by Peter Corris
I'd been looking out for him for a few days during my own workouts and eventually he turned up. He was running to fat but still awesomely powerful. He saw me going through my middle-of-the-range workout and beckoned me over to the bench press stand.
'Hey, Cliff, my man. Spot me?'
He meant stand by and help if the weight attempted proved too much for him or if he faltered for some reason. This was a ridiculous request given the difference in our strength and he knew it.
'Don't be silly,' I said. 'If you can't handle it I couldn't and you're looking at a crushed chest.'
'Piker,' he said, as he loaded weights onto the bar.
'Tell you what I will do,' I said. 'I'll buy you a few schooners in return for a chat.'
'You're on, man. Stand aside. I got testosterone to burn.'
He went into his routine, muscles and veins in his head and torso bulging and sweat breaking out all over his big, brown body. It made me tired to watch him. I finished my stint, showered, and waited for him in the foyer. He came bounding out dressed in his usual tight T-shirt, hooded jacket, jeans and basketball boots. But the outfit was shabby and some flab was moving on his torso. Marvis's best days were behind him.
We crossed to the pub on the corner of Carlisle Street and
I ordered two schooners of old for him and one of light for me. He put the first drink down in a couple of gulps, sighed and settled back in his creaking chair.
'So, Cliff, I hear you had a bout with the big C.'
'No, with a heart attack, and I won.'
He patted the roll of fat around his waist. 'Headed that way myself less'n I make some changes.'
'I'm looking for someone.'
He smiled. 'Ain't we all?'
'Frankie Szabo.'
'Don't know why anyone would be looking for him. He's a mean mother.'
'I know that. I have my reasons.'
He held out his empty glass. 'Which are?'
I shook my head and got up to get him another drink. My glass was half full, but when I got back he'd emptied it.
'Savin' you from yourself, brother. Why I'm asking is that I can see that you're carrying and I like to know what I'm selling and why.'
I was wearing a loose denim jacket that I thought concealed the shoulder holster, but Marvis's eyes were sharpened by experience.
'It's for protection, nothing more.'
'Yeah, sure. I'm just a dumb nigger doesn't know nothing.'
'Don't come that line with me.' I pulled a newspaper cutting, a bit frayed now from constant use, about Patrick's death, from my pocket and passed it to him. I told him the dead man and I were related, that we looked alike and the killing happened in my house.
Marvis whistled. 'I get it.'
'I never thought you were dumb, Marvis.' I took out my wallet and peeled off two hundred dollar notes and one fifty. 'For the pleasure of your company. Same again if you can help.'
'You trust me?'
'No.'
'Good. I don' trust folks as trust me.'
I put the notes under my empty glass. 'Szabo. He was in your line of work but he expanded a little which put him inside.'
'Dumb, and him not even a nigger.'
'Marvis.'
'Happens I did run into someone who ran into Frankie recently. Sold him certain items, he said.'
'What items?'
'Didn't say, but this man deals in what you might call ordnance and mind-altering substances.'
'Great. Who are we talking about?'
'Nobody you know or want to know, but he told me a bit about Frankie's new… field of endeavour. Seems he joined a certain organisation. Another two-fifty you said?'
'For something solid that checks out.'
Marvis slid the now damp notes towards him and beckoned with his index finger. I took out more money and leaned closer across the table.
Marvis smiled and chuckled like Gene Hackman. 'Frankie's in with a soldier of fortune crew, name of the Western Warriors up Hawkesbury way. Ain't hard to find- fuckers have themselves a website.'
14
I was heading for home and my Mac when Sheila called on my mobile. Mindful of my precarious legal position, I pulled over to take the call.
'Where are you?' she said.
'Almost home.'
'Can I visit? I've got something to celebrate.'
She was waiting out front when I arrived. She put her arms around me and we kissed. Then she pulled back, pointing to my armpit.
'Is that what I think it is?'
'For protection only. Come in and tell me what's happened.'
I thought it was going to be something legal-applying for the document Viv had mentioned, or a positive result from the divorce records search, but her manner and her clothes told me something different. She was wearing a blue silk dress with a faux fur jacket. She'd had something done to her hair and her shoes looked new. She moved with the same grace as before but perhaps more confidently. No whiff of tobacco smoke. She produced a bottle of champagne from her bag and waved it in my face.
'I got the part.'
Her face was alight with happiness and it communicated directly to me. I reached for her and we kissed again. It had been a long time since I'd had what has to be one of the great human experiences-the blending and sharing of sexual and emotional and professional pleasure. It had happened a few times before-when Lily won a Walkley award for journalism; when Glen Withers got a police promotion; when Helen Broadway's vineyard scored a gold medal; when Cyn had got a commission to design a building. I hadn't expected to feel it again, but here it was.
We opened and poured and drank. She told me about the role in the film she'd auditioned for-the avenging mother in a thriller about a miscarriage of justice. She said she needed to project sex and danger and cracked it at the audition.
'I have to thank you, Cliff.'
'How's that?'
'You supplied the sex charge and you still aren't sure that I didn't arrange to have Patrick killed, are you?'
