Peter Corris - Burn and Other Stories

‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Tell me what happened.’

‘Simple enough. McPherson went after Cook with a gun-. 22 rifle, if you want to know. The witness says McPherson got Cook out of bed and started blasting. Cook took seven bullets, but he got McPherson.’

‘Who was the witness?’

‘Some whore Cook had with him. McPherson winged her too. Pity you weren’t around, Hardy. He could’ve taken a shot at you.’

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‘It’s Colin, Mr Hardy. I know it is!’

She’d shown me a photograph and told me it was of her husband. A wife generally knows what her husband looks like, but I was sceptical. The photo was clipped from a local newspaper — the Eastern Suburbs Courier — one of those free rags full of civic news and real estate ads, not renowned for the quality of anything — photographs, paper, accuracy. The picture was of the Petersham Lawn Tennis Club Men’s A Grade team which had beaten the Coogee team in a semifinal of the club competition.

I put my finger on the rather blurred head of a man turned slightly away from the camera. ‘Him?’

Mrs Andrea Cook nodded. She was an attractive, somewhat care-worn, woman in her mid-thirties. She looked as though a few hours more sleep per night and a few hundred extra bucks per week would’ve transformed her into someone much more vibrant. She had told me that her husband had disappeared while swimming at Apollo Bay in Victoria four years ago. She and Colin Cook had been married for four years. They had a child and Colin had conducted a successful, small-scale building and consultancy business.

‘How small?’

‘Col built mudbrick houses, yurts, wattle and daub, that sort of thing. You know?’

I said I didn’t know and she filled me in quickly on the details of alternative house-building in Victoria in the mid-’80s. Apparently, special government-backed loans and even grants were available for people prepared to build their own houses out of local, environmentally-friendly materials. But the builders needed plans, advice, land-use approvals, and modifications to their solar, naturally-insulated, low-maintenance fantasies. That was where Colin came in. He built a mean mudbrick open-planner and he also had the technical and economic know-how and the political skills to steer projects through the grant application minefield into council-approved heaven.

‘Sounds like he was on a winner,’ I said.

‘For a while,’ Andrea Cook said. ‘But bad times began in Victoria earlier than most people think. The grants and loans started to dry up. The councils started to get scared of the greenies, especially in the country. They began to worry about how real environmentalists would feel about the rivers and creeks being toxic sewers for half the year.’

There was a passionate, iconoclastic note in her voice and, just for an instant, I could see this mild-mannered, suit-wearing middle-class woman as a denim-clad, headbanded greenie, chained to a fence or lying in the mud in front of a low-loader.

‘So what happened?’ I said.

‘The business got into trouble. Colin owed money to people who wouldn’t wait and the people who owed him money couldn’t pay. He was tense, withdrawn. We fought. He drank. We borrowed a house from some friends at Apollo Bay. Col went swimming one morning and didn’t come back. The water was rough that day. I still loved him. It was terrible.’

She told me that Cook had had a paid-up life insurance policy and, while the company wasn’t happy with the circumstances, she got a payout. Not the full amount, but enough to settle the most pressing debts.

‘They weren’t as bad as Col had made them out to be,’ she said. ‘That puzzled me, but it stopped the insurance company from insisting on invoking the suicide clause.’

She said she came out of the legal battles with enough to finance a move back to Sydney where she’d come from.

‘I’m a Maroubra girl and I went back there. You’re from Maroubra too, aren’t you? My solicitor-I was seeing him about something else, but I sort of steered him round to talking about private detectives-told me about you.’

Indeed I was. I’d been ocean-dipped, salt-sprayed and maybe skin-cancered there at least ten years before her. I had no intention of going back, though. The solicitor’s name didn’t ring a bell, but it was a bond of some sort and the job didn’t sound too hard on the operational level. The emotional side of it might get a bit sticky for Andrea later if the man did turn out to be her husband and not David Richmond, the way it said in the photo caption. But that wouldn’t be my problem.

She smiled when I said I’d help and, as I suspected, a smile improved her looks a lot.

‘Did your husband have any brothers or cousins? This could be a family resemblance.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No brothers or male cousins.’

That made it time to caution her. ‘This sort of thing happens, Mrs Cook. Men take off and start new lives, new families.’

‘I have to know,’ she said. ‘If you find that it is Col and what he’s doing, I’ll think about what to do next.’

That seemed fair enough. She was a qualified pharmacist and had a job in a Maroubra shop that was doing OK. She was buying a flat and could write a decent cheque. I got a six-year-old photo and some details on Col: born Melbourne, 1952; 180 centimetres, brown hair, olive complexion, solid build; no spectacles, hearing aids or false teeth. I looked at the photo. Like the man in the clipping, he was wearing tennis gear. He held a racquet as if he knew how to use it. Maybe.

“Was he a good tennis player, your husband?’

‘Oh, yes-very good. A schoolboy champion.’

‘Any peculiarities? I mean scars or birthmarks, anything like that?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Nothing. He’s a very normal man. In every way.’ We both noticed that she was using the present tense. She took another look at the clipping before handing it to me.

‘You’ve talked to someone about it now,’ I said. “That can help in itself. You’re still sure?’

Firm nod. ‘When can you…?’

‘Today,’ I said. ‘But it could take a while. I’ll be in touch.’

I waited until she’d gone before lifting up the L-Z. It doesn’t look impressive but it often works. Not this time though — no Richmonds in Petersham, Stanmore or Marrickville. Worth a try. I phoned the tennis club and was told that the competition players practised on Friday evening. Tomorrow. That was OK; I had bills to pay, phone calls to make, people to meet.

The Petersham Lawn Tennis Club was on Stanley Road, Marrickville. I hadn’t expected to find any actual grass courts there, but I was wrong. There were three in a group behind a dozen or so with the usual synthetic surfaces. I parked in the street and took a look at the courts, feeling nostalgic. There used to be a lot of grass courts around Sydney, green in winter, bare and yellow in summer. Bastards to play on, with their uneven surfaces and tricky bounces, but in the 1950s grass was the recti surface, like at Wimbledon, Forest Hills and Kooyong. These survivors were well-maintained and the people playing mixed doubles on two of them were having a good time.

The serious business was taking place on a hard court near the clubhouse. I wandered through the gate, behind the social players and took up a position near the court. It was after six but with daylight saving in operation, the light was good. So were the players. Two men were playing a hard-hitting singles, going all out, whipping top and underspin shots across court and rushing the net at every opportunity to make punching volleys. I watched a few games. Both had grooved, kicking serves and good footwork. The difference emerged in the third game-the shorter guy was a fraction faster and had a little more variety in his game. When he had to scramble for a shot he did something quirky with it. He won more of the points that mattered.