by Peter Corris
Patrick Lamberte drove up and parked behind me. I used the last of my pocket pack of tissues as he walked into the Post Office. He was an impressive figure—185 centimetres or so and trim. He’d changed his sweater, otherwise he looked pretty much as he had when I’d first seen him except that he was wearing a satisfied, just-had-a-great-fuck look. For a man supposedly facing bankruptcy, he seemed remarkably chipper. When he came out of the Post Office he was carrying a couple of letters and a parcel, about the size of a paperback book, wrapped in brown paper. He tossed it up once and caught it deftly before he swung himself inside the Land Rover. I wiped my running nose on the sleeve of my parka and hated him.
He jumped in and gunned the Land Rover up the hill towards Mt York Road. I followed sedately, wishing that I’d bought more tissues, and cold tablets and Strepsils and rum. I had learned absolutely nothing from Lamberte’s manner. My tentative judgement was that his air of self-satisfaction was probably so strong and so constant that it would always be hard to tell what he was thinking or feeling. He drove fast, bullying a couple of slower cars and changing into the right-turn lane at precisely the moment calculated to cause most consternation behind him. I followed until I was sure that he was headed towards Salisbury Road without any stops along the way and then turned off to take my alternative route into the valley.
The head cold was making my ears ring and my throat felt like Velcro. I was coughing and sniffling when I reached the bottom of the stack of rocks that ascended to my vantage point.
‘Twenty-four-hour cold, Cliff,’ I said. ‘Treatment, exercise, vitamin C and alcohol.’
I was talking to myself again and beginning to feel light-headed. I grabbed the glasses and the whisky and began to climb the rocks. Sweat broke out on me almost at once; it ran into my eyes and I had to stop to wipe them. I took off the parka and tied its sleeves around my waist. I suppressed a giant sneeze and went on with the climb. My thin city socks weren’t right for the boots and I could feel blisters building on each heel. I made it to the ledge and rewarded myself with a swig of the Johnny Walker. It seemed to clear my head. I moved forward, lifted the glasses and peered at the cabin. The land Rover was sitting in its spot by the woodpile. Smoke was drifting lazily from the chimney. They’re probably having coffee, I thought, and getting ready for a rematch, no holds barred. I lowered the glasses. At that instant there was a roar like a low-flying jet and the back of the cabin burst into flames. I dropped the binoculars, jumped across a metre of open space to a big rock, scrambled over that and took off towards flatter ground that would take me to the house. I ran, jumped and scrambled, pushing through low bushes and slipping and sliding on damp grass. A window cracked and the flames roared from it, withdrew, then shot out more fiercely than before. I kicked at the back door until it splintered but the flames flared around the broken panels and drove me back. There was a hose running from the water tank. I turned it on and played it around the door but it had no effect. I ran around the side of the house, looking for another way in or out, but the windows were all set high in the timber walls which were already smoking.
I untied the parka, soaked it and held it over my head as I rushed along the front deck where the heat was less fierce. I kicked in a window and went through it into a big room that was filled with acrid, lung-searing smoke. I saw movement over towards a half-open door and lunged forward. The woman was in the full regalia—black neck ribbon, bra, suspender belt and stockings and all of it, like her cloud of blonde hair, was on fire. I grabbed her, beat at the flames with the wet parka, but she pushed me away.
‘Patrick!’ she screamed. She moved towards the door which was gushing smoke and fire.
‘Don’t.’ My chest filled with smoke as I yelled and I almost collapsed. I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the door. She fought me. She was frantic and incredibly strong. Her mouth was open and she was gulping down smoke as she sobbed and screamed. The roof beams were on fire above our heads, steaming and spitting out hot liquid, and the seagrass matting was burning under our feet. I clubbed her with a roundhouse swing and she went limp. I extinguished the last of the burning hair and dragged her towards the window and the deck. She was big and a dead weight. Things were exploding into flames around me. I took a blow across the neck and something seared my right shoulder.
