by Peter Corris
‘I was there,’ I said. ‘Brian took a shot at me. I made a statement to the police. I can make one to your insurance company. You won’t get a bean.’
Scammell’s loose, floppy mouth tightened. ‘What do you want?’
‘I thought a cheque made out to SOS.’
‘No way.’
‘I had a little talk with Brian last week. He’s not too happy with you, leaving the country like that.’
Scammell slid open a drawer and took out a chequebook.
‘Make it $10,000,’ I said, ‘and write it big and clear. I’ve got a photographer and a reporter downstairs. They might want a close-up of the cheque.’
‹‹Contents››
Eye Doctor
‘An eye doctor?’ I said. ‘I had some dealings with one once a little while back. Mind you, I didn’t see much of him, especially when he was operating on me.’
‘You always liked your little joke, Cliff,’ Ian Sangster said. ‘But this is important. Could you be serious for a minute?’
‘Sure,’ I said, but I couldn’t help myself, I was in such a good mood. ‘I also knew an undertaker, but he’s dead.’
I burst out laughing. Dr Ian Sangster looked at me the way he might at a victim of brain damage. ‘Am I going to have to give you something to calm you down? What’re you on? I’ve probably got the antidote.’
‘Glen and I are going up to her place on the coast next week. We’re going to catch fish and swim and rub oil all over each other, day and night.’
‘When next week?’
‘Friday.’
‘Good. Ten days away. That’ll give you time to do this job. It’ll pay well, not that you need much money for what you’ve got planned. Mind you, if it comes to rings…’
I held up my hand. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Money wouldn’t hurt, but I couldn’t take any from you.’
Sangster has been my doctor for most of the last twenty years. He’s patched me and other people up at unlikely hours and in unlikely places, and provided other extracurricular services. He hasn’t filed reports or charged the going rates. Now, he pushed aside his scotch and leaned forward-two signs that he really was serious.
‘It’s not for me. It’s for Jonas Buckawa. You’ve heard of him, haven’t you?’
I had. Buckawa was a Bougainvillean lawyer and politician who was holding up the works in a big way. A major petroleum strike had been made in the strait between the islands of Buka and Bougainville and financial interests in Papua New Guinea, Australia and Singapore were falling over themselves to get the drills down and the barrels filling. Buckawa had found a dozen different objections to the contracts-in terms of the environment, traditional ownership and usage of the waters, the terms decided between the contracting parties and their governments-as well as doubts about the reliability of the survey work estimate of the reserves. He’d filed his objections in a series of courts, including the International Court, and he’d got the media interested and the locals stirred up so that the prospective field was constantly under surveillance. The PNG government wanted to send in troops. Singapore, it was said, supported that; Australia could not.
‘What’s his problem?’ I said. ‘He seems to have the ball at his feet.’
‘He does, in a sense. He stands a good chance of winning his court battles and bringing a stop to all this oil-drilling bullshit.’
Ian is a conservationist, worried about greenhouse gases, the ozone layer, pollution, everything. I tried to think of when I’d last read anything about Buckawa and realised that it had been some time. I’d assumed it was just a matter of legal wheels turning slowly. Evidently not.
‘Jonas has had severe eye trouble for some time-cataracts and glaucoma. It’s got worse. He needs an operation, a tricky one. It has to be kept secret though. If word got out that he has these problems the campaign’d collapse, it’s all on his shoulders. That’s where Professor Frank Harkness comes in. He’s worked in Bougainville, Jonas knows and trusts him. He can do the job and keep his mouth shut. He’s a bit of a stirrer himself
‘Is that right?’ I was sceptical. I didn’t associate eye surgeons with much except clever hands and big bank accounts. ‘I still don’t see why you need me.’
‘We — I’m on the Buka Strait Committee-need someone to protect Harkness. Jonas is getting into Sydney the day after tomorrow, very much on the quiet, illegally in fact. The PNG government took away his passport. We’ve got people to look after him but the same sort of people can’t be seen to be hanging around Harkness.’
‘Bougainvilleans, you mean?’
