by Peter Corris
I drove home in a very confused state. Easy enough to get angry about being taken for a mug if that’s what had happened. I tried to keep the anger in check to permit clear thinking. If everything Karen Bach had said was true, then Marisha Karatsky was still playing some sort of game to do with Stefan Parnevik. Had she lost him and wanted him back? Had she suspected already that Kristina was with him and all I had done was confirm it? Was my job just to locate him with evidence of his association with an underage female to allow Marisha to . . . ?
My mood deteriorated as I thought about it. It had been a longish and confusing day, not arduous physically, but taxing just the same. I made myself a meal by defrosting meat I had in the freezer, chopping up some onions and subjecting the mixture to a dose of Clive of India curry powder. I still had a couple of bottles of chardonnay left from my one wine club purchase, since the literature had gone in the bin for its patronising and pretentious tone. I microwaved some pappadums and sat down to it with a big glass of wine and a few more paracetamols. My head was hurting again. I was supposed to see Marisha that evening. How the hell was I going to do that?
Confrontation. Nothing else for it. I finished the meal off with a cup of strong coffee, showered and headed for Dulwich Hill. I wasn’t looking forward to the meeting and took the drive slower than I needed to. I buzzed her flat and got no response. Buzzed again, and again. Nothing. I called her number on my mobile and the phone rang and rang. No answering machine. I stood outside the building with frustration and anger mounting inside me.
The parking spaces for the building were unnumbered so I had no way of telling whether she had a car or if it was there or not. I walked along the adjacent street, staring up at the windows. Hers were curtained and dark. I could’ve hung around, tried to get myself buzzed in by another resident, or maybe slipped in when someone was going in or out. Once in, I could’ve picked her lock and snooped. Instead, I consigned her and her daughter to hell and drove home. I knocked off the rest of the bottle of white and went to bed.
I don’t often dream and when I do I usually forget the content straight off. I remember some though, and the ones I remember have two themes. One is that I’m in danger in a high place. These dreams usually end with me falling or jumping and then I wake up. In others, my father is present. I didn’t get on well with him or admire him, and in the dreams he reproaches me the way he did in life. I try to find some common ground with him but it doesn’t happen. What Freud or Jung would make of all this I don’t know and don’t care. So the dream I had where my father criticised me for fucking Marisha Karatsky (though that was a word I never heard him use) didn’t surprise me, but it hung disturbingly around through the early part of the morning.
I rang her number several times with no result. Kristina’s mobile number had registered on my mobile when she’d rung me after taking the car. I rang it and got the message that the number was no longer in operation. So the Karatskys had quit the stage. I was out a day’s pay and a few expenses. No big deal. But being used and deceived, if that’s what had happened, rankled. I tried to recapture the quality of the time with Marisha—the sex, the talk, the laughs. It had seemed pretty good, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like an act. That intense, that quickly?
I could shrug it off. I’d had worse disappointments and fifteen-year-old Kristina had shown every sign of being able to handle herself in the dodgy world she was in, apparently by choice. I decided to turn my attention to the Farmer matter. That was where the money was, and the questions to be answered, and there was no emotional involvement to muddy the waters.
I got the Illawarra Mercury up online. It contained a substantial article on the murder of Adam MacPherson, thirty-three, insurance salesman. The writer’s name was Aaron De Witt and I phoned him at the paper. At a guess, more than fifty per cent of the calls journalists get are from nutters, liars or worse. A good journo can tell pretty quickly whether the caller is worth his or her time. After a few sentences I had De Witt’s attention.
‘Not much detail on how and where, let alone why,’ I said.
‘Shotgun up close. What you might call emphatic.’
‘Also noisy.’
‘Well, up-market townhouse, double glazed, and you know how it is—you hear shots at night, it’s probably Bruce or Clint.’
‘What about why?’
‘We should meet.’
‘I’m coming down today. You say where and when.’
‘Any preferences?’
‘I’d rather not be too close to any police precincts.’
