by Peter Corris
Rookwood can be pretty bleak at the best of times, but the good weather spell had gone and the day of the funeral was overcast and damp. Not cold, though. It reminded me of Ireland, and it was a sure bet there were plenty of the Irish planted there. My father was there somewhere in a grave my sister, who was fonder of him than me, had looked after until she moved to New Zealand. Must’ve been pretty overgrown by now.
The ceremony in the crematorium chapel was the usual soulless affair and the mourners numbered seven—a man named Dan Munro representing Pavee Security, Frank and Hilde, Megan and her partner Hank Bachelor, me, and a police officer named Stanton who introduced himself and retreated into the background. Standard police procedure—they turn up at funerals of people whose deaths are being investigated just to see if anyone of interest is present.
After the business was over, Frank went into a huddle with Stanton, who smoked a cigarette and looked uncomfortable.
Frank spoke to me later when we’d adjourned to a back room in Kelly’s.
‘Pretty close-mouthed,’ he said, ‘but I gather they’re not making much progress. One thing—they’re suspicious of him, but they’re not sure why. What d’you think, Cliff?’
I waited while Declan Donovan, a Glebe folk singer I knew, tuned his banjo. I’d asked him to play a few songs to give the event a bit of cheer and he agreed to do it for all the Guinness he could drink. That’d run up a fair tab along with what the rest of us drank, but it was the least I could do for Patrick.
With Declan strumming quietly, I said, ‘I’m just going on instinct, but I don’t see him as a big-time criminal player. A cutter of corners maybe, but . . .’
‘Secretive?’
‘We’re all secretive. You are, I am. We have to be.’
‘Philosophy, now?’
I shrugged as Declan launched into ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’, playing the upbeat Irish version followed by the slow Australian lament. He did ‘Lily of the West’ and ‘Roddy McCaulay’ to wring tears from your eyes, and a long rendition of ‘With My Swag on My Shoulder’ that had us all shouting the chorus line ‘. . . like a true-born Irishman’. Dan Munro left after one drink, but a few other people, like my doctor Ian Sangster, and Daphne Rowley, turned up.
It was a good bash—Pat would’ve loved it.
When I said we were all secretive I meant it. Circumstances sometimes demanded it. For example, if Welsh had been more forthcoming, less dismissive, I might have told him that Patrick had posted a package to my address from London. I’d done the same, just some books I’d bought in Charing Cross Road. I didn’t know what Patrick had sent. He’d mentioned buying some DVDs and CDs of some fiddle players and I’d just assumed it was something like that. Maybe not.
You have to allow up to ten days for a package to arrive from the UK, so I had a few days to wait. Another thing was Patrick’s mobile phone. He’d borrowed a jacket of mine and hung it back up in the cupboard under the stairs where it belonged. When I went to wear it, I found the phone in the pocket. Didn’t tell Welsh for the same reason. The police hadn’t asked about it—slack of them. That gave me two things to look into. I thought I might be able to get something out of the Pavee Security driver, Kevin, remembering his enigmatic remark. I wasn’t expecting to nail the killer, just to give the investigators some lines to follow. Or so I told myself.
I like to think I’m not a complete Luddite, however the intricacies of Patrick’s mobile were well beyond me, but they were Hank Bachelor’s bread and butter. I took the phone to his Newtown office, the one I’d vacated in his favour after losing my licence. Hank, an American who found it impossible to live in a country run by the Bush administration, had been what he called my apprentice. He’d acquired his own PEA licence and was doing well.
‘Thought you’d turn up,’ Hank said when I arrived.
Hank is a caffeine addict and I’d brought along two King Street long blacks to smooth my path.
‘I’m your de facto father-in-law. Why shouldn’t I drop in?’
Hank took a long, appreciative sip of the coffee. ‘Couldn’t leave it alone, could you?’
‘I’m planning to assist the cops.’ I put the mobile on the desk.
