The twenty minutes’ delay due to the blow-out had almost wrecked the plan to introduce Inspector Bonaparte into Cork Valley. Had the pursuing police caught up with him they would have had to arrest him, and to arrest him was not the purpose of the pursuit. They merely wanted to confirm his story.
Bony could hear the murmur of voices, and presently he heard an approaching car. He mounted the steps to bring his ear close to the shed floor, and he heard the car arrive, its engine stopped, the doors slammed shut. He ventured to raise the trap an inch, and heard clearly the conversation outside the open-fronted shed. Sergeant O’Leary, of Wollongong, was saying:
“We are looking for a feller calling himself Bonnay. He’s got a record, and we believe he’s concerned with thefts on the outskirts of Wollongong. He was last seen at the turn-off from the Hume Highway, and a couple of blackberry-pickers at the foot of the pass think he was in your truck.”
“That’s so, Sarge,” came the quiet even voice of Mike Conway. “Half abo, I think. I picked him up a couple of miles in from the Highway. Said he was making for Bowral way and he asked me if there was any work going over there. What’s he done?”
“No matter,” growled the sergeant. “Exceptin’ he’s got a record as long as your arm. You bring him here?”
“No. Not in the habit of bringing waifs and strays to Cork Valley. I put him down at the turn-off on the mountain road. You call on my brother?”
“Your brother said he didn’t notice him with you.” Sergeant O’Leary’s voice was distinctly chilly. “You haven’t unloaded yet, I see.”
“What of it?” softly asked Conway.
“Well, get along. Unload. The feller might have hopped up into the load as you moved off from the mountain road.”
“Unload yourself,” a man shouted, and Bony thought he must be the red-headed giant.
“That’ll do you, Red Kelly,” snapped the sergeant, and again the quiet tones of Conway reached the enthralled Bony.
“Cut it out, Red. Give us a hand, you fellers, to unload for the sergeant. Wire into the shed, cased stuff into the store.”
Through the chink between the floor and the trap, Bony could see the activity outside. A man came into the shed rolling fencing wire, and Bony closed the trap and climbed down the steps. The wire was placed on the trap, and a moment later another coil was stacked on top of the first. Up the steps once again, Bony listened and heard some of the conversation above.
“Have a look behind those stacked spuds, constable,” a man said, giving a deep chuckle. “The feller could be among ’em.” Another man added: “Give it a go, constable. Them aborigines are slippery bastards. What about trying the rafters?”
Another coil of wire was dropped on the stack over the trap door, and then sounds of activity abated, and the voices became distant and the words blurred. Bony descended again to sit on the chair beside the table and roll another cigarette, complacently satisfied that the plan had succeeded in its dual purpose.
The story he had told Conway of being imprisoned for stealing horses, and associating with a fowl-stealing hobo was now substantiated by the police. It was proved that he was a person of ill repute. And further, it was now proved that these Cork Valley people weren’t above harbouring a wanted man, and the suspicion was strengthened that they had been closely associated with crimes for several years. They were an anachronism in an orderly country. They owned this rich land pocket amid mountains extending south of Sydney to the Alps, and farther still into the mountainous maze of Gippsland having its western extremity but a few miles north of Melbourne. And on one side of the Highlands the rich coastal belt and on the other the farms and grazing properties and thriving towns and railways.
Superintendent Casement’s analogical rabbit burrow included a region much larger than Cork Valley. The dead and mangled ferrets had not been found in Cork Valley itself but miles from it, and no member of the community had been charged with a serious crime for the past forty years.
“They’re a stubborn crowd, Bony, and mighty cunning,” he had explained. “Try to evade paying licence fees for anything, just for the hell of it. Fought and beat the Education Department about sending the children to school by bus outside the Valley. Now they run their own school. Customs people are convinced they’ve operated stills for many years but could never locate one. Farmers right outside the area have repeatedly lost cattle and horses, and shortly before petrol rationing was terminated, a semi-trailer truck broke down on the pass up the mountains, and, when the driver was away telephoning for assistance, fifty forty-gallon drums of juice disappeared.
“Seven years ago, a party of Customs investigators made a raid and when returning, their car fell through a bridge. Cork Valley never pays rates until compelled to, so the road in doesn’t concern the local council. We sent in a man last year. Went in as a potato digger. Two weeks later they delivered him at the Bowral Hospital, swearing he’d started a brawl. He couldn’t admit he was police, and he couldn’t prove the brawl was staged for his benefit. Nine years ago the body of a man was found in a tidal creek south of Kiama. Never identified. Dentures found in a pocket didn’t fit his mouth. Nothing to prove that he was murdered by anyone at Cork Valley. But back of the creek are the mountains and in the mountains is Cork Valley.
“This recent crime is nearer Cork Valley, and the victim was an excise officer of the Customs Department. On December 21 last year the body of a man was found on the road three miles from Bowral by a milk-collecting truck driver. Road marks as well as the condition of the body pointed to a hit-and-run affair, but the pathologist’s report says that the man had been dead for several hours before being deliberately run over.
“The body was dressed in worn working clothes and boots, but the hands proved he wasn’t a working man. It has taken us four months to identify him, and that because of unusual circumstances.
“Excise Officer Eric Torby was granted three months’ leave, as from the beginning of December; was single, no relatives, lived in lodgings in Sydney. Told his landlady he was going bushwalking in the Southern Highlands, and anticipated being away for weeks. She states he left wearing plus-fours and a tweed coat, and carried in his rucksack extra underwear. Says further, that he was interested in geology, and took with him a geologist’s hammer. Cork Valley would interest a geologist, Bony?”
“And a still would interest an excise officer,” Bony had said. “I’ll study that wall map again, and we’ll think up a plan to get me into Cork Valley.”
The opening phase of the plan had succeeded, and Inspector Bonaparte, alias Nathaniel Bonnay, now listened to the departure of the police car. The ensuing silence continued for half an hour, when he heard the sound of rolls of wire being removed from the trap door.
The trap was raised and down the steps came Mike Conway and the huge red-bearded man called Kelly. Conway sat on the bed and fingered the old suitcase. Redbeard stood with fists clamped to his hips and stared down at the seated Bony.
Chapter Three
Dinner with the Family
“So you’re on the run eh? Stealing horses and thieving a poor widder-woman’s fowls.” In the lamplight the big man’s eyes were almost black, and Bony remembered them to be fiercely blue. “If you would be after stealin’ fowls at Cork Valley, or borrowing a horse or two, be carshous.”
“I didn’t rob the widow although I ate her chook,” Bony particularised. “The horses I took belonged to a squatter.”
Red Kelly made the first of his many mistakes, saying: “Stand up when you speak to an Irish gintleman.”
Bony stood; and Red Kelly observed the metamorphosis Bony could achieve. The slightly drooping, shifty-eyed descendant of two races became a blazing-eyed spitting panther as he took the three steps necessary to stand chest to chest with the man a foot taller and