by Peter Corris
Don’t kid yourself, Cliff, I thought as I worked on the drink. Tripping up and down the coast in a tour bus like Kesey’s Pranksters? Of course you’re going to do it. But with eyes wide open.
There were interesting things to consider about the information I had. Why did Jack list the PA before the partner? Did that mean anything? And why the bus? Seemed an old-fashioned way of hopping about but I suppose flying that mob around would be expensive. The finances of the operation were a subject in themselves. Who would do the accounting?
I emailed Jack, attaching a contract and asking him to sign it and send it back. I also asked for copies of the death-threat emails and for him to make available copies of the threats that had come by other means. I ate Chinese with one glass of wine at a Pyrmont café and drove home sober.
Jack’s email was there in the morning with the contract scanned and signed and the information I’d asked for. His thanks were brief. I printed out the material but before I had a chance to look at it the phone rang.
‘Hardy.’
‘Mr Hardy, this is Penelope Milton-Smith, Rory O’Hara’s personal assistant. Rory would like to meet you. Are you free for lunch today?’
‘I thought he wasn’t getting out of hospital until tomorrow.’
‘That’s so, but he has special privileges in the hospital and we can arrange a catered lunch. Mr Buchanan said he’d engaged you.’
So Jack had got the wheels turning quickly. ‘I’d be happy to come, Ms Smith. Just tell me where and when.’
‘Thank you so much. The Greater Care rehabilitation hospital in Crows Nest at twelve-thirty. Parking is available.’
‘I’ll be there,’ I said. ‘Should I bring my gun?’
She laughed. ‘I hardly think so, but if it makes you feel better.’
A win for her. No time to inspect the death-threat material and I thought it’d be better to meet the target first anyway.
The hospital was a converted Victorian mansion and, at a guess, an old building adjacent had been knocked down to make a car park. It was late April with a cool wind and I wore cords, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a denim jacket. I inquired for Mr O’Hara’s room and was corrected.
‘Mr O’Hara’s suite is on the second floor,’ the receptionist said. ‘You’ll have to give your name and show ID to the man posted there.’
‘I should hope so,’ I said.
The place didn’t have a hospital smell because it was somewhere everyone came to get better, none to get worse and die. I went up the stairs to see if the guard was on his toes. These days, everyone expects the lift to be used. The door from the stairwell was just around the corner from where the guard sat. He had a clear view down a passage to the lifts but I was able to loom up beside him before he noticed.
‘I took the stairs,’ I said.
He jumped up and spun around. He was young, pudgy and trying to grow a moustache with limited success.
I opened my jacket, made a show of frisking myself, and showed him my driver’s licence. ‘Cliff Hardy. Expected and unarmed.’
He wore a rent-a-cop uniform with a pistol in a belt holster, a baton and a capsicum-spray shooter. His hands flew nervously from one weapon to another.
‘Don’t tell them,’ he said.
‘Tell them what?’
‘That you snuck up on me.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
He pulled himself together and dialled a number on his mobile. I could hear it ring on the other side of the wall.
‘Mr Hardy is here.’
The woman who opened the door stood 180 centimetres or more in her high heels. She wore a tailored charcoal trouser suit with a white shirt. She had golden blonde hair, olive-tinted skin and dark eyes. She wasn’t beautiful but something more and better. She nodded thanks to the guard and gave him a wide smile. He blushed. She kept the smile going and gestured for me to go in. I caught a whiff of perfume as I went past her. It was there and then it wasn’t, the way good perfume works, women had told me.
‘Ms Smith,’ I said.
‘Milton-Smith.’
‘With a hyphen.’
‘Definitely. Rory’s out on the balcony. This way.’
We walked through a sitting room with three doors leading off it. One was half open and I could see gym equipment. No mucking in at the hospital facility for Rory.
The balcony was glassed-in, capturing and holding the heat of the sun. O’Hara was sitting at a table. A walking stick rested in a fitting attached to the chair. He wore a shiny blue tracksuit with the top unzipped enough to show a silver neck chain on a tanned chest. He stuck out his left hand.
