Burn, and Other Stories

by Peter Corris

  ‘It’s a joke for sure.’

  ‘If it’s funny, I’ll laugh.’

  He took the money. ‘He’ll do a hit for five grand.’

  I produced another twenty. ‘Tell me where to find him.’

  Logan, being the man he is, gave me three addresses and two names. Never in his life had he been known to deliver up information straight. In the old days, I’d have had to make a decision—would it be better to give him more money or lean hard and persuade him to be more precise? But everyone’s become more devious since those times, and more hungry lately. Besides, Logan was almost a cripple. I bought him another beer, thanked him and left the pub. I’m more devious nowadays as well—I positioned myself where I could spot the Dingo and follow him, whether he limped, drove himself or rode.

  He came out of the pub and hopped into a taxi which he’d apparently called from inside. I was right behind him, up Bourke to Oxford Street and through to Paddington. Like I said, alcohol is the fuel of criminality. Logan paid off his cab outside the Five Ways Hotel and took himself, and my fifty bucks, inside. Trendy place, for the Dingo—restored to its former glory, painted in colonial colours and with as many vines growing out of pots as could be crammed into the available space. It wasn’t one of the addresses he had given me. I parked a few doors from the pub and walked back, fishing sunglasses out of my pocket and getting ready to do my imitation of a private detective on the job. In fact I knew that if Logan had another couple of beers it would be possible to belly up to the same bar and not be recognised.

  The poet who said something about standing and waiting should be the official laureate of this trade. I watched men and women enter and leave the Five Ways for the next fifteen minutes. About half of the males could have been hit men or cops and a certain percentage of the females could have been males. When I judged that Logan would have absorbed two schooners, I went into the public bar. Logan was drinking at the far end, near the dartboard. He looked anxiously at his watch and lifted his glass with an unsteady hand. I got behind a pot-plant that seemed to have wandered in from outside and did some more watching. A big, beefy guy in a blue suit came in and spotted the Dingo. He had sparse blonde hair cut short, and a red face with a deep cleft in the chin. I didn’t know him and from the way he moved, as if he expected everyone to get out of his way, I didn’t want to.

  He ordered a scotch and ice and appeared to be ready to give Logan about one minute of his time. The Dingo said something quickly in his ear and cleft-chin scowled. He grabbed a handful of Logan’s jacket and polo-neck sweater and hustled him straight towards the toilet door. The action was so quick and neat that I was the only person in the bar who noticed. I went after them. Steep steps dropped away immediately inside the door. I heard scuffling sounds and went down the steps fast and quiet. Cleft-chin had Logan bent forward over a hand basin. He was so big it was hard to see the Dingo’s body at all, but I could tell that his feet were scrabbling for a purchase on the slippery tiles and his head was getting wet. The big man was running water with his right hand and holding Logan’s head down with his left.

  I came up behind him and jabbed my .38 Smith & Wesson hard into the base of his spine. His head lifted and he saw me in the wall mirror behind the basins. I ran the muzzle of the gun up a few vertebrae and then moved it away.

  ‘Let him go,’ I said, ‘or I’ll make you a worse cripple than he is.’

  Logan spluttered, pulled free and headed for the door. The big man let him go and I could feel him ready to turn his aggression on me. I backed away and kept the gun steadied on his wide mid-section.

  He shook water from his hands, some of it in my direction. ‘You’re not going to use that,’ he growled.

  ‘You can’t be sure.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ He moved forward, getting balanced.

  The door opened and a man came in with his hand already dropping towards his fly. His jaw dropped when he saw the gun. ‘Hey,’ he said weakly, ‘what is this?’

  ‘Stand aside,’ I said. ‘I’m a police officer and I’m arresting this man. You’re coming with me, aren’t you, Clark?’

  He swore, bullocked past the man at the door and went up the stairs. Three steps up, he kicked back savagely at me. I was ready for it. I grabbed his leg and jerked him down. He bounced against the wall, flailed his arms for a split second and then fell clumsily to the bottom. He landed heavily with his ankle turned under him. The would-be toilet user was gaping.

  I grinned at him. ‘He slipped. You saw it, didn’t you?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘He’ll probably claim police brutality.’ I gestured for Clark to get up. He did, testing the ankle gingerly. I prodded him with the gun. ‘Up you go and mind your footing. For a big man, you’re very clumsy.’

