by Peter Corris
‘No? That’s interesting.’
‘Getting close,’ Rolf said.
We entered a bay that seemed to taper in to a stream that disappeared into darkness. Before we reached the mouth of the stream Rolf cut the motor and the boat drifted in the current.
‘Dinghy, Hardy,’ the boss said.
‘Jesus. Why don’t you just shoot me now and drop me over?’
‘Too easy. Come on.’
We stood at the stern and watched a rowboat approach us.
‘Williamson?’ The whisper came from the boat, only just audible over the plopping oars.
‘Yes. You’re taking two. Okay?’
‘ ’kay. Here we are. Steady …’
Williamson swung his long legs over the side and lowered himself into the boat. I moved awkwardly and Rolf helped me roughly to do the same. I squatted in the boat; my shoulder was on fire and my eye throbbed and gave me stabs of pain at the smallest movement. It was hard to hold my head steady in the moving boat and I eventually used both hands to help me do it.
The boatman pulled hard against the last of a running tide and we moved steadily up the stream. It was wider in some spots than others; branches from the trees hung over the water and a couple of times Williamson told me to duck. I did so and groaned at the pain. After about ten minutes of rowing we ran ashore on a narrow, sandy beach. The boatman heaved the vessel far enough up to allow himself and Williamson to jump onto dry sand. I couldn’t jump.
‘Get your feet wet, Hardy,’ Williamson said. ‘It’s part of the treatment.’
I didn’t know what to make of that but I eased gingerly over the side and waded to land through a few inches of water.
‘What now?’ I said.
‘Short walk. You can wait here,’ he said to the boatman. ‘I can handle this.’ He produced a torch from his coat pocket and took out his gun almost as an afterthought. He was cool and confident which made everything feel very much worse. He pushed my damaged shoulder and I yelled.
‘Sorry. That way.’ He flashed the torch beam at the scrub. I could just see a break in it. My vision was good in the open eye but it’s hard to gauge distance and levels with only one eye. I stumbled a lot as I walked which hurt the eye and shoulder. My feet, sloshing about in wet shoes and socks, were cold. Once or twice Williamson jabbed me with his gun but he was a pro. He moved around from side to side and dropped back sometimes so that I never really knew where he was—not that I could have done anything about it anyway.
We came out of the scrub into a sandy hollow, like the space between two big sand dunes. The grass was thick over the area. Two men stood to one side, just out of the scrub. One held a hurricane lantern and I could see a rake and a broom on the ground beside him. I shivered and stopped. Williamson moved around and stood beside me. He extended the hand that held the torch. ‘I want you to look very carefully to where this is shining, Hardy. What do you see?’
I stared through the darkness trying to keep my restricted vision inside the area lit by the torch. The eye watered and I rubbed it. ‘Nothing,’ I said.
He moved the torch. ‘There. Can’t you see anything?’
I could. Just discernible were two long, narrow disturbances of the earth. The grass had partially grown over them but you could see the slight rise of the ground, like long lumps, the slight shadow.
‘What is it?’ I said.
I felt Williamson’s gun muzzle touch the back of my neck. It rested there lightly. It was cold and I could smell the faint tang of gun oil.
‘There lie Joe Agnew and Tania Bourke,’ Williamson said.
13
A rake, I thought. What good is a rake. Where’s the shovel?
Williamson took the gun away and turned me around back towards the track. He used the gun to steer me but he prodded the undamaged side. ‘Little charade, Hardy. I’m a Federal policeman. Narcotics. Teach you to mind your own fucking business.’
I felt some warmth creep back into my cold, stiff, tingling body.
‘God.’ I said. ‘I thought …’
‘Yeah. You held up pretty well.’ He swung the torch beam over footprints and other marks in the sandy soil. ‘Clean her up, boys. Just like she was.’
I stumbled back to the beach and got my feet wet again getting in the boat. Williamson gave me some of the details as we made the trip back to the speedboat and some more on the run to Bayview.
‘Agnew and Bourke were part of a big drugs operation,’ he said. ‘Bourke was a courier. Have you worked out what Agnew’s part was?’
