd been trying to put a spoke in the wheel?” Brett asked. Somehow I doubted that and I was right, because when we got round to the station the sergeant told us there had been a radio call from Slattery in Sydney. It had evidently come through while we’d been on the road back from Cape Scott, for the sergeant had called Lifeforce and had been told we’d been checked out. Anyway, Slattery wanted me to call him at the Warrandarralong post office, down in New South, where he would be at 1400 hours. It seemed I wouldn’t be able to get him before then. So I called him at the appointed time and his voice, distorted with interference, crackled at me over the air as he said, “Look, I can’t talk a lot just now. You’ll understand that. Thing is — there’s been some activity down the line from you, south of Newcastle Waters. The eastern system. I reckon you’d better check along from there right down to Alice.” That was all Slattery said and he didn’t give me a chance to ask him to elaborate just a little before he went off the air. Probably he couldn’t have done that anyway. With my temper a shade ragged at the edges from the hot sun I went back to our hotel and found Brett Cleland in the bar sinking a beer and I passed on what the Sydney boss had said.

  “Reckon he means the pipelines all right,” Brett said, “but God knows what he expects us to do!”

  I said, “I dare say we’ll find out. A run right down the line. I suppose that means the Stuart Highway, all — what? — around a thousand miles of it.”

  Brett grinned. “Dead right, plus the deviations en route, following along the branch lines.”

  “Off the highway?”

  “Yep.”

  “How’re the roads, when you get off the highway?”

  He shrugged and said, “So-so. They’ve built feeder roads, mainly for cattle movement, but the pipes don’t necessarily follow the roads, not all the time.”

  “Lovely,” I said sardonically. “In that case, I don’t fancy the trip in that hire car. A Land Rover’s more in my line for that sort of work. It shouldn’t be beyond Darwin’s resources to produce one, I suppose.”

  I had a beer with Brett, then, hot as it was to rouse anyone out on a job of work, we went round to Dan Macey, the garage proprietor from whom I’d hired the car. He would have a Land Rover available, he said, from the next afternoon and we could have it for as long as we wanted it. So that was fine. Brett and I spent the rest of the afternoon fixing our stores and sleeping equipment for what was likely to prove a long while on the road, and in between times we wondered what in hell it could be that Slattery had referred to so obliquely as ‘some activity down the line’. It had us beaten. Sabotage, of course, seemed the most likely thing he’d had in mind, but if that was the case I’d have thought it much more probable that he would have alerted the official people and got the RAAF to carry out a troop drop along the pipelines rather than leave it to Cleland and me. If anything interrupted the flow of water, at any rate for any length of time,
the result was going to be dead serious.

  Cleland said, “We’ll just have to be ready for anything, that’s all, and don’t ask me what.”

  “If that’s all you can contribute,” I said, “I won’t!”

  He grinned. “Sorry. But I did gather from what you said that Slattery didn’t sound too urgent about whatever it was.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed, and reflected that that aspect militated against sabotage too. So we left it at that. And that evening after our early supper I saw Tracy Learoyd again, getting out of a lush-looking Fairlane at the Oak South Hotel. What really intrigued me was that he had Flair Dunwoodie with him. As it happened he didn’t see me, but she did, and she gave me a quick wink behind his back, and a little shake of her head. I took the hint and slid away behind a big screw-pine as Learoyd turned from the car. He looked off balance still, I thought. He and Flair went into the Oak South. I wondered, rather grimly, what Flair was giving away in exchange for information about her husband, and whether or not Learoyd would tell her about Lily Earring who, for my money — assuming Learoyd had told the truth about himself — was the same woman Jake Dunwoodie had been with. I fancied he wouldn’t; that, in his mind anyway, was far too deadly a secret. I hadn’t trusted what I’d seen of Learoyd and I didn’t find it at all difficult to visualize him bedding Dunwoodie’s wife in exchange for a faked-up name and address in Brisbane or anywhere else for that matter. I hoped the girl knew what she was doing; I decided she did and I found I was trying not to see her in Learoyd’s bear-like embrace and hoping I’d been quite wrong and that in fact he was much too worried about his own position now to be bothering about sex.

  It was latish when I went to bed that night. Before I turned in I checked over all the gear for our forthcoming trip. I had it all in my bedroom: cooking apparatus, stocks of tinned food and milk, half a case of scotch and some brandy, some cans of beer, medical necessities, and plenty of spare clips of ammunition for our automatics and my own personal Beretta. Petrol, oil, and water would be picked up at Dan Macey’s when we took over the Land Rover itself; I had just finished checking against my list when I heard the faintest possible movement outside my window and I reached for my gun and flicked the light off and then moved fast and silent for the side of the window, all ready for action.

  Then someone tapped on the open sunblind slats.

  I hadn’t expected that.

  I waited and the tap was repeated and after another few moments a girl’s voice, low and soft, called me by name. I let out my breath in a long hiss and pulled the cord of the sunblind and I saw Flair’s form outlined against a high full moon. I snapped, “Is your cloak-and-dagger really necessary?”

  “This is Australia,” she reminded me, leaning in over the sill with one leg already up, “and more than that, it’s Darwin. They’d never have let me into your bedroom at this time of night, even if they’d answered the door in the first place.”

  “All right,” I said resignedly. “Come in your way, then.”

  I helped her through and I rather liked it when I had her in my arms for the moment of entry. I think she liked it too, but she wriggled away towards a cane chair and sat down. I dropped the blind again and snapped the light on. She had a high colour, I noticed, and her eyes were diamond bright and she looked a little dishevelled as to her clothing. I felt savage about Learoyd but all I said was, “Well?”

