The Black Prince

by Peter Corris

  I headed south on the motorway, bypassing Wollongong and Kiama and picking up the Princes Highway through Nowra. It was early in the week and early in the good weather season so traffic was light. I calculated I could make Ulladulla for the night and get into Bingara the next morning. Nowra had expanded since I’d last been there some years back and I suspected that the story would be same all the way down the coast. Why not? These days, with the cars and roads the way they are, you can live in Sydney and have a weekender at Jervis Bay. I wouldn’t mind.

  I reached Ulladulla soon after nine and checked into a Flag motel. I like motels and fancy the idea of managing one in the right spot, on the North Coast or in Queensland, say, when I get too old for the game I’m in now. With proper organisation, I reckon that could give me plenty of time for swimming, reading, fishing, drinking wine and observing human nature. For now, this was just another motel night the way I’ve spent too many, alone. I bought a hamburger in a cafe across the road and ate it with a can of light beer from the minibar. I watched a documentary on TV about the connection between heart transplants and retirement. That kind of took the gloss off the Queensland motel idea.

  I made Bingara by mid-morning on a day that started out mild but was going to warm up fast. In the bad old days when you wanted to find the Aborigines in a country town, you located the camp on the river or creek or, in the worst cases, out by the town rubbish dump. Things have changed for the better and the Aborigines live in the towns and not always clustered together. I drove around the place for a few minutes, just enjoying the view out over the estuary to the sea and the way the town settled in between some low hills and the sand dunes.

  The local phone book in the post office-cum-general store gave me the number of the Bingara Aboriginal Progressive Association. I rang it on my mobile and a woman answered in the distinctive tones of Aboriginal speech. I identified myself and said I was trying to get in touch with the Roberts family.

  ‘Are you a Koori, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Can you tell me the reason for your enquiry?’

  ‘I’m looking for a young man named Clinton Scott. He was close to Angela Cousins who died recently. I believe he came down here to make contact with Angela’s mother’s family. That’s Mrs Julie Cousins whose maiden name was Roberts. I was told by someone else who came down to talk to the Roberts family that a family member met Clinton Scott here. That’s the last reported sighting of this young man and I want to follow it up.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Mrs Cousins?’

  ‘No, but I met Mr Cousins a couple of months ago. He told me about his wife’s connection with Bingara. If you were to ring him in Parramatta I think he’d vouch for me.’

  ‘Hold on, please.’

  I sat in the car with the windows down, hoping to catch some breeze. I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and linen trousers, but a T-shirt and shorts would have been more appropriate. I wondered who she was talking to and about what and was getting impatient when she came back on the line.

  ‘This someone else you’re referring to, would that be Mark Alessio?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I believe he had a conversation with Daniel Roberts in the Fisherman’s Rest hotel.’

  That’s how it is in these small places. You can’t scratch yourself without someone noticing and passing the information on to somebody else. ‘Thank you. Where would I find Mr Roberts?’

  ‘You’ll find him in the Fisherman’s Rest hotel.’ Her voice was full of regret and disapproval.

  I thanked her and rang off. Bingara town centre essentially consisted of a street running north–south crossed by two running east–west. I got out of the car, looked east and saw the hotel on the corner a block away. It was 11 a.m. on a hot day and the Fisherman’s Rest hotel didn’t sound like a bad port of call. I drove the block, parked in a skerrick of shade, and crossed the street to the pub. Its design was classical—two-storeyed with a wide balcony on the top level supported by skinny uprights. On a busy hot night the drinkers would spill out onto the tiled area under the balcony, lean on the posts and shoot the shit. But there was no one out there now. The drinkers were all inside, sensibly sheltering from the midday sun.

  I went in, took off my sunglasses and let my eyes adjust to the light. There’s something harmonious about an Australian country pub if the licensee gets it right. The parts all fit together—the tin and wood on the bar, the mottled mirror behind the spirits bottles, the blackboard with the counter lunch menu chalked up. There were four men in the bar lined up on stools with beers in front of them. Two were Aborigines, two were white men. The barmaid was middle-aged, fat, blonde and looked ready to cope with anything that came at her from the other side of the bar. She had an unlit cigarette in her mouth that jiggled when she spoke.

