Free Beware of the Dog by Peter Corris

much from high school arithmetic. The lots along Salisbury Road were at least that size or possibly bigger. It was hard to tell because some were vacant, others had houses set well back from the road and in most cases there were only hand-painted signs tacked onto trees to indicate where properties began and ended. I used the spotlight mounted on the roof sparingly even though it looked like weekender territory. The track didn’t get a lot of work and the entrances to the blocks had thathalf-grown-over look that indicates occasional use.
    The Lamberte lot was no exception. There was a wire fence running along the front perimeter but one of the strands had snapped; several of the posts had sagged inwards and the fence looked half-hearted. The track onto the block was marked by a gnarled eucalypt which had ‘Lambert’ painted on it, evidently executed by someone other than the owner. Unfamiliar as I was with the area and dark as the tree-lined track was, the Lambertes seemed to have the best of the location. I stopped at the last fence post and looked across the valley. In the far distance I could see the lights of the Bells Line of Road and imagine where the railway must run. Very
nice, Patrick,
I thought.
If I was in the asset-hiding business, this would definitely be one to hide.
    The nearest neighbour was the better part of a kilometre away. I could see the back of the house nestled down among a stand of trees, on a rock shelf fifty metres from the road. No lights, no sign of a vehicle. I was tempted to break in and toss the place. You never knew, maybe Mr Patrick Lamberte had a shelf full of wife-murder books—
The Memoirs of Dr Crippen, The True Life Story of john Christie, Tony Agostino Tells All
. I resisted the impulse, recognising it as unprofessional and sloppy. Besides, I was in enough trouble already without adding a break-and-enter charge.
    I drove on to where the Electricity Commission track met Salisbury Road. It hadn’t been used for some time and the bush was fighting back, trying to reclaim the cleared space. That suited me. I engaged the four wheel drive and piloted the Land Cruiser slowly along the track, probing ahead with my lights on full beam.I didn’t want to break an axle on a creek bed or rip a tyre to shreds on a metal stake. But the saplings parted easily, brushing the windows on both sides, flicking at the windscreen, and the fall of the land was gentle. The map suggested the presence of a fire trail running to the right, behind the Lamberte land, but it was too dark to search for it. After the hectic events of the day, the sudden slowing down of movement, the dark and the quiet hit me and let me know how dose to exhaustion I was. I could scarcely hang on to the wheel as the tyres bumped along in old, hard-baked ruts. The bush on either side hemmed me in; tall trees shut out the moonlight.
    I slowed to a crawl and pulled off the track into the trees. Within a few metres the front bumper came to rest against a solid trunk and that was far enough. I killed the lights and waited for a time to make sure my arrival in the valley hadn’t attracted any attention. A couple of wallabies thumped in the bush nearby and some night birds whistled and cooed. By torchlight I emptied my bladder into a fern bush and made my bed in the back of the Cruiser—foam rubber unrolled, sleeping bag spread out, the parka for a pillow, off with the jacket and shoes, a big swig of whisky to clean the clackers and goodnight.
    I woke up a few minutes before dawn, that time when the temperature seems to drop suddenly by a couple of degrees. Inside the sleeping bag, with my jeans, shirt and socks on, I was frozen. My breath was like a fog machine in action and when I reached out for my watch I touched metal that stung. It was no hardship to get up and moving. I climbed into myjacket and pulled on the parka, the gloves and the hiking boots and I was still cold. I stamped around in the almost-light,