The All-Purpose Bodies: A Fast-Paced Thriller (Commander Shaw Book 11) Read online

  “Like —— hell you can, mate. I’m calling the police.”

  “Go right ahead,” I said wearily. “They’ll do my explaining for me and save my breath.”

  He gave me a puzzled sort of look but he kept the gun steady and I could see he would use it if he felt he had to. He got on an old-fashioned telephone with a yellowed, fly-blown, dangle-from-the-hook type receiver and cranked a handle. He yapped into the mouthpiece. While we waited for the law to show up I asked, “How come that bloke knew my room?”

  “Rang ahead. Said ’e knew you’d booked in, and what room’d I given you.”

  “And you took him right along when he showed up?”

  “No. ’E didn’t show up. Must ’ave gone in through the window.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said sarcastically. “That does sound just like the police, doesn’t it? So does the fact he bunked off out of it after that shot, leaving the villain behind. Just the sort of thing a policeman would do.”

  The fat man scratched his head and looked suddenly doubtful of his position. Sweat ran down his jowls and dripped into his shirt. We had a long wait but eventually the police turned up, a sergeant and a constable, and the sergeant knew Cleland and he just checked my 6D2 pass. He said grudgingly, giving me a coldly supercilious look after he’d taken down particulars of the intruder, “Well, that’s okay, then, we’ll be watching out for that bloke,” and I knew what I’d always known: no cops anywhere were all that keen on our outfit, we cut the ground from under them too often. And this time the dislike, the professional envy, was going to be that much the worse, for I was a pom and that was just about the flaming end.

  *

  “So what do we do now?” Cleland asked after it was all cleared up and we were sitting in my room sinking a couple of beers.

  “For a start,” I said, “we leave all further investigations till tomorrow morning. Time’s getting on.” By Australian standards, it was. Already, even though it was only 7 pm, we were going to be latish for our evening meal and the dining-room staff, which I guessed would be the girl Hilda, would be giving us dirty looks and cold meat. We wouldn’t be getting anything out of anybody at Lifeforce tonight. Union hours are union hours and for the time being at any rate I meant to play this thing along strictly orthodox lines, like the police would. I had nothing to go on and the undercover stuff had to wait till I was ready.

  I told Cleland this.

  “And in the morning?” he asked.

  “There’s no change in the programme,” I said. “We just go quietly along and have a word with Learoyd, that’s all.”

  “No fresh ideas?”

  “Not one. Listen, we’re not any of us magicians, Brett. There’s never a quick answer. I haven’t an idea in all the world as to how I’m going to handle this thing — not yet.”

  He fiddled with his beer glass and said moodily, “Pity about losing that bloke. No idea who he was, have you?”

  “There was hardly time to find out,” I said, “but I’ll know him if ever I see him again, and I’ve a strong feeling I will. Meanwhile, the fact he’s around and gunning for me does lend this business a little extra weight.” I looked at Brett’s glass; it was just about dry. “Have another?”

  He shook his head. “We’d better get along to the dining room if we want to eat.”

  “We’ll go on the beer again after that, then,” I said. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea if I moved around town and fixed the local geography in my head.”

  So we went along for cold beef and pickles, which isn’t really my idea of a nice dinner. Neither in fact is beer my idea of a drink, so afterwards I drank whisky and I was on my third double in a bar called the Royal Blue and just beginning to get the dust clear of the sides of my throat when Jake Dunwoodie’s wife came in. To this day, despite the way things developed later, I don’t know if, given the chance, I would have hidden under the table and then slunk out unseen when the opportunity cropped up, or whether I would have made a joyful beeline for an attractive girl in a town that was already striking me as being in need of some female distractions; but it didn’t arise, because she saw me at once and came straight over to our table.

  4

  I got to my feet. Flair looked up into my face, with a sort of fake demure expression. “Why, hullo there,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you in Darwin. Not so soon, I mean.”

  “Sometimes things happen fast,” I said, and realized it was a fatuous thing to say. “Anyway, here I am, and here you are, so what about a drink?”

