The Black Prince ch-22

by Peter Corris

  ‘Thank you, Ms Martyn, you’ve been very helpful.’

  Somehow we’d drawn closer so that we were almost touching. Now she drew away a bit as if she’d just noticed. ‘Can’t see how.’

  ‘One last thing-is there anyone who might know something about what was going on in Clinton’s head? The kid he shares a house with doesn’t know anything and he’s been out of touch with his family.’

  She stood up and flexed her shoulders, picked up the clipboard. We moved towards the door. It was raining hard outside and the sight of it seemed to affect her. ‘I hate the rain,’ she said. ‘Silly but I do. I should live in San Diego where it doesn’t happen. Sorry, what was that you said?’

  ‘Someone who knew Clinton intimately.’

  She laughed harshly. ‘Yeah, well, you could try Ted Kinnear. Coaches the men’s basketball team. Coach is supposed to know what the players are up to. Hah. Look at me-at first I thought Angela was bulking up from the weights. Still, worth a try. You’d get him here tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She turned away and then turned quickly back, shaking her head. ‘Hold on. Ted Kinnear handed over to his assistant recently. Leo Carey’s the man you want.’

  I thanked her yet again. She nodded and strode out into the rain as if daring it to trouble her. I felt oddly lonely after she’d gone. That’s been happening to me lately. I get a feeling with someone that a connection’s possible here, and then it falls away.

  I sat damply in my car thinking about what I’d got. It seemed like quite a haul of information for comparatively little investment of time, but which way did it point? I was going to have to stay in the district to talk to the basketball coach the next day so I decided to put in one more house call. In any case, Parramatta would be a better place to stay in than Campbelltown-better chance of a decent meal at least.

  I caught the tail end of ‘PM’ as I drove to Parramatta. Pauline Hanson’s popularity was rising rapidly according to the polls, as people saw in One Nation a way to show how pissed off they were with the others. Bad news. But the rain eased. I found the Cousins’ address in the northern section of the town, across the street from the Pentecostal church. As always when confronting Aborigines, I had to prepare myself. Don’t patronise; don’t be too matey; don’t… I’d soldiered with Aborigines, boxed with them, drunk with them, joked with them for more than twenty years and still I never felt comfortable at first meetings. My English, Irish gypsy and French ancestors had arrived in the late nineteenth century and lived in cities. I had no reason to feel personally guilty about the dispossession of the Aborigines but I did.

  I exchanged my damp parka for my dry leather jacket, smoothed my hair and straightened my shirt collar after doing up two more buttons. There were lights on in the house, an unremarkable double-fronted brick-veneer job with a neat front garden and a cement path. I pushed open the wrought-iron gate and stopped dead still. The dog occupying the middle of the path was low-slung, black and emitting a barely suppressed fury. It barked three times and I didn’t move a muscle. It looked like a Staffordshire terrier, normally a congenial breed, but all terriers can bite and hold ferociously and you never can tell.

  An outside light came on over the front door. It opened and a tall man stood there.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Are you Mr Cousins?’

  ‘I am. Who’re you?’

  I told him, keeping my voice down, no need to advertise the business to the neighbours. ‘Would you call off the dog, please?’

  ‘Jerry, back here!’

  The dog retreated and I advanced a few steps, brushing away a branch of a shrub that had partly obscured my vision of the man. I could now see that he was tall, thin and straight, with brown skin and a frizz of white hair. I stopped short of the porch but put one foot up on it.

  ‘Hardy,’ he said. ‘Private detective. You the bloke Jimmy Sunday talks about?’

  Some time back I’d helped ex-fighter Jimmy Sunday straighten a few things out for Jacko Moody, who was then on his way to the national middleweight title. ‘I know Jimmy. Yes, I guess so.’

  ‘Come in, then. Don’t worry about the dog, he won’t hurt you.’

  ‘He puts on a good act.’

  ‘That’s all it is.’ He reached out and we shook hands. It was like touching wood; I felt thickened knuckles and callused fingers and palm-a boxer and an axeman for sure.

