by Peter Corris
‘Knock it off,’ I said. ‘We’re not going one step further until you tell us what’s going on.’
‘How about your friend?’
‘He’s not a friend. He’s someone I used to help track you down.’
‘Is that a fact? He’ll be disappointed to hear it. We drove about a bit and got on famously. I told him some things he didn’t know and helped him sort out the dirty lies from the dirty truths.’
‘The blarney is giving me the shits. Who did you send the text to?’
‘Ah, good question. Just the right question. I can see that you have a brain in your head. Well, I might say the same as you. He’s no friend of mine but someone I’ve found useful. I think we may have more in common than it looks, Hardy.’
‘If it’s the right question, what’s the answer?’
Cummings laughed and the movement brought on another spell of coughing and forced him to lean against a wall again. ‘He . . . he’s by way of being a member of the Australian intelligence service, oxymoron though that is, and he’s known about me and Patrick Malloy and you and your friend Casey for days and days and days. And I know about him, so I thought to invite him along to a little meeting. Not a céilidh, mind, Hardy, but you’ll want to be there for certain.’
We followed Cummings in his black ute away from the farm.
‘I hope you’ve got that gun with you,’ Sheila said.
‘I haven’t, it was a temporary measure.’
As I expected, Cummings turned in at the caravan park. I drove past.
‘What’re you doing?’
‘Taking you back to the motel.’
‘You do and I’ll never fucking speak to you again.’
‘Sheila, he’s a killer.’
‘Maybe he was, but not now. You saw and heard him. The man’s on his last legs. He wants to talk. I’m involved in this, Cliff. I want to see it through.’
She had a point. I slowed down. ‘I don’t like the sound of the intelligence people being involved. A minute ago you were wishing I had a gun.’
‘I was dramatising. It’s one of my faults. How can it hurt to have a security guy there? Look, I meant what I said, Cliff. I like you a lot. I think we could be good together, but I’m buggered if I’ll be sidelined. Turn around . . . please.’
I did. It wasn’t late and the boom gate hadn’t come down. The place was fairly well lit and I remembered the layout well enough to navigate back to cabins 31 and 33. The black ute was there, parked next to 33 with Casey’s SUV by 31. The porch light was on at 33 and Cummings stood at the door wrapped in a blanket. His breath steamed in the cold air. We drew up behind the SUV and got out, Sheila carrying one bottle and me two.
‘We were waiting for the grog. Lose your way, did you?’
His grin showed that he knew exactly what had happened. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reply. ‘Jack?’ I called.
‘Careful, you’ll wake the neighbours,’ Cummings said.
Casey appeared behind Cummings. He looked strained and white as he puffed nervously on a cigar. A movement behind him suggested there was someone else inside.
‘Better get in here, Cliff. Tell Sheila to wait in the car.’
‘Dunno about that, Jack. She’d be likely to ram your vehicle and then have a go at the cabin. That’d wake the neighbours.’
‘That’s right,’ Sheila said. ‘Fuck you, Jack.’
‘All in together then,’ Cummings said. ‘It’ll be a little cramped, but who looks for a lot of room at a good party, eh?’
Cummings and Casey eased back inside and Sheila and I went up two steps to the porch and through the door. The cabin was bigger inside than it looked from outside. There was a kitchenette and doors to what I assumed to be a bathroom and sleeping area. A table stood in the middle of the room, and there was space for four chairs around it and two armchairs in the corners. An oil heater was keeping the place warm.
Jack Casey sat at the table. Cummings eased himself into one of the armchairs. The other was occupied by a pale man with thinning ginger hair. He wore a suit and tie and stood as we entered to offer the chair to Sheila, smoothing down his tie as he did so. Sheila shook her head. We deposited the bottles on the table where they joined a half-full bottle of Johnny Walker red. Casey had an empty glass in front of him and the other man had a glass at his feet.
‘This is Martin Milton-Smith,’ Cummings said. ‘He’s by way of being with ASIS, isn’t that right, Martin?’