‘Excuse me not getting up, and the left hand,’ he said. ‘Right shoulder’s still a bit stiff from cracking it when I went down.’
The handshake was awkward.
I nodded. ‘Shoulders are tricky.’
‘You’ve had some injuries, I suppose?’
‘A couple, but they patched me up okay. I gather you had complications.’
‘Sit down. Yeah, fucking hospitals are infection traps. Jack Buchanan gives you a big rap. Can I call you Cliff?’
I sat. ‘Sure, Rory.’
He laughed. ‘Let’s have a drink and some lunch. Pen, how about some wine and you shove some of this stuff on a plate. Christ knows what it is.’
There were two bottles of wine in an ice bucket and an assortment of dips and things on plates.
‘It’s vegetarian Lebanese, as you very well know,’ she said.
She opened a bottle, poured three glasses, slid one across to O’Hara, another to me and took the third. ‘To the tour,’ she said.
We toasted. The wine was dry and cold which is all I ask of white wine. She busied herself putting things on a plate and adding dollops of dip. ‘Help yourself, Mr Hardy.’
‘Cliff,’ I said.
She said, ‘Pen,’ and passed the plate with a napkin and a fork to O’Hara. I put a couple of pieces of falafel, a stuffed green pepper and some rice on a plate and spooned hummus over the lot. We ate and drank for a few minutes. The food was very good.
Pen had served herself generous helpings of everything and was tucking in. Siting relaxed with her jacket open she was shapely, with a swimmer’s broad shoulders but lean. She drank the wine at more or less the same pace as Rory and me. Eating and drinking like that it was a sure bet she spent a lot of time running or in the gym.
O’Hara didn’t eat much; he used his left hand mostly and found it difficult. A few times I sensed Pen wanting to help him but holding back. Eventually, he pushed his plate away and accepted a top-up of his glass.
‘Jack says I’ve got a rat in the ranks,’ he said. ‘What d’you reckon?’
I forked in the last of the rice. ‘Could be.’
‘What would you recommend?’
I wiped my mouth with a napkin. Pen, who’d seemed to be mostly interested in topping up her wine glass, was suddenly engaged again.
‘Sack ’em all,’ I said, ‘and hire a whole new bunch.’
He shook his head and I saw that the luxuriant dark locks were retreating a bit with an emerging widow’s peak being screened by the hair falling forward. ‘Can’t do that. Those people have given up a lot to be with me. Jobs, partners . . . as far as I know everyone is loyal and committed.’
‘As far as you know,’ Pen said.
O’Hara thumped the table with his right fist and winced. ‘Don’t start! Sorry, Cliff. I’m very glad to have you along and I’ll be grateful—for advice and insights.’
‘And protection,’ Pen said.
O’Hara nodded and suddenly looked tired. He put his hand on the walking stick. Time to go. I thanked him for the lunch, told him I’d see him on the bus. Pen took a large manila enevelope from her briefcase and walked me through the sitting room to the door.
‘He’s not strong enough,’ she said. ‘He shouldn’t be doing this now.’
‘If there’s really someone out to kill him maybe he shouldn’t be doing it at all.’
She stopped in her tracks. ‘Do you doubt it?’ She handed me the envelope. ‘Copies of the death threats and transcripts of the phone calls.’
We were standing very close. I had a couple of glasses of wine inside me and I could smell the perfume again. I wanted to touch her, had an urge to see if she was real inside that perfect shell. I stepped back. ‘Running down’s not killing, Pen,’ I said. ‘My job is to doubt everything and everybody.’
3
I drove home in a cheerful mood. Despite doubts about his sincerity and his long-term goals, and with an inbuilt distrust of the wealthy, I liked O’Hara well enough to find the job worthwhile. I’d liked Penelope Milton-Smith, too. Who wouldn’t? She was efficient and warm. I wondered about her relationship with O’Hara. She was protective and perhaps more than that. She also had something on her mind.
