by Peter Corris
16
Since small business people started installing answering machines, Commander phones and car phones, I’ve almost given up ringing to arrange appointments. There are too many ways they can duck you. A direct approach is best; most people aren’t rude, most are curious. It was late in the afternoon when I arrived in St Peters. Ashley Street was a nondescript thoroughfare, half given over to factories and half to houses that looked as if they had been squeezed onto blocks of land that were too small for them.
Brown & Brown presented a long, high brick fence to the street. I could see the superstructure of a couple of cranes and bits of earth-moving equipment poking up into the sky, and the outlines of some buildings that would not have carpet on the floors or paintings on the walls. I parked further down the street and walked back to give myself some time to rehearse what I was going to say. I had it worked out by the time I reached the wide main gate. Brown & Brown looked to be doing pretty well. Tyre tracks on the road and drive showed that a lot of traffic had passed through the gate. The brick wall was new. Reddish-brown stains on the cement marked where water had run for years down a rusty tin fence and across the footpath.
A smaller gate further along from the main entrance was set in a recess in the wall; it even had a skimpy overhanging roof. I pressed the buzzer and looked around for the closed-circuit TV lens, but the door swung open before I found it. I went up a cement driveway towards an office building that had a small flagpole standing outside it. The US and Australian flags hung listlessly from the mast. I went through double doors into a functional reception area where posters and photographs on the walls showed the sort of work Brown & Brown did. Brick towers were shown crumbling under the force of explosions; giant steel balls reduced brick walls to rubble. The man at the desk was about thirty; he had a tanned face and a mass of wrinkles around his eyes, as if he spent a lot of time squinting in bright sunlight. Big shoulders and neck, cropped brown hair.
‘Can I help you, sir?’
I gave him my card. ‘I’d like to see Mr Marshall Brown.’
He read the card and looked at me with interest. ‘Private detective, eh? Don’t think I ever met one before. Hold on, I did run into one when we were wrecking the brickworks.’
‘What did you run into him with?’
He smiled, showing teeth not as white as those of the workers in the posters. ‘He was from an insurance company.’ He looked down at a typed list on the desk. ‘I think Mr Brown has all the insurance he needs, if that’s …’
‘It’s not,’ I said. ‘Just for interest, if you wrecked a brickworks, what’re you doing here?’
‘Mr Brown thinks everyone should know every part of the business. I’m on a two-week stint here. After that I do vehicle maintenance. Then I can get back to the bulldozer. Have I been polite?’
‘Very,’ I said.
‘Mr Brown says we should be polite. What’s your business?’
‘I’ll be polite too. Please tell Mr Brown I want to talk to him about Barnes Todd.’
He made a note on a pad and then his big fingers with their blunt, broken but very clean nails punched buttons on the intercom system. I heard an American voice respond: ‘Yes, Wayne.’
Wayne? I thought. With luck, his surname.
‘A Mr Hardy here, Mr Brown. A private … investigator. He says he wants to talk to you about Todd Barnes.’
‘Barnes Todd,’ I said.
Wayne corrected himself. ‘Barnes Todd.’
There was a pause. Then the American voice again: ‘Show him in, Wayne.’
Wayne pointed to a door which had an exit sign over it.
‘Exit?’ I said.
‘A joke of Mr Brown’s. Just go through, Mr Hardy.’ I was three steps towards the door before he added, ‘Nice to meet you.’ At least he didn’t say anything about spending a pleasant twenty-four hours.
The room was as functional as the space outside. Big desk, a couple of chairs, low table, bookshelves and filing cabinets. Papers, maps and blueprints were spread or stacked on every surface. Marshall Brown was standing behind his desk; he didn’t wear a string tie or a jacket with piping on it, or cowboy boots. He wore a white shirt, dark tie and trousers and he was as bald as an egg. He was about five foot six, ten or more years older than me, and the pale skin on his face sagged around his jawline. He gave me a quick, moist handshake.
‘Sit down, Mr Hardy.’ His voice was high and light. I’m no expert on American accents. Southern, Hickie had said. Well, he certainly wasn’t from Boston or New York.