  I put the gun away and we went through the bar without attracting attention. Clark limped convincingly, but I held myself ready to plant my foot in the back of his knee if he suddenly got mobile. There was no sign of Logan on the street. Everything looked normal—light traffic, pedestrians hurrying to keep warm. I was struck by the bizarre thing I was doing. Clark seemed to sense my confusion. He stopped in the middle of the pavement and jammed his fists in his pockets.

  ‘Okay, hotshot,’ he said. ‘What’s this all about?’

  ‘Why were you heavying the Dingo?’

  Clark grinned. The cleft in his chin flattened out and made him look even meaner. ‘He was giving me some bullshit about someone looking for me. He didn’t want to say who. I was persuading him.’

  ‘Me,’ I said.

  ‘Well, well. I can’t say I’m pleased to meet you. In fact, if I thought my ankle’d stand up to it, I’d punch your fuckin’ face in. What the fuck do you want?’

  It wasn’t something to talk about there on the street. I grabbed his arm, jerked him off balance and propelled him a few steps towards my car. ‘C’mon. I’ll give you a lift.’

  He swore and hobbled. I held him up, still pushing; he couldn’t get any leverage and had to go with the pressure. At the right moment, I shoved again. He lurched forward and had to grab at the car for support. I opened the door and pushed him in. He lifted his foot out of the way quickly as I slammed the door. I moved around and got into the driver’s seat, ready for him to try something nasty at close quarters. He didn’t. He was curious. He took out a packet of Camels and a lighter. He lit up and I wound down the window.

  ‘So?’ he said.

  I told him who I was and the nature of my business. He smoked in short, jerky puffs. He nodded and grinned when I said the name Andrew McPherson. When I finished talking he took a last, deep drag and flicked the cigarette past me and out the window.

  ‘That Logan better crawl under a rock,’ he said.

  ‘Kill him, would you?’

  He laughed. ‘I never killed anyone in my fuckin’ life. Never would. Mug’s game.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. So, it’s just a scam, is it?’

  ‘Yeah. Right. Look, Hardy, I don’t want you on my fuckin’ back, so I’ll tell you about it. I take ten per cent up front and I don’t do anything. What’s going to happen? Do you think Mrs Fucknuckle’s going to go running to the cops and say ‘This guy didn’t kill my shitface husband the way he promised”? Like hell she is.’

  ‘Wasn’t this a bit different? The hit actually hiring you himself?’

  He waved one of his big hands dismissively. ‘Bullshit. All bullshit. Tell him from me he’s as safe as … what the fuck is safe these days? How about my lift?’

  I leaned across him and opened the door. He laughed, eased himself out and hobbled off back towards the pub.

  I phoned Gabrielle Walker and gave her a suitably edited version of what had happened. ‘I don’t think you have to worry,’ I said. ‘How’s Mr McPherson?’

  ‘Cheerful. But he still thinks he’s doing something clever and solved his problem. It’s terrible for me. I don’t know what to do. But thank you for what you’ve done, Mr Hardy.’

  ‘Is he
getting any help at the moment? Psychiatric help?’

  ‘No. Nothing like that.’

  ‘Maybe in time you’ll be able to talk about this. Tell him that he’s not going to be killed. It’s out of my line, but I’d talk to him if you think it would do any good.’

  ‘Perhaps. Not now. But thank you again, Mr Hardy.’

  So, I left it there. What else was there to do? It was hard on the woman, but if McPherson had bought himself some kind of weird comfort for five hundred bucks, that was his business.

  Two weeks later she phoned me at home, at five o’clock in the morning. ‘You bastard,’ she sobbed. ‘You bastard. You told me it was all right. You told me …’

  It took me a few seconds to place the voice, distorted by grief and anger. ‘Ms Walker. What happened?’

  ‘He’s dead! Andrew’s dead. He killed him. God damn you, you bastard!’

  She hung up. I gripped the receiver and tried to take in what she’d said. I was still half-asleep. Impossible. I started phoning and eventually got onto a Detective Sergeant Belfanti who was handling the investigation of the deaths of Andrew McPherson and Reginald Clark Cook.

