Pride's Harvest (39 page)

Strayhorn shook his head. “That's not on. Things are gunna be busy here till we close down tonight. I'll come in tomorrow, soon's I've helped them pack and they're on the road. I'll come in whether I'm gunna make a statement or not. It's been bloody years, another day won't matter.”

“You won't change your mind and shoot through on me?”

“Mr. Malone, I've left Collamundra for the last time, that's a promise. Next time I go, I'll be in a pine box.”

As Malone drove out of the showground one of the elephants trumpeted shrilly and inside the
circus
tent a lion roared in reply. He wondered if they were missing the jungles of Africa or if, like Fred Strayhorn, they had had enough of being on the road.

Russ Clements and Curly Baldock were waiting for him in the detectives' room. The look on Clements's face told him they had dug up a nugget; he just hoped it wouldn't be fool's gold. He dropped into a chair and said, “Tell me.”

“We got Ted Hart, he's the local gun dealer, we got him out of bed. He wasn't too happy, he and his missus were in bed for their Sunday bit while the kids were out at the carnival. Anyhow, he came in and opened up his shop. We went through his registered sales for the last five years, that's as long as he keeps „em. He's sold sixty-two Twenty-twos in that period, most of them Remingtons.”

“Anyone who interests us on his list?”

“Practically everybody,” said Clements. “Ray and Phil Chakiros, Trevor Waring, Chess Hardstaff, Bruce Potter, Narelle's husband—he bought one the day before he was killed. All Remingtons, except the Chakiros's guns, they're Brnos.”

“You've missed out one on our list. Max Nothling.”

“No, he doesn't own one. At least he didn't buy a Twenty-two from Ted Hart.” Clements looked at Baldock; they beamed like juveniles as they held out their nugget: “But his wife Amanda bought two, a Remington and a Tikka. Plus a full set of „scopes. For five years running, till she gave up the game two years ago, she was the Country Women's small-bore champion. Ted Hart, who saw her in action, said she could shoot the balls off a bull at two hundred yards.”

“The bull'd like that.” Malone looked at Baldock. “You must've known that, Curly.”

Baldock was embarrassed. “Of course I did! But I never give it a thought. Jesus, why would a woman like her wanna shoot Sagawa?”

Malone glanced at Clements, feeling their thoughts click into the same gear. Then he said slowly, “Maybe Sagawa wasn't the target at all.”

II

“
Why did you ask the Potter woman?”

“I wanted to see Max squirm. He knows it was because of her that I meant to shoot him.”

The Hardstaffs, father and daughter, were alone for a few moments, beyond earshot of the party crowd on the lawns. The Nothling homestead, east of the town and back in the slight rise of hills to the north, was another colonial relic, so beautifully restored that it looked better than it had in its original state. It had been featured in
House and Garden
and
Vogue Living;
the National Trust had placed its seal on it. No one ever mentioned the pioneer family, bankrupt and now forgotten, who had built it; sometimes even Max Nothling was not mentioned, because it was more often than not referred to as the “second Hardstaff property.” Amanda was a Hardstaff, make no mistake about it. Her and Max's only child was registered as Chester Nothling-Hardstaff and he would inherit both this and his grandfather's property, the Hardstaff name carried on.

“Unlucky Mr. Sagawa.” Chess Hardstaff didn't say,
Poor Mr. Sagawa.
Sympathy, like forgiveness, did not come easily with him. “I don't understand how you made such a mistake.”

“It was not an easy shot, not at that distance. Just as I pressed the trigger, Sagawa stepped in front of Max.” She said it so coolly that she could have been discussing a loose shot in some weekend competition. She regretted the death of Kenji Sagawa, a harmless little man who had paid her the proper respect on the few occasions they had met, but it was something that was distinctly apart from the anger and contempt she still felt for her husband. Later, she might feel guilt; but not now.

“You're sure she's not making
you
squirm?”

“Perhaps,” she admitted. “But I'll never let her see it.”

