BECKER Page 8

  Bob did not answer, but after a while, scratching an ear, he said: ‘Why would he want to leave a girl like Robyn?’

  No more was said about the matter.

  That was Christmas. Two days later, they packed up and left Bob and Muriel in charge and drove along the Snowy Mountains Highway, up and up through the great national park, eventually reaching Jindabyne. They could not get a place at Thredbo up in the high country, every so-called chalet had gone, booked out months in advance, and the hotel was big and bleak and noisy with boozers and boasters and blow-ins from about every part of south-eastern Australia looking for a good time, where they could relax and drink themselves stupid. They went to other places, like Bateman’s Bay and ate fish and chips from a paper roll and watched the fishing boats coming in over the bar. And down to Merimbula, and paddled in the lagoon. And had a joy ride in a light aircraft. All of them, even though Robyn was scared stiff. It being her first flight.

  Then they came home, happy but anxious. Bob Elliott said nothing whatever had happened. But there had been one small thing. A strange man walking through the property, slowly and casually as if he had a perfect right and did not need to ask anyone’s permission, holding a rifle, a long-barrelled model with scope on top. As if he were a hunter. There was nothing worth shooting around here, no wild deer or horses or pigs or anything a hunter would want.

  Bob had gone out and asked him what he’d wanted. The man, anywhere between forty and fifty, had simply said, ‘Nothing’. And walked on. shuffling and scuffing his way through the grass, long now but drying out fast, there not having been good rain for a month, the summer settling on the land like a hot-press you might see in a steam laundry.

  Bob had watched him, strolling to the front fence, where there was no car or truck or other form of conveyance as far as he could see. Having climbed through the wire fence, the nonchalant and indifferent fellow had ambled off down the road.

  Becker wasn’t greatly worried. You had to expect that sort of thing in the country, people out for a day’s hunting, although in the district there was nothing worthwhile taking a shot at. But, still, they did it. If you had spent a lot of hard-earned money on a hunting rifle, you had to kill something, hadn’t you?

  A few days later he was out walking with the boy, thinking he might let him hold the Winchester. Terry was now ten, about the same age as he himself when his father had died. He would slowly and carefully introduce the boy to hunting. If he was going to live on a farm, he had to learn some day.

  They’d walked up the creek to the top fence, which wasn’t high ground at all, the country around there being almost flat, it being a riverine plain flooded by great silt-bearing torrents over millions of years and would grow anything. They went to his shooting ground, where Becker took a few shots at the old target, now mangled and splintered and shot almost to pieces and practised his speed.

  Then he said, ‘Want to hold it? Get the feel of it?’

  ‘Yeah!’ the boy yelled. He was always yelling, rowdy. But you got used to it. ‘Can I really?’

  ‘Come here. Look, take it this way, one hand under the stock behind the trigger and the other under the forearm. And feel the weight. It’s much too heavy for you. Hold it, get used to it, feel it, take it as if it’s a baby, gently. Now lift it a bit, let it down, lift it. Then turn it this way and—’

  There was a shot, an ear-splitting shot.

  It could not have come from the Winchester, the magazine of which he’d taken out. And there was nothing in the breech, he’d double-checked. Bark chips fell, one piece hitting an ear. The boy jumped, shocked, scared.

  ‘What the hell?’ Becker pulled him down, guessing the shot had come from up the hill, although there was no real hill, a gentle rise or swell like a stationary wave in the endless land. He crouched over the boy, dragging him behind the tree.

  On the ground lay fresh chips of the bark and sappy flesh of the yellow box, shattered and disfigured by an idiot.

  Becker looked out, one eye, then two.

  He could see nothing.

  Not a soul, not a shape, except a few trees and an occasional wattle bush.

  The shot could have come, he realised, from farther upstream, over the back fence. The shooter must be behind a tree or bunkered down in the creek bed, not wet for weeks. He could not be lying or squatting in there. That was a wheat field and his neighbour had finished harvesting more than a month ago.

