by Peter Corris
‘Let me go’, the girl said, ‘I'm no use to you. Let me go, Clem!’
Clem slapped her hard across her tear-daubed face. ‘Shut up! Just shut up and let me think!’
There was a silence and we were all thinking fast and all thinking scared. The girl was telling the truth, that was clear, but I wondered if Clem saw all the consequences.
‘How did Riley take the news, Clem?’ I said quietly. Clem looked at me blankly. ‘He was … sort of shocked.’
‘You told him to get the money and come up here.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Jesus! I know what I'd do if I was him; I'd get hold of the biggest gun I could find and come up here and blow you away. Has he got any guts, this Riley?’
‘He has, he was an SP bookie in Sydney. He'd gone soft when I last saw him, but he used to do his own collecting.’
‘You're in trouble, son. There's nothing to stop him killing you, it's the best end to all his troubles. You'd better get out, Clem.’
‘Shit, where can I go? I was counting on getting the money.’
‘Ring the cops then, it's your only chance.’
It was exactly the wrong advice; the words seemed to jolt him out of a defeatist mood and into something else, he checked the bolt on the rifle and patted Dorothy on the head clumsily.
‘Sorry, Dot, stay put and you won't get into any trouble. It makes sense you know. I couldn't work out why she didn't come through with the money.’ He was talking to me now and running his left hand along the stained wood under the barrel of the rifle. I'd seen men do that before, in the army and not in the army, I'd done it myself; it meant you were ready to shoot and didn't mind being shot at. A lot of those men were dead.
‘I wanted the money, but I came for Riley and I'll get him. What does he drive, Dot, something flash?’
‘Volvo’, she said.
‘That'll do, I'll take that and head up to Queensland and get lost. Want to come along, Cliff?’ He was jocular but there was a desperation in it, as if he was screwing himself up to do something.
‘No thanks, Clem’, I said. ‘Listen, have you ever shot a man?’
‘No.’
‘It's not that easy.’
‘I'll manage. Now shut up, I need to organise this.’ He looked around the shed obviously picking the best cover assuming that Riley would come up the track. There wasn't much doubt about what was best—the plastic-covered cars were at right angles to each other in the middle of the shed; anyone down behind them would be protected on two sides. Dorothy and I would be off to one side, out of the line of fire from the track or the direction of the house, but with all that machinery around bullets could ricochet. I felt I had to make another try.
‘Give it up, Clem, you're just going down for the second time. He might have help. All the odds are against you.’
He ignored me and settled himself behind the cars with the box of ammunition beside him. He wriggled to get himself comfortable and then turned back towards us.
‘One sound out of you two, and I'll shoot you. Got it?’
Dorothy bit her lip and shot an anguished look at me. I nodded and she did the same. Clem eased himself up to look down the track when two shots sounded clear and sharp. They hadn't carried into the shed and I squinted out past the cars; the VW sank crookedly like a wounded buffalo.
‘The VW’, I said, ‘front and back. He doesn't want you to go to Queensland.’
Clem said nothing, then he tensed himself, lifted the rifle a little and let go two rounds, working the bolt smoothly; he mightn't have shot men but he knew his rifle.
‘Get him, Clem?’
‘No.’
‘Can you see his car?’
‘No.’
‘Probably left it well back. If he's any good he's disabled it.’
Clem turned on me fiercely and his head lifted up above the car. ‘Will you shut up, Cliff, I …’
A bullet whined off the bonnet of the car and two more whanged into the metal body. Clem dropped down and knocked over his ammunition. Dorothy was sobbing quietly in her chair and Clem's lips were moving silently.
‘Listen, Clem’, I said urgently, ‘you're an amateur at this and I once did it for money. You've got to go out and get him. You're pinned down as it is, he can call the shots.’
‘You said he might have mates.’
‘I was trying to persuade you to run, it's all different now. I don't think he'd bring anyone in on this. He wants you out, clean.’
‘Well, you tell me, if you're the professional.’
