by Peter Corris
‘Happy to,’ I said.
I flicked through the pages slowly, trying not to let Willis see how much the movement hurt me, making the amendments and initialling, watching him do a slow burn. When we’d finished, Constable Booth executed a smart turn and marched from the room. Like me, she seemed to find the situation slightly ridiculous. I put my spare copy of the statement on the bedside cabinet, along with the water carafe, the as-yet-unopened paperbacks and untouched grapes.
Willis heaved himself up from his chair. ‘Be careful,’ he said.
There had never been any question of skin grafts or plastic surgery. The burns, though severe, hadn’t been the problem, nor the smoke inhalation. The thing that had laid me low was the pneumonia that had developed as a result of my severe cold plus the exertion, trauma and exposure. I’d lain half-naked in cold mud for some time before the rescuers had arrived. Antibiotics had knocked out the infection but, after twelve days in the hospital, I exhibited an allergic reaction to one of the drugs and I went down again into a weakened state that had me sleeping around the clock and having disturbing dreams. I emerged from this bout clear-headed and alert, but very weak physically.
Glen took me home to Glebe and stayed with me there. In one of my dreams I saw Sir Phillip Wilberforce stretched out on a morgue slab. I asked Glen for the latest on him.
‘He pulled through,’ she said. ‘But he suffered some kind of stroke. I understand he’s shaky all down one side, poor old bugger. He’s at home though. D’you want to send him a card?’
I was sitting in a deck chair in the back courtyard, soaking up winter sun. ‘I want to see him,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Remember he’s my client, too. Hired me to find his daughter, Paula.’
‘Isn’t that a conflict of interest? You’re working for the Lamberte woman.’
I shook my head. ‘The regulations are vague on this point. Hardy handles heavy case load.’
Glen grinned. ‘Fucks up all round.’
‘But soldiers on.’
We looked at each other. Glen had taken leave and we’d spent a week together, every night and a lot of the daytime. It was the longest time we’d put in like that apart from holiday breaks. It had worked well—a little gentle sex, taking care not to disturb my dressings and open my wounds; quiet walks, light meals, reading and watching TV together. We were closer than we’d ever been, each anticipating the other’s wishes, responding to allusions, taking the hints. Great, and as artificial as a politician’s smile.
‘You’re not ready,’ she said.
‘I’m not planning to climb any mountains. I just want to move around a little. Talk to a few people.’
‘About what? I thought you didn’t have any leads to follow.’
‘Why did you think that?’
‘I just … never mind.’
This was more like our usual style, slightly combative but mutually respectful, resolving itself in bed or being dissipated by work. We had both recognised that we worked different sides of the street. It made for a certain kind of tension that, I realised clearly then, I liked. I wasn’t sure that Glen liked it as much.
I reached forward to touch her. We were sitting about a metre apart and it felt like a kilometre or two. She didn’t pull away, but the movement stretched the healed skin on my shoulders and made me wince. ‘Look, love,’ I said, ‘I don’t believe those two died by accident.’
‘Your former client is being looked for. If you’ve got any information you should volunteer it.’
‘I haven’t, but maybe if I just sniff around.’
‘Bullshit. And what did you say was your unstated motto: no dough, no show, wasn’t that it?’
‘All right, but the Wilberforce thing is different. She took my gun, for Christ’s sake. I feel like a bloody idiot.’
‘Male pride. Terrific way to run a business.’
‘The old man …’
‘Probably doesn’t remember who you are. Leave it be, Cliff.’
‘And do what? Walk all the way to the library on my own? Read the TV guide? Pick a few winners and plan what to have for dinner?’
‘Look at you. You can hardly move without something hurting.’
‘I want to find Paula Wilberforce. I have to. It’s important.’
‘More important than your health? More important than me?’
‘Shit.’
The cat wandered out of the house, stood on the warm bricks and stretched itself. It mewed and curled up in a corner. We both looked at it and laughed.
