The Godson (48 page)

‘There's two WIA's near the front gate,' said the solid one.

‘I got one KIA here.' He motioned to Liam's body. ‘How bad are the WIA's, Ray?'

The solid bloke shrugged. ‘Pretty bad. They've both been shot through the legs. One's got a bullet in his stomach. The other's taken one in the face.'

Madden seemed to think for a moment. ‘Do you think it might be best if you went and took another look at them, Ray?'

The solid bloke nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. That might be the best idea,' he said, and walked off.

No one said anything while he was away. Ronnie and the other bloke just stood there. Les stared at the table, moved his jaws and worked on getting his hearing back. Suddenly two quick gunshots rang out in the still of the night.

‘Shit! What was that?' said Les. Ronnie and the other bloke still didn't say anything. The solid bloke returned. ‘What happened?' asked Norton.

The solid bloke looked at Norton impassively. ‘They tried to get away,' he replied briefly.

Les was going to say something but changed his mind. ‘Yeah, righto,' he said, with a quick nod of his head.

‘I'll tell you what,' said Madden cheerfully. ‘All this shootin' and runnin' around's thirsty work. I notice the fridge is still in one piece. Any chance of a beer, Les?'

Norton made a brief gesture with his hand. ‘Help yourselves.'

‘You gonna have one?'

‘Yeah, why not?'

Ronnie went to the outside fridge and got four bottles of assorted beers. He opened them and handed them around. ‘Well, cheers,' he said.

‘Yeah — cheers,' was the general chorus. The four men each took a hefty swallow.

‘Les,' said Ronnie. ‘I want you to meet a couple of mates of mine. This is Ray and Lennie.'

‘How are you, fellahs?' said Norton, shaking their hands. ‘Pleased to meet you.'

‘We've heard a fair bit about you,' said Lennie, the tall one.

‘And seen you in action at the local pub,' smiled Ray. ‘You go off all right, don't you?'

‘He didn't put on a bad show here either, just quietly,' said Ronnie. ‘Six blokes. And he was on his own.'

‘Yeah,' agreed Ray. ‘And they had bloody bullpups too. I wonder where the fuck they got those?'

‘Before we go any further,' said Les. ‘I just got to say one thing. Thanks, fellahs. You saved my bloody neck.'

‘Ahh, don't worry about it,' replied Lennie.

‘Yeah, well, thanks anyway. I owe you one.'

‘Well in that case,' said Ronnie, draining his beer. ‘We might take that one right now.' The little caretaker got another four beers from the fridge and handed them around. ‘So,' he said, smiling at Les after draining almost half a bottle of Lowenbrau. ‘I suppose you're wondering what's going on and how we got here?'

‘Well,' agreed Les, ‘I am more than a bit curious, yeah.' Norton watched as the three men exchanged glances then settled back into their chairs.

‘Okay. I'll do my best.' Madden took another swig of beer and belched. ‘The three of us are vets. Eddie was our platoon sergeant in Vietnam first time around. I won't go into all that rattle. But when we got back, it just wasn't the same for a lot of us. It was almost like being a stranger in your own country.'

‘Yeah, some fuckin' homecoming,' said Lennie. ‘We marched
up George Street and some sheila stepped out of the crowd and spat in my face.'

‘It's a bit hard to work out, Les,' added Ray. ‘You're in a jungle one week fighting Vietcong. And you come home and find university students running around waving North Vietnamese flags.'

Norton shook his head in disbelief.

‘Anyway, we teamed up again after we got back,' continued Ronnie. ‘I bought a few acres up here years ago to get away from every cunt. Built a bit of a shack on it and Ray and Lennie joined me. It was more or less a coincidence Harcourt lobbed here and built his joint. We knew him in Vietnam. Eddie did a bit of business with him the second time around. And we did a bit of work for him when he got the duck farm going. Anyway, we all owe Eddie a big favour from Vietnam and he's been good to us with a quid since we been up here. And it was just by another coincidence that Peregrine lobbed in not long after Harcourt put the place on the market.'

‘Where did he go?' asked Les.

