by Peter Corris
The mail consisted of several bills and a postcard from Cyn. The picture was a collage of the attractions of Cairns, which seemed to consist of nightclubbing, fishing, water skiing and playing golf. There didn’t seem to be anything I’d want to do. Cyn had written a few lines in her impeccable private schoolgirl script to the effect that the weather was great and the job was interesting and Queenslanders were funny folk who called bags ‘ports’ and said ‘eh?’ at the end of every sentence. She missed me, she said. She ended with, ‘Why don’t you pack a port and come up, eh?’
I turned the TV on and off, listened to a few news broadcasts on the radio and tried to read Manning Clark’s Short History of Australia to make up for one of my many educational deficiencies. I liked the book but my mind kept wandering to the business I’d been through and wasn’t finished with yet. It was embarrassing to have misread Pascoe and Gallagher so completely and to have been jerked around like a puppet. I resolved to be a lot more cautious—downright mistrustful—if I stayed in the private enquiry game. That was a big question I shied away from. I showered but my face was too badly roughed-up to shave. I put Savlon cream on my lacerations and probed at my bad tooth with my tongue. It felt loose. Another one on its way. The shoulder felt better, though, and I did without the sling.
Pascoe arrived late in the afternoon. He plonked himself down on the sofa. ‘Got any beer?’
I opened some Coopers’ ale I’d bought for a South Australian friend of Cyn’s who turned out not to drink beer. Pascoe took a big, appreciative gulp. I sat in a saucer chair and rolled a cigarette. Pascoe pulled out his Craven A’s. Man-talk time.
‘Did you do as I told you, Hardy?’
‘You know I did. You had one of your blokes outside all day. And I bet a couple of the phone calls I didn’t take were from you.’
He grunted and drank some more beer. ‘Well, it was a shitty mess you got yourself into. Some big names and some big money there.’
‘I’m sure you can handle it. What’s going to happen to Gallagher?’
‘Nothing. As I said, he was working undercover.’
‘Bullshit. He was right there in the middle of it.’
‘That’s not the way we want it to be. The force can’t afford all that to come out just now. But we’ll keep an eye on him.’
‘Wilton’ll put him in.’
Pascoe drank some more beer and shook his head.
‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘This was a bloody big conspiracy. Lawyers, politicians, a cop, God knows who else. And you’re just going to leave it at two dead hoods?’
‘There’s no evidence against Wilton.’
‘I was there.’
‘So was Ian Gallagher. Forget it, Hardy. Like you say, it’s big. Too big for you. It’s being handled … institutionally, like.’
I looked at him, big, solid, not at all stupid as I’d thought and doing what he thought was best. I wished I’d had some similar conviction. The phone rang. Pascoe held up his hand to stop me moving and reached for it himself.
‘Yeah? This is Pascoe. We’re having a drink and a talk right now.’
He cradled the phone under his ear and picked up his glass. Somehow, he was able to drink from it with his head in that position. He looked at me as if I was asking him a big favour. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Oh, I reckon he’ll be all right. Yeah, I’m sure he will be. Thanks.’
He hung up and held out his glass for more beer. I poured. The room was smoky now, smelling of hops and still warm from the heat of the day, but it was beginning to take on some of the atmospherics of the Campbelltown paddock. Pascoe looked critically at his beer—there was too big a head.
‘I get it,’ I said. ‘I play ball and I’m safe.’
Pascoe drank. ‘That’s right. Don’t worry about it, Hardy. It’s all just part of the very difficult business of law enforcement. All you have to do is nothing.’
That was more than tempting, it was compelling. There were loose threads though, and pride demanded that I pull a few of them. ‘Gallagher told me that a man named Vernon Morris in Alistair Menzies’ office had put him on to the divorce deal. Anything in that?’
‘No. He was lying. You should’ve checked up on that, Hardy. Could have saved you some grief. Mind you, we mightn’t have got this result if you had.’
‘That’s all that matters.’
‘I’ll give you something for free. It was Dick Maxwell put you on to Chalky, right?’
I swallowed the rest of the beer in my glass. ‘Shit. Don’t tell me you had a tail on me when I went to see Maxwell. I’ll give this game away …’
‘No. We’ve been doing some sniffing around. Chalky was a bit of a poof, it seems. Him and Maxwell were friends and then they weren’t.’
Another thread pulled. Pascoe took out another cigarette but put it away. He had only an inch of beer left and was obviously getting ready to go. ‘Well, have you got the picture?’
I nodded and he lifted himself up from the sofa. ‘Thanks for the drink. I wouldn’t say you’re actually in credit with us, Hardy. But it you stay sensible you’ll be all right and I might be able to do you some good one of these days. Who knows?’
