Peter Corris: The Undertow

'She was making a lot of money, she said.'

'Not that much. The trouble with her was that she looked so good the suspicion was the customers wanted her rather than the product. Different in Europe, where she wouldn't have looked so exotic.'

'Did she ever mention her son?'

'Now that's something I'd forgotten. She brought him along to the suit session. Nice enough looking kid, very much like her, not a lot of his dad in him, I guess. Well behaved. As I recall, he sat and read a book.'

'A twelve-year-old boy reading a book? What kind of book? What about?'

Henry shrugged. 'Can't remember, probably didn't ask. A proper book. Hard cover.'

'What was their relationship like?'

Henry drained his can. 'Hard to say. They didn't talk much, and then it was in Italian. I no speak. Respectful?'

'That all?'

'What're you getting at?'

(T) 5

I m not sure.

Still with time to kill, I drove back to the Heysen house in Earlwood. I stopped a short distance from it and tried to look at it again through fresh eyes. I still wasn't convinced that a woman like her would choose to stay in such a white elephant of a house. Some of the things she'd told me had checked out solidly with Henry Hamil, but I was by no means sure that she'd told me the truth about everything. Was there some complication regarding the title to the house? Did that explain her hanging on to it over the years? Did she stay there now in the hope her son would contact her there and she'd lose that chance if she moved away? I made a note of it as just one of a number of things I'd have to check with Frank while deceiving Hilde. It wasn't going to be much fun.

Michael Simmonds, the solicitor, was a small man in his sixties who looked as if time was pecking away at him piece by piece-hair, body, voice. But his mind was sharp and his memory for events twenty-plus years ago was acute.

'Horatio Mallory,' he said in his reedy tones in answer to my question about Gregory Heysen's barrister, 'was arrogant, superior and bombastic. He met his match in Heysen, and together they destroyed any semblance of a defence that could have been mounted.'

We were in his office in Canterbury Road, a suite three floors up in a new building with all mod cons. Simmonds, dressed in a suit with a waistcoat, explained that his partner and paralegals did most of the work these days and that he was semi-retired.

'But I keep my hand in, Mr Hardy. Had a goodish win this morning. I miss the cut and thrust. Don't miss the conveyancing, I must say. I've had a bit to do in my time with chaps in your profession. Some stories I could tell you, but I suppose you've heard them all.'

I guess it was nostalgia for the old, heady days that had led him to make me so welcome, or perhaps it was the good win. We were settled in comfortable chairs in a small meeting room adjacent to his office and the cup of coffee I had, although inferior to Catherine Heysen's, was acceptable on a day that had turned cold and blustery. I ran a few names past Simmonds. He didn't remember Frank Parker but Rex Wain rang a bell.

'I didn't take to him,' Simmonds said. 'Pushy, with bad grammar. You have, if I may say so, an altogether more soothing manner despite your rough exterior.'

'And here's me thinking I was looking my best to call on the Widow Heysen.'

He smiled. 'Forgive me. I'm old-fashioned, as you see. I take off my tie to go to bed.'

He said he was surprised that Catherine Heysen was still pursuing the matter. His pale, watery eyes behind the thick lenses retained a keenness about them. He was one of those men-and I'd met a few-that you didn't lie to because you knew they'd trip you up. Without giving him chapter and verse, I indicated that I was working for another involved party and that had captured his interest and led him to open up so frankly about the late Horatio Mallory.

'What might that defence have been?'

'It would have been difficult at the best of times, with that chap's confession. What was his name again?'

'Rafael Padrone.'

'Just so. His statement was plausible, perfectly recorded and documented, and Mallory floundered trying to counteract it. I advised a cautious approach, to try and tease out the possibility that someone else might have put Padrone up to it, that perhaps he was under some kind of pressure. But poor old Horatio went at it bull-at-a-gate- blackening Padrone's name, disparaging his background, his ethnicity. There were a couple of people of Italian descent on the jury. A shambles. And it wasn't a propitious time for defending doctors.'

I tried to cast my mind back but couldn't recall any particularly anti-medico sentiment at the time, other than cartoons suggesting that they didn't make house calls because they were too busy playing golf.

Simmonds smiled. 'Can't remember, eh? I can. It's far enough back. I'm in that condition where past events are crystal clear and I can't recall what I had for lunch. Not quite, but you know what I mean.'

'We all get there.'

'Just so. Well, as I say, it wasn't a good time to be appearing for a doctor accused of a serious crime. It never is, really. The public rates the profession very highly but takes a dim view when a member of it transgresses. Anyway, there'd recently been a scandal involving doctors in car crash insurance fraud and the Medicare system had recently been modified with the result that some doctors-surgeons, I think-had gone on strike.'

I nodded. 'It's coming back to me. I seem to remember that doctors had a few problems back around then. There was Edelsten and his pink helicopter lifestyle, and Nick Paltos, who got sucked in by the gamblers and tried drug importation as a way out. That sleep therapy nutter couldn't have helped the image.'

'Not a bit, and when Heysen presented, all puffed up with his own importance, you can imagine the reaction. I suppose you're wondering why a suburban solicitor was brought in on such a serious matter?'

'I have a feeling you'd have been up to it.'

'I was in those days. I did a bit of criminal work, some of it fairly high profile. But the fact is that we handled the conveyancing when Heysen bought the Earlwood house. Not a difficult job, because, for a youngish doctor not long in practice, he had substantial equity. Of course, that was before they had to pay back the cost of their degrees. One of my then partners steered it through and Heysen seemed to have confidence in us, so he came to me when the police homed in on him. Mallory was a mistake. He would not have been my choice, but Heysen had met him somewhere and insisted on him.'

'Did Heysen's wife attend the trial? I forgot to ask her.'

'Indeed she did, and added to the ill-feeling. She was dressed to the nines, glamour personified, and induced resentment among the female jurors and lust among the males. Altogether unfortunate.'

'It sounds like a nightmare from where you were sitting.'

'Yes, especially as old Horatio was so taken with the wife that he could hardly keep his mind on the business. The joke around the place at the time-trials are full of jokes, as you'd know from experience and television-was that Mallory wanted his client to lose so that he might get a free run at the wife. Nonsense, of course.'

I liked this man. 'You're being very frank, Mr Simmonds.'

'Indiscreet, you mean.'

I shrugged. 'I'm grateful.'

'No mystery. I've heard of you, Mr Hardy. I remember that Viv Garner represented you at the hearing you had to attend in connection with your licence.'

I nodded. A recent case where the police had found me less than cooperative and insisted that I go before the licensing board. 'A suspension,' I said. 'I took a holiday.'

'So Viv told me. We're old acquaintances. I've got a lot of time for him. Odd expression, in the context of our profession.'