Free Deal Me Out by Peter Corris

and I don’t just mean cleaning up. Someone was looking for something and they didn’t find it.’
    ‘How can you tell?’
    ‘I can read the signs. The destruction goes right through the place—they were angry to start with, they got angrier and they never got happy. That means they didn’t find it. Your Dad can spare you from the exporting business for a while, can’t he?’
    She smiled. ‘Importing. Yes, of course.’
    ‘Then you can look through here inch by inch. See if you can find anything that might help us.’
    ‘Like what?’
    That was harder, but I kept myself from shrugging and looking hopeless. ‘I don’t know. A diary, letters, maybe some numbers written down somewhere. A phone number—anything unusual that looks contrived or done for a purpose. The only thing that worries me is that they might come back. Is there anyone you can get to come and stay here with you?’
    She nodded. ‘Yes, I can bring Max.’
    ‘Who’s Max?’
    ‘He’s my German Shepherd. He stands so high and he weighs about a hundred pounds.’
    ‘Get him on the phone,’ I said. ‘He sounds like just the bloke you need.’
    Erica said she could walk across the park to get Max. That sounded all right to me; I’d have preferred park walking to hospital visiting myself, but it seemed unlikely that the ducks and joggers would be able to tell me anything useful. I drove to the hospital and parked as near to the place as the able-bodied and non-medically-qualified could get. Then I negotiated the barriers they put between the sick and the well. They wouldn’t let me see Mal, registered as Malcolm Fitzwilliam, who was recovering from a severe concussion as well as his other injuries, but Geoffrey Stafford was visitable.
    They wheeled Geoff into the waiting room with the tiny, dust-shrouded windows where I’d spent nearly an hour waiting. Geoff didn’t look pleased to see me; he had one leg in a cast, half an arm was in plaster and held crooked by a metal strut and both his eyes were bruised the colour of eggplant.
    ‘What do you want, Hardy?’
    ‘For openers, how do you know my name?’
    ‘I did a bit of ringing around after you split the other night. With the gun and all I reckoned you’d be a private licence.’ Talking was difficult for him; all facial movementwould be for a while to come.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Three blokes—very quick and good, better than you.’
    ‘That makes them a hell of a lot better than you, son. Any talking?’
    ‘Not much, Mal didn’t have anything to tell them except ….’ He broke off and looked at me through slits in the bruised flesh. I didn’t feel particularly chipper, but I must have looked in the pink to him. He gave a malicious giggle. ‘Except your name.’
    ‘He told them that?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘And they still worked you over?’
    He nodded and instantly regretted it. ‘Yeah. This bloody job turned out to be tougher than it looked.’
    ‘They often do. Did Mal say anything about the girl?’
    ‘The slappy? No, he’s a gentleman that way. He liked her, he told me.’
    ‘What did you say?’
    ‘Didn’t get a chance to say anything. I had a go, but they fixed me up fast. I was nearly out of it, but I could just hear what was going on. What the fuck is it all about? Mal said it was a small-time gambling debt. Needed time to pay, he said. Shit!’
    ‘Take too long to tell you. Ask Mal.’ I stood up. ‘What did they look like?’
    He screwed up his eyes in an effort at recall and the effort hurt him. ‘Three, like I said. Nothing special. Average-sized blokes, one was a bit bigger.’
    ‘Fair or dark?’
    ‘Two dark, one redhead.’
    ‘Australian?’
    ‘Didn’t talk much, couldn’t tell. One of the dark ones could’ve been a dago.’
    ‘How’s that?’
    ‘Smell.’
    ‘Age?’
    ‘Not young. Thirtyish.’
    I let that pass. ‘Clothes?’
    ‘Ordinary—jeans and jackets. The redhead had some gold chains around his neck. Ponce.’
    ‘You should’ve