Ian nodded. ‘Not everyone up there’s on side, not by a long shot. If someone unsympathetic in Sydney spotted odd comings and goings around Harkness they might put two and two together. Jonas’ eye problems aren’t a total secret, although only a very few people know how bad they are.’
I took a drink and thought about it. Babysit a professor of ophthalmology for a few days. How hard could it be? ‘These unsympathetic people,’ I said, ‘what would they be likely to do to Harkness?’
“There’s a hell of a lot of money and influence involved. They’d be prepared to damage his hands, maybe even kill him. But if everything goes right nothing at all will happen.’
‘Who’s paying?’
‘Funds are available.’
‘Come on, Ian. There’s paperwork to do.’
‘Do it afterwards-wouldn’t be the first time.’
That’s the trouble with being flexible, people know you’ll flex. I told Sangster I’d take the job. ‘The professor, what hospital does he work at?’
‘Prince of Wales.’
‘And he has a big house where?’
‘Clovelly.’
‘So, he goes between them in his BMW. It doesn’t sound so hard.’
‘Harkness works hard and plays hard. He’s a billiards nut, a golfer, and he likes to drink whisky. He also goes in for bushwalking and climbing mountains. You might find it a bit hard to keep up with him, Cliff.’
I grunted. My whisky drinking isn’t what it used to be, but I play snooker and I’ve climbed the odd rock. Maybe I could teach the professor to surf. I said so.
Sangster grinned. ‘Your first problem is getting Harkness to agree. He doesn’t want to hear about having a bodyguard.’
‘Who’re you?’
The man moving towards me was short, about 175 centimetres; he was squarely built with wide shoulders and a thatch of thick grey hair. He wore a white doctor’s coat over jeans and an open-necked shirt; his teeth gripped a curved pipe and his voice was like a pop riveter, working hard.
‘I’m Cliff Hardy, professor. I’m…’
‘Oh, yeah. The private detective. I thought I told Ian Sangster and those other fuckin’ old women I didn’t need a bodyguard.’
The Ophthalmology Department was in a big old stone building in the grounds of the hospital. It was nothing flash, just a small lecture theatre and a collection of offices where work seemed to go on. We were standing outside the department secretary’s room. The adjoining door to Harkness’ office was open and I could see crammed bookcases, piles of papers, several coffee mugs and a set of golf clubs.
“Things have changed.’ Lowering my voice, I added, ‘It looks like word has got out that the man’s in Sydney.’
‘Shit. You’d better come in.’
The secretary, a slim, good-looking, dark-haired young woman, was on the phone. Harkness winked at her and we went into his room. He pulled off his coat and dropped it on a filing cabinet, waved me into a chair, sat behind his desk and began excavating his pipe. ‘Ever been to Bougainville?’
I shook my head.
‘Cunt of a place, a lot of it. Some beautiful bits. Good people-tough and smart. Jonas is a good guy. None of this Catholic or traditionalist bullshit. He wants the place to go ahead, but he reckons turning the Buka Strait into a sewer isn’t the way to do it.’
“That sounds right,’ I said.
He tapped ashes out of the pipe
into a metal wastepaper bin, packed it from a tin of Erinmore flake and lit it with a match. Puffing, he said, They’ve got a lot of eye problems up there- cataract, bit of follicular trachoma and diet-related things. A couple of good regular clinics with operating teams could clear it up pretty quickly but those pricks in Moresby don’t give a stuff. Jonas’ mob does.’
‘That makes him important,’ I said. ‘So it’s important that you operate on him without interference. Where’s it going to happen? Not here, at the hospital?’
‘Shit, no. This place is run by medical bureaucrats who never put a finger up a bum in anger. We’re going to do it in a little private joint in Bondi. What’s your background — not an ex-copper, are you?’
‘No. Army for a bit, insurance investigator, then into this. You’ve got something against the police?’
‘Plenty. Used to see them use Redfern as a training ground for the heavy squads. And I got the piss beaten out of me a few times on demos and that. I suppose some of them’re all right. What did you do in the fuckin’ army?’
‘Fought in Malaya. Have you got something against the army, too?’
