Matrimonial Causes

by Peter Corris

  Then I did in a very general way. The road got rougher and narrower to judge from the way the left side wheels dipped off the bitumen from time to time, and the traffic was definitely lighter. The country. I’m a city man who prefers pavements to paddocks, and I never preferred them more strongly than at that moment. It’s too easy to lose things and citizens in the country. There’s too much space and not enough people to notice. Another opinion is that everybody knows everybody else out there and nothing goes unremarked. A nice debating point, but I couldn’t see that it was going to make much difference to me one way or the other.

  All this mental activity diverted me from my aches and pains, if not from my terrors. I doubted that they’d torture me to extract the name of the person who’d tipped me off about Teacher or to get a line on Virginia Shaw. It takes a special kind of nastiness to do that. I’d seen it in Malaya in Australians, Brits, Malays and Chinese—I didn’t see it in Teacher or Gallagher. Mario was a possible candidate. It was more likely that they were just tidying up and that was quite frightening enough. I tried to think of something I might bargain with, some threat to worry them. There was nothing. Fear of dying is ignominious. Life itself becomes precious, whatever its quality. I just wanted the impossible—for the painful, cold, humiliating ride to go on and on.

  A jolting stop and I knew it was the final one. Doors opening and closing. Voices, and then the sound of something being taken down from a roof rack. A rustling noise and then the clank of metal. It wasn’t a surfboard. The opening of the back of my box confirmed my guess about the sort of vehicle I’d been travelling in. A strong torch beam lit up the interior, danced around and hit me, blindingly, in the face. I shut my eyes against it and it moved away. I blinked and looked past it, out at the dark shapes of trees outlined against a starlit night sky.

  ‘I think it’s going to rain,’ a voice I didn’t recognise said. Mario?

  ‘Good. Make the fuckin’ ground softer.’ That was Teacher.

  A match flared and I smelled tobacco smoke. ‘Let’s just get on with it, eh?’ Ian Gallagher was nervous. Maybe it was his first time at a cold-blooded execution and interment. If so, I had to hope he wasn’t the one to do the job. A pistol shot at close range can go terribly wrong. I was feeling calm now, registering every little thing as if my system was working frantically for the short time it had left to function, but resigned. My feet were grabbed and I was pulled out of the van without any regard for my wellbeing. I lost skin, suffered wrenched joints and my head banged painfully as it crossed the gap between the van floor and the flap of the bottom half of the door. A final heave and I collapsed onto cool, damp, sweet-smelling grass.

  I fell on my face and struggled to roll over. It hurt everywhere, but I managed it. I looked up into the pale, troubled eyes of Ian Gallagher. One part of my brain was telling me that it was better they should leave the tape across my mouth. It meant they weren’t going to get out the bolt-cutters. I was worried about that clank from the roof rack. But I didn’t want to die like a dumb animal, I wanted to speak. Gallagher drew on his cigarette and looked away.

  ‘Here?’ Mario said. He glanced at the sky. It had been him worrying about the rain. I would have welcomed a few drops. I was hungry for sensation, experience, touch and sound as my time ran out. I wanted to stretch the moments, suck just a little more of the juice of life, even though it had turned sour and scary.

  ‘Why not here?’ Teacher said.

  The next sound I heard was a familiar one—my .38 cocks smoothly and softly if you know how to handle a weapon. Teacher did. I kept my eyes open even though the blood pounding in my head threatened to burst through my eyeballs. I wanted to see things, hear things! Mario was holding the torch and in its glancing beam I saw what he held in his other fist—a short-handled shovel. That’s when I closed my eyes and said my goodbyes to Cyn and my sister and Joanie Dare and everybody else I’d loved and hurt.

  When the heavy, booming shots sounded I knew the bullets weren’t for me and I experienced sheer joy. Teacher was hit twice. He jerked the gun up and fired wildly but another shot got him somewhere vital and he crumpled and lay still. Mario was hit too. He yelled, dropped the shovel and the torch and started to run towards the trees. Two more bullets stopped him in his tracks. He groaned, fell awkwardly and twitched. I heard him scratching at the ground. The torch was on its side, still throwing light. I twisted my head around to see Gallagher. As I did a voice came from the darkness:

  ‘One fuckin’ move, Ian, and you’re off.’

