Peter Corris: O'Fear

I had the addresses and telephone numbers of Michael Hickie, the lawyer, and Felicia Todd, nee Armstrong, the wife. Barnes Todd had apparently lived in Coogee, which didn’t surprise me. I could see him as an ocean-views, early-swimming type. Hickie’s office was in Bondi Junction, which didn’t mean anything in particular. Cy had given me a report on the accident, if that’s what it was: Barnes Todd’s Holden Calais had failed to hold the road coming down Bulli Pass at 1 a.m. on 26 January. The car had fallen a long way and hit a lot of trees and rocks on the way down. It had exploded, and people at first had taken the noise and fire for a bit of Australia Day whoopee.

I crumpled the sandwich wrapper and bag and tossed them into a bin. The tourists were bent over a guidebook, talking intently. The woman in the overcoat had started tossing the peas to the pigeons, which weren’t very interested.

‘Bloody pigeons,’ the woman said, ‘bloody buggers.’

The Japanese man inclined his head politely. ‘I beg your pardon?’

The woman looked as if she might shower him with the peas so I stood and moved around to block her. ‘She’s talking to the pigeons,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about her. Enjoy your stay.’

‘Thank you,’ the man said. ‘Can you tell us where is Mrs Macquarie’s chair?’

I gave them directions and explained that it wasn’t really a chair, just a rock.

‘This is a very strange country,’ he said.

The woman with the peas had left the bench and was walking towards the street, dropping a pea with every step.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is.’

Since the media barons started selling their papers and magazines and TV stations to each other, it’s become harder for a man in my line of work to keep his press contacts in good order. For years I had relied on my friendship with Harry Tickener to gain access to the resources of the News. Now that paper was part of a package that might or might not be traded, and Harry had taken six months’ leave while they sorted it out. He was at home writing a book, with his door locked and his answering machine switched on, twenty-four hours a day. So I used the Public Library to check the newspaper reports on Barnes Todd’s death.

I had barely glanced at the papers in January. The early weeks had been good or bad for crime, depending on your point of view. There had been several bank robberies and a spectacular payroll grab by seven men with shortened shotguns. That was a lot of firepower, but $1.2 million was a lot of money. Even if I had been reading the papers in my usual inattentive way, I could easily have missed the small item headed ‘“Bonfire” a funeral pyre.’ This wasn’t strictly accurate, because Todd had been thrown clear of the car and had died in Wollongong hospital soon after. Otherwise, the details were pretty much as Sackville had stated. Sergeant Anderson of the Bulli police had his say about the dangers or Bulli Pass. The report gave the names of three witnesses-Mr M. Simpson and Mr C. Bent had helped to put out the fire started by the exploding car after Mr W. Bradley had alerted them. I wondered why W. Bradley hadn’t fought the flames. ‘Mr Todd was alone in the car. He had attended a party in Sydney and was driving to Thirroul to join his wife for a holiday in their beach house.’ Implication-Barnes Todd had got pissed in the city and wiped himself out in the country. An old story.

I flicked through the pages and found the funeral notice. Private, cremation, no flowers. No suspicious circumstances, no inquest. The accident was almost two months in the past. There was no sign that a man had been murdered except some sort of signal from the man himself. I was intrigued, and there haven’t been many days in my life when $10,000 wouldn’t have come in handy.

I left the library and walked through the Domain and Woolloomooloo to my office in Darlinghurst. The morning had been cool with a southerly breeze and clouds banking up to the east; now the sky had cleared and the air was still. It was hot and I carried my jacket over my shoulder. I sweated freely but my wind was good on the upgrades. I wasn’t a candidate for the City to Surf, but I’d back myself for two lengths of the Bondi promenade against Cy Sackville any day.

Thoughts of Bondi were much on my mind as I turned into St Peter’s Lane. You hear of people who have lived their whole lives in the one house and you shudder, but right now I was yearning for a little permanency. The building that houses my office was up for renovation. I didn’t want to be renovated or to pay a renovated rent. A few of us tenants-such as the painless depilator and the iridologist-had got together and made an approach to the owner. The result had been an avalanche of paper-notices from various bodies declaring the building unsafe and unsanitary, reports indicating how many provisions of the wiring and plumbing regulations were being violated, and the threat of a rent hike anyway. Since then the iridologist had left and my footsteps in the corridors were sounding more and more hollow. I didn’t want to move, but I had had a very attractive offer of a place in Hastings Parade, Bondi.

‘Afternoon, Cliff. Love your hours.’ The depilator, whose office was next to mine, was a fiftyish woman named Paula. Paula had dyed red hair, scarlet fingernails and a mouth painted to match. She always wore red clothes and if her throat got cut some day, it would be a while before anyone noticed.

‘Don’t get the wrong idea. I’ve been at work all night.’

She rubbed hard at the dust on the glass panel in her door with her sleeve, got it satisfyingly dirty and gave me a broad wink. ‘That’s what I mean, lover.’

I blew the dust from the business card that carries my name and is held in place by a drawing pin-my version of the professional nameplate- and bent to pull at a promising-looking envelope. It was stuck under the door. I straightened up, trying not to feel stiff. ‘Have you got any plans, Paula? About moving?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘They can pull it down around me. Don’t pin your dreams on the fat envelope, Cliff. I got one too. It offers you a chance to win a Fiji island, a stud racehorse and a speedboat. There’s a video of the horse and the boat in action.’

‘What d’you have to do?’

She snorted. ‘I didn’t bother to find out.’

‘Maybe I can record over the tape. Get an episode of Miami Vice.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it. Buggers’ve probably fixed it so you can’t.’

I shoved hard and got the door open. The offending envelope was just as Paula had said. To win one of the fabulous prizes you had to invest $10. I put the video cassette on my desk and threw the rest of the information away. There was no other mail, which didn’t surprise me. Things have changed in Darlinghurst: the white ants have made a couple of steps on the second flight of stairs hazardous unless you know them, which my clients naturally don’t, and Primo Tomasetti has moved his tattooing establishment several blocks away, so I no longer have a parking place. As a result, I’ve been doing most of my dwindling business from home, where I installed my only hired help-an answering machine.

But you never know; I once had a client who waited for forty-eight hours outside my office to see me. Another time someone left a telephone number and a cheque for a thousand bucks under the door. I wouldn’t feel right without an office. I brushed dust from the chair and settled down with the telephone and my notebook. Michael Hickie had a secretary who sounded as if she just loved to answer the phone, take down names and consult her boss’s appointments book. So much eagerness is suspicious; when she tried to squeeze me in for tomorrow I suggested later today and she buckled under the pressure. Four-thirty p.m. Maybe Mike and I could commiserate on how slow business was.