by Peter Corris
I was early; he was on time. He came bustling in, a big, overweight man who looked as if he might have been a footballer in his youth before beer and sitting behind the wheel blew him up. Drivers typically have waiting time to fill in, and a lot of them cure the boredom with calories.
He plonked himself down at the table. 'Gidday, Hardy. I'll have a schooner of old and a steak and chips-well done.'
I got his beer and ordered the meals, same for me.
'Good health.' He raised the glass and drank almost half.
'Not in uniform, Kev?'
'Nah, part-time job with Pavee. Doing courier work today. Pretty good fight, wasn't it? Pat's last fight.' He lifted the glass in a token toast. 'Pity that. Good bloke, Pat.'
Our number was shouted from the servery-none of your vibrating pagers at the Square Leg-and I collected the plates, the plastic cutlery, the tomato sauce sachets and paper napkins on a tray. Barclay finished his schooner as I put the tray down and I went to the bar for refills.
He was chomping enthusiastically when I got back and I let him get a few mouthfuls and swigs down before putting my questions.
'I want to ask you about a remark you made when you drove me to the fight.'
Still chewing, he nodded.
'What did you have in mind when you said you'd let me into a secret? It was after I'd asked if you expected any trouble.'
He was working on another mouthful and he held up a hand to signal a wait until he had chewed and swallowed.
'Why?' he said.
'I liked Pat and I don't like what happened to him. I want someone to pay.'
'Fair enough. I was a bit pissed and should've kept my trap shut, but what I was going to say was that sometimes-only sometimes, mind you-Pat arranged for some trouble to happen at a place we were doing the security for. Nothing too serious, but just so word got around that we were useful and up to the job. You understand?'
He sawed off another piece of steak, pressing down hard, and speared some chips. I'd given up on the tough meat and was investigating the rather limp salad. I'd told Frank Parker I thought Patrick might cut corners without knowing why I thought so, but here was confirmation.
'Interesting,' I said. 'How many people know about that?'
'Just a few.'
'And a hundred bucks lets you tell me?'
He was cleaning his plate, mopping up fat and tomato sauce with two slices of white bread. He finished and took a long pull on his schooner.
'Why the fuck not?' he said, swallowing. 'I'll get the flick for sure from the new mob and bugger-all severance pay as a casual.'
'Who are they?'
'Consolidated Securities. Yanks. All computers and bullshit. You've run well over your twenty minutes.'
'You're looking at another hundred. Can you think of anything, an incident, something going wrong with that scam, that would've made an enemy for Patrick, supposing it got known?'
He took a chip from my plate and ate it as he thought about an answer. He was like those people who can't think without smoking, except his prop was food.
'Three hundred,' he said.
I nodded.
He leaned closer. 'We were doing security for this pub in Hamilton. Music gig, country rock-James O'Day and the Currawongs. Well, Pat arranged for this fight to break out, nothing serious, and me and another bloke were supposed to move in and stop it. But a brazier got knocked over and a fire broke out and a good bit of the pub got burned down. Get me another drink, eh?'
I got the beer. He tapped his pocket for his cigarettes, remembered the new rules and swore.
'Go on,' I said.
'The wife of the guy who owned the pub was killed by the fire. Pat paid me a fair bit of money to keep quiet and I did, but the other bloke, the one who sort of provoked the fight, he disappeared. I heard a whisper that the pub owner killed him. Maybe Pat killed him or he just shot through. I dunno, but Pat was edgy for quite a while after.'
Pat, a killer? I wouldn't have thought so, but I was learning something new about him every day. 'This was when?'
'About two years ago.'
'The names of the other Pavee guy and the pub owner?'
He shook his head and held out his hand. 'No names.'
I gave him three hundreds but he didn't look happy. He drained his third schooner and left.
I only had to go a block to South Dowling Street and then cross to Moore Park and I fancied a contemplative walk, even though the day was cold and windy. On the paths the trees dripped on me from the morning rain and the fallen leaves were slushy underfoot. I think of myself as a summer rather than a winter person but for some reason the conditions suited my mood. I walked briskly and warmed up.
