Peter Corris - Matrimonial Causes

‘What happens next?’ I asked Pascoe.

I gave Pascoe a brief run-down on what the whole business had been about and ventured the opinion that Mario had killed Juliet Farquhar. Gallagher nodded but stopped the movement when Pascoe gave him a savage look. The rain held off but it was getting colder out there. Gallagher and I were in our street suits; Pascoe was comfortable in his battle jacket. He put the odd question and I realised that my original assessment of him had been way off-beam. He was a shrewd, experienced cop and I was having trouble matching him up with the blustering thug who’d assaulted me in the Bondi police station. I asked him about that and he grinned.

‘An act,’ he said. ‘More or less. I knew Ian here was playing funny buggers. Someone I had keeping an eye out told me about your little powwow outside the Darlo station. When I heard you’d gone straight for Ian after you struck bother I thought I’d push that along a little. You’re a pretty good fighter, Hardy, but I wasn’t really trying.’

I buttoned my jacket against the cold and said nothing. It was still good to be alive but not so good to feel stupid. I was in pain, too, and wanted to get away from the spot that could easily have been my unmarked grave. Pascoe was starting to look a bit tired himself and Gallagher had gone very quiet and still. He wasn’t smoking now, just worrying. My tooth jumped.

‘You wouldn’t have anything alcoholic on you, would you?’ I asked Pascoe. ‘I could do with a drink.’

‘There’s some scotch in the van,’ Gallagher said.

Pascoe took Gallagher’s pistol from his pocket. ‘You fetch it, Ian. I’ll come along just to make sure you don’t drop it in the dark.’

I was shivering again by this time. I leaned against the vehicle and my foot touched something stiff but yielding. It was a sheet of heavy plastic. Another shovel and a rake were half-wrapped in it. Standing in the pool of light it was hard to tell much about the plot of land. I thought I could see the track we had come in on; the trees were plain against the sky and there looked to be other shapes-bushes or rocky outcrops. The grass was high and thick. Nothing much had happened out here for a very long time. Then I caught a movement out in the darkness. I stared and two shining discs appeared a few feet above the ground about fifty yards away. I was laughing when Gallagher and Pascoe came back with the bottle.

‘What’s funny?’ Pascoe said.

I pointed. ‘There’s a kangaroo out there.’

Pascoe swung his torch. The shining eyes disappeared and I heard the soft thumps as the animal hopped away.

‘Got better things to do,’ Pascoe said. ‘So have we.’

We all had a drink from the bottle. The liquor stung my battered mouth and scorched my parched throat but it still felt good.

‘Good grog,’ Pascoe said. ‘You didn’t keep any little mementos, did you? Tapes? Notes? Photos of this and that?’

I shook my head and reached for the bottle again.

‘OK. Well, what we’ve got here is two fucking murderers killed by a police officer in the course of his duty. We’ve got another officer operating in an undercover capacity as a witness, and a civilian who’s been assisting authorities in their investigation. Also a witness. What would you say about that assessment of the situation, Mr Hardy?’

Two big swigs on a very empty stomach and a very disturbed metabolism hit me like a right and a left from Tony Mundine. I was feeling lightheaded and weightless, as if I could float away into the trees. Some birds called. Another sip and I could be up there with them. ‘I’d say that was spot on, Mr Pascoe. Spot on.’

‘Good. Don’t touch anything here. Just get in the van to keep warm. Me and Ian’ll get some help. We’ll be back soon.’

Gallagher’s face was a study of confusion, a blend of terror and hope. He didn’t fancy walking off into the dark with Pascoe, but the reference to him as a witness and an undercover operator must have sounded like sweet music. He took another drink and screwed the cap back on the bottle. No more drinking. No flying tonight.

‘What about Ian? Does he get a say?’

‘No,’ Pascoe said. ‘He does exactly what he’s told. He doesn’t get a say at all.’

That night I discovered how much better the cops are at managing their own death scenes than anyone else’s. The blue lights and the uniforms arrived along with the suits and the cameras. They went about it smoothly, with lots of nods and murmurs of agreement. Bob Loggins showed up briefly. He didn’t talk to me but I saw him shake a very pale and stressed-looking Ian Gallagher by the hand. My. 38 went into a plastic bag and I never saw it again. A bloke with a medical chest came over to me and did what he could for my cuts and abrasions. He gave me a sling for my wrenched shoulder and I wore it. Why not? Why should Colin Pascoe hog all the heroism?

Eventually they had all the pictures and measurements and fingerprints they needed and, as the movie people say, they called it a wrap. I was just about asleep by this time, with a blanket around my shoulders. I’d had some hot coffee from a thermos, but the caffeine was losing the battle. I climbed into the back of a police car and settled down into its comfort. Just before we left the door opened and I was looking into Pascoe’s ugly, bristled face, smelling the whisky and tobacco on his breath and knowing my breath would smell much the same.

‘I’ll drop in tomorrow,’ he said quietly. ‘Until then, your door and your mouth are shut. You don’t use the phone, you don’t write anything down. Understood?’

‘What about Henry Wilton?’

He put his fingers to his lips and slammed the door shut. I don’t remember anything about the ride back to Glebe. I must have slept through it. A cop escorted me to my front door and helped me to open it. The cord they’d used on my wrists had scraped skin away and I realised that my fingers had been tingling unpleasantly ever since the circulation had been restored.

‘Will you be all right, Mr Hardy?’

‘I’ll be OK, Constable. Thank you.’

‘Goodnight.’

I stood at the door and watched him go down the path, through the gate to the police car. A solidly-built young man, competent, a public servant. It was 2.00 a.m. or thereabouts and the street was quiet. The strangeness of it all struck me-here I was in my scarcely renovated terrace in Glebe, with money being made and upward mobility getting going all around me, and I’d come within a hair’s breadth of being buried in a Campbelltown paddock. I was bleeding in ten places and smelled like an all-in wrestler after a night on the town. I didn’t belong here, but then again, with an architect wife and a small business to operate, I did. I closed the door and limped towards the back of the quiet house.

A jacket of Cyn’s was hanging on a doorknob and I sniffed at it as I went past. Ma Griffe or Rive Gauche, I could never tell the difference. But it was a Cyn smell and I missed her powerfully. What would I tell her if she’d been here? Would I say, ‘I came this close’? I knew I wouldn’t. I’d make a joke about the steepness of the McElhone steps and the exorbitant cost of dry cleaning and throw down as much white wine as I could. I climbed the stairs, stripping off my clothes as I went and fell on the bed and dragged a sheet across me. An hour later I woke up out of a nightmare which faded immediately. I was cold and the room seemed unnaturally dark. I found a blanket and turned on the bedside light and slept fitfully for another couple of hours like a frightened kid.

As it happened, Pascoe’s rules weren’t hard to live by. I wasn’t in any shape to go out walking, there was food and drink in the house and I was too demoralised to want to talk to anybody. The phone rang a couple of times and I ignored it. I didn’t stick to the letter of the law. I opened the front door to collect the paper. A car I’d never seen before was parked across the street and it was still there later when I checked for mail. I read the paper from cover to cover. They were talking about introducing late-night shopping on Thursdays on a trial basis. There was a story about the opening of Sydney’s first sex shop selling ‘fantasy apparel’, ‘erotic literature’ and ‘marital aids’. Probably go well on Thursday nights. The operational phase of Australia’s military presence in Vietnam was drawing to a close. I read that piece several times to see what it meant about the war, apart from the fact that the boys were coming home. Between the armyese and the journalese it was impossible to tell.