Aftershock

by Peter Corris

  ‘Oh, yes. That nice man. Good. That’s good. God, it’s amazing. I was just thinking about you.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Her tone was hard to judge over the phone. Not exactly cool, not exactly warm either. ‘How’ve you been, Helen?’

  ‘Lousy. Michael and I have split, finally. I suppose you gathered that from the answering machine? That’s all I’ve spoken to for weeks—that bloody answering machine. Oh, well, it had to happen.’

  ‘How’s Very?’

  ‘Not bad. She’s old enough to cope. I’ve got a house in town. She floats between us.’

  I remembered Verity, Very for short, as a lively kid. Bright, interested in a lot of things and happy with herself. Well equipped. I heard Helen expel a breath and I could see her with her Gauloise and the quizzical, amused expression on her face. Kempsey was, how far? I could probably get there if I sobered up and drove for a few hours. But we’d done all that, the midnight driving, the passionate arrivals and bitter departures. ‘So,’ I said, ‘what brought this on? Did you … find someone else?’

  Her laugh was throaty the way I remembered it, but harsh from smoking. ‘Me? No. Michael did. A lady vigneron. She’s installed out there now and I suppose they’re lapping up a good red. Actually, she’s a nice woman and I’m happy for him. She’ll give him peace and be interested in what he does. Not like me. It’s just a bit hard, being on your own after all those years. Doing things solo. Including sex.’

  That was Helen, direct and earthy. I could feel myself getting aroused—300 kilometres away and holding onto a telephone. What a world. I said something inane about marriage and asked her about her job at the radio station.

  ‘Really good,’ she said. ‘I’ve got this morning program—guests, talk-back, raves. I love it.’

  ‘I’ll listen tomorrow’

  ‘You won’t. You’ll mean to, but you’ll forget or be off chasing something or somebody. I wanted to do more work on Mr Jacobs’ story but all this with Michael and Michelle blew up. Her name’s Michelle, would you believe it? Jesus. Anyway, Mr Jacobs and all that … it just all got away from me.’

  ‘I’m working on it. I wondered if you’d found out anything more.’

  ‘No. Is that why you rang?’

  ‘Yes. No, not really. I … I wanted to hear your voice …’

  ‘My voice! Radio and twenty fags a day is ruining it. You sound a bit pissed. Are you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I know you. You’ve got a slight buzz on but it wouldn’t stop you doing anything—go for a walk, read a book, go to bed. Shit, Cliff, I can’t handle this. I’m hanging up.’

  ‘Helen …’

  ‘Don’t say a thing. Not a fucking thing. I’ll give you a call in Sydney or something, sometime. I don’t know. ‘Bye, Cliff.’

  The cap had stayed on the scotch and the cork had gone in and out of the wine bottle only a few more times. I used the TV and good ol’ Larry McMurtry to see me through the night. In the morning I ate the healthy parts of the motel breakfast and did my stuff in the newly cleaned pool. I felt fine. The cuts were healed, more or less, and my head no longer ached. After a shower and shampoo and shave, I checked myself out. Hair—dark, grey-grizzled; face—battered but holding together, two chipped teeth; some thin lines of fat around the midsection, degenerated muscle; love handles, minimal. Could be worse. During my evening’s light drinking and reading, I’d convinced myself that the separation of personal and professional life was alienating. At 10 a.m. I phoned Senior Sergeant Glenys Withers.

  ‘Personnel Sergeant Withers.’

  ‘This is Cliff Hardy.’

  ‘You’re up and about early.’ Ironical.

  ‘That’s me. I’ve found out some things about Oscar Bach that I think the police should know about.’

  ‘Why are you talking to me, then? You want Chief Inspector …’

  ‘No. Not yet at least. There’s a snag or two.’

  ‘There would be. Have you been getting yourself into trouble again? What is it this time? Broken leg?’

  ‘Nothing like that. Were you serious when you said you wanted to move out of personnel, do some real police work?’

  The flippant tone left her voice. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Something nasty has been going on. Rape for certain, murder possibly, but I haven’t got very much at this point. I need to have your confidence and your help.’