He laughed. He said he was writing a story on the problem with the coast road and would be in the Coalcliff area. We agreed to meet in the Clifton pub at 1 pm, giving me time to pack a few more things than I’d taken the first time and to fit in a quick gym workout. Before I left I rang Marisha’s number again with the same result. I had a fleeting, unsettling thought: what if the pair of them were in some kind of danger from Parnevik or someone else? I dismissed it, but it was enough to take the edge off my pleasure at getting out of Sydney.
The Clifton pub sits high above a rocky shore. The coastline is fragile and photographs inside the hotel show that it has changed a lot over the years. The mine that burrowed into the escarpment is now just a coking operation, and the jetty where the coal was loaded was swept away years ago. Most of the houses that once perched on top of the cliff are long gone and the instability problem with the road indicates that changes are still going on. There was a concrete barrier and a boom gate across the road and a high chain link fence with barbed wire further on. With the coast road closed for the couple of kilometres between Clifton and Coalcliff, the locals have to go a long way around to north or south to get to where they used to go directly. The closure had made the Sydney papers and there was a suggestion that house prices in the area could drop as a result. Nobody’d be happy about it.
The weather had taken a turn for the worse and I was wearing jeans, my flannie and a leather jacket and needing every layer. I was early and business wasn’t brisk. I studied the photographs of the shoreline and then a set featuring boxers who were from the area or had fought locally in the golden era of Australian boxing—Spargo, Delaney, Patrick and others.
I was nursing a beer on the big back deck that looked straight east to New Zealand when a tall man walked out and ran his eye over the three or four of us rugged outside drinkers. He held a copy of the Mercury in one hand and a schooner in the other. I caught his eye and nodded. He must have topped 195 centimetres and a couple of stiff strides brought him to my table.
He stuck out his hand. ‘De Witt.’
‘Cliff Hardy.’ We shook.
‘Thing you should know,’ he said. ‘I’m a recovering alcoholic. This is soda and bitters. I can handle staying here about as long as it’ll take you to finish that beer.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You test yourself, right?’
He nodded. ‘You’ve been there?’
An image of Glen Withers, tight as a drum with the effort of not drinking in a drinking environment, came to my mind. ‘Friend,’ I said.
I proposed that we meet at the Farmer property in Wombarra. It seemed like a good setting for us to exchange information. The way it can in the Illawarra, the weather changed in a few minutes. The sun was shining and the wind had dropped when I reached the gate leading to the Farmer acres. Off with the jacket. De Witt parked his Volvo station wagon carefully by the side of the road but stepped out into thick grass and a soft spot. He was wearing a baggy linen suit over a black poloneck skivvy. Shiny black slip-ons, now rather muddy. He picked his way carefully towards me over the sloppy ground.
‘Bit of rain here lately,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘All we need. A bit more at the right time in the right place and that coast road’s history. There’s a metre wide crack running for fifty metres on the sea side of the road. Deep, too.’
‘Aren’t they working on it?’
‘Thinking about it.’ He cl
eared his throat, pulled out his cigarettes and lit up. ‘But we’re not here to talk about the weather or roads, are we?’
‘No.’
‘Why are we here?’
Insisting it was off the record for now, I elaborated on the little I’d said on the phone, telling him about the Farmer case and how it had led me to MacPherson.
‘Or not quite to him,’ I said. ‘The cops found my card on him and knew I wanted to talk to him.’
‘Interesting. Why me?’
‘I checked on a few of your stories. Seems to me you’ve got a pretty good idea of what goes on around here. And reading between the lines in your piece on MacPherson, I reckon you can say a bit more about him than that he was a thirty-three-year-old insurance salesman.’
‘You’re right there. Now just suppose there’s something in all this . . .’
‘You’ve got the inside track.’
‘Fair enough.’