  She said, “I’d like a sherry.”

  “It’ll probably be Australian.”

  “We’re in Australia,” she said, and looked quizzically at Brett Cleland, whom I’d temporarily forgotten. I introduced him. She didn’t ask any questions, but I dare say she guessed what Cleland’s job was.

  I got her the sherry, then asked casually, “Seen Learoyd yet?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t they let you in?”

  She said, “Oh, it wasn’t that. Once they were satisfied I was Jake’s wife, the guards didn’t make any difficulties. Tracy Learoyd wasn’t well.” She laughed, lightly. “In other words, he had a stinking hangover and couldn’t face visitors. I tell you, I know Tracy.”

  “Or maybe,” I suggested, “he didn’t want to talk to you? Because he knew what it would be about?”

  “But he doesn’t know about Jake, you said.”

  I grinned. “You have a good memory.”

  “Well,” she said, after a sweeping look at me, “we’re only guessing anyway, aren’t we?” She didn’t seem worried about not seeing Learoyd and I supposed she had all the time in the world. “I’ll try again tomorrow. I’m staying at the Oak South Hotel, by the way.” She lit a cigarette and looked at me through narrowed eyes as the smoke drifted up. She was wearing a white shirt that set off her golden skin wonderfully and I could see the thrust of her breasts against the fabric. “And you, have you had any luck?”

  “No,” I said shortly. I didn’t want to go into details about the man who’d tried to get hold of me, nor did I want to talk too much about my lack of plans. I shifted the conversation on to the attractions of Darwin but she didn’t seem to want to talk about that, and after a while I noticed the way she was looking around the bar as though she were expecting someone. I said, “I doubt if Learoyd’s going to turn up in here, somehow.”

  She smiled. “Did you think I expected him to?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Of course not.”

  I asked, “What did you come in for, then?”

  “Listen,” she said coolly, “don’t you think you’re asking rather too many questions, Commander Shaw?”

  “Listen yourself,” I told her. “You know damn well this thing could be big. I’m the one that has to handle it. I’d just as soon you didn’t get in the way while I’m doing it, because for one thing you could get hurt and I might not have time to tend the wounds. All right?”

  She looked livid for a moment but then she shrugged it off and said yes, she did understand and she would do her best to keep her own investigations separate from mine but, didn’t I think, they could cross somewhere along the line.

  I said, “That’s just my worry, Flair. I wish you’d keep right out of this till I’ve established a few lines of my own.”

  “You miss the point,” she said snappishly, and she finished the sherry and got up and before I could ask her to explain further she was moving for the door. If there had been a point, I certainly had missed it.

  I saw Cleland’s grin. He said, “Pretty. Could be sexy. But she has the reputation of being cold.”

  “How in hell d’you know that?” I asked. He only shrugged and I went on, “That’s only the shell, Brett, the way she’s been brought up. I’ll bet she’s hot enough underneath.”

  “Well — maybe.” He swilled the beer around in his glass, absently, frowning. “What did she mean, about you missing the point?”

  “I’ve
no idea,” I said. “Unless she feels … oh, I don’t know. I doubt if it’s important,” I added untruthfully.

  “You think there might be a link between your investigation and hers — and she knows it? After all, there were always women mixed up in Dunwoodie’s life before she married him.”

  “Maybe there were, Brett. But I’ve an idea there’s no woman who’s basic to his disappearance — which is what Flair thinks.” I took a mouthful of whisky and let it sink slowly. “All the same, there could be a woman somewhere who might know a thing or two. I’m bearing that in mind.”

