Peter Corris - The Coast Road

Sometimes, after a case has come together, I feel like a creature that should be in hibernation being forced to carry on beyond its allotted time. Not tonight. My brain wouldn’t stop working. I felt bad about exposing Elizabeth Farmer to that danger, relieved, but at the same time embarrassed by how well she’d coped. I sat down and wrote her a long report on all the aspects of the case. My suspicion that her father had been killed because he’d got an inkling of Buckingham’s plan had no foundation in fact and probably never would have, but it felt right. I said that I’d had to offer Matilda a certain amount of protection in return for her cooperation in isolating Wendy. That wouldn’t please her. It would please her even less that I’d let Wendy off the hook, since I was sure she’d been involved in the arson.

Again, necessity, but it didn’t sit well with me and I made no reference to it.

I read the report through when I’d finished and was dissatisfied. It was plausible, in the true meaning of the word. I emailed De Witt, telling him about Buckingham’s plan as I’d promised to do. It’d be up to him to decide how to use it. If he went into print on it the police wouldn’t be pleased and would probably heavy him. I’d have to hope he adhered to the journalists’ code of ethics and protected his source.

As I finished the email and before I sent it, the phone rang. Farrow.

‘How’s it looking?’ I said.

‘Okay. We picked up Lonsdale and another guy at the hotel. No sign of Wendy Jones. Where is she, Hardy?’

‘Don’t you want to know what Larry Buckingham’s grand plan was?’

‘Sure.’

I told him. From his silence I guessed that it was news to him, but still I asked, ‘Did you get a sniff of that from Barton?’

‘I can’t discuss operational police matters with you.’

‘Means you didn’t. Well, be my guest. You’ll find a lot of equipment for that project. A little bird tells me it’s in Thirroul.’

‘Let’s back up. Where’s Wendy?’

‘No idea. That’s the truth.’

‘You keep that information about the mine shafts to yourself, Hardy.’

He hung up and I sat looking at my message to De Witt on the screen. I certainly owed Farrow; but for him I was buried under a ton of earth and a layer of aggregate down Port Kembla way. But I remembered what he’d said about the way things could play out with the prosecution of Barton and the other corrupt cops, and I’d already had my thoughts about what Larry Buckingham could contrive if he had the money.

I hit send, and dispatched the email.

De Witt’s story made the Wollongong and Sydney papers in the morning. He had some of the names and some of the details-enough to give the story flavour and show how a major episode in criminal organisation and police corruption had been orchestrated and exposed. I wasn’t mentioned except as a ‘source’ and that was fine by me. Buckingham was in hospital but under arrest with a battery of charges pending. There were photographs of him in his athletic heyday and in his bloated present. Barton wasn’t mentioned by name, suggesting that a deal was being done. Par for the course.

Marisha rang me mid-morning.

‘That was your case, wasn’t it, Cliff?’

‘What case would that be?’

‘Please don’t think I’m stupid. I read the paper. I know my car was down there in Wollongong. The police told me.’

‘You’re right. Sorry, Marisha, I don’t like to talk about the work. You never know about loose ends, people wanting to get even in some way. It’s best to keep your friends right out of it.’

‘Is that what we are, friends?’

‘I don’t know, Marisha. I’m sorry. It takes a while to come down from these things. I’ve been dealing with shotguns and dead men and wild women and crooked cops and it-’

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry, and wog drama queens and teenage whores. I understand.’

‘Marisha-’

She hung up. I had her number and I could’ve called back. Maybe she wanted me to, maybe she didn’t. I wavered, but I didn’t call. I sat, looking at the phone and remembering. What I’d said was true. I’d got into relationships with women in the middle of cases before and, mostly, they hadn’t gone anywhere. There’s something about the situation, the pressures, the need for comfort and release that can shape your feelings and distort your judgement. One of the penalties of the business, something Cyn had sensed early in our marriage, was that dealing in deceit and mistrust, violence and hurt, so much of the time erodes the ability to believe in anything human. Chinks open in the armour; there are moments and times of love and trust, but they don’t last because the job busts in and cuts them down.

I tried my usual therapy-a long walk around Glebe, clocking the improvements and the damage and diverting my-self by trying to decide where the balance lay. On those occasions when I judged that the ledger worked out in the black, I felt encouraged, other times, not. Today, I was somewhere in the middle and that wasn’t unusual. I tramped back along Glebe Point Road thinking that this was pretty much the way I regarded the state of the country as a whole-good impulses on the part of the many, rotten motives from the few who held the power, for now. The whole thing in the balance. No help there.

I turned into my street and felt an uplift when I saw Aaron De Witt’s stately old Volvo station wagon, dust-streaked and dented, parked outside my house. It was late enough for a drink for me and to brew up a strong coffee for De Witt. There were things he could tell me and things I could tell him. I was grateful for his concealment of my identity behind the mask of the ‘source’. Made me feel like Deep Throat, whoever he or she was.

I approached the car on the driver’s side. It was empty. Probably taking a stroll around while he waited for me, I thought. I went inside, leaving the gate and the front door open, and put the coffee on. I opened a bottle of white and sampled it. Good enough to drink. I took the glass out to the front and leaned on the gate looking up and down the street. I finished the drink and went back inside for a refresher. Still no sign of De Witt after about twenty minutes.

I put the glass down and went out to take a closer look at the car. Back and front seats empty. The windows to the utility area at the back were too dirty to see through so I opened the back doors. Long, lanky Aaron De Witt was compressed and folded in a foetal position along with some tools and a couple of children’s toys. I recognised him from his clothing and from the nicotine-stained hand that lay lifelessly clear of the body. His features had been mostly obliterated by a shotgun blast.

So again it was a long session with police and more contact with Farrow and eventually the arrival of a TV crew and me losing my temper with the reporter and only just holding back from assaulting him in the presence of police. The SOC officers did their thing; the ambulance took the body away and a tow truck carted off De Witt’s vehicle.

I was left standing by my gate with Aronson from the Glebe station, who’d done the liaising with Farrow. He wasn’t sympathetic.

‘I said you were a nuisance, Hardy, and I meant it. You got that guy killed.’

I’d only just missed being killed myself, and so, probably, had my client, but it didn’t seem like the time to point that out. I didn’t say anything.

Aronson looked at my house with its cracked cement path, lifting porch tiles, warped wrought iron fence and sagging guttering. He shook his head. ‘How many people are sorry they ever met you?’

‘Too many,’ I said.

I went back inside the house with a strange sense of loss for someone I scarcely knew. I felt responsible as well, even though I knew De Witt was a volunteer. The coffee I’d prepared for him reproached me. I poured a mug and added a slug of whisky. No matter what they say, you can use alcohol to take the edge off mental as well as physical pain. I sat in the sun in the back courtyard and let its warmth and the warmth of the whisky run through me. I was close to feeling better when I thought of Elizabeth. I rushed inside and called her, first at home, then at the university, getting answering machines at both numbers. I left the same message-go somewhere else and be very careful. Ring me when you can.