I'd taken off my jacket, removed the shoulder rig, stowed it away, and taken out the notebook I'd opened just that morning to keep track of what I was doing. My habit was to write down the names of the people I was dealing with under the case heading and draw connecting arrows and dots between them indicating possible guilt, possible lies, gaps in information. I showed her the dotted lines running from her name.
'What's that mean?'
'What you said-a maybe.'
'What's this?'
I'd drawn a line through the information about James O'Day, the fire at the hotel in Hamilton, and the aggrieved publican.
'No connection,' I said. I was high on adrenalin and alcohol. 'Case closed.'
'But not for me?'
'Not yet.'
We made love. It was slower this time but just as good. Only other difference was that she was careful with her clothes- new underwear, too. Amazing what a change a bit of good luck can make. She didn't even mention the legal advice she'd had from Viv until after we'd dressed and were thinking of where to go for dinner. We agreed on walking to the Indian in Glebe Point Road.
'Your lawyer mate was helpful,' she said.
'Done anything about it yet?'
'No, but on the strength of this job I'll be able to get someone good, not poor old Harvey. What have you been doing with yourself?'
I told her about my possible nemesis, Szabo, and the reason for carrying the gun. Didn't mention the parcels from the UK or the night in the lock-up. She smoothed down her dress and glanced at the cupboard where I'd put the pistol.
'Are you going to take it with you now?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
I shook my head, didn't want to go into the details.
'Might help me to get in character,' she said. 'Sorry, I know it's serious. That's the trouble with this business, confusing make-believe with reality.'
I thought about that as we walked. She took my arm proprietorily. With her height, stylish clothes and
gleaming hair, she turned heads. Was this make-believe or reality? We all play roles, but actors can play them more convincingly than most.
I ate my fill; she ate much less.
'Have to watch my figure. This bitch I'm playing's thin as a snake, acts like one, too. Have to do some jogging, which I hate. What d'you do to the keep the flab down?'
'Gym, walking, bit of tennis. Light on the carbs.'
She pointed to my plate. 'I didn't notice.'
'You ate so little I didn't want them to think we didn't enjoy the meal.'
We walked back briskly against a cold wind. We turned into my street and she stopped. 'I'm parked just here, Cliff. Do you want me to stay the night?'
I put my arm around her. 'I insist.'
I turned on a couple of heaters and made coffee while she wandered around looking at the books, the DVDs and CDs. She examined the photograph of Lily I had propped up on a shelf but made no comment. She went over to the corkboard and stopped in her tracks. She pointed to the photograph of the malevolent Sean Cassidy at the ceilidh.
'Jesus Christ, what's this doing here?'
I poised the plunger over the coffee. 'It was taken in Ireland. That guy was staring at Patrick as if he wanted to kill him. I just wondered…'
'I'm not surprised.'
'You know him?'
'I should. That's Seamus Cummings. Older. And God he's got thin, but that's him.'
I forgot about the coffee. 'How do you know him?'
She turned away from the board and got milk from the fridge.
'Sheila?'
'I thought from the way we… went about things, we weren't going into our past histories.' She pointed to Lily's photograph.
'This is different.'
She poured milk into the mugs. 'How?'
'I still want to find out who killed Patrick.'
'I thought you'd decided he was trying to kill you.'
'I haven't decided anything.'
She lowered the plunger, waited the required time and poured. 'Mmm, me either. I don't know if I want to go into it.'
It was one of those moments when something, apparently promising, potentially solid, can fracture at a word or a gesture. I was still unsure about Sheila but I didn't want that to happen. My feelings for her and the hope I felt were too strong. I'd blown these moments too often in the past by reacting too quickly. I slowed down, picked up the mug and blew gently on the surface to cool it. She took her mug and did the same, looking past me, back at the photograph.
'It's all right, Sheila,' I said. 'You don't have to tell me.'
She smiled. We were both tired and affected by the emotional pulls and tugs. Some strands of her well-managed hair had come loose and made her look younger, more vulnerable. I wanted badly to touch her and I think she sensed this.
'Cost you a bit to say that, lover, didn't it?'
I shrugged, drank some coffee.
'Tough guy. Our break-up, Paddy's and mine, was a protracted business, with infidelities on both sides and brief reconciliations. One of my affairs-didn't last and I went back to Paddy briefly-was with him. Seamus Cummings.'
15
Sheila told me that the man she knew as Seamus Cummings, known to Angela Warburton as Sean Cassidy, was, or had been, a soldier. She didn't know in what army he'd served- who he'd fought for or against.
'He was sexy,' she said.
Looking at the photograph, I could see the cause of the attraction, especially when he had a bit more flesh on his bones. He looked confident, and that means more to a lot of women than good looks. Certainly more than a full head of hair or the other things that men worry about and put store in. She said Cummings had never met Patrick as far as she knew, but had seen his photograph.
'He went wild when I told him I was dropping him for Paddy.'
'Violent wild?'
'Not to me; more to himself. He did threaten Paddy, but instead of doing anything he went on a week-long drunk and finished up in jail.'
'This was where?'