The deck was burning. Its paint was blistering into bubbles and spurting little yellow and red flames. I dragged her through the fire and smoke and staggered blindly down the steps onto firm ground. The heat coming from the house was like a huge, white hot brick wall, threatening to fall on me. I couldn’t see or breathe. I coughed and felt that I had expelled my lungs. Somehow I got to the running hose and sprayed water over the woman and myself. The shirt was burning on my back and I screamed as I felt the flesh being grilled. The water cleared my vision. The hose came away from the tap and I rolled under the gushing water, wallowing in the mud.
The woman lay on her back. She was naked now with bits of smouldering fabric sticking to her. Her eyes were closed. My hands were raw and felt useless as if I was wearing giant, flapping rubber gloves. The burnt skin on my fingers was splitting. I tried to move her arms, to expand her chest. My strength was going and I could scarcely move my limbs, let alone hers. I willed myself to do it—lift and open, lift and open. I thought about giving her the kiss of life but her mouth was wide open, locked in a rictus of agony. I flapped her arms and felt the burnt skin on my back peel and tear. She moaned and jerked, then went still.
I could hear the flames roaring in the trees around the front of the house. I looked up; a light wind was fanning the blaze and the fire leapt from the house and caught on the canopy of the Land Rover. The interior of the vehicle filled with a bright red glow. I tugged at the woman and slid her through the mud, trying to get some shelter from the water tank. The Land Rover went up like an incendiary mine. Bits of metal clanged against the water tank and flew past me into the bush. The heat blast drove the air from my lungs, deafened and blinded me. I felt my hands slide from the woman’s arm, the ground dissolved under me and I disappeared into the middle of a blazing sun.
10
I drifted around timelessly in a country full of pain but devoid of responsibility. Only sensations registered—warmth and cold, dryness and damp, sound and quiet, hard and soft. I was acutely aware of my body, of its shape and size, its texture, and nothing else actually mattered. There were visions—faces, voices and vague feelings of happiness or distress—but they were nothing to do with me, not really. I was out of it all, floating. Sometimes it seemed that I might be going to land and the pain in every part of my body would rise to an unbearable level and I would feel outraged that this could be happening. Not to me, not to the floating man. Then I would go aloft again, up into the stratosphere where everything was clean and cool and soft.
‘Cliff, Cliff, darling. Can you hear me?’
It was Cyn’s voice; no, Ailsa’s; no, Ann’s. No. It was Helen Broadway, and I hated her because she was pulling me in like a hooked fish. I wanted to stay out there in the cool cottonwool country, where nothing hurt and no one ever asked any hard questions like, ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Of course I can hear you,’ I said. ‘Go away. Let go, Helen. You didn’t want me, not really. Don’t …’
A woman’s voice I didn’t know, not quite, said, ‘Helen?’
‘Helen Broadway,’ Frank Parker said. ‘Girlfriend. Before your time, Glen.’
‘Better be,’ Glen said.
I opened my eyes and saw them standing beside my bed. Frank Parker was wearing a blue suit. Glen had on a green dress.
‘Colours,’ I said.
Glen leaned down and touched my face. ‘What?’
‘I can see the colours.’
Glen looked at Frank. ‘Should we get the doctor?’
Frank shook his head. I wondered what it would be like to shake my head but it seemed like an impossibility. ‘They said he’d be vague for a while. He’s taken an awful lot of dope.’
‘Who’s a dope?’ I said.
I felt something touch my hand and looked down. I supposed I had a hand, but just at present it looked like a bundle of white cloth. ‘You are,’ Glen said.
There were tears in her eyes and I gathered something pretty important must have happened. Nothing seemed real. Little bits and pieces of my life and times came back to me in tantalising snatches. I felt hot and I itched all over. My mouth was dry. Then it hit me, all at once, just like that. The mountains, the house, the fire and all the questions.
‘How long?’ I said.
Glen said, ‘Ten days.’
‘The woman?’
‘She’s dead, Cliff,’ Frank said, ‘along with the man who was in the house. You bloody nearly went with them.’
Glen seemed to sense what I needed. She poured some water from a carafe and held the glass to my lips. My hands were bandaged and I could feel dressings on my face, shoulders and back. ‘You had bad burns on your hands, face and other bits,’ Glen said. ‘Also severe smoke inhalation. You had a temperature of a hundred and four.’
