‘That’s the way he thinks,’ she said, ‘he likes to cover all the angles.’
‘He’s doing all right isn’t he?’ I let my eyes drift around the gadget-laden kitchen.
‘Yes, but he’s ambitious, he wants to be big.’
‘Why?’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t know, something to do I suppose. He’s not interested in me or the girls. What’s your next move, Mr Hardy?’ She looked at the bottle and I had the feeling that she was the sort of boozer who rewarded herself with a drink before she tackled anything hard just in case she didn’t make it. I moved the brandy out of reach.
‘I’m going after them, it’s time to break up their little game, get the thing running my way. Where’s this river place?’
She looked at me with her mother’s eyes, calculating.
‘Would you like to go to bed with me?’
‘Sure. Some other time.’ I thought of Kay again as soon as I spoke. I was fifteen hours late with my call; I felt impatient, eager to get the Chatterton case wrapped up, anxious to get on with what might be called my life.
She sighed. ‘I thought you might say that. I’ll take you to the river. If you don’t let me come you can go to hell. It’d take you a while to find out where it is.’
True, I thought, and she might be useful. It was a hell of a situation, impossible to lay down rules for. I was going up against two men I didn’t know. It was important that one of them didn’t get hurt. To take the wife and maybe-mother along could be a good move, she could anticipate how Selby might behave. Or it could be a recipe for disaster.
‘Are there any guns in the place?’
‘Yes, a couple.’
Great. They already had one of mine, I assumed, and there was the drug angle to think about. Who was using the stuff — Selby, Baudin, both of them?
‘Maybe we should get the police,’ Bettina said.
That decided me. The police were out, the last thing Lady C wanted was the prying eye of officialdom — there’d be no bonus for Hardy in that event.
‘No police,’ I said. ‘Let’s keep it in the family. You can come but you do exactly as I say. Right?’
‘All right. D’you want to go now? I’ll change.’
I nodded. She got up with the grace I’d noticed before — when she wasn’t drunk or traumatised she moved like a dancer. When she’d gone I grabbed a phone and dialled Kay’s home number; it rang and rang hopelessly. I hung up feeling numb and empty, also resentful — the Chattertons with their dynastic ambitions and hang-ups and middle class boredoms were a pain in the arse. I felt like a mercenary, disaffected but with no other side to switch to. I was in the mood for Baudin and Selby, guns and all.
Bettina came back wearing jeans and a white Indian shirt; her hair was pulled back and tied and her make-up was subdued. She carried a big leather shoulder bag and looked ready for action.
I picked up my tobacco and other things while she waited; I was still stiff and my arm hurt where the syringe had gone in; otherwise I was in fair shape.
‘Is there much grass up there?’ I asked her.
‘Plenty, why?’
I grabbed the brandy bottle. ‘We’ll take this for snakebite.’
22
I got my other gun, the Colt, from the Falcon. It’s an illegal gun but a good one. We took the Honda north. The Selbys’ weekender was at Wisemans Ferry, Bettina told me, but that’s all she’d say. She drove well; there wasn’t a lot of traffic but there were a few curly spots and she put the Honda through them with style. As we went I tried to reconstruct what I’d heard while the drug was working on me, but I was aware of gaps. ‘Up the river’ was clear and the intention to come to some decision about things, but not much more than that. I had a feeling that another person was involved — Leonidas Green? Albie Logan? I hoped it was Albie.
Bettina was quiet for a while, concentrating on her driving, and then she started spewing questions at me — about her mother, Henry Brain, Blackman’s Bay. I had a sense of someone pent-up and thirsty for self-knowledge. One thing was clear, she knew that this was a crisis in her life and that the old round of booze and parties and battles with her husband over trivialities was over. I asked her what she’d do with the Chatterton estate if it came to her.
‘I’d like to set up somewhere in the country,’ she said. ‘A farm, you know? Horses… it’d be good for the girls and might straighten me out. I don’t suppose it’ll happen.’
‘Hard to say. It’s your son she’s lining up for the dough.’
‘He could hardly be expected to care about me, I only saw him once.’
I shrugged. ‘He might be tickled pink to meet his Mum.’
‘That isn’t funny,’ she snarled.
‘Sorry, just trying to keep it bright.’
She slammed the Honda through a corner using gears and engine, no brake. ‘Are you ever serious, Hardy?’
‘Nup, I meet too many crooks and liars to be serious.’
She sighed. ‘I think you carry on like that because you’re nervous and don’t know what to do.’
‘That’s what I said.’
We left the highway and began the descent to the river which is big and bold the way rivers ought to be. The Hawkesbury is tidal, salt-water a good way up and has lots of sharks in it — there are also fashionable islands and a prison farm island where they send fashionable offenders like defaulting solicitors. We crept down the road to Wisemans Ferry — the place has been going for about 150 years but still consists of only a few stores and petrol pump. She turned left before the run down to the township and we bounced along a couple of hundred yards of track before she stopped and set the handbrake. We were on a steep hill running down to the river.
‘We’re close,’ she said.
I looked out across the river to the rugged cliff face on the other side; we were only about ninety kilometres from Sydney but it wasn’t too hard to imagine an Aborigine sneaking along that cliff hoping to spear his lunch. I tried to remember all the guff in the instruction manuals they’d thrown at us in Malaya: study the topography, high points, cover, look for exits — it all mattered, but what counted in the end was luck and guts.
‘Where’s the house?’
She pointed down to where two tin roofs glinted in the sun through a canopy of gum leaves.
‘Down there, the house back from the road.’
There was a proprietorial note in her voice and I squinted to get the layout clear. One of the houses did sit a few yards further back from the road and apparently such details counted up here; me, I’d have called it the one with the fibro cement painted white rather than green.
She watched me nervously while I checked the Colt and attended to the basics, like tucking my trousers into my socks and making sure I wasn’t going to lose a shoe heel at a crucial moment.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘First, make sure I don’t get hurt, second try not to hurt anyone else. Try to give them a hell of a fright if I can. Anyone likely to be home next door?’
‘No, they’re real weekenders.’
‘Okay, where would the cars be?’
‘On the other side. We’re sort of near the back here.’
‘Can you show me the way in and let me get a look at the cars as well?’
She nodded. Her lips were tight and she’d lost a bit of her high colour but she looked determined rather than afraid.
‘Let’s go. Remember our deal — you do what you’re told.’
I reached over, took out the keys and dropped them into the door pocket; we got out and I motioned at her not to slam the door. We walked down the road a bit and then took a rabbit track off into the trees. It was steep and Bettina steadied herself expertly on the slim-trunked gums as we went down.
The back fence of the Selbys’ lot was three strands of barbed wire strung on half a dozen rough posts. The words of the old World War I song rang through my mind — ‘hanging on the old barbed wire’ — nasty stuff, anti-people. The scrub came up to within a foot of the fence and afforded cover along its length. I pulled Bettina down.