  Another light showed and Colin Pascoe came slowly forward carrying a carbine and a large flashlight. The beam reached Gallagher, who stood white-faced and shaking. His jacket was buttoned. He hadn’t tried to reach his pistol.

  ‘I knew you were a gutless wonder,’ Pascoe said. He walked up to Gallagher and clouted him hard in the face with the metal flashlight. Gallagher reeled back and hit the open door of the van. He grabbed at it for support. Blood trickled down his face. ‘Col, I …’

  ‘Shut up, prick! Put your weapon on the ground.’

  Gallagher eased the pistol out slowly and dropped it on the grass. It landed only a foot or so from my head and the sound reawakened my fears. Three enemies out of action, but what about Pascoe? I squinted up at him but the light wasn’t on him and all I could see was a big dark shape. Then I was blinded by the strong beam and I heard Pascoe’s rumbling laugh. ‘I wondered why your big mouth wasn’t working, Hardy. Now I see.’

  The light danced away again. Pascoe picked up Gallagher’s gun and shoved it into a pocket of his combat jacket. He had to juggle the other things he was holding but he did it deftly. This was the moment for him to swing the carbine around and make it a hat trick, if that was what he had in mind. Gallagher was fumbling for a cigarette.

  ‘Light me one, too, Ian,’ Pascoe said. ‘You should be able to manage that.’

  Pascoe put his torch on my chest. Gallagher passed the lit cigarette over. They were virtually on top of me and Pascoe’s rifle was only inches from my head. He drew on his cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke, when he leaned the rifle against the ute. It was very quiet. Mario’s dirt-scratching had stopped. Gallagher and Pascoe smoked. I shivered and the torch jiggled.

  ‘Chalky’s where he belongs at last,’ Pascoe said. ‘Who’s the other cunt?’

  Gallagher’s voice was strangled and shaky. ‘Name’s Mario. He works for …’

  ‘Henry Wilton. I was watching. You might have a fuckin’ law degree but you’re a dumb bastard, Ian. I knew you were bent. I’ve been watching you ever since you got into this. I heard your little chat with Hardy in his office.’

  Jack the rat, I thought, and he isn’t going to kill me.

  ‘What … what’re you going to do, Col?’

  ‘Do? I’ve already done what Bob Loggins asked me to do.’

  ‘Loggins. What d’you mean?’

  ‘Oh, me ’n’ Bob go back a long way. He told me what was going on and I agreed to keep an eye on you and Hardy. It worked out pretty much the way he hoped it would, eh?’

  I was seriously cold now, trembling with it, and my various cuts and bruises were stinging and stiffening up. I made an effort, heaved and flipped the torch off my chest.

  ‘Shit, I forgot about you, Hardy. Cut him loose, Ian, and see if you can find something to keep the poor bugger warm.’

  I knew enough to lie still for a minute after Gallagher cut the rope. A sudden movement could’ve given me a crippling cramp. He ripped the tape from my face roughly, taking skin and beard bristles with it. I swore at him as I slowly tested the mobility of my arms and legs. He made no reply. He went to the ute and came back with my clothes which he dropped on top of me. I turned slowly and painfully to look at Pascoe who was squashing out the end of his cigarette with his big, blunt fingers. He dropped the butt into his pocket.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. My voice sounded like a frog with its throat cut. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Out Campbelltown way,’ Pascoe s
aid. ‘You were bloody lucky, Hardy. It was tricky following them in the dark with no lights, and if they’d got on with the job instead of pissing around you’d be under by now.’

  I pulled the crumpled clothes on, making small, careful movements, glad of the warmth, even gladder to get the feeling that I was still the same man, still alive and likely to see the night out. ‘You sound almost sorry they didn’t do it.’

  Pascoe laughed, picked up Mario’s torch and walked across to look at the dead men. He barely glanced at the neat dark shape that was Teacher, but he studied the crumpled form of Mario closely, playing the torch beam on different parts of the body. He straightened up and ambled back. ‘I got him twice with the carbine but he got another nick as well.’

