The Godson (12 page)

For a brief moment a little life seemed to come into Peregrine's eyes as he reflected into his coffee. ‘There's not a great deal to tell, actually. And I'm not very good at explanations. It
was just one of those spur of the moment things.' He stared evenly at Les. ‘But if you insist…'

‘Well… I wouldn't mind,' said Les.

‘Very well, then.' Peregrine took a sip of coffee. ‘I was with some friends in London. We were drinking and arguing about the Irish. One word led to another and I happened to mention my cousin Lewis, who's a captain in the Coldstream Guards stationed in Belfast, and if they didn't believe me about this thing we were arguing about, I'd drive up and ask him myself. And I'd bring back two pints of Guinness from a Belfast pub while I was there. Someone dared me. So we did.'

‘We?'

‘Stephanie Wingate. My current girlfriend. She came along for the ride.' Peregrine made a defensive gesture with his hands. ‘It was also an excuse to run in a new Aston-Martin I'd just purchased.' Norton nodded still a little mystified. ‘Anyway, Les, to make a long story short, we get to Liverpool, over to Ireland and arrive in Belfast. Stephanie is now driving and I'm giving directions as we head for the barracks where Lewis is stationed, when, bless my soul, if I don't see him sitting on a motorbike outside this pub talking to three fellows. I immediately tell Stephanie to pull up and jump out of the car waving a bottle of champagne. I… might add, I'd been drinking rather heavily the whole time. Lewis sees me and almost turns white. I didn't realise, I mean… well, I didn't know he was working undercover. The three men he was talking to immediately go for their guns. But Lewis, who I might tell you is the crack shot of his regiment, gets to his gun first, and shoots all three dead. It was an absolutely ghastly sight, Les. I can tell you that, when I look back at it.'

‘I reckon it would be,' agreed Norton.

‘Anyway, Stephanie starts screaming. We both turn around and as we do I accidentally knock the gun out of Lewis's hand with the bottle of champagne. You must remember, Les, I was quite drunk and this all happened so quickly.' Norton nodded. ‘Next thing I know, Lewis is pushing me towards the car, screaming at me to clear off, then he gets on his motorbike and roars away. However, in my drunken state, instead of getting in the car, I pick up Lewis's gun and call out to him that he'd forgotten his gun. The mob came out of the pub at all the shooting and see me holding this gun, which luckily stops them for a moment. They regroup and are getting ready to tear me to pieces, when just in the nick of time, a British Army patrol arrives on the scene. This time I do get
in the car and Stephanie takes off like jolly Sterling Moss. And we don't stop till we get back to London.'

‘Not even for the two pints of Guinness?'

‘Not even for a piddle.' Peregrine shook his head and reflected into his coffee. ‘The stupid thing is some paddy got the number of my car. And my cousin and I are very similar in looks. Now they think I'm Lewis, and Lewis is me, and I shot the three men. And … oh God, Les, I don't know what the stupid buggers think. And in a way, I don't give a toss either, to be perfectly honest.'

Norton shook his head in amused amazement. ‘It's a funny one all right. But still, I wouldn't be taking it too lightly, if I were you.'

‘Well, I'm not really,' conceded Peregrine. ‘That's why I agreed to come to Australia; while Lewis sorts all this rattle out back home.'

‘Yeah, what's this Lewis's story? What's he got to do? Go in and shoot some brother, Frayne or something?'

‘That's right,' nodded Peregrine. ‘You know about the Frayne brothers do you?'

‘More or less. My boss explained it all roughly to me. I'd just like you to fill in a few loose ends, that's all.'

‘All right. Well, Liam is his name. He's the older brother of the two Lewis shot outside the pub. He's the one making all the noise and the one who's convinced I'm Lewis and vice versa. Cousin Lewis is sure, as is my father, that if he can kill this remaining Frayne brother and get a mistaken identity story run in Fleet Street press or some magazine or something, it should clear me. Then we can all live happily ever after.'

‘It sure sounds all right,' shrugged Norton.

‘Oh, if I was foolish enough to be seen in Belfast someone might take a pot-shot at me. But if I stay in England, toing and fro-ing the way I do, they're not going to worry much about me. To the Irish, Les, I'm small potatoes. And I don't mean that as a joke.'

