Peter Corris - The Marvellous Boy

‘How do I know I can trust you?’ he said harshly. Some of the power he must have had when younger suddenly seemed to flow back into him. ‘You’re a man for hire.’

‘Aren’t we all,’ I said, then I corrected quickly. ‘I’m only partly for hire. There are things I won’t do. I don’t cause unnecessary pain.’

‘A fine speech,’ he sneered. ‘Who judges what is necessary, you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Aye. I thought so. That won’t do. What are your standards? What would you know of a lifetime’s dedication to an ideal?’

Not much, I thought, and thank God for it. Ideals should change like everything else. But he felt he had got some sort of moral and ethical drop on me and in a funny way I felt it too. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep.

‘You come down here out of nowhere,’ he went on, ‘telling about my oldest friend. You could be lying.’

He was pacing up and down the verandah now; his slippers flapped on the floor and his pyjamas swished around his white, bony shanks. His voice became more vehement as he moved as if the pacing was giving him strength and purpose.

‘Nurse Callaghan is dead,’ I said dully. ‘You’ll get news of that soon enough.’ I fingered my cut head. ‘This is real.’

He snorted, still pacing. ‘You could have done it yourself.’

‘You’re going in circles doctor, a minute ago you accepted that she was dead…’

‘Don’t you dare criticise my logic. I’ll thank you to know that I’m in full possession of my senses.’

I doubted it. He was getting more excited by the second and trying to construct defences against me. I’d lost him, just like that, in a sentence or two.

‘I’ll say no more Mr Hardy, and I’ll be obliged if you’d go. I have nothing to say to you.’

I spoke quietly, trying to calm him down. ‘That’s not true doctor. I must know more. I know a good deal already. It’s vital to my investigation…’

‘You’re threatening me!’ His voice rose and cracked. ‘I won’t stand for it. You come here and threaten me.’ He whipped across the floor and through the door into the house. I stood up wondering what my next move should be. He came back and he wasn’t alone — he had a double-barrelled shotgun for company and he levelled it at my chest.

‘Go Mr Hardy.’ He jerked the gun at the door. ‘And don’t come back.’

I make a point of not arguing with old men waving shotguns. I went.

There was a telephone booth on the street three houses along from Osborn’s place. I called his number and when he answered I dropped the phone, ran back down the street and jumped over his fence. I sprinted up to the side of the house and then bent low to keep under the windows. Osborn was still holding the phone when I got to the back part of the house. I risked a peep up and saw him put it down, dial, listen and hang up. He moved around for a few minutes and I was wondering how to handle it if I heard paper being torn or smelled it being burned when I heard drawers opening and closing in the room nearest me. I heard him grunt the way men do when they bend over to put on their shoes. Then he left the room and I heard a door at the back of the house slam. I sneaked down and hung an eye around the corner: Dr Osborn, minus his shotgun, was heading for his garage.

I went back the way I’d come. I’d left my car around the nearest corner from the doctor’s house out of old habit. I drove back to a point where I could see his gate and watched a green Cortina roll down the drive and head south for the hills. I tailed him from as far back as the traffic would allow. Osborn drove sedately, like a man used to motoring in a more leisurely age. I hung back on the highway which wasn’t easy because most cars were passing him. We followed the coast for a few miles and then swung inland. The Cortina toddled along off the bitumen and up an unmade road into the hills. I stopped and let him get well ahead, then I crawled up after him. The road climbed steeply but straight so he couldn’t wind round on top of me. I hung back behind the drift of his dust cloud. Suddenly the road got rougher and another track ran into it on the left. I stopped and examined the ground; it looked as if nothing had gone straight on for a while and as if the Cortina had turned left. Hardy of the 5th Maroubra Scout Troop.

I pulled the car off the track, got the gun out of the glove box and started to follow the tyre marks in the dust. The track was steep and I had to stop for breath twice. I stumbled once, jarred my leg, and sent waves of pain curling and dumping inside my skull. The morning was warm, I sweated and the handgrip of the. 38 became wet and slippery. Each time the track took a turn I went into the rough at the side and worked through so as to get a look at the road ahead, but each time it was quiet and still except for the noise and movement of the forest birds. After about ten minutes walking the trees thinned out and the ground levelled. I used the cover of the trees to approach a clearing extending over an acre or so on a stretch of flat ground.

In the middle of the clearing, spaced about forty feet apart, were two crumbling brick pillars that would once have been chimneys. Some blackened timber was piled off to one side. I watched from behind a tree as Osborn came into the clearing carrying a pile of branches. He threw them down near the old chimney closest to me, squatted, and began working on the bricks of the old fireplace. He pulled them out and piled them up beside him. Then he reached into the cavity and hauled out a box about the size of a beer carton. He stood up and slapped his pockets. I stepped out and levelled the pistol at him.

‘Keep your hands still, doctor. Move towards me slowly.’

He started and stopped the slapping movement. Then he looked down at the box and bent over.

‘Don’t!’

He was on his knees now by the box. ‘It would be hard for you to explain, Mr Hardy, killing an old man. And not a bad solution for me. I think I’ll keep on.’

I was almost close enough to kick him. ‘I wouldn’t kill you doctor, just hurt you a bit. It’d solve nothing. Now get away from that bloody box!’

He straightened up and stood there rock still. I looked over the blackened earth. A couple of the building’s stumps still stuck up stubbornly through the weeds. I glanced about for the shotgun but couldn’t see it. The branches by the bricks were light with feathery leaves, tinder dry. I nudged the box with my toe.

‘Your records doctor?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m surprised. Was it discreet to keep them?’

His old face turned up and he looked affectionately around at the ruin and the overgrown land.

‘It was my life’s work,’ he said softly. ‘I thought that someday I could write it up, publish it. Opinion has changed, it could be done soon.’

‘Maybe so,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to stop you. I just need some information from those records myself. You can do what you like with it after that.’

‘You don’t understand.’ His voice was thin and strained. Pleading was foreign to him and he was having trouble getting the sound right. ‘That would be a violation of my trust. I can’t allow it.’

‘You can’t stop me. I’m the one with the gun now. Move aside doctor, I don’t want to hurt you.’ I bent down and examined the box; it was metal, heavy, but unlocked. The lid came up stiffly and revealed rows of file cards, neatly packed.

‘This was the place? The clinic?’ I tried to let a little kindness into my voice and I let the pistol drop a bit, not too far.

‘Yes, this is it. This is where I did my life’s work. Later the vandals had their fun. All my memories are here… Gertrude… my daughter…’ He pointed. ‘You can see the ocean from over there. I’ll show you.’