  We went into the smallish house which was similar in design to the one in Helensburgh but in much better condition. Cousins led me into the sitting room and turned off the TV set. He gestured for me to sit down and I took a chair near the fire and leaned forward to rub my hands in front of it.

  Cousins smiled. ‘They used to say you’d get chilblains from doing that. I never did. Tell you the truth, I don’t know what a chilblain is. What can I do for you, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘I’m looking for young Clinton Scott. He’s dropped out of sight and his family’s worried. I’ve been told he kept company with your daughter. I’m sorry, I know what happened to her and I know this must be hard for you, but I thought you might be able to help me.’

  I guessed his age at forty-plus and they hadn’t been easy years. A few of the marks of boxing were on his face-a little scar tissue around the eyes, a flattened and marginally off-centre nose, one slightly thickened ear-but the lines and planes of his face suggested that his usual expression was one of peace and good humour. There was an uppishness to him. At the mention of Angela, some of this fell away.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I thought you might be here about the old-time boxers’ association, something like that. You’ve got the look yourself

  ‘No, sorry. Not that.’

  All my worries about the barriers of ethnicity fell away. This was a man in pain and I’d dealt with plenty of those. ‘I knew a Joey Cousins once,’ I said. ‘I boxed with him in the army. He was a sergeant. Welterweight. Good punch.’

  Cousins brightened a little and nodded. ‘My uncle. I was named after him, but my dad was against fighting so I went under the name of Joey Lewis. Sort of joke, you know?’

  ‘I get it. How did you do?’

  He shrugged. ‘West Australian middleweight title. Fought in the west mostly. Got to Adelaide a couple of times. Darwin. Never had the name to get fights in the east. I came east in the late seventies but the game was in the doldrums. Before Fenech and them. I had a few goes in the tents and that was enough for me. Gave it away.’

  ‘Probably wise.’

  ‘Yeah. I did all right. Worked in the timber game until that all slowed down. Got a fair package.’

  I nodded. We’d covered some neutral ground now and made some connections. He cracked his knuckles and stared at the fire. ‘Well, something to do with Angie?’

  I gave him the story in as much detail as I could. He listened, still looking at the fire. The dog padded in from somewhere and curled up in front of the fire, not far from my feet. Cousins reached forward and patted him. The dog didn’t stir.

  ‘My wife’s at her church group,’ Cousins said. ‘Got very churchy lately. Always a bit that way. Not a bad thing in a woman. Does no bloody good for me though. Fancy a drink?’

  ‘That’d be good.’

  He went out and came back with a longneck of VB and two glasses. He poured the drinks and took a judicious sip. ‘Be easy to get on the piss after all this,’ he said. ‘But I won’t. Wife needs me. Gotta slog on, haven’t you?’

  ‘Right.’ I drank to that.

  ‘Yeah. Well, Clinton. Bloody nice kid. Angie brought him around a couple of times. We both liked him. I’ve known a few West Indians here and there. Good people. I remember Julie, that’s the wife, saying that it was a good combination, West Indian and Koori. You know the Saunders family, Reg and them? Reg had a West Indian in the line, grandfather I think. And he was a captain in the army. First Koori officer. His kids’ve done well, too. My Julie was looking ahead… See, Angie’s our only kid and Julie comes from this big fa
mily down Bingara way, on the south coast. She’s a Roberts, big mob of them down there. That’s where we met. I mean, she’s real light-skinned and the welfare took her away as a nipper and stuck her in an institution. She only connected up with her people much later. So it’s all very important to her, like. She was thinking about grandchildren.’

  He got up and opened a drawer in a dresser. He took out a framed studio photograph and showed it to me. Julie Cousins was many shades lighter than her husband and Angela was the same. They were a good-looking threesome, making allowances for Joe Cousins’ hard knocks. Angela, who looked to be in her late teens, was tall and slight with an athletic carriage and a winning smile. Just looking at her image it was hard to believe that she wouldn’t go on to do great things. In my jacket pocket I had the photograph of Clinton after kicking his goal-similarly promising and future problematical. I handed the picture back and he put it away.

