Peter Corris - Torn Apart

Googled it because his web research skills were better than mine. It didn't take him long to find that 'descendants of the Irish Travelling families now living in Australia were invited to gather at the O'Loughlin farm in Kangaroo Valley on the weekend of 2-3 August to celebrate their heritage'.

'A week off,' Casey said.

'Can you get to your informant before then?'

'I'll try.'

'Tell you what, I've got two bottles ofJamesons we brought back, in case he happens to be Irish.'

'That'd help and he is. How'd you know that?'

'I didn't, but there's nothing but the bloody Irish in this thing. Casey, for God's sake.'

He laughed. 'It's an Anglicisation of something Polish and unpronounceable, but I've been known to trade on it. I'll get busy. Jesus, something solid on Olympic Corps, that'd be a coup.'

'A footnote?'

'An article at the very least, maybe an update of the book, and a poke in the eye for those FOI bastards.'

'Don't get carried away. If he's the man who killed Patrick, talking soldiers to him won't be my first priority.'

'I understand. He must have survived that shackling. I wonder what happened to his brother?'

That was one of the questions in my mind, though not the most important. I'd come to trust Sheila and had resolved the concern about Szabo. I was off the hook on the steroids charge and should have been able to concentrate on Cassidy/Cummings and his links with Patrick. But now I had a question about Casey. He seemed to have everything he needed, so why the naked ambition? Wasn't professor as high as you could go before becoming a bean-counting bureaucrat?

I replied to Angela Warburton, saying that I'd be glad to see her when she came to Sydney. I said I hadn't been in the surf for fifteen years but was prepared to give it a go if I could find a board long enough. What I didn't say was that I'd have to get in some practice first.

Sheila got back from Melbourne excited by what she'd picked up about criminal matriarchs. We celebrated her return in the usual ways. She gave me an impromptu performance of one of the scenes in the script and was very good. Chilling. She asked me what I'd been doing and I told her just about everything. We were in bed on a cold morning, reluctant to get up for the run to the bathroom.

She drew closer. 'Jesus, Seamus a mercenary and an assassin. It's hard to believe.'

'It's not proven yet.'

'It sounds like something out of Frederick Forsyth.

What're you going to do?'

'I'm going down to Kangaroo Valley with this Jack Casey to hunt him out.'

'Shouldn't you go to the police?'

I hadn't said anything about the security services angle. Now I did.

'It sounds like something out of le Carre.'

'It won't be. If he killed Patrick it'll be for some mundane reason, probably money. No glamour, no ideology.'

'Now it sounds dangerous.'

'Casey's ex-SAS. We'll be all right.'

We got up and had breakfast; at least I did. Sheila, noticeably thinner, was still watching the carbs and had black coffee.

'Be careful your kidneys don't shut down,' I said.

'Always with the jokes. Can we be serious for a minute?'

I thought I knew what was coming and I realised that I hadn't thought enough about it. A mistake I'd made too many times before. Good times, good sex, what next? But I was wrong.

Sheila finished her coffee and dabbed at her mouth, careful not to smudge the faint lip-gloss. She'd bought clothes in Melbourne and was looking terrific in a red cashmere sweater, black trousers and medium-heel boots. She was less heavily made-up than before with more lines showing. She looked mature, experienced and all the more sexy for it.

'I want to come with you,' she said.

'I don't think so.'

'He'd talk to me. I'm sure he would. He might not talk to you. From what you say he just might shoot you.'

'We'll make sure that doesn't happen.'

'So you'll make it safe. What's the objection then? You tracked him under the name of Cummings, right?'

'It helped.'

'I put you on to that, Cliff. You owe me.'

'It's not a movie.'

'Don't insult me. I know it's not a movie, but it's about my ex-lover perhaps being the murderer of my husband. I've got a stake in this. You say you want to know why. I bloody well want to know, too.'

I thought back to when I suspected she could have been in it for the money and could have been lying about still being married to Patrick. I'd come full circle on those points. She'd barely mentioned Patrick's estate since that first encounter, and she had been helpful. It went against every instinct to take her, but my instincts have been wrong before. Perhaps she could help on the spot.

'You're wavering.'

'What if I say no?'

'I'll be pissed off, and I'll think you're lacking in…'

'What?'

She shrugged. 'I don't know. Something.'

She didn't know it, but she had me cold. I wanted her with me; it was as simple as that. Or almost. What I'd said before about exorcising Patrick held true even more now. I didn't know what Casey would think of it, but I was running things, wasn't I?

'Okay,' I said.

'Thank you.'

'You're crazy,' Jack Casey said when we met again in the Balmain pub.

I'd thought my excuse out beforehand. 'She had me over a barrel,' I said, giving him the whiskey. 'If I hadn't agreed she said she'd go to the police and tell them everything we knew.'

'That'd stuff it for sure. Why'd you tell her in the first place? Sorry, shouldn't have said that. Not my business.'

'That's all right. She matters to me and she's part of it.'

He nodded and we went on to the details of our expedition. I'd emailed the Aussie Irish Travellers' website with details of my Malloy grandmother and my interest in attending the gathering in the company of Sheila Malloy and John Casey. There was a two hundred dollar a head registration fee to cover administrative expenses and a dinner: I paid by credit card. Attendees who wished could camp at the farm. There were also a limited number of powered sites available on a first-come-first-served basis. A block booking at the Valley Caravan and Cabin Park had ensured cut-rate accommodation for others.

'Cold down there this time of year,' Casey said.

'Take a sleeping bag. You can sleep in that bloody huge SUV you drove up in. Sheila and me'll get a cabin. We can make you coffee and a hot water bottle-two hot water bottles.'

Casey smiled. 'Fuck you,' he said.

A good start.

'What d'you think of him?' I asked Sheila following a brief meeting with Casey before we left for Kangaroo Valley. He was still waiting for a message from his informant about the photo of the mercenaries. I had a niggling worry that if Casey and Sheila got to talking he'd find out that I'd lied to him about her threatening to tell all to the cops.

'Too soon to tell.'

It was a two-hour drive. Casey drove his SUV and Sheila and I followed in the Falcon. We skirted the 'Gong, went west at Nowra, and began the climb before dropping down into the valley.

'I came here once years ago,' Sheila said. 'Bloke I was with had an old rust-bucket Holden with a dodgy clutch. He had to go up one of these steep hills in reverse.'

'Yeah? I remember that sort of thing-old bombs with no starter motor so you had to park on a slope; broken windscreen wipers you had to work with a couple of bits of string. All gone now.'

'And good riddance.'

'I suppose so.'

'Come on, they were death traps, those cars.'

An Alfa Romeo passed us at speed on the steep road, rounding a blind bend. 'Those aren't?'

'Seatbelts, child restraints, breathalysers-it's all better.'

'You're right. I drove lots of times right across Sydney half pissed when I was young.'

'Only half?'