The Godson (11 page)

‘Good,' answered Les. He got out of the car and moved round to the back. ‘What about yourself? Everything sweet here?'

‘Good as gold,' winked Eddie. ‘Couldn't be creamier.'

Norton turned his attention to a very sullen Peregrine, dressed in blue corduroy trousers, matching wide-shouldered jacket and the same trilby he had on at the airport. ‘Hello, Peregrine,' he said. ‘How are you, mate?'

‘Fine,' replied the Englishman tightly. He climbed in the front seat without waiting for anyone to tell him what to do.

Les noticed Eddie eyeing Steelo in the back. ‘He's all right. He's a mate of mine. I'm giving him a lift to Newcastle.'

The little hit man nodded an impassive approval. ‘Just wait here for a minute, Les,' he said. Eddie jogged down to his Mercedes parked about a hundred metres down from The Sebel,
opened the boot and took something out. He was back in an instant and handed Les a small overnight-bag.

‘What's this?'

‘A gun. It's an old 9mm Robinson. So don't lose it.' Norton accepted the bag reluctantly. ‘Snooker it under the seat or in the tyre well. You probably won't need it; but take it just in case. Have a bit of target practice. There's two hundred rounds of ammo there too.'

‘Yeah — all right.' Norton nodded without any expression.

‘Well,' Eddie smiled and gave Les a quick handshake. ‘Have a good time up north.'

‘I'll ring you as soon as we get there,' said Les, getting behind the wheel of the car.

‘Do that. See you later, Peregrine.' Eddie gave the Englishman a cheeky grin and tapped the roof of the car. ‘Keep smiling.'

Peregrine returned Eddie's grin with a very sour, very quick, once up and down. Les gave the horn a toot and they were on their way.

‘Peregrine. This is a mate of mine, Tony.'

‘G'day Peregrine,' said Tony, offering his hand. ‘How are you mate?'

‘Fine, thank you,' replied the Englishman with a quick shake.

‘I'm dropping Tony off at Newcastle, about an hour and a half's drive from here. Tony's a photographer.'

At the mention of the word photography, Peregrine's eyes lit up. He was also pleasantly surprised to meet someone who wasn't either a hit man or a heavy. ‘You're a photographer, Tony?'

‘Yeah,' replied the Dan, without a great deal of enthusiasm. ‘Worst thing I ever done in me fuckin' life.'

‘I dabble in photography,' said Peregrine. ‘A close friend of the family back in England is quite a famous one.'

‘Yeah. Who's that?'

‘Lord Snowdon.'

‘Lord Snowdon!' Steelo was visibly impressed. ‘Shit! Is he a mate of yours?'

A
BOUT HALF AN
hour or so later Norton was on the other side of Hornsby heading towards the toll-gates at Mt. Colah and the start of the expressway; roughly the same time as the two English journalists introduced themselves to Katherine the PR lady at The Sebel Town House. They were handsome,
dark-haired men, impeccably mannered with soft, rich, yet slightly strange English accents, and there was the hint of a smile in their inquisitive green eyes. They left their car just down from the hotel with a third journalist behind the wheel.

‘Yes, Katherine,' smiled the journalist holding the camerabag. ‘We're with the
Manchester Guardian
. We're here to do a feature article on Sir Peregrine's visit to Australia.'

‘Oh, what a shame,' said Katherine, returning their smiles with a sympathetic one. ‘You've missed him by about half an hour.'

For a split second the smile in the two reporter's eyes turned to icy steel. ‘We've missed him?' said the one on the left.

‘Yes. He checked out at six-thirty.'

‘Did he say where he was going?' asked the one with the camera.

‘No,' Katherine shook her head. ‘I'm afraid Sir Peregrine didn't leave a forwarding address.'

‘Was he with anyone when he left?'

‘There was a gentleman who stayed the night with him. But Sir Peregrine drove off with two other gentlemen. In a white Ford station wagon I think it was.'

‘The two men he drove off with, were they English?'

‘I don't know,' replied Katherine. ‘But the gentleman who stayed with him last night was Australian.'

‘And you've no idea where they went?'

‘I'm sorry.'

The two reporters exchanged a brief glance. ‘Okay, Katherine,' said the one holding the camera-bag. ‘Thank you very much, anyway.'

‘You're welcome, anytime,' smiled the PR lady.

Grim faced, the two journalists returned to their car, where the English accents quickly disappeared to be replaced by a much stronger brogue.

