Peter Corris - Aftershock

There had to be a clue to the other man, but maybe it was in the cottage being gutted. Maybe I’d never find it. I went through all the stuff for a second time, as is my methodical way. I probed and rattled things and turned them upside down. An old leather jacket creaked and rustled as I felt in its torn pockets. I shook it and it rattled with more noise than the metal zip fastener should have made. I took the jacket across to the window for the light, turned it inside out and began to feel around the lining and stitching. There was something loose and metallic inside the lining near the waistband. I worked it around to a hole and poked it out. Two keys on a ring, one big and new, one small and old.

I put everything back the way I’d found it and took the keys and the empty coffee mug out to the kitchen. May was sitting at the table doing the cryptic crossword in the Sydney Morning Herald. She looked up. ‘What a beast to breathe on her,’ she said.

‘Sorry.’

‘That’s the clue-what a beast to breathe on her.’

I rinsed the mug and put it on the sink. ‘How many letters?’

‘Seven.’

‘Panther,’ I said.

She wrote it in. ‘It fits. Do you do the crossword?’

‘No. It was just a guess. Can you tell me where Horrie is?’

‘He’s in the garden. Did you find anything interesting in his things?’

There was something so direct and honest about her that I didn’t consider lying. I noticed, though, that she didn’t use Oscar Bach’s name. I showed her the keys.

She shrugged. ‘Horrie might know what they are.’

‘Have you two made it up?’

‘Nothing to make up. I’ll love that man till the day they put me in the ground. I just wish he didn’t have all this trouble.’

‘I don’t understand. What trouble? You’re rich. He lost a friend but…’

She put down her ballpoint and turned her dark, slanting eyes on me. ‘You don’t look stupid but you say some dumb things. Like all Australian men, you think women don’t really know what’s going on. I know, believe me, I know.’

‘I’m sorry, May. You’ve lost me. What do you know?’

‘I know who attacked you the other night, or who ordered it. Horrie doesn’t know and you mustn’t tell him. It would make him too unhappy. Go and talk to him, Cliff, but be careful.’

‘What can you tell me about Oscar Bach?’

She shook her head and the fine, grey hair flew around her wise face. ‘Nothing. But when you find out some more come and talk to me. Talk to me before you talk to Horrie.’

‘What about Ralph?’

She picked up her pen and filled in an eight letter word.

I found Horrie weeding a garden bed. I’m no gardener, but the green things sticking up out of the ground looked like the tops of vegetables. He was on his hands and knees, bending forward and back easily. I wondered if I’d be able to move like that when I was his age. Maybe if I ate more vegetables? The sun was high and hot. Horrie wore a stylish wide-brimmed hat and, despite my thick head of hair, I felt the need for a hat, too. I showed him the keys.

‘That looks like a key to Oscar’s van,’ he said, fingering the larger key. ‘Don’t recognise the other one.’

‘There was no trunk in the house? Tool box, sea chest, nothing like that?’

‘No.’

‘What’s this van? You didn’t mention that before.’

‘Must’ve forgot. Oscar had an old Bedford van for his work. Real wreck, but he kept it running. He must’ve been a pretty good mechanic. The young feller who’s doing the work now’s got it. Mark Roper. Leastways, he did have it a couple of weeks ago. I saw him in town. Said it was running all right. Is it important?’

I said I didn’t know what was important yet, which was true. I got Roper’s address in Lambton from him and told him I was off to pay a few visits.

He brushed dirt off his hands and stood up. ‘You feeling all right? Need any help?’

I said I felt fine which was half-true and that I didn’t need help. That disappointed him. He looked down at the garden bed as if he didn’t care whether the things grew or not. It brought home to me again how important this matter was to him. I asked him to thank May for her hospitality and reassured him that I’d stay regularly in touch.

‘If you need money…’

‘I’ll ask for it. Don’t worry. No need yet.’

He took off his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead with his hand. ‘Can you tell me this? Do you think I’m crazy or is there really some sort of mystery here?’

I still had a slight headache; I had a broken car window, a hostile son and a man who left fewer traces behind him than a bird flying across the sky. ‘There’s a mystery, Horrie,’ I said.

Glenys Withers took one look at me and said, ‘I knew you were trouble the minute I laid eyes on you.’

‘That’s not a very compassionate attitude, Senior. I’m the innocent victim, not the vile perpetrator.’

‘Attacked, were you? Did you report it to the police? I thought not.’

She took two steps down towards me, better than backing away, but I still felt I was losing ground. I’m no more of a fetishist than most men, but there was something about her strong, shapely body in the crisp uniform that was doing things to me. If I’d been forced to describe it, I’d have called it pre-sexual. First off, I wanted this good-looking woman to like me. Right then, I wasn’t sure that she’d have a cup of coffee with me. I hadn’t counted on kindliness. She stood a step above me which made her only a couple of inches shorter and looked at my face. ‘My god,’ she said, ‘you have taken a battering over the years, haven’t you? What happened to the nose?’

‘Boxing,’ I said, ‘mostly’

‘That’d be right. What have you been doing, apart from being bashed?’

‘Talking to Horrie Jacobs and looking through Oscar Bach’s things.’

‘Find anything interesting?’

I’d recovered my balance and had the half-truth ready. ‘His old house’s being renovated as of yesterday after years of neglect. Seems a bit coincidental. Did you find anything interesting?’

She touched my arm and shrugged her shoulder bag into place. The gun on her hip jumped a few inches. ‘Come and have something to eat and we can talk about it.’

She took me to a semi-outdoors restaurant, part of the re-vamped waterfront. We sat under a pergola covered with a vine that grew out of a tub. It was that sort of a place-almost natural. She ordered a light beer and calamari and I opted for the same drink and whitebait. We made small talk over the beer while we waited for the food. I reflected that this semi-profession had changed: once, you had to be an ex-cop or something equally heavy and be ready to put in the boot, now, there’s a TAFE course leading to qualification for a PEA licence and we lunch al fresco with gun-toting female cops.

She speared up some calamari, ate it and nodded. ‘It can have the texture of a bicycle tube, ever found that?’

‘Yes.’ I crunched the bones and skin of some whitebait, chewed briefly and swallowed the lot. ‘This is great.’

‘Good, since it’s all on you. The police force is feeling the pinch.’

I groaned at the joke and suddenly we were on better terms. She told me that Oscar Bach fell very definitely into the category of ‘nothing known’. No convictions, no fines, no violations, no infringements, no complaints.

I said, ‘Isn’t that a bit unusual?’

She ate some of the side salad that had come without being ordered. It seemed to be fresh and crisp, but was it free? ‘Yes, but not unique. In theory, all citizens should have a clean bill of health.’

‘You’d be out of a job if they did.’