them. I assume it was a well-regulated place. I’m not a moralist.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Myself, I’m a radical, a reformer and a radical. I am a moralist you might say.’ His eyes, which had been focused on my face, drifted away. It looked like he was going into the mind-cranking stage again. I was impatient but judged it better to let him set the pace. I leaned forward to get some more coffee. He didn’t notice.
‘I love this place Mr Hardy, these people, I’ve been here nearly fifty years. Did you know that?’
I nodded, took milk.
‘I went back to Edinburgh once, detested it! I found the Scots ungenerous and narrow. Well, that’s by the way. Do you know what used to be the single greatest cause of human misery in a place like this?’
I said ‘No’, which was true.
He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee. ‘Unwanted children. Forced marriages and unwanted children. It was behind most of the crime, nearly all the drunkenness, most of the trouble.’
‘A problem,’ I agreed. ‘Still is, I suppose.’
‘It’s different now, more information, better methods. And there’s some support for the girls bringing up the babies.’
‘Come down to cases doctor,’ I said gently.
‘Aye. I ran a clinic here for twenty years, abortions and births, adoptions. Proud of it.’
‘It was a secret though.’
‘It was. A secret entrusted to a few.’
‘Nurse Callaghan?’
‘Helped me, the whole time. Wonderful woman, she believed in the work.’
It was more than that and I tried to keep the knowledge out of my response. Unsuccessfully.
‘I was unhappily married,’ he said simply. ‘A daughter died in childbirth with no one to help her.’
It explained a lot but I wasn’t happy with the drift of his account. Too much flavour of abortion in it; abortion wasn’t what I needed.
‘How many abortions did you perform doctor?’
‘Hundreds.’
‘How many births and… adoptions?’
‘Fewer.’
‘It’s the adoptions I’m interested in.’
‘Both things were illegal.’
‘I don’t imagine anyone cares now.’
He misinterpreted me and flared. ‘But I must explain what went wrong, how my ideals were perverted.’
The craving overtook the tact; I pulled out my tobacco and made a cigarette. I said ‘Go ahead’ more roughly than I’d intended.
He glanced at me sharply, annoyed, as though I wasn’t worthy to be his confessor. But he was too far into confession to stop. ‘I did this community a great service for twenty years. A law-abiding community. Blackman’s Bay, very low incidence of violence, disruption. But they wouldn’t let me be.’
‘They? The locals?’
‘No, the others, from Canberra and Sydney. Men and lasses, some terrible stories I can tell you.’
We seemed to be moving into the right area. I blew smoke away from him and juggled the ash.
‘What did they do, blackmail you?’
‘Aye, and worse. Terrible place Sydney, full of the lowest people.’ He looked hard at me and I felt I had the harbour bridge growing out of my head and Kings Cross painted on my face. I knew I had a day’s beard and a very dirty shirt.
‘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.
11
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
