Shooting Star by Peter Temple Page B

any good. In his eyes and his hands and his shoulders and his chin, you could see the resentment. I heard the round snick into the breech, waited for the bullet, wanted the bullet.
    Stephanie leaned across and put her left hand on her grandfather’s right hand, kept it there.
    Sack me. I willed him to say the words. I wanted to be away from this grand house, back in my own life, such as it was.
    Anne Carson’s face in the Portsea photograph came into my mind. The schoolgirl screwed by her driver. The girl who opened the holiday house gate for grown men, drunk men with breath as pungent as woodsmoke. The girl in the back of the yellow van with the cocky locksmith.
    There was something in her face, something in the eyes, the look of a child wanting praise, wary of displeasure.
    A girl with only a stub for a little finger. It would be bandaged now. By what crude hands? Perhaps they had given her a painkiller. Perhaps they had given her a shot of something before. Before and later. Heroin was as easy to buy as aspirin, easier in some places, an excellent painkiller. And they could keep doing that, she’d do a bit of projectile vomiting, then she’d be relaxed, she wouldn’t feel too bad about the whole thing.
    ‘Tell me, Frank, tell me.’ Pat Carson’s voice was soft. He was still sitting back, chin almost touching his chest, shaggy eyebrows raised.
    The old man didn’t want to fire me. He wanted me to tell him what to do. He didn’t know that I didn’t want the responsibility, that I was scared of having it, that the idea of telling this family what was best for the safety of the girl made me feel sick at the stomach. To carry the bag for them was one thing. I was just an expensive courier. But to shoulder the weight of a girl’s life, a girl lying somewhere, probably in the dark, terrified, in pain…
    ‘They’ve had her for more than seventy-two hours,’ I said. ‘Keeping someone hidden, it doesn’t get easier. These people are sweating, they’re under the gun. And they’ve lifted the stakes, they’re trying to pump us up to something. It’s too late for the cops.’
    Pat was moving his jaw. He still wasn’t sure what I was saying.
    ‘They told you not to bring in the police and you didn’t,’ I said. ‘If you had, the newspapers, television, the radio, they’d have co-operated with the cops for a while. Media blackout. But the media won’t keep quiet for long. Seventy-two hours, that’s about it. Then it’s just a question of who goes first. I’m assuming that the kidnappers know this, that they’ve read about other kidnappings.’ I paused. ‘In particular, about your other kidnapping. They may be those kidnappers. I doubt it very much, but it’s possible.’
    I looked at Orlovsky. He was interested in his hands. I looked at Noyce. He’d got the point, didn’t necessarily agree with it. So had Stephanie, who recrossed her legs at the ankles and bit her lower lip. She looked like someone who slept badly, never felt rested, feared the small hours. I knew that feeling.
    ‘Mr Carson,’ I said. ‘My fear is that the police won’t even get a ten-minute media blackout now. It’s too long after the event. And the force leaks. Too many people are involved. You can’t keep it secret. That’s why they have to go to the media and beg them not to print stories like this.’
    ‘Yes? That means?’
    ‘It means the kidnappers will assume that you went to the police straight away and the police arranged a media blackout. On Thursday. That you disobeyed instructions from the start. Like Alice again, Mr Carson.’
    Noyce held up a hand, like a schoolboy in class. ‘Mr Carson,’ he said, a pressing tone of voice, ‘I think we need to talk to Tom about this.’
    Pat looked up, looking at me not at Noyce. He blew out breath, a sad sound, half sigh, half whistle. He leaned forward, put his forehead on his clasped hands, closed his eyes.
    We sat there, not looking at one another, for a long time.