Gith (11 page)

'I'm sorry,' I said.

'What for?' She looked surprised.

'For telling you about it. I haven't been thinking straight. I
haven't been taking it seriously.'

'What do you mean?'

'I've told a few people what Gith saw, and word's obviously
got back to him and he figures he'll scare her shitless to shut her
up. That's why he took the risk. That's why he grabbed her.'

'He grabbed her?'

'Yes, she's got a bruise on her arm. Like a thumbprint.'

'God!' she said. 'That's assault. They could arrest him for
that.' She thought about it. 'But then if they go after him and
they don't nail him, he'll be on the loose, feeling even more
desperate.'

True enough. Maybe we shouldn't tell Hemi, I thought.
But if we didn't, how the hell were we ever going to get out
of it?

'What do we do?' I asked. 'Sit tight and keep quiet?'

Brenda sipped her beer. Then she looked at me, smiled.
Again I felt I couldn't read her. She was trying to make up
her mind about something. She gave a little toss of her head,
flicking her hair aside.

'I'm very discreet,' she said. 'I'm not going to say anything.
And I don't suppose you're going to tell anyone you told me
about it. So, you don't need to apologise, eh?'

'No.' I figured it was Gith I should be saying sorry to
really.

'On the other hand, I'm a nosy creature. I like to hear
what's going on. So if you want to, I'm happy to lend an ear
whenever you feel like talking something through.'

'Thanks.'

'And I can keep my eyes open, as long as I know what I'm
looking for.'

'Thanks. That's great.' I was not at all sure what she was
saying she would do, partly because I didn't know what I
wanted.

We sat without speaking for a bit. The anger came up in
me again. I wanted to smash something or hit somebody. Not
in front of Brenda though. I took a big breath. Tried to keep
my mind on the facts.

'Well,' I said, 'we know a few things, eh? We know he's
about a metre seventy-five. And we know he knows who Gith
is but she doesn't know him, except by sight. He's bought gas
from us a few times but he's not a regular. And we've also got
some names.' I remembered what Hemi had said about not
spreading stories. Too late now. 'Rick Parline. Colin George.
Wayne Wyett. And Ray Tackett.'

'Really?' she said. 'I know Colin. He does odd jobs for me.
I can't imagine it's him.'

'It's got to be somebody. Could he have been the shadow
you saw today?'

'Well, yes. I suppose.'

'Where does he live?'

'Basingstoke Road. About three houses down from the
Arms.'

'And he has a white van?'

'Yes.'

'With a sliding side panel door?'

'I think so.'

'A Mitsubishi?'

'I wouldn't have a clue.' She thought for a second and then
looked at me, frowning. 'Oh, this is silly, isn't it? It couldn't
possibly be Colin. I only saw him today.'

'Where? At the show?'

'Well, yes. But everybody was at the show.' She frowned
some more. 'Good God,' she said. 'This is weird.'

'For sure,' I said. 'It doesn't have to be him. It doesn't have
to be anybody on the list.'

'What about the others?'

'Well, Tackett's out in the valley. Parline lives in Church
Street. I think he works in Katawai. I've seen him with a
little boy a couple of times so I guess he might be married. I
don't know much about Wyett except that he lives in Ramp
Street.'

'Yes, well that's not exactly a recommendation, is it?'

Ramp Street was an extension of Church Street but at the
other end of the social scale — a No Exit that led down to the
river. The bottom of it flooded in a wet winter. Most people
thought that if you lived down there you were either a loser
or a ratbag or both.

'What about this bloke everyone's talking about? Cleat?'

'Don't know,' I said. 'I've got nothing to link him with a
white van.'

'The police have talked to him apparently. Maybe he's in
the clear.'

'Maybe.'

A silence then. We looked at the sky. There was grey cloud
along the top of the range and above it, orange fading into
yellow and apple green and blue.

'So,' she said, 'given all that, what do we do?'

We? I liked that. It was a sign that she felt part of it — we
were in this thing together. It was good to be able to speak
freely with somebody who had the same take on things as I
did. It was a long time since I'd had such a straightforward
talk, even if it was about who had done a murder.

'No idea.' I looked at her. She smiled. I liked it when she
smiled.

***

WHEN IT CAME time for her to leave, we stood outside
the front door for a few minutes, not saying anything, like we
didn't want the meeting to end.

'You're good to that girl,' she said, out of the blue.

'She's good for me.'

Brenda nodded. Then she reached out and touched me on
the arm.

'Stop by the café,' she said. 'Anytime.'

She turned and walked away. I watched her go, the sway of
her hips, down the drive towards the service station.

When I got inside again the fear came back. I went and
checked my rifle. It was where it should be — in its case and
locked in the cupboard in the hall. It was safe there but pretty
useless if I wanted it in a hurry. Were we in danger? Any of
us? Yes, I figured we were. I put the rifle on the top of the
wardrobe. I tucked the box of shells away with my jocks in
the chest of drawers. Gith didn't move. I figured she was still
asleep.

I walked back out to the kitchen and got myself another beer,
stood there leaning against the bench, feeling the fear and the anger. I had
to keep her safe. That was the only thing I knew. God, if only the cops would
believe her, there might be a chance that the bastard would be caught. And
then the feeling came again that it was all my fault somehow, that nothing
would have happened today if I hadn't been blabbing. Who had I talked to,
though? Tom and Mark and Monty. Maybe Faye Ingrest. And Hemi. Ma and the Old
Man. Dolly McKenzie? Christ, well, there you go. Telling Dolly was like standing
on the steps of the war memorial and yelling it through a loud-hailer.

***

GITH SLEPT FOR sixteen hours that night and the next
morning she acted like nothing had happened. We had
breakfast and got to work about seven-thirty. She took the
pink teddy bear with her and propped it on the workbench
beside the radio.