‘What if Lewis doesn't get this Liam Frayne?'

Peregrine shook his head adamantly. ‘He will. Lewis is the best there is. Besides, they want to shoot him anyway. He's a suspected arms courier — he's supposed to bring them in from the Middle East and steal them from the British Army.'

‘A suspected arms dealer? So what? They shoot him, then give him a fair trial afterwards?'

‘That, unfortunately, Les,' smiled Peregrine, ‘is how it works in Ireland these days.'

Norton shook his head almost in disbelief. ‘Well, I'm glad I'm over here and not there,' he said sincerely.

‘You and I both, old boy,' replied Peregrine, still smiling. ‘Though I would much prefer to be back in England than here, I can assure you of that. Still, I promised father I'd stay here for two weeks and I shall.'

‘And you don't think the Irish will follow you out here?'

Peregrine dismissed Les's question with a wave of his hand. ‘No. They wouldn't bother coming all this way. Where would they find me?'

‘What about that bloody thing all over yesterday's paper?'

The Englishman screwed up his face and dismissed this with a wave of his hand also. ‘If you ask me, Les,' he said tiredly, ‘this whole blessed thing has been blown out of all proportion. Me having to come all this way out here. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Lewis hasn't sorted it all out by now, to be quite honest.'

‘Well, let's hope for your sake he has.' Norton drained his cup of coffee and looked evenly at Peregrine. ‘Anyway, what do you reckon? We start making tracks?'

‘Am I to take it that that means leave?'

‘Words to that effect, in part, thereof — yes.'

‘Then let's go.' Peregrine had a quick look around the cafe. ‘The heads on some of these truck drivers in here remind one of something one would expect to find haunting a castle somewhere on the Cornish coast.'

Norton paid the bill, Peregrine bought a bar of chocolate and they walked back out to the car. Before they left, Les took the bag Eddie had given him from under the front seat and stuffed it in the tyre-well. Then they were on their way.

They continued their journey in silence, although Les felt he could distinguish a slight but unmistakeable change in Peregrine. The Englishman still wasn't saying much but he did seem noticeably cheerier and on several occasions Norton saw him tapping his feet lightly to the music coming through the speakers. It appeared that their brief conversation in the cafe had given Peregrine a chance to open up a little and maybe get one or two things off his chest. Les might not be a bosom buddy, but for an obviously rough man he was friendly and tried to show some understanding, quite unlike Eddie. And when it all boiled down, apart from his godfather miles away in Canberra, Peregrine didn't know a soul in Australia. There were definitely worse people he could be spending his two weeks in Australia with.

They zoomed on through the North Coast countryside: distant blue mountain ranges, uneven plains, hills thick with trees sloping up from the sides of the road. Every now and then they'd cross the odd river or stream or bump over some railwaycrossing surrounded by tiny hamlets of a dozen or more houses. It was a clear blue day and even though they were barely 250 kilometres from Sydney both men could notice the chill leaving the air now and the further north they went the warmer and more pleasant it became. More countryside went past in silence, both men still preoccupied with their own thoughts when the Englishman undid his jacket and wound his window half way down.

‘I say,' he muttered, a little unexpectedly. ‘It's getting quite warm.'

‘Warm?' Norton couldn't help but grin. ‘Mate, this is the middle of winter.'

‘Winter? God, what's it like out here in the summer?'

‘In a word Peregrine, hot. Bloody hot. And millions of bloody flies.'

Peregrine loosened his collar and stared out the window. ‘Phew!' he exclaimed. ‘This would be quite a decent summer's day back home.'

A signpost whizzed past: Kempsey, 210 kms. They both saw it at the same time.

‘We might stop there for a bit of lunch,' suggested Les.

‘Sounds good,' smiled Peregrine.

About ten kilometres north of Nabiac Norton chuckled quietly to himself. The Machinations tape had stopped playing. He pulled it out and slipped on some Hoodoo Gurus.

‘So,' he said, as ‘Bittersweet' piped through the speakers. ‘Where actually is home to you, Peregrine?'

‘Home?' replied the Englishman. ‘Well, I have an estate in West Sussex. But I also have a mews in Knightsbridge in London. I suppose my social life revolves mainly around there. The West End.'

