Peter Corris - Burn and Other Stories

I moved away from the car into open space. He was as tall as me, lighter, but much younger and maybe quicker. “What woman?’ I said.

He had the fist cocked and he was well-balanced. He wore jeans, a T-shirt and Nikes. Good fighting gear. ‘You were on the bus,’ he said. ‘You followed her to the library, then you followed her home.’

‘You’ve been doing some following yourself,’ I said.

He feinted at my head with his left and threw the right low. Good move, like something Fenech might have taught him at the Police Boys’ Club. But he hadn’t done it often or seriously enough to quite bring it off. I stepped back, made the punch miss, and clipped him on the side of the jaw with a short left. He lost balance and I gave him a bit of elbow and shoulder to help him on his way down. He fell, but he bounced up quickly and tried a roundhouse swing at my head. Another feint, but this time his feet were doing the work. He kicked me on the inside of my right thigh and I felt the strength drain from the leg as I buckled. He shuffled like Ali, but couldn’t decide whether to punch or kick. I dropped my head and butted him in the stomach with the last of the leverage I had. We both fell, me on top. I kneed him fairly hard in the crotch, splayed my fingers and exerted pressure on his staring eyeballs.

‘Keep very still,’ I gasped, ‘or get badly hurt.’

He froze. ‘OK, man. OK.’

I eased away slowly, plucking the keys from his hand and letting him see the gun in mine. ‘I want to talk, too,’ I said.

He said, ‘It’s not that heavy, man. I’m just trying to save one junkie.’

I put the gun away, kept the keys and let him sit up. We sat on the kerb in the lane. He lit a cigarette and told me about Fiona and her smack habit and how he wanted to help her kick it.

‘I saw you score in the underpass, again in Newtown and maybe again at the Cross last night.’

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t score in the Cross. I talked to a couple of the girls about what it’s like, trying to get straight. It’s rough. I’ve been building up a supply. I’m going to take Fiona away…’

‘To Maianbar?’ I said.

‘Yeah, right. You really have been on the job. Are you a nark?’

‘No. Go on.’

‘I’m going to take her to Maianbar and taper her slowly and get her clean. I’ve got some friends who’ll help.’

‘Why?’ I said.

‘I love her.’

‘How’d she get hooked?’

He turned his head to look at me. There was a slight swelling under his jaw where I’d hit him and some bruising around his eyes, but he was ready to take me on again if he had to. ‘The guy responsible is dead,’ he said.

We struck a deal, Alberto and me. I agreed to obtain some clean heroin, not the street crap he’d been scoring, and to get a doctor in on the cure. He agreed to let me tell Henry Hathaway what was going on.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Hathaway said. ‘Not my daughter.’

We were in the living room of his house- polished boards, Persian rug, cedar furniture. ‘It happens,’ I said. ‘Think about it-how jumpy she is, the long-sleeved blouses. Track marks. She met the wrong man at the wrong time. Now she’s met the right one.’

He shook his head. ‘A bloody wog.’

I leaned closer to him. ‘Let me put you straight. He’s risked more for her already than you ever have. The man who introduced her to heroin isn’t with us any more.’

Hathaway’s high colour leached away. ‘God,’ he breathed.

‘Yeah. And Alberto’s risked being busted and fingered buying the stuff to help her with the cure. D’you think scoring heroin’s fun? It isn’t. And I’ll tell you something else. His family doesn’t want him to have anything to do with her.’

‘They know? About Fiona’s… problem?’

‘Of course not. She’s Australian. She’s not a Catholic. They don’t think she’s good enough for him.’

Fiona took her annual leave and went to Maianbar with Alberto and his friends. Dr Ian Sangster, the medico who helps keep me together, supervised the tapering and the cut-off. He tells me that Fiona’s chances are good because she has love from outside and self-esteem from within. I got a big cheque from Henry Hathaway and an invitation to Fiona and Alberto’s wedding which was a great bash. They went to Portugal for the honeymoon. A happy ending, so far.

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‘I’m at my wits’ end, Mr Hardy. I know he’s serious about it. He’s tried twice with pills.’

Gabrielle Walker dropped her head so that I couldn’t see her red-rimmed, frantic eyes. Her thin shoulders heaved and she sighed. She was too tired to weep. I went past her, out of my office and down the hall to what the agent for the building refers to as a ‘kitchenette’. In fact it’s a couple of square metres of dead space beside the toilet fitted out with a sink and a power point. I’ve tried leaving a Birko and instant coffee and long-life milk in there to give the place a homey look, but the stuff always gets stolen. I ran the water until it cleared and took a glass back to Ms Walker. From the way she looked, anything stronger would have laid her out.

She thanked me and sipped the water. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

I said, ‘It’s OK. You’ve obviously had a rough time and you have a big problem. I’m not sure I can help you with it though. It sounds like something for counselling.’

She’d told me almost nothing. Just that her boyfriend was trying to kill himself. I didn’t even have his name. She was a thin, intense type, with a pale face and a mop of curly dark hair. The hair danced around her face now as she shook her head vigorously. ‘No. We’ve been through all that. This is different. I heard about you from Renee Kippax.’

Renee ran a sandwich bar and coffee shop in Palmer Street. I’d had a lot of breakfasts and lunches there, eaten on the run or taken away in paper bags, over the years. When she had a problem with some characters who were trying to persuade her that she needed plate glass, coffee machine and upholstery insurance, I helped her out by persuading them that she didn’t. She was a smart, tough, independent woman whose protective instincts would be brought to a high pitch by this helpless young woman. But she wouldn’t mention me without good reason.

‘Maybe you should tell me what you told her,’ I said.

‘Andrew McPherson’s his name. He’s a couple of years younger than me. I’m twenty-seven. He had a terrible life as a child. His father was a drunk who came back from time to time to bash him and his mother. She went mad. But Andrew battled on. He went to tech and he’s got a good job.’

I was scribbling to get this down. I interrupted her to give me time to catch up. ‘Tell me what you do first, Ms Walker. I gather you work around here?’

She nodded. ‘At the ABC. I’m a researcher and production assistant.’

I was back on the pace by this. ‘And what does Mr McPherson do?’

‘He’s an art designer for magazines. He works at…’

She stopped and looked at me. It’s something you get used to in this business. You’re a problem-solver and people want your help, but their first instinct is to mistrust you.

I said, ‘Ms Walker, if I went around telling people’s employers what I’ve been told in confidence, I’d be out of a job in a month.’

‘I’m sorry. Renee said you were very trustworthy.’

Not quite the point but what the hell. She told me that McPherson was the art director for Bigtime Publications, an outfit that published sporting and technical magazines. ‘It’s a smallish firm, really,’ she said, ‘despite the name. And it struggles sometimes when people don’t pay their bills. But it’s surviving and Andy has a future there. Except that…’