  The field was totally bare except for the stubble, dotting the slope with twisted and battered stalks looking like thousands of crippled stick figures on a battlefield. Becker stood up slowly, wishing the Winchester had a scope. He’d bought it, not for hunting, but for close-range protection.

  ‘Terry, crouch down low and get back to the house. Duck from tree to tree as fast as you can. I’ll follow you.’

  They did that, the boy ducking and Becker creeping backwards, loading the few shells left in a pocket, covering the boy, his gaze jumping from spot to spot in case the fellow showed up. He had a good mind to shoot the bastard and apologise later. But the bastard did not show. Either he had slipped away unseen or he was still up there lying low in the creek.

  Nothing more happened. Then he walked back, mostly backwards, from tree to tree until there were so many trees between him and the marksman that he thought he was safe. Then dashed to the back door.

  He was not going to tell Robyn, but the boy couldn’t keep his mouth shut. She came out to meet them. ‘Oh, Harry, who would do a thing like that? Right at you, just above your head?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But if he comes back, I’ll shoot him.’

  Chapter 9

  He hadn’t heard from Anastacia for weeks and it worried him. Not that he’d really thought he should have heard. She was not going to tell him on a phone that she’d killed someone. She wasn’t that stupid. She’d said, or at least had hinted, she was going to Melbourne to find the man, whose name had been on the credit card picked up by Buster Keaton after Vincent Torrence had been popped one night by the lake. The Feds had already interviewed the man, a businessman in Melbourne, who sold bras and girdles and gee strings and other pretty unmentionables in Chapel Street, but he’d said someone had stolen his card. He had nothing to do with any shooting in Canberra. He wasn’t even in Canberra at the time, he’d said.

  So, who was the fat man?

  What had happened? Had she found him? Had she killed him or not? Not a word. Not a hint or a whisper or nudge or story in The Daily Bulletin, which usually ran hot wire stories as they used to be called. There was nothing, not a skerrick. Nor in the interstates held at the local library. He dared not make inquiries; people might wonder why. That was the last thing he wanted. He could call a mate and ask him to check with Melbourne. He didn’t have any mates in any force, except old Bob Fricker at Queanbeyan. Fricker would have been reluctant to help, he being only two years from retirement.

  Still, he was edgy. He was, in effect, a party to a murder, if in fact the crime had been committed. She had not committed a crime when she’d shot the kid. That was okay, she’d done her duty in saving him from death. But disposing of a body without notifying the authorities was a crime, although perhaps not serious. She’d get a scolding from her superiors, if they found out she’d done all this in secret. But the real problem was that he knew what she had intended to do in Melbourne—kill a man. And if she did kill him, he would be an accessory before the fact. And that would be serious. He had no doubt that she would kill him, if convinced he was the capo, the one who’d ordered the hits on Torrence and Evelyn. The one who’d killed Polly Politis in order to get at Evelyn. Babchuk was going to get satisfaction. There’d be no stopping her. She seemed to be a woman of cold-blooded rage.

  Toward the end of the long school break, Becker saw the hunter.

  He’d been watching an electrician installing the new pump above the eastern side of the creek,
when he looked up and saw the man.

  He was walking across the property, slightly downhill. Must have jumped a fence up there, followed the creek. Average height, a bit porky and had a beard. Not any kind of beard, but one about two inches long with a little curl at the point. Not exactly a van Dyke, a bit too scruffy for that. And a moustache, which at that distance looked gingery, like Becker’s own moustache, but not so dark. Like the beard, it was more grey than gingery.

  ‘Nearly there,’ the electrician said.

  ‘Excuse me a minute.’