‘Sonofabitch!' cursed the one with the camera-bag. ‘We've missed the bastard by a half fockin' hour.'

‘Christ!' said the one behind the wheel. ‘It's enough to make you sick.'

They sat in silence for a moment staring moodily at each other. ‘What do you think we should be doing?' asked the third.

‘Drive back to the flat,' said the one with the camera-bag. ‘Ring up. Tell them we've lost him — only for the fockin' time being, though.'

The driver looked at his watch. ‘It'll be almost midnight
back there. Not the best time to be waking Liam with news like this.'

‘Nor his mother.'

‘Don't be worrying too much about old Mrs Frayne,' said the one with the camera. ‘That woman is well used to this sort of thing by now.'

N
ORTON'S PLANS FOR
an enjoyable trip, cruising along listening to his new music and having a bit of a chat to Tony and Peregrine were well and truly thwarted, much to his disdain. He'd had the radio on very low, listening to nothing in particular as they headed out of Sydney and intended dropping a cassette in as soon as they got onto the freeway. Peregrine and the Dan, however, had got into an engrossed conversation about photography. Peregrine the pupil, was listening intently, and Tony the expert was in his element. Norton was like the cocky on the biscuit-tin: not in it at all. He drove along in enforced silence and by the time they were at Berowra he was fed up to the gills with f/1.8 lenses, f/1.4 lenses, light-emitting diode displays, depths of field, aperture-preferred automatic metering, silicon photocells and more bullshit that went straight over his head. As soon as he dropped his sixty cents in the basket at Mt. Colah, he slipped on a Divynls cassette. The band had got through the first four bars when Peregrine gave him a look of sour and utter contempt.

‘I say, Les,' he bristled, with frigid politeness. ‘Would you mind turning that down, please? We're trying to have an intelligent conversation here.'

‘Yeah, piss that fuckin' shit off,' barked Steelo. ‘I got to listen to that disco fuckin' garbage four nights a week at the bar. I'm half deaf now from putting up with it — low fuckin' top-forty shit that it is. Stick it in your arse.'

Peregrine had to blink at Steelo's tirade. ‘I wholeheartedly agree,' he nodded.

Norton reluctantly turned off the cassette and switched on the radio, but the local music was so bad and they made him keep it down so low he may as well have not had the thing on at all. He drove on fuming in silence. He was fuming so much he forgot he had to go through Newcastle and took the Wollombi turn off. Tony was so engrossed in bayonet-mounted lenses and four frames per second power winders with Peregrine he didn't notice where they were going either. Then it dawned
on Les and he screeched to a halt just out of Hexham where they rejoined the Pacific Highway.

‘Well, here you are, Steelo,' said Les cheerfully. ‘Newcastle.'

Tony looked around him and screwed up his face in disbelief. ‘Newcastle?' he howled. ‘This isn't fuckin' Newcastle.'

‘Yes it is. What's that sign say over there?' Norton pointed to a sign on the opposite side of the road: Newcastle 20 kms. Hexham 1km.

‘I got to get to Bar Beach,' protested Tony.

‘Well I'm not stopping you,' shrugged Norton. ‘And I sure as hell ain't getting stuck in Newcastle traffic at eight o'clock in the morning.'

‘Jesus fuckin' Christ!! How am I gonna get there?'

‘Walk. Catch a bus. How do you think, you wombat?'

‘I've got two bucks. That's got to get me my lunch and my fare back to fuckin' Sydney.'

Norton shrugged indifferently. ‘Snip your surfie mate Mark Richards. He's the world champion. He should have plenty of money.'

‘Ahh, Jesus fuckin' Christ!! Fuck it. Fuck, fuck, fuckin', fuck, fuck …' To an accompanying string of further profanities, Tony picked up his camera-bag and got out of the car.

‘See you back in the old steak and kidney, Steelo,' grinned Norton.

Peregrine waved a quick goodbye just as Les bipped the horn and they were on their way again, Tony Nathan's curses still ringing vividly in their ears.

‘I say,' said Peregrine. ‘That was a bit unsporting of you, wasn't it? Leaving your friend stranded there without any money.'

‘Steelo?' answered Norton. ‘Mate. He wouldn't have it any other way.' Norton watched Tony disappearing in the rearvision mirror for a second or two. ‘Now Lord Normanhurst, warden of the cinque ports or whatever you are,' he chuckled, turning off the radio and replacing it with a cassette. ‘I think it's well and truly time we got the Les and Pezz show on the road.' He pressed the cassette, hit the volume and immediately the Divynls began howling into ‘Siren'.

