spent big money on it.’
‘Jacuzzi? TV mast?’
‘All that.’
‘I hope he’s here. It’s a long way to come up empty.’
‘He’s here. I rang Damien last night.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me? Both of them here?’
‘Who knows?’
‘I suppose you gave him to understand he might have another crack.’
She smiled as she steered round a puddle. The front right-hand wheel went down into mud and only the extra drive power kept us going. We rounded a bend where the road widened out to allow for safety. The drop on the left looked like a plunge of a thousand feet into a misty void. A sign read ‘Danger-Skinner’s Leap’ and a fence emphasised the fact. Then the track rose steeply for about half a mile before reaching a flat area of four or five acres. It snaked past, climbing higher.
Plenty of trees around the flat spot, some scrub, outcrops of rock. A cottage sat in the middle of the space- timber and glass, smoke drifting up from the chimney. There was no garden to speak of but an area beside the house had been cleared, levelled and closely mown. It had a flag on a six foot pole stuck in the middle of it.
‘He’s a keen golfer,’ Tania said as she steered the car towards a cement slab where another car stood. ‘Do you play, Cliff?’
‘No. Strikes me the ball’s too small and the distances are too big.’
‘That’s the fun of it. Well, here we go.’
She shrugged into her parka, pulled the hood up, opened the door and, tucking her bag under her arm, made a dash through the rain and mud to the front porch. I watched while she took off the parka and did something to her hair. She rang a bell. The door opened and she waltzed in. I zipped up my jacket, turned up the collar and got out. The rain was really just heavy drizzle and I tramped around to the other side of the house to check it out. A Land Rover, fire engine red, newish, gleaming in the pale light, stood under a tree. Wayne was not alone.
I continued my circuit and reached the back of the house, where a covered deck ran the full length. Tania was right about the view, even through mist and drizzle. Some trees had been dealt with to enhance it, and the result was a vista down towards the township with the lake in sight and the mist-clouded hills in the distance. I’m a citizen of the city and the beach, but this view brought me to a halt and I stood looking out over it, scarcely feeling the damp.
‘Hey, Hardy. Come up out of the rain.’
I scraped my boots on the wire mat provided and climbed the steps to the deck, rubbing the water from my hair and unzipping my jacket. The man who met me was too young to be Wayne Ireland but had the same bull-like build I’d seen in photographs of the politician.
‘Damien Ireland,’ he said, holding out his hand.
I brushed my wet hands together. ‘Got a towel?’
He didn’t like my not shaking hands but he didn’t want me to see it. ‘Sure, Cliff,’ he said. ‘Come and I’ll show you to the bathroom. Better wipe your feet again. Better still, take your boots off.’
I braced myself against the rail and removed my boots. Damien had a couple of inches over my six-foot-one and, as he was wearing boots too, he now had a big height advantage. Just for the hell of it, I took my socks off as well.
I went into a room that mirrored the deck, stretching across the whole length of the house-polished floors, rugs, a big fireplace, wood panelling, a bar with stools and a mirror. No hunting trophies. Tania and Wayne Ireland sat across from each other on either side of the fireplace. Both held drinks in one hand and were smoking-Tania a cigarette, Ireland a cigar.
‘Cliff just has to dry off a bit, Dad,’ Damien said.
Ireland senior nodded. ‘Why don’t you fix Cliff a drink.’
If they call me Cliff like that again, I thought, we could have a serious problem.
Ireland Junior pointed the way to the bathroom and I dried myself with a towel warm from a heated rail. When I got back he was standing behind the bar.
‘What’ll it be, Cliff?’
‘Rough red.’
He was confused. ‘Jesus, we haven’t got-’
‘I didn’t think so.’
‘Can’t you see he’s taking the piss?’ Ireland Senior said. ‘Pour him some red and let’s get down to it here.’
I accepted a glass of red wine and went over to a chair between Ireland and Tania, a little back from them. Damien hovered in the background for a minute, then disappeared.
I seemed to remember reading that Wayne Ireland had played football. The frame that would have stood him in good stead then was overlain with fat. His face and neck were flabby and his expensive outdoor clothes didn’t conceal a waistline bulge. He was ‘hog fat’ as the old bare-knuckle fighters used to say. His colour was high and the only healthy-looking thing about him was a crop of still dark, springy hair, growing thickly and worn long. It was carefully tended-about all he had left to be vain about, physically.
‘Tania has put an interesting proposition to me, Hardy,’ Ireland said. ‘Very interesting.’
I sipped some of the very good wine and said nothing.
Tania flipped her cigarette into the fire and dug into her bag for the packet.
‘Yes, she proposes that I give you certain information about an individual in whom you have an interest. In return she guarantees that the way in which I came by this information will remain confidential, and she will write several newspaper articles to help correct the bias against me that’s currently being peddled.’
The pedantic phrasing and careful diction covered an underlying roughness, a legacy of a lower-class upbringing and schooling. Wayne Ireland had taken a long step vocally as well as in other ways.
‘How do you know you can trust her?’ I said. ‘You know she’d sell her mother into white slavery to get what she wants.’
Tania sat up and almost spilled her drink. ‘You bastard, you-’
‘Keep your shirt on, love,’ Ireland said, sounding more like the old unionist. ‘He’s just playing games with us, trying to assert himself.’
Tania delved for her lighter and lit up.
‘Now, I find that proposition fairly attractive,’ Ireland went on. ‘As you know, I have certain legal problems. Not insurmountable, but I certainly don’t need to add to them. I understand, Hardy, that you’re in a position to do just that.’
‘It could happen,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t have to.’
‘Exactly. I admire your dedication to your enquiry. Now, how should I put this? I was able to facilitate an individual…’
I could tell this wasn’t going to work the way Tania had planned it. Where was Damien and what was he up to? And Ireland Senior was way too sure of himself for my liking. Time for some more self-assertion. I drained the wine glass and set it on the floor.
‘Listen, Wayne, I don’t give a fuck what names you mention or how you pussyfoot around the details. I only want to know two things-did you provide Justin Hampshire with a passport and, if so, in what name? That’s it as far as I’m concerned. Tania can work out the subtleties with you however she likes.’
Ireland drew deeply on his cigar and tossed the long butt into the fire. ‘Justin Arnold Pettigrew,’ he said.
22
A bit stagily, Ireland opened a pigskin case, took out a cigar and lit it with a gas lighter. What he was drinking looked like whisky and he emptied his glass and let out a sigh. He looked tired, every day of his age and then some.
‘I also gave him three thousand dollars.’
‘That was… considerate,’ Tania said.
