Peter Corris - Comeback

‘Okay, I’ll talk to you. You can buy me a drink or a couple of drinks so I get something out of it at least.’

We sat in the bar of the Bank Hotel with the windows open and the life of Newtown swirling around us. Kylie March ordered a martini, saying that was what people in films drank when they talked with private detectives. I had white wine.

‘How much do you know about Jason Clement?’ she asked.

It’s not best practice to let an informant ask the first question, but I had the feeling that Ms March would treat the interview like a performance and I might as well let her as long as I eventually got what I wanted. It was going to cost Ray Frost a bit-martinis don’t come cheap.

‘I know something,’ I said. ‘He was a promising actor and then something happened to him.’

‘He was brilliant. He was in a class I ran at NIDA and he was far and away the best. He had the poise, the timing, it. You know what I mean by that?’

‘I think so. A special quality. I’ve heard people say Cate Blanchett had it at NIDA.’

She nodded. ‘She did, in spades. Jason had another aspect of the quality that’s very important-an ability, sort of subliminal, to appeal to both sexes. He wasn’t bisexual as far as I know, but there was something androgynous about him.’

‘Like Elvis.’

‘Before my time. Then he had an accident of some kind. He never said exactly what it was. I suspected a motorcycle accident.’

‘Like Bob Dylan.’

She drained her glass and pushed it towards me. ‘I’m not sure you’re being serious.’

I got up. ‘I am serious, Ms March, but I’m not much concerned about Clement’s history. I just want to find him and I’ll invest in another drink but my patience is running out.’

She didn’t like it, but she didn’t gather her things and leave. Probably holding on for a good exit line. The bar was crowded and I had to wait to be served. I kept an eye on her. She took a mobile phone from her bag and made a call. Hard to interpret that. I returned with the drinks.

‘Thank you.’

‘Take your time with the drink. I’m interested in why Clement left your school,’ I said. ‘I’d like to hear about the firearm incident.’

She was mollified and gave me a practised smile. ‘Jason had all sorts of problems with his mobility and his appearance-even with his voice-but he was very brave about it. In his teaching he tended to take things to extremes.’

‘For example?’

‘He was a great one for things like Russian roulette. He pushed the students to the limits of their physical and emotional capacity. That was a good thing in a way, it sorted out the sheep from the goats.’

‘Chloe Monkhurst?’

She worked on her drink, bleeding the moment for all it was worth. ‘She couldn’t stand the pace. She became a sort of acolyte, an assistant, rather than a student. Jason was a great one for reality and he went too far. He was demonstrating a shooting scene and he put live ammunition in the gun.’

‘Pistol or rifle or shotgun?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Pistol. A student was wounded. Only very slightly but he made a complaint. The police were involved.’

‘They would be. What happened?’

‘There were no charges laid. The student withdrew his complaint. I suspect Jason intimidated him. I haven’t seen Jason since then.’

‘It didn’t make the papers.’

‘We were lucky. A very big news story broke just at that time. I forget what it was, but it blotted out the. . incident.’

‘How long ago did all this happen?’

She’d finished her drink. She didn’t eat the olives. She reached into her bag and took out a small notebook with a reproduction of the Penguin edition of Wuthering Heights as its cover and leafed through it.

‘A few months ago.’

Around the time Bobby Forrest took up with Jane Devereaux and things began to look rosy.

‘Where is he?’

She shrugged. ‘All I can tell you is where he was then.’

Kylie March told me that Clement had a farm at Picton.

‘A farm?’

‘Well, some land at least. I don’t know how much. He’s not poor, you know. He got a payout after his accident. I remember him saying that Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe had farms, so why shouldn’t he have one. He was being ironic, of course. He’s very bitter about what happened to him. He was only part-time with us, you understand. I don’t think he needed the money, which wasn’t much.’

‘What’s the address?’

She consulted the notebook. ‘Lot 12, Salisbury Road, Picton, but, as I say, that was when he first came to me for a position. That was some time ago.’

‘It’s a starting point. Thank you. What kind of car does he drive?’

‘The questions you ask. I don’t know about cars. Quite a big one. I remember that he had it modified to enable him to cope with his disability.’

‘What colour?’

‘Let me think. I only saw it once or twice. It was white, I believe, and dusty, I assume from driving from Picton. You will consider the school, won’t you? I have been cooperative, haven’t I?’

It was the middle of the afternoon but we were well into daylight saving and there’d be light for quite a few hours yet. I drove home, changed into my version of country clothes-jeans, T-shirt, boots, denim jacket-hunted out a map of the area to the west of Sydney and put the.38 in the pocket of the jacket. Picton was eighty kilometres away. It wasn’t going to be a comfortable drive-commuter traffic for most of the way and into the setting sun at the end.

There wasn’t any concrete evidence against Clement but he had the motive, the means (he was evidently familiar with guns) and the opportunity. I was putting it together in my head as I drove. Chloe Monkhurst could have told Clement that her father was dealing with Bobby Forrest. Monkhurst told his daughter things he shouldn’t have about Forrest’s state of mind. Chloe passes these things on to Clement-details of the car, movements, habits. Embittered anyway, Clement sees Forrest pulling his life together and kills him. From tracking him in his last days, Clement knows that Forrest has hired me and sends me a text message after he’s killed Forrest.

It hung together pretty well. Clement tells Chloe about me and she freaks when she sees that I’ve progressed to contacting her father. What’s her next move? Most likely to get this very bad news to Clement. What’s his likely reaction? Anybody’s guess.

I stopped for petrol and was slowed down by a rainstorm that swept in to the south-west and made the road slippery so that traffic speed dropped to a crawl. A few kilometres of that and the rain eased off and most of the traffic took the road to Campbelltown. I activated the GPS and found my way to Salisbury Road. The lot numbers were clearly marked.

I drove slowly with things to worry about. Chloe had had plenty of time to alert Clement. She’d have guessed that the old Falcon parked near her father’s place was mine. She’d have told Clement and he’d had time to do what? Run? Stand and fight? He was armed and he knew this territory the way I knew Glebe Point Road. Farmers have rifles and shotguns. I had a pistol with an effective range of not much more than fifteen metres.

It always amazes me how few animals there are in Australian paddocks. The drought was well and truly over and the land was green but there still weren’t many sheep or cows in sight. But what do I know? Maybe they were off being shorn or slaughtered.

The Salisbury Road blocks appeared to be large, ten hectares or so. Did that suggest they were hobby farms, genuine concerns or tax dodges? Again, I didn’t know. A few had no visible buildings, others had buildings at a distance from the road. Some of the buildings were screened off by trees.