Beware of the Dog by Peter Corris Page A

daughter?’
    â€˜Daughter,’ he spoke slowly, dragging the word out.
    â€˜No. No. Can you come to see me?’
    I said I could but I needed another day to collect something which I hoped I could find.
    â€˜You’re being cryptic, your privilege, I suppose. What?’
    â€˜A photograph. I hope you can identify the subject and the photographer.’
    â€˜Intriguing. Well, tomorrow then?’
    â€˜Tomorrow evening. Have you got someone looking after you?’
    â€˜Yes, damn and blast her. I’ll tell her you’re coming and with a bit of luck she’ll let you in. Do you need any money?’
    I said I didn’t and he seemed not to care, one way or the other. The best kind of client. I rang off and rang Verity Lamberte’s home and business numbers—no answer at the one, no information at the other, as expected. Glen had gone to Goulburn again but before she left she’d ascertained that the Land Cruiser was being held by the police in Katoomba and that there was no obstruction to my going and getting it. Like the good bloke he was, Terry Reeves hadn’t made a peep. I rang him and told him I’d have the vehicle back tomorrow.
    â€˜No worries. How’s things, Cliff?’
    A question you normally answer without a thought. I couldn’t do it. I said something meaningless, maybe cryptic again. Terry sounded puzzled.
    The next day I caught the 8.03 to the Blue Mountains.
Rabbit at Rest
was one of the paperbacks Glen had bought me and I was working slowly through it. It was a good book to read when you were on theright side of fifty and didn’t look like dying just yet. The book held my attention, but I looked up from time to time to observe the passengers coming and going, boarding and alighting. It was good to feel like part of the moving scene again, not confined within walls. To be out there in the world where something interesting might happen. On the train, nothing did, except that Rabbit’s son came back from the drug rehabilitation program as a born-again Christian. Not for the first time, I was glad I hadn’t had any kids.
    I was in Katoomba shortly after ten. In the city it had been overcast and gloomy but the day was clear and bright in the mountains. And cold. I’d come prepared for it in a thick shirt and heavy sweater but the cold cut through the layers of cotton and wool and I could feel the places where I’d been burned and lacerated stiffening. I walked up the steep main street to the police station thinking that it was a different world up here—Sydney belonged to the ocean, the mountains belonged to the enormous country behind them. Dangerous thoughts, these, they tend to make you feel that human beings have no place on the continent at all.
    The reception I got from the Katoomba cops couldn’t have been more different from that in Sydney. Here, I was something of a hero—the man who’d dragged the woman from the inferno and might have saved her life if help had arrived in time. No fault of his. Some city cops had been up, asking around and making themselves unpopular. Nobody gave a shit about the Loggins and Brewster case up here. There was no question of charges for bringing the Cruiser in or housing it. They told me they’d startedit up every few days or so and that it was running fine. I thanked them, produced my ID, accepted their good wishes for my recovery from my injuries, and that was virtually that. I started the Cruiser and drove it out of the police car park.
    A hundred metres down the road I pulled over to the kerb. I got out and opened the back of the truck. There were all the things I had hastily thrown together that morning four weeks ago—the bedroll, sleeping bag, thermos. There was no sign of the leather jacket. I was sure I’d left it in the back. I yanked open the back door and looked on the seat. The newspaper I’d bought was there along with the binoculars, which must have