Barclay's information was interesting and would be easy enough to check, at least in its outline. I knew James O'Day, who'd fought as Jimmy O'Day, some years back. A good, careful fighter with a good, careful manager who'd picked his fights. Never won a serious title, but he'd made money and got out of the game before any damage was done and turned to his other talent-music. The Currawongs were a moderately successful band. I'd seen them live once in Bulli in the course of an investigation and talked to O'Day a few times. I owned a couple of their albums, one of them signed by James. I could ask him about the Hamilton gig and the fire and I could go there and ask questions. A man who lost a wife in a fire caused by someone playing a dodgy game might well want revenge. I felt enlivened as I went up the steep path towards the golf course. Bugger golf, I had work to do.
I phoned O'Day, spoke to one of his girlfriends, and arranged to meet him at his place in Newtown that evening. She said he was just back from a tour and was chilling. I spent part of the afternoon in the gym and the rest loading the photographs from my mobile onto the computer. I flicked through them, slotting the right paper into the printer, and printed out the shot of Patrick pretending to play his fiddle with an appropriate Dublin scene in the background-a pub. I wasn't really concentrating and was about to close down when something I'd seen in passing nagged at me.
I went through the shots more slowly until I came to the photos showing the tavern where the ceilidh had taken place. The light wasn't the best and the pictures were fuzzy. The one of Angela Warburton in profile didn't do her justice. I found the one that had almost captured my attention-a wide-angle shot that showed Patrick with a group in the middle of a wild leap with his eyes closed in joy, and in drink. A man sitting behind him was staring at Patrick with a look of sheer malevolence on his face. He was thin, dark, not young, and not obviously one of the Travellers. Although there were other people sitting near him he gave the impression of being on his own.
I blew the image up and studied it. The hostility was unmistakable, made more emphatic by the bony thinness of his face. He had a barely touched pint of beer in front of him and a cigarette in his hand, but he didn't look drunk or as if he was about to do anything. He just stared and hated.
The next photo in the sequence was only moments later and covered the same scene, but the man was gone and Patrick had taken a breather. I ran off a copy of the photo. In the old days I'd have opened a file and the photo would have gone into it. But that was then and this was now. I pinned the ceilidh photo and the one of Patrick with his fiddle to the corkboard in the kitchen where I could look at and think about them.
James O'Day and assorted members of the Currawongs, their road crew and girlfriends, occupied a big terrace house in Newtown close to Camperdown Park. I rolled up at about 7 pm with half a slab of beer-the acceptable calling card. A young woman let me in and took the beer. She wore modified goth gear-black clothes and shining metal-but didn't have the sullen, the-world-is-a-shitheap look. I actually got a smile.
'James is in the kitchen,' she said.
'Cooking?'
'I wish. We've got pizza coming. I thought you were it.'
'Sorry.'
She smiled again, her lip ring glinting in the light, and lifted the beer. 'You're welcome.'
I followed her down t
he passage past a couple of rooms, one with a whiff of marijuana leaking out. The kitchen was galley-style, made spacious by a wall being knocked out and an archway constructed. There was a big pine table in the centre and an even bigger antique oak butcher's bench along one wall. Speakers hung at various points around the room and most of the surfaces were covered with magazines, books, newspapers and CDs.
'Your visitor, James,' the woman said, 'bearing gifts.'
O'Day was in his early forties, middle-sized and lean. His Aboriginal ancestry was becoming more pronounced with the passing years. He seemed darker and heavier around the brows than when I'd last seen him. He wore a few marks of other men's fists on his face, but not many. He was sitting at the table tapping on the keyboard of a notebook computer.
'Cliff, good to see you, brother. Saw you at the Moody fight. Still interested in the sweet science, eh? This is Vicki.'
'Now and then, Jimmy. Hello, Vicki.'
She'd taken the tops off three of the stubbies in a matter of seconds. She handed me one. 'Hi, Cliff,' she said. 'Is this going to be, like, secret men's business?'
O'Day looked up from the screen, accepted the stubby and shook his head. 'Don't reckon. Hey, Cliff, what's a good rhyme for silver?'