11
I started by getting myself fit enough to do more than get out of bed and feed the cat—long walks in the warm part of the day with my shirt off, up and down the Wigram Road hill several times a day, plenty of protein and sleep. After a week of that I felt well enough to reclaim my car from the Chatswood police compound. The cops were barely civil, compliant rather than cooperative. My profession still wasn’t popular with the custodians of the law. They slapped me with a towing charge, a fee for holding the vehicle and an unroadworthy notice. With the taxi fare from Glebe, it was turning out to be an expensive morning. They gave me the notice before I saw the car.
‘What’s this?’ I said.
‘Can read, can’t you?’ the senior constable said. ‘One bald tyre, defective wiper, broken tail-light.’
‘How can you tell the wiper’s defective unless you turn on the ignition? And the tail-light wasn’t broken when I left it.’
‘On your way, Mr Hardy,’ the senior said. ‘And don’t get stopped between here and home with the vehicle in that condition.’
‘No wonder you’re so popular,’ I said.
‘Just be sure the cheques you write to the Police Department and the Road Traffic Authority don’t bounce.’
I let him feel like a winner as he scratched his second chin. The Falcon’s engine purred immediately into life and the wipers worked fine. ‘Like being with the cops, do you?’ I said. ‘Be careful or I’ll trade you in.’
More out of curiosity than anything else, I drove to Lindfield. The For Sale sign had been taken down and work had been done in the garden. New owners were putting their stamp on the place. A Mitsubishi Colt was parked in the driveway and a security screen had been installed across the front door. I wondered who had bought the house, who had got the money and what had happened to the broken easel and the paintings. On past experience, Climpson & Carter were unlikely to enlighten me.
The drive back to Glebe didn’t phase me. I found I could put my own seat-belt on and everything. I celebrated by skipping the Wigram Road hike and having a couple of glasses of wine with lunch. Then I phoned Sir Phillip Wilberforce.
‘Yes?’ an old, cracked voice said carefully. It sounded as if he’d suddenly aged twenty years.
‘Sir Phillip, this is Cliff Hardy. Do you …’
‘Remember you? Of course I do. I haven’t gone gaga, despite what they’re trying to say. I’ve been hoping you’d call. We have things to talk about.’
This was better than I’d hoped for. It sounded as if I was still on the payroll. ‘Has there been any word of your daughter?’
‘Daughter,’ he spoke slowly, dragging the word out.
‘No. No. Can you come to see me?’
I said I could but I needed another day to collect something which I hoped I could find.
‘You’re being cryptic, your privilege, I suppose. What?’
‘A photograph. I hope you can identify the subject and the photographer.’
‘Intriguing. Well, tomorrow then?’
‘Tomorrow evening. Have you got someone looking after you?’
‘Yes, damn and blast her. I’ll tell her you’re coming and with a bit of luck she’ll let you in. Do you need any money?’
I said I didn’t and he seemed not to care, one way or the other. The best kind of client. I rang off and rang Verity Lamberte’s home and business numbers—no answer at the one, no information at the other, as expected. Glen had gone
to Goulburn again but before she left she’d ascertained that the Land Cruiser was being held by the police in Katoomba and that there was no obstruction to my going and getting it. Like the good bloke he was, Terry Reeves hadn’t made a peep. I rang him and told him I’d have the vehicle back tomorrow.
‘No worries. How’s things, Cliff?’
A question you normally answer without a thought. I couldn’t do it. I said something meaningless, maybe cryptic again. Terry sounded puzzled.
The next day I caught the 8.03 to the Blue Mountains. Rabbit at Rest was one of the paperbacks Glen had bought me and I was working slowly through it. It was a good book to read when you were on the right side of fifty and didn’t look like dying just yet. The book held my attention, but I looked up from time to time to observe the passengers coming and going, boarding and alighting. It was good to feel like part of the moving scene again, not confined within walls. To be out there in the world where something interesting might happen. On the train, nothing did, except that Rabbit’s son came back from the drug rehabilitation program as a born-again Christian. Not for the first time, I was glad I hadn’t had any kids.
