Peter Corris: Aftershock

‘I think they’re in the Redhead lagoon.’

‘Jesus. I think I want to get out of this place. If I’m fit I might apply for a transfer to Sydney.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ I said.

Assistant Commissioner Morton wanted to debrief me the way he had Glen. I wasn’t too co-operative, but I did tell him about the lagoon.

He shook his head. ‘Weird world isn’t it? You come up here looking for a killer and you find him. You know where Mario Costi is, don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘He’s about two floors above.’

‘What’ll happen there?’

‘Nothing. He’s not improving, close to brain dead. They’ll be pulling the plug pretty soon.’

I didn’t envy the cops what they had to do next-dragging ponds, identifying bodies and informing relatives is not fun, but I didn’t imagine much of that would fall to Morton’s lot. He had something else on his mind.

‘Did you get much of a chance to talk to Ted Withers before he went over the top, Hardy?’

‘Not much. Why?’

‘I just wondered about his state of mind.’

I didn’t say anything and we walked down the hospital corridor to the elevator. Reynolds and the stenographer had gone and we had the lift to ourselves. ‘I’m in a position to do Glenys Withers a bit of good,’ Morton said.

‘I imagine you are.’

‘Or not, as the case may be.’

I nodded. We reached the ground floor and Morton reached for my hand again, the way he had the day before. It was an odd gesture for such a restrained man. ‘There are some ladies and gentlemen from the press wanting to talk to you. Watch what you say, won’t you?’

I did better than that. I jumped back into the lift, went up a few floors to where I could get across to another wing, and left the building through a side entrance. After the siege, the cops had taken me back to my motel. I’d caught a cab to the hospital; now I caught another one to where my car was parked near the police building with an infringement notice flapping in the breeze under the windscreen wiper. I wondered whether Morton was in a position to fix it for me.

I drove to Dudley and pulled up outside the Jacobs’ house in Bombala Street. There was a red BMW parked outside. May Jacobs met me at the door with a smile and a kiss.

‘Ralph’s here,’ she whispered. ‘He’s having a good talk with his father. The first in years. They’re going to the football today.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said.

‘I want to thank you. It was an awful business. Those poor people.’

There had been some rather garbled coverage of the activity in Dudley and Kahiba in the press, but May would have picked up some more solid dope from the locals. I heard a laugh coming from further inside the house. May smiled.

‘I just came to explain a few things to Horrie or try to,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how he feels about Oscar Bach now but

‘We talked last night. He said Oscar must have had a split personality-crazy and not crazy. Even a man who did such awful things needs a friend.’

It seemed as good a way as any to leave it. Bach may have been cultivating Horrie to get at his money or his granddaughters. We’d never know. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘that’s about it.’

‘I want to pay you, Cliff.’

‘Horrie already paid me. I’ll be going, May. Give them both my regards.’

She kissed me again. ‘Ralph says you beat him in a fight.’

I grinned and the healed cuts on my face hurt a little. I also felt some pain in the knee Wrecker had worked on. ‘It was a draw,’ I said.

I was halfway back to Sydney, heading in the other direction, before I remembered Helen Broadway’s phone message: ‘Give me a call, hey?’ Well, maybe I would, but then again, maybe not. For a man in my game there’s something very attractive about a policewoman who knows the score and has a house on the coast.