Beyond the Horizon by Peter Watt

Author:Peter Watt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2012-08-04T04:00:00+00:00

17

Lenny Johnson had good reason to look over his shoulder whenever he left Maude’s flat. Detective Inspector Jack Firth was searching for him, and Lenny did not want to meet the feared policeman on the streets.

But he had to leave the safety of the flat to convince a colleague to assist him by driving his automobile to the residence of George Macintosh. He already had a down payment for the job, as Maude had been able to inveigle George into giving her a substantial amount of cash on the pretext of needing the money to buy more clothes and other female essentials.

‘This the place?’ Lenny’s accomplice asked. He was a small man, with weasel-like characteristics, who sat behind the wheel of the car with a toothpick protruding from his lips. Lenny leaned out of the car window and stared at the big house behind the wall of high hedges and wide wrought-iron gates.

‘Yeah,’ he said and settled back in his seat. ‘We park here so that we can see who comes and goes.’

‘What’s this job all about?’ the Weasel asked, changing the position of the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. ‘We gonna do it over?’

‘You ask too many questions,’ Lenny growled. ‘But maybe that is not such a bad idea.’

Already Lenny was considering that he might be able to kill the woman and at the same time ransack the house to make it look like a robbery that had gone bad. He would ensure that Maude kept Mr George Macintosh occupied while Lenny broke into the Macintosh mansion. Lenny would use his sidekick to act as the driver on the job, and later the Weasel and the car might have an unfortunate accident, driving off the infamous Gap on Sydney’s southern headland. It was not wise to leave witnesses to high-profile murders – Lenny knew from experience that only one person in a crime could keep a secret.

They waited, the driver reading the race form in the newspaper while Lenny continued to watch the house for movement. After a boring hour of surveillance Lenny was rewarded by spotting a very pretty woman emerge from the house, holding the hand of a toddler. Lenny frowned. Was this the nanny or Mrs Macintosh? He had not thought much about what she would look like and realised he was getting sloppy. He would have to rectify that and also learn how many servants might be on the premises at any given time.

‘Okay, we can go now,’ Lenny said, leaning back against the seat. The driver put down his paper and engaged the ignition as the woman wandered into the garden, following the laughing child.

*

‘I don’t know what his wife looks like,’ Maude said. ‘That’s your job to find out.’ She stood with her hands on her hips, wearing nothing but a flimsy nightdress.

‘I need you to get me information on the layout of the house and how many servants live or work there,’ Lenny said.

Maude looked thoughtful. ‘I could get one of the staff to tell me about the house, maybe a nanny or a maid.

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