'Jack Casey.'
'It's Cliff Hardy, professor.' 'Good. Have you got a secure line?' 'I believe so, yes.'
'Mine is, as far as I know, but let's keep it short. Where and when can we meet?'
He lived in Balmain and we fixed on a Darling Street pub at 3 pm. This felt like progress of some kind. I photocopied the passage in Casey's book, left the library and walked home. When I got there a car was parked outside my house and a uniformed police officer stepped out of it and approached me. 'Mr Hardy?'
We'd seen each other at the Glebe station. 'You know it is.'
He opened the rear door of the car. 'Please accompany me to the station.' 'Why?' 'Just get in.'
I unshipped my mobile and stepped back. 'Not until I know why.'
'Under the terms of your bail you're required to report-' 'Jesus Christ, I forgot.'
They made me wait at the station while they filled in forms, made phone calls, twiddled their thumbs. Then they read me the riot act, warning me that another violation could bring the cancellation of my bail, arrest and the loss of part of my bond. I gritted my teeth and took it. When they finally let me go there was barely time to get to Balmain to meet the professor. I was certainly ready for a drink.
Prof Casey was no tweedy bookworm. I'd given him my description over the phone. The man who jumped to his feet and waved a copy of his book at me was late forties, of medium height, solidly built with thick hair and a bushy beard-both dark with a lot of grey. He wore jeans, a grey Harvard T-shirt and a black leather jacket. There was a carafe of red wine on his table with two glasses. Looked like he'd already made a solid start.
'Mr Hardy, I'm Jack Casey.'
'Cliff,' I said. We shook hands.
'I'm on the red. You want something else?'
'Red's fine.'
We sat down and he poured. His copy of Diggers for Hire had seen a lot of work: the spine was broken and the corners of pages had been turned down and bits of paper were sticking up. I took out my photocopied page with the footnote highlighted. I took a big slug of the wine.
'You said you had information about Olympic Corps.'
'That's right.' I pointed to the highlighting. 'I'm hoping you've had more luck with this.'
He put on reading glasses and peered. 'I get it. We're swapping, are we? What's your profession, Cliff?'
'I was a private detective, now…'
'Ah, yes, it comes back to me. You got the flick.'
'That's right. Now I'm investigating the death of someone I think may have belonged to this mercenary mob.'
'Why?'
'He was my cousin and it happened in my house.'
He went up in my estimation by not saying he was sorry.
Why should he be? He took a swallow of wine and examined me closely. 'Convince me you're not a spook of some kind.'
I laughed. 'They wouldn't have me, and I wouldn't have a bar of them. I've met a few in my time, a couple were all right, but most of 'em couldn't tell their arses from their elbows. They might've got better, of course.'
He shook his head. 'They haven't-worse if anything in this paranoid climate, which I hope is cooling.'
It was a standoff. I might have asked the same question as him. Universities have always harboured intelligence people, but Casey didn't strike me as a candidate. I took Sheila's photograph of Patrick in Africa from my pocket and the postcard.
'This is the man I'm talking about, and this is a postcard he sent from a certain place. I'll tell you more if you reciprocate.'
He studied the photo, took off his glasses, wiped them on a ragged tissue, and looked closely again. 'Fuck me,' he said. 'This could really be something. See those inverted chevrons? I've seen photos of mercenaries wearing those in…'
'Angola. That's where P… he sent a postcard from.'
'Right. Who is this guy?'
I took the photo back. 'Whoa. Give and take. Tell me why you asked me if my line was secure, and what's all that about spooks? And I want to hear about the FOI request.'
'Then you'll tell me who he is?'
'Was. I might, under certain conditions.'
'That's a hard bargain.'
I finished off the red and poured another glass, 'Take it or leave it.'
He reached down for the backpack under the table and pulled out a sheaf of papers. I'd seen others like them many times before. They were governmental files but these had the identity of the department and practically the whole of their content blacked out. He leafed through the sheets, showing me that barely a sentence or two per page was complete.
'National security,' he said.
'Tell me about the photos of the mercenaries you saw.'
He pointed to the photo in my hand. 'Who?'
'You first.'
'Okay. It was of a bunch of unidentified white mercenaries shackled together and apparently on their way to prison. Or maybe not.'
'Meaning?'
'Both sides did nasty things to each other in that war. I should say all sides because there were quite a few. I'm talking about mutilations and beheadings of the living and the dead. Killing prisoners was routine.'
'His name was Patrick Malloy. Someone blew him apart with a shotgun.'
He gulped down some more wine, took a small box from the pocket of his jacket, opened it and sniffed up a pinch of powder. 'Snuff,' he said. 'Only way to use tobacco inside these days.'
'I'm waiting for the sneeze.'
'Doesn't always happen. There's a security angle to all this, obviously. But a shotgun doesn't sound like our lot.'
'I wouldn't be too sure,' I said. 'There's always outsourcing.'
21
It was murky-maybe right up Casey's street but not mine. I'd never cultivated contacts in what journalists called the intelligence community because, as I'd told him, I had little respect for the species. What did the CIA predict about the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Shah, Marcos and Soeharto? Nothing, and I doubted that their Australian counterparts were any better informed. I told Casey all I could about Patrick and he was encouraged to dig deeper into the photographs he now thought could be of the Olympic Corps, undertaking to keep me informed. He agreed not to publish anything about Patrick until after I'd either found his killer or given up.
The rough red had given me a headache. I bought some painkillers and walked down Darling Street to the water to allow them to work and me to think. Balmain had changed since I arrived in the inner west. It was no longer the habitat of waterside workers, tradesmen, boxers, footballers and bohemians. Gentrified to the max, it had been renovated, speed-bumped, mosaic-paved and priced into a middle-class haven. 4WDs lined the narrow streets and cute little lofts pushed up through the roofs to gain the all-important, property-enhancing water glimpse.
But the water itself was still the same, despite the demise of slips and the surfeit of yachts, and was still balm for the troubled mind. I watched a ferry unload the day's commuters and take on the evening's city-bound fun seekers, and looked across to where lights were marking out the bridges and buildings and felt glad to be part of it, problems and all.
With Sheila away and no obvious avenues to follow, I spent a good part of the next morning in the gym trying