The smoke was coming out in short, quick puffs. ‘Mostly a waste of time and money. The medical corps paint wounds on people and practise washing them off. Bullshit. But the army did some bloody tremendous work for us on the Aboriginal eye health project. Set up these field hospitals in the bush. Great stuff.’
‘I read about that. And I knew one of the blokes you used in liaison work, Jacko Moody.’
‘Great guy. Did you ever see him fight?’
I nodded. ‘He could’ve gone a long way. Still, maybe it’s good he didn’t. He’s got all his marbles.’
‘I fixed his retinas. He came close to the white cane. What’re you looking at?’
I was gazing over his head at a picture on the wall. It showed Harkness in bathers, looking chunky but firm fleshed, on a beach with a blonde woman and two snowy-haired children.
Harkness screwed around to look at the picture. He put down his pipe and massaged the bridge of his nose where there was a red indentation. Suddenly, he looked his age, which was fifty-six, and tired. ‘I sent them down to Victoria for a while.’
‘Good,’ I said. “That was smart. Why not be smart about yourself, too? What’s that mark on your nose?’
He stopped the rubbing. ‘It’s where you strap on the magnifying apparatus for operating. You’re observant, Cliff. D’you play billiards?’
‘Snooker.’
‘Better than nothing. Drink whisky?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Over the next few days I drank a little whisky with Frank Harkness and played some snooker with him-on the table in the basement of his house-but what he mostly did was work. The man was a tiger for it-early morning ward rounds, lectures, clinics, consulting, operations, administration. He was at it from 6.00 a.m. to nine o’clock at night and how he had the energy to lift a glass or a cue was beyond me. But he did, and when he went up to bed I noticed that he took sheaves of papers and journals with him. He was brusque and abrasive at times, extraordinarily patient and kind at others. I quickly found out that the thing to do was to stand up to him. Toe to toe, he’d listen to a contrary argument and sometimes take notice. Otherwise, he went completely his own way. I judged that he was a man who’d made mistakes, but not very often.
I almost made one myself on the third night. I was sleeping in one of the spare rooms in the house and, before going to bed, I checked all the doors and windows. I was in bed, reading the paperback of Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart, which I’d found on Harkness’ shelves, when something began to niggle at me. My. 38 was on a chair near the bed; I was sleeping in a light tracksuit and had a pair of slip-on sneakers at the ready. The front gate was locked; the cars were locked; the doors were locked, but something was wrong. I put the book down, pulled on my shoes and went out into the passage light was showing under Harkness’ door and I could smell his pipe. That jogged my memory. We’d been playing snooker in the basement and the fug from the pipe had got to me. I’d opened a small window onto a light shaft and had forgotten to close it. Just a small aperture, but enough. I padded down to the basement and closed the window. Harkness was standing at the top of the stairs when I returned. He wore a striped, knee-length nightshirt. His calf muscles bulged.
‘What?’ he rasped.
‘Nothing.’
He nodded and went back into his room but I could tell that he was edgy. So was I.
The call came the next day. My job was to get Harkness, in the mid-afternoon, to an address in Bondi without anyone knowing where he was going to be or following us. Harder to do than it sounds-Harkness’ day was mapped out in half-hour grids, but we managed it. I had to hope that the people looking after Buckawa were doing the same.
The place was a small cluster of two-storey, cream-brick buildings set behind a high fence. It looked like a garden furniture factory, with all the chrome and plastic chairs scattered around, but in fact it was the William O. White Private Hospital.
‘Supposed to be closed for renovation,’ Harkness said as we mounted the front steps. ‘But it’s got a good working theatre.’
‘How many people to do the op?’
Harkness took a last suck on his pipe and knocked the ashes out into a flower pot. ‘Just you and me.’
He laughed at my reaction and we went through the front door into a tiled lobby where Ian Sangster was waiting with three black men and one black woman. Ian did the introductions but the only name that stuck with me was that of the biggest of the bunch, a 190 centimetre heavyweight named John Kelo, who seemed somehow to be in charge. Sangster looked worried, I thought. Harkness was in his element, shaking hands, turning on the rough charm for the woman who was evidently a nurse.
We trooped up a staircase, Harkness in front with the nurse, then Sangster and me, then Kelo and his pals.
