Peter Corris - The Big Score

One reason for his savage denunciation of me presented itself-fury that a man older and smaller than himself could beat him in a physical contest not just once but twice. It was hardly enough. I went through the documents again. Something there niggled at me but I couldn’t pin it down. I knew I had enemies, but a dying enemy trying to screw me was a new and unsettling experience.

I trod on eggshells for the next month or so but the police didn’t approach me again and nothing out of the ordinary happened. I got on with the usual run of things-serving notices, a bit of bodyguarding, the tracing of a missing husband. Eventually the Harvey killing surfaced in the papers. Cleve Harvey, it emerged, was a small-time police informer, and he was shot by one of the men he’d dobbed in on a minor matter that eventually led to a conviction on serious drug charges. There was another informer, DNA and a weapon, and the shooter went down for a long stretch. A small-time player who had struck it unlucky hadn’t concerned the police enough for them to probe closely into his life. That explained their lack of interest, but it didn’t explain why Cleve had fingered me. I thought I was within my rights to contact Detective Sergeant Wilson.

‘Cliff Hardy,’ I said when he answered the call.

‘Oh, yeah.’

‘Good result on the Harvey killing. I see you got a mention.’

‘I did.’

‘I didn’t, did I?’

‘Come again?’

‘Don’t piss me off, Sergeant. Did the shooter say anything about me?’

‘No.’

He hung up, leaving me with the question.

The answer came quite a bit later and in a strange way. I’d lost interest in Rugby League after the Murdoch manoeuvre ruined the competition. I was never keen on Union for the mauls and scrums, and I found just looking at the no-hands game frustrating. I began to watch a bit of Australian football and to enjoy it for its positive character-forward passing, hands and feet, the high marks, long kicks, the flow. I was watching a match called ‘the Derby’ between Fremantle and the West Coast when the name hit me. Cleve Harvey had been married to a woman named Rachel Fremantle. The name took me back a couple of years.

With my occasional offsider Hank Bachelor, I was staking out a sports store in Marrickville. The owner had somehow got word that yet another ram raid-he’d already endured two-was to happen. He’d lost faith in the police and hired us to catch the raiders red-handed. We did, two kids in a stolen 4WD. Nothing to it. We blocked them off and they gave up without a murmur. We handed them over to the police, made our statements, collected our fee and that was that. They were too young to go before an adult court and, for one reason or another, we weren’t required to give evidence. One of the kids was a Brian Fremantle.

I had a contact in the relevant section of the justice department and I phoned her to enquire about young Brian.

‘Normally,’ Bronwen Armstrong said, ‘I would be breaking all the rules to tell you anything.’

‘But…?’ I said with a sinking feeling.

‘He’s dead. He was sentenced to a year in juvenile detention and was stabbed to death resisting a rape.’

I let out a long, sour breath. I was at home with a drink I thought I might need to hand. I took a pull on it.

‘Thanks, Bron. Do your records give you the names of the parents?’

They did of course. Cleve Harvey had been Brian Fremantles father. Brian had taken his mother’s name. I doubt that Cleve had done anything much for his boy along the way, but in his own twisted fashion he’d tried to exact a bit of revenge as he went out.

I stood on the balcony in a block of flats in Dover Heights. The view back towards the city was spectacular-a swathe of suburbs grading into city high rise with the promise of the Blue Mountains far beyond. The view towards the water was blocked by a double-row stand of lofty trees. Not quite blocked-there was almost a gap where one of the trees appeared to have withered.

Pointing, Joseph Young said, ‘Some criminals are poisoning those trees. Beautiful Norfolk Island pines. I want it stopped.’

He’d phoned me at my office and asked me to come and visit him. He said he’d pay me for my time even if I didn’t take the job. I had nothing much on and a visit to the eastern suburbs is always a pleasure. I’d toyed for years with the notion of selling my Glebe terrace and moving there. Could never seem to do anything about it though.

Young was in a wheelchair, partly paralysed from a car accident. Insurance and compensation had made him comfortable. He was a widower with no dependents and he owned the flat. One of his pleasures was to look out at the stand of trees. He was a Norfolk Islander himself, a Bounty descendant, and the view reminded him of home.

‘I’m sure it’s a crime,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t the council or the police…?’

He waved the point aside. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if a councillor is one of the culprits. As for the police, they’re too busy worrying about imaginary terrorists.’

There was a row of large houses below on more or less flat land. The trees would block their view of the water absolutely. Standing 186 centimetres and on tiptoe, I could just get a glimpse of the far horizon over the top of the trees, or thought I could. Couldn’t have held the pose for long.

Young was a well-preserved seventy, at a guess. Full head of white hair, neat white beard, casual clothes. His olive skin was a legacy of his Polynesian forbears. He saw me craning for the far view and laughed.

‘I suppose you can see the water,’ he said. ‘I could myself before the accident. Stood six foot four and a half. Can’t see it now of course and I don’t give a shit. I want to watch the trees. The water’s overrated in my book. Just sits there. Trees are different-they move.’

‘Not sure I agree,’ I said. ‘The water moves, changes colour.’

‘Have you got a water view, Mr Hardy?’

‘Not really-a glimpse of Blackwattle – Bay between blocks of flats. What would you want me to do, Mr Young?’

‘Keep watch at night. Make a citizen’s arrest and hand them over to the police?’

‘With photos of them in action?’

He nodded. ‘Good idea.’

‘How do they do it-copper nails?’

‘You know about that, do you?’

‘Not really. I remember my father trying it to kill off a rubber tree that got out of hand. Can’t remember if it worked. Most of the things he tried didn’t.’

‘That’s old-fashioned. No, I’m told they drill holes and pour in some poison or other.’

‘Who told you?’

‘I’ve got a mate, Chester Ivens, lives in the flat below this. He went over there and took a look at the dying one. He’s as pissed off about it as me, but he’s another old fart and can’t stay up much beyond nine o’clock.’

Didn’t sound too hard. Young wheeled himself back inside. I’d brought a contract form with me. He signed it and wrote a cheque. I said I’d get on the job straightaway and I did.

I called on Young’s mobile mate. There were quite a few more things I needed to know. He came to the door and seemed pretty spry. A medium-sized bloke, bald, stringy lean, with a cheerful attitude. I introduced myself and he shook my hand enthusiastically.

‘Glad Joe took my advice. About time something got done. Come in.’

‘Thanks, but I thought you might take me over and show me what’s what.’

‘Be glad to take a walk with a bit of company. Gets bloody lonely and boring, this retirement. Hang on while I grab a coat.’

He came back, pulling on a padded jacket, slapped his pants pocket to check that he had his keys and yanked the door shut.