I sat, and he looked at me for a full half minute.
‘I think I’m a pretty fair judge of a man,’ he said, ‘if you say you’re a private eye, I’d be inclined to believe you. But I’d check up before I told you anything.’
I put my licence folder on the desk. ‘What would you do before you gave me any money?’
His laugh was a high whinnying sound. He glanced at the licence and pushed it. ‘I’d doublecheck. You mentioned Barnes Todd.’
‘You knew he was dead?’
‘Yeah. I should’ve sent a wreath, but …’ he waved his hand at the paperwork.
‘It was “no flowers”, anyway.’
‘Uh huh. Well?’
I hesitated, playing the part of a plain man searching for the right words. ‘I was in Korea with Barnes,’ I said. ‘Me and a few others thought we’d like to chip in for some kind of memorial. You know, a plaque or something like that.’
‘Is that so? How’s his widow feel about it?’
It was a God-will-strike-you-dead kind of question. And if God wouldn’t, Felicia would. ‘She’s agreeable. You were in Korea, weren’t you, Mr Brown?’
‘US Infantry. Second division.’ There was a snap in the words and his jaw seemed to tighten. ‘How about you?’
‘Sergeant, A Company, Third Battalion.’
‘I was a captain, most of the time.’
‘Barnes was …’
‘One of the toughest soldiers I ever saw. It was a bloody terrible war. Best forgotten.’
‘Can you forget it?’
His eyes moved around the room without focusing, as if he wasn’t seeing the furniture and the blueprints but something else—paddy fields, burning tanks, panic-stricken men about to die? ‘No, I sure can’t,’ he said quietly.
‘Did you and Barnes talk much about Korea?’
‘Yeah. We talked. But about business, mainly.’ He undid the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie. Flesh bulged. ‘I guess I could make a contribution. It’s the least I can do.’
‘What d’you mean?’
He looked at his watch. ‘I usually work for another hour, but what the hell. Got anything you need to do just now, Mr Hardy?’
He seemed to be two people—the flabby, harassed businessman and the steely cold warrior. Both could be dangerous and I felt very unsure about him. ‘I’m free for a while,’ I said cautiously.
He got up and walked across the room; his jacket hung on a key sticking out of a filing cabinet. He freed the jacket, turned the key in the lock and put it in his pocket. ‘Let me take you somewhere.’
We went out through the foyer and Brown made a sign to Wayne with his fist and forefinger. Wayne nodded.
‘What’s that mean?’ I said.
‘Dozer driver stuff. Means cut off the motor.’
We left the building and got into Brown’s Volvo, which was parked in a slot labelled ‘the boss’.
Brown snapped his seat belt on. ‘Safest car on the market. What d’you drive?’
‘A Falcon.’
He didn’t comment. He drove out through a boom gate at the back of the big yard. Shadows were spreading across the cranes and other equipment, which were painted dark green and looked like prehistoric monsters immobilised by a climatic change. Brown drove aggressively but well. I wondered whether he had a gun in the car, the way I did in mine. Great help it was to me there. If he had headed for the river or anything that looked like a dumping ground, I
suppose I would have got ready to jump him or jump out, but he didn’t. He worked his way across to Newtown and parked in a side street near St Stephen’s church.
It was after six o’clock, but King Street was still crowded and the shops were open. I hadn’t seen a paper or heard a radio for days and had lost track of the week. It was Thursday—late-night shopping. The road was full of cars crawling along and spewing fumes, but no one seemed to mind. If you can’t take car fumes, you don’t live or shop in Newtown. Brown was a quick walker; his purposefulness cut a path through the strolling shoppers and I recalled reading somewhere that this was a characteristic of successful Americans—purposefulness. I was finding it irritating.
‘Where the hell are we going?’
‘You’ll see.’
Brown cut across the path of a woman pushing a laden shopping trolley and pushed open a door. I followed him into a long, dark room. Some soft music was playing and, as my eyes adjusted to the concealed lighting, I saw several low tables with cushions laid out geometrically around them.
