Torn Apart ch-35

by Peter Corris

  He sounded excited when he rang me.

  'It could be, could be. He's a lot thinner, but those guys were thin and super fit. Funny thing is, it could be one of two in the group who look almost identical.'

  'What're the chances, on a scale of ten?'

  'I'd say eight. Who is he?'

  'Have you got a database of known mercenaries from Australia?'

  'Yes.'

  'Can I see it?'

  'It's taken years to compile…'

  'This man is in Australia.'

  'Jesus, if I could talk to him.'

  I'd phoned the Kangaroo Valley Tourist Association about the date of its Travellers meeting. 'I know where he's going to be soon. I'm not expecting you to email or fax the bloody thing. Let me have a look at the database on your computer. Be very interesting if there's a match.'

  'What if there's not?'

  'I'd still want to meet him.'

  'You'd put me in touch with him?'

  Why not? I thought. 'Yes, although it could be risky. You realise what you could be letting yourself in for?'

  'This could be the man who killed your cousin.' 'Right.'

  'Hardy, I'm ex-SAS myself and I've been working on this stuff for a long time. I've met some very hard cases in dodgy places.'

  Not as hard as this, if he's the man, I thought, but I agreed that we'd go together.

  'It'd take a day or two. Can you get the time off?'

  'I'd fucking take it!'

  He gave me his address in Balmain and I arranged to be there that evening.

  Jack Casey had everything a successful academic looks for-a sandstone terrace with a water view, a good-looking wife, two kids-a boy and a girl-and a book-lined study. Briskly, he introduced me to his wife and the children before taking me off to the study with a bottle of red wine and two glasses. Evidently the inside smoking ban extended to the house, because the room didn't smell of tobacco and his snuff box was on a shelf above the computer. He poured two glasses of Merlot and switched on the computer.

  I studied the room as the computer booted up. No framed degrees, no military insignia. There was a photograph of his wife and another of the two kids and one of a football team. A younger, still bearded version of Casey was sitting in the middle row holding a football. The captain, apparently. I browsed the bookshelves-orderly, but not obsessively so. A low shelf held a few copies of Diggers for Hire and multiples of two other titles by Casey- The Great Lie and After Vietnam. I pulled a copy of the Vietnam title out and turned around when I heard the keys being tapped. 'You're too young for Vietnam,' I said. 'Gulf one. You?'

  'Earlier. What've you got there?'

  'A list of all the Australian mercenaries I've been able to trace post the Korean War. This is where I learn the name of your bloke, unless I'm supposed to leave the room.'

  I laughed and drank some of the wine. 'I wouldn't abuse your hospitality like that, Jack. Try Sean Cassidy.' He hit the keys. 'No match.' 'Try Seamus Cummings.'

  'That name rings a bell. Here we go. Bingo. Yeah, I remember now-Seamus and Liam Cummings.' Casey printed out two short dossiers:

  Seamus Kelly Cummings, d.o.b. 2.1.56, Galway, Republic of Ireland, emigrated to Australia 1964; Australian Army (Sgt) 1975, discharged 1978; I.R.A. 1980-4; imprisoned 1984-7; rumoured mercenary Namibia 19xx (see interview 12a/765). Whereabouts unknown.

  Liam Kelly Cummings, d.o.b. 1.10.56, Galway, Republic of Ireland, emigrated to Australia, 1964; Australian CMF 1976-?; rumouredl. RA. ?-?; rumouredmercenaryNamibia 19xx (see interview 12a/765). Whereabouts unknown.

  'A couple of boyos, to be sure,' Casey said. 'Practically twins. Has to be them.'

  He got the photograph of the captured mercenaries on the screen and blew it up. We studied the faces of the two who resembled my photo of Cassidy/Cummings. Making allowance for weight loss and the different conditions under which the photographs were taken, I was reasonably sure that one of the men was a match.

  'Which one?' Casey said.

  'Take your pick. What's this interview you've cited?'

  'It was with a guy who claimed to be a sort of recruiting agent for an English organisation providing mercenaries for Africa.'

  'Claimed to be?'

  'That's why I labelled his information as rumour. He seemed to be on the level, but I couldn't get confirmation.'

  'What did he say about the photograph?'