‘Go out the side there, get across to the house and work around behind him. Try not to kill him, Clem, they'll let you rot if you do.’
‘What's the odds.’ He put a handful of bullets into the pocket of the jeans and wriggled across to the side of the shed. He took his time, moved back and deeper into the shadow thrown by the post and then he snaked across towards some bushes by the house.
‘Dorothy’, I hissed. ‘Are you okay?’
Her answer was a sniff.
‘Quick, get the pliers off the bench.’
She sat frozen in the chair like an accident victim.
‘Dorothy, move! There'll be bullets flying everywhere unless I can stop this! Move!’
She got up and stumbled over to the bench. ‘Pliers’, she said.
‘Right, to cut this wire. Quick, give them here.’
She got them and I hacked at the wire with my left hand; I lost a bit of skin in the process but having the use of both hands again was like being given a million dollars. I bent low, and scuttled across to where Clem had left the Smith & Wesson when he went back for the rifle. I held it and looked at it, and wondered what the hell difference it made. The girl was standing by the bench; she wiped the hand that had held the pliers on her blouse and left a dark, oily stain on her right breast. She glanced at it and giggled, she was close to hysteria. I took her arm and herded her across to the shed to a point nearest the house. There was no sign of Clem or Riley.
‘Get across there and ring the police. The window's broken by the door, you can reach in. After you've phoned, stay there; you'll be safe.’
She ran across to the porch and made it into the house. I breathed out and turned my attention back to the track in front of the shed. The light was just starting to fade and a slight breeze was moving the trees and bushes. I took the .38 off safety and crouched down behind a post at the front of the shed. After ten minutes or so Riley came into view, working his way along in the scrub towards my corner of the shed. He would have been invisible from behind the cars. He looked back down the track and froze, I ducked behind a packing case and then he came on. He was doing it slow and careful and he held the short, stubby carbine lightly and ready for use. He was a big man, over six feet with a full belly and a wide, pale face. His hair was dark and thin; he wore grey slacks and white shirt, the dark hair made his thick forearms look almost black. There were big sweat patches under his arms. I waited until he had got up to the post then I tossed some sand out onto the track. He turned at the sound and I came up and put the .38 in the nape of his neck.
‘Put the rifle down Riley, or I'll blow your head off.’
He stood stock still for a second, I jabbed him with the muzzle and he bent and put the rifle down. He was standing there, full frontal, six feet high and three feet wide when Clem stepped out of the scrub thirty yards away. He lifted the .303 and sighted.
‘Clem, don't!’ I yelled.
‘Move away, Cliff, I'm going to kill him.’ He moved a bit closer stiffly, with the rifle still up. Then from behind Clem a woman's voice screamed ‘No!’
Clem swung back towards the sound, I stepped away from Riley to look and saw a small figure running up the track. Then Riley bent smoothly, picked up the carbine and fired a short burst. Clem's head flew apart and he pitched backwards still holding the .303. The woman ran up the track screaming and screaming and then we heard the sirens.
Riley gave me a lot of the credit. He said he coul
dn't have shot Clem in self defence if I hadn't created the diversion. Dorothy told the cops I'd been tied up, how I got loose and that it was me who sent her to call them. A doctor treated me for abrasions to the wrists; my gun hadn't been fired. I was clean.
Riley told his story pretty straight; he said Clem had phoned him, told him he was holding the girl and demanded money and a car. Riley came to try to talk some sense into him and Joannie for the same reason. He said Clem had fired twice at him with the .303 and that checked out. They were a little concerned about a private citizen possessing an Ml but hell, he'd been shotgunned hadn't he?
I cleaned up in town and the police drove me back to where my car was. I drove slowly back to Sydney along the coast road. I thought of well-padded Riley with all his problems solved, and I thought of Clem's wife, a neat, dark little woman who'd stood still and said nothing. And I remembered Clem telling me that he thought she was pretty.
