feeling well.'
I walked away. The confrontation had taken a matter of seconds and the few other people in the park were too far away to see what happened.
I drove home. Sheila's VW was parked across from my house. She got out as I arrived; we embraced in the middle of the street, and she stepped back sniffing.
'What?' I said.
'Funny smell.'
We went into the house and when we were under the light she pointed to my pants below the knee. 'Ugh, you've got chuck all over you.'
I'd been massaging a bruised knuckle. She noticed. She put down her bag with a thump. 'What happened, Cliff?'
'Couple of wannabe muggers.'
'Did they hurt you? No, you hurt them, didn't you?'
'They were young and inexperienced and probably drunk. It's nothing to be proud of. Let me get cleaned up. Did I say I was glad to see you?'
'No, but you will be. I've pulled myself together and I'm ready to tell you everything I can about Paddy and to show you a few things as well.'
I changed my clothes and we sent out for Vietnamese food. Sheila was animated, almost hectic, high on the prospect of the film and fascinated by the character she was playing. Her research had gone well and reports from the producer, getting the money together, and the director, scouting locations, were good. She drank a few glasses of wine and hoed into the fish and vegetables but scarcely touched the rice. I'd never mastered chopsticks; Sheila was adept. She tried to instruct me as others had done but I was hopeless. The sore hand didn't help.
'You must really have belted him,' she said. 'You were a boxer like Paddy, weren't you?'
I was glad we'd reached the subject. 'He was a pro, I was an amateur.'
'Mr Modest.' She got up, fetched her bag and sat on the couch. 'Come over here.'
I drained my glass and went. The extra weight in her bag turned out to be a hefty photograph album. She opened it over our close-together knees. Sheila was a keen photographer and a good one. She'd kept an extensive photographic record of her tortured relationship and marriage to Patrick Malloy from the days of their meeting at a party to the final split-a shot of Patrick storming off towards his car. Good times and bad times; smiles and tears; presents and the aftermath of rows-smashed glasses, scattered books, broken furniture.
'You can see how it was,' she said. 'We'd break up, go off with someone else and get back together again. Look, here's Seamus Cummings and here's one of the women Paddy was fucking, one of many. I took that without her knowing, jealous as hell.'
The photographs were more or less in chronological order and carried captions: 'Paddy beating me at pool', 'Our wedding', 'Us at Kakadu', etc.
Sheila leaned towards me. 'I bet you looked exactly like him at the same age. What d'you think?'
'Pretty much. Just a bit more handsome.'
'Huh. Just as cocksure, if you know what I mean.'
There were several photos of Patrick in military uniform looking pleased with himself, and one near the end of the collection of him in what looked like a bushman's outfit. Not exactly fatigues, more the movie version of fatigues. He'd put on weight and grown a bristly moustache and didn't look much like me at all.
'What's this?' I said. 'I never looked like that.'
'That's his African outfit.'
'I thought you'd broken up permanently by then.'
'We had, but he turned up. He was always turning up out of the blue and causing trouble.'
'What was the name of that group? Did he ever tell you? He shouldn't have, but since he was showing off…'
'He was drunk and unhappy. He didn't care what he said. He did mention a name, but I forget-something Greek. Hercules, Parthenon.. .'
'Well, he never made it to Africa.'
'Why d'you say that?'
'He told me he quit the mercenary mob in England when he learned what they were headed for. Deserted, he said.'
'That's not true. He went to Africa, all right. Look.'
She pulled a postcard from its plastic sleeve and handed it to me. It showed a bush village with characteristic African flattop trees in the background. The message read: 'Shillelagh, glad you're not here. Love, Paddy.' The card was postmarked Luanda, Republic of Angola.
20
Sheila went off to Melbourne to do more research for her part, this time to talk to people with information about the female role in the gang wars. She said a member of the production team was going with her, a karate expert.
'He'd better be an expert in a bit more than that.'
'Like what?'
'Australian football, dining in Carlton, catching trams, coats and scarves…'
'I gather you don't like Melbourne.'
'Nothing good ever happened to me there. You'll be right. Have fun-not too much.'
'What're you going to do?'
'The usual. Talk to people who know things I need to know.'
A web search for Australian mercenary soldiers turned up only one useful item-a book entitled Diggers for Hire by John
Casey, published by Partisan Press in 2007. Thanks to the software loaded by Lily and transferred to my new computer, I had Sydney University's Fisher Library catalogue online and found that the book was in the research section. I walked to the university past all the restoration and enhancement work being done on Glebe Point Road to run into major work going on inside the campus. Holes in the ground, cranes, noise-not exactly the dreaming spires. I threaded my way through detours and diversions to the library, made an inquiry and was directed to the right section. A ticket that allows you to borrow costs a fortune, but there's nothing to stop you reading inside the place. The book was mercifully slim and I sat down with it and a notebook. I haven't had much to do with university libraries since my less than successful student days when I was supposed to be studying law but was more interested in other things.
John Casey was a professor at Macquarie University, a former soldier and no stylist. The introduction nearly put me to sleep in the musty, air-conditioned atmosphere and I was relieved to see that the book had an index. I worked through it looking for anything Greek, and the only likely reference was to something called the Olympic Corps. The reference was limited to one paragraph:
The Olympic Corps is a shadowy organisation that may indeed be no more than a rumour. It has been mentioned by former soldiers, but no actual member has ever been identified. All information about it is, as far as my researches show, hearsay. One person has heard something about it from another and that information is elaborated on and extended by a further account, which turns out to have no more solid foundation. Lurid stories are told of African, Pacific and Caribbean adventures having more the ring of airport fiction than reality. Official sources, with detailed information about such bodies as Sandline, are silent about the Olympic Corps, sometimes called the Corps Olympic. It may be a military myth.
In a footnote, the author said that FOI approaches to the Department of Defence and the Attorney-General's Department had met with no reply at the time of the book going to press. I emailed the professor that I had some information about the Olympic Corps and would like to meet him to discuss it. I was about to log off when the chime told me I had a message. Casey must have been at the computer when my message arrived because he'd replied immediately, giving me his phone number and asking me to contact him a.s.a.p. I did.
