Peter Corris - O'Fear

After the whistle, Hickie introduced me properly to the men who had been Dave, Ben, Russ, etc., for the purposes of the game. They smiled and wiped away sweat and most of them drove off, but Ben produced a cold six-pack of Heineken, and we leaned on the bonnet of his Celica for a spot of mateship.

‘Ben’s a surgeon,’ Hickie said.

I recalled Ben’s precise throwing and catching.

‘You’ve got the hands and eyes for it,’ I said.

Peter Corris

CH12 — O'Fear

Ben tilted his bottle. ‘Yep. Long may they last.’

The other stayer, whose name I didn’t catch, tossed his empty at Ben, who plucked it out of the air effortlessly. ‘See you,’ he said.

We chatted while Ben drank the spare bottle. After he’d gone I wiped myself off with the T-shirt. Hickie was tossing the ball from hand to hand.

‘You didn’t come here to play football,’ he said.

‘No, but it was fun. I’ve got questions.’

We squatted on the grass.

‘Have you seen or heard from O’Fear since yesterday?’

‘No.’

‘What d’you know about Barnes’ dealing with Athena Security?’

Hickie wiped sweat from his face and drank from his bottle. Ben had had two, mine was long gone, but he still had an inch or more left. ‘That’s a bit tortuous. Athena’s a strange concern, a bit mysterious. They approached Barnes for an investment, then for his custom, and eventually made him a takeover offer.’

‘How did he react?’

‘He considered the investment and using their services. Then he had ideas of going into security himself, so he backed off. He had a high opinion of their operation, though.’

‘What about the takeover?’

‘I think he’d sooner have lost a leg.’

‘Do you know anything about Barnes’ relationship with Eleni Marinos?’

Hickie nodded and finished his beer. ‘It was a very hot affair. Before he met Felicia, but not long before. I don’t know the details but Barnes ended it. It was a very rough patch for him. He drank a good bit and… you know…’

Of course I knew. Anybody who had been through the relationship mill knew only too well. The indecision, the resolutions and the turnings-back. Sheer hell and we keep on doing it because, as Woody Allen says in Annie Hall, we need the eggs. Lucky are those who don’t need the eggs. Or maybe they’re not lucky. I helped Hickie tidy up the bottles and the cardboard wrapper and the soft drink cans. We stowed the rubbish in a bin and stood together, looking across the grass in the direction of the sea.

‘How’re things with Felicia?’ Hickie asked. He rubbed his shoulder, which must have been sore from our hard bump.

‘She’s still at the coast. I haven’t got any good news for her.’ I didn’t tell him about the new slant I had got on Todd from Piers Lang and Marshall Brown, but I did tell him about the attack on O’Fear, and how I had established the connection to Athena Security.

‘Well, I can see how Eleni Marinos’ nose would be out of joint,’ Hickie said. ‘Barnes had really knocked her back. But to kill him?’ He shook his head.

‘Must be more to it than that,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a terrible feeling that O’Fear is on to something and going it alone. I admit I don’t know what to do about Athena, but I doubt he has any better ideas.’

‘I could look through the correspondence-see if I can come up with something.’

‘That’d be good. Thanks.’ As he spoke I realised that a question had been nagging at me since early in the case. After the break-ins at Coogee and Thirroul, why hadn’t the searchers done the obvious thing and looked through Michael Hickie’s files? As I chewed on the thought, Hickie opened the driver’s door of his yellow Datsun 200B. I could see that the door had been panel-beaten and resprayed. I pointed to the new work.

‘What happened?’

‘I got rammed a few weeks back. It’s been in the workshop for ages.’

That figures, I thought. Hickie was thinking too. He got into the car and wound down his window, as if to invite my next question.

‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Who handles the security for your office building?’

Hickie clicked his tongue. ‘Athena,’ he said.

My thoughts were uncomfortable. Felicia Todd was involved in a deception about Todd’s creativity. She had scores to settle and there might be justifications for it. But I was worried that she might know something about Barnes’ dealings with Eleni Marinos and Athena, and be holding out on me. It was tricky territory. In my experience, men can talk about their present partner’s ex-partners without distress, but women find it difficult. I don’t know exactly why this is; perhaps because women like to work things through and, by definition, they cannot work through relationships they haven’t been in. I wanted to see Felicia, and advance our budding love affair, if that’s what it was, and this topic wasn’t calculated to help. It was a new slant on conflict of interest.

I went home and packed a bag, drew out some money and filled the Falcon’s tank. I set off for Thirroul with two guns and not many ideas. In Rockdale I waited at the lights alongside an Athena armoured van. The large driver wore aviator glasses and had silver insignia on the epaulettes of his shirt. He read a copy of Evan Whitton’s Can of Worms while he waited. He chewed gum, too. With operatives like that available, I wondered why they would employ a little runt like the one who had broken my bathroom window. Then I remembered his neat driving the night he had followed me, and his quick recovery from O’Fear’s ‘little tap’. Maybe his gun hadn’t been loaded; maybe he was a master of restraint.

I got to Thirroul around three. A battered Holden ute was parked in the Todd driveway and a big German shepherd greeted me at the gate.

‘Easy,’ I said. ‘Friend of your owner’s friend.’

The dog barked and Deborah appeared at the d oor. She was wearing her overalls with the bottoms tucked into football socks above dirty gym boots. ‘It’s all right, Hero,’ she said.

The dog wagged its eight-pound tail. I patted its head and stepped past.

‘Hero?’ I said.

Deborah nodded. ‘Hero was a woman, didn’t you know that?’

‘I forgot. Well, I suppose I should’ve phoned, but…’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing.’

‘If you think Felicia and me’re having an affair, you’re dumber than you look. Forget it. We’re friends. She’s straight. Got it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you’re here. Some pretty strange things’re happening. Where is she now?’

‘Having a sleep. We talked late and had a few drinks. She’s got no head, poor love. Got up for a while this morning and crashed again. She’s told me a bit about what’s going on.’ She glanced at my bag. ‘See you’ve come to stay.’

‘Not if she doesn’t want me to.’

‘She will. I want to talk to you. Come around the back.’

I followed her and Hero around to the back of the house. We went up the steps and took chairs on the deck. The Pacific Ocean foamed quietly on the beach a hundred metres away. I squinted and could see the dark smudges of ships strung out on the horizon. Deborah looked in the same direction.

‘Strike’s tying up the port,’ she said. ‘Bludging men’ll be the ruin of this country.’

‘You’re not exactly laying bricks yourself at the moment, Deb.’

The rumble of her laugh was a lot louder than the waves on the beach. ‘I think you might be all right, Chris… or whatever your name is.’

‘Cliff,’ I said. ‘My mother wanted Errol as in Flynn, but my father wouldn’t wear it.’

‘Thank God for that. Fel’s having serious thoughts about you. She’s guilty, of course, because it’s not long since her husband died.’