O'Fear

by Peter Corris

  ‘Excuse me. Is this an insurance matter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand.’

  There was something hypnotic about him. I found myself telling him briefly what my business was. He nodded as if he was used to people playing straight with him. ‘I could give you a list of the people who were here, with perhaps a few omissions. I think a couple of my guests were officially elsewhere in other company, if you follow me.’

  My turn to nod.

  ‘Barnes certainly wasn’t drunk. I doubt that he’d had more than one drink, two at most. He left quite late, but only because the argument took up a lot of time.’

  ‘Argument?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I wanted to exhibit him. I’d sold some of his things privately. I thought I had the right. He objected to that. He became very angry.’

  ‘With you?’

  ‘Yes, and with several other people in the business who tried to put their oars in. He called us the usual things—leeches, bloodsuckers and so on.’

  ‘You’re being frank, Mr Willowsmith.’

  He shrugged those big shoulders and smiled again. The glint came from a small diamond embedded in the tooth. ‘I have no choice. I want to exhibit him. I’m desperately anxious to do it. I assume you’ll make a report on me to Felicia. I want it to be favourable. Would you like some coffee or something?’

  ‘No thanks.’ I was finding his plausibility and frankness enough to cope with, without his hospitality. ‘You think Todd had a future as an artist?’

  ‘Limitless—properly exhibited, properly handled and marketed.’

  ‘Have you seen a lot of his work?’

  ‘No, have you?’ The first note of an emotion not totally under control was struck then. His tone was sharp. He touched his smooth chin with his left hand, also heavy with rings.

  I smiled non-committally. ‘What would a sizable collection of his work be worth?’

  His eyes seemed to glitter like the diamond tooth, but that might have been just my imagination. ‘As I say, it would depend on who was handling it.’

  ‘Say you were handling it.’

  ‘Millions, over a period of time.’

  ‘Your competitors feel the same?’

  ‘I have no competitors in this matter. Felicia should talk to me, no one else. I hope you can make that clear to her.’

  He moved slightly in his chair as he spoke. The purr was back in his voice and I thought I was beginning to read him. If I made the right noise I was sure he would offer me an inducement. It would have been a terribly wrong move for me. I took out my notebook and got the names of the other art dealers who had taken part in the heated conversation. He told me that Todd had left the party, which had been held in what he called an entertainment area further down the passage, at about 2 a.m. He had seemed very upset.

  ‘Over the argument?’ I asked.

  The window behind Willowsmith was full of a view of the trees growing in some Paddington backyard. A stiff breeze had got up, and the trees were swaying. I wanted to be out in the wind; something about Willowsmith made me crave fresh air. He cleared his throat. ‘Possibly that, possibly something else. I’d have to say that he seemed upset when he arrived.’

  ‘Did you tell all this to the police?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They didn’t ask. I gave them some names and times. As I say, I’ve been frank with you, because …’

  ‘You’re desperate to get your hands on Barnes Todd’s paintings.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’

  ‘Did you hear about the break-in at Barnes’ house?’

  ‘No. The paintings?’

  ‘Nothing lost.’ His surprise and relief seemed genuine, but then, maybe Mr Willowsmith had done some acting. I thanked him for his time and left the room. I waited outside with my ear to the door but he didn’t pound the desk or grab the telephone. Maybe he counted his rings or felt his diamond with his tongue. Nasty sights, both. I walked out past Judith, who was looking at her catalogue again.

  ‘Sorry I barged in like that,’ I said. ‘I was putting on my tough act.’

  She smiled warily. ‘That’s okay. I bet it didn’t worry him.’

  ‘You’re right. Tell me, did you know Barnes Todd?’

  ‘Mm, lovely man. I like his wife, too.’

  ‘Were you at the party?’

  ‘Yes. I was serving drinks and things.’

  ‘Willowsmith tells me there was an argument. Did you see it?’

  ‘Couldn’t miss it. It was terrible. They were circling Mr Todd like sharks.’

  I thanked her and left the gallery. So much for the softies of the art world. So much for starting at the easy end.