‘I’ve got a client. Virginia Shaw. What about her?’
‘Where is she?’
‘Not in Sydney.’
Pascoe laughed. He picked up his glass and emptied it. ‘I think you should tell her to stay where she is and get into another line of work.’
‘What about the divorces?’
‘Watch the papers. There’s not going to be any blackmail, I can tell you that. You really look pretty crook, Hardy.’ He took out his car keys and jiggled them as he looked around the room. I’d left my book and the papers scattered about. My crumpled suit jacket hung on the stair rail and my dirty shoes were in the hallway. ‘Where’s your wife?’
‘In Queensland.’
‘I reckon you should shoot up there yourself for a holiday.’
22
‘You’ve made half of it up,’ Glen said. ‘More than half.’
‘Every word is true. I swear it.’
It was into the early hours by the time I’d finished. We were lying together on the sofa, huddled close for the warmth. Even summer nights can get cool in the Hunter. Glen had wrapped herself in an old football sweater that had belonged to her dad. Ted Withers had been a dishonest cop who’d got in very deep and virtually committed suicide to cover up his crookedness. Knowing this, I’d worried about telling the story to Glen. She was protective of the good parts of her father’s memory and still a loyal member of the New South Wales police force. But we’d both had a fair bit to drink and it was all a long time ago.
‘So, what happened?’
‘Who to?’
‘All of them. Wilton.’
‘Nothing much. He went quiet for a while, seemed to be strapped for cash.’
‘You mean he was paying someone off?’
‘I don’t know. His father died and he took over the bookmaking business. I’ve seen him at Randwick once or twice.’
‘Gallagher?’
I poured the last dregs of a bottle into my glass. Glen had switched to tea a few hours back but I’d gone on killing brain cells. ‘He resigned a few years later and joined the force in Queensland. Got pretty high up, too. I saw his name mentioned in a report on the Fitzgerald hearings. He was in the hot seat over some kind of corruption. I don’t know how it all came out.’
‘What about Pascoe and Loggins? I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of Loggins.’
‘You would have. He only retired a few years back. He made Assistant Commissioner. A very distinguished career. Col Pascoe made senior rank. We kept in touch. He was useful to me a few times later. He had a heart attack while he was playing golf at Concord and dropped dead in a bunker. It’s one of the reasons I’ve never played golf. Mind you, he was smoking fifty a day, so it’s probably one of the reasons I gave up smoking as well.’
‘Thank God. A smoking golfer, I don’t think I could st
and it. There must have been an inquest on the two dead men.’
‘There was. I don’t remember much about it. Stage-managed, you’d call it. I said my piece. Pascoe and Gallagher got commendations. I didn’t feel too bad about that—Chalky and Mario were no loss.’
‘Double standard there, Cliff. You see Henry Wilton at Randwick and he was the real villain.’
I yawned. ‘Just being realistic. I don’t place bets with him.’
I hadn’t thought about all this in a long time and now that they were back the memories weren’t pleasant. Glen could feel the tension in me and she touched my face. ‘You healed up okay. Is that the most dangerous situation you’ve been in?’
‘I think it’s the closest I’ve come since Malaya, yes. There’s been some tough moments since, but I was completely helpless that time, just waiting, just feeling stupid.’
I remember that it had taken me some time to get my confidence back. I let things slide, lost jobs, didn’t do much at all for a few weeks. Then I told myself that I’d gone in at the deep end and it couldn’t be that hard all the time. And I had done a few things right, like throwing the camera at Teacher, locating Maxwell and keeping Joanie Dare’s name from Gallagher. I was never able to give her the story though, and couldn’t explain. She accused me of bad faith and that was the end of our friendship. I worked my way back to normality via some easy jobs, had a few lucky breaks and eventually put the whole thing behind me. I hung on to the old Falcon, but I got a new gun.
‘Which brings us to the next question,’ Glen said.
‘It’s late, love. We should go to bed.’
‘I want to hear about Cyn and now’s the best time. Did you go up to Queensland?’
I shook my head. ‘I rang her with that in mind but we had a fight over the phone. I don’t even remember what it was about. Something stupid. So I didn’t go. She came back and we struggled on for a while, but she left in the end.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘On the north shore somewhere. She married an advertising man. They’ve got a couple of kids and she sails or skis or something.’
‘Not friends?’
‘Not anything.’
Glen moved closer to me and I held her. There was sand in the parting of her hair. I touched the long white scar the bullet wound had left in her arm, smoothing out the puckered skin. ‘Nice,’ she murmured. ‘And what would you say you learned from all that?’
‘I became a very much better judge of police persons,’ I said.