by Peter Corris
‘Those things’re illegal now. Don’t you read the papers?’
‘I don’t give a bugger. This government’s on the way out. Bloody fools. They can’t enforce that law. Every country cop’s got a couple of guns himself. It’s madness.’
A gun lobbyist, for God’s sake. I left.
Sergeant Trevor Anderson wasn’t a whole lot of help. He was youngish for his rank, anxious to please but new in the district and very light on for experience.
‘I don’t think I can add anything to what you already know, Mr Hardy,’ he said. ‘There were a couple of witnesses or people on the scene pretty quickly. You’ve got their names.’
‘Yes. Was there any other traffic on the road?’
He pushed back his sandy hair, which was a bit longer than normal for a cop. He also wore spectacles. It looked as if he was hoping to rise to Commissioner by force of intellect. He checked his notes carefully. ‘Apparently not.’
‘What does that mean, sergeant?’
‘None of the witnesses mentioned any. Is that all, Mr Hardy? I’ve got work to do.’
Merv Simpson, one of the firefighters, was at home. He had recently been laid off from a coalmine and he was happy to pass the time of day. Trouble was, he couldn’t tell me anything. He had seen the fire, not the accident, and he was sure that Clarrie Bent, who had helped him, was in the same boat.
‘Talk to Warren,’ he said. ‘Warren Bradley. He got us on the blower. Poor bugger sits up all night. He mighta seen a bit more.’
Warren Bradley’s wife read my card carefully, studied my face and then showed me through to the back verandah of the house, which was in a bushy setting back from the steeply descending road. Bradley was a heavy-set, middle-aged man with grey hair and a pale, pudgy face that looked as if it had once been tanned and hard. He was sitting in a wheelchair, staring out over the treetops towards the water.
‘Be patient with him,’ Mrs Bradley whispered. ‘He’s a bit difficult.’
‘I’m not bloody difficult, Mildred,’ Bradley said, ‘and I can hear your whispers a hundred yards away. Who’s this?’
I went up to him and stuck out my hand. ‘Name’s Cliff Hardy, Mr Bradley. I want to have a few words with you about the accident on the Pass a few months back.’
Bradley shook my hand. His palm was soft but there was strength in his grip. ‘Bout time someone did that. Take a seat.’
I sat on a straight-backed chair beside him. Mrs Bradley hovered. She was a thin, nervous woman who looked as if she had never known the right thing to do.
‘What about a couple of beers, Mildred?’ Bradley said.
‘Do you think you should, dear?’
‘Yes. I think I should. Stop worrying, love. The money’s due any day.’
‘It’s not the money. It’s your health.’
Bradley let out a bellow of laughter; his big, deep chest gave the sound resonance and volume. ‘My health! Just get us a drink, there’s a good girl.’
She left the verandah, closing the screen door quietly behind her. Bradley slapped the tops of his thighs. ‘Mine accident,’ he said. ‘Both legs buggered for good. Compo’s coming through, but.’
I nodded. ‘No hope?’ I said. ‘Physio? Operation?’
‘Stuffed,’ he said. ‘Mind you, I miss the fishing more than the bloody work. What d’you want to talk about?’
‘Sounded to me like you wanted to talk.’
‘Yeah. Well, I was in a shitty mood back then. Having a bad time with all this.’ He touched his legs again. ‘Couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t what you’d call cooperative. I was giving Mildred a bad time. Everybody.’
Mrs Bradley came back with a tray on which were four cans of Fosters, two elaborately shaped glasses and a bowl of peanuts.
‘Good on you,’ Bradley said. ‘Do you, mate?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks. What about you, Mrs Bradley? Are you having a drink?’
She smiled, shook her head and drifted away.
‘Never touches it,’ Bradley said. He popped two cans and pushed one towards me. He poured a little beer into one of the glasses, swilled it around and drank it. Then he took a pull from the can. ‘Can’t stand those bloody glasses, but it’s not worth the trouble to say so. Cheers.’
I repeated his manoeuvre and took a swig of the cold beer. Fosters isn’t my favourite, but it was my first drink of the day, which helped it along. ‘I got the feeling Sergeant Anderson didn’t have too many clues.’
