Torn Apart

by Peter Corris

  Sean Malloy, the winning farrier, had a grip of iron and bore a few boxing scars. So we talked fighting and over cups of strong tea and door-stop sandwiches we roughly established the relationship of us both to the thirty or so people in the camp. Then it was off to a nearby tavern for the adults where a céilidh was scheduled, with a few of the Malloys slated to sing and play.

  For me, the evening was a bit of a blur, not so much from the drink, but from fatigue and the noise and the smoke. The tavern was an old cottage, gutted so that there was a long open space with a bar at one end and chairs and tables scattered about. The night was cold and the windows were closed so that a thick fug of tobacco smoke, sweat and alcohol fumes quickly built up.

  We weren’t allowed to pay for anything, which kept me going slow with the grog. The music was heady, emotional, traditional stuff that touched off tears and joy in everyone present, especially when old Paddy played the fiddle to a tenor lament from his nephew Sean. But that mood was quickly replaced by jigs and reels in which Patrick and I joined with nothing like the lack of inhibition of the locals. I opted out and went to find a corner to gather my breath and my wits.

  ‘Hello, Aussie,’ a woman sitting nearby said. ‘Conked out have you, mate?’

  The accent was genuine Australian.

  ‘I’m buggered,’ I said. ‘A bit old for this.’

  She pointed with a long, thin arm at where the dancers were. ‘Your mate’s doing okay.’

  ‘He’s a bit younger. I’m Cliff. You are?’

  ‘Angela Warburton, from Coogee.’

  We shook hands. ‘Know it well.’

  She was fortyish, dark, with a mass of red-brown hair, green eyes and a strong face. I was a bit drunk and I took out my mobile phone, still experimenting, and snapped a picture of her. Just for fun I pointed the lens here and there and took some more pictures.

  ‘They’ll be lousy in this light,’ she said, ‘and you should’ve asked permission. I’m a photo-journalist and I’m trying to do a spread on the Travellers. They’re sensitive about photos. I have to go carefully.’

  ‘You’re right. Bad manners. We should be going if I can drag Pat away.’

  She handed me a card. ‘Look me up if you come back through London. You can tell me how Coogee is these days. I’ve been away for seven years.’

  ‘I can tell you a decent house costs most of a million bucks.’

  She shrugged. ‘Would you believe it’s getting to be the same over here.’

  I put the card in my pocket and located Patrick sitting down after a dance and deep in conversation with old Paddy. When I said we should be off, Paddy wouldn’t hear of it. We ended up staying another hour in the tavern and bedding down in sleeping bags in one of the vans.

  Patrick spent four days with the Travellers. After being politely interested for the first day, I got bored with the talk of horses and which Patrick was related to which Michael. I caught a bus into Galway, booked into a hotel and spent the time walking around the town and its outskirts, fossicking in the second-hand bookshops and visiting various pubs. There were black and Asian faces in the streets and I got the impression that the immigrants were opening businesses and that Galway was in for some big changes.

  Despite the Irish heritage, I didn’t feel a particular connec- tion to the place, unlike Patrick. My paternal grandmother was French, and I wondered whether I’d feel more at home in Paris where I’d never been. Perhaps next time.

  I finished the Stanley biography and traded it in for a biography of Rimbaud. My taste was for the stories of people who led creative and active lives, and Rimbaud fitted the bill.

  On a grey morning, Patrick collected me in the SUV and we stopped at the first bank for him to cash some traveller’s cheques.

  ‘I wouldn’t say they bled me,’ he said, ‘but they didn’t refuse my generosity. I said your goodbyes.’

  ‘Thanks, Pat. It was interesting, but a bit rural for me. You going in for horses when we get home?’

  ‘I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do. But it was grand.’

  ‘It was,’ I said.

  We both laughed as we sprinted to get out of the rain.

  We took our time on the return trip, followed the coast north and crossed into Northern Ireland. Patrick said he wanted to get to the place in Belfast where Van Morrison got his start and that was okay by me. We’d bought CDs of Moondance and Tupelo Honey in Galway and played them all the way. We never found the Maritime Hotel, but we heard some great music in other places.

  My image of Belfast came pretty much from the film The Boxer, which proved to be fairly accurate. The city had a grim look and feel, although the military presence that had aroused such hatred was much reduced.

  ‘One of the blokes in that bullshit mercenary outfit I told you about was ex-British Army,’ Patrick said. ‘He reckoned the Brits kept the trouble here on the boil as a cheap way of training troops.’

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ I said. ‘Nothing more useless than an idle soldier.’

  ‘That’s true. That’s very true.’

  We stayed in Belfast for longer than I’d have wanted and then Patrick insisted on going back to Dublin.

  ‘The Malloys told me there’s a terrific bookshop with everything ever written about the Travellers. I have to go there, Cliff. D’you mind?’

  What could I say? I put it partly down to him apparently being reluctant to leave Ireland. We stayed at the same hotel as before and I used the gym and a heated indoor pool to try to stay in shape, given the beer and the amount of food you inevitably eat on a holiday. Patrick said he’d found the bookshop specialising in works about the Travellers.