‘We honestly don't know, Les.' Ronnie had another mouthful of beer. ‘We'd been talking to Eddie on the phone about the place saying how we'd like to buy it. Make it a sort of a halfway house for vets having a bit of trouble. But none of us had the money. Not long after, Eddie rings back saying he needs somewhere to snooker that Peregrine bloke and why. What about here? And would we keep an eye on things if something should eventuate. Well, like I said, we all owe Eddie a favour. So here you are and here we are.' Madden shrugged and took another mouthful of beer. ‘And that's about it, Les.'

‘Yeah. But how come you knew there was going to be trouble here tonight?'

‘We didn't, really,' replied Ronnie. ‘But Eddie rang around eight and said Peregrine had been sending postcards from here back home. Said some pommy blokes had been sniffin' around and to really keep our eyes open from now on. Actually we were up home getting into the piss when we heard all the fireworks start.'

‘Why, where's your place from here?' asked Norton.

‘Only about two klicks the other side of the stables,' said Ray.

‘Oh.'

‘We knew you were pretty sweet inside the house,' said Ronnie: ‘So we didn't break our necks arming up and getting ourselves together. But when we recognised those RPG-7's,
we knew you were in trouble. So we got our fingers out.'

‘If they hadn't have had those, you'd have been sweet,' said Lennie. ‘This place is built like a fortress.'

‘Yeah. It sure is,' agreed Les.

‘Anyway, we double-timed down the hill. And I guess you could say,' the little caretaker broke into another one of his wheezy laughs, ‘the cavalry arrived just in the nick of time.'

Norton flashed back to the figure in the doorway aiming the machine gun at him and a chill ran down his spine. ‘You can bloody well say that again. And I reckon I owe you blokes a drink, too.'

‘Ahh, don't worry about it,' said Ronnie. ‘Eddie'll probably shout us one. Plus we got six bullpups and a rocket launcher.'

‘Yeah. And they've got to have left a car round here somewhere,' said Ray. ‘We'll keep that. Change the plates. Bodgie up the rego.'

‘Yeah, whatever,' said Les. ‘But if you blokes want something — anything — just ask.'

‘Another beer'd go well,' winked Ronnie, finishing his bottle.

‘Help your bloody selves,' said Norton. This time Lennie got them.

Norton watched as the three Vietnam veterans enjoyed another cold bottle of beer, completely oblivious to Liam Frayne's body laying not much more than six feet away. He knew all along there was something about Ronnie Madden that wasn't quite right. The way he eluded questions. The way he answered others. The way he changed the subject. Now all the questions seemed to be answered, but it was all too cut and dried. Les took another thoughtful sip of beer as he watched the little caretaker.

‘How come you never told me all this in the first place, Ronnie?' he asked.

Madden shrugged his shoulders. ‘I just want to leave the past behind me, Les. There's a few vets living up here apart from us and we'd all rather have it like that. Me and Eddie honestly thought the less you knew the better. He's been ringing me every day to make sure you're all right. Besides, from what I can gather, that Peregrine can be a bit of an egg roll at times. And he might have done something stupid, especially with that Robinson laying around.'

‘Sending cards back to London telling everyone where he is was dumb enough,' said Ray. ‘Especially with the IRA wanting him like that.'

‘Yeah,' agreed Ronnie. ‘And watching youse running around
in those tiger stripes and jungle boots was enough.'

Les gave a self-conscious laugh. But the pieces had fallen into place now, there was nothing else he really needed to know, leave it at that; it was bad enough that he had to force Ronnie and his two mates to relive unpleasant memories to save him and Peregrine. Norton sipped on his fourth beer and began to unwind; even his head was starting to clear up now. He looked curiously at one of the strange-looking little guns Ronnie and his mates had placed on the table. Tiny little things — they almost looked like children's toys. Black metal, no butt. The two handles were just metal frames with a strange double trigger mechanism. They were lucky if they were half a metre long and even with the drum magazine, they wouldn't have weighed much more than two kilos.

‘Where did you get these things?' he asked. ‘I've never seen nothing like these before.'

‘They're Seggerns,' replied Ronnie. ‘They're American. They make 'em in New Jersey.'

‘Or Noo Joisey, as Harcourt used to say,' laughed Lennie.

‘We called round for a drink one day,' said Ronnie, ‘and Harcourt had a crate of them sitting there. He gave us one each. Fucked if I know where he got them from. Didn't bother to ask. But they're the grouse for wild dogs and feral cats.'

