Blindside Read online

  In a little while he leaned the shovel against the wall of the hole he’d dug, gripped the handle at the end of the chest— and lifted. Christ it was heavy. But it moved. He pulled hard— straining, grunting, swearing and finally lifting the whole base clear of the sucking grave that seemed intent on not giving up its prize without a decent fight. When he had hold of both handles at either end he half-hauled, half-pushed with his thighs and knees until the beast was balanced on the hole’s edge. Then he gathered all his remaining strength, took a deep breath and heaved until it was free and clear and on firm ground.

  ‘Well done,’a guttural voice said.‘Good morning,my friend.’

  He looked up at the figure that seemed to tower over him. But there was sweat in his eyes and he had to wipe them with his forearm before he could focus properly. Something in the voice, however, had already triggered alarm bells.

  ‘Bernie,’ he said.

  ‘Correct,’ the figure said, squatting. ‘You’ve worked hard this morning—but not as hard as you’re going to work.’ He hooked his fingers into one of the trunk’s handles and jerked it well away from the hole.‘I almost lost you for a while back there. That was most considerate of you, displaying your blue jacket so clearly. It served as a very efficient beacon.’

  ‘I . . . I heard you’d retired.’ The tone was placatory, almost congenial, as if they were old friends catching up.

  The man called Bernie said in his distinctive gravel voice: ‘News travels fast inside prison walls. Yes, that’s right. I have taken the package, as the saying goes. And now I’m taking yours too.’

  Bernie Walsh—real name Bernhard Hermann Wolicz, former crack detective and ex-professional prize-fighter who had served at the sharp end in a long and controversial career. Homicide, rape, drugs, armed robbery, Special Operations. In each case he had etched an indelible impression before departing in dubious circumstances, usually for cutting corners and doing things his way. In the rape squad particularly he had been notorious for bashing suspects, on one occasion shoving a rubber hose right up someone’s back passage to see how they liked it. More commonly he would take them to the lavatory and beat them half to death with his fists before making them drink piss from the urinal. Not that he was any champion of justice—he also humiliated the victims with his intense, aggressive style of interrogation, which often resulted in tears, nervous breakdowns and official complaints. Like an army officer he carried a brass-tipped swagger stick under his arm, and one of his little tricks was to slam it on the table when the suspect started nodding off after hours of questioning. The fact was, Bernie Walsh enjoyed hurting people.

  Now he stood over the man in the hole, vigorously chewing gum. He was fully erect and looked supremely fit for a sixty-year-old. He had on sturdy cotton trousers, hiking boots, a thermal shirt and sleeveless wool vest. On his back was a daypack, and in his hand a revolver that looked very much like a .38 calibre Smith & Wesson Chief ’s Special.

  ‘Keep digging,’ he instructed. ‘Dig the hole longer—and deeper. Six feet deep will suffice. Dig until I tell you to stop.’

  He dug steadily, not fast but not too slowly either. Bernie Walsh was no fool—he had an unerring nose for tricks, he was a cop who could read hearts and souls, and it would not do to make him angry or impatient. The dirt pile mounted. Now and then he paused for a much-needed rest, wiping sweat and flecks of black earth from his face with his filthy arm. His ears pounded. All the while he was thinking, trying to figure out how to get out of this mess. The future did not look encouraging, however: Walsh held all the cards. All he held was the shovel.

  ‘Come on,’ Walsh said during a spell. ‘No slacking off. We don’t want some fucking animal scratching up your putrid remains, do we? That won’t do. Dig deep, my friend. Put your shoulders into it.’

  Bernie Walsh called everyone ‘my friend’, even the prisoners he used to bash. ‘Come with me, my friend,’ he would say, leading them by the scruff of the neck to the toilet block. ‘It’s back to school for you.’ In truth, however, he had no real friends, only colleagues. Of his personal life little was known, except that he had a slave-wife who apparently maintained the Walsh residence in the spartan manner of an army barracks, ready for his inspection when he arrived home at night. Not that any visitors ever saw inside it. And he had two sons—both clear-eyed, straight-backed young men, one a tax investigator and the other a customs officer: chips off the old block. Walsh had a reputation for drinking vast amounts of Schnapps and eating huge platefuls of pickled pork, boiled potatoes and cabbage—every night for dinner it was the same. Or so the story went.