  ‘From Chalky,’ I said. ‘With my gun.’

  I stood up. My joints creaked. I’d almost dislocated my shoulder when I’d fallen out of the van and it was aching savagely. Ian Gallagher was chain-smoking, staring out towards the stand of trees. His pale face was set in lines of despair and his usually carefully arranged fair hair had flopped down over his forehead, giving him a defeated, puzzled look. My keys, watch and tobacco were in the side pockets of my jacket. My pistol holster was missing. I looked at my watch. It was close to 10 p.m. I rolled a cigarette, one of the worst I’d ever made, and got it up to my mouth. My lighter, Cyn’s present, was missing and I never found it. Gallagher lit the smoke.

  ‘What happens next?’ I asked Pascoe.

  21

  I gave Pascoe a brief run-down on what the whole business had been about and ventured the opinion that Mario had killed Juliet Farquhar. Gallagher nodded but stopped the movement when Pascoe gave him a savage look. The rain held off but it was getting colder out there. Gallagher and I were in our street suits; Pascoe was comfortable in his battle jacket. He put the odd question and I realised that my original assessment of him had been way off-beam. He was a shrewd, experienced cop and I was having trouble matching him up with the blustering thug who’d assaulted me in the Bondi police station. I asked him about that and he grinned.

  ‘An act,’ he said. ‘More or less. I knew Ian here was playing funny buggers. Someone I had keeping an eye out told me about your little pow-wow outside the Darlo station. When I heard you’d gone straight for Ian after you struck bother I thought I’d push that along a little. You’re a pretty good fighter, Hardy, but I wasn’t really trying.’

  I buttoned my jacket against the cold and said nothing. It was still good to be alive but not so good to feel stupid. I was in pain, too, and wanted to get away from the spot that could easily have been my unmarked grave. Pascoe was starting to look a bit tired himself and Gallagher had gone very quiet and still. He wasn’t smoking now, just worrying. My tooth jumped.

  ‘You wouldn’t have anything alcoholic on you, would you?’ I asked Pascoe. ‘I could do with a drink.’

  ‘There’s some scotch in the van,’ Gallagher said.

  Pascoe took Gallagher’s pistol from his pocket. ‘You fetch it, Ian. I’ll come along just to make sure you don’t drop it in the dark.’

  I was shivering again by this time. I leaned against the vehicle and my foot touched something stiff but yielding. It was a sheet of heavy plastic. Another shovel and a rake were half-wrapped in it. Standing in the pool of light it was hard to tell much about the plot of land. I thought I could see the track we had come in on; the trees were plain against the sky and there looked to be other shapes—bushes or rocky outcrops. The grass was high and thick. Nothing much had happened out here for a very long time. Then I caught a movement out in the darkness. I stared and two shining discs appeared a few feet above the ground about fifty yards away. I was laughing when Gallagher and Pascoe came back with the bottle.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Pascoe said.

  I pointed. There’s a kangaroo out there.’

  Pascoe swung his torch. The shining eyes disappeared and I heard the soft thumps as the animal hopped away.

  ‘Got better things to do,’ Pascoe said. ‘So have we.’

  We all had a drink from the bottle. The liquor stung my battered mouth and scorched my parched throat but it still felt good.

  ‘Good grog,’ Pascoe said. ‘You didn’t keep any little mementos, did you? Tapes? Notes? Photos of this and that?’

  I shook my head and reached for the bottle again.

  ‘Okay. Well, what we’ve got here is two fucking murderers killed by a police officer in the course of his duty. We’ve got another officer operating in an undercover capacity as a witness, and a civilian who’s been assisting authorities in their investigation. Also a witness. What would you say about that assessment of the situation, Mr Hardy?’

  Two big swigs on a very empty stomach and a very disturbed metabolism hit me like a right and a left from Tony Mundine. I was feeling lightheaded and weightless, as if I could float away into the trees. Some birds called. Another sip and I could be up there with them. ‘I’d say that was spot on, Mr Pascoe. Spot on.’

  ‘Good. Don’t touch anything here. Just get in the van to keep warm. Me and Ian’ll get some help. We’ll be back soon.’