  ‘Morning. What can I do you for?’

  One of the drinkers snorted his amusement at a greeting he must have heard a thousand times before.

  ‘Middy of Reschs, thanks. No, make it a schooner. She’s warm outside.’

  She drew the beer expertly. ‘You’re a bit early for the holiday season. Mind you, we can get some lovely weather this time of year.’

  I sipped the beer, the best drink on earth on a hot day and not so bad on a cold one. ‘I believe you. It’s a great spot. But I’m working.’

  It suited me to bait her a little. In places like this the ice needed breaking and it was better that you answered questions rather than volunteer information. I was betting that the barmaid had had all the conversations she’d ever need to have with the four men present. I shot them a quick look as I worked on the schooner. They wore the air of absolutely comfortable regulars whose every word and gesture would be familiar and hold no surprises. The barmaid was a talker and needed stimulation. She reached under the counter, found two saucers, gave them a wipe with her cloth and took a couple of packets of beer nuts from the rack near the cigarettes. The drinkers watched her with interest. This was evidently something unusual. She spilled nuts into the saucers, placed the fullest one for the four locals to share and put the other in front of me.

  ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I took a few nuts and chewed them. They were stale but I didn’t let on.

  ‘You going to want lunch? We’ve got good fish, steak if you prefer.’

  ‘Yes, maybe.’ A noisy truck went by outside and I dropped my voice. ‘Would one of these blokes be Daniel Roberts?’

  She looked at me closely, taking in the broken nose and other signs. ‘I should’ve known. Bloody boxing. Danny! Bloke here wants to talk to you.’

  My face might bear the marks of a few fists and beatings with other objects, but the face that turned towards us was one sculptured by pugilism. His nose was a flattened ruin, the heavy eyebrow ridges were a mass of scar tissue and his mouth and ears had been pulped into shapelessness. He stood. I was expecting a drunken lurch but he advanced steadily and stuck out his hand. He was sober or very nearly so.

  ‘Gidday,’ he said. ‘I’m Danny Roberts. Journalist are you, mate?’

  The name clicked then. Danny Roberts had been a journeyman welterweight in those years Joe Cousins had described as the doldrums. The fighters made lousy money, endured bad managers, mismatches and crooked promoters and were lucky to come out of it with their health. Whether Roberts had or not I couldn’t be sure. His speech was clear and he didn’t have any of the tics that afflict brain-damaged fighters.

  I stuck out my hand and we shook. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not a journalist. I’m a private detective.’

  ‘Yeah? Never met one of them before. I’ve met a few of the public ones.’

  I grinned with him and felt at ease. I began to tell him what I was about but he stopped me and suggested that we go over to a table where we could talk in private.

  ‘Buy you a drink?’ I said.

  ‘Sure. Middy of light.’

  I’d made a fair impact on the schooner. I tossed it down, got two middies of light a
nd joined Roberts at a table. ‘Have to be careful talking Koori business in public,’ he said. ‘That bloke at the bar’d be all ears and probably get it wrong when he blabbed to the nutters.’

  ‘Nutters?’

  ‘There’s people around here, blackfellas, who reckon we should kick all the whitefellas out and take the country back.’

  ‘Big ask.’

  ‘Fuckin’ right. Madness. And most of ’em’d be stuffed when the beer ran out. Me, I’m a moderate. Get everything we can, every bloody thing, and don’t worry about what we can’t get.’

  ‘Sounds right to me. Mind you, I can understand the other point of view.’

  ‘Me, too. But this isn’t fuckin’ South Africa. Now, what Kooris have you talked to about this?’

  ‘Only Joe Cousins and the woman on the phone at the Aboriginal Progressive Association.’

  ‘Beatrix,’ he said. ‘Good lady, but a dead-set wowser. Because I come in here for a couple of beers in the middle of the day she reckons I’m a lost cause. Okay, she steered you to me and she’s right. I talked to your bloke. Young fella, like you say, West Indian, but he said his name was George.’