  After three-quarters of an hour he sagged against the shovel and said, ‘Bernie, I’m so fucking dry. Have you got some water?’

  Keeping the revolver trained on him Bernie swung the daypack from his shoulder, produced a small bottle of mineral water and tossed it over. ‘Thirsty work, is it? Never mind, my friend, you’re nearly done. Then you can rest . . . forever.’

  The deeper he went, however, the harder the ground became. And there were tree roots to be hacked through, which was not easy given his state of near-exhaustion. Progress was slow. But another half-hour went by; the grave was waist-deep, almost long enough for him to lie in with his legs folded. Any second now he expected Walsh to pull him up.

  ‘That’s enough, my friend,’ he commanded a few minutes later.‘You have done very well indeed. Now comes your reward.’

  Blinking hard to get the stinging sweat from his eyes he looked up at Walsh, who seemed about ten feet tall with his legs astride, jaw working, the gun hand extended. The sun was now spearing through the trees and catching Walsh side-on, so that he resembled an Aryan man-god from a Second World War propaganda poster. His taut, muscular cheekbones flashed as he chewed and his military number-one cut glittered like shaved corn.

  The soon-to-be dead man stood still in the grave, legs trembling with fatigue and fear, the shaft of the shovel in his left hand, staring at Bernie and waiting for the crack that would send him on his way. He was as good as resigned to it.

  ‘Pass me the shovel,’ Bernie Walsh said, moving closer, squatting on his haunches and reaching out with his left hand while holding the gun level and steady in the right. He was not smiling, just watching his victim’s eyes as the shaft of the shovel was tipped towards his waiting hand. ‘Come on, come on,’ he said. But then the shaft, almost within his grasp, fell sideways, and in a reflexive movement Bernie made a lunge for it. It was only a split-second, and he barely took his eyes off the victim at all—but it was enough.

  The ground was slippery, and he teetered forward involuntarily, becoming slightly unbalanced. In that split-second a grimy, sweaty hand from nowhere clamped around his right wrist. Bernie Walsh’s jaw dropped open and his eyes widened. In the next instant he flew face first through the air, into the grave with the intended victim, crashing in an ungainly heap and ending up in a tangle of arms and legs with a mouthful of soil. On impact the revolver spilled from his hand. He twisted around, scrabbling for a hold somewhere, searching for the weapon, then found himself staring up at the man holding the shovel. The expression that froze his face was a marriage of disbelief and terror. How could their positions have been reversed so suddenly?

  He was about to speak, to issue an order perhaps, when the back of the blade slammed down onto his face. He saw the blow coming a fraction before the light show exploded inside his skull. A loud metallic clang reverberated through the clear morning air. Walsh made a horrible squealing noise, a panic-driven cry, before the shovel came down again and again, a dozen times, fifteen, every blow smashing into him with equal force, until blackness enveloped him and Bernie Walsh’s head was a flattened, compacted mixture of blood, mud and brain. At the end, the back of the shovel’s blade was thickly encrusted with dark reddish matter, along with teeth and bone shards.

  He wiped the blade on Bernie’s olive pants before leaning it against the grave wall. A hot, jagged breath seared his throat raw and his heart
pumped so hard it echoed in his ears like the shovel smacking onto Bernie’s head. Leaning against the wall he rested for a full five minutes while his system gradually recovered from the massive trauma of a near-death encounter. Then he turned his attention to Bernie Walsh. He went through his pockets, removing wallet, handkerchief, keys, a Swiss army knife, some coins, matches, odds and ends. In the daypack was a map of the area, another pistol—semiautomatic—some loose ammunition, a small mobile phone, binoculars, a notepad, felt-tip pens, tin of Dutch cigars, chewing gum packets, a hand towel, toilet bag, soiled socks and underpants. He zipped up the pack and tossed it clear of the grave, pocketed the dead man’s watch and gold wedding band and started to climb out. As he was doing so he noticed Bernie’s legs moving in a strange, circular, slow motion manner, and a weird, bubbling sound issuing from the place where his mouth had once been. Christ—the man was still alive. The brain was smashed to pulp, but the heart and the rest of his body refused to accept the verdict. He grabbed the shovel and finished the job with a welter of blows that put the matter beyond doubt.