‘Oh my God.' Peregrine turned his face away in anguish. ‘That's ghastly.'

‘No,' grinned Norton, bopping away to the music. ‘That's Christine Amphlett. She's grouse. You ought to see her in her school uniform.'

After they'd travelled about fifteen kilometres or so Norton felt he'd had enough fun and Peregrine had copped a good enough blast of rock ‘n' roll, which he evidently didn't seem to be too keen on, so he turned the car stereo down. Considering he'd had an early night and not much to drink, the Englishman still seemed tired and edgy apart from the annoyance of the loud music, which had Norton a little curious as to why; although he did notice a definite bad vibe going in Eddie's direction when he cheerily bid Peregrine goodbye outside the Sebel at six-thirty.

‘So how are you feeling now anyway, Peregrine?' asked Les, realising this was the first real start of any conversation he'd had with the Englishman since they'd left Sydney.

‘I'm quite all right, thank you,' replied Peregrine shortly.

‘That's good. How come you changed your mind about going out last night?'

‘Your friend Eddie persuaded me that it might be better if I stayed inside for the evening.'

From the way Peregrine spoke Norton twigged something must have happened in the room. ‘Yeah.' He turned and smiled at Peregrine. ‘Eddie can be very persuasive at times, can't he?' Peregrine ignored Les's stare. ‘Yes. He has a certain way about him, hasn't he?'

A few more kilometres sped by in silence. ‘You hungry?' asked Les. Peregrine shook his head. ‘I had a good breakfast at the hotel.'

‘Well, there's a place up ahead, Buladelah. I'm gonna stop and have a steak sandwich and make a couple of phone calls. You feel like a cup of coffee?'

‘Yes. I suppose I could manage a cup of coffee.'

‘Righto.'

They sped on through the Australian countryside in silence, apart from the music playing lightly in the background. Norton made a couple of half-hearted attempts at conversation but Peregrine virtually ignored him, preferring to stare out the windscreen in silence. Christ! I hope he's not going to be like this the whole trip, thought Les. This is going to be a real lot of fun. I may as well have a side of veal sitting there. Still, he's only been here barely two days, I suppose. What can you expect? But he sure needs livening up. Don't know how though. And I don't fancy sitting here watching him guzzle bottles of champagne, if that's what it takes to get his rocks off. Ah well, I suppose I'll think of something.

More countryside went past without anything being said.
The Divynls tape finished; Norton slipped on some Machinations. Before long they were in Buladelah. Norton swung the station wagon into the BP garage and restaurant parked to the side and switched off the motor.

‘Come on, mate,' he winked. ‘Let's have a cuppa.'

They walked into the restaurant and found an empty table amongst several truck drivers and a few other travellers. Les ordered, and told Peregrine he'd be back as soon as he made his phone calls. He returned and sat down just after their food and coffee arrived about five minutes later, the hint of a smile flickering in the corners of his dark brown eyes.

‘Have to ring Eddie, did you?' enquired Peregrine, with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice. ‘Tell him I haven't tried to escape?'

‘No, nothing like that,' replied Norton brightly. ‘In fact I just tried to ring a mate of mine who lives near Coffs Harbour. Tell him I'd have dinner with him tonight. But there was no one home. I'll ring him again later. We'll stay at Coffs Harbour tonight. We're in no mad hurry. That way we'll get to where we're going in the daytime and feeling fresh. What do you reckon?'

Peregrine shrugged and took a sip of coffee. ‘You're driving,' he said uninterestedly.

They sat in silence. Les polished off his steak sandwich while Peregrine checked out the surroundings and the heads on some of the truck drivers as he delicately sipped his coffee.

‘I suppose this must be all pretty strange to you, Peregrine,' said Norton, washing down the last piece of crust with coffee. ‘Out in the middle of nowhere, not knowing a soul?'

‘I suppose one could say that.'

‘It's all a bit strange to me, too. I've never been to this place we're going to in the Tweed Valley. And I don't know much about you or this whole set up either. All I know is your godfather's the Attorney General, you've got a lot of money and you're related to the Royal Family. And you're in some sort of trouble with the IRA. You want to tell me about it? I mean, what happened in Ireland that these people would want to go to all that trouble to kill you?' Norton gave a shrug. ‘Apart from head butting that wombat at the Sebel, you've got to be one of the most inoffensive blokes I've ever met in my life.'