  ‘They let me sit and read there,’ he said. ‘It’s marvellous.’

  ‘You’ll have to lash out and buy something eventually.’

  ‘I will. When I’m ready.’

  ‘When d’you want to head back, Pat?’

  ‘Never, mate. No, don’t look like that. I’m joking. Pretty soon, pretty soon.’

  That sounded a bit strange, as if he had a definite schedule to meet that I wasn’t aware of. That made me curious. Also, I was getting bored and that’s probably another reason why I decided to follow Patrick one day when he set off after telling me he was skipping our usual breakfast at the hotel. I’d spent years watching for changes of behaviour in people and then watching them as they moved about. It was my stock in trade and I couldn’t resist the urge to give it a go in Dublin town.

  ‘I’m off to the bookshop,’ he said. ‘Buying something today, and we should talk about a flight. Okay?’

  I skipped breakfast, too. I picked him up in the street, staying on the other side and keeping close to other walkers. I told myself I was seeing if I still had the old skills.

  Patrick didn’t go anywhere near the stretch that featured the city’s many and varied bookshops. Dublin had an efficient light rail system that I’d used a few times. Patrick bought his ticket at a stop where there was a fair-sized crowd waiting. I hung around on the fringes and bought my ticket when the double car swung into view. Patrick got into the first carriage and I got into the second.

  It was a tricky situation; if he was the only one to get off at his stop and turned back he’d spot me. I’d have to go on to the next stop and hope to catch him when I doubled back. But I was in luck; he got off in the midst of a bunch of passengers and all of them moved forward so that I could hang back again. It was raining, a plus—hurrying people and umbrellas are always a help.

  Patrick turned into an arcade and tracked the shop numbers as he consulted a slip of paper. He opened a door and went in. I waited before I moved past. The place was a veterinary clinic. I kept going and took shelter from the rain in a pub. I’d enjoyed the exercise. It looked as if Patrick was getting serious about horses.

  Patrick was quiet tha
t night, almost morose. Just to make conversation I asked him if he had any ideas about what business to get into when he got home. He sparked up a bit.

  ‘Have you got a proposition?’

  ‘Me? No.’

  He nodded. ‘I have a thought or two.’

  We flew from Dublin to London and caught a connecting flight home. During the stopover Patrick shaved his beard off because it was itching. So we looked very alike again. We were in the bar at Heathrow when Patrick grinned over his third whiskey.

  ‘Want to have some fun, Cliff?’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘Let’s swap passports and tickets. See if we can get away with it.’

  I’d had a couple myself and was tempted, just for the hell of it. He took out the documents and waved them.

  ‘Show them their security’s not worth a pinch of shit.’

  I looked around and took in the warnings about leaving baggage unattended, the urgings to report anything suspicious and the security men standing about, bristling with firearms and communication equipment.

  ‘It’s not worth the risk,’ I said. ‘Level of paranoia’s too high.’

  He sighed and put the papers away. ‘Guess you’re right. It’s a terrible time to be getting old in, to be sure.’

  On the flight Patrick sent and received text messages and I asked him how his business was doing.

  ‘Running like clockwork. I’m selling it, didn’t I say?’

  ‘No. And then . . .?’

  He shrugged. ‘Something’ll turn up.’

  My grandmother’s grand-nephew repeating her words.

  He said he’d given up the flat he’d been renting and would be looking for something to buy. I offered to let him stay at my place while he looked and he accepted.

  Patrick moved into the spare room with little more than the light luggage he’d taken on the trip, apart from a fiddle he bought in Ireland and the duty-free Jamesons, of course. He said the rest of his possessions were in storage and that he knew what sort of flat he wanted and in what area, so the business wouldn’t take long. I was glad of the company and, as we were both more or less in limbo, I thought us bouncing ideas about our different futures off each other might be useful. Patrick was determined to learn to play the fiddle, but I wasn’t up for that.

  I lent him the Falcon to get around in because most of the places I wanted to go—the gym in Leichhardt, Megan’s place in Newtown, the bookshops and eateries in Glebe and Newtown—I could reach on foot or by bus. After the damp of Ireland it was good to be back in a spell of crisp, dry Sydney winter days—while they lasted. I paid some bills, caught up on some films, visited Frank and Hilde and took my meds. I found life a bit flat, politics boring, and time hanging heavy, but Patrick was amusing and he never scraped away at his fiddle beyond 9 pm.

  I got back from a gym session in the mid-morning, opened the door and knew something was wrong. A smell, a sound, or just a feeling?

  ‘Pat?’

  There was no answer. Nothing was out of place in the living room or the kitchen. It was moderately untidy like always, but the back door was wide open and the cordite stink was unmistakable. I pushed open the door to the back bathroom and the smell and the sight rocked me back and had me grabbing for the doorjamb for support. Patrick Malloy didn’t look like me anymore. He didn’t look like anyone. Most of his head had been blown away; an arm was hanging by a thread and his chest was a mass of raw meat and splintered bone. He’d been torn apart. The plastic curtain was shredded, and the walls in the shower recess were like a mad abstract painting in red and grey.