  ‘Did you see Clinton after Angela went into hospital?’

  He nodded and drank some more beer. ‘A couple of times. He was really cut up. Angry as hell. I went in one time and found him after he’d been to see her. He was crying and he was pulling his boot to bits.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A footy boot. He had a sports bag with his gear in it. He’d taken out one of his boots and was ripping it to shreds with his hands. Not easy to do, that.’

  ‘What did he have to say?’

  ‘Not much. He’d been drinking pretty heavily I’d say. He nearly got run in by the cops, too.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘This was another time. Bit later. He was here. He’d brought us back from the hospital in his car. A copper came to talk to us, you know, about the steroids. It was the first Clinton had heard of it. Julie and me’d only been told the day before. We thought she’d had some sort of attack. Shit!’

  He finished his drink and I followed suit. He refilled the glasses and it was as if we were drinking to lost hopes and broken dreams.

  ‘What did Clinton do?’

  ‘When the copper mentioned the steroids and asked us if we knew where Angie’d got them, Clinton went wild. We knew bugger-all, of course. Clinton screamed that it was impossible. That Angie wouldn’t do anything like that. That’s what I thought at first, but they explained the tests and all and you couldn’t knock it. Clinton attacked the copper. I hauled him off and we got it calmed down, but he was off his head and it was touch and go for a bit, believe you me.’

  That seemed to head off my next question- did Clinton know anything about how Angela made this fatal turning? Joe Cousins nursed his beer, turning the glass in his battered hands.

  ‘There’s no hope for her, you know,’ he said. ‘She’s going soon. Julie’s just getting her strength up for it. It’s hard. It’s fuckin’ hard. I was disappointed in Clinton if you want to know the truth.’

  ‘Why?’

  He looked at me. His eyes were moist and he rubbed at them in much the same way as Wesley Scott had done. ‘The last night we saw him, after a hospital visit, he said he’d get the people that gave Angie the steroids. He said he’d destroy them. But that’s weeks ago. Julie wanted to talk to him, explain what was going to happen. Talk about a service or something. But his phone doesn’t answer and it was no good leaving messages at the university. We haven’t seen or heard from him since that night.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your trouble,’ I said. ‘And I’m sorry to have had to bring all this up.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s all right. Better to talk than sit and brood about it. D’you reckon he meant it, about getting the bastard who gave her the steroids?’

  ‘I think he did.’

  ‘Good luck to him. I wish I could be there when he does.’

  So do I, I thought.

  5

  Two glasses of beer on an empty stomach was an effective appetiser. I drove to the nearest motel, booked in and found a restaurant that served steak and salad and house wine for a reasonable price. It’d go on Wes Scott’s bill but I never liked to pad the expenses for a friend. The food was good and the red must have been out of one of the better casks because it slid down nicely. The rain had stopped and the sky was clear. The air was cold, moved about by a slight breeze. After a day of driving and sitting I felt the need for exercise. I zipped up the leather jacket and walked around the town for an hour, deliberately keeping my mind off the case.

  Parramatta has a real and honest feel to it, like a place that belongs where it is for real historical and geographical reasons, and does a job it’s supposed to do. Like a lot of Australians, I feel a bit anxious when I’m a long way from the water, but Parramatta didn’t set up too much of that, maybe because the river isn’t far away and it leads to the harbour. Wednesday was evidently a quiet night in the centre. There were pubs doing reasonable business and the usual ebb and flow out of the takeaway joints, but no energy. That suited me. I was tired and my warm room with the double bed and an instant coffee with a dash of Johnny Walker red from the minibar was beckoning.

  Back at the motel, I had a shower, wrapped the towel around me and did some stretching and a few push-ups. Nothing strenuous. I debated whether to have the laced coffee before, after or during making a report to Wesley. I decided on after and phoned him.

  ‘Cliff, I was hoping you’d call.’

  ‘Any news your end?’

  ‘No. Nothing. What’ve you found out?’

  They’re often like that; the anxiety makes them unreasonable so that they think one day on the job should bring concrete results. It never does. I told Wesley about meeting Noel Kidman and the deal I’d made with him.