We had a dozen jobs booked that day, mostly regular
services and minor repairs, and the first of them came in
about eight o'clock. By nine we were flat stick. Gith was in the
pit under a Falcon and I was giving an old Toyota a tune-up,
all to the sounds of some big orchestra sawing away. When it
was Gith's turn to pick the radio station it was always Concert
FM. Around ten, Julian Smeele dropped by for gas. I went
out and served him, chatted to him while the tank filled.

Julian is a tall, good-looking bloke with an upper-crust
Pommie accent. I guess he and Susie belong to the same sort
of set as the Marsdens. They are nice enough, though, and fit
in pretty well with the locals. Gith and I did the work on all
their vehicles, including the classic MG, which was a lot of
fun. We started talking about cars that day: the parade at the
show and whether it would be a good idea to get a rally going
come next summer. Somehow we got on to Jim Parline's
Zodiac, and that took me on to the next thing.

'Jim's got a brother. Rick. Do you know him?' I asked.

'I do, actually,' Julian said. 'He's a customer of ours.'

Which meant that he had a bit of money.

'I gather his people used to own a farm down towards
Katawai,' Julian went on. 'The old house is still there. It's
pretty derelict now.'

'Where is it?'

'You've probably seen it. It's on the right going south, about
six kilometres. When they widened the road they took out
most of the front garden.'

Yes, I thought I remembered it.

'Any reason you're interested in Rick?' Julian asked.

'No, just curious.'

***

WHEN HE HAD gone I took the poster for the Annual
Show down from the window. That reminded me of the day
I'd seen Anneke Hesse and I stood there for a while, behind
the till, looking out at the forecourt and trying to remember
just what had happened.

We have four pairs of pumps. One and two and five and
six are out nearest the road, three and four and seven and
eight are next to the shop. The white van had been at pump
number five. Monty had been at seven and Mavis Blake at
eight. What about six? I couldn't remember. And where was
the red Holden? At one. And the grey Camry wagon with
the labrador? It was hard to get it clear and in the end it was
bugging me so much that I went into the back room, grabbed
pen and paper, and drew myself a picture.

That was kind of what I remembered, although when I came
to look at it, it didn't make sense. If pumps two and six had
been empty, then the Camry wouldn't have pulled into pump
three, behind Monty. It would have gone on to six. So had
there been seven cars? Maybe there was a white wagon at six.
That could be why Mavis and Monty had got things wrong.
If there were seven cars, had the cops tracked down all the
drivers? I had to talk to Gith about it.

I folded the paper and put it in the pocket of my overall.
Then I put the kettle on for a cup of tea.

Outside there was a black Nissan Cefiro parked on the
forecourt next to the air pump. I headed into the workshop.
Gith was standing beside the Falcon with a man — Ray
Tackett. He was talking to her. She had her hand on her hip
and was listening with a not-believing sort of look on her
face.

'Gidday,' I said.

Ray turned. 'Gidday.' He looked kind of awkward but then
he came towards me, grinning in a way that might have been
friendly.

'Something we can do for you?' I asked him.

'Not specially. Just wanted to . . . well, you know, say sorry
for yesterday.'

'Okay.' I didn't like him and I didn't trust him so I couldn't
figure out what I was meant to say. Ray was a big bloke, a bit
taller than me and solid across the shoulders. He had short
spiky hair and blue eyes, a mouth that looked like it was going
to snarl at you any minute. Right now, though, it had that big
grin on it, a grin that didn't go with his eyes.

He stuck out his hand. I didn't know what else to do so I
shook it.

'Bloody stupid,' he said. 'All that carry-on. My old man and
your old man, they're as bad as each other.'

'Yeah,' I agreed. 'They're a couple of prickly old buggers.'

'No need for us to get caught up in it.'

'No.'

'And I just wanted to say there was no disrespect to . . .'
He turned and looked over his shoulder. Gith was standing a
couple of metres away. 'What's your name, love?'

Her mouth moved round, trying to get a word. 'Gith,' she
said.

'That's right. Gith.'

I didn't like his tone. There was something nasty in it.

'Listen . . .' I started but he stopped me.

'S'okay. S'okay.' He lifted his hands to calm me down.
'We're friends here, right? We're all friends. And your little
lady there . . .' He looked at Gith again. 'She deserves the
respect of a lady. That's all I want to say.'

'All right.'

'And I don't see any reason why I shouldn't buy my gas here
now and again, no matter what my old man thinks.'

'You want gas?' I asked.

'Not right now. But . . .' He shrugged. 'You never know.' He
turned away, walked over to his car, opened the door. He gave
a wave to me and then pointed his finger at Gith, made like
he was firing a pistol.

'Bastard!' I said, as he drove off.

Gith came up to me, looked at me with a puzzled sort of
frown.

'What was that about?' I asked.

She gave a shrug, like it made no sense to her.

'Did he say sorry?'

But then I thought, why would he say sorry to her? She
wasn't there when we'd had the face-off. 'Did he come on to
you?'

'Narg.' Well, not really.

I didn't like it.

'Did he . . .' It was one of those times when I didn't know
what to ask her. I felt there were things I had to know but I
didn't have the words to make the questions come out right.
At least I could see she wasn't worried. In fact she just seemed
to think it was weird, like I did.

'He's not the bloke who grabbed you yesterday?' I asked.

'Narg.'

'And he's not the bloke who was in the white van?'

'Nar, nar.'

'Let's have a cup of tea,' I said.

I made it in the back room and brought it out to the
workshop. We stood together leaning on the bench. I showed
her my map of the forecourt on the day Anneke went
missing.

'Is that right?' I asked.

She looked at it. Then she shook her head.