discretion.’
‘She’ll know I’ve talked to you. She might be hard to catch up with.’
‘Right.’
‘A hundred and fifty a day and expenses.’
‘Jesus!’
‘Discretion guaranteed.’
Kelly grimaced and put on his very good American accent, a legacy of his time at UCLA. ‘You got it.’
After he left I spent a few minutes thinking about how unwise it was to get involved in a separated couple tangle. Certain disaster, bound to lose one friend if not two. But business was business, angry men exaggerate and Pauline might have calmed down. I gave myself enough reasons to pick up the phone and ring the house in Willoughby where I assumed Pauline was still living.
The voice in the answering machine was breathy and cigarette-choked: ‘This is Pauline Lyons. I’m out at the moment. Please leave a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you. If it’s Byron Kelly calling or anyone connected with him… don’t bother!’
A challenge. I said: ‘Pauline, it’s Cliff Hardy. I want to talk to you. Please ring me-you know the numbers.’
I hung up and waited. The call came through in about as long as it must have taken her to ring my home number before the office one.
‘What do you want?’ she said.
‘Aha, you leave your machine on broadcast and listen to the messages.’
‘Who doesn’t? What’s on your mind, Cliff? If you want a fuck I might be interested. In fact that’s the only reason I’m talking to you.’
‘At least you’re talking.’
‘Make it quick, I’m on my way out.’
‘I want Michael Parsons’ letter.’
‘Shit, that again. I don’t know anything about it. I barely glanced at it. I was too pissed to take any notice. I told Byron a hundred times.’
‘He’s worried about you, he… ‘
‘Bullshit!’
‘How about the fuck then?’
‘I think I’ll wait for someone keener.’ She hung up hard.
It isn’t that Pauline tells lies exactly, it’s just that she regards journalism as one of the highest callings and the freedom of the press as a sacred human right. She’d say Joh Bjelke-Petersen made sense if she had to in defence of her trade. I’ve met people like her before-stiff-necked lilywhites. There’s only two ways to go-front up and convince them that what you want is really best for them, or sneak behind their backs and steal it.
I used a credit card to buy a tank of petrol because I don’t like to carry that much cash and drove out to Willoughby. The house was a medium-sized, middle-aged timber and glass job that was usually as messy as a garden shed. Byron and Pauline used to say that the dullness of Willoughby was just what they needed after the excitements of politics and journalism.
I was there within half an hour of the phone call. For a top flight journalist Pauline was incredibly disorganised. I judged that ‘now’ meant in ten minutes, ‘soon’ meant half an hour and ‘on my way’ could mean almost anything. I parked down the street, listened to a news broadcast. Another body had turned up, naked, dead for some time and as yet unidentified. The report linked the two deaths through the police statement that the men were ‘well nourished’. To be thin was getting healthier all the time.
Pauline’s Gemini backed out of the drive and roared off in the direction of the city.
In a two-income belt nothing stirs in the early afternoon. The Kellys have a German Shepherd named Gough who looks as if he’d tear your throat out but is as gentle as a lamb if you know him. I opened the front gate and walked towards the house on an overgrown pebble path; Gough loped up to greet me.
I patted his head. ‘Hello, Gough,’ I said. ‘Nothing will save the Governor-General.’ He growled amiably and watched me squint in the gloom of the heavily tree-shaded porch as I picked the lock of the front door.
Byron’s departure had brought changes in the house-some books and pictures were missing, the furniture was extensively rearranged and the small room that had served as his study was empty. Pauline had worked in the room that also served as a spare bedroom. It was chaotic as usual, with books and papers spilling everywhere, brimming ashtrays, sticky glasses and coffee cups, half-eaten sandwiches, forgotten biscuits.
Chaos is harder to search through than order; I spent more than an hour there, patiently sifting and probing. As far as I could tell Pauline was working on three different stories and a novel. The stories were about police corruption, religious sects in Queensland gaols and a profile of a newly appointed judge. The novel was about a terrorist who was laying mines in Sydney Harbour.
Pauline was famous for the depth of her research, even on small stories. There wasn’t a scrap of evidence to suggest that she had any interest in a land development on the central coast.
I picked up one of the sandwiches and a couple of the biscuits and fed them to Gough on the way out.
When I got back to Glebe there were three frantic messages from Kelly on my answering machine. I phoned him and had to tell him to calm down and take a breath and stop gabbling.
‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to see Pauline. She’s in danger.’
‘ I saw her an hour ago. She was a danger to others the way she was driving.’
‘Stop fucking joking! You heard about the second body?’ His voice was thick with worry and fear.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Unidentified.’
‘Not any more. Not if you know who to talk to. That means two of the characters associated with this development I was telling you about are dead.’
‘What sort of characters?’
‘Operators, you know the kind. I didn’t make anything of it when the first one turned up. The cops sat on it but I got a whisper on who he was. Name of Morrison. He was a go-between, handled the graft, or some of it. Michael mentioned him in the letter. Well, those blokes-they’re into all sorts of things. They have enemies. But this new one, Brent Fuller. Shit!’
‘He in the letter too?’
‘Yeah. He was more… central and more… exposed. Am I making sense?’
‘Only just.’
‘In a thing like this there’s always a couple of unreliable people. Michael’s letter pointed out a few weak links. Pauline must’ve showed the letter to someone who’s in with them, or talked about it.’
‘You’re sure you didn’t talk to anyone? There aren’t any copies?’
‘No. Copies? Don’t be crazy. It looks to me as if they’re getting rid of a few of the expendable people. Look, in effect, they’ve taken out number one and two among the small fry if you regard Michael’s letter as a sort of list.’
‘How well do you know these people?’
‘Parsons knows… knew Fuller pretty well. I knew him too.’
‘You should be talking to number three.’
‘I have. They almost got him this morning. They killed his guard dog but they tripped an alarm. He’s on a plane right now.’
‘Where would Pauline have been going? I saw her leave your house.’
‘The News most likely. I called but she’s set up some kind of interference system. I can’t get through to her. I’m worried, Cliff.’
‘Yeah. Where’re you now?’
‘Balmain. At my flat.’
‘It’s time for the cops, Byron. Whatever the consequences.’
‘Jesus. Yeah, I suppose so.’
‘I’ll take Pauline somewhere safe and I’ll call you. You’ve got a bit of time to think about it but… ‘
‘I’ll do it. Don’t worry. Just get her!’
I drove in to the newspaper building, parked illegally and took a lift to the features office where Pauline did