We were both leaning on the gate enjoying the pale sunshine. I guessed that De Witt, although his face was lined and grooved, was only in his mid-thirties. But from the tension in his long body and the way he was smoking, he looked likely to die sober in his forties. He gazed out over Elizabeth Farmer’s inheritance and shook his head. ‘I can’t see a development behind it. Your client’ll have to get all sorts of permits even to rebuild here.’
‘That’s what she says, but like I told you, she’s had a generous offer from her dad’s ex. I thought you might be able to look into whether Matilda Sharpe-Tarleton Farmer has any dodgy connections down here.’
‘Speculative investigation?’
‘Yeah, like the Watergate burglary.’
He grinned, blew a cloud of smoke and was gripped by a spasm of coughing. I slapped his bony back and when he’d recovered he looked at me with watery eyes. ‘I know, I know. And while I do that, what will you be doing?’
‘What was MacPherson into—drugs, vice, politics?’
‘All of the above.’
‘With a few signposts from you, that’s where I’ll be looking.’
13
De Witt told me that MacPherson was a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War and had been a member of an outlaw bikie gang for a few years after that. Then he’d done a business degree at Wollongong University and had a few jobs in the insurance business before his last position with Illawarra Mutual.
‘That job was most likely a cover. MacPherson was almost certainly still involved in drugs. Had too much money for it to be otherwise.’
‘You mentioned vice and corruption.’
‘No, you did. But they all go together. The pros down here are almost all addicts. So are some of the paedophiles, and some of them’re in high places. Put two and two together.’
‘All this’d be known to the police?’
‘Hard to say. Some of it.’
‘I got the impression from Lucas that MacPherson was a bit of a loser, on the skids.’
De Witt shrugged and lit the last cigarette from his packet of plain Camels. He looked anxiously at the soft pack as he crumpled it. ‘Probably a pose. They say he could act a lot of parts.’
‘You know more about him than you let on in the article. I get the feeling you took an interest before he got killed.’
‘Right.’
‘So, am I homing in on your story?’
‘No, no. I’m glad you’re in. Now you can go sniffing around that stuff while I do the safe work.’
As I hoped he could, he filled me in with more information about MacPherson and the underworld of the Illawarra.
‘Are you happy to stand back?’
De Witt pressed the butt of his last smoke into the soft ground and turned towards me. His young/old face looked tired. ‘Hardy,’ he said. ‘I’m thirty-six and I feel fifty. I’m off the booze and grass and I have to get off the smokes. I’ve got a wife and two young kids. I’m looking for a quiet life.
Nice editorship here or somewhere else. People who go where you’re going down here have a way of turning up very hurt or rather dead.’
De Witt drove off and I climbed the gate. I went past the burnt-out house and further down looking for the track to Sue Holland’s land. I’m no country man, but it wasn’t hard. Several large stands of lantana had been slashed to open up a path that at one time had been heavily overgrown. Now it was clear enough, showing signs of being walked fairly frequently by someone handy with a machete.
I tramped along, ducking under low branches but in no danger of losing the track, until I emerged at the side of the Holland cottage. I wasn’t trying to be quiet and the old dog sussed me out and came towards me with his head up and his tail stiff.
‘Fred,’ I said. ‘Good old Fred. Friend. Friend.’
Fred growled several times and then let out a series of short, sharp barks. Sue Holland came from the back of the house. She looked flustered and upset, maybe angry.
‘You again. At least you had the sense not to pat him. He doesn’t like people coming from that direction.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know that. I didn’t mean any disruption. I just—’
‘It’s all right. I’ve just had a run-in with some bikie hoons roaring around in one of my paddocks. Arseholes.’
‘Bikies, or trail bikes?’
‘I know the difference, Mr Hardy.’
‘Did they . . . do anything?’
‘You mean rape me? I’d like to see them try. I capsicum-sprayed one of them so that he fell off.’
‘I didn’t hear anything. When was this?’
Her tanned face was pale and perspiration had matted her hair. ‘An hour ago. The adrenalin’s gone and I’m shaking.’
‘Okay. You need to sit down and have a hot drink with plenty of sugar in it.’