Milton-Smith subsided back into his chair and reached for his glass. ‘Something like that.’
‘Something like that,’ Cummings repeated.
‘We’ve met,’ I said. ‘You visited Pat in hospital.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I didn’t like the look of you then anymore than I do now. I should’ve asked Pat who you were, but that was back when I thought I knew who he was.’
Cummings moved the scotch bottle an inch. ‘I don’t like to mix my drinks and I fancy a drop of that good wine we had tonight. Would you care to fetch a couple of glasses, Hardy?’
He was at it again, running the show. I pulled out a chair for Sheila and then opened both the other doors, switched on the lights and looked inside. Both empty.
I sat and said, ‘I think Jack could get the glasses. Probably knows where they are, same layout as his cabin.’
‘Good point,’ Cummings said.
Still without speaking, Casey got up and brought three tumblers from the kitchenette.
‘I’m for the red,’ Cummings said. ‘Sheila? Hardy?’
I poured him a glass of red and one for myself. Sheila waved a refusal.
‘Okay, Seamus,’ I said. ‘You’ve had your fun. Now let’s hear what this is all about.’
‘I think I should step in here,’ Milton-Smith said, ‘just to bring you up to date as it were. We’ve had a watching brief on Professor Casey for some time, ever since his research started to touch on matters of national security. He has been very careful but apparently he was carried away by information brought to him by you, Mr Hardy. We’ve been able to monitor his emails and telephone calls.’
‘I hope you’re proud of yourselves,’ I said.
‘It’s not a matter for pride, simply of doing what has to be done. Anyway, we tracked you and Professor Casey here which led us to Mr Cummings, in whom we have a special interest.’
‘And that’s a black lie,’ Cummings said. ‘I’ve been doing more tracking than being tracked. I invited you here, remember.’
‘I think we know why,’ Milton-Smith murmured.
‘I don’t. What’s all this “we” business?’ I said. ‘You make it sound as if you’ve got spooks hiding behind every rubbish bin.’
‘Not quite, but certain assets are in place.’
‘That sort of language makes you a laughing-stock,’ Sheila said.
‘I don’t think you’ll be laughing by the time we finish here, Ms Fitzsimmons. Mr Cummings . . .?’
Cummings took a big swallow of the red, cleared his throat and drew in a deep breath. ‘Most people don’t know what a shite hole Angola was all through the seventies and eighties. They’d no sooner got their independence from Portugal when they started fighting each other under different names—MPLA, FLNA, UNITA—it was like something out of The Life of Brian, except that it wasn’t funny. They reckon forty thousand people were killed and about a million were made homeless in the first couple of weeks.
‘Then the Soviets and the Cubans hopped in with tanks and planes and the slaughter went on and on. Those bloody Africans hate each other worse than they hate us, and they hate us like poison. The different sides started to enlist mercenaries—a few of them got themselves topped in ’76, but they were just the ones the media picked up. Hostages were being taken every other day and murdered an
d mercenaries, a lot of them undocumented in the sort of language Martin likes, just fuckin’ disappeared. This went on well into the eighties when the world’s attention had switched elsewhere. Some of those militia leaders who felt they’d missed out on the goodies or had axes to grind were getting dollops of money from here and there and still recruiting.’
‘Ratbag people like the Olympic Corps,’ I said.
Cummings showed more emotion than he had so far. ‘I know where you got that, from Paddy Malloy. All fuckin’ wrong. It was an elite group. The best.’
Couldn’t buck that sincerity. ‘Okay,’ I said.
‘You can’t imagine what it was like fighting in that country. Just existing’s hard enough. The border with the Congo was like a sieve, anyone could get across and the Congo River, in case you don’t know, has these heavily wooded islands in it you can hide in, retreat to, attack river traffic from. Angola’s all fuckin’ mountains when it isn’t swamp and jungle. Insects to eat you alive, elephant grass to slice you to bits. Malaria . . . anyway, we were fighting for this splinter group from the MPLA faction that pretty well had everyone else against it. Did well, too, scored some heavy hits.’