  Becker went after the stranger, to intercept him, to ask what the hell he was doing on private property? But he had to be careful. This man was holding a long-barrelled rifle with a telescopic. Holding it in his right hand on his right side, so Becker could not see it well. But he knew it was a very powerful rifle, something you saw Americans in movies using to bring down deer. The man did not stop. He kept on walking toward the fence and the highway. The more Becker increased his step, the more the intruder edged away. Increasing his own step. Watching Becker warily. Glancing at Becker, then at the road he was heading for. Then back at Becker, then at the road. Increasing speed. Eyes going back and forth. Like a scared kid about to break into a run, but he didn’t. He kept going.

  ‘Hey, you!’ Becker said.

  The fellow twisted or jumped or jerked at the call. But he did not reply.

  Then he was at the fence. Grabbed a wire and slipped under. Cut through some young wattles and climbed a small bank and onto the highway.

  Becker called from the fence: ‘Come back here!’

  No answer. He could hear the man behind the wattles, or at least sense him. But couldn’t make him out. Just an impression of a thick and sturdy creature, standing still and breathing, and watching out. Not more than a few feet away.

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  A tourist bus went by, swishingly, gravel flying, faces at the glass.

  ‘Are you the bloke who shot at me a few days ago?’

  No reply, only the breathing. Heavy breathing, like that of a man who had trouble breathing with his mouth jammed shut. Almost snorting.

  ‘Are you the one? Nearly blew my head off up the creek? And frighted the wits out of the boy?’

  Becker was edging along the fence to get a better view.

  The man wore a cap, not a hunter’s cap but some sort of old-fashioned headgear. Raggy, Becker thought. Not a scarf, not a turban. Like they used to wear in the jungle, because of the sweat. In Vietnam.

  ‘You been in a war?’

  Suddenly he could see the man, standing side-on.

  Rifle elevated, pressed against his chest as regulations specified, in case you shot a foot off or shot a buddy. Whiskered, and fat in the face and body and tired of living. There was an eye, looking at Becker. It was the eye you saw in the face of a small child, perhaps six or seven, scared he’s going to get a whipping. He’s done wrong. Or, he hasn’t done wrong and doesn’t know why everyone is looking at him like that. It was a frightened eye, wide open and crazy. The kind of eye you wouldn’t want to look into too deeply for fear of seeing yourself, scared witless, never knowing where the bullet would come from or when. Or who’d shot it.

  And when it did come, you wouldn’t even know you’d been shot. You were so scared. All you knew was feet, perhaps in boots and perhaps not, were approaching through the bush and bamboo and everlasting slush. And a rifle pointing down, probingly.

  You’re looking up, afraid the face is not an Australian face, but something below a red sweat band and some sort of slanty eyes and sloping head. And an enigmatic smile, like the smile on a skinny and dirty and ill-fed peasant, holding a Soviet-made Mosin-Nagant carbine, staring at you.

  And thinking something you would never know before he fired. Straight through the skull. This man had that sort of stand and stanch, like a man waiting stock-still under cover, unsure whether he should twist around and open fire or run for his life. Crash out of there.

  ‘You were in Nam?’ Becker asked.

  The guy did not answer, but he breathed as if it were a release, Vietnam.

  ‘My old man was in Nam,’ Becker said, hands on the top wire. ‘In ’68,’ he added. ‘You there then?’

  The man made some sort of sound, maybe a quick snort. Perhaps a snuffle. May have, for a moment, taken his hand off the trigger, relaxed a little, perhaps opened his mouth to say something. Changed his mind.

  ‘He didn’t come back,’ Becker said.

  Then thought he should add something, like ‘Poor bastard,’ or ‘Bloody shame, that’ or ‘We all miss him’ or ‘But that’s life.’ Anything you could say was pretentious, as though you didn’t have a hole inside you, a cavern.

  ‘What outfit were you in?’

  Then the man said something, not a word. More like a last gasp.

  Early in his first posting, Becker had had to go to a man who’d smashed up on the road out south of Cootamundra. The car was pushed in at the front and the driver had been jolted out, just his head. The rest of him was tangled in shattered steel. Across the road a truck was on its side, crates of oranges and lemons and grapefruit spilled. There was no sign of its driver. Must have been thrown out, or crawled out and stumbled into the scrub, and perhaps died. The man in the car was not left much of a man. His legs were mangled and held tight in the desolation.