  8

  One of the many things you can do in Paddington is eat well. Lately I’d tended to eat when I was hungry, which wasn’t necessarily at any particular hour or even three times a day. I bought a perfect apple and walked along Oxford Street eating it, looking at the fast-moving young and the slow-moving old and feeling somewhere in the middle. The shops seemed to be full of things that were more than a hundred years old or that had only been invented a week ago. I was on a promise to myself not to drink before six at least three times a week. Yesterday I’d buckled under at 10 a.m., today I was made of sterner stuff. I bought a takeaway coffee and put it in the slot under the orange phone where the directory was supposed to go.

  Michael Hickie answered his own phone.

  ‘You haven’t had to let Jenny go, have you?’ I said.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Hardy. I was joking.’

  I could hear the relief in his voice over the traffic noise. ‘No, no. Her lunch break. Look, I want to thank you for talking to Felicia. She called me this morning and she was very reasonable about everything. She’s given me the go-ahead to conclude a few pressing shipping and storage contracts, and we’re going to have a meeting about the business as a whole. She’s okaying your fee, by the way.’

  ‘Good. You sound a bit strained.’

  ‘One of these contracts of Barnes’ is a bitch. I thought you might be someone from the opposition having a go at me.’

  ‘That rugged?’

  ‘Packing and storing and development? You bet they’re rugged. And Barnes was a pretty vigorous operator.’

  ‘That’s what I’m ringing about. Is there anyone out at the Botany address who could tell me something about the business? I mean about competitors, dirty tricks, hands-on stuff?’

  ‘There is. I was talking to him an hour ago after I spoke to Felicia. Bob Mulholland. He’s your man, but he’ll be busy now things are moving again.’

  ‘Could you give him a ring and tell him I’m coming over? I want to get cracking.’

  Hickie said he would. I rang off and drank the cool coffee. Paddington had a self-conscious, self-indulgent look. It was mark-up land, commission country, franchise-ville. I went to the Autobank, drew out a few judicious dollars for petrol and possible palm-greasing, got in the car and headed for Botany.

  Barnes Enterprises was located off Botany Road, away from the water, a kilometre or so from the Caltex terminal. From a rise I could see the refinery structures in the distance—tall, spidery towers like something out of The War of the Worlds. Factories and houses jostled together in the streets. Some of the houses were solid and well maintained, but many looked apologetic about their existence. Their peeling paint and rusty metal said they were sorry to be there. I parked among trucks and utes and vans. Sydney these days seems to be filling up with leisure vehicles; VWs with their roofs cut off, four-wheel drives and convertibles, but here were only working wheels. A plane roared off the runway to the west, and the car shook as it passed over, gaining height. It left a dirty smudge in the clear blue sky and the noise stayed in my ears long after the plane became a speck.

  I got out and almost had to fight for breath. I had a .45 automatic under the dashboard, a camera and miniature tape recorder amo
ng my professional equipment—what I really needed was a respirator. The dust in the air was clinging to the oily sludge and the slight breeze was stirring it all around like a chemical soup. And it was hot. Sweat broke out on my face; I wiped it off with my hand, which then felt greasy. I left my jacket in the car and walked between two prime movers and across a rutted piece of road to a wide double gate, standing open, in a high cyclone fence. It took massive posts and hinges to hold the gates, one of which had a metal plate attached to it, on which BARNES ENTERPRISES was written in fading red paint. Rust had pitted the metal and flaked off the paint so that the words were hard to read. The fence enclosed a couple of acres of cement, dirt and scruffy grass. Along one perimeter was a large shed with a serrated roof; nearby were a couple of structures like aircraft hangars as well as smaller sheds and prefabs, all old. But one brick and glass structure was post-World War II. A few vehicles were in evidence—cars, vans, a loaded semi-trailer. There were a couple of sea cargo containers and several high stacks of wooden crates.