Brown’s nostrils flared. ‘Smell that.’
I sniffed. I could smell seafood, spices, sesame seeds, chilli.
‘This is the best Korean restaurant south of Seoul,’ Brown said.
A waiter came out of the nether darkness and, after a lot of hand-shaking and bowing and Korean palaver, we sat on cushions with our legs under us or under the table. The dishes started to arrive and Brown identified them for me. Ku-jeol-pan came in a box with compartments that held fish, meat and vegetables and small pancakes; kimchi was a very hot pickled cabbage; nakgibokeum was braised octopus with spicy sauce. Brown ate quickly but delicately; I picked along in his wake. We drank Korean beer from green bottles.
‘Barnes and me came here all the time,’ Brown said. ‘We’d eat this great food and get high on the beer and talk about old times.’
‘The war?’
‘Sure. What else?’
‘Bob Mulholland told me about an accident you had when you were clay shooting with Barnes.’
Brown gulped beer and speared up some kimchi. He chewed it with relish. A few strands of the stuff had nearly taken the lining off my mouth. ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Damn careless. But there was no harm done. Were you at the Han?’
I didn’t answer. I was still unsure of him, but getting surer. A few more customers had arrived and soft conversation blended with the clink of bowls and glasses. The waiter brought more beer.
‘They bring it till you tell them to stop,’ Brown said.
I drank some beer and told him that the closest I’d ever been to Korea was Malaya. I told him Bob Mulholland’s story about the US captain and his threat to Barnes.
‘You thought I might be him?’
I shrugged. ‘I think Barnes was murdered. It was something I had to check.’
Brown went on eating for a while. He drank more beer and belched. ‘I know all about that, but I never thought I’d have to talk about it.’
‘I think you have to now, Mr Brown.’
‘Yeah, well, he’s dead. What harm can it do? There haven’t been any real war heroes for a long time.’
I said nothing and waited for him to order his thoughts and memories. When he spoke, he sounded much older than the go-get-’em businessman, much more tired. ‘The sergeant got it wrong, Hardy. I was there. The sergeant couldn’t see a thing and Barnes ’n me stage-managed it all. What could we do? It was get down that fuckin’ road or die.’
‘What happened?’
Brown looked around him as if the walls might become his accusers. He guzzled a glass of beer and shook his head. ‘We shot people to get through. All kinds of people. You had to be there to know what it was like. The panic was like … like cancer racing through everyone. Someone had to do something. We weren’t the only ones.’
‘What about the American captain?’
Brown sighed. ‘That guy was a coward. He kept going in the space we opened up. Bleating about human rights the whole fuckin’ time. Shit, the Chinks would’ve cut off his human rights where his legs met. The top brass wouldn’t have understood. No one who wasn’t there could understand. We did what we had to do.’
I had had enough military experience to know what he meant. ‘A scapegoat?’
Brown nodded. ‘The guy was courtmartialled. He died in Leavenworth pretty quick. Cancer, I think.’
My image of Barnes Todd was in fragments, although I knew that was a naive reaction. I couldn’t find any words. I drank some of the tepid beer.
‘What can I say?’ Brown growled. ‘It was a shitty war. Everyone who died in it was just plain dumb.’
I knew he was talking a kind of brutal, pragmatic sense. Despite what the promoters and medal-givers say, the main thing about war for the participants is survival. I tried to concentrate on my reason for seeking Brown out in the first place. I located it finally among the ruins of my stupid illusions. I gave him a quick résumé of the case as I understood it. ‘So forget history,’ I said. ‘Any clues on why anyone’d want to kill Todd?’
Brown had listened attentively. He shook his head. ‘Can’t help you, I’m afraid. On the business level, all I know is I wanted Barnes to come in with me. He wouldn’t. No hard feelings. We met, we ate, we drank, we talked about the good times. That’s all.’
I see.
He gave me one of his hard, tight-jawed looks. ‘That’s not a bad idea about the memorial, though. Why don’t we do something about that?’
I nodded.
‘Have some more kimchi,’ Brown said.
