Something Fishy (14 page)

Past the waiting customers, the lucky guests were roaring at each other across long tables covered with butcher's paper, carafes of wine and Duralex tumblers. Some of the tables were outside, running around the edge of a broad patio. Party lights hung in droopy loops, illuminating the scene.

At one end of the terrace a four-piece combo was doing a playful
mucho maracas
Carmen Miranda routine. Snack jockeys were circulating, aproned tweenies with nibbles on trays. Couples sat on the low adobe wall that surrounded the terrace, soaking up the view. All two-seventy degrees of it. A wedge of moon glowing through a thin gauze of clouds crept across the sky. The sea extended forever, eerily phosphorescent. And immediately below, the snaking lights of the cars on the Great Ocean Road.

Hooley-dooley, I thought. Whacko the did. All the senses, all at once. Count me in.

I scanned the moving bodies, peering into the muted, multicoloured light, searching for a slender woman with a talent for the casual chic, a mannish haircut and an elusively attractive way of carrying herself. The knot of supplicant customers dissolved, approved
en masse
by the head waiter. As I shuffled forward to plead for admission, Barbara emerged from a clump of conversation on the far side of the room.

She was wearing a sheathy jade-green thing with shoestring straps. One of them slipped off her shoulder and as she turned her head to fix it, our eyes met. Hers were still grey.

‘Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay I like you verrry much!' warbled Carmen on the veranda.

Barbara gave a little self-satisfied smile. I knew you'd come, it said. Let the games begin.

I gave her a smile back, the hapless here-I-am one. I poked at my chest, then at the head waiter, shrugging. She nodded and began to make her way across the crowded room. Some enchanted evening, I murmured.

The kitchen door flapped on its hinges and a big man came sailing out into the restaurant. He wore a loose cotton shirt, cuffs rolled to the forearm, and an air of proprietary bonhomie. It was Signor Gusto himself, Jake Martyn. He paused for a moment, cast an appraising eye over the proceedings, then advanced into the throng, arm raised in hearty salutation.

A burst of flame drew my eye to the window into the kitchen. A flambé of prawns in Pernod, perhaps. Beyond the cooktops and the steaming molluscs, a man in a khaki work shirt and matching stubbies had also turned towards the sudden flash. He was glancing back over his shoulder from the semi-darkness of a doorway to the delivery bay. Stocky. Bushy beard. Ravaged baseball cap, the bill pulled down. A working man. Delivery driver, rubbish removal, hump and grunt.

Head tilted sideways, eyes peering out, his expression exactly mirrored an image which I had seen many times before. A still photograph printed from a few seconds of video footage, then enlarged. A three-quarter profile of a handcuffed prisoner being bustled into a remand hearing, tossing a sideways glance in the direction of the television camera. A picture at which I had stared long and hard, simmering with impotent rage.

A picture of Rodney Syce.

And then he was gone.

My stomach dropped away beneath me like an elevator in freefall.

I stood rooted to the spot, mind spinning, staring into the empty space where the man had been. Was it really possible that I had just looked through a plate-glass window at Lyndal's killer?

Only one thing was certain. I could not ignore what I had seen. Try, and the doubt would drive me nuts, poison the promise of the evening. And beyond.

I had to get another look at the man. Satisfy myself, one way or the other.

Dashing back along the corridor, I squeezed past a phalanx of incoming guests and burst through the rope-and-bottle-cap curtain. An irregular hedge of tea-tree separated Gusto's public entrance from its service area. I shouldered my way through the thicket and glimpsed a curved driveway leading from a loading bay at the back of the restaurant to the road above the guest carpark.

A runabout tray-truck was parked half-way up the driveway, a well-used Hilux utility. Its driver's-side door was open and the figure in khaki was hoisting himself aboard. He glanced back, not noticing me as I parted the shrubbery.

I was thinking very fast. His general description fitted Syce. Height, shape, approximate age. The beard didn't appear in the picture, but that proved nothing. Stood to reason that he'd attempt to disguise himself. More to the point, there was a nagging similarity between my snapshot and what I could see of the man's face. The oval shape, the full lips, the sloping cheekbones.

