Peter Corris - O'Fear

I ran the Falcon through the gates Felicia had opened and parked beside the house. She came to the front door minus the. 22 and seemed pleased to see me. We kissed. She had been shopping. We had a beer and ate grilled fish and salad. She had been to the local library, seen a few acquaintances in the street. Nothing unusual had happened. She seemed tense, though.

‘I have to collect the pictures tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I don’t want anything to happen to them. I’m nervous about it.’

‘I’ll be there. Stopping things from happening’s supposed to be my forte. It’ll be all right.’

We went for a walk on the beach, drank coffee on the deck and went to bed. I had my pistol in its holster rolled up inside my beach towel. She put the. 22 under the bed. We laughed about that and were tender with each other. I was pulled from a deep sleep by the insistent bell of the phone. It was 3 a.m. and the phone was nearest to my side of the bed. I hesitated about answering it, and Felicia reached across me.

‘Yes? Michael? Yes, he’s here.’

She passed the phone to me.

‘Hardy,’ Michael Hickie said, ‘hope this isn’t awkward for you.’

‘It’s all right, Michael. What’s up?’

‘It’s O’Fearna. He’s been stabbed.’

Hickie was pretty excited. When he’d calmed down, he told me that he’d started to make the moves to get bail for O’Fear. He hadn’t encountered any serious problems and he had expected his release that day.

‘That is today, you understand? It’s today now.’

‘I understand. What happened?’

‘He got knifed late last night. It happened in one of the recreation areas, I understand. I got the message around eleven. It’s taken me a while to locate you.’

I didn’t ask him how he had managed to do that. ‘Where is he, and how is he?’

‘He’s in the prison hospital. He’s going to be all right, but it was a serious attack. Apparently O’Fearna’s tough and quick. The point is, he can get out today, and he wants to see you very badly. He says you’ve got a lot to talk about.’

‘Is he safe where he is?’

‘I spoke to him on the phone very briefly. He says he’s safe. But he wants you to pick him up tomorrow afternoon.’

‘When’s that?’

‘Two o’clock. At the Bay.’

‘I’ll be there.’

‘He said you would be.’

I thanked Hickie and hung up. Felicia had gone off to make tea. She came back with a tray; I dipped the bag in the water until the liquid was black and sipped it. It tasted like burnt stringybark, but I was able to get some of it down. I told Felicia about O’Fear.

‘What does it mean?’

‘I’m not sure. But something’s happening.’ I told her what I had learned the day before about the way Barnes’ car had left the Bulli Pass road. She sipped her tea and had difficulty in swallowing. ‘Poor Barnes,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t he confide in me?’

‘Either he wasn’t sure about the threat and didn’t want to alarm you unnecessarily, or it was too dangerous.’

‘Bloody men. Always sure they can handle it. Are you the same?’

‘Try me.’

‘I want to stay here for a bit. I wanted it to be with you, but if you can’t stay that doesn’t change anything.’

‘I don’t think you should.’

‘There you are. You want to protect me, is that it?’

I nodded.

‘I don’t want to be protected. Just take a look at yourself.’ She touched my nose and put her index finger on two scars-one on my arm and one on the shoulder. ‘What are they?’

I shrugged. ‘From football.’

‘Rubbish. Gun or knife wounds. You can scarcely look after yourself.’ She was looking at me fiercely. Suddenly she grinned and kissed me. ‘It’s all right. I don’t really mean you’re incompetent or anything, I’m just making a point. I want to live my own life.’

‘I don’t want to stop you, Fel. I just… ‘

‘Shh. You want to haul me back to Sydney and stick me away somewhere I don’t want to be. No way. Look, let’s be logical. You can take the paintings to Sydney and deliver them to Piers Lang. He’ll tell everyone he’s got them. So that should take care of any threat from that direction. Right?’

‘I suppose.’

‘And if all this searching isn’t for the paintings, then they’ve looked through my knickers enough now to know that I haven’t got anything they want. Doesn’t that make sense?’

‘Maybe, but I’d feel better… ‘

‘There it is! You’d feel better. I’d feel worse. I’m staying.’

In the morning we drove to a house in Austinmer and loaded up with Barnes Todd’s paintings and photographs. They filled the boot and the back seat. There were also several boxes and thick folders full of sketches and photographs. Felicia’s friend Deborah was a big, overall-wearing woman, who had built her own house and earned her living by landscape gardening and doing building jobs for others. Her hobby was sculpture and, from the way she strode about carrying pictures and boxes, I had the feeling that she’d do big ones. I would have felt happier if Deborah could have taken up temporary residence with Felicia in Thirroul, or vice versa, but it was worth more than my life to say so.

Deborah’s voice rumbled like a coal loader. ‘I’ll run her back in the truck.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll ring you tonight, Fel.’

Felicia bent down to the driver’s window. She kissed me and touched my bristled chin. ‘Why don’t you grow a beard? Might suit you.’

I took the freeway back to the Princes Highway and was unloading the masterpieces at Piers Lang’s gallery in Riley Street, Surry Hills, not much more than an hour after leaving Austinmer. For long stretches of the drive I had forgotten that I was carrying items that could be worth millions of dollars. I don’t think I believed it anyhow, not on the word of Leon Willowsmith. The gallery assistant who was helping me unload missed his footing and dropped one of the folders of photographs. The string around it snapped and the contents spilled across the floor. I collected the pictures together and saw enough to note the sharp clarity of the shots-you could see the veins of the leaves on the trees, or convince yourself you could.

The assistant relieved me of the folder and dusted the glossy black and white surfaces with his handkerchief.

‘Marvellous,’ he said. He held up one of the framed photographs and looked at it as if he had been waiting for it all his life.

I got a detailed receipt from Lang, a rolypoly little man who seemed wildly enthusiastic about everything. The atmosphere at Lang’s place was completely different from Willowsmith’s. Here there was a stronger smell of paint than of money.

‘Leon Willowsmith’s not going to be too keen on this,’ I said. ‘Maybe you should beef up your security.’

‘Good idea,’ Lang said. ‘Are you in that business?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Would you be interested? God, those photographs.’

I was folding the receipt, ready to leave, but something in his voice stopped me. ‘What about the paintings? I thought…’

‘The paintings are good, too.’

I tried to look as if I knew what he was talking about. He beckoned me into his office-a small room cluttered with paintings, photographs and objects that could have been pieces of sculpture or plastic bottles that had been left in a hot oven. ‘This is sensational stuff,’ Lang said. ‘Potentially.’

I nodded.

‘I think Felicia and I have an understanding. Are you in her confidence, Mr Hardy?’

‘Up to a point.’

‘Tell her everything will be all right and that I’ll make sure the catalogue appears exactly as she wants it to. Now, as to the matter of security…’