‘Yes,’ I said. My eye was hurting like hell and it was all a charade. Still, I had to play along. I didn’t know what Williamson’s complete plan was; there was still time and opportunity for him to erase me. ‘He was in at the Customs end. He watched for cetain flights and bits of luggage. I don’t know how they’d have worked it. All that stuff looks pretty random to me when I’ve travelled.’
‘It is, or it can be. If you’ve got the luggage handlers and some of the Customs men fixed it’s less random. It was complicated but it works. Worked.’
‘What happened?’ We were back in the speedboat now, a smoother ride than the dinghy but not smooth enough for me. ‘Haven’t got anything to drink on you, by any chance?’
‘No. The usual thing happened. People got greedy, started to cheat. We got someone inside and looked like cracking it.’
‘Where does Darcy fit in?’
‘He’s an informer …’
‘Which means he’s a dealer as well.’
‘Set a thief. He knew Bourke and Agnew. Knew Bourke pretty well, in fact.’
‘Yeah, his girlfriend’s not too happy about that.’
He shrugged his well-tailored shoulders. ‘He knows it. His problem.’
Rolf handled the wheel like an artist. The shore lights were coming up fast—the trip back always seems shorter than the one out. Soon there’d be people around instead of dark stretches of water, telephones not trees. I would have felt better if I’d been able to see properly. As it was, the blanked-out eye felt like a hot coal in my head, but there were still things I needed to know.
‘Who killed them?’ I said.
‘The man who was trying to take over from the big man.’
‘When?’
The boat bumped the piles; Rolf tossed the ropes, jumped to the jetty and tied us up. He stood and lit a cigarette. He was a bit of a specialist, Rolf. ‘This all happened a while back,’ Williamson said. ‘Don’t trouble yourself. Look, can you get up here? Ladder’s awkward.’
‘I can do it.’ I climbed onto the marina walkway. My boat was tied up where they’d be able to see it from the office in the morning. I was dizzy and the shoulder and eye injuries made me feel as if I’d taken a hard left-right combination. I hung on to the handrail all the way back to dry land.
‘The thing is this,’ Williamson said. ‘Oh, I’ve got someone to drive you home. Don’t worry about it.’
‘I won’t lick your boots either.’
He ignored that, intent on his story. ‘Bourke had got hold of a big shipment. She diverted it. Agnew helped. They got killed. The big man’s still looking for them and the stuff.’
‘Who is he?’
He shook his head. ‘Can’t tell you. But you know him. Everyone knows him. He’s getting close. When he moves to get the stuff we’ll get him. That’s all you need to know.’
‘Like hell, it is! Jesus.’
‘Sit down in the car. Come on.’ He led me to the Falcon and helped me in. Then he put my Colt in the glove box. Rolf was hanging around and Williamson turned to him. ‘Got anything to drink? Brandy or something?’
Rolf shook his head. ‘Got a joint.’
‘That’d be right,’ Williamson said. ‘Hardy, any use to you?’
‘No. What about the flat in the Cross and the house over there?’
‘Part of the set-up. We’ve left them as they were. Keep an eye on them.’
‘You know how I got into this?’
/> ‘Yeah, the girl who got killed outside the Greenwich place.’
‘Well?’
‘We had nothing to do with it.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Well, only after the fact. We passed the word to the police not to … disturb things. You have my word, Hardy.’
I snorted. ‘Shit, what’s that worth?’
‘Suit yourself. All I’m saying is that we had nothing to do with the girl’s death and it was completely unconnected with our operation. Completely.’
‘Why the hell couldn’t you have just told me this?’
‘Darcy told us how you acted when you broke in on him. The girlfriend told us about the phone call. You were getting warm, right?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘We knew you’d get somewhere at the bank, one way or another. Or somewhere along the line. If you’d looked into the leasing of the house on the island you’d have been led somewhere else. Another house. It’s the way they lived. The trail’s there to be followed. I mean that’s why it’s there. And we didn’t need you tramping around on it.’
‘Still …’
‘Still nothing. You’ve got a reputation, Hardy. You know what for?’
‘Sustaining physical damage?’
‘Stubbornness. I was told I’d have to convince you. You looked pretty convinced back there in the park. Are you convinced, Hardy?’