But still I couldn't be sure. The light was murky and he was a good ten metres away.

The door of the Hilux slammed shut and it started up. I began to run towards it, but its wheels were spinning, tyres spitting gravel, tail-lights glowing.

I pulled up short. But only for a heartbeat. And then I was running again, sprinting back to the Magna, slamming the key into the ignition, backing out of the parking slot. Acting, not thinking, except to think that I couldn't let him vanish into the night. That there was no way in the world the cops were going to believe me a fourth time.

The Hilux had turned right, heading uphill. Fifty metres past the restaurant driveway, the road became graded gravel. It climbed through low scrub for a couple of minutes, crossed the hump of the hill and emerged into a residential area, cars at the kerbsides, lights in the houses, party time.

But the utility was nowhere in sight. I arrived at a T-junction. Two lanes of asphalt, double yellow lines, cats-eye reflectors on white roadside markers. Deans Marsh Road, the back-door route across the ranges. Cars whizzed past, barrelling downhill, revellers heading into town. Which way had he gone? Downhill or up? Towards the activity or away from it?

Go back to the restaurant, I told myself. Make enquiries. Find out if anybody knew him. By the look of it, he'd been making a delivery of some kind. So even if nobody knew him, they'd at least be able to tell me who sent him. What could be gained by chasing him?

A better look at him, for a start. The chance to cross him off the list, mark him down as a false alarm. And without going through the rigmarole of interrogating the Gusto staff, parading my obsession. Without the risk of making a fool of myself in front of Barbara Prentice.

Uphill, I decided, away from town. I swung the wheel and floored the pedal, spraying gravel as my front tyres gripped the bitumen. The road climbed steadily, joined at irregular intervals by smaller side roads and tracks. Had he taken one of those? I stuck with the main road, a theory taking shape in my mind, consistent with what I knew about Rodney Syce. As scenarios went, it made as much sense as anything the coppers had told me.

On the lam, solo, Syce had gone to ground, grown some fungus. Stayed in Victoria, where he had no criminal connections, less chance of being fingered. Picked up jobs on the margins, cash-in-hand stuff, melded into the here-today-gone-tomorrow casual workforce. Maybe even built a new identity.

The road twisted and turned, climbing continuously, its course hemmed by thickening bush. The traffic was all downhill, oncoming headlights at the frequent corners. It was almost nine-thirty, night coming down. If I didn't spot the Hilux in the next few minutes, I told myself, I'd pack it in, turn around, contact the cops. Persuade them to make enquiries at Gusto. Let the appropriate authorities deal with it, like I'd been told.

I checked my watch, stepped on the gas. Two minutes, that's how much longer I'd give it.
Dangerous Turn
, read a yellow advisory sign.

Then it was there, right in front of me as I rounded a bend, nothing between us. I dropped back, not showing my hand, waiting for an opportunity to overtake, study the driver as I passed. I tried to read the number plate, but it wasn't lit.

It was double lines all the way, not a chance to swing around him. We continued uphill, north-west into the ranges. At some point, twenty or thirty kilometres further along, the road would pop out of the hills and run through farmland to the Princes Highway. If he went that far, he could be headed anywhere in Australia. Literally. The Princes Highway circled the entire fucking continent.

The road straightened and I moved closer, preparing to pass. But the Hilux slowed, indicated left and turned down a side road. I continued past for a hundred metres, then doubled back. The road was a single lane of asphalt, gravel-edged, tree-lined, a trench cut into the forest, well signposted. Mount Sabine Road. Never heard of it, or its mount. The ute's tail-lights bobbed in the distance, beckoning.

This is crazy, said the voice of reason. But since when has reason been reason for anything? I dipped my lights to low beam and kept going, deeper into the night.

Rodney Syce was an experienced bushman. And what were the Otways if not the bush? Dense, virtually impenetrable bush, all just a few hours from Melbourne. A tall timber bolt-hole, exactly the sort of place where a wanted man could lie doggo, grow a beard, pass unremarked among the locals. Scruffy transients, back-to-nature hermits, hippy farmers, breast-feeding ferals, bush mechanics, timber cutters, sleep-rough surfers, mind-your-own-business truckies, law-leery bikers. The full panoply of tree-dwelling, kit-home, cud-chewing yokeldom. The only thing missing was a banjo-plunking soundtrack.

