Peter Corris - Burn and Other Stories

‘Alberto!’

A heavy-set, middle-aged, dark man shouted from the rear of the shop. A young man at the counter who was dealing with customers while clacking keys on a computer, looked up. A quick exchange in what I took to be Portuguese followed and the older man scowled and looked very unhappy. The younger one hit the cash register key viciously but smiled as he took my money and made change quickly. He was tall and lean, in his early twenties, and no darker than I am myself after a week or so at the beach.

Hathaway had told me that young de Sousa worked in the liquor store by day and did a stint in the restaurant at night. I wandered around for a couple of hours familiarising myself with the area. I sat for a while on a bench in Petersham Park. Nice place-well-tended oval, small grandstand, Moreton Bay figs and a swimming pool tucked into one corner. The big, hand-operated scoreboard still held the proceedings of Saturday’s second-grade cricket match. The board was partly in shadow, but from where I sat I could read one of the entries: Kazantsakis 58. The Petersham RSL club was a big, garish joint with wide steps, glass doors and a look that said ‘Forget your cares and spend your money’.

I had whitebait and salad and two glasses of wine in the de Sousa restaurant. The place was moderately busy with a clientele of southern Europeans, Asians and Anglos. Alberto waited table as if he didn’t like doing it very much but wasn’t going to screw up in any particular. Later, I sat in my car in a side street and watched the back exit of the restaurant. At 10.30 Alberto came out, got into a blue Laser and drove off. I followed him. So far, I hadn’t seen anything to criticise in the kid. He worked hard. He even drove a Ford.

First stop for Alberto was the underpass west of Petersham station. A few small fluorescent tubes didn’t do much to dispel the darkness. The tunnel was a gloomy, graffiti-daubed slimepit smelling of piss. Alberto conferred briefly with a man in biker gear. Small objects changed hands. Next point of call was a pub in Newtown. He ordered a light beer and sipped at it without interest. I knew the pub by reputation. I went past him and down the steps to the toilet where I took a leak. One of the two cubicles was closed with no sounds coming from within. I went back up to the bar in time to see Alberto check his watch. He went into the toilet and wasn’t there long enough to unzip his fly. He walked straight through the bar, ignoring his barely touched middy.

I followed the Laser to the Cross and left Alberto in Darlinghurst Road, talking to a young blonde with four-inch heels and a three-inch skirt. I drove home to Glebe, stowed the Jacobs Creek in the fridge and went to bed.

The next day was Saturday. Alberto worked in the shop until noon, emerged eating a sandwich and swigging a can of coke, and headed south. He turned off the Princes Highway into the national park, crossed the Audley weir, took the turnoff to Maianbar and drove to a small timber house on the edge of the settlement.

Maianbar is one of those anachronisms-a small pocket of freehold land within a national park. It consists of a few unpaved streets off the main road, maybe a hundred houses and a general store. At low tide you can walk around the beach to Bundeena and get a ferry to Cronulla. Otherwise, the only way out is by road. Cyn and I had spent a let’s-try-to-patch-this-marriage-up holiday there years ago. Good holiday, no soap on the marriage. The house de Sousa went to was at the end of a rough track, surrounded by bush. I approached on foot, using the abundant cover. I saw two cars besides de Sousa’s, two other men and one woman. They sat on the front veranda, talked and drank coffee. They argued, then calmed down. I’d have given a lot to be able to hear what they were saying but there was no way to get close enough. When the group showed signs of breaking up I scooted back to my car and got it out of sight down another track.

All three cars left and I walked back to the house, intending to break in. The woman sat on the veranda fiddling with something on her lap. I squinted through the bush, trying to make out what she was doing. Suddenly, she lifted a pair of heavy binoculars and started scanning the landscape. I ducked back under cover and squirmed away through the scrub to my car.

On Sunday I thought about it. On Monday I decided to have a look at Fiona Hathaway. She left her father’s large terrace house in Macauley Street, Leichhardt, at 8.15 and caught a bus into the city. I rode along with her. She was pretty, blonde, nervous-looking; fashionably and expensively dressed in a pale linen suit and cream silk blouse, but without the confidence those sorts of clothes usually give a woman. She sat in the bus, staring straight ahead of her. Maxwell had thought of her as possibly tough underneath a conventional exterior. I wasn’t sure. There was something unusual about her, but I couldn’t identify it.

She walked from George Street to an office building in Martin Place. I watched the lift go up to the third floor, killed half an hour and went in, pretending to be lost. I got enough of a look around to see that Lilly, Braithwaite amp; Reade was a big, prosperous legal firm and that Miss Fiona Hathaway was the assistant secretary to a clutch of the associates. She had her own cubicle, almost an office. I went to my place of work and handled routine matters for the rest of the day. At five o’clock I trailed Fiona home. It was hot and she carried her linen jacket, but she wore her long-sleeved blouse buttoned at the wrists.

She got off the bus two stops early and went to the Leichhardt library. I followed her in and browsed around, keeping her in sight. She lingered in the travel section. I was nearby, in geography and local history. I consulted an atlas and found that Madeira was indeed closer to Morocco than Portugal, but not by much. A history of Marrickville told me that the district had originally been inhabited by the Cadigal band-fifty or so Aborigines speaking the Dharug language. By 1790 only three Cadigals survived.

Fiona took her selection to the desk and I sneaked closer to get a look. She had three books on Portugal.

‘Have you been to Portugal?’ the librarian asked as she entered the books in the computer.

Fiona looked nervous and dabbed at her face which was perspiring, although the library was air-conditioned. ’I’m hoping to go soon,’ she said, ‘on my honeymoon.’

That’d be news to her dad.

I had a lot and I had nothing. Plenty of tracks but nothing to actually shoot at. Alberto was scoring smack, consorting with prostitutes and conducting secret meetings in the bush. Fiona thought she was going on an Iberian honeymoon. What the hell was going on here? And what was I supposed to do? I could keep up the surveillance on Alberto, take a few infra-red snaps and lay it out for Hathaway and his daughter. I could also tell Hathaway about Fiona’s wedding plans. But something told me that what I was seeing wasn’t the reality. Alberto the pusher, Fiona the bride — it didn’t feel right.

I followed her back to Macauley Street, noting the quick, nervous way she walked, the mannerisms that suggested insecurity, or something else. My car was parked nearby and had collected a ticket. Another expense for Mr Hathaway. I drove to Petersham, intending to watch Alberto, maybe even front him. As it turned out, there was no need. I parked in a lane behind the liquor store and, as I was locking the car, I became aware of the blue Laser that had drawn up behind me to block the exit to the lane. Alberto got out of the car and wrapped his right fist around a heavy bunch of keys. I had two keys and an NRMA tag on a single ring. I also had a. 38 Smith amp; Wesson on my right hip under my shirt-tail.

Alberto approached me, waving the loaded fist. ‘I want to talk to you. Why’re you following that woman?’