  'No, that came from another source, not the recruiter. This bloke was a camera freak but pretty solid, I thought. I'm ahead of you-he might be able to throw some light on it. We're still in touch. I could probably see him soon.'

  'How soon?'

  Casey took a pinch of snuff, didn't sneeze and swigged some more of his very good wine. 'You said you know how to locate this Cummings. When are you going to do that?'

  As I'd anticipated, we were back to dealing. Fair enough. I told him about the Travellers meeting and suggested that he

  Googled it because his web research skills were better than mine. It didn't take him long to find that 'descendants of the Irish Travelling families now living in Australia were invited to gather at the O'Loughlin farm in Kangaroo Valley on the weekend of 2-3 August to celebrate their heritage'.

  'A week off,' Casey said.

  'Can you get to your informant before then?'

  'I'll try.'

  'Tell you what, I've got two bottles ofJamesons we brought back, in case he happens to be Irish.'

  'That'd help and he is. How'd you know that?'

  'I didn't, but there's nothing but the bloody Irish in this thing. Casey, for God's sake.'

  He laughed. 'It's an Anglicisation of something Polish and unpronounceable, but I've been known to trade on it. I'll get busy. Jesus, something solid on Olympic Corps, that'd be a coup.'

  'A footnote?'

  'An article at the very least, maybe an update of the book, and a poke in the eye for those FOI bastards.'

  'Don't get carried away. If he's the man who killed Patrick, talking soldiers to him won't be my first priority.'

  'I understand. He must have survived that shackling. I wonder what happened to his brother?'

  That was one of the questions in my mind, though not the most important. I'd come to trust Sheila and had resolved the concern about Szabo. I was off the hook on the steroids charge and should have been able to concentrate on Cassidy/Cummings and his links with Patrick. But now I had a question about Casey. He seemed to have everything he needed, so why the naked ambition? Wasn't professor as high as you could go before becoming a bean-counting bureaucrat?

  23

  I replied to Angela Warburton, saying that I'd be glad to see her when she came to Sydney. I said I hadn't been in the surf for fifteen years but was prepared to give it a go if I could find a board long enough. What I didn't say was that I'd have to get in some practice first.

  Sheila got back from Melbourne excited by what she'd picked up about criminal matriarchs. We celebrated her return in the usual ways. She gave me an impromptu performance of one of the scenes in the script and was very good. Chilling. She asked me what I'd been doing and I told her just about everything. We were in bed on a cold morning, reluctant to get up for the run to the bathroom.

  She drew closer. 'Jesus, Seamus a mercenary and an assassin. It's hard to believe.'

  'It's not proven yet.'

  'It sounds like something out of Frederick Forsyth.

  What're you going to do?'

  'I'm going down to Kangaroo Valley with this Jack Casey to hunt him out.'

  'Shouldn't you go to the police?'

  I hadn't said anything about the security services angle. Now I did.

  'It sounds like something out of le Carre.'

  'It won't be. If he killed Patrick it'll be for some mundane reason, probably money. No glamour, no ideology.'

  'Now it sounds dangerous.'

  'Casey's ex-SAS. We'll be all right.'

  We got up and had breakfast; at least I did. Sheila, noticeably thinner, was still wat
ching the carbs and had black coffee.

  'Be careful your kidneys don't shut down,' I said.

  'Always with the jokes. Can we be serious for a minute?'

  I thought I knew what was coming and I realised that I hadn't thought enough about it. A mistake I'd made too many times before. Good times, good sex, what next? But I was wrong.

  Sheila finished her coffee and dabbed at her mouth, careful not to smudge the faint lip-gloss. She'd bought clothes in Melbourne and was looking terrific in a red cashmere sweater, black trousers and medium-heel boots. She was less heavily made-up than before with more lines showing. She looked mature, experienced and all the more sexy for it.

  'I want to come with you,' she said.

  'I don't think so.'

  'He'd talk to me. I'm sure he would. He might not talk to you. From what you say he just might shoot you.'

  'We'll make sure that doesn't happen.'

  'So you'll make it safe. What's the objection then? You tracked him under the name of Cummings, right?'

  'It helped.'

  'I put you on to that, Cliff. You owe me.'