  ‘That’s fine. I’ll send him a cheque. What else?’

  ‘Nothing much, Wes. But there was a girl Clinton was involved with.’ I described Angela Cousins. There was a silence so long I had to ask if he was still there.

  ‘Yeah, I’m here. An Aboriginal girl? Why didn’t he talk about her, or bring her home?’

  ‘I think you know the answer to that.’

  ‘God, I didn’t think it was that serious.’

  ‘Easy, Wes. I don’t know the finer details of your family set-up.’

  He managed a short laugh. ‘You could hardly accuse Mandy of being prejudiced against blacks. No, I can’t think of anything apart from the blue with Pauline. I’m beginning to wonder if I knew the boy at all.’

  Joe Cousins was probably having the same thoughts, but at least the Scotts didn’t have all their eggs in the one basket. I told Wesley what had happened to Angela and about Clinton’s reaction. I didn’t mention the drinking or the boot-shredding.

  ‘Steroids? My god, Clinton really was hot on that subject. I told him I’d never taken them back in my body-building days. I had a hard time convincing him. He once said he was ashamed to be of the same race as Ben Johnson. I’m not surprised he went wild- The girl couldn’t have done anything worse in his eyes.’

  ‘She couldn’t have done anything worse, period.’

  ‘Of course. That’s very sad. You say she’s going to die?’

  ‘Soon. It looks as if Clinton cut himself off from the girl’s family as well as his own. They seem to have got on very well before that.’

  A silence again while he absorbed the information that his son had been close to people he had chosen to keep separate from his family. When he spoke there was hurt and mystification in his voice. ‘A few years back Clinton had a mate who got leukaemia. Clint was a tower of strength to that family-nothing he wouldn’t do. I don’t understand this. I don’t understand anything. Why he wouldn’t tell us about the girl. Why he’d cut off from her people. What d’you make of it?’

  ‘It’s too soon to say. I’m talking to Clinton’s basketball coach tomorrow. He might have some ideas. I should see Angela’s mother too, for the woman’s perspective. Can’t say I’m looking forward to that.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do, Cliff?’

  ‘No. How are Mandy and Pauline bearing up?’

  ‘It hel
ped when I told them I’d hired you. I thought it would. We’re counting on you, man.’

  Just what you want to hear when all you’ve got is a few unconnected threads and some worrying suspicions. I didn’t know anything about the emotional storms children can stir up or how adults cope with them. Maybe you need to be married with three kids to understand how life really is. If so, I’d missed the bus all along the line. I didn’t know anything about the trade in steroids, but if it was a big money business then an angry kid blundering in could come to serious harm. I didn’t admit any of this to Wesley. I told him I’d stay in touch. Then I made my drink and went to bed.

  I carry shaving tackle, a toothbrush and a change of shirt in the car so I was able to scrub up reasonably well the next morning. I had orange juice and a packet of nuts from the minibar along with two cups of coffee for breakfast, paid my bill and headed back to the university. I passed the hospital on the way and thought about the young woman lying there with machines keeping her alive, technically. She evidently knew nothing about what had happened and was most likely already at peace. But she was leaving a lot of pain and distress behind her.

  Leo Carey was in the middle of a coaching session with his players when I arrived. I sat at the side of the court and watched them going through the set plays, off-fence and de-fence as the language is, dribbling and practising all the other skills of the game. I used to play it at the Police Boys’ Club when the hoop seemed to be halfway to the roof. The giants in this squad slam-dunked and took rebounds in the stratosphere.

  The coach moved restlessly up and down the sideline, shouting and punching the air with his fist. Occasional collisions seemed to inspire him to greater fury and I couldn’t tell whether he was glad his players were bumping the shit out of each other or deploring it. He was a tallish man in his forties, bald with the beginnings of a belly but with the old athlete’s lightness of step. He wore a tracksuit and sneakers and looked as if he spent his entire life dressed like that. A stray ball bounced towards him and he scooped it up and returned it like a rocket while still bellowing.