  I fished out the photo of Clinton and showed it to him.

  ‘Yeah, that’s him. Hair was longer but that’s him all right. Good looking kid, good build on him. Tall middleweight. Cruiser, maybe.’

  ‘What did he want to talk about?’

  ‘Ah . . . hold on, d’you want something to eat?’

  I did. We went across to the counter and ordered steaks with chips and salad. I told Danny Roberts I could put the cost of the meal on my expenses and he shrugged his acceptance. When we sat down with our ticket I noticed that the other Aborigine had left the bar. A few drinkers and lunchers, white and black, had wandered in but we still had our privacy at the table.

  ‘All he wanted to talk about was Angie and the Cousinses. Now Angie, she’s my . . . fuck it, second cousin or something. We just call it family, you know? Julie, her mum, used to bring her down here for holidays when she was little. Beautiful little girl. She could run like a greyhound. And jump? You never seen anything like it. She jumped over this creek out in the bush once. I wasn’t there but the others told me about it and I went out and measured it. It was seventeen fuckin’ feet. Now that’s a hell of a jump for a thirteen-year-old in bare feet off grass onto grass.’

  I drank some beer and nodded. ‘Did you know about what had happened to Angie when Clinton . . . George, was talking to you?’

  Roberts shook his head. ‘Knew she was in hospital and pretty crook, but I didn’t know she was in a coma and that. The women would’ve known. Sometimes they keep things like that secret from the men.’

  ‘What else?’

  The kitchen hand shouted our number and we went across and collected our plates. The steaks were big and well done. The chips were crisp and the salad contained slices of tinned beetroot and that was fine by me. We both ate a few mouthfuls and drank some beer.

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Bloody good.’

  ‘Mine’s all the fuckin’ better for being paid for by you. Okay, now George wanted me to tell him things about the Koori way.’

  ‘What things?’

  He masticated a mouthful of steak, plucked out a sliver of bone and grinned at me. ‘I couldn’t tell him and I can’t tell you. He might’ve had a brown skin but he was just as much a whitefella as you as far as I was concerned. I showed him some blackfella fishing tricks. No harm in that. Oh, and we had a day out in the bush and I learned him a bit about hunting and that, bush-tucker stuff. But he wanted to know how I felt about the country and what things mean to me. Couldn’t tell him much. Hard, because he was real sincere about it.’

  ‘How’d he take it?’

  ‘Bad. Very upset, like it was the end of the world. Got pissed. I have to tell you he was a terrible drinker. I mean, he fuckin’ tried to drink and he did. But it didn’t take much to get him rotten.’

  ‘How many times did you see him?’

  ‘A few times.’ He jabbed his fork at the table. ‘Mostly in here.’

  ‘And when was this, exactly?’

  ‘Mate, exactly is a bit hard for me. I’m on a pension, see. Do a bit of fishing and odd jobs, but one day’s much the same as the next and the weeks sort of run on. It was a fair while ago. That’s about all I can tell you.’

  We kept eating, exchanged a few remarks about the food, finished our drinks and he got up to get another round. We were Cliff and Danny by now and I asked him if he’d liked Clinton.

  ‘Yeah, well enough. Nice young bloke when he wasn’t pissed. He got me to teach him a few things about boxing. Wish I hadn’t.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘He got into a fight one night when he was drunk. Right here it was. Picked on a big blackfella and got the shit beat out of him. He was knocked about real bad and on top of that he was the one got thrown in the lockup. I reckon the copper thought he was just another Abo.’

  ‘What happened to him after that?’

  ‘I dunno, mate. Like I told that young fella from the university, I never saw him again. Reckon you’d have to ask the copper.’

  9

  I was tossing up whether to pay Danny Roberts for the information he’d given me when he finished his last mouthful of food, downed his beer, wiped his mouth, put his knife and fork together and stood up.

  ‘Gotta catch the tide, Cliff. Should be a few sand whiting about.’

  ‘Good luck, Danny. And thanks. By the way, what’s the policeman’s name?’