  I had to jump aside to avoid a truck that raced past me through the gates. The driver jammed on the brakes and the truck threw up water and mud as it skidded through some puddles and stopped near the brick building. Three men wearing grey overalls jumped from the truck. One threw a brick through the window of a van, another began splashing something liquid from a can over the loaded semi-trailer. The first man went to work on truck tyres with a knife and the third ran a cable from the back of the truck towards a stack of crates.

  I shouted and ran towards them. Two people came from the building, a man and a woman. The man threw himself at the one with the can and the woman ran in the direction of the nearest shed. When I got there, the man from the building had flattened the petrol splasher, but one of the others had king hit him from behind. He sagged to his knees and his attacker got set to hit him again. He pulled the punch when he saw me and reached into his back pocket. I ducked under his swing and hit him very low with a wild right. The breath rushed from him and I heard metal hit the cement. I kicked him between the legs and he went down. The man with the knife was moving towards me, but I had the feeling he was happier slashing tyres. I grabbed the Stillson wrench the guy I’d put down had dropped and let him come. He stopped and the other two struggled up.

  The woman had enlisted two men from the sheds. They were running towards us.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell,’ one of the attackers said. ‘I’m off!’

  He ran for the truck and the other two went with him. I moved to follow them but the guy who had thrown the best punch of the fight was on his feet now. ‘Let the buggers go,’ he said.

  They were twenty feet away and in the truck. They had left the motor running. Stop them and we’re talking to the police, I thought. I threw the Stillson and it shattered the passenger side window as the truck roared off, spraying mud, the cable whipping along behind it.

  The reinforcements reached us and one of the men sniffed loudly. ‘Shit, that’s petrol.’

  ‘Are you all right, Bob?’ the woman said.

  ‘Yes, I’m all right.’ He turned to me. ‘I have to thank you, mate. You were bloody useful.’ He looked to be about fifty or a bit older, with the crinkly hair, dark skin and wide nose of the Aboriginal. He had boxing scars around his eyes and when I shook his hand I felt the lumpy knuckles of the ex-fighter. ‘Who are you, brother?’

  ‘Cliff Hardy. If you’re Bob Mulholland, I was coming to see you.’

  ‘That’s me. Yeah, Mike Hickie told me. Excuse me a minute. Geoff, will you do something about the petrol? You’ll need a hose and some sand. Col, can you take a look at the tyres?’

  The men nodded. Col was the sniffer. He sniffed again. ‘Great throw with the Stillson, mate.’

  ‘Lucky,’ I said.

  Mulholland brushed dirt from the knees of his grey pants. He wore a white shirt, no tie. Grey hair sprouted at the neck. ‘All in a day’s work. This is Mrs Carboni, Mr Hardy.’

  ‘Anna,’ she said.

  ‘Cliff,’ I said.

  Mulholland mimed a short left jab and the solid right he had thrown a few minutes before. ‘Let’s go inside. I could do with a cuppa tea.’

  We went up a short flight of concrete steps into the brick building which turned out to be the office. There was no air conditioning or interior decoration; it was a large work space with three desks, two computers, filing cabinets and notice boards covered with bits of paper. A couple of big maps of Sydney and suburbs hung on one wall; on another was a large blackboard with times, dates and numbers scrawled on it in chalk. Anna Carboni asked whether I would rather have tea or coffee. I plumped for coffee the way I do a hundred times out of a hundred.

  Mulholland settled into a chair and put his feet on the desk quite close to a computer. He gestured for me to pull another chair across. The computer screen was full of figures.

  ‘Mike said you wanted to know a bit about the business. What you’ve just seen isn’t typical.’

  ‘I’d be surprised if it was. But you’re not interested in calling the police?’

  He shrugged. ‘I didn’t see the number of their truck, did you?’

  I tried to remember. ‘I don’t think it had one.’

  ‘There you are. The cops couldn’t help even if they wanted to, which is only even money. I blame myself. Things’ve been very quiet and I got slack. I should’ve kept a look out. Barnes would have roasted me for leaving those bloody gates open.’

  Anna came back from the sink and urn at the far end of the room with three mugs. She gave me mine, Mulholland his and sat at one of the desks. She tapped computer keys.