The energy seemed to drain out of him. He drank some wine, took a pill bottle from his pocket, shook some pills into his palm and took them with another gulp of wine. There was no blarney now, no performance. He was living the experience.
‘We were betrayed and ambushed. We lost two good men and twelve of us were taken. There were four Australians in the team including Malloy, but he was a plant, working for UNITA.’
‘And for his country,’ Milton-Smith said.
‘Oh, that’s right. Your government was very opposed to any of its citizens being mercenaries. Happy for them to fight for the fuckin’ Brits and Americans anywhere in the world, but not for themselves. Not for filthy lucre.’
‘Not for communists,’ Milton-Smith said.
Cummings ignored him. ‘He betrayed us. We were hauled off to a bush jail and I’m telling you Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib’re picnic spots compared to that. We were beaten and starved and raped. My brother, a year younger than me, was beaten to death, slowly, right in front of me.’
‘What happened to you, Seamus?’ Sheila said.
‘Oh, I was beaten, too, and shot and buried, but I survived, after a fashion. I spent some time with decomposing corpses. It hurts your mind as well as your body and it’s something people like you wouldn’t know anything about. I got back on my feet for a while, as you know, Sheila, but it all caught up with me in the end. This fuckin’ cancer came as no surprise. I lived just to come face to face with Paddy Malloy and I came to Australia time and time again to look for him, but I never found him.’
‘That’s why you freaked out when you saw my picture of him,’ Sheila said.
‘Right, darlin’. I missed my chance then. I got drunk and went to jail and when I got out you’d gone and he’d gone and I was back where I started.’
‘How did you know Paddy betrayed you?’ Sheila said.
‘I can answer that,’ Milton-Smith said. ‘He tortured a man to death to get the information about Malloy. Very nasty.’
‘And then you saw him at the Ballintrath céilidh,’ I said.
‘I did and it was a sweet moment. He didn’t see me. He was too busy dancing and he was too pissed. I made myself scarce, but I knew him at once. I’ve kept tabs on you and him ever since. Missed you here and there but I picked you up again. I’ve had some help.’
I shook my head and he laughed.
‘Don’t get upset, Hardy. I had professional help. Better than you or maybe just younger. Fuck it. Paddy Malloy killed my comrades and my brother and left me a wreck and that’s why I did for him in a way he’d understand. I’d do it again. I wish to Christ I could do it again.’
Cummings’s head was bowed and he was crying quietly.
‘I told Paddy about the Travellers, him being a Malloy and all, when we . . . when I thought we were comrades,’ he said through his tears. ‘He didn’t know much about it and he was interested. It was like a double betrayal, d’you see?’
Sheila shuffled her chair along and put her hand on Cummings’s shoulder. ‘Why didn’t you leave the country after you’d killed Paddy? It was so risky to stay.’
Cummings sniffed and blinked away the tears. ‘Nothing’s risky for a man in my condition, darlin’. I had some old friends to see and I really wanted to go to this gathering. Just to be there, to see the faces and hear the music.’
‘Touching,’ Milton-Smith said, ‘but the fact remains that you murdered an Australian intelligence agent.’
‘So arrest me,’ Cummings said. ‘The fuck do I care? I’m a dead man walking.’ He smiled and lifted his tear-stained face to look at Sheila. ‘Sitting, that is.’
Milton-Smith stood and poured himself a small measure of scotch. ‘True, it was all a good time back, but we can’t have it getting out that an Australian intelligence agency conspired to have some of our citizens . . . eliminated. However delinquent they may have been. There were a couple of Australians in that merry band, recruited by the Cummings brothers. The good professor didn’t pick them up in his research.’
I was getting tired of Milton-Smith and I was angry with Casey, whose carelessness had let the spooks into the picture. ‘I hope you’re getting all this down on your cleverly concealed tape recorder, Jack,’ I said.