  ‘You’ve got a nerve. All I’ve seen from you is macho bullshit.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘All right, some rudimentary sense of professional ethics. Maybe. What is it now?’

  ‘Do you have access to the computer records—unsolved crimes, MO breakdowns, case match-ups, all that?’

  ‘Yes, within limits.’

  ‘Could you find out whether there’ve been abductions, rapes, missing females, at Mittagong, Richmond, Wentworth Falls and Taree over the past couple of years?’

  ‘Be precise. How long?’

  ‘Four years.’

  ‘I can give it a try. What else? I know there’ll be more.’

  ‘Run a check on Werner Schmidt, convicted of rape and abduction sixteen years ago.’

  ‘Oscar Bach?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘It fits, I suppose. I’ve been doing a bit of work on him and he was coming up very dodgy.’

  That was encouraging; the last time I had a cop doing work on one of my cases it was to try to get something on me. I hedged and backed off when she tried to get me to spill some more. No harm in trying, but I had to get before I could give.

  ‘I’ll be putting all this in my notebook,’ she said.

  ‘Only right and proper. Me, too.’

  She gave me her address in Whitebridge and I agreed to meet her there at 6 p.m. That left me with eight hours to occupy. The day was perfect; bright sun with a little high cloud; a light wind to stir the trees and lift the waves. I promised myself a piece of it after I’d done something to earn it and used the phone energetically for half an hour. People splashed noisily in the pool, seizing the hour.

  My calls to Sydney and then to Newcastle had put me in touch, through the journalists’ circumlocutory network, with Barrett Breen, crime writer on the Newcastle Herald. We made the usual deal—I could scratch his back for information and he could scratch mine for a story if one materialised. I drove into the city and was inside Breen’s cubicle in the busy office, shaking his hand, before eleven o’clock—there’s something to be said for not living in the big smoke. Breen was a big man with the shoulders of a swimmer and the belly of beer drinker who doesn’t swim much anymore. His grip was powerful.

  ‘Mate of Harry Tickener’s, eh?’ he said. ‘I’ve been meaning to write him a piece for ages. Some good stories up here.’

  ‘You know Harry,’ I said. ‘He’ll say it’s shit, tell you to re-write it and say it’s still shit. But he’ll print it if it’s any good.’

  He was suddenly a bit less sure of himself and I got the feeling he didn’t have stories to burn. ‘Mm. Well, I got those cuts for you. On the desk there. Good local angle to this?’

  I nodded and sat down at the desk. Breen looked as if he hoped for more from me but I kept my head down and he made a quick phone call and left. Early lunch was my guess.

  The abduction of Greta Coleman and the trial of Werner Schmidt had got more media coverage than usual because the girl’s father was a prominent citizen—businessman and churchgoer—who’d called for the death penalty. The Wran government was in reformist mode at the time, emphasising the social context for crime, the need for counselling, rehabilitation. None of that was worth a rat’s tail to Rory Coleman. He denounced the fifteen-year sentence as ‘weak-minded capitulation to the forces that are cancering our society’. Cancering, that was nice. He called for Schmidt to be executed along with all other such offenders. He had a fall-back position—if the weak-kneed, communist-leaning government wasn’t prepared to put animals like Schmidt into the lime, it should at least hav
e the courage to make them suffer physically. ‘Werner Schmidt should receive one hundred lashes of the cat o’nine tails,’ Mr Coleman was quoted as saying, ‘and I would be happy to wield the whip myself.’

  Coleman organised a ‘fathers of rape victims committee’. It met in Heathcote and issued statements to the press. He turned up every day at the Glebe court where Schmidt was tried. At first he behaved circumspectly, but as the trial went on, particularly when the defence introduced medical evidence on Schmidt’s mental state, he became agitated, shouted and had to be ejected. He created a major disturbance outside the court after the sentence was handed down and narrowly missed being charged with assaulting police and instigating a riot. He had a lot of supporters.