Bradley snorted. He took a handful of peanuts and put them in his mouth. He chewed and spoke around them. ‘Doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. Sent some kid of a constable up here to talk to me the day after. Bugger that.’
‘What did you see, Mr Bradley?’
Bradley drained his can in two massive swallows and popped another. ‘I’ve thought about it a bit. It’s hard to be sure. I’d had a few.’ He tilted the can. ‘And I’m on these painkillers—make me pretty woozy sometimes.’
‘But it was two a.m. on a good, clear night.’
‘Yeah. You seem a reasonable sort of a bloke. What were you before you got into this game? Not a copper?’
‘No. Soldier, timber worker, insurance investigator.’
Bradley nodded approvingly. ‘I reckon he was run off the road.’
I drank some more beer and took a sidelong look at him. He didn’t have the appearance of a fantasist or self-dramatiser. Bitter, but who wouldn’t be? ‘Go on,’ I said.
‘It’s hard to be sure. Take a look. The trees block the road a bit.’
I leaned forward and looked. The drop made the distance hard to judge, but the road couldn’t have been more than a hundred metres away and the view was mostly clear. ‘Where did he go over?’
Bradley took more nuts, chewed noisily and pointed.
A clear stretch went into a wicked bend. A section of the metal siding marking the edge of the shoulder was freshly painted. The trees fringed the road before and beyond the place on which his finger was trained.
‘It’s partly a feeling,’ Bradley said. ‘Or I might have just heard it. I dunno. But I think there was another car or a four-wheel drive … a truck or something, real close … too close. And it kept on going.’
‘And you didn’t tell the police?’
‘Like I say, I was pissed off with them.’ He drank deeply. ‘I phoned Merv Simpson and Clarrie Bent, and they got down there with the extinguishers and the bags pretty smart. I done my duty.’
‘Right.’ The beer was warming up in my hand and not tasting so good, but I drank some more. ‘Did you hear him brake or did he go straight over? Was he skidding? What happened?’
‘Bloody mess,’ Bradley said. ‘Straight over, but there was stuff flying everywhere—barrier posts, branches, you know? Door wide open … Look, you haven’t had any nuts. D’you want this other beer?’
It wasn’t something to take back in triumph to Felicia, but I felt a degree of satisfaction. Something was happening now—the surveillance and break-ins—and this was the first clue that something had happened then. I negotiated the steep roads above Bulli carefully and rejoined Lawrence Hargrave Drive for the drive back to Thirroul. Coal trucks used to hammer along these roads to the risk of everyone else on them, but they’re much quieter now. Good for drivers, bad for the area. The sun was dropping below the scarp, cooling the day down fast. The sea sparkled but there was a brown smudge on the horizon where the pollution drifting down from Sydney meets that coming up from Wollongong. Nowhere’s perfect.
I ran the Falcon through the gates Felicia had opened and parked beside the house. She came to the front door minus the .22 and seemed pleased to see me. We kissed. She had been shopping. We had a beer and ate grilled fish and salad. She had been to the local library, seen a few acquaintances in the street. Nothing unusual had happened. She seemed tense, though.
‘I have to collect the pictures tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I don’t want anything to happen to them. I’m nervous about it.’
‘I’ll be there. Stop
ping things from happening’s supposed to be my forte. It’ll be all right.’
We went for a walk on the beach, drank coffee on the deck and went to bed. I had my pistol in its holster rolled up inside my beach towel. She put the .22 under the bed. We laughed about that and were tender with each other. I was pulled from a deep sleep by the insistent bell of the phone. It was 3 a.m. and the phone was nearest to my side of the bed. I hesitated about answering it, and Felicia reached across me.
‘Yes? Michael? Yes, he’s here.’
She passed the phone to me.
‘Hardy,’ Michael Hickie said, ‘hope this isn’t awkward for you.’
‘It’s all right, Michael. What’s up?’
‘It’s O’Fearna. He’s been stabbed.’