  She tossed that long, honey hair. “All is well,” she said. “But only just.”

  “Meaning he tried it on but didn’t succeed?”

  She nodded. “Too right. That man’s not my style, not in that way. I had a feeling he’d lie to me anyway.”

  I said, “Good. I’d say you were right. Do I take it you got nothing out of him at all, Flair?”

  “Nothing,” she said. I was watching her face and was pretty sure she was speaking the truth.

  I asked, “How did you find my room just now?”

  “I saw you,” she said. “You had the sunblind open. I just came on the chance. I felt like talking to someone, preferably you, Esmonde.”

  “I’m glad. Care for a drink?”

  “Love one,” she said, and sounded as if she meant it. “What’ve you got?”

  I indicated the pile of stores. “There’s whisky. Genuine John Haig.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “What’s all that lot for?”

  “Just a road trip,” I said evasively. “Could be a long one.”

  “Oh dear,” she said. “When do you leave, or mustn’t I ask?”

  “You’ll pick up the gossip soon enough anyway. I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon, with Brett Cleland.”

  She nodded. “So the trail runs on, and away from Darwin,” she murmured. She didn’t really seem all that interested; she was sitting in that cane chair still, and it was on the big side, and she had drawn her legs up beneath her buttocks and was sitting sideways — and looking more than seductive. She smiled up at me as I poured two scotches. She said, “So you’re going to leave me all alone, are you?”

  I shrugged. “It’s what you were before I came, isn’t it?” Suddenly I wanted her, badly.

  “Yes,” she said, “I suppose so.”

  “Anyway,” I said, feeling, for no reason at all, on the defensive, “your reason for being here is over too, I’d have thought.”

  “You mean Tracy Learoyd? Well, yes, I suppose it is.”

  “So?”

  She said off-handedly, “Oh, I don’t know yet. I may stay around. There are other people who knew Jake, of course, but none so well as Tracy. I may fly down to Sydney. Or I may go back to London after all, I don’t know. I’m a bit in the air, really.”

  “D’you feel the whole thing has been rather a wasted journey, Flair?”

  “I don’t think so altogether,” she said, and smiled at me again. I handed a glass to her and she thanked me and said, “Here’s luck, then, which I think we’re both going to need, thanks to my bloody husband,” and she took it in a couple of quick swallows. It wasn’t very ladylike but it seemed to do her good.

  “Another?” I asked, and reached out for the glass.

  She shook her head. “No. It’s time I went to bed.” I took the empty glass from her, and as I did so her fingers slid slowly, warmly up my bare arms. I fancied there had been an invitation in her tone when she had said she must go to bed — and I wanted like hell to take her up on it. I really needed her just then and of course she must have sensed that. But I didn’t say anything because I didn’t care for the prospect of getting over-involved with the wife of the man I was being paid handsomely to find, nor did I want to cross those wires. So all I did was to murmur, “Me too. I’ve a long drive ahead.” And then I added casually, “Have you ever heard of Lily Earring?”

  She stared at me, obviously puzzled. “What’s she — a pop singer, or a whole group?”

  “Neither,” I said. “She’s — just a girl I used to know in — Sydney. I wondered if you’d ever come across her, that’s all.”

  “Never,” she said. “Come to think of it, it sounds like an abo name. Was she — is she?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She gave a sudden rather loud laugh. “Well, well,” she said, “I’d never have thought it. Perhaps if you finish this job quickly, you’ll be able to have a spell in Sydney when you can rout her out again.”

  “Yes,” I said, “perhaps I will.”

  She got up then and said goodnight and went out again via the window. I helped her through; I liked the scent of her hair. When she was outside she leaned back in again and kissed me on the mouth. I liked that, too. Then she was gone, a dark, melting shadow moving quickly against the moon and around the corner of the wooden building, and I was left to curse myself for an over-scrupulous bloody fool.

  *

  In the morning she rang and asked for me and I took the call in the proprietor’s office, once again dislodging the skinny girl, Hilda. Flair said, “I’d like to see you before you leave.”

  “
What for?”

  “There’s something that might help. I can’t tell you on the phone.”

  I said, “I’ll come round.”

  “Lovely,” she said, “but for various reasons, not till after lunch. I’ll explain when I see you. I rang early in case you went out.” She hesitated. “How about a drink to see you on your way?”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll be all ready to go by 1400 hours. That do?”

  “Yes. Come along then — to the Oak South. I’ll be in the lounge. And I think you’d better bring Brett Cleland along too.”

  She rang off and I got my grip packed up and I settled my bill, and later I strolled down the tree-lined road in the fierce heat towards Dan Macey’s garage. He already had the Land Rover in and I stood and watched while he checked her right over and got the petrol, oil, and water-cans stowed. I left the deposit and signed up for the vehicle and took her away to our hotel, where Brett and I loaded her up with all the gear out of my room. After a quick lunch we drove round to the Oak South and parked the Land Rover round the back of the hotel beneath some thickly growing trees that would keep the worst of the heat off her. We went into the lounge and sat down and waited, because Flair hadn’t turned up yet. I kept glancing rather irritably at my watch. Cleland yawned and asked after a while, “How long do we wait, anyway?”

  “I’ll give her another five minutes,” I said, “then I’ll get a message sent to her room.”

  And in five minutes’ time I did that. I was informed, within another five minutes, that the lady wasn’t in her room.

  I asked, “She hasn’t checked out, has she?”