I was in Katoomba shortly after ten. In the city it had been overcast and gloomy but the day was clear and bright in the mountains. And cold. I’d come prepared for it in a thick shirt and heavy sweater but the cold cut through the layers of cotton and wool and I could feel the places where I’d been burned and lacerated stiffening. I walked up the steep main street to the police station thinking that it was a different world up here—Sydney belonged to the ocean, the mountains belonged to the enormous country behind them. Dangerous thoughts, these, they tend to make you feel that human beings have no place on the continent at all.
The reception I got from the Katoomba cops couldn’t have been more different from that in Sydney. Here, I was something of a hero—the man who’d dragged the woman from the inferno and might have saved her life if help had arrived in time. No fault of his. Some city cops had been up, asking around and making themselves unpopular. Nobody gave a shit about the Loggins and Brewster case up here. There was no question of charges for bringing the Cruiser in or housing it. They told me they’d started it up every few days or so and that it was running fine. I thanked them, produced my ID, accepted their good wishes for my recovery from my injuries, and that was virtually that. I started the Cruiser and drove it out of the police car park.
A hundred metres down the road I pulled over to the kerb. I got out and opened the back of the truck. There were all the things I had hastily thrown together that morning four weeks ago—the bedroll, sleeping bag, thermos. There was no sign of the leather jacket. I was sure I’d left it in the back. I yanked open the back door and looked on the seat. The newspaper I’d bought was there along with the binoculars, which must have been taken from where I’d been observing the house. They were back in their case, safely tucked away. No whisky, that’d have been too much to ask, but where was the jacket? I swore and searched again but it wasn’t in the Land Cruiser.
I sat behind the wheel while the light morning traffic crawled past. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry. I’d been feeling fine when I’d arrived in Katoomba, now I didn’t feel so good. The morning sun coming through the windscreen made me hot inside my sweater but I’d been warned against sudden changes in temperature so I didn’t take it off. I sat, sweated and swore. I’d been warned about getting emotionally upset, too, but I kept on swearing. You nearly died and were on drugs for a couple of weeks, I thought. That could have screwed up your memory. I tried to recall in detail my actions before I’d gone up the rock pile and I found that I couldn’t.
I started the motor and headed towards Mount Victoria. The weather changed abruptly the way it can in the mountains. Some cloud came over and some mist came down, a heavy mist, needing an occasional swipe from the windscreen wipers. Not ideal conditions for searching for something brown in a couple of hundred hectares of bush. I took the back way in and bumped along the tracks until I found where I’d parked before going up to watch the house. This was the right place, surely—right rocks, right trees. I convinced myself and got out to search. The mist was almost a drizzle. I grabbed the groundsheet from among the camping gear and draped it over my head.
There had been a fair bit of rain up there and the ground was slushy. Things started to come back to me as I probed around. I’d worn the jacket into town but I’d put the parka on when I got back here because I’d thought I might have a long cold wait up on the rocks. I’d got the binoculars and the whisky from the seat, put them on the ground and taken off the jacket. Then … I remembered. I’d slung the jacket up onto the top of the Cruiser intending to put it away safely. And something had broken the chain of thought. It came back to me—a train whistle from the track across the valley, a long, clear sound that had cut through the chill morning air.
When had they found the Cruiser? I didn’t know. If it had been late in the day they might not have seen the jacket and just checked the vehicle over before driving off. In which direction? I searched both ways on both sides of the track for about twenty minutes before I found it. An overhanging branch must have brushed it off the roof. The jacket had fallen into a bush and lay, scarcely disturbed from the way I’d folded it, in a natural leafy shelter. It was wet and slimy and a white mildew had formed around the seams. I stood under a tree, water dripping from the groundsheet and felt the jacket. The photograph was still there, not as crisp as before, but still there.
I ran back to the Cruiser, put the jacket on the seat beside Rabbit at Rest and got moving. I needed the wipers now and the heater. My hands and feet had become cold during the search and aches and pains had started up in various places. The warm air circulated around me and I took a few experimental deep breaths. No wheezing, chest clear. It was some minutes before I realised that I’d turned onto the Electricity Commission service track automatically and was now heading for Salisbury Road. I had an impulse to turn around and go back the way I’d come, difficult though the manoeuvre would be on the narrow road. I’ve never understood old soldiers’ desires to visit the battlefields where they’d fought and bled. I never wanted to see mine in Malaya ever again, and I felt the same about the Lambertes’ cabin.