14
Hickie was pretty excited. When he’d calmed down, he told me that he’d started to make the moves to get bail for O’Fear. He hadn’t encountered any serious problems and he had expected his release that day.
‘That is today, you understand? It’s today now.’
‘I understand. What happened?’
‘He got knifed late last night. It happened in one of the recreation areas, I understand. I got the message around eleven. It’s taken me a while to locate you.’
I didn’t ask him how he had managed to do that. ‘Where is he, and how is he?’
‘He’s in the prison hospital. He’s going to be all right, but it was a serious attack. Apparently O’Fearna’s tough and quick. The point is, he can get out today, and he wants to see you very badly. He says you’ve got a lot to talk about.’
‘Is he safe where he is?’
‘I spoke to him on the phone very briefly. He says he’s safe. But he wants you to pick him up tomorrow afternoon.’
‘When’s that?’
‘Two o’clock. At the Bay.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘He said you would be.’
I thanked Hickie and hung up. Felicia had gone off to make tea. She came back with a tray; I dipped the bag in the water until the liquid was black and sipped it. It tasted like burnt stringybark, but I was able to get some of it down. I told Felicia about O’Fear.
‘What does it mean?’
‘I’m not sure. But something’s happening.’ I told her what I had learned the day before about the way Barnes’ car had left the Bulli Pass road. She sipped her tea and had difficulty in swallowing. ‘Poor Barnes,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t he confide in me?’
‘Either he wasn’t sure about the threat and didn’t want to alarm you unnecessarily, or it was too dangerous.’
‘Bloody men. Always sure they can handle it. Are you the same?’
‘Try me.’
‘I want to stay here for a bit. I wanted it to be with you, but if you can’t stay that doesn’t change anything.’
‘I don’t think you should.’
‘There you are. You want to protect me, is that it?’
I nodded.
‘I don’t want to be protected. Just take a look at yourself.’ She touched my nose and put her index finger on two scars—one on my arm and one on the shoulder. ‘What are they?’
I shrugged. ‘From football.’
‘Rubbish. Gun or knife wounds. You can scarcely look after yourself.’ She was looking at me fiercely. Suddenly she grinned and kissed me. ‘It’s all right. I don’t really mean you’re incompetent or anything, I’m just making a point. I want to live my own life.’
‘I don’t want to stop you, Fel. I just … ‘
‘Shh. You want to haul me back to Sydney and stick me away somewhere I don’t want to be. No way. Look, let’s be logical. You can take the paintings to Sydney and deliver them to Piers Lang. He’ll tell everyone he’s got them. So that should take care of any threat from that direction. Right?’
I suppose.
‘And if all this searching isn’t for the paintings, then they’ve looked through my knickers enough now to know that I haven’t got anything they want. Doesn’t that make sense?’
‘Maybe, but I’d feel better …’
‘There it is! You’d feel better. I’d feel worse. I’m staying.’
In the morning we drove to a house in Austinmer and loaded up with Barnes Todd’s paintings and photographs. They filled the boot and the back seat. There were also several boxes and thick folders full of sketches and photographs. Felicia’s friend Deborah was a big, overall-wearing woman, who had built her own house and earned her living by landscape gardening and doing building jobs for others. Her hobby was sculpture and, from the way she strode about carrying pictures and boxes, I had the feeling that she’d do big ones. I would have felt happier if Deborah could have taken up temporary residence with Felicia in Thirroul, or vice versa, but it was worth more than my life to say so.
Deborah’s voice rumbled like a coal loader. ‘I’ll run her back in the truck.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll ring you tonight, Fel.’ Felicia bent down to the driver’s window. She kissed me and touched my bristled chin. ‘Why don’t you grow a beard? Might suit you.’
I took the freeway back to the Princes Highway and was unloading the masterpieces at Piers Lang’s gallery in Riley Street, Surry Hills, not much more than an hour after leaving Austinmer. For long stretches of the drive I had forgotten that I was carrying items that could be worth millions of dollars. I don’t think I believed it anyhow, not on the word of Leon Willowsmith. The gallery assistant who was helping me unload missed his footing and dropped one of the folders of photographs. The string around it snapped and the contents spilled across the floor. I collected the pictures together and saw enough to note the sharp clarity of the shots—you could see the veins of the leaves on the trees, or convince yourself you could.