Casey stirred for the first time since our arrival. Fumbling, he relit his cigar that had gone out and puffed smoke at Milton-Smith. ‘I’m sorry, Cliff. I’ve screwed everything up badly. This bastard has me by the balls.’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ Milton-Smith said. ‘Professor Casey has been indiscreet, we find, with one or two of his students. His career is in my hands, rather than his balls.’
I’d been in a similar situation once before, when the spooks had stepped into an investigation and tied it all up in a way that suited them and left me, and others, no room for manoeuvre.
‘So tell us about the cover-up,’ I said, ‘and why we all have to go along with it.’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite that way,’ Milton-Smith said. ‘I’d rather say that, in the interest of national security and the reputation of some of our valued institutions, certain arrangements have to be made.’
Sheila laughed. ‘Meaning you’re going to cover up a murder.’
‘They’ve already started to do that,’ I said. ‘They closed down the police investigation. Isn’t that right, Martin?’
Milton-Smith took a sip of his scotch, enjoying himself. ‘An example of what I said, arrangements being made.’
Sheila said, ‘I can see why Jack’s going to keep quiet about it, but . . .’
Milton-Smith began to tick points off—right index finger against left thumb. ‘Let me make it clear, then. One, I doubt that Mr Cummings wants to spend his few remaining weeks in a prison hospital. In fact I happen to know he has excellent palliative care all lined up. Very sensible. Two, the film you’re hoping to work on, Ms Fitzsimmons, dealing as it does with actual events and characters, doesn’t quite have all its financing in place. Close, but not quite. It can also be subject to legal injunctions that would delay or frustrate it altogether. Do you follow?’
‘You bastard,’ Sheila said. ‘What about Cliff ? He’s got media contacts. He could blow the story wide open.’
‘Ah, yes, Mr Hardy, defrocked private enquiry agent who’s already served time in prison for serious offences and who allegedly imported dangerous substances into this country. If convicted, he’d be looking at ten years’ imprisonment.’
‘The case was dropped,’ I said.
‘We had a hand in that as I expect you realise by now. It could easily be picked up again if we had a change of heart. Our influence with the Customs people is considerable.’ He turned back t
o Sheila. ‘Add to that, his motivation. He now knows who killed his cousin and why and that the killer is dying. Case closed, as he might say.’
‘Talk anymore about me in the third person,’ I said, ‘and I’ll break your jaw, you smug prick.’
‘Talk, talk, talk,’ Cummings said. He yawned, stretched his thin arms out, reached under the table, and produced a cut-down automatic shotgun. The strips of duct tape hanging from it made it seem all the more lethal.
Sheila pulled away. ‘Seamus, no!’
‘It’s all right, darlin’. Don’t be frightened. I won’t hurt any- one if I don’t have to. I’ll just leave quietly.’
He pointed the gun at Milton-Smith who backed away, his composure disturbed for the first time.
‘I’d love to kill you,’ Cummings said. ‘But what would be the good? There’s a million just like you, fuckin’ lackeys, manipulators, corrupters. Can’t kill ’em all. Don’t move, Hardy!’
I’d stood and made a tentative move closer but was still too far from the gun. Casey grabbed at Cummings, but he was drunk and slow and Cummings clubbed him down with the butt of the gun and had it back level all in one smooth movement. Weak as he was, the old skills were still there.
‘We’ll help you any way we can, Seamus,’ Sheila said. ‘Won’t we, Cliff?’
Cummings laughed, sucked in more breath and said, ‘It’s all right. I’m thinking I can get to Singapore and contact the News of the World.’
‘You fool,’ Milton-Smith said. ‘Put the gun down. We can work something out.’
Cummings slid smoothly towards the door.
‘Don’t, Seamus,’ Sheila said. ‘He’s got people out there.’
‘Bluffing,’ Cummings said. ‘It was a bonus seeing you again, Sheila.’ He opened the door and stepped out.
The single shot had a clean and final sound to it. Cummings was thrown back; he collapsed in the doorway and lay still. A little blood pumped from a wound in his forehead and then stopped.
Sheila burst into tears.
I’d seen the expression of joy on Cummings’s face as he’d moved to the door.