Silverman
If I hadn't been so busy worrying about money and my carburettor—the sorts of problems that beset your average private detective in the spring—I would have taken note of them out in the street. The car I did notice—a silver Mercedes, factory fresh. But then, that's not an impossible sight in St Peter's Lane. We get the odd bookie dropping by, a psychoanalyst or two, the occasional tax avoidance consultant. I also saw a man and a woman in the car, nothing discordant about that really, as I went into the building and up to my office to move the bills and accounts rendered around.
I was at my desk wanting a cigarette (but fighting against it), with a slight breeze from the open window disturbing the dust, when the door buzzer sounded. I got up and let them in. The woman walked over to the solidest chair and plonked herself down in it; she needed everything the springing could give her—she must have been close to six feet and wouldn't have made the light heavyweight limit. Her hair was jet black and her make-up was vivid. Of women's clothes I'm no judge; hers looked as if they'd been made for her out of good material. She got cigarettes in a gold case out of a shiny bag, lit up, and waited for the man to do whatever he was going to do.
He was a plump, red-faced little number with lots of chins and thin hair. His dark blue suit had been artistically cut, but the unfashionable lines of his body had easily won out. He looked like a funny, little fat man, but I had a feeling that his looks were deceptive.
‘I'm Horace Silverman, Mr Hardy’, he said. ‘This is my wife, Beatrice. I'm in real estate.’
I nodded; I hadn't thought he was a postman.
‘We are concerned about our son’, Silverman went on. ‘His name is Kenneth.’ I opened my mouth, but he lifted a hand to silence me. ‘Kenneth left home a year ago to live with other students. He was attending the university.’
‘Was?’ I said alertly.
‘Yes. He suspended his studies; I believe that's the term. He also changed his address several times. Now we don't know where he is, and we want you to find him.’
‘Missing Persons’, I said.
‘No! We have reason to believe that Kenneth is in bad company. There may be … legal problems.’
‘How bad?’
‘The problems? Oh, not bad. A summons for speeding, a parking violation. Others may be pending.’
‘It doesn't sound serious. You'd be better off using the police, scores of men, computers …’
The red deepened in his face and his big, moist mouth went thin and hard; any affability he'd brought in with him had dropped away.
‘I said no!’ He slammed his palm down on my desk. ‘I'm involved in some very delicate business negotiations; very delicate, with a great deal of money involved. The slightest complication of my affairs, the slightest hint of police hanging about, and they could fall through.’ He got the words out with difficulty through the rising tide of his anger. He seemed intolerant of opposition. Maybe Kenneth knew what he was doing. The woman blew smoke and looked concerned but said nothing.
‘Okay, okay’, I said. ‘I'm glad of the work. I charge seventy-five dollars a day plus expenses. You get an itemised account. I take a retainer of two hundred dollars.’
He dipped into the bulging pocket of his suit coat and fished out a chequebook. He scribbled, ripped and handed the cheque over—five hundred dollars.
‘Do you want them shot, or tortured to death slowly?’ I said.
‘Who?’
The woman snorted ‘Horace’, crushed out her cigarette in the stand and levered herself up from the chair. I gathered that they were going.
‘Not so fast. I need names, addresses, descriptions, photographs …’
He cut me off by hauling a large manila envelope out of his other pocket and dumping it on the desk. I hoped his tailor never saw him out on the street.
‘I'm busy’, he said shortly. ‘All you'll need is there. Just find him, Mr Hardy, and report to me.’ He'd calmed down; he was happiest telling people what to do.
‘It could be unpleasant’, I said. ‘He might be smoking cigarettes, taking the odd drink …’
‘A full report, no punches pulled.’
‘You'll get it.’ I opened the door and he bustled out. She cruised after him, still looking concerned. He seemed to have brought her along just to prove that the boy had a mother.
I sat down at the desk again, propped the cheque up in front of me and opened the envelope. There were three photographs, photostats of a parking ticket and a speeding summons and of a letter, dated two months back, from the Registrar of the University of Sydney. It ws directed to Kenneth at an address in Wahroonga. There was also a sheet of Horace Silverman's business paper half-covered in type.