The assistant relieved me of the folder and dusted the glossy black and white surfaces with his handkerchief.
‘Marvellous,’ he said. He held up one of the framed photographs and looked at it as if he had been waiting for it all his life.
I got a detailed receipt from Lang, a rolypoly little man who seemed wildly enthusiastic about everything. The atmosphere at Lang’s place was completely different from Willowsmith’s. Here there was a stronger smell of paint than of money.
‘Leon Willowsmith’s not going to be too keen on this,’ I said. ‘Maybe you should beef up your security.’
‘Good idea,’ Lang said. ‘Are you in that business?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Would you be interested? God, those photographs.’
I was folding the receipt, ready to leave, but something in his voice stopped me. ‘What about the paintings? I thought …’
‘The paintings are good, too.’
I tried to look as if I knew what he was talking about. He beckoned me into his office—a small room cluttered with paintings, photographs and objects that could have been pieces of sculpture or plastic bottles that had been left in a hot oven. ‘This is sensational stuff,’ Lang said. ‘Potentially.’
I nodded.
‘I think Felicia and I have an understanding. Are you in her confidence, Mr Hardy?’
‘Up to a point.’
‘Tell her everything will be all right and that I’ll make sure the catalogue appears exactly as she wants it to. Now, as to the matter of security …’
‘You’ll have to tell me a bit more about your understanding with Mrs Todd. She’s a subtle woman. If I’m going to be involved at the security end I’ll need to know any … angles.’
Lang passed his hand over the thin dark hair on his rather pointy head. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘maybe I should protect myself. I’m not going into this thing with my eyes shut, you know.’
‘What thing, Mr Lang?’
‘Did you know Todd? Like him?’
‘I knew him slightly. He was okay.’
‘Do you think he was honest?’
‘More or less.’
‘Exactly. He was certainly smart. You don’t think the photographs are his work, do you?’<
br />
I tried to remember whether Felicia had actually said so. I couldn’t recall. ‘I assumed it.’
‘Exactly. So will everyone else, and the catalogue will confirm it.’
‘Are you saying he didn’t take the photographs?’
Lang gave me a level look. ‘Did I say that?’
‘Whose work are they?’
‘Who do you think? I’ve said enough. This is all very delicate. What about the security?’
I told him I wouldn’t handle it, but I gave him the name of a firm I occasionally deal with. I didn’t think it would hurt to stay in some kind of touch with the snaps and daubings.
O’Fear eased himself gently into the car. He was wearing a grey suit that was slightly too big for him. He had lost weight in gaol. I put his bag in the back, but I didn’t open any doors for him or offer other help. He would probably have broken my arm.
‘How bad is it?’ I said.
‘Could be worse. Glanced off a rib. A dozen stitches and no ballet dancing for a while.’
‘Where d’you want to go?’
‘Where does anyone want to go after a period of durance vile? To a bloody pub, boyo. Have you got a shooter?’
I nodded and started the car. We drove to a pub in Chifley near the Star drive-in theatre. It was showing a couple of the Harrison Ford Indiana Jones movies and I wondered who would want to go to drive-ins anymore, now that we had videos and all-night TV. Unless it was for the same old reason.
The pub was undergoing a refit and only the saloon bar was open. There was no draught Guinness, so O’Fear accepted a bottle of Sheaf stout. He filled a schooner expertly and drank it down in a couple of long gulps. I had a middy of the same stuff in lieu of lunch.
O’Fear wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, refilled his glass and signalled for another bottle. ‘Ah, that’s better.’
‘You’re not going to tell me you went all those months without a drink. I could smell it on you the other day.’
‘It’s not the same.’ We were sitting on bar stools. O’Fear pushed some of the change from my ten bucks across the bar and the barman replaced the empty bottle with a full one. He took some money and put back very little. The walls of the bar were covered with photographs and paintings of cars and horses. I didn’t think Felicia would approve too much of my spending her money in here.