  This was the material that had been blacked out in Oscar Bach’s clippings. The cuts contained a few follow-up stories. One carried photographs of Greta before and after the assault. She had been a pretty girl, blonde, carefree-looking. The later picture showed a face from which every trace of character and promise had been wiped away. Rory Coleman hadn’t shied away from the camera; there were shots of him holding placards, shaking his fist, looking distraught. He was balding, wide-faced, belligerent in expression and body language. If the quotes were accurate, he was articulate, with a good grasp of conservative arguments on the issues of law and order and the punishment of sexual offenders. He owned and operated a number of carpet warehouses. He looked as if he’d like to do his own TV ads, shouting abuse at the opposition.

  I read the clippings through carefully and made photocopies of several, printing Breen’s name on the user list attached to the photocopier. I left a note of thanks on his desk and one of my cards. My hands were dirty from handling the distributor cap earlier and from the newsprint, so the card wasn’t the cleanest. I hoped Barrett would be able to cope with that after lunch.

  I bought a sandwich and an apple and some mineral water and drove to Redhead Beach. Kahiba was on the way and, just out of curiosity, I drove past the Costi house. It was set on a five-acre block, surrounded by forest; it looked like an old squatter’s mansion restored to its former glory. Nice place—long verandahs all around, widow’s walk on the upper storey, bay windows. There were several cars inside the gate, sitting around like discarded toys, and a big, black, stripped-down, high handlebarred motor bike. The Costi brothers sounded like an odd bunch—Mario, businessman and earthquake victim; Bruno, wimp; and Ronny.

  The day had warmed up and people had taken advantage of it. There seemed to be more kids on the beach than was natural for a schoolday in October, but I suppose a lot of them could have had sore throats or upset stomachs. The older ones might have been in the study period running up to the HSC. If so, they were seeking inspiration in the natural world rather than in books.

  I parked near the clubhouse which carried a sign saying that the Redhead Surf Livesaving Club dated from 1910. There was just one relic of that period around—a wooden lookout seat mounted on the rocks. Otherwise, the place was a model of the well-tended modern beach. The dunes were protected behind wire fences and were being re-grassed; there were plenty of litter bins and signs insisting on their use. The kiosk served food in paper bags and coffee in returnable mugs.

  I changed in the shed and went onto the beach in shorts and T-shirt feeling too old, too pale and too Sydney to really fit in. But once I was on the sand those feelings fell away. The sun was high and hot and the waves were curling and crashing about a hundred metres out. It would’ve been close on thirty years before that I’d surfed there. I remembered the massive, pink bluff that gives the place its name and the sweep of the sand all the way south for nine miles to the lake entrance.

  Just like thirty years ago, it was swimmers to the left of the rocks, surfers to the right. No boogie boards then, plenty of them now. I joined the swimmers. The water was cold and clear. I waded out, slid under a wave and swam out to where they were breaking. The wind came back a few years after I stopped smoking, although the body strength has ebbed. I kicked hard in the old-fashioned way and chopped into the water, ducking under the waves that broke fiercely and threatened to push me back. I made it to the right spot with plenty of breath and strength to spare and noted where a small rip was running, off to the right. Be easier to get out in that next time.

  After two misses, due to my bad timing, I caught the third one that came along, a high-curling, surging monster that broke behind me after I had some momentum up, collected me and propelled me forward like a missile. I reared up, hunched my shoulders and saw the red bluff away to my left and the land, green and misty through the spray, and then I was locked into the world of blue and white water, jetting ahead with everything around me tight and controlled and beautiful.

  I used the rip to get out and caught a few good waves, but none to equal that first one. I lay on the beach and ate the food and drank the mineral water. Although I didn’t really want coffee, I had a cup just to support that sound environmental policy. A harsh Aussie voice over the PA system called for ‘Wayne Lucas’ and ‘Adam Amato’ and ‘Brenda Kimonides’ to call at the kiosk. I drifted off to sleep with Lonesome Dove as a pillow and the Falcon’s distributor cap tucked away, dirtying my T-shirt.

  13

  ’Mister. Mister!’

  The voice, young and piping, was close to my ear and a hand was shaking my shoulder. I looked up and was blinded by the low sun.

  ‘You’re going to get wet, Mister. Tide’s coming in.’