I twiddled the dial of the radio, caught wavering snatches of pop music and the hiss of static, the signals baffled by the timbered folds of the hills. The road rose and fell with the signal, snaking around tight-coiled corners. The trees got bigger, closer together, the understorey more dense. My headlights swept the fronds of giant ferns, bare rock walls, mossy clefts.

Occasional chinks opened in the curtain of bush. The brutal gash of a firebreak. Obscure clearings stacked with saw-logs. Unmarked forestry tracks. Machinery sheds, hunched in the middle of nowhere. All the while, up ahead, the pickup's tail-lights winked and blinked, luring me on.

The road meandered, lost its paved surface, became a rutted blanket of beige dirt, forever changing direction. As it followed the twists and turns, the pickup vanished for minutes on end. Then, just when I thought I'd lost it, I caught the flicker of headlights amid the trees ahead, slatted radiance. Or the abrupt flare of brake lights at some sharp bend.

Where was he going? A farm? That would explain the delivery to the restaurant. Strawberries? There were signs along the Great Ocean Road for pick-your-own berry farms. Kiwi fruit, maybe. Some sort of bush tucker, myrtle berries, gummy bears. Not very Jake Martyn, that sort of stuff.

And why the late-night delivery? An unexpected shortage of canapé garnishes? If this guy was indeed Rodney Syce, he should be hunkered down in the native shrubbery, not gadding about the place, running taste treats into a town crawling with coppers.

The road forked, then forked again, the Hilux nowhere in sight. I guessed, guessed again. Kept left, tightened my grip on the steering wheel, imagined it was Rodney Syce's neck.

The track kept getting narrower. Its surface was potholed and corrugated. It hammered my suspension, peppered my undercarriage with gravel, sent my tail slewing at the turns. A tight bend loomed and suddenly the track disappeared, replaced by a sheer drop into a scrub-choked gully. I stomped on the anchors, the steering juddered and the Magna went into a skid, wheels locked.

I wrestled for control, steering wildly for the inside edge of the road. The Magna slid to a halt, then stalled, side-on to the direction of the road. My fingers were rigid around the wheel, my ears roaring with adrenalin.

I killed the lights, got out and took stock. The car's rear wheels were sunk to the rims in a pothole, its tail dangling over the edge. Another half a metre and I'd have joined the choir eternal. Or worse, been trapped in the wreckage, ruptured and bleeding, lingering in agony for days, waiting for help that never came. Situation like that, a body could remain undiscovered for decades, like some shot-down Mustang pilot in a New Guinea jungle, a bleached skeleton buckled into a rusting machine.

I reached into the glovebox for another cigarette. My second in an hour. I was practically chain-smoking. Then, squatting at the side of the road, I tried to gather my wits. The bush was motionless, monochromatic, an ancient daguerreotype. Pools of black gathered at the feet of massive trees, grey slabs of bark peeling from their trunks. The milky wash of an overcast sky seeped through their dappled foliage. The humidity was oppressive and beads of sweat trickled from my armpits.

What the hell did I think I was doing? Right at the very moment that my life was regaining balance, when romance seemed not likely—okay—but possible, I'd headed for the hills in hot pursuit of a half-seen face. What was more important, settling the scores of the past or making something of the future?

It was nearly ten. Down on the Lorne foreshore, beer and sunburn were brewing a heady mix, testing the tolerance of the coppers. At the Falls, Red was moshing it up with Jodie Prentice. Back at Gusto, the Domaine Chandon was flowing and an intriguing, accomplished woman in a jade-green dress was wondering, I hoped, where that Murray Whelan fellow had disappeared to.

The bush, stilled by my noisy arrival, was coming back to life. Mopoke calls, cicada thrums, possumy ruttings in the canopy. I ground my cigarette under foot, making sure it was completely extinguished. It was time to stop chasing geese around the ranges.