Peter Corris - O'Fear

There’s a bolt on the inside of the front door of my house. It had been thrown and my key wouldn’t open the door.

‘Who?’ The voice was soft, immediately behind the door.

‘Hardy, who else? O’Fear?’

The bolt was drawn and the door opened quietly. O’Fear eased himself out and beckoned for me to move into the shadow at the front of the house, where the wistaria hangs down from the top balcony. He was white-faced, moving stiffly and carrying a gun.

‘What’s happened to you?’

‘To me? Nothing. But this idiot followed my cab from Botany to your place. I spotted him in the first half mile. He came in with a shooter and I had to tap him on the head. I hurt my side a bit doin’ it.’

‘What idiot?’

‘He’s inside. A young feller, maybe about thirty, with a twelve-year-old brain.’

‘Unconscious?’

‘He was. He’ll be comin’ out of it soon. I can hit so as to knock you out for a precise time, y’see. This was a half-hour tap at the most. I allowed for his size.’

As always with O’Fear, it was difficult to tell truth from bullshit, but there was no doubt that he was an expert in violence. My first thought was that we had a hostage.

‘I was thinkin’ you might make a few private enquiries of him,’ O’Fear said, ‘although he looks like a tough little nut. Perhaps I should do it meself. I’m rather tirin’ of these fellers havin’ a go at me.’

‘That’s brilliant. What’re we going to do? Torture him?’

‘I wasn’t thinkin’ of bribing him with my share of your ill-gotten gains, I can tell you that!’

‘Perhaps it’s to do with your other trouble?’

O’Fear shook his head. ‘That hasn’t the mileage in it. It’s not a shootin’ matter at all. No, it’s to do with Todd all right. Look, Cliff, he’ll be stirrin’. I put him in your little falling-down bathroom…’

From the back of the house came the sound of glass breaking.

O’Fear waved the gun. ‘Christ, he’ll be out and away.’

I shattered the existing record for getting from my front door into my car. I drove to the end of the street, turned through the new block of flats and stopped on the rise. If he went over the back fence he had to come out down the street from where I was. It would take him a few minutes to negotiate the fences and gardens, but he would come. There was no other way.

I was right. He dropped over a fence onto the pavement about the same time as a car drove up the street in my direction. He was a small man, dressed in dark clothes but with a white stripe on his jacket sleeves. He shrank back against the fence as the car went past. Then he ran.

I drifted down the street, keeping well back and not showing any lights. He rounded the corner into Glebe Point Road and sprinted down the hill towards the water. I saw him take the turn into the avenue beside the park before I put my lights on and followed. I picked him up under the light where the street bends. He tore open the door of a car, gunned the motor and took off. I kept as far behind as I could, delaying on the turns and hugging the kerb until he was back on the main road. I relaxed a little then, allowed a car to pass me to serve as cover and tried to pick out something distinctive about the car I was following. There was nothing distinctive, no broken tail light or racing stripe, but the number plate was KNM 223.

He drove badly. His reactions were slow and he was indecisive; probably the results of O’Fear’s gentle tap. But he managed to get into King Street and turn off towards Erskineville. This was harder for me-narrow streets, some of them one-way, relatively unknown territory. He threaded through between the factories and terrace houses and dark, empty looking lots, still driving erratically, clipping the footpath more than once. His right indicator flashed and he turned sharply into a wide concrete driveway. A man stepped out of a lighted booth, consulted something the driver showed him, and waved the car ahead. A heavy metal gate slid open, and KMN 223 was home at last.

I pulled in to the kerb and killed my lights. It was a long, narrow street, poorly lit. The side I was parked on was mostly taken up by the backs of factories. Opposite me and a bit further on, the metal gate was set in a high brick fence. Higher than that of Brown amp; Brown, almost prison-like. I felt in the shelf under the dashboard and located the half bottle of rum I keep there for emergencies. Emergencies are fairly few and the bottle was almost full. I took a swig and looked at the brick fence. The guy in the glass booth was bent over, reading or eating or playing with himself. Anyway, he wasn’t looking at me. I took another drink and squinted until I shut

out the peripheral light and could read the words painted on the gate: ATHENA SECURITY PTY LTD.

I let out a rummy breath in a low whistle. Athena was a big security firm, comparatively new. It advertised extensively and aggressively and boasted that it had the latest technology in all departments of the game. I get a lot of the security business propaganda in the mail- brochures, magazines, sales pitches-and Athena had loomed large in the material in recent times. It’s a very competitive field. I glance at the stuff, some of it I file, most of it I throw away, but one unusual fact about Athena had stuck in my mind-the head of the company was a woman.

I drove around the Athena establishment, taking in the high walls, signs of electronic equipment and the glow that suggested spotlights within. The wall was lower along one side which occupied a section of a neater residential street. It was almost as if Athena didn’t want to look too institutional among the tidied-up terraces and wide bungalows. Image is everything, or nearly everything. Still, it wasn’t the sort of place you storm with a Smith amp; Wesson. 38 shouting: ‘Freeze! Nobody moves until I get some answers to these questions.’

The rum was warm and comforting inside me as I drove home. I was looking forward to some coffee and plain food. I’d even be able to manage a conversation with O’Fear now that we had something solid to talk about. It was good to make a connection. I could check out Athena and its boss lady, talk to everyone ail over again from this new angle. What might Anna Carboni and Bob Mulholland know? I remembered Mulholland saying Barnes Todd was considering moving into the security business. All very promising. And the cut on my hand had stopped throbbing.

I parked in the street behind mine, put the. 38 in my pocket and approached the house warily. No sense in taking chances now that things were starting to break. I hoped O’Fear had not found the scotch or had brought his own. A few lights were on, as per normal. Nothing was lurking in the shadows. I opened the door and stepped in with the gun in my hand and knowledge of the terrain on my side. The house was quiet. I walked right through it, upstairs and down. There were no gunmen or baseball bat swingers. No obscene messages scrawled on the walls. There was no sign of O’Fear either.

A soggy, bloodied-up towel was lying in the bath. The louvre window was a wreck, and there was blood on the floor and outside on the bricks. Look for a small man-and he had to be small to get through the window-bleeding from the hands and head. I cleaned the bathroom roughly, threw the towel in the laundry basket along with my own shirt and underwear and had a shower. I kept the. 38 within reach and, as I washed, I tried to remember when I had last used it. Some time ago, I thought. Good. Keep it that way.

I sat down with a strong black coffee and my notebook and reviewed the day’s confusing developments. O’Fear had gone voluntarily; there was no evidence of a struggle, and he would have managed to leave some sort of sign even if they had caught him unawares and marched him out. But no note either. Gone where, with whom?