“Were they together last Monday night? Max hasn't even mentioned her. Matter of fact, he's said hardly a word to me since that night. She could have been with him out at the cotton farm.”

He looked across the lawns to Narelle Potter standing beside a liquidamber. The garden lights had just come on and she was standing in the glow of one of them. She was a good-looking woman, he had to admit, but no man was paying court to her now; certainly not his son-in-law, who had removed himself to the far side of the lawn and had his back to her. “Where was she?”

“
He must have dropped her off somewhere. I'd been following them, but I lost them—” Amanda stopped, aware of his stern disapproval. “I
know.
It's embarrassing and shameful, spying on one's husband . . .”

“I don't know why you didn't just kick him out, then divorce him.”

“And have everyone learn I'd lost my husband to the town bike? That's what you men call her, isn't it?”

“I use a more old-fashioned term.”

“Don't be so bloody pompous, Dad!”

He was suddenly aware of the tension in her; he had never seen her like this before. He wanted to comfort her, put a hand on her arm or round her shoulders; but he hadn't done that with her, or her sister, since she was a small child. It struck him, with shame, that he couldn't express sympathy properly even to his own daughter.

“I haven't thanked you for what you did last Monday night,” she said.

They hadn't discussed the murder till now; he wondered why she had chosen this awkward moment. Was she planning some spectacular confession? He hoped not. Confession was only good for the souls of those who heard it, it gave them a feeling of superiority without feeling sinful about it. All it gave the confessor was trouble.

“I had to do something. When Max rang me . . .”

He had been at home in Noongulli, listening to a Bach concerto before going to bed. He preferred the work of composers of the first half of the eighteenth century; the orderly architecture of their music suited his temperament. Then the phone rang and the night fell into disorder. It was his son-in-law ringing from the office at the cotton gin in a state of panic.

“But why call me, Max? Ring the police.”

“No, no! I know who shot him—it was Amanda!”

“What the hell are you saying? Just a minute.” He went across to the player and turned off the music. Then, unhurriedly, he went back to the phone. “Amanda? You're not drunk again, I hope.”

“
For Christ's sake, Chess! She's been following us—following me! She must have thought Sagawa was someone else—”

“Who?”

“Never mind that, Chess! Just come and help me—it's your fucking name that's in danger, not mine!”

“Where's Amanda now?”

“I don't
know
! For Chrissakes, hurry!”

Chess hung up, went out and got into his Mercedes and drove fast but with steady control into Collamundra and out the other side to the cotton gin. As he drove he thought of the madness of what he was doing, but, as always, he thought he could control it. Just as long as Max did not fall apart.

Nothling was waiting for him, the dead Sagawa lying between the Ford LTD and the Cressida. Max's panic seemed to have subsided, but there was still more blubber to him than bone.

“He's been shot in the back—the bullet's still in there. They'll trace it to her gun, won't they?”

“I don't know. I'm not experienced in police procedure—you're the government medical officer.” He looked down at the inert form of the Japanese. He felt more anger than anything else, an intense annoyance that something as stupid as this had happened. But, of course, it
had
happened before . . . “What are we going to do with him now I'm here?”

“I've been thinking—”

Hardstaff looked at the darkened office cottage. “Were the lights on when he was shot?”

“Yes, he was expecting me—”

“Go and put them on again. If someone drives past and sees three cars parked here and no lights, they'll wonder what's going on. If the lights are on in the office they'll assume we're having some sort of meeting.”

“But it's risky—”

“Do it!”

Nothling turned and went into the office and switched on the lights. When he came back he
said,
“We have to hide the fact that he's been shot. We can take the body somewhere, out to the river, perhaps, and I'll try and extract the bullet, then we can throw the body in the river—Jesus Christ, what am I saying?”

Hardstaff said calmly, “You are proposing a way of getting rid of incriminating evidence against your wife and my daughter.” He looked towards the cotton gin, a huge, black angular hill against the stars. “Isn't there some way we can get rid of the body in
there?
All that machinery—it must have its destructive uses. Machinery usually does.” Unconsciously he had spoken like a Luddite, a thought which would have horrified him in a saner moment.

