Peter Corris - Aftershock

‘So would you.’

‘True. I have to tell you that I got the same result when I looked through his stuff. Too good to be true. No, worse than that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Not true at all.’

‘You’re being fanciful now. You’re trying to promote something. That’s the trouble with people in your business, always looking for angles.’

The tasty whitebait turned to ashes in my mouth. Suddenly I was angry. Where did she get off? Going from office to courthouse, attending the odd disaster… ‘That’s your old man talking,’ I said. ‘How many private detectives have you dealt with, Senior? In your smooth ride towards the top?’

‘What d’you mean by that?’

I started eating again and the food tasted better. I crunched the skin and bones, took a forkful of the salad and a solid swig of the light. I wished it was Newcastle Brown.

‘You think I made this rank because of my father,’ she snapped. ‘I’m a better bloody police… ‘

It was getting out of hand. Her voice had risen and people were starting to look at us. I resisted the impulse to complete her sentence with ‘person’, and poured her some more beer. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘we shouldn’t be fighting.’

‘Why are we, then?’

I looked at her over the plates and glasses and bowls. The light bouncing off the water made her eyes look even bluer than before.

You’re not interested in blue eyes, I said to myself, you like dark eyes. Think of Anne Bancroft. But I liked what I was seeing much more than I wanted to. I tried to think of Helen Broadway. I needed help.

“What’s wrong?’ she said.

I shook my head and a laser of pain shot through my skull. I blessed it. Something to blame. I touched one of the cuts and winced. ‘My head hurts. Crowbar.’

‘Jesus. You should be in hospital or something.’

‘I’ll be all right. Not as young as I was. You don’t bounce back from these things as quickly. We seem to have rubbed each other up the wrong way. I apologise. I need your help.’ The words were not coming from the part of my brain that was thinking and feeling things.

She ate a little more calamari, drank some beer and lit a cigarette. ‘D’you mind?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘blow some over here.’ Not much of a line but better than telling her to put it out. Maybe someone else would do that. It was a pretty clean-looking place and I didn’t see any ashtrays.

‘Let’s get back on the point,’ she said. ‘Nothing known on Mr Bach. An autopsy was done, of course. If we find someone squashed flat with a refrigerator lying on top of him we still have to determine the cause of death.’

I nodded. Maybe tough talking was her way out of emotional confusion, the way excessive formality was mine.

‘There is something slightly unusual about the autopsy, but I wouldn’t get excited about it if I was you.’

‘What was unusual?’

‘It was done here at the forensic unit of the Central Hospital, like most of them…’

‘Most? Not all?’

‘No. The workload must’ve got too heavy or something, because a couple of the bodies were shipped to Sydney. Mr Bach’s autopsy was done here but the doctor who did it died of a heart attack himself a few weeks later. This was the only autopsy he did and, compared with the others, I’d have to say his report is perfunctory.’

‘Can I see it?’

She opened her shoulder bag and took out some papers. She’d balanced the cigarette on the edge of a plate and it had burned away, forgotten. I resisted the impulse to reach over and stub it out before it burnt down to the filter. ‘I couldn’t photocopy reams of the stuff or someone might have asked me what I was doing. But here’s a sample-a page of the Bach report and one of the others. And I still don’t know why I’m doing this.’

‘Your cigarette’s going to smell of plastic soon,’ I said. ‘Can I see the papers, please?’

She dealt with the cigarette and I took the papers and it would have been hard to say whether she’d intended to surrender them or not. The waitress arrived just then asking if we wanted coffee. We both did. Another agreement, another diversion. I scanned the papers quickly. Dr… (signature scrawled in haste, indecipherable) had some talent as a writer. His notes on the injuries to his subject and their clinical consequences leading to death had a dramatic and convincing ring. Not so with the work of Dr Keifer McCausland, who wrote his name in a bold, round hand. It was all ‘apparents’ and ‘evidents’ and ‘obviouslys’. Dr McCausland concluded that Oscar Bach had died from ‘contusion and trauma’ resulting from ‘falling objects’.

The coffee arrived and we both took it black without sugar. I handed the papers back. ‘I see your point,’ I said, ‘it looks a bit sloppy, but you couldn’t promote anything on that basis.’

‘Don’t start,’ she said. ‘All you can take away from this is that you’d have had more confidence if Dr Thingummy had done the job. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘That’s not much.’

‘No.’

‘Who bashed you?’

‘I don’t know for sure. Why’re you interested?’

‘You think I’m interested in you?’

‘Again, I don’t know. No reason to think so. Maybe you’re tired of being in personnel and liaison or whatever. Maybe you want to do some policing.’

‘You’re right there. I do. Is there anything in this, really?’

‘I’m sick of being asked the same thing. Another minute and you’ll have me saying it’s a clear case of suicide, just for the variation. I simply don’t know, and I have to admit I’m a bit thrown. I’m not accustomed to dealing with policewomen.’

‘What’s the difference? You’re lying to me just as you’d lie to a man.’

I sipped some of the thin, bitter coffee. ‘That’s not true. I mean, it’s been known, but…’

‘This is getting tricky,’ she said. ‘I assume you’ve got a few things to follow up?’

‘One, at least.’

‘Why don’t you do that and get in touch with me again? I might have something more to add myself.’

That suited me. Her tone was neutral, not unfriendly. I fished out my Mastercard and waved it at the waitress. ‘You wouldn’t like to tell me what that something more might be?’

She smiled. ‘I don’t think so. Thank you for the lunch.’

In the old days if you booked into a motel, took off in the afternoon and didn’t come back by midday, the manager would open up the room and start inventorying your belongings. Not any more. At the Hillside they held a signed credit card slip and they could play it any way they chose. The manager gave me a casual wave as I drove in and went back to supervising the cleaning of the pool. Good move.

I lay on the bed with my brain in neutral and only my digestion working. My head ached and I thought about taking some painkillers but fell asleep before I could translate the thought into action. It was late afternoon before I woke up and I tried to tell myself that an interview with the client, an investigation of the subject’s possessions and a consultation with an officer of the law constituted a day’s work and entitled me to an evening with Lonesome Dove and the TV. I failed to convince myself. I showered, cleaned up the cuts on my face, changed my shirt and headed for Lambton.

Lambton is to Newcastle what Erskineville is to Sydney. Close in, old established, traditionally working class and by-passed by the trendies. I drove through the look-alike streets until I located Yorkshire Road which must have been named by someone stabbing a map of England with a pin. There were no moors, no pubs, no pits-nothing here for Freddy Trueman. Mark Roper’s place was a double-fronted fibro bungalow-iron roof, chimney at the side, garage at the rear-pretty much like the one next to it and the one next to that. As I got out of the car I was aware of two unrelated thoughts in my head: I’d never gone calling on a pest exterminator before, and I wondered what Glenys Withers was doing just then.