  I’d shot a man dead in the house many years ago and had been shot there myself quite recently, but those events were nothing like this. The police determined that Patrick had been killed by three blasts of heavy load from an automatic shotgun. The first would have killed him; the others were about something else altogether.

  Chief Inspector Ian Welsh of the City Major Crimes Unit who headed the investigation called me into the Surry Hills Centre for an interview two days after the SOC people had done their work. A folding table had been set up in his office and on it were the things Patrick had in the house at the time of his death, including the fiddle. I’d given permission to the police to take the stuff away on the condition that I watched them pack it up and had an itemised list signed by the detective in charge.

  Welsh, thin, fiftyish, tired-looking, had Patrick’s passport open when I entered the room and he stared at the photo- graph, at me, and back at the photograph, but made no comment.

  The killing had shocked and saddened me and I hadn’t slept well for the last few nights. Patrick was one of those people who filled a room, filled a house, but wasn’t a nuisance. He had a knack of knowing when I might want coffee and when I might want quiet; when I wanted music and when I didn’t. Seeing his fiddle lying on the table like an exhibit broke me up a bit. I sat in the chair Welsh indicated, reached out and picked up the bow.

  Welsh put down the passport and examined a document in front of him. ‘Thanks for coming in, Mr Hardy. I’ve read your statement. You’ve been very cooperative.’

  I fiddled with the bow, nodded, said nothing.

  ‘You’ve no idea why . . . your cousin—’

  ‘Second cousin,’ I said, ‘and friend.’

  ‘—why this could have happened to him?’

  I put the bow back on the table. ‘None.’

  ‘You travelled overseas, you put him up in your house, lent him your car, but you don’t seem to know anything about him.’

  ‘I know the things he told me and they seemed enough at the time. Our family relationship, a bit about his past and the business he’d been in. We had interests in common—books, music, boxing . . .’

  ‘You never felt the need to know more? After all, you used to be a private enquiry agent. I’d have thought curiosity was your middle name.’

  ‘I suppose I would’ve found out more as we went along.’

  ‘He sought you out, you said.’

  ‘Yes, this family thing about the Irish Travellers, we . . .’

  ‘Yes. Did it ever occur to you that he needed you for protection?’

  Given what had happened, it was a reasonable question, but from his suddenly alert manner there appeared to be more to it. He picked up the passport and flicked through it as he waited for my answer.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Did he do business of any sort while you were overseas?’

  That was a new tack and on the money, now that I knew what Patrick’s visit to the vet in Dublin had been about. You go to vets for steroids the way you go to Mexico for Nembutal. But I didn’t feel like enlightening Welsh.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  He closed the passport and put it back on his desk. It was the only item separated from the other things—the fiddle, clothes, books, keys, shoes, a wallet, some photographs, a shell from the beach at Galway Bay.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Hardy. That’ll be all. I’ll get an officer to see you out.’

  ‘Hang on. What was that all about? Those questions?’

  He touched a button on his desk. ‘Don’t concern yourself. We’ll keep you informed of any developments that involve you.’

  ‘You think I’m just going to walk away?’

  ‘You’d better, Mr Hardy. You’re not a private detective anymore.’

  So that was just about that as far as the cops were concerned, but I wasn’t having any of it. I’d liked Patrick, was grateful to him for suggesting the trip and had felt comfortable in his company. I knew that I’d miss him and that made it personal.

  Welsh phoned, said the body could be released, and did I want to make funeral arrangements.

  ‘Did you contact that company he owned?’

  ‘Part-owned. Of course.’

  ‘An
yone there know anything about his personal affairs—lawyer, will, that sort of thing?’

  ‘I’m only responding because you seem to be the person closest to him. The answer is no. He scarcely involved himself in the business at all. Usually just when something big was on.’

  ‘They must know something.’

  ‘I’ve got no more to say. Are you going to make arrangements or not?’

  Of course I agreed. I put a notice in the paper and arranged for the simplest disposal Rookwood could provide. Patrick hadn’t gone to church during our trip and I’d never seen any signs of religious faith from him.

  Megan phoned when she read the news in the paper and so did Frank and Hilde. They knew that I’d been fond of Patrick and his funeral wouldn’t be easy for me. They each said they’d attend.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said to Frank. ‘I wouldn’t like to be the only one there for the poor bugger. Frank . . .’

  ‘I know what you’re going to say. Could I use my contacts to monitor the police investigation for you?’

  ‘What’s your answer?’

  ‘I doubt it’d do much good. People in the service know about our connection. Anyone with information’s liable to clam up if I get nosy.’

  ‘Not everyone.’

  I heard his groan. ‘Okay, I’ll do what I can but don’t push too hard, Cliff. How’s your heart?’

  ‘Beating strongly, unlike Pat’s.’

  ‘I’ll see you at the cemetery. There’s something you should consider, if you haven’t already.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It could’ve been meant for you.’

  I had thought about it, briefly. I had enemies who bore grudges—plenty of enemies, plenty of grudges. I avoided certain individuals and places, watched my back. There were people who’d want to get even, but I couldn’t think of anyone who’d want it badly enough to go to this extreme.