  Filling in the plot was a lot easier than digging it—in fifteen minutes the job was completed. He then covered the grave with leafmeal, sticks and pieces of foliage until he was satisfied no-one would look twice at it. Just to make sure he hauled a heavy fallen branch over it, arranging it to look like a natural occurrence. Now there was absolutely no indication of anything untoward. Satisfied, he turned his attention to the chest. Using the shovel he broke the rusted padlock, then slowly lifted the lid. He liked what he saw, but did not allow himself to smile. There was a time for smiling, and it sure wasn’t now.

  With Bernie Walsh’s daypack on his back and the shovel over his shoulder he dragged the chest back to the sagging wire fence, checked both ways, then loaded everything including his down jacket into the back of the Land Cruiser. Not far down the road, towards town, was a white Ford Falcon—presumably Walsh’s. They would know where to start searching once he was reported missing. Too bad, but since there was nothing he could do about it there was no point worrying. The body was well concealed, and there was no obvious trail to the grave site.

  He knelt at the bank and washed his face and arms in the cold river before cupping his hands and drinking his fill. It was very bracing indeed. After he’d dried off in the vehicle, using Walsh’s hand towel, he fired up the engine and drove deeper into state forest, where the track became steep and winding. Ominous rainclouds were rapidly filling the sky. On a level stretch he stopped, got out and looked over the side. There was a sheer precipice that went down a long way. Keeping the automatic pistol and spare ammunition, the phone and notepad, he stowed all Walsh’s possessions in the daypack, including the watch and wedding ring, zippered it securely and flung it over the edge. It bounced and tumbled down into obscurity and was soon swallowed up by rugged, impenetrable scrub and rocks. The shovel followed, and it too disappeared. Specks of rain began to fall.

  It was necessary to drive on along the narrow, dangerous track for some time before he could find enough room to turn around. All the while he had plenty to think about. What was Bernie Walsh doing coming after him in what was obviously a well-planned operation? How did he know to come to Buzzards Hut? He had information, he was thoroughly equipped, and he was armed up and prepared to kill. One thing was for sure: where there was one, there were bound to be two—or more. Bernie Walsh was a soldier, an effective and fearsome one, but he’d never been leadership material. He had to be working for someone. Who the fuck would that be, after all this time? And while he pondered, Bernie Walsh’s phone trilled on the passenger seat.

  Immediately he hit the brakes, snatched the phone and hit the caller ID button. Committing this to memory he then answered in Bernie Walsh’s gravelly monotone: ‘Yes.’

  The squeaky voice at the other end said: ‘Anything to report?’

  ‘No developments at this stage, my friend.’

  Silence, then: ‘What’s the subject up to?’

  ‘Very little—to any purpose.’

  ‘He must have a purpose, or what the fuck is he doing there?’

  ‘If he has, it is not apparent. Perhaps he enjoys the clean mountain air.’

  ‘Well . . . stay on it. And keep me informed. Make sure you only use this number.’

  ‘If anything happens, my friend, you’ll be the first to know.’ Click.

  And who are you, my friend?

  Light misty rain blurred the windshield as he drove slowly through town. Approaching the hotel he saw a figure sitting on a bench, a rucksack beside her. She watched him come, and only stood when he had stopped in front of her. The passenger side window whirred down.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, leaning in.

  ‘Good morning. I thought you’d be sleeping.’

  ‘I was. You?’

  ‘No chance.I had something on my mind. It kept me awake.’

  ‘Me too.’ Silence, then: ‘I figured you’d have to come by eventually, if I sat here long enough.’

  ‘There’s only one way back to the real world.’

  ‘I was wondering if I could . . . hitch a lift. I’ve decided this bushwalking caper is definitely not for me.’