  'It's not a movie.'

  'Don't insult me. I know it's not a movie, but it's about my ex-lover perhaps being the murderer of my husband. I've got a stake in this. You say you want to know why. I bloody well want to know, too.'

  I thought back to when I suspected she could have been in it for the money and could have been lying about still being married to Patrick. I'd come full circle on those points. She'd barely mentioned Patrick's estate since that first encounter, and she had been helpful. It went against every instinct to take her, but my instincts have been wrong before. Perhaps she could help on the spot.

  'You're wavering.'

  'What if I say no?'

  'I'll be pissed off, and I'll think you're lacking in…'

  'What?'

  She shrugged. 'I don't know. Something.'

  She didn't know it, but she had me cold. I wanted her with me; it was as simple as that. Or almost. What I'd said before about exorcising Patrick held true even more now. I didn't know what Casey would think of it, but I was running things, wasn't I?

  'Okay,' I said.

  'Thank you.'

  'You're crazy,' Jack Casey said when we met again in the Balmain pub.

  I'd thought my excuse out beforehand. 'She had me over a barrel,' I said, giving him the whiskey. 'If I hadn't agreed she said she'd go to the police and tell them everything we knew.'

  'That'd stuff it for sure. Why'd you tell her in the first place? Sorry, shouldn't have said that. Not my business.'

  'That's all right. She matters to me and she's part of it.'

  He nodded and we went on to the details of our expedition. I'd emailed the Aussie Irish Travellers' website with details of my Malloy grandmother and my interest in attending the gathering in the company of Sheila Malloy and John Casey. There was a two hundred dollar a head registration fee to cover administrative expenses and a dinner: I paid by credit card. Attendees who wished could camp at the farm. There were also a limited number of powered sites available on a first-come-first-served basis. A block booking at the Valley Caravan and Cabin Park had ensured cut-rate accommodation for others.

  'Cold down there this time of year,' Casey said.

  'Take a sleeping bag. You can sleep in that bloody huge SUV you drove up in. Sheila and me'll get a cabin. We can make you coffee and a hot water bottle-two hot water bottles.'

  Casey smiled. 'Fuck you,' he said.

  A good start.

  'What d'you think of him?' I asked Sheila following a brief meeting with Casey before we left for Kangaroo Valley. He was still waiting for a message from his informant about the photo of the mercenaries. I had a niggling worry that if Casey and Sheila got to talking he'd find out that I'd lied to him about her threatening to tell all to the cops.

  'Too soon to tell.'

  It was a two-hour drive. Casey drove his SUV and Sheila and I followed in the Falcon. We skirted the 'Gong, went west at Nowra, and began the climb before dropping down into the valley.

  'I came here once years ago,' Sheila said. 'Bloke I was with had an old rust-bucket Holden with a dodgy clutch. He had to go up one of these steep hills in reverse.'

  'Yeah? I remember that sort of thing-old bombs with no starter motor so you had to park on a slope; broken windscreen wipers you had to work with a couple of bits of string. All gone now.'

  'And good riddance.'

  'I suppose so.'

  'Come on, they were death traps, those cars.'

  An Alfa Romeo passed us at speed on the steep road, rounding a blind bend. 'Those aren't?'

  'Seatbelts, child restraints, breathalysers-it's all better.'

  'You're right. I drove lots of times right across Sydney half pissed when I was young.'

  'Only half?'

  'Okay, two-thirds. Jack's going to get there well ahead of us. Let's stop for the view.'

  We detoured to the lookout on Cambewarra Mountain. There was a view east across Nowra to the ocean and west across the valley. We stood at the rail, wrapped in our coats and with our arms around each other.

  'Nice,' Sheila said. 'You ever fancy a sea change, Cliff?'

  'Yeah, sure-Bondi, Coogee, even Watsons Bay.'

  She laughed. 'That'd be right.'

  By arrangement, we met Casey outside the Visitors Centre in the township where he was studying a brochure and a map and puffing on a cigar. Sheila sniffed the aroma and a look of longing crossed her face.

  'The farm's about eight k's out of town on Bendeela Road,' he said, 'and the caravan park's on the same road a bit closer. Of course we've got the option of staying somewhere more flash. What d'you reckon?'