  *

  We went to bed eventually and early in the morning Brett and I took a trip out to Cape Scott in a self-drive hire car. It was a longish way, around 140 miles, but the road that had been built to link Lifeforce and its causeway with Darwin was a very good one and we made ninety most of the way. It was a pretty uninteresting run and it was wetly, stickily humid all the way along, with little visibility over the sea so that we couldn’t see the complex which, I’d gathered, was visible from a good way north of Cape Scott when conditions were right. The road terminated in the grand entry to the causeway, taking a wide sweep towards the sea so that along the last couple of miles we had a head-on view of the massive gatehouse and the causeway running out across the water behind the guarded barrier. Today it was a dismal enough sight and whoever was supposed to be on duty at the barrier was evidently skulking inside somewhere. But of course we were being watched and as I slowed towards the barrier a depressed-looking uniformed man came out of a doorway with a damp butt-end stuck in a corner of his mouth.

  “Passes,” he said.

  Cleland handed them through and the man looked at them carefully, then looked at us again. “Haven’t bin warned to expect you,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Pom?”

  “I am,” I said. “Don’t mind, do you?”

  “Me, I don’t care if yer the flaming cat’s left tit. But yer not on the daily arrivals list, see?”

  “Too bad,” I said smoothly. “As it happens, we’re not expected, but I can promise you our visit is very official. If you want confirmation that we’re okay, I suggest you ring the police at Darwin.”

  “Good-oh, I’ll do that,” the man said. He spoke into a police-type two-way radio that he carried in his top pocket and a younger man, also uniformed, came smartly out from what I took to be the guardroom. “Watch ’em, boy,” the man said, “while I goes an’ checks, right?”

  He disappeared inside and came back after ten minutes and jerked a thumb at the younger man. The barrier went up. We drove on through. It was like entering some military establishment in wartime — or a prison camp. The sides of the causeway itself were webbed with wires through which an electric current ran, a lethal dose of it according to the red warning notices, and Brett told me this was backed up, just in case, by a boat-borne water-guard that patrolled continuously in shifts along both sides. As we came towards the end of the gently rising causeway and neared the complex itself, we could see one of the patrol boats, a fast launch with three men in it and a nasty-looking gun mounted in its bows. Australia took the security of the complex with deadly seriousness and I didn’t blame them for that.

  At the seaward end — and by this time I could see the tall blocks and towers of the complex looming above me through the weather — there was another gatehouse, a kind of drawbridge affair in front of it, and another document check. Glancing into a window as we stopped, I could see a television screen. Closed circuit, no doubt, watching the vital points. The man at the landward end had evidently rung through to give us the okay ahead, for once our passes had been scrutinized we were waved through and I drove on under a big sign reading STRAIGHT AHEAD FOR THE ADMINISTRATION BUILDING.

  I drove into something that really amazed me. I thought I’d seen most things, but there had never been anything remotely like this. It was a seaborne city all on its own, a city ten miles out at sea, whose sole purpose was to support the nuclear plant that in turn supported Australia’s geographic heart. There were streets just like in any other city; there were buses, cars, even a narrow-gauge overhead railway running between buildings that were almost skyscrapers. This was Sydney or New York in miniature. There were shops — all kinds of shops, so far as I could see as I drove past, secluded in shopping precincts free of traffic — cinemas, cafés and bars, even public urinals. There were churches for various denominations, rather incongruously — to my mind — grouped in what looked like a religious precinct. There were offices — insurance companies, banks, accountants. There were no parks, no open spaces, and no animals that I could see, and that was just about the only aspect of normal life that was lacking. No greenery, no gardens, no trees. That gave it all a dead, metallic feel, a soulless atmosphere. The whole place was almost frighteningly clean and sterile — there was no dirt anywhere, no dust, no mud. Of course, all waste matter would be disposable overboard, as it were, and there would be nothing to make mud. Once again I recognized the ship simile.

  Following the excellent signposting I found the administration building and took a left turn up a fairly steeply inclined ramp, at the top of which I stopped the car outside an impressive main entrance. It was like a town hall, which in a sense, I suppose, it was. And the mayor would be Tracy Learoyd, only Learoyd would be more than any mayor in any city in the rest of the world, because he was not only the civic leader of the community but also the boss of everybody living and working in it. For the third time there was that ship simile: Learoyd was the master — master of Lifeforce.

