Peter Corris - O'Fear

‘No chance. This is my house and I’m staying here.’ She stalked away and when I went back into the house I found her clicking bullets into the magazine of a. 22 repeating rifle.

‘Hey. What’re you doing?’

‘Go and earn your money, Cliff. Don’t worry, I know how to use this. I’ll be all right.’

‘Those things’re illegal now. Don’t you read the papers?’

‘I don’t give a bugger. This government’s on the way out. Bloody fools. They can’t enforce that law. Every country cop’s got a couple of guns himself. It’s madness.’

A gun lobbyist, for God’s sake. I left.

Sergeant Trevor Anderson wasn’t a whole lot of help. He was youngish for his rank, anxious to please but new in the district and very light on for experience.

‘I don’t think I can add anything to what you already know, Mr Hardy,’ he said. ‘There were a couple of witnesses or people on the scene pretty quickly. You’ve got their names.’

‘Yes. Was there any other traffic on the road?’

He pushed back his sandy hair, which was a bit longer than normal for a cop. He also wore spectacles. It looked as if he was hoping to rise to Commissioner by force of intellect. He checked his notes carefully. ‘Apparently not.’

‘What does that mean, sergeant?’

‘None of the witnesses mentioned any. Is that all, Mr Hardy? I’ve got work to do.’

Merv Simpson, one of the firefighters, was at home. He had recently been laid off from a coalmine and he was happy to pass the time of day. Trouble was, he couldn’t tell me anything. He had seen the fire, not the accident, and he was sure that Clarrie Bent, who had helped him, was in the same boat.

‘Talk to Warren,’ he said. ‘Warren Bradley. He got us on the blower. Poor bugger sits up all night. He mighta seen a bit more.’

Warren Bradley’s wife read my card carefully, studied my face and then showed me through to the back verandah of the house, which was in a bushy setting back from the steeply descending road. Bradley was a heavy-set, middle-aged man with grey hair and a pale, pudgy face that looked as if it had once been tanned and hard. He was sitting in a wheelchair, staring out over the treetops towards the water.

‘Be patient with him,’ Mrs Bradley whispered. ‘He’s a bit difficult.’

‘I’m not bloody difficult, Mildred,’ Bradley said, ‘and I can hear your whispers a hundred yards away. Who’s this?’

I went up to him and stuck out my hand. ‘Name’s Cliff Hardy, Mr Bradley. I want to have a few words with you about the accident on the Pass a few months back.’

Bradley shook my hand. His palm was soft but there was strength in his grip. “Bout time someone did that. Take a seat.’

I sat on a straight-backed chair beside him. Mrs Bradley hovered. She was a thin, nervous woman who looked as if she had never known the right thing to do.

“What about a couple of beers, Mildred?’ Bradley said.

‘Do you think you should, dear?’

‘Yes. I think I should. Stop worrying, love. The money’s due any day.’

‘It’s not the money. It’s your health.’

Bradley let out a bellow of laughter; his big, deep chest gave the sound resonance and volume. ‘My health! Just get us a drink, there’s a good girl.’

She left the verandah, closing the screen door quietly behind her. Bradley slapped the tops of his thighs. ‘Mine accident,’ he said. ‘Both legs buggered for good. Compo’s coming through, but.’

I nodded. ‘No hope?’ I said. ‘Physio? Operation?’

Peter Corris

CH12 — O'Fear

‘Stuffed,’ he said. ‘Mind you, I miss the fishing more than the bloody work. What d’you want to talk about?’

‘Sounded to me like you wanted to talk.’

‘Yeah. Well, I was in a shitty mood back then! Having a bad time with all this.’ He touched his legs again. ‘Couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t what you’d call co-operative. I was giving Mildred a bad time. Everybody.’

Mrs Bradley came back with a tray on which were four cans of Fosters, two elaborately shaped glasses and a bowl of peanuts.

‘Good on you,’ Bradley said. ‘Do you, mate?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks. What about you, Mrs Bradley? Are you having a drink?’

She smiled, shook her head and drifted away.

‘Never touches it,’ Bradley said. He popped two cans and pushed one towards me. He poured a little beer into one of the glasses, swilled it around and drank it. Then he took a pull from the can. ‘Can’t stand those bloody glasses, but it’s not worth the trouble to say so. Cheers.’

I repeated his manoeuvre and took a swig of the cold beer. Fosters isn’t my favourite, but it was my first drink of the day, which helped it along. ‘I got the feeling Sergeant Anderson didn’t have too many clues.’

Bradley snorted. He took a handful of peanuts and put them in his mouth. He chewed and spoke around them. ‘Doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. Sent some kid of a constable up here to talk to me the day after. Bugger that.’

‘What did you see, Mr Bradley?’

Bradley drained his can in two massive swallows and popped another. ‘I’ve thought about it a bit. It’s hard to be sure. I’d had a few.’ He tilted the can. ‘And I’m on these painkillers- make me pretty woozy sometimes.’

‘But it was two a.m. on a good, clear night.’

‘Yeah. You seem a reasonable sort of a bloke. What were you before you got into this game? Not a copper?’

‘No. Soldier, timber worker, insurance investigator.’

Bradley nodded approvingly. ‘I reckon he was run off the road.’

I drank some more beer and took a sidelong look at him. He didn’t have the appearance of a fantasist or self-dramatiser. Bitter, but who wouldn’t be? ‘Go on,’ I said.

‘It’s hard to be sure. Take a look. The trees block the road a bit.’

I leaned forward and looked. The drop made the distance hard to judge, but the road couldn’t have been more than a hundred metres away and the view was mostly clear. ‘Where did he go over?’

Bradley took more nuts, chewed noisily and pointed.

A clear stretch went into a wicked bend. A section of the metal siding marking the edge of the shoulder was freshly painted. The trees ringed the road before and beyond the place on which his finger was trained.

‘It’s partly a feeling,’ Bradley said. ‘Or I might have just heard it. I dunno. But I think there was another car or a four-wheel drive… a truck or something, real close… too close. And it kept on going.’

‘And you didn’t tell the police?’

‘Like I say, I was pissed off with them.’ He drank deeply. ‘I phoned Merv Simpson and Clarrie Bent, and they got down there with the extinguishers and the bags pretty smart. I done my duty.’

‘Right.’ The beer was warming up in my hand and not tasting so good, but I drank some more. ‘Did you hear him brake or did he go straight over? Was he skidding? What happened?’

‘Bloody mess,’ Bradley said. ‘Straight over, but there was stuff flying everywhere-barrier posts, branches, you know? Door wide open… Look, you haven’t had any nuts. D’you want this other beer?’

It wasn’t something to take back in triumph to Felicia, but I felt a degree of satisfaction. Something was happening now — the surveillance and break-ins-and this was the first clue that something had happened then. I negotiated the steep roads above Bulli carefully and rejoined Lawrence Hargrave Drive for the drive back to Thirroul. Coal trucks used to hammer along these roads to the risk of everyone else on them, but they’re much quieter now. Good for drivers, bad for the area. The sun was dropping below the scarp, cooling the day down fast. The sea sparkled but there was a brown smudge on the horizon where the pollution drifting down from Sydney meets that coming up from Wollongong. Nowhere’s perfect.