I went home to collect the documents I’d printed out earlier, drove to the office and opened a hard copy and a digital file on the case. The five emails were from disposable gmail and Yahoo addresses, no doubt sent from public internet services. They were blunt, best summarised as ‘Stop what you’re doing or you’ll be stopped’.
The four letters were computer-printed, literate and more explicit. They told O’Hara he was a menace to society— ‘a disruptive force’ was one of the expressions used—and recommended that he devote his resources to worthy causes such as indigenous disadvantage. Like the emails, they appeared to come from the same or very similar minds, going by the language. The letters threatened in an oblique way, suggesting that O’Hara might want to think again before making himself a martyr in the interests of anarchic groups like the Occupy movement.
The phone transcripts were more varied and colourful. Jack’s notes indicated that three of them were from male voices and three female. The female voices made disparaging remarks about O’Hara’s sexual capacity while threatening emasculation, which seemed a bit contradictory, and the male ones hinted at information about him that was known and would be made public if he didn’t cease his activities.
I read through them several times and then rang Buchanan. An underling put me straight through to him.
‘What did you think of him?’ he asked before I could speak.
‘He’s okay,’ I said.
‘And Pen?’
‘You’d want her on your team.’
‘Wouldn’t you just. What’s on your mind, Cliff? Bit busy right now. I’ve deposited the retainer in your bank.’
‘Thanks. All that stuff came before the hit and run, right?’ ‘Right.’
‘Nothing since?’
‘No.’
‘What do you make of those remarks to do with damaging information about him?’
‘Bullshit.’
‘No skeletons?’
‘Your job’s to protect, not investigate him. The bus leaves the hospital at nine sharp tomorrow. Pack a bag, and keep your receipts.’
I cleaned up the few unfinished bits of business in the office and drove home, where I washed and dried some clothes, left a note asking my obliging neighbour to collect my mail and made sure my laptop was fully charged and that I had all the connections to keep it running. I cleaned and oiled my .38 Smith & Wesson and packed it into a bag containing a selection of clothes I was likely to need from the south to the north coast and inland. I threw in Thomas Dormandy’s book on the history of opium.
I rang my daughter Megan and told her I was off on a job for a few weeks. She knew that business had been slack lately.
‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘You sound up.’
‘On the road again,’ I sang.
‘Okay, Willie, have a word with your grandson.’
Young Ben came on the line. ‘Mum says you’re off on a job.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What sort of job?’
‘Bodyguarding.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Ask your mum.’
‘Will you bring me back something?’
‘What would you like?’
‘A dog.’
Megan on the line: ‘Don’t you dare.’
‘A boy needs a dog.’
‘Yeah, and a dog needs a back yard, which we ain’t got yet. Take care of yourself, Cliff.’
In the morning I caught a taxi to Crows Nest and saw the bus pulled up in front of the hospital. A group of people waited to get on. I hung back to look them over. I could pick the driver easily enough; he was getting in and out of the bus and opening two luggage lockers along the side. The dark-skinned man in the suit and the Asian woman standing next to him were obviously Dr Chandry and the nurse.
Of the other three men, one was fat and smoking furiously—the media guy, Clive Long, who’d put on weight since the web photo was taken. The other two were younger; both had laptop bags at their feet. One, the older and bigger, bulky in a leather bomber jacket, was stabbing expertly at his mobile while looking at the nurse. The other man, in a duffel coat missing a toggle, was flicking through images on an iPod—IT types for sure.
The morning was cold and I was glad of my leather jacket. The bus was sure to have air-conditioning, which would be welcome. As I approached, the group suddenly stopped milling about and took some shape.
Penelope Milton-Smith came down the path from the hospital. She was wearing jeans, boots and a Sydney University sweater with a big, thick scarf. She carried her briefcase in one hand and had a stack of newspapers under her arm. She nodded to the others and lifted the briefcase in a greeting to me.
‘Hi, Cliff.’
‘Morning, Pen.’
‘Rory’ll be here in a minute but we’d better get settled. I’ll introduce you. What d’you want me to say?’