‘I was sick beforehand,’ I said. ‘Where am I now? Hospital at the Bay?’
Frank laughed. ‘You think you get freshly painted walls, TV and young nurses there? You’re in a private hospital in Petersham, near Glen’s place.’
I looked at Glen. She was pale and had lost weight. The last words I had heard from her were angry but there was no sign of anger now. Something else. The look in her big eyes soothed me. Her mouth was slightly open and I desperately wanted to kiss her. ‘All I can see is cops,’ I said. ‘Where’s the young nurses?’
I fell asleep after that. This happened a few times over the following days. Glen would come in, tell me a little bit of the story, I’d feel better, then drop right back into nowhere land. It wasn’t a bad way to live, all things considered. I was in a private room; the treatment I was getting was healing me fast and Glen and I were getting along well in a quiet, foundation-building kind of way. But as I got a better grip on what had happened, the feeling of irresponsibility dropped away. When you feel you have to do something, your time as the pampered patient is at an end.
Patrick Lamberte had died in the fire. The woman who I had tried to save was Karen Livermore, a dress designer aged thirty-eight. She was the sister of Verity Lamberte, my client. Patrick’s wife. She was dead by the time the fire brigade arrived. The house had been completely destroyed and I had been found near death and delirious. The police had discovered the Land Cruiser, identified me, and had questions to ask. I tried to contact my client but her home number didn’t answer and all I could learn from her business associates was that she was ‘on leave’. Glen and Frank fended their colleagues off for a time with the aid of the doctors, but eventually a Detective Sergeant Willis arrived with a policewoman carrying a laptop computer.
Willis was polite. He introduced himself and Constable Booth and asked if I was prepared to make a statement.
‘What about?’ I said.
‘The circumstances surrounding the fire at Salisbury Road, Mount Victoria and the deaths of Patrick Lamberte and Karen Livermore.’
I told it straight: why Mrs Lamberte had hired me and what I’d done and hadn’t done. I hadn’t entered the cabin before the fire started; I hadn’t actually seen Lamberte take the posted package inside; I had no idea of who the woman was and no brief to report on Patrick Lamberte’s romantic associations. I didn’t know where Mrs Lamberte was now and had had no contact with her since the fire. Even when I ran dry Willis didn’t prompt me. Eventually I got through it all. Constable Booth had clattered away, easily keeping pace with me. She shut down her machine and told Willis she’d be back in an hour with a printout.
Willis, a tired-looking middle-aged man with jowls and thinning hair, flopped into a chair. ‘Doesn’t sound too good,’ he said. ‘Even given the fuckin’ stupid job blokes like you do.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘You say you cleaned out the shells?’
I was tired by this time and I simply nodded
‘Fits. They found a little lump of melted metal. What we don’t know is what caused the fire. You reckon the wife set it up?’
I shrugged, which hurt my burned back. ‘How would I know?’
‘You’ve met her. You’re her boy.’
‘Someone must have interviewed her by this time.’
It was Willis’s turn to shrug. ‘Not really. She was in shock, her quack said. She had a certificate. No one really got to talk to her. Now she seems to have pissed off. Sure you weren’t rooting her yourself, Hardy?’
I closed my eyes.
‘It’s bad for you that she’s not around. The sister shacked up with the husband?’ Willis shook his head stagily. ‘Makes it hard to believe that you were camped out there in the fuckin’ freezing cold just to keep an eye on things.’
‘I told you. She thought her husband was going to kill her.’
‘Nothing we’ve heard about him makes that likely. He was a wheeler-dealer and an arsehole, but that’s it. And there again, he’s not around to give your story the confirmation it so badly needs. You’re in a bit of a spot, Hardy?’
‘What’s the charge?’
‘We could do something with putting dangerous materials through the post. Could cost you your licence, but you’ve got a bit of pull, I hear. So maybe you can fancy step your way out of that.’
I kept my eyes closed. His voice was a tired drone. With a bit of luck it’d send me off to sleep.