  ‘A lift? Sure. Is that all your gear?’

  ‘It’s enough.’

  He got out and hoisted the brand-new, expensive rucksack into the back. It was heavy. ‘That’s good equipment,’ he said.

  ‘When it comes to luggage in future, I’ll stick with Louis Vuitton.’

  Inside the cabin they looked at each other.

  ‘Here we go then,’ he said.

  ‘Here we go,’ she said. Then she leaned over and planted a delicate kiss on his lips. While she did this he snaked an arm around her and lightly squeezed the back of her neck. The scent of her freshly shampooed hair engulfed him.

  In a few minutes they were heading down the mountain, swerving between potholes. Sizeable patches of snow were scattered through the impenetrable scrub on either side of the road.

  ‘This is a nice car,’ she said, stretching out. ‘Comfortable. Plenty of . . . room, to move around, stretch one’s legs.’

  ‘Not mine,’ he said. ‘It’s rented.’

  Her hand was resting on his thigh.‘So how long have you been out of prison?’ she said. She was a cool one.

  He checked his wristwatch.‘About . . . twenty-eight hours.’

  She looked at him and said, ‘It doesn’t matter a damn to me. I was just curious.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘How long were you in for?’

  ‘Eleven years, give or take.’

  Silence, then: ‘Wow.’

  ‘Yeah. Wow.’

  She turned half side-on, facing him, and said,‘Incidentally, in case you’re interested, my name’s Joanna. Joanna Steer. But people call me Jo.’

  Joanna Steer . . . Steer . . . Husband a famous QC . . .

  ‘Are you married to Raydon Steer?’ he said after a space.

  ‘I am. Do you know him?’

  ‘No, not personally. I know of him. I’m aware of his . . . fame, or notoriety.’

  ‘Notoriety is exactly the word,’ she said bitterly.

  Silence descended while they both thought about the top-priced lawyer who was always in the papers, always on a big case, defending some corrupt tycoon with bottomless pockets: the type of upscale client who can afford the very best representation. Then she said, ‘And do you have a name? Or will I call you mystery man and best fuck this side of Paradise?’

  He laughed unexpectedly. ‘You can call me that if you want. But my real name’s Shaun. Shaun McCreadie.’

  ‘Shaun McCreadie,’ she said, tapping fingers on her lips.

  He lit a Lucky Strike while she processed the information. ‘Any bells ringing?’

  ‘Nope,’ she said.

  ‘Good.’

  They broke the journey once for sex, pulling over on a flat, treeless tract of rocky high country that was as wild and wind-blasted as any Scottish u
pland heath. In the middle distance was a single rundown farmhouse that looked like the façade of a movie set—there were no animals or crops here, no signs of life, just prehistoric terrain that stretched away for miles, against a backdrop of snowy mountaintops. Golden sun showers and intermittent hail swept over the vehicle under an eerie black sky. Sitting astride him on the passenger seat she directed all traffic, her flushed face resting against his sandpapery jaw while he stroked the damp undersides of her buttocks. Soon he slipped his fingers up under her shirt, unclipped her bra and released her breasts, allowing them to sit in his hands while she lifted and lowered herself with delicious, maddening slowness. Outside, rain and hail swished on the vehicle like handfuls of lead shot being thrown, while in the fogged-up confines of the cabin there was short breathing, the rustle of half-removed clothing and the luscious wet sound of lovemaking.

  They were approaching Marysville, winter tread tyres whining on bitumen, when she said, ‘What’s the plan, then?’

  ‘Plan?’

  ‘As in, what are you going to do now? Where are we heading?’

  ‘Thought I’d check into a motel,’ he said. Pause, then:‘After I take you wherever you want to go.’

  They were passing a battered, psychedelic campervan jammed with holiday gear and a stressed-out, hippie-looking family, with half a dozen bicycles attached, when she said,‘Tell you what. Forget the motel. Why not stay at my place?’

  He didn’t answer for a while, so she said, ‘I mean the townhouse in East Melbourne. There’s plenty of space. And I’m the only one there.’