‘Have you told them anything about me?’
‘No.’
I thought about it. Bodyguard struck the wrong note, consultant was too vague. ‘Just say security adviser.’
She went through the names as the people boarded the bus. All were polite, a couple were curious. Clive Long took a last drag, dropped his cigarette and stamped on it. He brushed ash from the front of his overcoat. His handshake was aggressive.
‘I’ve heard of you, Hardy. Are we expecting trouble?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Then you’ll just be along for the ride.’
‘Hop up, Clive,’ Pen said. ‘Rory’s coming.’
Long saluted ironically and hoisted himself up into the bus. I heard rhythmic tapping and turned to see Rory O’Hara, using an elbow crutch, coming down the path accompanied by a woman.
O’Hara was of medium height—say, 180 centimetres at most—and the woman topped him by a fair bit in only medium heels. Kelly Scott had filled out since her modelling days and it suited her. Under a faux fur jacket she wore a dark, long-sleeved dress in a soft material that seemed to flow over her generous figure as she moved. It had a high collar that accentuated her long slender neck. Her shoulder-length hair was a glossy dark brown and her features were strong. The catwalk boredom was gone; she exuded vitality as she gave O’Hara light support, just barely touching his free elbow.
‘Gidday, Cliff,’ O’Hara said. ‘Kelly, this is Cliff Hardy.’
She gave me a nod and a smile that suggested she’d reserve judgement before deigning to speak to me. Pen had turned away and was talking to the driver.
‘Ready to rock and roll, Stan?’ O’Hara said.
Tracey gave him a thumbs-up, cleared his throat and climbed stiffly into the driver’s seat.
O’Hara leaned against the bus and waved his crutch. ‘Let’s go then. I’ve been practising steps in the gym. I reckon I can get aboard all right. After you, Pen, Cliff.’
We went up the two fairly shallow steps and I looked back to see O’Hara following, placing his crutch carefully to help his left leg take his weight with Kelly hovering behind him.
The Volvo bus wasn’t much smaller than a standard public bus, which made plenty of room for ten people and left space at the back for a toilet, a
miniature office and kitchen and a bed. The seating just seemed to happen naturally, with the doctor and nurse beside each other, the two IT guys together already opening their laptops, Rory and Kelly at the back, Long on his own tearing open a packet of Nicorettes and me with Pen in about the middle.
Pen opened her briefcase and extracted some sheets of paper held together by a bulldog clip.
‘Itinerary,’ she said, detaching the top sheet and handing it to me. ‘Maybe you should look it over first to see if you approve.’
‘Is that you being ironic?’
She sighed. ‘I don’t know what I’m being. I don’t know what we’re doing here. It all seems wrong to me.’
‘Getting the word out.’
‘There are better ways.’
I looked the sheet over: it conformed pretty much to the outline Jack had given me, with the first appearance at the convention centre in Wollongong, followed by two in Sydney and a succession in Newcastle and north-coast centres and then a sweep through the inland from Armidale down to Goulburn.
‘Why start in the Gong?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘A try-out, Kelly’s idea. Sort of off-Broadway.’
‘You know what my brief is, don’t you?’
She grinned. She wore less makeup than before and I saw faint lines appear in her cheeks. They didn’t make her less attractive. ‘To stop a bullet, like Clint Eastwood.’
‘No, to see if one of these people set Rory up for the hit and run.’
She’d been rummaging in the briefcase, now she turned towards me with her full attention. ‘Whose idea was that?’
‘Jack’s.’
‘Fucking Jack,’ she said.
Now she had my attention. ‘Better tell me what you mean.’
But she didn’t respond. ‘Shouldn’t you be keeping it in the dark, what you’re doing? Wouldn’t I be a suspect?’
‘Yeah, everybody is, but I’ll stick out like a sore thumb anyway. I’ll tell Clive next. He’s dying to know and he’ll tell everybody unless I miss my guess.’
She laughed. ‘You’re right there. Clive considers something a secret if fewer than a hundred people know about it.’