‘I’m convinced,’ I said.
‘Rolf’ll drive you home. You’ll have to get that eye seen to. It looks pretty bad.’
Book Two
14
I don’t know what time it was when I got home. I was barely conscious. Rolf got me into the house and Helen set to work with hot water and cottonwool. She phoned Ian Sangster who left his Friday night bridge game to come.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘You look like you’ve gone a few rounds with Fenech.’
‘Try a tree,’ I said. ‘Or more precisely, a branch. How bad is it, Ian?’
He put his bag of tricks down, took out one of the medieval instruments they use, and examined the eye closely. ‘It looks bad, Cliff. You need a surgeon. I’ll get you into hospital tonight and with luck I can get one of the best men in Sydney on it tomorrow.’
‘One of the best?’ Helen said.
‘It’s a competitive field. They argue about it. Why’s he sitting all hunched like that?’
I was on the couch in the front room still wearing my jacket because I couldn’t move the arm enough to slip it off. Helen’s attempt to do so had called forth an unmanly scream. I’d taken off the wet footwear though. ‘Shoulder,’ I said.
‘Jesus, Cliff, you’re …’
‘I know. Too old. I’m too old, Helen.’
‘You’re babbling. He wants whisky, Ian. What d’you reckon?’
‘Why not? It has important medicinal qualities. I’ll take some of the same medicine. Let’s have a look at the shoulder.’
‘After the Scotch,’ I said. I had a stiff one and heard about the hand Ian had been holding when Helen called. I had another and hardly screamed at all as he eased the jacket off.
‘You could almost do the Elephant Man,’ Ian said. ‘With the eye like that and the back all swollen.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Quasimodo’d be more like it. It feels like a hump.’
‘Richard III, then,’ Ian said. ‘Don’t go down-market.’
‘You’re both crazy,’ Helen said. ‘It’s bloody blue!’
‘Bruised.’ Ian finished his whisky and tapped the glass. ‘More, if you please. This the first time you’ve seen him like this, Helen?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re lucky. Cyn …’
‘Ian!’ Pain shot through me as I spoke. ‘Drop it, Ian.’
‘No. Tell me.’ Helen poured more whisky for Ian and one for herself. I nodded and she added a few drops to my glass. Ian was probing at the shoulder; his hands were cool and firm. It almost felt better under them.
‘This is dislocated and strained. Nothing broken, I think. He was a wild boy in those days, I can tell you. Liked to mix it, would you believe? I stitched him and set him in plaster. Quite often.’
‘No good for the sex life,’ Helen said.
‘Funny, that’s what Cyn used to say.’
‘D’you mind?’ I said. I felt myself slowing down and drifting, stress and Scotch will do that to you. ‘Shouldn’t you ring this fuckin’ wizard of microsurgery … whatever?’
Ian was fiddling with a syringe and a bottle with a rubber membrane on the top. ‘Blah, blah mls of scotch whisky, blah, blah mls of this,’ he mused. He gripped and pressed until a vein stood up in my arm. He slid the needle in. ‘Goodnight, Cliff. I promise to respect your woman.’
I woke up in a private hospital in Hunter’s Hill. I didn’t know then that it was Hunter’s Hill, but the water and trees and gracious rooftops I saw from the window told me that it sure as hell wasn’t Glebe. I was wearing a nightshirt—something that had lain in a drawer since the last time I was in hospital, about eight or nine years back—long stubble and a plastic bangle around my wrist with my name on it and some coded things I couldn’t understand. My watch was on the bedside table. It was 7 a.m. on Saturday: time to lie in bed with Helen and read the papers, check the quotes of the week and if there was a movie on we wanted to see. No Helen.
A nurse came around at 7.30 and took my pulse and temperature.
‘When’s breakfast?’ I said.
‘Tomorrow for you.’
‘Eh? What is this, the Gulag?’
‘You’re fasting, Mr Hardy. You’re being operated on at ten o’clock.’