  ‘Thanks, Anna, you make a great cuppa.’ Mulholland said.

  She smiled. ‘For a wog.’

  ‘You can’t help being a New Australian.’ He grinned at me, which puckered the smooth scar tissue and made slits of his eyes. ‘Neither can you.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. Through the window I could see Geoff, Col and another man working in the yard. The big gates were closed. ‘How much did Michael Hickie tell you?’

  Mulholland sipped his black tea. ‘About you? Nothing. Just said to help you any way I can.’

  ‘Barnes thought someone might try to kill him,’ I said. Anna Carboni’s head jerked aside, but she kept her eyes on the screen in front of her. ‘What do you think of that?’ I was addressing both of them, but Mulholland answered.

  ‘I warned him a coupla times that he was taking too many bloody risks, cutting corners, going at it too fast. But … did you know him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, he did what you’d expect. Tightened the security around here and other places and made sure the accident insurances were paid up, but he didn’t do a bloody thing about his personal safety. What brings you into it?’

  I told him while he finished his tea.

  ‘Drink your coffee before it gets cold.’ His voice, gruff and harsh, as it is with most older Aborigines, sounded almost hostile. ‘I wish he’d told me he felt that way. Maybe I coulda helped him. Given it a bloody good go, anyhow.’

  I drank the coffee. Anna Carboni had stopped working; she gazed across the top of the computer monitor. ‘He was a strong man,’ she said. ‘The best I ever worked for.’

  Mulholland nodded. I told them that Felicia Todd was having discussions with Hickie about the future of the business. They listened and seemed comforted. Anna was in her forties—these were not good times for people at their stage of life to be thrown out of work. I explained that I wanted a rundown on the business: number of employees and details about them, long-term contracts, new jobs, sub-contracting, competition.

  ‘Do you know who your visitors today were, for instance?’

  ‘I’d guess they were from Riley’s,’ Mulholland said. ‘Just a dumb stunt to keep us on the ropes.’

  ‘Who’s Riley?’

  ‘Big operator. One of the biggest, before Barnes came along and undercut him and provided a better service right across the board. Riley had a big slice
of trucking, storage and house removal, all dovetailed but bloody expensive and ratshit managed.’

  ‘What’s house removal?’

  ‘It’s all the go. People want old houses off their land to build new things, other people want houses already built. We cut ’em in half and move ’em on low loaders. Supply and demand.’

  ‘Sounds tricky.’

  ‘It is, but there’s money in it. Riley had councillors in his pocket all over the state. Coppers too. Big kickbacks all round. You need council approval, see? And police cooperation on the roads. Barnes went to the local MPs and the straight councillors and got the game cleaned up. Riley didn’t like it.’

  ‘This seems like a pretty crude operation for a big wheel.’

  ‘Riley’s like that. We’ve lost a lot of business since Barnes died. I’ve had to put people off. Riley’s picked up our crumbs, but I think he wants to wipe us out altogether.’

  ‘So this wasn’t the first trouble here?’

  Mulholland firmed his jaw muscles and shook his head in the way fighters do to loosen up. ‘First in daylight. There were a couple of pathetic goes at the office a while back. A shot at burning down a shed. Nothing we couldn’t handle.’

  ‘What sort of money’s involved?’ I said.

  ‘If you mean what’s up for grabs between Barnes Enterprises and some of the other big operators, it’s fairly complicated,’ Anna said. She touched the computer screen. ‘I could prepare a breakdown for you, but it’ll take me a few days. Do you happen to know how Mrs Todd is?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ I said. ‘Well … picking up.’

  Mulholland seemed to be having trouble controlling a hostile spasm. ‘How come she’s taking an interest all of a sudden? That your doing?’

  I shrugged. ‘I might have helped a bit.’

  The scar-puckering grin again. ‘You’re all right, Cliff. Anna, you want some overtime?’

  She nodded eagerly. The working relationship between them seemed to be excellent, and it is axiomatic that a good boss gets and keeps good workers. All the signs were that here at least Barnes Todd was surrounded by loyalty and efficiency.