  ‘Cook a big guy with a cleft chin?’ I asked.

  Belfanti was terse. He told me to get down to the Edgecliff police station immediately. I was there in twenty-five minutes and shown into the detectives’ room. Belfanti was a young, well-groomed smoothie, learning to be tough.

  ‘Sit down, Hardy. How did you get onto this? It only happened a few hours ago.’

  ‘McPherson’s girlfriend.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  He switched on a tape recorder and I told him. He listened impassively, scribbling notes with a gold pen. When I finished he looked up.

  ‘Really fucked up, didn’t you?’

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘You’ve got contacts in the force. You didn’t think it’d be a good idea to talk to someone about this prick? This Cook?’

  ‘I thought I’d handled it.’

  ‘You handled it all right. Miss Walker and McPherson had a blue. She told him how you’d handled Cook.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Simple enough. McPherson went after Cook with a gun—.22 rifle, if you want to know. The witness says McPherson got Cook out of bed and started blasting. Cook took seven bullets, but he got McPherson.’

  ‘Who was the witness?’

  ‘Some whore Cook had with him. McPherson winged her too. Pity you weren’t around, Hardy. He could’ve taken a shot at you.’

  Lost and Found

  ‘It’s Colin, Mr Hardy. I know it is!’

  She’d shown me a photograph and told me it was of her husband. A wife generally knows what her husband looks like, but I was sceptical. The photo was clipped from a local newspaper—the Eastern Suburbs Courier—one of those free rags full of civic news and real estate ads, not renowned for the quality of anything—photographs, paper, accuracy. The picture was of the Petersham Lawn Tennis Club Men’s A Grade team which had beaten the Coogee team in a semifinal of the club competition.

  I put my finger on the rather blurred head of a man turned slightly away from the camera. ‘Him?’

  Mrs Andrea Cook nodded. She was an attractive, somewhat care-worn, woman in her mid-thirties. She looked as though a few hours more sleep per night and a few hundred extra bucks per week would’ve transformed her into someone much more vibrant. She had told me that her husband had disappeared while swimming at Apollo Bay in Victoria four years ago. She and Colin Cook had been married for four years. They had a child and Colin had conducted a successful, small-scale building and consultancy business.

  ‘How small?’

  ‘Col built mudbrick houses, yurts, wattle and daub, that sort of thing. You know?’

  I said I didn’t know and she filled me in quickly on the details of alternative house-building in Victoria in the mid-’80s. Apparently, special government-backed loans and even grants were available for people prepared to build their own houses out of local, environmentally friendly materials. But the builders needed plans, advice, land-use approvals, and modifications to their solar, naturally insulated, low-maintenance fantasies. That was where Colin came in. He built a mean mudbrick open-planner and he also had the technical and economic know-how and the political skills to steer projects through the grant application minefield into council-approved heaven.

  ‘Sounds like he was on a winner,’ I said.

  ‘For a while,’ Andrea Cook said. ‘But bad times began in Victoria earlier than most people think. The grants and loans started to dry up. The councils started to get scared of the greenies, especially in the country. They began to worry about how real environmentalists would feel about the rivers and creeks being toxic sewers for half the year.’

  There was a passionate, iconoclastic note in her voice and, just for an instant, I could see this mild-mannered, suit-wearing, middle-class woman as a denim-clad, headbanded greenie, chained to a fence or lying in the mud in front of a low-loader.

  ‘So what happened?’ I said.

  ‘The business got into trouble. Colin owed money to people who wouldn’t wait and the people who owed him money couldn’t pay. He was tense, withdrawn. We fought. He drank. We borrowed a house from some friends at Apollo Bay. Col went swimming one morning and didn’t come back. The water was rough that day. I still loved him. It was terrible.’

  She told me that Cook had had a paid-up life insurance policy and, while the company wasn’t happy with the circumstances, she got a payout. Not the full amount, but enough to settle the most pressing debts.

  ‘They weren’t as bad as Col had made them out to be,’ she said. ‘That puzzled me, but it stopped the insurance company from insisting on invoking the suicide clause.’

  She said she came out of the legal battles with enough to finance a move back to Sydney where she’d come from.