Norton nodded. ‘How do you get on with the cops?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Coppers. How do you get on with them? What do you think of them?'

Peregrine looked quizzingly at Les. ‘That's a rather unusual question isn't it?'

Norton shrugged and glanced up at the rear-vision mirror. ‘Is it?'

‘Well,' Peregrine seemed a little lost for words. ‘I don't quite
know how to answer that,' he said cautiously. ‘I imagine my friends and I get on quite well with the police — or the bobbies, as we call them. We don't really bother them. And they don't really bother us. They have a job to do like anybody else I imagine — why?'

‘Well, I hate the cunts myself,' grunted Norton sourly, making Peregrine blink at the bitterness creeping into his voice. ‘They're fuckin' fleas, the lot of them.'

‘Well, if that's the way you wish to think,' Peregrine had to blink again, ‘then you're entitled to it. But personally, I have nothing against them at all.'

‘Well, I reckon they're all cunts,' repeated Norton grimly. ‘And there's one behind us right now.'

Without thinking, Peregrine spun straight around, and sure enough, barely ten metres behind them was a highway-patrol cop on a motorbike.

‘I wonder what he wants?' said Peregrine.

‘What do you think the cunt wants?' growled Norton. ‘To pull me over for speeding. The prick.'

No sooner had Les said that than the cop on the motorbike flashed his lights and turned on his siren.

‘Well, I suggest you pull over,' said Peregrine.

Norton looked at Peregrine and his lip curled. ‘Pull over?' he hissed. ‘Listen. I got shoved in gaol because of one of those arseholes on motorbikes. Fuck him. Let's make the cunt earn his money.'

Norton slammed his foot straight to the floor. The Ford station wagon immediately bucked into second gear, forcing them both back against the seats as they took off like something out of ‘The Dukes of Hazzard', the needle on the speedometer climbing crazily like a thermometer gone berserk.

‘My God, Les,' said Peregrine, wide-eyed. ‘What do you think you're doing?'

Norton didn't answer. He just gritted his teeth and gave Peregrine a look of pure savagery.

Round the bends they hurtled, tyres screaming as Norton ignored the double yellow lines and overtook the other cars and semi-trailers as though they were standing still. Eyes bulging like tennis balls, Peregrine rocked from side to side straining against his seat belt while right behind them the highwaypatrol cop stuck grimly to their tail, his siren wailing like a banshee through the peace and quiet of the North Coast countryside.

Terrified and trapped, Peregrine sat there clutching his seat
belt in disbelief at what was going on around him and what had happened to him since he arrived in Australia. The previous day some cold-blooded killer had pulled a gun on him and threatened to throw him off the balcony of his hotel room. Now some other thug with a pathological hatred for the police, whom for a moment he had thought was half all right, had him involved in a high-speed car chase through the countryside trying to escape the highway-patrol. And these people were supposed to be looking after him.

After about another five kilometres of screeching, smoking tyres and wailing sirens Norton muttered something under his breath and began to slow down. With a look of utter contempt at the cop in the rear-vision mirror he finally pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the motor. The cop pulled up behind them. He sat there watching them for a moment then slowly got off his bike and walked warily towards them.

‘Have a look at this prick,' snarled Norton. ‘How would you like to get out and kick him right in the nuts?'

Still wide-eyed, Peregrine stared at Norton and shook his head.

The cop walked up to Norton's window. Les glared straight ahead, totally ignoring him. Peregrine sensed he could see the highway-patrol cop's eyes flash behind his sunglasses.

‘Okay. Get out of the car,' said the cop.

‘Get fucked,' replied Norton.

Peregrine gave a double blink, scarcely believing his ears.

‘I said get out of the car,' repeated the cop, louder this time.

‘And I said to get fucked,' replied Norton.

‘Right. That's it.' The cop pulled out his service revolver and levelled it straight at Norton's big, red head. ‘Now get out of the car.' He moved the barrel towards Peregrine. ‘You too,' he barked.

Les and Peregrine exchanged looks. Finally Les undid his seat belt and they both got out, standing on either side of the car.

‘Where's your driver's licence?' ordered the cop.