Peter Corris - Man In The Shadows

A long shadow fell across the corridor outside my office. The shadow obscured the scuffed lino tiles on the floor and almost touched the card thumb-tacked to the door. The card reads ‘Cliff Hardy- Investigations’. It’s not the original card, not the one I pinned up almost fifteen years ago, but it’s very like it. I’ve always felt that a nameplate or stencilled letters might bring bad luck, so I’ve stuck with the card.

I walked towards the door and a man stepped from the shadow. He was tall and thin and I instantly felt that there was something wrong with him. Not something to make me reach for a gun, if I’d been wearing one, but something to be sorry for. It was there in the way he moved-slowly and tentatively-and in the way he stood as I came closer. He looked as if he might suddenly flinch away, retreat and dive down the fire stairs.

‘Mr Cliff Hardy?’ he said. He swung the small zippered bag he was carrying awkwardly.

‘That’s right.’

‘You… investigate things?’

I pointed to the card. ‘That’s what it says. You want to come inside?’

The question seemed to cause a struggle within him. He wasn’t a bad looking man-under thirty, full head of dark hair, good teeth, regular features, but there was something missing. His face was immobile and was like a painting which the artist hadn’t quite finished off. But he nodded and moved closer as I unlocked the door.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

I got him settled in the client’s chair. He put his bag on the floor beside him. For some reason that I couldn’t account for, I pulled my chair out from behind my desk and sat more or less across from him with nothing in between. He wore a grey suit, white shirt, no tie. I smiled at him. ‘I usually start by asking my client for a name. I don’t always get the real one.’

‘Gareth Greenway,’ he blurted.

‘Okay, Mr Greenway, how can I help you?’

He looked slowly around the room. There wasn’t much to see-filing cabinet, desk, calendar on one wall, a bookcase of paperbacks and a poster from a Frida Kahlo exhibition. ‘You haven’t got any recording devices or anything like that, have you, Mr Hardy?’

‘No, nothing like that.’

‘Good. Have you ever heard of psychosurgery?’

‘Yes.’

‘Psychosurgery was performed on me nine months ago against my will.’

I let out a slow breath as I studied him more closely. There were no physical signs; he didn’t twitch or dribble, but he had the air of an alien, of someone for whom everything around him was strange and new. ‘How did that happen, Mr Greenway?’

‘I don’t know. That’s the problem. I can’t remember. I know I was in the hospital for some time.’

‘What hospital?’

‘Southwood Private Hospital. It’s what you’d call a loony bin.’

That was the first flicker of aggression I’d seen; he opened his eyes wider as he spoke and seemed to be flinching back, although in reality he didn’t move a muscle. I didn’t react; I’d seen enough psychoanalytical movies to know how to behave. ‘Go on,’ I said.

“They did this to me, made me like this, and I don’t know why. All I know is that they’re going to do it to Guy and they’ve got to be stopped.’

‘Who’s Guy?’

‘He was my friend, my only friend, in there.’

‘I see. Why do you think he’ll be… treated the way you were?’

‘This is the hard part,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why. I just have these impressions. They won’t come together properly. That’s what things are like since they cut into me. That’s the idea. You don’t make connections between all the things that’re wrong in your life so they don’t bother you as much. You see?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, it didn’t quite work with me. I’m still bothered. They tell me I was violent. I don’t feel violent anymore. I was an actor. I couldn’t act now, I wouldn’t know how. That’s what it does to you. How would you like it, Mr Hardy? Would you trade in all your anxieties for the sort of peace of mind that stopped you from doing what you do now? Even if that’s what causes the anxieties? I assume you have some?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘No, I wouldn’t. What do you mean about it being the hard part?’

He leaned forward. ‘I’ve been to see the police, doctors, the health authorities, everyone. They won’t listen. I know, from something I saw or heard that I can’t… reassemble now, that Guy is in danger and that that place is hell on earth. But no one will listen because I’ve been certified insane and psychosurgeried. I’m a vegetable, I’ve got no rights, I… ‘

‘Easy. Why did you come to me, Mr Greenway?’

‘Annie Parker told me to.’

‘Annie Parker!’ That made me sit back and set memories running. Annie was a heroin addict I’d had some dealings with a few years back. The daughter of an old friend, she’d been in big trouble which I’d extricated her from. She’d gone to England. ‘Is Annie at this hospital?’

‘She was. She died of an overdose a while back. We used to talk. Annie was pretty wrecked; some money she’d inherited from her mother was keeping her going.’

‘I see.’

‘You probably don’t. I’ve got a few thousand dollars. I can pay you.’

‘To do what?’

‘To help me get Guy out of there. To stop him ending up like me. To save his life.’

He put his back against the chair rest and held himself straight. He looked tired suddenly, almost exhausted by the effort he’d made. I felt confused. I was sympathetic towards him; he seemed like a serious, responsible person who’d taken a terrible knock. He had a friend he cared about. I’d cared about Annie and her mother. It should have been straightforward, but mental illness and the medical profession set up strong feelings.

He waited for me and I floundered.

Do you want to be on the side of the patients or the doctors? I thought. Neither. Don’t touch it. Walk away. Say you’re sorry and go out and have a drink in memory of Annie and all the other damaged people you’ve helped but not enough to make any difference.

‘Tell me more,’ I said.

Greenway gave me five hundred dollars in cash which was unusual but not something for me to tear my hair out over. Then he surprised me by standing up, grabbing his bag and jerking his head at the door. ‘You’ve got a car, haven’t you?’

‘Sure.’

‘I don’t like small rooms very much. Let me show you the place we’re talking about.’

We went down to the lane at the back of the building where I keep my 1984 Falcon on a slab of concrete Primo Tomasetti the tattooist rents to me. Primo was standing in the lane having a smoke. He recently declared his tattoo parlour a No Smoking zone on a trial basis. He looked at the car which has replaced a 1965 model, same colour, fewer miles, less rust.

‘Looks great, Cliff,’ he said. ‘Just like you’d be with a facelift.’

‘Are you thinking of going into that business?’ I asked him. ‘It’s only a sort of sideways move.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘The first’d be the toughest. You volunteering?’

Greenway was standing by, not paying any attention. I unlocked the passenger door and opened it for him. He got in slowly and gracefully. Primo stared. ‘Who is he?’ he whispered. ‘A doctor?’

I winked at him. ‘The Pope’s grandson. Keep it under your hat.’

It was the last week in March. Daylight saving was a recent memory and the sun was still high in the late afternoon and a problem as I was driving into it. I asked Greenway to get my sunglasses out of the glove box.