Peter Corris - Matrimonial Causes

‘Thank God. A smoking golfer, I don’t think I could stand it. There must have been an inquest on the two dead men.’

‘There was. I don’t remember much about it. Stage-managed, you’d call it. I said my piece. Pascoe and Gallagher got commendations. I didn’t feel too bad about that-Chalky and Mario were no loss.’

‘Double standard there, Cliff. You see Henry Wilton at Randwick and he was the real villain.’

I yawned. ‘Just being realistic. I don’t place bets with him.’

I hadn’t thought about all this in a long time and now that they were back the memories weren’t pleasant. Glen could feel the tension in me and she touched my face. ‘You healed up OK. Is that the most dangerous situation you’ve been in?’

‘I think it’s the closest I’ve come since Malaya, yes. There’s been some tough moments since, but I was completely helpless that time, just waiting, just feeling stupid.’

I remember that it had taken me some time to get my confidence back. I let things slide, lost jobs, didn’t do much at all for a few weeks. Then I told myself that I’d gone in at the deep end and it couldn’t be that hard all the time. And I had done a few things right, like throwing the camera at Teacher, locating Maxwell and keeping Joanie Dare’s name from Gallagher. I was never able to give her the story though, and couldn’t explain. She accused me of bad faith and that was the end of our friendship. I worked my way back to normality via some easy jobs, had a few lucky breaks and eventually put the whole thing behind me. I hung on to the old Falcon, but I got a new gun.

‘Which brings us to the next question,’ Glen said.

‘It’s late, love. We should go to bed.’

‘I want to hear about Cyn and now’s the best time. Did you go up to Queensland?’

I shook my head. ‘I rang her with that in mind but we had a fight over the phone. I don’t even remember what it was about. Something stupid. So I didn’t go. She came back and we struggled on for a while, but she left in the end.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘On the north shore somewhere. She married an advertising man. They’ve got a couple of kids and she sails or skis or something.’

‘Not friends?’

‘Not anything.’

Glen moved closer to me and I held her. There was sand in the parting of her hair. I touched the long white scar the bullet wound had left in her arm, smoothing out the puckered skin. ‘Nice,’ she murmured. ‘And what would you say you learned from all that?’

‘I became a very much better judge of police persons,’ I said.