  We shook hands.

  ‘Pipe,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Pipe. Goes by the nickname of Copper, but not to his face, mind.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I hope you find the kid and that he’s not in too much trouble. But from the fuckin’ look of him I’d say that’s where he was headed. I know the signs. Thanks for the tucker. See you.’

  He gave a wave to the fat barmaid as he walked out. I cleaned up my plate and put down the rest of the beer, thinking that to live on a pension in a place like this and do some fishing and odd jobs couldn’t be too bad. Then I remembered that he’d said he lived on his own and I knew the downside of that. He’d befriended a young man who’d got into trouble and left without saying goodbye. He had a lot of dignity and resilience: all things considered, Danny Roberts was one of life’s lucky people.

  A passer-by directed me to the police station, a newish brick building with a well-maintained lawn around it and neatly trimmed hedges. I wondered if the temporary occupants of the lockup cut the grass and the privet. Probably. I went through a screen door that had ENTER painted on it. The interior was air-conditioned and smelled of floor polish and scented cleaner. Sergeant Pipe had some good backup. There was a high counter closing the working space off from the citizenry. A big man in the uniform of the NSW police force was sitting behind a desk reading a facsimile sheet.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Sergeant Pipe?’

  He looked up. ‘Be with you in a minute, mate.’

  He finished reading the sheet, made a note in the margin and put it aside. He took off his reading glasses and tucked them away in his shirt pocket. He got to his feet, not without effort. He was built big and overweight with it so that he had a lot to move. He shifted the pistol on his hip as he advanced to the counter but I was sure that was just for his own comfort. I’d taken my sunglasses off and couldn’t look threatening in my short-sleeved shirt and linen pants. I smelled of beer and onions, but he must’ve been used to that.

  I opened up the folder with my PEA licence and laid it on the desk for him to inspect. He looked at it as if he wanted to put it through a shredder. He was about fifty and going to seed fast. Not open to new experiences, I judged, not a lover of humanity.

  ‘Yes?’ he growled.

  ‘I’m working on a missing person case,’ I said. I took out Clinton’s picture and held it up for him. ‘I understand this young man was here some time back and that you arrested him?’<
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  His eyes flicked over the photograph but gave nothing away. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Danny Roberts.’

  ‘Should mind his own bloody business, but, yeah, I had him in for a night. So what?’

  I produced the copy of the report Wesley had filed with the police at Helensburgh. The official document seemed to mollify him somewhat. He took the glasses out and scanned it. ‘Says here this bloke’s name’s Clinton Scott.’

  ‘Same man though. What name did you book him under, sergeant?’

  ‘Don’t remember.’ He reached under the counter and pulled up a heavy ledger book. ‘All in here. Have to put it on bloody computers nowadays. I get the wife to do that of a Sunday night, but I go by this.’

  He wet his finger and turned over the leaves. ‘Here he is. Drunk and disorderly, 10 June. George Cousins.’

  The date placed Clinton in Bingara shortly after the verdict was pronounced on Angela and was the only firm record of his existence after his disappearance from Helensburgh and the university. I made a note and tried to read the entry but the writing was faint and illegible.

  ‘What happened? Was he fined or what?’

  Sergeant Pipe closed the ledger and for a moment I thought he was going to close off all information but the reverse happened. He removed his glasses and leaned on the counter, almost matey. ‘I’ll tell you. Just to show you city types that we don’t treat the blackfellas too bad around here. In the first place, he was banged up real bad in the fight he had with Ernie Carter. Silly bugger shouldn’ve never taken Ernie on. Had no chance. Anyway, he had a busted nose, cracked cheekbone, couple of teeth out and some cuts that needed stitches. I took him to the clinic here in town and got him fixed up. No charge.’

  So I’d been dead wrong about Copper Pipe. ‘That was decent of you.’

  ‘Yeah. He’d lost some blood. I didn’t want him dying on me in the lockup, did I? Now normally, he would’ve gone up before the beak on the Monday, this was a Friday night, after a couple of nights in the lockup.’