Nothling stared at him, his nervousness suddenly chilled by the cold calm of the older man. “Christ, you beat everything, Chess!”

“Am I right? That's all you have to tell me. You know the workings here better than I do.”

Nothling looked towards the gin, said nothing for at least half a minute, then turned back to Hardstaff. “Yes, there is a way. We could hollow out one of those modules that are ready to go into the feeder first thing tomorrow morning . . .”

It had taken them twenty minutes, working quickly but methodically, to bury the body and then re-pack the cotton around it. They were left with a quantity of cotton equal to Sagawa's bulk; Hardstaff, his mind even now acute to irony, wondered if Archimedes, turning from water, had considered such a principle. Nothling gathered up the surplus cotton and dropped it on a bundle of sweepings in the annexe.

They walked briskly back to their cars. “What time did you get here?” Hardstaff asked.

“I'm not sure. About nine, I think.”

Hardstaff looked at his watch. “It's ten fifteen now. Go home, find Amanda and tell her what we've done and impress on her that the two of you have been home all evening. Is your housekeeper home tonight?”

“No, she's away for two days in Bathurst, her sister's sick. What about yours?”

“She's in town at the films . . . All right, you leave first. I'll follow. And Max—” He could have
been
starting another political campaign; but, of course, it was a campaign, if not political. “Get a grip on yourself. You're the GMO, you'll examine the body tomorrow morning when they find it. If that feeder back there works the way you say it does, there should be no need for an autopsy. Good night.”

“Will you talk to Amanda?”

“Not unless she speaks to me first about what's happened.”

Nothling had got into the LTD and driven away, going too fast and almost clipping the gates as he passed through them and out on to the main highway.

Hardstaff waited till he saw the LTD's tail-lights disappearing eastwards. Then he went into the office, went through Sagawa's desk and found the diary with Nothling's name marked in it for a meeting this evening. He took out his handkerchief, wiped where his hands had rested on the desk; then, on his way out, wiped the light switch where Nothling would have touched it. He did the same with the interior of Sagawa's car, just in case Nothling had sat in it with the Japanese.

He went out, got into the Mercedes and pulled away towards the driveway that led out of the farm. He had just turned on to the gravelled track when he saw the headlights turning in from the highway. His foot lifted for a moment, then he pressed it down again, switched his own headlights on to high-beam and went down the driveway towards the approaching car as fast as he dared. He went by it, spattering gravel, bounced over the cattle-grid at the gates, swung hard right on to the highway and headed west towards the town, home and safety.

He had, however, miscalculated; which was so unlike him. As a political boss he should have allowed more for human weakness; or anyway, for his son-in-law's weakness. Max Nothling had gone straight home, but it had taken him till the next day to tell Amanda what he and her father had done to cover up her crime. Instead, that Monday night he had got drunk, blind paralytic drunk, and next morning he had been in no fit condition to respond to the police call when the body was discovered. Dr. Bedi had done the autopsy and then, slowly, everything had started to unravel.

Now here was Hardstaff on the lawns of his daughter's home, calmly discussing with her how and why she had murdered an innocent man whom she had mistaken for her husband's lover; the lover
who
now stood no more than thirty paces from them.

Then he was aware that Amanda had said something that he had missed. “What?”

“I said, why did you kill Mother?”

It was the first time in seventeen years she had asked him that. He had expected to be shocked or frightened by the question, coming from her; instead, it was almost like the breaking of a boil, one he had kept hidden for so long. It was not a matter of conscience, he had never been troubled by such a weakness. There are just some secrets that, even in the most secretive of men, are cancerous.

“She was sleeping with Frank Kilburn,” he said.

“And he never said anything? Did he know it was you who did it?”

“I presume so,” he said calmly: Kilburn, too, was now dead and no longer to be feared.