He gaped at me as I walked out of the office.
I was right. Ailsa reported to me several days later. The information was fragmentary, hardly to be relied upon unless you had something to support it as I had. Julian Guyatt was part of a small task force that had been infiltrated into New Caledonia to operate against the Kanaks. It had been wiped out in the first exchange. Piecing it all together, the one-time Under-17 100-metres champion had been dead for twenty-four hours when his father first stepped into my office.
Byron Kelly’s Big Mistake
The newspaper Byron Kelly dumped on my desk carried the headline DECOMPOSED BODY IN PARK. That made it a fairly ordinary day in Sydney, but Byron hadn’t come to talk about bodies or parks or for help with the crossword.
‘I’ve got to get it back, Cliff,’ he said, ‘or she’ll ruin me and a lot of others. This time, she doesn’t know what she’s doing.’
It was late on a Tuesday morning in March. We were in my office in St Peter’s Lane, Darlinghurst. Byron was looking a bit crumpled in his expensive clothes. He moved restlessly from the chair to lean on the filing cabinet and try to look through the dirty window. I sat behind my desk; I was less expensive but less crumpled and I knew there was no point in trying to look out the windows.
‘What exactly are we talking about, mate?’ I said. ‘A letter, a memo, a rocket fuel formula, what?’
‘A letter, no, a draft letter,’ Byron said. ‘Michael roughed out a letter to… one of the money men who’d approached him about getting the all-clear for a development. Two things, no three. One, Michael was pissed at the time; two, he thought he was going to get the Department of the Environment and three, it was a bloody joke anyway.’
‘And you showed the letter to Pauline. I suppose you were pissed at the time too?’
‘No. Just angry. It was a bad time for us. The point is, she took it and she’s been saying all over town that she intends to fry me and this had to be the way she’s going to do it.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Talk to her.’
‘I’m a private detective, not a marriage guidance counsellor.’
‘You’re also my friend.’
‘And hers. Don’t forget that.’
‘Jesus! You know what it’s been like with us, Cliff. We love each other and all that but it’s impossible. She’s done this before, used stuff I’ve shown her against me but… ‘
‘Why d’you show her?’
‘I don’t know. Rage, I guess. But this is bigger. There’s some very heavy people behind this development and it’s going through for better or worse.’
‘Where?’
‘Albion Reef, up north. Lovely spot. Was. This’ll fuck it but there’s jobs and money at stake. It just squeaked through an environmental impact study-took some modifications and some palm greasing. You know how it is.’
I grunted. ‘What was in Parsons’ letter?’
‘Enough dirt on the developers and the graft to sink it. The silly bastard really let himself go. If it gets out the development’s gone, Parsons is gone and I’m gone. The government’ll probably survive.’
‘Does Pauline know all the ramifications?’
‘Probably not. She certainly wouldn’t know exactly who’s putting up the real money.’
‘You’re sure she’s got the letter?’
‘Has to be. She’s got a key to the flat I moved into.’
‘Why’s that?’
Byron pushed his thick brown hair back and looked boyish although he’s in his thirties and has knocked around. ‘I didn’t want anything to look too final’
‘You want her back?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s fantastic with her when it’s good. Unbelievable. Then these things come up and it’s hell. I don’t know.’
‘Have you tried to talk to her about the letter?’
‘She hangs up. I tried to catch her in at the News. She went into the women’s dunny. I waited, then I went in. She’d left by another door. Look, I’m not only worried about the flak. That letter’s dangerous. The big noise is… ‘
I held up my hand. ‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Let me think.’
I’d known Byron and Pauline Kelly for eight years. For most of that time they’d been married, that is, all except a few months at the beginning and the last few weeks since they separated. They fought. At the beginning they were known as Rocky II; that was before the movie came out. Since then they’ve been Rocky III, IV, as the movies caught up with them. They’d called it off several times but the current separation looked final. Rocky V, at least their version, seemed unlikely.
Byron was Michael Parsons’ political adviser cum press secretary cum bodyguard cum drinking companion. Parsons was rising fast in the state political zoo. He was currently a Minister but I wasn’t quite certain what for.
Pauline was a journalist, an in-demand freelance who appeared in print, on radio and on television. Byron was a pragmatist, Pauline an idealist; they agreed on almost nothing but the superiority of red wine over white. Pauline had once told me why they stayed together.
‘Because of King Arthur.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘We come a lot.’
Pauline was a small woman, blonde, untidy and energetic. I liked her. Byron was a foot taller, more careful of his appearance but somehow always in her shadow. I liked him too so it pained me to see him looking strained and underslept. ‘How come you kept this letter?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you get rid of it when your boss was sober?’
‘You don’t understand what it’s like working for these blokes. Pauline didn’t understand either. They’re like… shit, I don’t know. Have you ever been to a really even fight, where the fighters slugged it out all night and finished up square?’
‘Sure. Rose and Famechon.’
Kelly scratched his head. ‘They never fought.’
‘That’s what it would’ve been like if they had.’
‘Okay. Well, these politicians get off a lot of shots; they torpedo people and humiliate them but they’re sitting ducks themselves. Real targets. If they make the wrong move at the wrong time, they’re history.’
‘My heart bleeds all over their superannuation cheques.’
‘You sound like Pauline. I find it sort of exciting. Parsons’s not a bad bloke. Compared to the guy on the other side he’s a genius and a saint rolled into one, but he’s got his faults. He gets pissed at a certain pressure level. I kept the letter to scare him, to show him what political suicide looks like. I didn’t get around to doing that. I showed it to Pauline when we were having one of our blues and… that’s it.’
‘Does Parsons know the letter’s floating around?’
‘Christ no!’
‘Why me, Byron?’
‘You like Pauline. Not everybody does. She likes you and… ‘
‘Not everybody does,’ I said.
Byron grinned. ‘You’d know. Look, Cliff, I have to play this close to the chest. Almost everybody I know has a word processor. They write everything clown. They’re all keeping diaries, for Christ’s sake. It needs…