The typed sheet gave me the low-down on Ken. Born in Sydney twenty-one years ago, six feet tall when last measured and slim of build, fair of hair with no marks or scars. The last meeting with his parents was given and dated—a dinner eight weeks back. Two addresses in the inner suburbs were listed, and it was suggested that the Registrar's letter had been sent to Ken's home address by mistake. His interests were given—tennis, bushwalking and politics. His major subject at university was psychology, and a Dr Katharine Garson was listed as his student counsellor.
The photos were black and white, good quality, good size. They showed a young man in his late teens or around twenty, all three shots roughly contemporaneous. Kenneth Silverman had it all—thick, wavy hair, even features, broad shoulders. I'd have taken bets that his teeth were good. One of the pictures showed him in tennis gear, and he looked right; in another he was leaning against a sports car and he looked right in that too. I couldn't see any resemblance to Horace, maybe a little to Beatrice. There were none of those signs-weak chin, close-set eyes—that are supposed to indicate, but don't, character deficiencies. Kenneth Silverman looked healthy and happy.
Sydney University was just down the road and Silverman's last known address was in Glebe, my stamping ground. I went down to the street and along to the backyard of the tattooist's shop where I keep my car. In an ideal world, I'd find the boy in Glebe before three o'clock, deposit my cheque, draw some out and be home in time to invite someone out to dinner.
The Fisher Library of the University of Sydney is a public place, like the whole campus. This statutory fact has been found useful by a few Vice-Chancellors who've felt the need to call the cops in. I got there a little after midday and looked up Dr Garson in the handbook—a string of degrees, senior lecturer in psychology. The Psychology Department was in one of those new concrete buildings that academics have allowed themselves to be herded into. They have as much personality as a bar of soap and, in my experience, they have a corresponding effect on the people who work in them. Not Dr Garson though; she'd done her concrete cell out with pictures that actually looked like people and places, and she had a flagon of sherry sitting on the window ledge.
‘A sherry?’ she said when she'd installed me in a chair.
‘Please; then I can show you what good manners I've got, how well I can sip and murmur appreciatively.’
‘Don'
t bother’, she said pouring, ‘piss is piss’. She set the glass on the desk near me and took a belt herself. ‘So you're a private detective? Some of my colleagues wouldn't allow you on the campus, let alone in their rooms.’
‘It's a public place.’
She raised one plucked eyebrow. ‘So it is.’ She finished her sherry and poured another. She had fine bones in her wrists and even finer ones in her face.
‘I want some information about a student you counselled.’ She laughed. ‘Unlikely.’
‘I want to help him—find him, that is.’
She sipped. ‘Perhaps he wants to stay lost.’
‘He still can if he wants to.’ I drank some of the sherry, dry. ‘I find him, report to his father and that's that.’
‘You don't look like a thug, Mr Hardy, but you're in a thuggish trade. Why should I help you?’
‘One, you've got an independent mind, two, Silverman might be in trouble.’
She didn't jump out of her skirt at the name but she didn't treat it like a glass of flat beer either.
‘Kenneth Silverman’, she said slowly.
‘That's right, rich Kenneth who dropped out and disappeared. His Mum and Dad would like to know why. You wouldn't be able to put their minds at rest by any chance?’
‘No.’
‘Can't or won't?’
‘Can't. I was surprised when he dropped out, he was doing well.’
‘What did you do about it?’
She finished her sherry with an exasperated flick. ‘What could I do? I counsel twenty students and teach another sixty. I wrote to him asking him to contact me for a talk. He didn't.’
‘Had you counselled him much?’
‘No, he didn't seem to need it.’
‘It looks now as if he did.’
‘Not really, he became radical at the beginning of the year. It happens to most of the bright ones, although a bit late in his case. The process sends some of them haywire but Ken seemed to be able to handle it. His first term's work was excellent, he trailed off a bit in early second term, nothing serious, then he just suspended for no reason.’