I'd enjoyed the exercise. It looked as if Patrick was getting serious about horses.
Patrick was quiet that night, almost morose. Just to make conversation I asked him if he had any ideas about what business to get into when he got home. He sparked up a bit.
'Have you got a proposition?'
'Me? No.'
He nodded. 'I have a thought or two.'
We flew from Dublin to London and caught a connecting flight home. During the stopover Patrick shaved his beard off because it was itching. So we looked very alike again. We were in the bar at Heathrow when Patrick grinned over his third whiskey.
'Want to have some fun, Cliff?'
'I might.'
'Let's swap passports and tickets. See if we can get away with it.'
I'd had a couple myself and was tempted, just for the hell of it. He took out the documents and waved them.
'Show them their security's not worth a pinch of shit.'
I looked around and took in the warnings about leaving baggage unattended, the urgings to report anything suspicious and the security men standing about, bristling with firearms and communication equipment.
'It's not worth the risk,' I said. 'Level of paranoia's too high.'
He sighed and put the papers away. 'Guess you're right. It's a terrible time to be getting old in, to be sure.'
On the flight Patrick sent and received text messages and I asked him how his business was doing.
'Running like clockwork. I'm selling it, didn't I say?' 'No. And then…?' He shrugged. 'Something'll turn up.' My grandmother's grand-nephew repeating her words. He said he'd given up the flat he'd been renting and would be looking for something to buy. I offered to let him stay at my place while he looked and he accepted.
Patrick moved into the spare room with little more than the light luggage he'd taken on the trip, apart from a fiddle he bought in Ireland and the duty-free Jamesons, of course. He said the rest of his possessions were in storage and that he knew what sort of flat he wanted and in what area, so the business wouldn't take long. I was glad of the company and, as we were both more or less in limbo, I thought us bouncing ideas about our different futures off each other might be useful. Patrick was determined to learn to play the fiddle, but I wasn't up for that.
I lent him the Falcon to get around in because most of the places I wanted to go-the gym in Leichhardt, Megan's place in Newtown, the bookshops and eateries in Glebe and Newtown-I could reach on foot or by bus. After the damp of Ireland it was good to be back in a spell of crisp, dry Sydney winter days-while they lasted. I paid some bills, caught up on some films, visited Frank and Hilde and took my meds. I found life a bit flat, politics boring, and time hanging heavy, but Patrick was amusing and he never scraped away at his fiddle beyond 9 pm.
I got back from a gym session in the mid-morning, opened the door and knew something was wrong. A smell, a sound, or just a feeling?
'Pat?'
There was no answer. Nothing was out of place in the living room or the kitchen. It was moderately untidy like always, but the back door was wide open and the cordite stink was unmistakable. I pushed open the door to the back bathroom and the smell and the sight rocked me back and had me grabbing for the doorjamb for support. Patrick Malloy didn't look like me anymore. He didn't look like anyone. Most of his head had been blown away; an arm was hanging by a thread and his chest was a mass of raw meat and splintered bone. He'd been torn apart. The plastic curtain was shredded, and the walls in the shower recess were like a mad abstract painting in red and grey.
5
I'd shot a man dead in the house many years ago and had been shot there myself quite recently, but those events were nothing like this. The police determined that Patrick had been killed by three blasts of heavy load from an automatic shotgun. The first would have killed him; the others were about something else altogether.
Chief Inspector Ian Welsh of the City Major Crimes Unit who headed the investigation called me into the Surry Hills Centre for an interview two days after the SOC people had done their work. A folding table had been set up in his office and on it were the things Patrick had in the house at the time of his death, including the fiddle. I'd given permission to the police to take the stuff away on the condition that I watched them pack it up and had an itemised list signed by the detective in charge.
Welsh, thin, fiftyish, tired-looking, had Patrick's passport open when I entered the room and he stared at the photograph, at me, and back at the photograph, but made no comment.
The killing had shocked and saddened me and I hadn't slept well for the last few nights. Patrick was one of those people who filled a room, filled a house, but wasn't a nuisance. He had a knack of knowing when I might want coffee and when I might want quiet; when I wanted music and when I didn't. Seeing his fiddle lying on the table like an exhibit broke me up a bit. I sat in the chair Welsh indicated, reached out and picked up the bow.
Welsh put down the passport and examined a document in front of him. 'Thanks for coming in, Mr Hardy. I've read your statement. You've been very cooperative.'
I fiddled with the bow, nodded, said nothing.
'You've no idea why… your cousin-'
'Second cousin,' I said, 'and friend.'
'-why this could have happened to him?'
I put the bow back on the table. 'None.'
'You travelled overseas, you put him up in your house, lent him your car, but you don't seem to know anything about him.'
'I know the things he told me and they seemed enough at the time. Our family relationship, a bit about his past and the business he'd been in. We had interests in common-books, music, boxing…'
'You never felt the need to know more? After all, you used to be a private enquiry agent. I'd have thought curiosity was your middle name.'
'I suppose I would've found out more as we went along.'
'He sought you out, you said.'
'Yes, this family thing about the Irish Travellers, we…'
'Yes. Did it ever occur to you that he needed you for protection?'
Given what had happened, it was a reasonable question, but from his suddenly alert manner there appeared to be more to it. He picked up the passport and flicked through it as he waited for my answer.
'No,' I said.
'Did he do business of any sort while you were overseas?'
That was a new tack and on the money, now that I knew what Patrick's visit to the vet in Dublin had been about. You go to vets for steroids the way you go to Mexico for Nembutal. But I didn't feel like enlightening Welsh.
'Not that I know of.'
He closed the passport and put it back on his desk. It was the only item separated from the other things-the fiddle, clothes, books, keys, shoes, a wallet, some photographs, a shell from the beach at Galway Bay.
'Thank you, Mr Hardy. That'll be all. I'll get an officer to see you out.'
'Hang on. What was that all about? Those questions?'
He touched a button on his desk. 'Don't concern yourself. We'll keep you informed of any developments that involve you.'
'You think I'm just going to walk away?'
'You'd better, Mr Hardy. You're not a private detective anymore.'
So that was just about that as far as the cops were concerned, but I wasn't having any of it. I'd liked Patrick, was grateful to him for suggesting the trip and had felt comfortable in his company. I knew that I'd miss him and
