I BECAME WORRIED about Cassie. I hadn’t seen her since the bail application, and she hadn’t been answering my calls. I drove to her place and found the wire door to the apartment was open and had been prised with a crowbar, as had her front door. The radio was tuned in to the ABC’s FM classical music station where she had it when the TV wasn’t on. Inside cupboard doors were open. Coat-hangers were strewn on the floor. The bed was unmade and in the kitchen dishes were piled up in the sink. In the living room, ash from the fireplace had spilled onto the rug. I touched the ash. It was still hot. A bottle of perfume sat out of place on the dining-room table, and a piece of white lace lingerie was crumpled on the floor. It was not like Cassie, who carried her ordered approach to research into the rest of her life.
The door to her study was locked.
I felt a spine chill as I noticed that a piece of the carpet where Maniguet had been guillotined had been removed. I went over and cleared away rubbish from an upturned waste-paper basket so I could examine the cut in the carpet. Amongst the debris was a a damaged answer-phone cassette. The tape had been pulled loose from it.
I found a screwdriver and spent ten minutes threading the tape back in before flicking it into the machine to hear it. The lead-in from Cassie said she could be contacted on an 059 number.
I rang the number. There was no answer. I checked directory enquiries and found that the number was listed for Somers, a Westernport Bay resort address. It was an hour’s drive away. I left a message on Farrar’s answer machine, telling him where I was headed.
I reached Somers just before midnight and parked the Rolls a good hundred metres from where the house should have been. I had trouble finding it and had to stumble down a track from Parklands Avenue through the tea trees to the beach and then work my way round the rear of the place. A wooden water-break two metres high ran parallel to the fence, which was five metres or so above water level. There was barbed wire along the fence and a sign said, Keep Out, Private Property. Despite this, a rickety gate opened. A path over a small rise in the tea tree scrub led to a back door of a wooden holiday home which had a pre-fab look about it. Lights were on.
A car door slammed at the front. I edged along the side of the house.
Cassie was carrying a suitcase towards a red Porsche waiting under a light at the front gate. One figure was sitting at the wheel and another in the passenger seat.
There was a noise behind me. I turned to see Cochard pointing a sawn-off shotgun. He charged and swung the weapon. I ducked and fell. Cassie screamed, dropped her case and began running towards us. She was restrained by the people who had been sitting in the car. As Cochard half-turned towards them, I saw them clearly under the light on the gate.
Walters and Danielle.
Cochard kicked my thigh and pointed the shotgun at my chest. Walters helped Danielle push Cassie to the car and they forced her into the back seat. Danielle and Walters returned to Cochard and the three of them began arguing. Cochard wanted to blow my brains out. Danielle said another murder would be dangerous for their escape. Walters stepped in and told Cochard to tie me up and lock me in a secure room. He left Danielle to mind Cassie in the car and finally ordered Cochard to wait half an hour, in which time he was to dig a grave, and then execute me.
Cochard asked why he couldn’t kill me first and then bury me? No, Walters explained, he didn’t want any gunshot sound while he was still in the vicinity. Cochard objected, saying that he could do it inside and muffle the sound. Walters insisted that Cochard should not kill me before they had been gone thirty minutes.
The executioner finally agreed. Walters departed, telling him they were to meet as planned at a farmhouse. He kept his voice down as if it would matter if I heard. Cochard complained he had not been there. Walters said he should study a certain map again. Then he got in the car with the two women. Cochard watched the Porsche reverse down a winding path towards Parklands Avenue.
I felt nauseated. I had killed his best buddy, perhaps even his lover. Mine would not be an easy death. He strolled over to me.
‘Get up,’ he said.
Cochard found a shovel and a flashlight in a tool shed at the back of the house and took me out to a clearing amongst the tea trees. He scraped the ground for a minute. There was an urgency in his controlled manner as the shovel was dropped at my feet.
‘One metre deep,’ he said.
I began to dig. The earth was soft and sand was just below the surface. I made out it was tough going.
‘Vite,’ Cochard said, ‘vite!’
He laid the flashlight on the ground so that it was trained on me. He sat on a log, juggling the shotgun in his left hand and lighting a cigarette with his right. Because of the flashlight, he was just a silhouette and the smoke from his Gaulloise formed a light cloud halo about him. He began that shoulder spasm, but this time it was much slower and more rhythmical than ever before. Like a silent drum roll.
‘I’d like a cigarette,’ I said.
‘Dig!’ he snarled.
‘It’s the least you could do.’
‘Fermez la bouche! Bêchez!’
In three weeks I had seen a few final resting places. The heavy rain at Fawkner Cemetery had made Martine’s grave a watery bog. There was Freddie’s perfunctory memorial. And now, amongst the scrub and tea tree was my very own rough bed of sand. I grunted and again made it look tougher than it was.
With ten minutes to go before the deadline, Cochard flicked away his cigarette stub and stood over me. He wanted plus vite, and I wanted plus lent.
We heard the whine of a car engine pulling up at the front fence, and someone snapping his way through the scrub. Cochard stood open-mouthed, his shotgun held in front of him. The intruder stopped.
There was silence except for the hum of cicadas.
‘Claude?’ Cochard called, ‘Claude?’
A split second later a shot was fired and Cochard clutched a shoulder. I fell forward in the hole and lay flat. Cochard fired twice. The assailant came out of the scrub as Cochard tripped over me and landed on his back. He still held the weapon. The assailant ran forward and fired again. Cochard was struck a second time, and he went down with a sudden expulsion of air. The assailant stumbled into the open and straddled the grave. It was Farrar. He fired once more at Cochard’s head from no more than a metre.
It wasn’t until we were inside that I noticed Farrar had been hit in the arm. It was a grazing blow, but the heavy bullet had sliced off a piece of shirt and flesh. Farrar had wrapped a white towel round it.
There was a map of Victoria and New South Wales on the kitchen table but nothing except arrows along the Hume Highway between Melbourne and Sydney had been marked for Cochard’s benefit.
‘They left a half hour ago,’ I said, ‘will they drive straight through?’ Farrar held his arm.
‘Dunno,’ he said, ‘but it’s not your problem.’
‘It is. They’ve got Cassie.’
‘Forget her,’ he said, ‘she’s probably in with ’em.’
I didn’t respond.
‘Look, mate,’ he said, ‘you’ve got more guts than a tennis-racket factory, but to chase them would be bloody mad!’
I studied the map.
‘You’re right out of your league, Duncan,’ he persisted, ‘look at what just happened. They had you, mate. If I hadn’t rung Morris’s place and heard her cassette, you would have been dead meat.’
‘It hasn’t stopped you.’
‘I’m a pro. Besides, I’ve been protecting my investment. If they get you I don’t get paid, and no bonus.’
Blood dripped onto the map.
‘I’m getting you to hospital,’ I said, and led Farrar out to the Rolls.