Possibly.'
'I can't think of any way to flush him out,' I said. 'Can't see myself posing as an ecstasy buyer with a preference for the Indonesian variety. Couldn't stand the dance party music, for one thing. Anything happening about the DNA test?'
'I've provided the sample. Takes a while.' 'She says she doesn't know who the father is.' Frank raised his drink as a toast to nothing in particular. 'That makes quite a few of us.'
The news came through a day after and I picked it up on the radio at 6 pm:
A woman was shot in Earlwood this afternoon as she got out of her car to check the malfunction of the electronic gate to her driveway. Mrs Catherine Heysen was wounded in the shoulder by a shot fired by a person sitting in a parked car. Mrs Heysen's neighbour, who has asked not to be named, was drawing up near the attacker's car in his Volvo sedan and witnessed the shooting. He sounded his horn and rammed the car, which drove off at high speed. An ambulance was called and Mrs Heysen was taken to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital where she has been reported to be in a satisfactory condition following an operation to remove the bullet.
The police are investigating. They say Mrs Heysen made a short statement before undergoing surgery. She said she could not think why anyone would want to kill her, and that her neighbour had saved her life. She said she thanked him from the bottom of her heart and that she would compensate him for damage to his vehicle.
'That's typical of her,' I said to Lily, who'd heard the broadcast. 'Do and say the right thing however you might be feeling.'
'Gutsy, I'd say.'
'Yeah, but secretive. This must have something to do with the investigation of Heysen and Padrone or the search for William Heysen.'
'Or both.'
'Or both. Do you reckon the media'll dig up the stuff about Heysen and Bellamy?'
Lily considered. 'Possibly, but a lot of the reporters around now think of everything pre-9/11 as ancient history. If she'd been killed maybe, but wounded isn't sexy.'
'A photo of her'd take care of that.'
'Really?'
I nodded. 'But she did her modelling under a different name so they might not twig. It could bring young Billy to the surface though, if he cares about her.'
'Come on, she's his mother.'
'I told you, he's a cold fish and she hasn't seen hide nor hair of him in six months.'
'No one's that cold.'
'I hope you're right. If it's got something to do with the old Heysen and Bellamy matter, I'm back on the same trail, or two trails.'
'You'll cope.'
'I dunno. I'm a linear thinker. Two lines of thought tend to confuse me.'
'Bullshit. I have to go out, Cliff. By the way, I had word today that my house's nearly finished. Be out of your hair soon.'
She kissed me as she went. That was Lily. That was Lily and me.
I phoned the hospital and asked when Mrs Heysen could receive visitors.
'Family?'
'Friend.'
'She's under heavy sedation.'
'Have family members been in?'
'Who is speaking, please?'
That meant the cops had asked the hospital to monitor calls. Fair enough. I hung up. I went back to my notebook and the page with the boxes and arrows and squiggles and tried to come up with an explanation of why anyone would want to kill Catherine Heysen. There were two possibilities as I saw it: one, that William Heysen was involved in some deep, big money shit, and that our enquiring about him had prompted someone to put an end to that enquiring at the likely source. The second was that my scouting around about the Heysen and Bellamy matter had opened an old, tender wound, and someone thought killing Catherine Heysen might cauterise it. I tended to favour the second scenario and wasn't happy about it. 'Mad Matt' Sawtell was a possibility, and Frank and I were both possible additional targets.
'Watch your back, Frank,' I said when I phoned him.
He'd thought it through the same way. 'Watch your own,' he said.
'This woman's brought you a fair amount of grief already. You don't need any more.'
'I feel embarrassed about this, Cliff. But there's some hold-up with Peter's marriage and the visas and that. Hilde's dead keen for us to go over there and meet the girl and see Peter.'
'You should.'
'It feels like running away.'
'Bullshit. It focuses things. I can arrange protection for Catherine, and if I attract any flak I reckon I can handle it. Someone who shoots at a woman at close range, misses, and gets scared away by a Volvo doesn't worry me too much.'
'What about Lily?'
'How d'you mean?'
'With a partner you're vulnerable. You know that.'
'Lily's house is nearly ready. She'll be gone in a day or so.'
'How do you feel about that?'
'In view of this, good. Do a Peter Allen, mate.' Tunelessly, I chanted, 'Go to Rio, de Janeiro.'
'Christ, that's enough to make me do it.'
I kept phoning the hospital. Complications had set in and Catherine Heysen needed a second operation. She recovered quickly after that. Her shooting had attracted no more media attention and, almost a week after it, when Lily had moved back to Greenwich and Frank and Hilde had flown to South America, I went to the hospital to see her.
15
She had a private room with a view back towards the university colleges. Not bad. The room was full of more flowers than she could smell and more fruit than she could eat, indicating that members of her family had been frequent visitors. She was sitting propped up when I arrived. Her hair was arranged and her makeup was perfect. She wore a pink bed jacket over a silk nightdress and looked about as good as anyone who'd been shot could look.
She extended her left hand. 'Mr Hardy.'
'How are you feeling, Mrs Heysen?'
'Not bad, thank you. The people here are excellent and I have my own doctor keeping an eye on things of course. Please sit down.'
'I know the police will have asked you, but did you see the man who shot you?'
'No, not at all. I don't even know that it was a man.'
'Why d'you say that?'
She shrugged and a grimace of pain crossed her face. 'I must not do that. I don't know-there are terrible people around these days of both sexes.'
'It sounds as if you had some… intuition about it.'
'Perhaps. But if I did at the time, it has dissipated now after the operation and the drugs.'
'Can you write? I mean, it's your right shoulder, isn't it?'
'Yes. I wonder. I haven't tried. Why?'
I took one of my cards from my wallet. 'I'd like to talk to the neighbour who helped you. Apparently he wants to stay anonymous. I thought if you okayed it he might talk to me.'