  ‘I’m a Maroubra girl and I went back there. You’re from Maroubra too, aren’t you? My solicitor—I was seeing him about something else, but I sort of steered him round to talking about private detectives—told me about you.’

  Indeed I was. I’d been ocean-dipped, salt-sprayed and maybe skin-cancered there at least ten years before her. I had no intention of going back, though. The solicitor’s name didn’t ring a bell, but it was a bond of some sort and the job didn’t sound too hard on the operational level. The emotional side of it might get a bit sticky for Andrea later if the man did turn out to be her husband and not David Richmond, the way it said in the photo caption. But that wouldn’t be my problem.

  She smiled when I said I’d help and, as I suspected, a smile improved her looks a lot.

  ‘Did your husband have any brothers or cousins? This could be a family resemblance.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No brothers or male cousins.’

  That made it time to caution her. ‘This sort of thing happens, Mrs Cook. Men take off and start new lives, new families.’

  ‘I have to know,’ she said. ‘If you find that it is Col and what he’s doing, I’ll think about what to do next.’

  That seemed fair enough. She was a qualified pharmacist and had a job in a Maroubra shop that was doing okay. She was buying a flat and could write a decent cheque. I got a six-year-old photo and some details on Col: born Melbourne, 1952; 180 centimetres, brown hair, olive complexion, solid build; no spectacles, hearing aids or false teeth. I looked at the photo. Like the man in the clipping, he was wearing tennis gear. He held a racquet as if he knew how to use it. Maybe.

  ‘Was he a good tennis player, your husband?’

  ‘Oh, yes—very good. A schoolboy champion.’

  ‘Any peculiarities? I mean scars or birthmarks, anything like that?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Nothing. He’s a very normal man. In every way.’ We both noticed that she was using the present tense. She took another look at the clipping before handing it to me.

  ‘You’ve talked to someone about it now,’ I sai
d. ‘That can help in itself. You’re still sure?’

  Firm nod. ‘When can you … ?’

  ‘Today,’ I said. ‘But it could take a while. I’ll be in touch.’

  I waited until she’d gone before lifting up the L–Z. It doesn’t look impressive but it often works. Not this time though—no Richmonds in Petersham, Stanmore or Marrickville. Worth a try. I phoned the tennis club and was told that the competition players practised on Friday evening. Tomorrow. That was okay; I had bills to pay, phone calls to make, people to meet.

  The Petersham Lawn Tennis Club was on Stanley Road, Marrickville. I hadn’t expected to find any actual grass courts there, but I was wrong. There were three in a group behind a dozen or so with the usual synthetic surfaces. I parked in the street and took a look at the courts, feeling nostalgic. There used to be a lot of grass courts around Sydney, green in winter, bare and yellow in summer. Bastards to play on, with their uneven surfaces and tricky bounces, but in the 1950s grass was the real surface, like at Wimbledon, Forest Hills and Kooyong. These survivors were well maintained and the people playing mixed doubles on two of them were having a good time.

  The serious business was taking place on a hard court near the clubhouse. I wandered through the gate, behind the social players and took up a position near the court. It was after six but with daylight saving in operation, the light was good. So were the players. Two men were playing a hard-hitting singles, going all out, whipping top and underspin shots across court and rushing the net at every opportunity to make punching volleys. I watched a few games. Both had grooved, kicking serves and good footwork. The difference emerged in the third game—the shorter guy was a fraction faster and had a little more variety in his game. When he had to scramble for a shot he did something quirky with it. He won more of the points that mattered.

  Two men sat on a bench outside the clubhouse watching the play. They wore tennis gear and exchanged remarks from time to time about shots made and missed. One of them was the subject of my enquiry. Height is hard to judge when the person’s sitting, but 180 centimetres seemed about right. He had the pleasant, open face and the square shoulders of the Colin Cook in the photograph. There was a fair bit of grey in his hair, but then, the photo was six years old. Col was getting on for forty now. Still only maybe. I moved a bit closer. A few of the social players wandered around. They looked respectfully at the men I was watching. Tennis obviously had its serious side at the Petersham courts, although I could see the illuminated Tooheys sign near the driveway to the clubhouse and, from the sound of it, some of the activity inside was more social than sporting.