'Brisbane. I was buggering around in a crummy little theatre company and Paddy was still in the army but getting ready to leave.'
We'd finished the coffee and were on the sofa. I was sitting; she was lying with her head on my lap. I stroked her hair. We'd got past the point of antagonism or misunderstanding. She saw that I wasn't probing her, just pursuing a line of inquiry.
'Did Patrick have a beard back then? Say, in the photograph this guy, whatever he calls himself, saw? He certainly recognised him at the ceilidh.
'It's a lovely word for a piss-up, isn't it? Let me think. Yeah, I think so. They weren't allowed to have beards in the army, but he was on leave. Paddy's beards were sort of reverse deciduous-on in winter, off in summer.'
We were both tired, more than a little drained by the recent events in our separate and combined lives. Our hands moved, independently, to the places we wanted to touch. Tired can be good.
'One last question,' I said. 'What was Cummings doing in Australia?'
'Jesus, you detective, you. He had family here. People who'd emigrated. He said he came out pretty often to look them up. He wouldn't kill Paddy over something that happened that many years ago, surely.'
Sheila was up early, before me. She spent a lot of time in the bathroom and then on her mobile phone. She skipped breakfast and took off in a hurry. I'd found recently that I needed something in my stomach for the heart medications to lie comfortably, so I sat down to two poached eggs and coffee with my notebook. I drew a firm line through Sheila's name, cancelling her as a suspect. It wasn't just the feelings I had for her. She'd scarcely mentioned her claim on Patrick's estate and was clearly more excited by her acting prospects than anything else, including, I suspected, our relationship. I was sure she wasn't acting now. If she was, she was better than Meryl Streep.
Men don't commit murder over failed love affairs twenty years in the past. I was down to two possibilities-Frank Szabo, or someone connected with Patrick's smuggling activities. The latter seemed more likely but I was unsure how to go about investigating it and, anyway, that would be what the police were concentrating on. I logged on and brought up the Western Warriors website. 'Up Hawkesbury way' translated into a property on the river above Wisemans Ferry.
The web entry gave details of the property and fairly precise directions to it. A photograph of what was called 'The Compound' showed a high cyclone fence with a reception booth. There were telephone and fax numbers for the Commander and the Personnel Officer. Didn't look like a place where you just dropped in.
The WW, as it was styled, described itself as 'dedicated to masculinity, courage, resourcefulness and survival'. The activities included physical training, orienteering, rafting, scuba diving, unarmed combat and war games. It sounded like one of the 'Iron John' outfits popular in the nineties in the US. They spouted right-wing political agendas, of course, but were basically harmless-run by fantasists catering to the insecurities ofother fantasists. I'd read that these organisations generally morphed into mechanisms for extracting money from those who signed up. Some switched focus and became wacko cults. It was hard to see Szabo playing those games, but Marvis Marshall had hinted at something more serious with his mention of soldiers of fortune and ordnance. And there was that reference on the website to war games.
Hank called in, checked my landline and gave it the all-clear. He spent some time with the computer and told me he'd installed firewall protection for my emails-whatever that meant. He used the upstairs bathroom and came down sniffing ostentatiously.
'You've got a lady friend, or you're turning weird on us.'
'Mind your own business.'
'Megan'll be pleased. She said she couldn't see you as a long-term celibate.'
I packed a bag, fuelled the Camry and headed north. I had no particular plan for getting inside the WW stronghold, but you can sometimes talk your way past caretakers, concierges, even armed guards. And I'd been over, under and through cyclone fences before.
It
was mid-week on a mild, cloudy day. Traffic on the highway is never light but it wasn't too bad and the car handled well. I played some Kasey Chambers, the Whitlams and Perry Keyes' album, The Last Ghost Train Home. It rained and the road grew slippery and the trucks threw up oily spray. I turned the music off and concentrated on my driving, glad to leave the freeway at Hornsby.
The road wriggles up past Galston and through Glenorie and Maroota. Nice country and pretty restful driving so that I could play the music again. Not that I really heard it. I was running possible courses of action through my mind. The toy soldiers, for all their openness, might not welcome me or give me time with one of their number. I could ask about them in the place nearest their property-a hamlet called Battle, which might have inspired their choice of site-and feel my way into the situation.
I resisted the impulse to have a drink in one of the Wisemans Ferry pubs, crossed the river on the cable ferry, and pushed on up a road that degenerated from tarmac to dirt to gravel and clay. The country looked lush after recent rain and the river had a strong flow. The road skirted the edge of the national park as the land rose with every kilometre west. I rounded a bend as the road veered away from the river and Battle came into view-from this distance just a collection of tin roofs with some smoke rising in the cold, still air.
The place consisted of a general store with a petrol bowser attached and a handicrafts shop. The shop was closed and looked as though it only opened at its owner's whim, but the store was open for business. It served as a DVD hire, post office, fast food outlet, bottle shop and pool hall. A gossip and information centre if ever I saw one. I was in cords, boots, a flannel shirt and denim jacket and the car had acquired a coating of mud and dust on the trip. I hadn't shaved that morning and I fancied I didn't look like a city slicker.