But I kept going and there it was—a collection of blackened foundation pillars, a chimney and fireplace and a set of stone steps that led nowhere at all. The fire had consumed everything combustible. The iron roof had collapsed and lay in a jumbled heap where people had once sat and talked, ate and drunk and made love. I stopped and looked at the ruin through the streaming windscreen and the slapping wiper blades. The barbecue and water tank were intact; the burnt-out 4WD had been removed. Trees on all sides of the house were charred and heavy wheels had churned the ground into a sea of blackened mud. I had a mental flash of the woman gyrating in terror in her high heeled shoes and erotic underwear, and of Patrick Lamberte, big and commanding in his country squire’s outfit, lightly tossing the package he’d picked up at the Post Office. He had looked like a man turning over his cards, confidently expecting an ace. Unaccountably, it was the image of the man that was most disturbing. Although by now I was warm and relatively dry inside the Cruiser, I shivered. I engaged the gear and drove fast down Salisbury Road, away from the death and destruction.
I drove straight through Mount Victoria and down to Katoomba before I felt like stopping. The visibility was bad, the road was slick and it took all my concentration to make the run safely. Good. I was in no fit state for letting my mind drift to other matters, to faces and movements and all the other half-collected impressions. Through my association with Helen Broadway, who read philosophy and Jungian psychology, I was aware of the rag-bag of memories and intuitions that make up our unconscious understanding of the world. I resisted them, always. I preferred to deal with the concrete and known—the facts, hidden and revealed, that defined the world in which work could be done, results achieved. I had a sense that I was moving beyond that world and it alarmed and dis
turbed me as such feelings always have.
I pulled into a shoppers’ car park off Katoomba Street and carefully unfolded the leather jacket. I slid the photograph out of the jacket pocket and opened it as delicately as if it was a three-hundred-year-old buried treasure map. The thick paper had lain inside the nylon lining of the pocket protected by several layers of leather. It was limp but not damp and the folded sections did not stick together. When I was sure it was intact I refolded it and headed for the Paragon Cafe which is the only eating place I know in Katoomba, apart from the pubs. I wanted to sit somewhere quiet, drink coffee and try to sort out the disturbing images that were flitting around in my brain.
The Paragon was dark and the lunch crowd had gone. Seeing the empty seats and booths and the tables with evidence of meals consumed reminded me that I hadn’t eaten. I was suddenly hungry and it was the first time I’d felt that way since I’d woken up in the hospital. I decided it was a good sign and ordered orange juice, a club sandwich, apple pie and a pot of coffee. I downed the orange juice in a couple of gulps and lowered the plunger in the coffee pot. Good coffee. Two sips and I unfolded the picture again and spread it out on the table.
I had never studied the photograph carefully and what I was looking at now was very different from my memory of it. The face was clearer and the features more distinct. Whereas before it had seemed otherworldly, a shot taken through a screen of some kind, now it looked lifelike and immediate. Perhaps that was because I was in no doubt as to who was the subject of the picture. Unmistakable. Same incipient widow’s peak, strong chin, deep-set eyes. I was looking at a photograph of the late Mr Patrick Lamberte.
12
The waitress put a plate on the table in front of me. She didn’t glance at the photograph. I didn’t look at the sandwich. This was what had been niggling at me—the as yet uncoded knowledge that Lamberte was the subject of the photograph. I poured out the last of the coffee. It was cool but I sipped it anyway as questions flooded my brain. Who was the photographer? Where and when was the picture taken? I’d been half assuming, without any evidence, that Paula Wilberforce herself was both painter and photographer. If so, what connection was there between her and Lamberte? And if not … Suddenly the photograph assumed greater importance. Now it was not only a possible clue to Paula Wilberforce’s whereabouts but evidence of a deep hostility towards Lamberte. And therefore a lead to his murderer.