Peter Corris - O'Fear

‘You thought I might be him?’

I shrugged. ‘I think Barnes was murdered. It was something I had to check.’

Brown went on eating for a while. He drank more beer and belched. ‘I know all about that, but I never thought I’d have to talk about it.’

‘I think you have to now, Mr Brown.’

‘Yeah, well, he’s dead. What harm can it do? There haven’t been any real war heroes for a long time.’

I said nothing and waited for him to order his thoughts and memories. When he spoke, he sounded much older than the go-get-’em businessman, much more tired. ‘The sergeant got it wrong, Hardy. I was there. The sergeant couldn’t see a thing and Barnes ‘n me stage-managed it all. What could we do? It was get down that fuckin’ road or die.’

‘What happened?’

Brown looked around him as if the walls might become his accusers. He guzzled a glass of beer and shook his head. ‘We shot people to get through. All kinds of people. You had to be there to know what it was like. The panic was like… like cancer racing through everyone. Someone had to do something. We weren’t the only ones.’

‘What about the American captain?’

Brown sighed. ‘That guy was a coward. He kept going in the space we opened up. Bleating about human rights the whole fuckin’ time. Shit, the Chinks would’ve cut off his human rights where his legs met. The top brass wouldn’t have understood. No one who wasn’t there could understand. We did what we had to do.’

I had had enough military experience to know what he meant. ‘A scapegoat?’

Brown nodded. ‘The guy was courtmartialled. He died in Leavenworth pretty quick. Cancer, I think.’

My image of Barnes Todd was in fragments, although I knew that was a naive reaction. I couldn’t find any words. I drank some of the tepid beer.

‘What can I say?’ Brown growled. ‘It was a shitty war. Everyone who died in it was just plain dumb.’

I knew he was talking a kind of brutal, pragmatic sense. Despite what the promoters and medal-givers say, the main thing about war for the participants is survival. I tried to concentrate on my reason for seeking Brown out in the first place. I located it finally among the ruins of my stupid illusions. I gave him a quick resume of the case as I understood it. ‘So forget history,’ I said. ‘Any clues on why anyone’d want to kill Todd?’

Brown had listened attentively. He shook his head. ‘Can’t help you, I’m afraid. On the business level, all I know is I wanted Barnes to come in with me. He wouldn’t. No hard feelings. We met, we ate, we drank, we talked about the good times. That’s all.’

‘I see.’

He gave me one of his hard, tight-jawed looks. ‘That’s not a bad idea about the memorial, though. Why don’t we do something about that?’

I nodded.

‘Have some more kimche,’ Brown said.

Marshall Brown paid the bill. He drove me back to my car and wished me luck. I watched the Volvo until it turned at the end of the street. Brown had handled himself well; if he was lying he was the greatest actor since Olivier. I sat in my car with the thin beer and the exotic food inside me and ruminated: here I was, slightly dyspeptic, fairly sure that a flawed man had been murdered, sexually involved with that man’s wife and teamed up with a gaolbird who could be playing some weird Irish game of his own. It’s a strange way to make a living. I was aware of one big consolation, however-I was thinking less and less about Helen Broadway and all that pain.

I didn’t want to go back to Glebe just yet, either to wait for O’Fear or to find him already there with a bottle and the blarney. Suddenly my mood changed-maybe it was the nakgibokeum. In fact, I told myself, I was doing pretty well on this job, complications aside. I had eliminated the American captain and probably the threat-from-the-art-world theory. The danger to Barnes Todd had come from whatever he had been doing on his nocturnal perambulations with O’Fear. And there was physical evidence of that-photographs and something heavy in a plastic garbage bag. Those things were still being looked for by the opposition, and so could be found. I stared through the windscreen, which had picked up some salt from the spray at Maroubra. I saw fences and buildings and roofs stretching away forever. A set of photographs and a gar-bag suddenly didn’t seem so easy to find.

I started the car and drove without purpose. It was almost dark and I switched the lights on automatically, checked the rear vision mirror for a tail, automatically. I found myself heading for Bondi, drawn towards the sea, as almost everyone as if they’ve ever lived near it for a significant period of time. I cruised down Hastings Parade and parked outside the building where I could live and work, mortgage-free, if I chose to do so. It was part of the estate of a grateful client from the past, now dead. The heirs were still grateful, and I could have the place for a song. It was white, freshly painted. I couldn’t see the water from the street, but I knew that all of the windows along one side of the apartment afforded an eyeful of the Pacific.

This wasn’t sleazy, beachfront Bondi; this was a land where exterior woodwork was painted every year, two videos per household territory, compact disc country-suburbia-by-the-sea. Do you really want to live and work here, out of the smog?

I thought. Where the kids are bright and helpful instead of drug-dulled and suspicious? Where the sun in the morning looks fresh and clean? Where the people who haven’t got money on their minds aren’t likely to last for long? I still didn’t know. If I didn’t decide soon, the opportunity would evaporate, and maybe that would be the best thing. I kissed goodbye for now to my personal shot at paradise, drove away and stopped near an all-night chemist with an orange phone. There was a bottle shop a little further along and I bought a six-pack of Swan Light so that I could get a fistful of change and have something to do with my hands when I phoned Felicia Todd in Thirroul.

She answered, sounding relaxed and pleased to hear from me. I told her I’d delivered the paintings and that I had eliminated the Korean connection.

‘That’s a relief,’ she said. ‘And what has this Irishman told you?’

‘It’d take too long to go into but I’ll fill you in when I can. In the meantime, do you know anything about a set of photographs Barnes took? A special set, relating to his business?’ As soon as the words were out I realised that I could be on tricky ground, if what Piers Lang had said was true.

Felicia’s reply came slowly. ‘No. The only photographs I know about are those you delivered to Piers Lang.’

‘Had you looked through them? Were they all…?’

‘Yes. All subjects, if you know what that means. I’ve almost finished classifying them and relating them to the paintings. They’re not at all to do with trucks or storage or bloody security.’

‘What about a big plastic garbage bag? Heavy.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Did you see Barnes with such a thing? Hiding it, maybe, or doing something unusual?’

‘I only ever saw him put garbage bags out the front of the house. Cliff, what is this?’

‘Evidence. Never mind.’

‘When will I see you?’

‘When are you coming back?’

‘I’m not sure.’

That was pretty clear. She was leaving it to me. Her tone was welcoming, though, and I felt encouraged. ‘I’ll keep in touch and get back as soon as I can.’

‘Good. I hope that’s soon. Deborah’s staying the night and she’s brought her dog along. With the stabbing on top of the housebreaking, I’m not feeling as confident as I made out.’

I rang off after telling her I thought it would be sorted out soon, which was more optimistic than truthful. But I was intrigued, which is a way of being optimistic.