I sat and drank. 'There isn't one.'
'No shit?' Vicki said. 'Bet there is. I'll Google it.'
O'Day laughed as she left the room. He logged off and took a swig. 'Good chick, Vic. Shit, I've got rhymes on the bloody brain. What's the reason for the very welcome visit, man?'
'D'you remember a gig you did a few years back at some pub in Hamilton? There was a fight and a fire.'
'Yeah, at the Miner's Arms. That was a bad scene. A woman died, I heard. We got out okay, in fact we helped a few people get out.'
'Who was the owner, or the licensee?'
'One and the same-bloke named Reg Geary.'
'You had dealings with him, did you? What was he like?'
'He was a prick-very tight with a buck. We didn't get paid for the gig. That was natural, I suppose, under the circumstances. We worked there again later, but not for him.'
'How was that?'
'We did a benefit to help them raise money to rebuild the pub. Glad to do it. We had a big following there.' He took another pull on the stubby. 'Why the questions?'
'I was wondering whether he could've been responsible for something that happened here a few days ago. A mate of mine got shot.'
'In Glebe. Yeah, I read about that and saw it on the news. Didn't connect it with you, but. That's rough. Sorry. As I said, Reg was a real bastard and I know he was bitter about what happened. Not just about his wife. I heard that he'd fucked up the insurance somehow and blamed everyone but himself. He lost the pub. He might've been crazy enough to do something like that, I suppose.'
'So he's not in Hamilton anymore?'
'No, he came to Sydney. Tried to get into promotion. Hang on.'
He found his mobile under a CD and punched in some numbers. 'Calling my agent. Hello, Gordon, James. Yeah, look, d'you know how to get in touch with Reg Geary? What? Of course I'm not wanting to work for him. Mate of mine wants to see him about something. Yeah, yeah, that right? Okay. Thanks, Gordie. See you Saturday.'
He rang off, drained his can and scribbled on the back of a magazine. 'Gordie says Geary's in a psychiatric unit in Marrickville. The cops booked him in yesterday after he assaulted a woman at some event he'd tried to promote. Here's the address.'
He tore off the corner he'd written on and handed it to me. 'A nutter. Could be your guy.'
7
You don't just wander up to a psychiatric facility, ring the bell, and ask to speak to an inmate. In the old days, when I was on passable terms with some of the police, I could've found out who arrested Geary and possibly got access to him that way. Not anymore. My doctor, Ian Sangster, wears a number of hats. I made an appointment to see him in the morning.
'Hammond Psychiatric Unit in Marrickville, Ian,' I said. 'Know it?'
'I know of it. I don't think you're a candidate for it quite yet.'
'Very funny. I want to talk to someone there.' 'In connection with what?' 'What else? Patrick's murder.' 'Let me make some phone calls.'
Ian got back to me a few hours later saying that he'd spoken to a doctor at the unit who was willing to allow me a short interview with Geary that afternoon, with an emphasis on the short.
'Dr Galena Vronsky,' Ian said. 'A very good clinician. Could be your type, come to think of it.' 'What did she say about Geary?'
'Nothing much, just that he's a violent paranoid schizophrenic resistant to medication. Have fun.'
Dr Vronsky was a slim, dark woman in her thirties. She was classically beautiful with violet eyes and sculptured features. She wore the standard white coat over a crisp blue blouse and a dark skirt, medium-heeled shoes. She sat me down in her office and I told her why I wanted to see Geary. I left out certain details, although there was something compelling about her and it felt almost shameful not to tell her the whole truth.
'How would you propose to go about questioning him, Mr Hardy?'
'I don't think I'll have to do much. Patrick Malloy and I were almost identical physically. If he killed Patrick and sees me he's bound to show some kind of reaction.'
'Possibly, but he's a very disturbed individual, so much so that it could be very difficult to read his reaction.'
'Do you think what I'm suggesting could do him any harm?'
She smiled and the temperature in the cold room seemed to lift. 'I'm glad you asked that. Ian Sangster vouched for you and your stocks just went up with me. No, I don't think so. He needs detoxing and medicating, and even then…'
She got up. 'Come on, and don't forget I'm in control of this.'