Hank moved it around with a pencil. ‘Top of the range. Patrick’s?’
‘Yep.’
‘Unknown to the police?’
I nodded and drank some coffee. ‘I’m wondering what might be stored in there—numbers, photos, passwords, codes . . .’
That’s the thing about digital technology freaks; whereas most of us yearn for the simple and straightforward, they revel in the cryptic and the unrevealed.
‘I’d like you to put it through your mental sieve, mate,’ I said. ‘Make it give up all its secrets.’
I phoned Pavee Security and asked to speak to Kevin Barclay. When I was asked who I was I told the truth. When asked in what connection I wished to speak to Mr Barclay, I said he’d driven me to the boxing some weeks back and that I wanted to continue the interesting conversation I’d had with him then. That seemed to be satisfactory, and I was given a mobile number. I rang it.
‘This is Kev.’
‘Mr Barclay. My name’s Hardy. You drove me to the Moody fight.’
‘I remember. The spitting image of poor Pat.’
‘That’s right. I wonder if we could meet? I’d like to talk to you.’
‘What about?’
‘Face to face. I’d make it worth your while—say a hundred bucks for twenty minutes.’
‘That’s a good rate. You know the Square Leg pub in Redfern?’
‘Yes. When?’
‘How about twelve thirty? I’ve got an hour break and you can buy me lunch. Do I get two hundred for forty minutes?’
I laughed. ‘We’ll see.’
It felt like being back in the saddle except that there would be no client paying the expenses. Didn’t matter; the feeling was payment enough.
The Square Leg is old style in architecture, fittings and décor. It’s not as if it’s seen better days, it’s almost as if the downbeat appearance is carefully maintained. The bar took me back to the pubs I used to drink in as a young soldier and a failing student. The advertisements are for brands of beer no longer brewed and the walls display pictures of horses and sportsmen long forgotten. The food on offer is basic—meat and fish, chips and salad—and they’re still described as counter lunches. I got a middy of light and settled down at a laminex-topped table to wait for Kev.
I was early; he was on time. He came bustling in, a big, overweight man who looked as if he might have been a footballer in his youth before beer and sitting behind the wheel blew him up. Drivers typically have waiting time to fill in, and a lot of them cure the boredom with calories.
He plonked himself down at the table. ‘Gidday, Hardy. I’ll have a schooner of old and a steak and chips—well done.’
I got his beer and ordered the meals, same for me.
‘Good health.’ He raised the glass and drank almost half.
‘Not in uniform, Kev?’
‘Nah, part-time job with Pavee. Doing courier work today. Pretty good fight, wasn’t it? Pat’s last fight.’ He lifted the glass in a token toast. ‘Pity that. Good bloke, Pat.’
Our number was shouted from the servery—none of your vibrating pagers at the Square Leg—and I collected the plates, the plastic cutlery, the tomato sauce sachets and paper napkins on a tray. Barclay finished his schooner as I put the tray down and I went to the bar for refills.
He was chomping enthusiastically when I got back and I let him get a few mouthfuls and swigs down before putting my questions.
‘I want to ask you about a remark you made when you drove me to the fight.’
Still chewing, he nodded.
‘What did you have in mind when you said you’d let me into a secret? It wa
s after I’d asked if you expected any trouble.’
He was working on another mouthful and he held up a hand to signal a wait until he had chewed and swallowed.
‘Why?’ he said.
‘I liked Pat and I don’t like what happened to him. I want someone to pay.’
‘Fair enough. I was a bit pissed and should’ve kept my trap shut, but what I was going to say was that sometimes—only sometimes, mind you—Pat arranged for some trouble to happen at a place we were doing the security for. Nothing too serious, but just so word got around that we were useful and up to the job. You understand?’
He sawed off another piece of steak, pressing down hard, and speared some chips. I’d given up on the tough meat and was investigating the rather limp salad. I’d told Frank Parker I thought Patrick might cut corners without knowing why I thought so, but here was confirmation.
‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘How many people know about that?’
‘Just a few.’
‘And a hundred bucks lets you tell me?’
He was cleaning his plate, mopping up fat and tomato sauce with two slices of white bread. He finished and took a long pull on his schooner.
‘Why the fuck not?’ he said, swallowing. ‘I’ll get the flick for sure from the new mob and bugger-all severance pay as a casual.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Consolidated Securities. Yanks. All computers and bullshit. You’ve run well over your twenty minutes.’
‘You’re looking at another hundred. Can you think of anything, an incident, something going wrong with that scam, that would’ve made an enemy for Patrick, supposing it got known?’
He took a chip from my plate and ate it as he thought about an answer. He was like those people who can’t think without smoking, except his prop was food.
‘Three hundred,’ he said.
I nodded.
He leaned closer. ‘We were doing security for this pub in Hamilton. Music gig, country rock—James O’Day and the Currawongs. Well, Pat arranged for this fight to break out, nothing serious, and me and another bloke were supposed to move in and stop it. But a brazier got knocked over and a fire broke out and a good bit of the pub got burned down. Get me another drink, eh?’
I got the beer. He tapped his pocket for his cigarettes, remembered the new rules and swore.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘The wife of the guy who owned the pub was killed by the fire. Pat paid me a fair bit of money to keep quiet and I did, but the other bloke, the one who sort of provoked the fight, he disappeared. I heard a whisper that the pub owner killed him. Maybe Pat killed him or he just shot through. I dunno, but Pat was edgy for quite a while after.’
Pat, a killer? I wouldn’t have thought so, but I was learning something new about him every day. ‘This was when?’
‘About two years ago.’
‘The names of the other Pavee guy and the pub owner?’
He shook his head and held out his hand. ‘No names.’
I gave him three hundreds but he didn’t look happy. He drained his third schooner and left.
I only had to go a block to South Dowling Street and then cross to Moore Park and I fancied a contemplative walk, even though the day was cold and windy. On the paths the trees dripped on me from the morning rain and the fallen leaves were slushy underfoot. I think of myself as a summer rather than a winter person but for some reason the conditions suited my mood. I walked briskly and warmed up.
Barclay’s information was interesting and would be easy enough to check, at least in its outline. I knew James O’Day, who’d fought as Jimmy O’Day, some years back. A good, careful fighter with a good, careful manager who’d picked his fights. Never won a serious title, but he’d made money and got out of the game before any damage was done and turned to his other talent—music. The Currawongs were a moderately successful band. I’d seen them live once in Bulli in the course of an investigation and talked to O’Day a few times. I owned a couple of their albums, one of them signed by James. I could ask him about the Hamilton gig and the fire and I could go there and ask questions. A man who lost a wife in a fire caused by someone playing a dodgy game might well want revenge. I felt enlivened as I went up the steep path towards the golf course. Bugger golf, I had work to do.
I phoned O’Day, spoke to one of his girlfriends, and arranged to meet him at his place in Newtown that evening. She said he was just back from a tour and was chilling. I spent part of the afternoon in the gym and the rest loading the photographs from my mobile onto the computer. I flicked through them, slotting the right paper into the printer, and printed out the shot of Patrick pretending to play his fiddle with an appropriate Dublin scene in the background—a pub. I wasn’t really concentrating and was about to close down when something I’d seen in passing nagged at me.
I went through the shots more slowly until I came to the photos showing the tavern where the céilidh had taken place. The light wasn’t the best and the pictures were fuzzy. The one of Angela Warburton in profile didn’t do her justice. I found the one that had almost captured my attention—a wide-angle shot that showed Patrick with a group in the middle of a wild leap with his eyes closed in joy, and in drink. A man sitting behind him was staring at Patrick with a look of sheer malevolence on his face. He was thin, dark, not young, and not obviously one of the Travellers. Although there were other people sitting near him he gave the impression of being on his own.