I realised for the first time that I was only looking through one eye. The other was closed, covered with a pad and throbbing. Through one eye, the nurse looked fresh, clean-scrubbed and young. Invisible Man jokes, Prisoner in the Iron Mask jokes, wouldn’t mean a thing to her. My shoulder was stiff but not as sore as it had been. I wriggled up in the bed. ‘What am I being operated on for, nurse?’
‘Torn cornea.’
’It sounds like a rock group,’ I said. A soft, warm wave called sleep hit me in the face and I slid down the bed and off it onto a soft, warm cloud.
The next time I awoke, two men in white gowns were bending over me. One was looking at my eye, the other was asking me my name.
‘Cliff Hardy,’ I said.
‘How did you sustain this injury?’
‘I ran into a tree branch.’
‘My name is Stivens, Mr Hardy. I’m a surgeon. The sight of your right eye is endangered but the operation I am going to perform has a 90 per cent success rate. Do you understand?’
‘What d’you like at Randwick in the fifth?’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘It sounded like you were quoting odds.’
‘Yes, Ian Sangster told me you have a sense of humour. I have not. This is Dr McGregor, he is an anaesthetist. I believe he has a sense of humour too.’
The other white-gowned figure nodded and grinned. ‘Dr Stivens,’ I said.
‘Mister.’
‘Mister Stivens. Could you just hold out your hands for a second. Like this?’
‘I told you I have no sense of humour.’
‘Please.’
He held out both hands; dark hairs sprouted around his wrists. I let myself go back and relax. ‘I’m sorry about the sense of humour,’ I said, ‘but in your case I’ll settle for the steady hands.’
‘Dr McGregor?’ Stivens said.
‘You’ll feel a prick, Mr Hardy. Then I’ll count backwards from ten and at five I’ll tell you a joke. Ten, nine, eight …’
I didn’t hear the joke.
It was a private room. I’d never had a private room in a hospital before. I couldn’t have afforded it. I couldn’t afford it now. Helen and Sangster were there. Where’s the cat? I thought. But you know cats, they’re never around when you need them.
‘How does it look?’ I said. ‘Get it? Eye operation? Look?’
‘Jes
us,’ Helen said.
‘You must never touch narcotics, Cliff,’ Sangster said. ‘They’d be too nice for you.’
‘Okay,’ I pulled my right hand out from under the bedclothes and put it up to my eye. Big patch, very tender. Helen gently took my hand away and held it. Her fingers were cool and smooth. I played with them. Sangster cleared his throat and stood.
‘Vance Stivens’ll be back tonight,’ he said.
‘Vance?’
‘That’s right. He told me to tell you he’ll adjust the sutures under local anaesthetic tonight.’
‘Terrific,’ I said. ‘I hope he’s had a nice day.’
‘We played golf this morning after he’d worked on you.’
‘Good. What did he shoot?’
‘Eighty-one. He’ll be happy with that.’
‘I’m glad.’ I gripped Helen’s hand and felt a strong sexual urge. Sangster moved away from the bed.
‘He also said to tell you that when he’s finished it’ll feel like there’s a house brick under your eyelid. That’ll last for a couple of weeks. You’re not to worry.’
‘I won’t. Thanks, Ian.’
‘Ciao.’
Helen was wearing a silk dress I liked and she smelled wonderful. Our hands were gripped together.
‘Not much we can do about it here. When do I get out?’
‘Tomorrow. But you could be on hand jobs only, for a while.’
‘We’ll see. You didn’t get put off, did you? By that stuff about Cyn, and me getting beaten up?’
She shook her head. ‘I was surprised though. It sounded as if you went out of your way to find trouble.’
‘I did, I suppose.’
‘Why?’
‘Something to do with the way things were with Cyn and me. Now I want to stay in one piece, all systems go. Mind you, a few hand jobs wouldn’t be so bad.’
‘Did you do it that way with Cyn?’
It was the first time she’d ever asked me about my sexual past. I hadn’t asked much about her and Michael either, but, from what I’d heard of him, it sounded as if he’d hardly have the time. ‘No,’ I said.
‘What about with Ailsa?’
I’d told her a bit about Ailsa. I could hardly avoid it; there were things she’d given me lying around the house. ‘No’, I said. ‘Not with Ailsa either. Look, where’s this heading? What’s wrong?’