‘Hey, there's something I want to know, Les,' said Ray. ‘Where's bloody Peregrine?'

Norton laughed. ‘Asleep.'

‘Asleep? How the fuck could anyone sleep through that?'

Les explained about Peregrine being bitten by a tick and how he'd filled him up full of rum and sleeping tablets. Even with all that under his belt the boys still conceded that it still wasn't a bad effort to sleep through a mini-war. Though in all probability it had worked out for the best.

Ronnie finished his beer and dropped the bottle in the Ottobin. ‘Well, this sitting around drinking piss is all right,' he said. ‘But what are we going to do with these six dead noggies?'

‘What do you suggest?' said Lennie. ‘You're the caretaker.'

‘I reckon dump 'em where Harcourt was going to put his swimming pool.' Ronnie motioned to the hole behind them. ‘There's some quicklime in the shed. Cover 'em with that then I'll get the tractor and bulldoze the edges in. Couple of weeks and there'll be nothing there but fertilizer and a few teeth.'

‘Good idea,' said Ray.

‘You want to give us a hand to drag 'em over Les?'

‘Yeah, righto,' replied Norton, trying not to sound too unenthusiastic.
‘I'll go and get the ones by the front gate.' He finished his beer and headed in that direction as the others rose from the table.

Robert and Brendan were laying face down almost next to each other; their clothes were a torn bloody mess and it looked like they had nearly been shot to pieces round the legs. At the base of their skulls, just above the neck, two neat, almost identical holes had been drilled into the backs of their black balaclavas. Not bad shooting, Ray, mused Les. A pitch black night, two blokes running away. Yeah, not bad shooting at all. Les gingerly picked up the two dead Irishmen by the collars of their jackets and started dragging them back to the barbecue area. It was quite an unpleasant task and worse was to come.

When he got back Ray and Lennie had the other four bodies by the edge of the hole. In the distance the lights in the toolshed were on where Ronnie was looking for the quicklime.

‘Strip them now, Les,' said Ray. ‘Leave their clothes here. Toss any ID, rings, watches, wallets and that on the table.'

‘Tag 'em and bag 'em, Les, as the Yanks would say,' smiled Lennie.

Norton swallowed hard. ‘Yeah, righto,' he said.

Stripping and searching the bodies in the moonlight was a miserable and macabre experience for Les. The Seggerns had done a horribly efficient job and it wasn't long before Norton's hands were covered in blood, pieces of flesh and other matter. Ronnie chugged over in the tractor and turned off the motor. Sitting in the scoop was a hessian sack; he dropped it on the ground and cut the string sewn across the top. Before long the six blood-caked bodies were laying naked at the edge of the hole; their clothing was in two black garbage bags, their personal effects sitting on the table. Lennie was examining a gold ring, the front of which formed two initials.

‘Not a bad ring, this,' he said. ‘I wonder what the LF stands for?'

‘Which one did that come off?' asked Les.

‘The one at the end.'

Les strolled over and looked impassively down at the body by his feet. So you're Liam Frayne, eh? You're the reason five of your mates are dead. He shook his head. Dopey bastard. You should have stayed in Ireland. Les turned round and the others were standing behind him.

‘We've got to place them in the hole now, Les,' said Ronnie. ‘Neatly and side by side. So I can get a good covering of quicklime over them.'

‘Righto.' Les took one of the bodies by the wrist, Ronnie took the ankles, and they carried it down into the hole.

Soon the six Irishmen were lying face up in a few inches of smelly water at the bottom of the hole. Ronnie gave the bag a shake and walked over to the tractor.

‘You gonna say something first before you bury them?' said Les. ‘After all, they are Catholics,' he added with a shrug.

Ronnie looked down from the seat of the tractor, smiled and turned to Ray. ‘What was it that big black sergeant said that day up at Bearcat? When the Yanks had just filled that pit with dead VC?'

‘Yeah, I remember,' laughed Ray. He took off his beanie and stood solemnly at the edge of the hole. ‘Hail Mary and all that jive. If you cats could shoot straight you'd still be alive. Amen.'

Ray put his beanie back on and Ronnie started the tractor. ‘I should have this done by the time Eddie gets here,' he called out.

‘Eddie gets here?' said Les. ‘How's Eddie gonna get here? He's in Sydney.'