‘Yuck.’
‘Honey then. Something to boost—’
‘Mr Hardy, I’m sorry but I think men suck as a species. I’ll deal with my body chemistry in my own way. What are you doing here?’
The only way to deal with Sue Holland was to be as direct as she was. ‘Who made you the offer for your land?’
‘What?’
‘You told me Frederick Farmer had had an offer for his place and so had you. I want to know who made your offer. If you know who made his, so much the better.’
The dog had taken up a position by her side but he’d grown tired of the conversation and looked as if he’d like to head back to his kennel. Sue Holland definitely needed a rest as well. She put her hand to her forehead and felt the hair pasted there. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘I can’t think. Can I get back to you?’
‘Of course. You’ve got the mobile number. Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’
‘I’ll be fine. Come on, Fred.’ She turned on her heel and she and the dog went back to the cottage. Birds burst into song as I moved and I could hear other forms of wildlife rustling in the scrub. A bit too early for sunbathing snakes, but I kept an eye out just the same. I followed the gravelled track back to the road and went up the hill to where the Falcon was parked. For me, that was enough bushwalking and country life for one day.
According to De Witt, MacPherson had kept up a kind of connection with the university, doing odd courses in a lackadaisical way to give him access to student drug users. De Witt himself was a part-time tutor in journalism, had been a recreational pot smoker, and heard grapevine stories about MacPherson. One of the stories was that, although MacPherson was married, he had a bikie girlfriend.
‘He kept this very dark,’ De Witt had said. ‘I doubt the police know about her.’
The woman’s name was Wendy Jones and she lived in Port Kembla.
‘When you say bikie . . . ?’
‘D’you know the joke Roseanne used to tell when she was a standup?’
I didn’t.
De Witt assumed the pose. ‘It goes something like this: “Bikers. I hate bikers. They smell, they’re dirty, got lice in their hair and beards, they chew tobacco and piss by the side of the road—and that’s ju
st the women.” Never met her, but from what I hear, that’s something like your Wendy. Probably not as grotty.’
De Witt didn’t have an address for her but he said there was a dirt track in a waste ground area to the south of Port Kembla where the bikies raced, drank and did the other things bikies do.
‘When?’
‘Every night, so long as the different gangs aren’t actually fire-bombing each other.’
‘Hard scene to infiltrate. I’ve never ridden a motorbike in my life.’
‘Oh, plenty of civilians turn up for the product.’
‘The cops?’
‘Know they’re outnumbered and possibly outgunned.’
‘Great.’
De Witt had been fairly specific about where the bikie meeting place was located and I wondered whether he might have made the trip there himself in his more toxic days. I drove south keeping an eye on the rear vision mirrors. The last thing I needed was to attract police interest. In fact the more I thought about it, the more sensible it seemed to get a different car. I left the Falcon in a parking station near the central shopping mall in Wollongong, lugged my bag to a Hertz office and rented a Mitsubishi 4WD station wagon.
I rang Illawarra Mutual and asked for Carson Lucas, to be told that he’d gone on leave.
‘That’s sudden,’ I said.
‘Is there anyone else who can help you, sir?’
The words, delivered in the meaningless singsong tone some receptionists use, struck me as funny and I laughed.
‘Sir?’
‘Nothing. Thank you.’
I waited and it came. ‘Have a nice day.’
I sat in the comfortable car with the mobile in my hand in a strangely thoughtful mood. There was nobody else who could help me and it seemed somewhat unlikely that I’d have a nice day. With luck, it wouldn’t be too bad. I checked the Gregory’s and tried to familiarise myself with the area south of Wollongong where I’d never been. The steelworks dominated the map and Lake Illawarra, a pinpoint on a small-scale map, almost filled a page of the directory. The NRMA accommodation guide, another essential accessory, showed that the area wasn’t well off for motels, but one at Warrawong seemed like the closest to where I was headed, had the necessary facilities, and wouldn’t make Dr Farmer have to apply for promotion.