‘Fire could’ve been an accident, I suppose,’ Willis went on. ‘Stove blew up as she was making cocoa. Or they were smoking in bed.’
‘There was an explosion.’
‘So you said. Then again, you were in the army. You probably know a bit about explosives and such.’
‘Not much.’
‘Still, you know the right people. Know someone who can take the bang out of bullets, for example. I’m not sure that’s legal and I don’t think you happened to mention that person’s name. Maybe he’s got a workshop full of jelly and, what d’they call it, plastique?
‘You’ve seen too many movies. You’re fishing. I’m tired. Go away, Sergeant.’
Willis laughed. I opened my eyes as I heard his chair scrape on the floor. He’d pulled it closer to the bed and now I could smell him—aftershave, bad teeth and beer. ‘I’m sorry you’re tired, Hardy, because that was just the easy part,’ he said. ‘You made your statement and you’ll sign it. Easy stuff. You were in control. You could lie as much as you liked. Thank Parker and your girlfriend for that. But their protection just ran out. Now I want to ask you a few questions and you can take all the usual warnings as given.’
I said, ‘About what?’ But I knew.
‘Tell me all about how this crazy twat who shot her dad got your gun, and why you didn’t say a fuckin’ word about it.’
Police minds work in strange ways. It seemed in this instance that they were more upset at my not reporting the loss of the pistol and evading their attempts to catch me, than at a possible double murder. I said something like this to Willis.
‘Don’t kid yourself. It’s early days in that investigation. If we come up with something against you Hardy, you’ll wish you’d taken up bee-keeping.’
Willis wasn’t as jaded as he looked. He began to get worked up and I wondered what lay behind his attitude. He’d been with me for almost two hours—maybe he found it hard to go that long without a drink. Maybe he didn’t have private health insurance the way I had to have, and resented my quiet room and leafy view. And there were young nurses. I wished one would come in now and usher him away. No such luck.
‘I was embarrassed,’ I said. ‘It’s embarrassing to have your gun lifted.’
Willis snorted. ‘Especially by a woman.’
‘By anyone.’
‘And you’re not embarrassed now? You can talk to me about it?’
I lifted my bandaged hands up above the blanket. The action hurt. �
��They tell me I nearly died. It puts things into perspective.’
Willis scowled. ‘Fuckin’ smartarse private eyes,’ he said.
I twigged then. He was expressing the police force’s anger over the publicity given to the case of two PEAs who’d been charged with bribing police officers, conspiracy to murder and conspiring to pervert the course of justice. The case had been in the news when I’d made my trip to the mountains, but that was almost two weeks ago. Glen and I had talked about it in the early stages, but there must have been later developments which we hadn’t discussed.
‘Brewster and Loggins,’ I said. ‘What happened to them?’
Willis nodded. Some of the energy seemed to drain from him. ‘Loggins jumped bail. He’s probably in Spain by now with that fuckin’ …’
‘Ray Brewster?’
‘Offed himself. Took a uniformed man with him and left a letter.’
There’s nothing the police dislike more than suicide letters and dying declarations. They have a dramatic impact that is almost impossible to refute. I wondered what Brewster had said. I’d met him once—a big man, ex-cop, which made it worse, slow-witted and violent. He’d resigned from the force when it was obvious that he was on the take. The granting of a PEA licence had been his price for keeping quiet about everyone else who was doing the same. An old story. Old pigeons coming home to an old roost.
‘I’ve got nothing further to volunteer about the Wilberforce matter,’ I said. ‘Beyond this—I have a client whose interests I am pledged to protect.’
‘Get off the soapbox, you …’
There was a knock at the door and Constable Booth entered carrying a sheaf of papers. She gave two sets to me and one to Willis as if she was unaware of the tension in the room. She wasn’t, though. She clicked a ballpoint pen with perfect timing and handed it to me.
‘A signature at the foot of two copies, please, Mr Hardy. Sergeant Willis will witness. There are two passages which are a little obscure. I’ve tagged them. Perhaps you’d be good enough to make corrections and initial the two copies at those points.’