Peter Corris: The Undertow

Was there an edge of contempt in that? A sourness in her smile? I thought so. I was learning more about her all the time and the bits of knowledge seemed to contradict each other. Her self-control and confidence were almost complete but the mention of her son had opened a small chink in the armour. She was vain, with reason to be, but I had a feeling that her beauty hadn't made her happy. Ever.

'Why did you and Frank break up?'

'I'm sorry, but I don't think that's relevant or any of your business.'

'You're right. Okay. Let's get right down to it. Why are you so convinced your husband didn't arrange Bellamy's murder? The evidence that he did was pretty compelling.'

'The word of a dying man who'd been paid to bear false witness isn't compelling to my mind.'

'He was in financial difficulties and his partner's actions were undermining his practice. I've been told he was homophobic and had come to despise Bellamy.'

'That's true, but one thing, no, two things were totally neglected in the investigation. Gregory was what's now called a control freak, Mr Hardy. He was completely unable to delegate anything. That's why he worked such insane hours and why what Peter Bellamy was doing made him so angry. He'd worked twice as hard as Bellamy to build the practice, and now it was slipping downhill despite his efforts. If Gregory had intended to kill Bellamy he would have done it himself, not entrusted it to someone else. Talk to anyone who knew him and ask if he ever allowed another person to do something for him that he considered important.'

'That's interesting but it's hardly conclusive. Killing a person isn't an easy thing to do, Mrs Heysen. It's hard enough to do in war or in self-defence, let alone in cold blood. It's got its own psychology.'

She appeared to think that over briefly, then she said, 'I'm sure you speak from experience and know what you're talking about. But you're losing sight of Gregory's profession. I know for a fact that he killed a number of people. He was a believer in euthanasia.'

'Not the same.'

'Not quite, perhaps. But you spoke of the psychology of killing. Gregory didn't just send terminally ill people to sleep with morphine. He told me that he had killed several severely handicapped children and a man whom he regarded as dangerously insane.'

In a sense she was arguing against herself-if what she said was true then Heysen had the capacity to kill. But her point about him not delegating carried some weight. She saw that I was considering it and followed up.

'The other thing is this-think of how easy it would have been for Gregory to kill Peter himself if he'd wanted to. The drugs available to him…'

'They must have considered that in the investigation. What about at the trial?'

She gathered up the photographs, looking at them as if she'd never seen them before. She moved the photograph of her son closer to me across the table. 'His legal team was incompetent. The prosecution painted Gregory as a coward, unable to do his own dirty work. Of course, Gregory wasn't able to provide support for the idea that he could! This was twenty-three years ago, and you know how things stand with euthanasia even now.'

'Yes. How did they get the idea that he was a coward?'

Again, her smile had a bitter edge. 'Mr Hardy, my husband, as Frank must have told you, was a very dislike-able man.'

'In what way?'

'He was arrogant and conceited in all his dealings with people outside the practice. He treated people he regarded as his intellectual and social inferiors with contempt. And that was almost everyone. He rubbed everybody up the wrong way-the police, lawyers, the judge, the jurors-and it was his undoing.'

'He doesn't sound like a man you'd marry.'

She shrugged. 'Like Frank, he was manly. The fashion business is full of effeminates and pansies.'

Perhaps they were well suited, sharing at least one prejudice.

'I've got a couple more questions, if you're up to it.'

'I'm not a fragile person, Mr Hardy.'

'How did you manage to keep the boy unaware of what had happened to his father? I mean, you're still in the same house. There must have been talk.'

'After the appeal failed, I took William to Italy with me. That's where I did most of the modelling. It pays even better in Europe than here. I have family there on my mother's side. I took their name for professional reasons, Castilione. We stayed for nine years. We told William his father was dead. My family… connived, you might say, in this. When we came back the whole matter had died down. Neighbours here had moved away. You probably noticed all the apartment blocks. The whole area had changed. When Gregory died it hardly made a ripple, there was so much else going on. Memories are short.'

'That's true. The other question is, how did William find out the truth and how did he react?'

Frank had told me, but I wanted to hear it from her. Again, this was the sort of subject that shook her. Just a little. 'You must understand that William is… was a very energetic person. When we returned from Italy he set about adjusting to life here. He attended Cranbrook, where he was a first-class student and a fine sportsman. He was in the school teams for tennis and cricket and would have been for swimming if he'd been able to fit it in. He was popular and socially active as well.'

She drew a breath as if this catalogue of her son's qualities had tired her, but she went on almost at once. 'He did splendidly in the HSC in science subjects and languages. He could have got into medicine at Sydney, but he opted to study languages. He was fluent in Italian, of course, and true Italian, not a dialect. He studied French and Spanish and got a first-class degree. He went backpacking in Indonesia after finishing and he acquired a proficiency in Bahasa very easily.'

As someone who battled his way through school, especially at science and French, and dropped out of university, I was finding this Rhodes scholar stuff a bit hard to take. 'And did he live here through all this?' I asked.

'Oh, no. He lived in college and was only here in the holidays and sometimes at weekends and for family occasions. He was a favourite with the Italian side of my family, naturally. After university he moved into a flat with some other young people. He applied to the UN to work as a translator and was accepted as a trainee. While he was waiting for that to be arranged he worked at SBS, subtitling foreign films. He seemed so settled and stable with a career path ahead of him that I thought I should tell him the truth.'

'A version of it,' I said.

'Of course, you're right. I told him what had happened to his.. my husband. I thought he was mature and confident enough to cope with it. I was wrong.'

Saying she was wrong was not something she liked doing. She paused, as if to try to think of some way to withdraw the admission, but there was none available. I was beginning to dislike her. I had no idea what she meant about true Italian and dialects, but it sounded snobbish. Again, it seemed as if she and Heysen had unpleasant characteristics in common. I started to question Frank's attraction to her, but maybe she was an actress and had projected a different personality to him.

'William went completely off the rails,' she said. 'He did some research and of course turned up the lurid tabloid stories about Gregory and all the details that came out at the trial. He turned against me for lying to him, and against the world he'd grown up in. He said he never wanted to see or hear from me again. He left his job and did not take up the traineeship at the UN. The last time I saw him he was heavily under the influence of drugs and he told me that selling them was how he made his living. That he was a criminal, just like his father. It broke my heart. I tried to tell him that Gregory wasn't guilty but he wouldn't listen.'