17
Marshall Brown paid the bill. He drove me back to my car and wished me luck. I watched the Volvo until it turned at the end of the street. Brown had handled himself well; if he was lying he was the greatest actor since Olivier. I sat in my car with the thin beer and the exotic food inside me and ruminated: here I was, slightly dyspeptic, fairly sure that a flawed man had been murdered, sexually involved with that man’s wife and teamed up with a gaolbird who could be playing some weird Irish game of his own. It’s a strange way to make a living. I was aware of one big consolation, however—I was thinking less and less about Helen Broadway and all that pain.
I didn’t want to go back to Glebe just yet, either to wait for O’Fear or to find him already there with a bottle and the blarney. Suddenly my mood changed—maybe it was the nakgibokeum. In fact, I told myself, I was doing pretty well on this job, complications aside. I had eliminated the American captain and probably the threat-from-the-art-world theory. The danger to Barnes Todd had come from whatever he had been doing on his nocturnal perambulations with O’Fear. And there was physical evidence of that—photographs and something heavy in a plastic garbage bag. Those things were still being looked for by the opposition, and so could be found. I stared through the windscreen, which had picked up some salt from the spray at Maroubra. I saw fences and buildings and roofs stretching away forever. A set of photographs and a gar-bag suddenly didn’t seem so easy to find.
I started the car and drove without purpose. It was almost dark and I switched the lights on automatically, checked the rear vision mirror for a tail, automatically. I found myself heading for Bondi, drawn towards the sea, as almost everyone as if they’ve ever lived near it for a significant period of time. I cruised down Hastings Parade and parked outside the building where I could live and work, mortgage-free, if I chose to do so. It was part of the estate of a grateful client from the past, now dead. The heirs were still grateful, and I could have the place for a song. It was white, freshly painted. I couldn’t see the water from the street, but I knew that all of the windows along one side of the apartment afforded an eyeful of the Pacific.
This wasn’t sleazy, beachfront Bondi; this was a land where exterior woodwork was painted every year, two videos per household territory, compact disc country—suburbia-by-the-sea. Do you really want to live and work here, out of the smog? I thought. Where the kids are bright and helpful instead of drug-dulled and suspicious? Where th
e sun in the morning looks fresh and clean? Where the people who haven’t got money on their minds aren’t likely to last for long? I still didn’t know. If I didn’t decide soon, the opportunity would evaporate, and maybe that would be the best thing. I kissed goodbye for now to my personal shot at paradise, drove away and stopped near an all-night chemist with an orange phone. There was a bottle shop a little further along and I bought a six-pack of Swan Light so that I could get a fistful of change and have something to do with my hands when I phoned Felicia Todd in Thirroul.
She answered, sounding relaxed and pleased to hear from me. I told her I’d delivered the paintings and that I had eliminated the Korean connection.
‘That’s a relief,’ she said. ‘And what has this Irishman told you?’
‘It’d take too long to go into but I’ll fill you in when I can. In the meantime, do you know anything about a set of photographs Barnes took? A special set, relating to his business?’ As soon as the words were out I realised that I could be on tricky ground, if what Piers Lang had said was true.
Felicia’s reply came slowly. ‘No. The only photographs I know about are those you delivered to Piers Lang.’
‘Had you looked through them? Were they all …?’
‘Yes. All subjects, if you know what that means. I’ve almost finished classifying them and relating them to the paintings. They’re not at all to do with trucks or storage or bloody security.’
‘What about a big plastic garbage bag? Heavy.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Did you see Barnes with such a thing? Hiding it, maybe, or doing something unusual?’
‘I only ever saw him put garbage bags out the front of the house. Cliff, what is this?’
‘Evidence. Never mind.’
‘When will I see you?’
‘When are you coming back?’
‘I’m not sure.’
That was pretty clear. She was leaving it to me. Her tone was welcoming, though, and I felt encouraged. ‘I’ll keep in touch and get back as soon as I can.’
‘Good. I hope that’s soon. Deborah’s staying the night and she’s brought her dog along. With the stabbing on top of the housebreaking, I’m not feeling as confident as I made out.’