  Sheila said, 'Seamus is a campin', huntin', shootin' and fishin' type, or was. I think he'd be in a tent.'

  'Doesn't sound like your type, Sheila,' Casey said.

  I could see his point. Sheila wore a suede three-quarter length coat over her red sweater, a stylish scarf, designer cords and boots.

  'I was younger and I could fuck in a sleeping bag with the best of them, Jack. Blow that smoke away, would you please? I quit recently.'

  'We'll go to the farm and register,' I said. 'Maybe we can find out where Cummings is staying. He might have changed his habits. With luck it could be one of these resort joints. I'm not anxious to rough it. Weather looks iffy.'

  The clear morning light was dimming with dark clouds gathering to the east.

  'Maybe we should have hired a couple of caravans or mobile homes and stayed at the farm,' Casey said.

  I shook my head. 'I doubt we could pass as the real thing. I saw these Travellers in Ireland-they've got a particular style. Not gypsy exactly, but not grey nomad either. That's what you and I'd look like, Jack.'

  And me,' Sheila said, 'but for superb hair product.'

  Casey, who'd been carefully blowing his smoke away from her, gave Sheila an approving nod. 'You tell it how it is, don't you?'

  'Always,' Sheila said. And what exactly are you planning to do?'

  'We'll decide that when we find him,' I said. 'We've got no proof he's our man. We'll have to see what he does and hear what he says.'

  'Circumstantial proof,' Casey said. 'Anyway, my intentions and Cliff's aren't the same. I want to know if he was a member of the Olympic Corps.'

  I don't know why, but for some reason when I'd told Sheila about our investigation and assumptions, I hadn't mentioned the name of the mercenary unit.

  She snapped her fingers. 'That's it. That's what he called it. I'm quite sure. I can smell…'

  'Smell what?' I said.

  'Jesus, that triggered it. He said he'd just come back from New Caledonia. In the Pacific. He was smoking Gitanes. I had one.'

  Smell sets off memory, usually painful in my experience, better than almost anything else. And memory sets off emotion. Sheila leaned against me.

  'I'm not so sure now that I want to do this,' she said.

  Casey dropped his cig
ar on the ground and put his foot on it. 'This is amazing,' he said. 'There was a big blow-up in New Caledonia twenty years ago and talk of mercenaries being recruited. Didn't come to anything much. I have to talk to this guy.'

  Sheila had lost colour and was staring up the road, not seeing anything, looking as if she wanted to be almost anywhere else.

  'It's all right, love,' I said. 'I'll find us somewhere you can have a rest. Jack, I…'

  I turned around. The cigar butt was still smoking but Casey had gone.

  24

  I booked Sheila into one of the township's motels. 'Sorry to wimp out on you,' she said. 'It's all right. No one likes to relive the bad times.' 'They were bad times. I was a mess back then, booze and drugs and blokes, and remembering that name just sort of brought it all back. Why did Jack take off like that?' 'I don't know, but I have to find out.' 'Sure you do. Just be careful. I'll hunker down here for a while. Maybe get some DVDs and keep doing my crunches. Call me if I can help. Promise?'

  I drove straight to the farm, passing the caravan park on the way. The drought of the past few years seemed not to have affected the valley; the rolling landscape was a patchwork of lush paddocks with dairy cattle grazing. Under other circumstances the expedition would have been an interesting experience. Caravans and mobile homes and campervans were clustered around a magnificent old sandstone farmhouse. An area was set aside for tents and heavy-duty cables snaked across the ground, providing power. I could hear the thrum of a couple of generators as I got out of the car and approached the house. No sign of Casey's vehicle.

  A reception area was set up on the wide front verandah with a brazier burning nearby. Early afternoon, but it was cold already with a cloudy sky and a stiff wind. A woman sat on a bench behind a table with a list in front of her and a stack of brightly coloured plastic folders and name tags on strings. People sat on chairs on the verandah or leaned against the rail, smoking and yarning. In a way they resembled the sorts of people you'd expect to find at Tamworth for the country music festival-jeans, hats, boots. But the women tended to wear more beads and bangles, like the hippies of old, and a lot of the men were fleshy, not going for the lean cowboy look.