I blew the image up and studied it. The hostility was unmistakable, made more emphatic by the bony thinness of his face. He had a barely touched pint of beer in front of him and a cigarette in his hand, but he didn’t look drunk or as if he was about to do anything. He just stared and hated.
The next photo in the sequence was only moments later and covered the same scene, but the man was gone and Patrick had taken a breather. I ran off a copy of the photo. In the old days I’d have opened a file and the photo would have gone into it. But that was then and this was now. I pinned the céilidh photo and the one of Patrick with his fiddle to the corkboard in the kitchen where I could look at and think about them.
James O’Day and assorted members of the Currawongs, their road crew and girlfriends, occupied a big terrace house in Newtown close to Camperdown Park. I rolled up at about 7 pm with half a slab of beer—the acceptable calling card. A young woman let me in and took the beer. She wore modified goth gear—black clothes and shining metal—but didn’t have the sullen, the-world-is-a-shitheap look. I actually got a smile.
‘James is in the kitchen,’ she said.
‘Cooking?’
‘I wish. We’ve got pizza coming. I thought you were it.’
‘Sorry.’
She smiled again, her lip ring glinting in the light, and lifted the beer. ‘You’re welcome.’
I followed her down the passage past a couple of rooms, one with a whiff of marijuana leaking out. The kitchen was galley-style, made spacious by a wall being knocked out and an archway constructed. There was a big pine table in the centre and an even bigger antique oak butcher’s bench along one wall. Speakers hung at various points around the room and most of the surfaces were covered with magazines, books, newspapers and CDs.
‘Your visitor, James,’ the woman said, ‘bearing gifts.’
O’Day was in his early forties, middle-sized and lean. His Aboriginal ancestry was becoming more pronounced with the passing years. He seemed darker and heavier around the brows than when I’d last seen him. He wore a few marks of other men’s fists on his face, but not many. He was sitting at the table tapping on the keyboard of a notebook computer.
‘Cliff, good to see you, brother. Saw you at the Moody fight. Still interested in the sweet science, eh? This is Vicki.’
‘Now and then, Jimmy. Hello, Vicki.’
She’d taken the tops off three of the stubbies in a matter
of seconds. She handed me one. ‘Hi, Cliff,’ she said. ‘Is this going to be, like, secret men’s business?’
O’Day looked up from the screen, accepted the stubby and shook his head. ‘Don’t reckon. Hey, Cliff, what’s a good rhyme for silver?’
I sat and drank. ‘There isn’t one.’
‘No shit?’ Vicki said. ‘Bet there is. I’ll Google it.’
O’Day laughed as she left the room. He logged off and took a swig. ‘Good chick, Vic. Shit, I’ve got rhymes on the bloody brain. What’s the reason for the very welcome visit, man?’
‘D’you remember a gig you did a few years back at some pub in Hamilton? There was a fight and a fire.’
‘Yeah, at the Miner’s Arms. That was a bad scene. A woman died, I heard. We got out okay, in fact we helped a few people get out.’
‘Who was the owner, or the licensee?’
‘One and the same—bloke named Reg Geary.’
‘You had dealings with him, did you? What was he like?’
‘He was a prick—very tight with a buck. We didn’t get paid for the gig. That was natural, I suppose, under the circumstances. We worked there again later, but not for him.’
‘How was that?’
‘We did a benefit to help them raise money to rebuild the pub. Glad to do it. We had a big following there.’ He took another pull on the stubby. ‘Why the questions?’
‘I was wondering whether he could’ve been responsible for something that happened here a few days ago. A mate of mine got shot.’
‘In Glebe. Yeah, I read about that and saw it on the news. Didn’t connect it with you, but. That’s rough. Sorry. As I said, Reg was a real bastard and I know he was bitter about what happened. Not just about his wife. I heard that he’d fucked up the insurance somehow and blamed everyone but himself. He lost the pub. He might’ve been crazy enough to do something like that, I suppose.’