  In the admin building’s foyer came the next document check when a skinny brown arm protruded from a blue uniform sleeve and the box-office-like aperture of the porter’s lobby. Once again our passes were okayed and the man said, “What d’yer want, mister?”

  “Mr Learoyd.”

  “Got an appointment, ’ave yer?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then you’ll be flaming lucky, I don’t think.”

  I said. “No appointment, but I’m here on federal business.”

  “Canberra, eh.” It sounded like a statement and I didn’t trouble to put him right. From what I knew of Australians, they all slung dung at anything resembling government and used a good many basic adjectives to describe it and its representatives; but nevertheless Canberra carried weight when quoted in official places and it wasn’t often questioned. Like Whitehall. And if this building I was in was the town hall, then Canberra was Downing Street and Whitehall and the Palace of Westminster all rolled into one. “I’ll ring through,” the man said.

  “Thanks,” I said. He withdrew himself. We hung around and waited till his head came through the aperture again and he said, “Sorry. Mr Learoyd, ’e’s on ’is way down, going across to the mainland. Reckon ’e may be away a couple of days.”

  I cursed and swung round. I saw the lift indicator showing the lift on its way down, so I moved across, with Cleland, to meet it. The porter came out of his box and shouted something at us and then the lift was down and the door was sliding back and three men were coming out. Two of them stood aside as a heavy-faced, hairy man disembarked.

  Cleland whispered, “Learoyd.”

  I went up to him. “Mr Learoyd?”

  “That’s me.” Small eyes looked me up and down. He wasn’t pleased, I could see that. “Who’re you?”

  I told him — more or less.

  He said in a long-suffering voice, “Damn it all, man, I have things to see to, you know. I don’t sit on my backside down in Canberra, fanning my nose with the Opera House programme.”

  “Neither do I,” I said, “and this is important. Very important.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  I said, “It’s also confidential.”

  Learoyd indicated his companions. “These gentlemen are my top people. What I know, they know. All right?”

  “It’s quite all right with me if it’s all right with you,” I said. My voice had hardened. I felt
Cleland’s gentle pressure on my arm, as much as to say: go easy, this man’s the boss cocky here and he’s not a soft option. Well — I knew all that, of course; but I didn’t care for Learoyd’s attitude and I wasn’t employed by the Australian government anyway. And I think Learoyd began to see things my way, because his eyes narrowed and he flushed and he said, “Well — oh, all right, then.” He glanced at the two other men. “Run away a moment,” he said sharply, moving his shoulders in irritation. “I’ll be right with you.” Then he glared at me. “Well?” he demanded.

  This, I thought, was a very arrogant and truculent bastard. I said, “It concerns a friend of yours. Jake Dunwoodie.”

  His head jerked a little and he said, “What does?”

  “Let’s do this in private, Mr Learoyd. State security’s involved.”

  “Is it, by Christ.” He’d lost some of his bounce all of a sudden and I wondered just how much he knew — or whether he was just scared about that little vanishment of his own some months back. “All right, then, come on up to my office.” He called across the foyer to his two aides. “Hang on a tick, I won’t be long,” he said, then he turned about and led the way back into the lift with Cleland and me behind him. We went up a long way and we stepped out into a wide, glass-screened gallery running round a central core to left and right, a gallery with a view right across the whole complex — a view that I judged would on a clear day stretch way beyond the end of the causeway, for at a guess we were around three hundred feet up in the air from the deck of the complex — which itself was fifty feet above the sea.

  Learoyd led the way to a door opening into the central core and we followed him into a big circular room a whole segment of which was formed by the gallery windows so that the boss had his own private view. (I was told later, much later when I had the chance of going round the whole complex, that the entire room was mounted on a swivel and that at the touch of a button Tracy Learoyd could shift his spyglass as it were.) Like the gatehouse, he too had a closed circuit TV screen to look at when he wanted to snoop at anything he couldn’t see direct. In the centre of this magnificent office he turned and faced me. “Well?” he said demandingly, as arrogantly as before. “What is it, then, and what’s all the air of flaming mystery?”