Peter Corris - Burn and Other Stories

She didn’t have to complete the sentence. I’ve encountered a few suicides in my time, some successful and some near-misses. A version of the old Samuel Goldwyn line applies: if people don’t want to live you can’t stop them.

Desperation or the look on my face or maybe both caused her to blurt the next words out: ‘He’s hired a hit man to kill him!’

After that, we got to the guts of it. McPherson had last tried to kill himself two months ago. After he was released from hospital, he saw a counsellor, took some anti-depressants and seemed steadier. Ten days ago, Gabrielle Walker had heard him talking on the phone, using what she called ‘frightening language’.

‘I tackled him and he admitted what he’d done.’

‘Which was?’

‘He said he’d made an arrangement with this man to kill him some time within the next three years.’

I stared at her. This was a new one. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s terrible. He’s been wonderful ever since- cheerful, funny, happy. He’s done some great layouts and he did a freelance thing, a book cover, that was just brilliant. I’ve never seen him more… alive.’

‘What does he say?’

‘He won’t talk about it. He wants to make love all the time, but he won’t talk. All he’ll say is that he can’t face the idea of living for five or ten or twenty years, but he can face three years. And the knowledge that he might only have to face a week, or less, makes him feel good.’

‘He’s a very disturbed man,’ I said.

‘I know. But I’ve never seen him happier. He’s never been more… passionate. I’m sorry, this is embarrassing.’

It was, a bit. She was a rather proper young woman essentially-restrained, even conventional. As I talked to her, I sensed that she had found McPherson’s suicidal impulses understandable, almost acceptable. She was a little low on self-esteem herself. Maybe that was what had drawn them together initially. But this twist, this variation on the theme, really threw her. She would have coped better with a suicide pact, perhaps. These were very deep and murky waters for a simple boy from Maroubra. I resorted to the oldest gambit of all. “What do you want me to do, Ms Walker?’ I said.

Her head came up defiantly. ‘I want you to find this man and tell him not to kill Andrew. Tell him that you know all about it and if anything happens to Andrew you’ll tell the police. That should stop him.’

I nodded. ‘It would, you’d reckon. But this is a big city and there are a lot of dodgy people in it. Even if Mr McPherson’s not just romancing…’

‘He’s not. I’m sure.’

‘OK. But you can see why I’m doubtful. Maybe the idea of being killed makes him feel better. It doesn’t mean there’s reality behind it.’

‘I know the man’s name,’ she said.

That, of course, put a different complexion on it. She said McPherson talked in his sleep and that she’d heard him say, ‘Do it, Clark. Please do it, Clark,’ over and over.

‘Just Clark? Not Clark somebody or somebody Clark?’

‘Just Clark’

Ms Walker seemed to think that was enough for a halfway decent detective to go on, especially one who’d been recommended by Renee Kippax. I thought it was one notch above nothing at all, but, at least partly, we PEAs are in the reassurance business. I got her address and phone numbers, took a very small amount of her money and promised I’d look into it.

You could say I went through the motions. I talked to a few people — a cop, two other private eyes, a journalist and several drinkers in several places where some of the dodgy people I’d referred to hang out. The recession was biting down there too, otherwise I doubt whether I’d have got the nibble I did in the public bar of the Finger Wharf Hotel, Woolloomooloo.

‘Clark,’ Mick ‘the Dingo’ Logan said. ‘Seems to me I did hear of a guy who called himself Clark sometimes. What’s it about, Hardy?’

‘As far as you’re concerned, Dingo, it’s about thirty bucks-if your information’s any good.’

‘Heavy stuff?’

‘It could be.’

‘Clark, Clark.’ Logan lit a cigarette, puffed on it a few times and then limped off in the direction of the telephone. The Dingo had had some bad luck a while back and got both his legs broken. Then he served a stretch inside and the legs didn’t mend too well. His armed robbery days were over but he still knew what went on and was prepared to sell a titbit or too as long as it didn’t put him in any danger to do so. That was what the phone call was about. I sipped my middy of old and waited.

Logan came back, grinning and snapping his fingers. He stubbed out his cigarette and took a long pull on the beer I’d bought him. ‘It all comes back to me,’ he said.

I put a twenty and a ten under my glass and looked at him.

‘Hey,’ Logan protested, ‘you’re getting it wet.’

‘Dingo, you’ll just turn it into beer anyway. ‘What’s the difference? Let’s hear it.’

It was early afternoon on a chilly, windy day. The kind of day that turns the streets of the ‘Loo into cold wind tunnels. There were very few people in the bar and they were all minding their own business. Logan leaned closer to me, whispering out of long habit. ‘Word is, this guy Clark’s either a bit of a joke or an undercover cop.’

I lifted his glass, put the twenty under it. ‘Go on.’

‘Yeah, like he claims to have form in the west or South Africa or some fucking place. But no-one knows him over here. There’s a whisper he did a bank in Rockdale. Cowboy job. Could’ve been a come-on.’

There’s no body of men more paranoid than crims when they’re sober or more trusting when they’re drunk. Without the lubrication of alcohol, the clear-up rate of the NSW police force would only be half what it is. I put the ten on the bar between us.

‘And?’ I said.

‘It’s a joke for sure.’

‘If it’s funny, I’ll laugh.’

He took the money. ‘He’ll do a hit for five grand.’

I produced another twenty. ‘Tell me where to find him.’

Logan, being the man he is, gave me three addresses and two names. Never in his life had he been known to deliver up information straight. In the old days, I’d have had to make a decision- would it be better to give him more money or lean hard and persuade him to be more precise? But everyone’s become more devious since those times, and more hungry lately. Besides, Logan was almost a cripple. I bought him another beer, thanked him and left the pub. I’m more devious nowadays as well-I positioned myself where I could spot the Dingo and follow him, whether he limped, drove himself or rode.

He came out of the pub and hopped into a taxi which he’d apparently called from inside. I was right behind him, up Bourke to Oxford Street and through to Paddington. Like I said, alcohol is the fuel of criminality. Logan paid off his cab outside the Five Ways Hotel and took himself, and my fifty bucks, inside. Trendy place, for the Dingo-restored to its former glory, painted in colonial colours and with as many vines growing out of pots as could be crammed into the available space. It wasn’t one of the addresses he had given me. I parked a few doors from the pub and walked back, fishing sunglasses out of my pocket and getting ready to do my imitation of a private detective on the job. In fact I knew that if Logan had another couple of beers it would be possible to belly up to the same bar and not be recognised.

The poet who said something about standing and waiting should be the official laureate of this trade. I watched men and women enter and leave the Five Ways for the next fifteen minutes. About half of the males could have been hit men or cops and a certain percentage of the females could have been males. When I judged that Logan would have absorbed two schooners, I went into the public bar. Logan was drinking at the far end, near the dartboard. He looked anxiously at his watch and lifted his glass with an unsteady hand. I got behind a pot-plant that seemed to have wandered in from outside and did some more watching. A big, beefy guy in a blue suit came in and spotted the Dingo. He had sparse blonde hair cut short, and a red face with a deep cleft in the chin. I didn’t know him and from the way he moved, as if he expected everyone to get out of his way, I didn’t want to.