  Gallagher’s face was a study of confusion, a blend of terror and hope. He didn’t fancy walking off into the dark with Pascoe, but the reference to him as a witness and an undercover operator must have sounded like sweet music. He took another drink and screwed the cap back on the bottle. No more drinking. No flying tonight.

  ‘What about Ian? Does he get a say?’

  ‘No,’ Pascoe said. ‘He does exactly what he’s told. He doesn’t get a say at all.’

  That night I discovered how much better the cops are at managing their own death scenes than anyone else’s. The blue lights and the uniforms arrived along with the suits and the cameras. They went about it smoothly, with lots of nods and murmurs of agreement. Bob Loggins showed up briefly. He didn’t talk to me but I saw him shake a very pale and stressed-looking Ian Gallagher by the hand. My .38 went into a plastic bag and I never saw it again. A bloke with a medical chest came over to me and did what he could for my cuts and abrasions. He gave me a sling for my wrenched shoulder and I wore it. Why not? Why should Colin Pascoe hog all the heroism?

  Eventually they had all the pictures and measurements and fingerprints they needed and, as the movie people say, they called it a wrap. I was just about asleep by this time, with a blanket around my shoulders. I’d had some hot coffee from a thermos, but the caffeine was losing the battle. I climbed into the back of a police car and settled down into its comfort. Just before we left the door opened and I was looking into Pascoe’s ugly, bristled face, smelling the whisky and tobacco on his breath and knowing my breath would smell much the same.

  ‘I’ll drop in tomorrow,’ he said quietly. ‘Until then, your door and your mouth are shut. You don’t use the phone, you don’t write anything down. Understood?’

  ‘What about Henry Wilton?’

  He put his fingers to his lips and slammed the door shut. I don’t remember anything about the ride back to Glebe. I must have slept through it. A cop escorted me to my front door and helped me to open it. The cord they’d used on my wrists had scraped skin away and I realised that my fingers had been tingling unpleasantly ever since the circulation had been restored.

  ‘Will you be all right, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘I’ll be okay, Constable. Thank you.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  I stood at the door and watched him go down the path, through the gate to the police car. A solidly built young man,, competent, a public servant. It was 2 a.m. or thereabouts and the street was quiet. The strangeness of it all struck me—here I was in my scarcely renovated terrace in Glebe, with money being made and upward mobility getting going all around me, and I’d come within a hair’s breadth of being buried in a Campbelltown paddock. I was bleeding in ten places and smelled like an all-in wrestler after a night on the town. I didn’t belong here, but then again, with an architect wife and a small business to operate, I did. I closed the door an
d limped towards the back of the quiet house.

  A jacket of Cyn’s was hanging on a doorknob and I sniffed at it as I went past. Ma Griffe or Rive Gauche, I could never tell the difference. But it was a Cyn smell and I missed her powerfully. What would I tell her if she’d been here? Would I say, ‘I came this close’? I knew I wouldn’t. I’d make a joke about the steepness of the McElhone steps and the exorbitant cost of dry cleaning and throw down as much white wine as I could. I climbed the stairs, stripping off my clothes as I went and fell on the bed and dragged a sheet across me. An hour later I woke up out of a nightmare which faded immediately. I was cold and the room seemed unnaturally dark. I found a blanket and turned on the bedside light and slept fitfully for another couple of hours like a frightened kid.

  As it happened, Pascoe’s rules weren’t hard to live by. I wasn’t in any shape to go out walking, there was food and drink in the house and I was too demoralised to want to talk to anybody. The phone rang a couple of times and I ignored it. I didn’t stick to the letter of the law. I opened the front door to collect the paper. A car I’d never seen before was parked across the street and it was still there later when I checked for mail. I read the paper from cover to cover. They were talking about introducing late-night shopping on Thursdays on a trial basis. There was a story about the opening of Sydney’s first sex shop selling ‘fantasy apparel’, ‘erotic literature’ and ‘marital aids’. Probably go well on Thursday nights. The operational phase of Australia’s military presence in Vietnam was drawing to a close. I read that piece several times to see what it meant about the war, apart from the fact that the boys were coming home. Between the armyese and the journalese it was impossible to tell.