  My saviour was one of those truants, jiggers they call them now—aged about ten, skinny and brown, a true habitué of the beach. I thanked him and scrambled to my feet. Another minute or two and one of the more thrusting waves would’ve soaked me.

  ‘Thanks, son.’ I found a dollar in my shorts pocket and gave it to him. He looked at it doubtfully. I found a fifty cent piece and gave him that, too.

  ‘Thanks, mate.’ He ran towards the kiosk, flicking sand all over me with his take-off.

  I collected my stuff and stood on the beach looking at the water. The surf was high and loud and the board riders were doing fine. Most of the swimmers had gone but there were still a few little kids playing on the rocks and bigger kids lounging around the surf club. Away to the south I could see people walking on the beach and a few immobile figures holding long rods and looking like permanent fixtures at the water’s edge.

  I was stiff from sleeping on the hard sand in an awkward position. A hot shower would have been good but the sheds didn’t run to that. I stood under the cold water and rubbed and soaped and did knee bends until I felt loose. I hummed a few bars of ‘The Sultans of Swing’ and a teenager gave me a sideways look. I did a rapid calculation: he’d have been five or six when the song came out. I remembered my father crooning Bing Crosby numbers, off key, in the bathroom with the door open. I remembered the smile on his face and the pleasure he was getting. He must have been imagining himself in Manhattan, in a tux, with slicked-back hair and a willowy blonde waiting to dance with him. Instead, he had a semi in Maroubra and my ratbag mum, my sister and me. I went on humming defiantly until it was time to turn off the water.

  It was too early to go calling on the Senior Sergeant but not too early to find out where she lived. Burwood Road branched off Dudley Road in Whitebridge. The houses were generally upmarket and tasteless, colonnaded, triple-garage horrors, but hers was one of a set of four cottages facing the entrance to the Glenrock Nature reserve. The cottages were identical in structure but had undergone some changes over the years—bits added, verandahs closed in. My guess was that they were mine managers’ houses, several notches up from the workers’ houses. Glenys Withers’ house was the last in the set, possibly the cheapest to buy, because it was in a dip and would not have had an ocean view. It was also the least adulterated.

  I drove down the gravel track to Dudley Beach through light timber and scrub that didn’t look to have changed since settlement. The ocean opened out in front of me after a particularly sharp and badly cambered turn and I almost missed t
he first stunning impact of the view as I fought the steering wheel for traction. The beach was long, wide and curving with rugged rock formations at either end. From this elevation and direction the water looked almost threatening, as if it would not be confined by the bay but would sweep up the sides and carve chunks out of the coast. Maybe it would. There was a car park at the bottom of the road, a rutted, half-hearted affair of posts and wire fences. It was a safe bet that not many of the BMWs and Volvos I’d seen in the Whitebridge driveways would risk their suspensions on the road or stand here in the blazing sun on a summer day. Dudley was still a beach for the people who went places on foot.

  ‘Come in, Mr Hardy.’

  She was wearing a black silk shirt and a blue and white horizontally striped skirt that came down well below her knees. Shoes with a bit of a heel. She had her hair pushed back from her face and held with some kind of a clip. Her forehead sloped back and her blue eyes seemed to bulge slightly. She smelled slightly of wine.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Nice house. Best in the neighbourhood.’

  She laughed and moved aside to let me into the hallway. ‘Aren’t they awful? And they keep getting worse. I’d had my eye on these houses for years and nearly went mad when they came up for auction.’

  I had a folder under my arm which contained a selection of the Oscar Bach material. I’d hoped to impress her with it, but right now I was the one being impressed. The hall was painted in soft colours and the hardwood floor was highly polished. The place smelled of natural things—wood, earth and flowers. We went through to a sitting room-cum-kitchen that held a lot of light and just the right amount of furniture.

  ‘White wine or beer?’ she said.

  ‘Wine, thanks.’ I put the folder on the pine table and looked through the back window. The view was of open, lightly timbered country rising back up towards a ridge covered with the sorts of houses that decorated Burwood Road. She handed me a stemmed glass and followed my gaze.

  ‘When I was little, all this was open way back up to the mine. These houses were all owned by BHP—leased to the the mine managers and engineers. They sold them off a year or so ago.’