Peter Corris - Aftershock

Withers put the phone down and looked at me as if I might just possibly be house-trained. ‘Parker gives you a good name. He tells me you sometimes need a word, to stop you from getting yourself into trouble.’

‘That’s fair enough,’ I said.

‘We don’t like extra trouble around here. We’ve got all we need.’

I was still gazing at the fine view. ‘Looks pretty quiet to me, but you never know what you’re going to find when you turn over a rock, or a brick.’

‘Parker also said you liked to come the needle. I don’t care for that too much.’

I looked away from the window towards the man at the desk. It was like turning off Jana Wendt and looking at the wall. ‘Look, Inspector, I don’t want trouble. If you can help me to get a look at the autopsy report on Bach, talk to the paramedics, tell me what the word on him was, fine. If not, I’ll just quietly go through channels and knock on doors.’

He looked at my licence again, jotted a few things on his notepad and pushed the vinyl folder across the desk towards me. ‘Far as I know, there was nothing about Bach to interest us. I’d be surprised if there was any sort of file on him. Migrant, I seem to remember. Ran a little business. Cleanskin. Autopsy? I dunno. Did he have any family?’

‘Not that I’ve heard of.’

‘Sad, that. Family life’s the only thing worth having, You got a family, Hardy?’

‘No. Frank Parker’s boy, Peter, is my godson. That’s as close as I get.’

He frowned. ‘I see. Well, the autopsy must’ve been done somewhere. It was all pretty chaotic there at the time. I’m sure you can track it down. I can help with one thing though. I can put you in touch with the police officer who found Bach. How’d that be?’

‘That’d be a big help. Who’s that?’

Withers smiled, showing big, uneven, yellow teeth. ‘Senior Sergeant Glenys Withers. My daughter.’

I suppose I’d been expecting a broad-beamed stalwart, all epaulettes and nightstick with a high-riding hip pistol. Glenys Withers was a slender woman with short brown hair and a lean, sensitive face. She was sitting behind a desk where her father said she’d be-in the personnel section, but she wasn’t nearly as interested in paper shuffling as he was. She looked up as soon as I was within speaking distance. A sure sign that the person behind the desk welcomes distraction.

‘Yes?’ Nice voice, quiet, good-humoured, not much good for crowd-control, but it’s amazing what a bullhorn can do. I was too old a hand to judge a cop by its cover.

I put my licence folder down in front of her. ‘I’ve just been talking to Inspector Withers, upstairs, Senior,’ I said. ‘He recommended that I see you next.’

She examined the photo and the printed details as if she’d never seen a PEA licence before. Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she interviewed people for jobs like hers. If so, what had she been doing in Hamilton on the 28th? She closed the folder and handed it back. ‘Sit down, Mr Hardy.’

She studied me with a pair of very blue eyes with a few fine lines around them that said she was thirty, not twenty. The rest of her, the hair, the nicely shaped shoulders and chest inside the crisp white shirt and the wide mouth, didn’t look any particular age. Just good. I gave her a short version of the story, taking care not to sound as if the police force or anyone else had been remiss. No Royal Commission required. I tried to communicate my own interest in some of the questions that Horrie Jacobs’ allegation threw up. Particularly ones he wasn’t aware of, such as the notion that a rich old man was a target of some kind.

‘I remember when he won all that money. Generally speaking, people said it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke. Unusual reaction. Usually, there’s jealousy.’

‘He’s that sort of a man,’ I said.

‘I don’t see how I can help you, though,’ she said. ‘You had to be here to appreciate what things were like that day’

‘Tell me.’

‘It was dreadful. We were all called out to do one thing or another. I’ve been on the force for ten years and I’ve seen a few things. But nothing like that. The distress and fear in the streets. I hope I never see it again.’

‘You saw Oscar Bach’s body?’

She nodded. The clean, shiny brown hair bounced. She wore two small earrings in the lobe of one ear-a silver and a gold, interlocked. Somehow it made her seem less like a police person. ‘I worked in Beaumont Street, up where the awnings had come down, for a few hours. Then a woman said there was a body under the church. She was hysterical. A lot of people were. I wanted to go on helping where I was but the Sergeant told me to go and take a look.’

‘Do you know who the woman was?’

‘Yes. A Mrs Atkinson. She’s got a drinking problem. Her husband was always leaving her and always coming back when she threatened to kill herself, you know?’

I nodded. I knew. Who doesn’t?

‘She came along with me, down the street. Weeping and carrying on. The church was a mess. The whole of the side section had collapsed. Mr Bach was half-covered by bricks.’

‘Which half?’

She looked at me with dislike and snapped, ‘The top. His feet, too. Are you enjoying this? I had a hysterical woman tearing my arm out of the socket, blood and dust and crap all over me and a man lying there with his head turned to pulp. I didn’t enjoy it, I can tell you.’

‘I’m sorry’ I said. ‘I was in a war once. I know what you’re talking about.’

‘Vietnam?’

‘Similar. Bit before. Malaya. It’s just that I have to be sure Oscar Bach was killed by falling bricks, not by anything else.’

‘Like what?’

I mimed the action of clutching a brick and using it as a bludgeon. She looked at me as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether I was an animal or an insect. Then she frowned. Two grooves appeared between her dark eyebrows and I had an impulse to reach across the desk and put my thumb on them, to smooth them away. ‘It’s possible,’ she said. ‘How could you tell?’

‘Were there any photographs taken?’

‘I don’t think so. As I said, everything was chaotic. Just up the street…’

‘Some people were killed by things falling on them. So it was assumed the same thing had happened at the church. What did Mrs Atkinson do?’

‘I’m getting a bit tired of this. You’re questioning my competence.’

‘I have to,’ I said. ‘People pay me to do that. It doesn’t make me popular and often I’m wrong anyway. Try to see it from my point of view.’

I liked her face, her voice and the calm steadiness of her. She was angry but not letting it block out everything else. I wondered why she was letting me take up so much of her time. I didn’t kid myself it was my rugged good looks. Dad, most likely. She took a packet of cigarettes from her skirt pocket and offered them to me. I shook my head and she lit up. She drew on the cigarette and let the smoke out slowly. ‘Mrs Atkinson waited until the paramedics came and they uncovered the body. When she saw the boots and the overall she knew it wasn’t her husband and she went right off the edge. I had to take her home. They removed the body. I put in a report. That’s all, Mr… ‘ she butted out the cigarette.

‘Hardy,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Do you know where the post-mortem was conducted?’

She reached for the phone on her desk. ‘No, but I could find out.’ She lifted the phone and dropped it. ‘What the hell am I doing?’

I grinned. ‘Assisting me in my enquiries. Inspector Withers cleared me with Sydney.’

‘That goes without saying. He wouldn’t talk to a private detective otherwise. Look, I’ve got work to do here and…’