  ‘You okay, mate?’ Becker had said, he being then only a young copper, straight out of Goulburn college.

  It was the most stupid thing he had ever said. The man was gasping, mouth and eyes wide open. He tried to answer, no doubt not to answer such a foolish question, but to say something like: Get me out of here! Or perhaps he knew already he was not going to get out, unless they cut off his legs. Even if they did, he was doomed because his pelvis and his spine had been crushed. He’d gasped something, over and over. In the distance, a siren was wailing, getting closer and closer.

  Becker had kneeled down and said, ‘Hang on, mate. They’ll be here soon.’

  He was dead before the ambos could stick a needle in him.

  The man behind the bushes did not try again.

  ‘You want to come in and have a beer?’ Becker asked.

  Already the fellow was departing.

  He walked away unseen. Becker waited, hoping he’d come back and have a beer and talk about Vietnam, but he did not. When he climbed through the fence and the wattles onto the road, the man had walked some distance. A slow, slovenly sort of walk, hopelessly. The rifle held high, not on a shoulder, but held like a man would do when walking through water, a lot of it, mud and slush and water lilies.

  Becker walked up to the house, thinking he would tell Robyn to be careful. There was a fellow walking about with a high-powered rifle. She was not at home. She’d taken Wendy into Wagga for her first day at high school and had said she’d do some shopping, provisions for a week. She’d not returned yet. When she did, he did not tell her.

  She was always jumpy, scared of guns. Scared of men with guns.

  The electrician called: ‘I think we’ve done it.’

  Becker went over. The pump was to be housed in a small cabinet by the new troughs.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  The electrician grinned. ‘Want to be the first to start it?’

  Becker bent down.

  ‘Press that button.’

  He pressed it.

  They waited. At first, nothing happened. Not even a sound from the pump.

  ‘Is it working?’

  ‘It’s working, I can feel it.’ He had a hand on it. ‘Listen!’

  Becker listened. Nothing at first, then a gasping sound, rising in a faint crescendo. Something was coming up. Coming up fast.

  ‘Here she comes!’

  It shot out of the pipe, a two-inch pipe. Ample capacity. Shot across the earth. Toward the troughs. Wa
ter everywhere. All they had to do now was connect it up. Connect it to the cattle troughs, connect it to the house, so that if it never rained again, they would have water, At least water to wash with and to water the garden and the fruit trees and even to cook with and drink, if it was too hard. He’d get a water softener, try that. So that you could shampoo your hair and brush your teeth, if need be, in bore water. He was close to getting what he wanted: a model farm, in which every eventuality had been covered.

  Becker jumped back, splashed. Delighted.

  ‘You’ve done it!’ he said.

  The electrician was still squatting by the gleaming pump. A hand on it. Feeling the vibration, soft, purring. Very sweet. Not a wobble anywhere. He was grinning up at Becker. He was happy.

  It was a great day.

  ‘Now you’re drought-proofed,’ he said.

  Chapter 10

  Each Sunday morning, they would go to church, all five of them. That is, Robyn and the two kids and her mother and father. They would meet Bob and Muriel at St Paul’s Anglican Church in Turvey Park, it being only a few blocks to walk for them. Becker would drop Robyn and the children at the church, then clear out. He’d go out to Kirralee, which is in the east, on the way to Forest Hill, where the aircraft came in. It was one of those homes for people who could no longer manage, both at home and themselves. It was spread out, three rugged blocks and an administrative centre. With an office and a sign on the wall. Our commitment, it said: Care, Comfort and Christ. Then, underneath, a long spiel about dignity, support, respect and devotion to the needs of those who, in fact, had no need of anything but a clear answer to the unanswerable question: How much longer?