I followed her through a series of passages with rooms on both sides. Some were open and looked more like motel rooms than cells. The place was no bedlam, closer to a sedate rest home. We passed a recreation area where a couple of men were playing table tennis while others were bent over hands of cards. Dr Vronsky opened the door to a warm, glassed-in sunroom. Three men were sitting in armchairs staring out at an expanse of grass. An orderly in a tracksuit sat in a corner working on a crossword puzzle.
Two of the men turned to look at us as we entered and one nodded a sort of greeting. The third man continued to look straight ahead. Like the others, he wore street clothes.
'This is Mr Geary,' the doctor said. 'You have a visitor, Mr Geary.'
He turned slowly and slid his chair around on the polished floor to face me. His face was deeply lined, grey-skinned and slack. His sunken eyes were blank and uninterested. 'Fuck off, shithead,' he said. 'You too, cunt.'
His hands on the arms of the chair were trembling, but as soon as he'd spoken he swivelled around and resumed his former position. I followed Dr Vronsky from the room.
She leaned against the wall, distress showing in her face.
'He's waiting to hear his voice. He was mildly irritated that we interrupted him.'
'He was trembling,' I said. 'This assault, what did he do?'
'He kicked a woman. Kicked her until she fell and then kicked her repeatedly. How was your cousin killed, Mr Hardy?'
'By a shotgun.'
She shook her head. 'Not possible. He has advanced Parkinson's disease. He would be quite incapable of using a firearm.'
A dead end.
'This is a damn fine instrument,' Hank said, holding up Patrick's mobile. 'It's a BlackBerry, the latest.'
'Why do they call it a blackberry? It's a noxious weed.'
'Not in the US it isn't, at least, not everywhere. Anyway, it's one word, spelled with two capital Bs.'
'What will they think of next?'
'It has a speaker phone, wireless broadband, email, huge memory, you name it.'
'So you could get up his phone numbers, his emails, photos, all that?'
'With ingenuity, yeah, in theory.'
'Meaning?'
'He uploaded almost everything
to…'
'Where?'
Hank shrugged. 'No way to tell. A server, most likely.'
'You said almost.'
'Do you remember someone taking a picture of the two of you outside some pub or other?'
'Yeah, the Travellers Arms in Dublin. A Japanese tourist took it.'
Hank fiddled with the phone and handed it to me. 'He kept that picture, nothing else.'
I looked at the photograph. Its quality was vastly superior to any of mine. It showed us standing outside the pub; Patrick with his fiddle case under his arm and me with a rolled-up newspaper held in much the same way. For once we were wearing similar clothes dictated by the weather-jeans, sweaters and light slickers. I had a few days' stubble because my shaver had conked out, and we looked like twins again- same height, same build, same pose. I remembered that the obliging Japanese photographer had smiled and said, 'Twin brothers,' as he returned the mobile, and then, 'Brackberry,' and we'd nodded and thanked him.
I took a deep breath and put the mobile on the desk.
'If I'd been there…'
'You'd likely be dead,' Hank said. 'Automatic shotgun, right?'
'Yes.'
'That's a serious killing. He wasn't about to leave any witnesses. It was a Perry and Dick situation.'
Hank had just finished reading the copy of In Cold Blood
I'd lent him. He'd said it was one of the best books he'd ever read. I agreed.
'You're right,' I said. 'I've got to work on this.'
'Sure. I remember when you were showing me the ropes in this business and you told me to stop at every piece of information and ask yourself what conclusions to draw.'
'Okay.'
'In this case just two-the guy had something to hide and he was fond of you.'
It looked like another dead end but that often happens and you just have to scratch away until you draw blood somewhere else. I knew someone at Consolidated Securities, the firm Patrick said he was selling out to. The company was a big, international outfit, handling investigation as well as conventional security matters, and one of its policies was to mop up as many smaller operations as it could to increase market share. One technique was to recruit one-man PEAs like me. I'd been approached several times but wasn't interested. Eventually they'd get around to Hank. I phoned Bruce Carstairs, the executive who'd made the offer to me.