‘What’s wrong?’ I hissed in Sangster’s ear.
He shook his head and didn’t reply.
Along a corridor, Harkness talking animatedly, snatches of pidgin, laughter. One of the Bougainvilleans moved swiftly past, opened a door and stood aside. The room was brightly lit; there was a small desk, several pieces of overhead equipment that could be swung into place and a chair something like the kind dentists use. A man got up from the chair and extended his hand to Harkness, ignoring everybody else. He was built along the same lines as the doctor, but bullet-headed, bald and his skin was the colour of tar.
‘Good evening, professor,’ Jonas Buckawa said.
‘Gidday, Jonas. Go easy with the grip, son, I’m going to need those fingers to fix your peepers. Sit down and let’s take a look at you.’ He gave Buckawa a gentle shove towards the chair.
One of the attendants stepped forward and grabbed Harkness’ upper arm. ‘Be more respectful of the leader,’ he said.
Harkness shook the hand off and looked furiously at Buckawa who was sitting in an upright, regal posture in the chair. “What the fuck’s this, Jonas?’
The same man spoke again. ‘Do not use foul language.’
I was turning towards Sangster for an explanation when I was gripped in an expert choke-hold. John Kelo opened my jacket and slipped the. 38 out of its shoulder harness.
‘Examine your patient, please, doctor,’ Kelo said. “You will be performing the operation tonight.’
Harkness laughed. ‘You’re off your head. And I won’t touch him until I hear what you bastards are on about. Jonas?’
The man whose task it seemed to be to handle Harkness raised his fist. Buckawa froze him with a look. ‘Don’t be foolish, Leo. You must not damage the doctor.’
Leo backed off. ‘Yes, sir.’
Kelo hadn’t taken his eyes off me. He nodded and the choke-hold was released. I rubbed my neck and thought about turning round to do some nose-breaking. I could feel Sangster twitching beside me. The nurse opened a door and I could see through into an operating theatre-harsh lighting, gleaming chro
me, an antiseptic smell.
Harkness folded his arms. ‘Forget it. I’m not operating tonight and maybe not at all unless I get an explanation for all this crap.’
‘Things have changed, professor,’ Buckawa said smoothly. ‘I have had visitations… visions… dreams. I am called to do great things, but my enemies are all around and I cannot stay here long.’
Buckawa’s body appeared to be relaxed but there was tension in his voice and something unnatural about his unwavering stare. I remembered Harkness saying that he approved of Buckawa because he wasn’t corrupt and he wasn’t religious. I could only guess at what he was feeling now. He moved forward, taking a device from his pocket, and shone it into each of the seated man’s eyes in turn. He snapped his fingers at the nurse and she handed him another gizmo with a headband attached to it. He slipped it on and fiddled with a control before leaning down and looking into Buckawa’s eyes again through the lens.
He straightened up and sniffed, felt for his pipe.
‘No,’ Leo said.
‘Get stuffed.’ Harkness took the pipe and tobacco tin out and began to go through his ritual. “No slicing tonight, children. Pressures’d have to be monitored for three days, minimum. Have to do measurements for the intra-ocular lenses. We need an anaesthetist…’
‘Much of that data is on hand,’ Buckawa said. ‘We have anticipated you. The implants and lenses are available. Sister Pali and Nurse Kwaisulia are highly competent theatre personnel. Dr Sangster can act as anaesthetist.’
Ian Sangster said, ‘No.’
Harkness said, ‘Fuck you.’
I swung hard at Nurse Kwaisulia and got him on the right cheekbone. I felt my knuckle crumple and it didn’t seem to bother him much at all. Harkness dropped his pipe and tin, went into a crouch and bullocked Kelo back against the wall, driving back a man who outweighed him by twenty kilos by sheer force of will and anger. I went for Kwaisulia again but Leo stepped in and the two men grabbed my arms and held me easily. Harkness got in one good shot at Kelo’s ribs but then the bigger man’s strength told-he pushed the doctor away and grabbed both his fists. Harkness’ hands were swallowed by those big black fingers and Kelo forced his arms down to his sides. I realised what he was doing-protecting Harkness’ hands and limbs from damage.
