drinks, he had two pills in the pink palm of his hand. He flicked them into his mouth and swallowed them with the water. ‘Bit of heart trouble. Nothing serious. Cheers.’
We drank some more beer and he told me about his few years as a boxer after he had come back from Korea. Then it had been deadend jobs for a long time until by chance he had met up with Barnes Todd, who was just getting started in his trucking business.
He did a good imitation of Barnes’ bluff manner and voice. ‘First, you’ll need an education, corporal.’
‘That’s him,’ I said.
‘He was as good at business as he had been at soldiering,’ Bob said. ‘Bloody tough, but fair. He looked after you.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Started up a super scheme as soon as he could afford it. Pretty democratic about the big decisions, asked everyone’s opinion, at least. There’s a bit of profit-sharing among the workers. I mean, it’s not bloody Utopia or anything, but a hell of a lot better than the average.’
‘Was he always on the up and up?’
‘Pretty much, as far as I know. Early on we did a few things that wouldn’t stand up to too much examination. Cleaned out a few warehouses for people. Debatable, I’d call it. Nothing really bent. D’you want details? It was a long time ago and pretty small beer.’
I shook my head. ‘Did you know he was a painter? A good one, they say.’
‘No, but it doesn’t surprise me.’
The noise in the pub had gone up as the workers had come in after knocking off; there was no one close and little danger of being overheard, but Bob leaned closer to me. ‘Was he murdered?’
‘I don’t know. What d’you reckon? I was hoping the business records might give me a clue.’
‘They might.’
‘But you don’t think so. Come on, Bob.
Something’s on your mind. I need all the help I can get.’
‘It’s probably nothing,’ Mulholland muttered. ‘But I can’t get it out of m’ head. It happened at Wonsan, on the retreat. We pulled back with the Yanks, except that they were running and we were fighting.’
‘I’ve heard about it,’ I said.
‘Yeah, no sense in going over it again. Most of ‘em were conscripts so it wasn’t their fault. Throw in a few bad officers and you’ve got all the makings of a balls-up. You never saw anything like the mess at Wonsan-the port was choked with boats trying to get away, the roads were shot to shit. What with the smoke and the rain, it was hard to tell who was who and what was what.’ An old-soldier look came over his face. The look holds two things in balance; thank God I’m out of it, and Christ, what a time it was!
He sipped some beer and went on, ‘Our platoon was down to five men and were buggered. We’d been on the move without sleep for days, almost no food and a couple of us with wounds. Barnes was holding us together, but only just.’
His dark face took on a fixed, strained look as if the act of memory was ageing him. I didn’t say anything.
‘The Yanks had had to abandon most of their armour, most of their transport and supplies. They were demoralised. Weather was too bad for the planes and a lot of the Yanks were still recovering from their first sight of the Chinese up close. Scary’s not the word for those blokes.’
‘I know.’ I had my own memories of the fanatical little Chinese fighters. In Malaya we hadn’t had endless waves of them like in Korea, but ten at a time were quite enough.
‘There was this American captain trying to get clear in a jeep. He shot a couple of civilians, including a woman and a kid, who got in his way. He ran over two wounded men. Barnes jumped onto the jeep and put his Webley up the captain’s nose. He made him stop to pick people up, Koreans mostly. We sort of escorted the jeep to where the medics were working and Barnes made a report on the captain.’
‘You saw all this?’
‘Not exactly. I’d copped one in the head. Nothing much, bit of metal I reckon. But it blinded me temporarily and buggered me up a bit. Barnes was hauling me along like a side of meat. I heard some of the shots and shouting. Barnes told me about it all later.’
‘What sort of a report did he make? Who to?’
‘I’m not sure. It was all a bloody mess. The mortars were dropping around us and the Yanks were firing everything they had in all directions at once. But I heard the captain just before we moved on. He said, “I’ll kill you, you bastard, if it’s the last thing I do.” It was as if everything stopped moving and all the noise stopped and I could hear every word. That’s how I remember it although it wasn’t like that, of course. I can still hear the captain’s voice. I mean he was a mad dog to start with, and what Barnes did really hit him. He meant it.’
‘It’s nearly forty years ago,’ I said.
‘It’s yesterday in my head. I know it’s crazy, but when I heard this talk of Barnes being murdered, it’s the first thing I thought of.’
I said I’d be in touch to collect the results of Anna Carboni’s work and to talk some more. We shook hands. He declined my offer of a lift home, saying he’d walk off the beer. As I watched him stride away, swinging his Gladstone bag, I realised that I knew nothing about his personal life. Did he have a wife, kids? He’d impressed me as an intelligent, truthful man, but what if I was wrong? What if he harboured a corrosive grudge against his WASP ex-C.O. and had waited thirty-plus years for an opportunity to settle the score?
I knew it was the beer on an empty stomach talking, and I took a walk to clear my head and give myself a chance of getting below. 05. The planes kept taking off and touching down; it was just as well I was talking to myself because the human voice wouldn’t have stood a chance above the racket. Now you’ve got three suspects — someone in the art game, a business rival and a US Army captain. Good going. Throw in Mulholland and the widow and you’re really in business. And what about suicide? That reminded me I should talk to Todd’s doctor. My business mainly consists of paying visits on people, some welcome, some not. And ten grand buys a lot of visits.
10
On the drive from Botany to Redfern, I tried to sift the facts and impressions I’d acquired so far, but two things kept distracting me-the prospect of seeing O’Fear in Long Bay and my urgent need for a piss. It was no way to go calling on a lady.
On the drive through Mascot, Rosebery and Alexandria, there’s nothing to inspire higher feelings. The residents of Alexandria are still waiting for their long-promised park on the old brickworks and rubbish dump site. It was strange-there was a state election campaign running and I hadn’t heard a word about speeding up work on the park. I amused myself by trying to work out what that meant. I decided that it was a forecast of the election result-the government thought it was going to lose so there was no point in talking about the park and the opposition didn’t have to talk about it because it thought it was going to win.
I had the piss and bought some white wine in a pub in Pitt Street. This part of Redfern was very quiet, almost sedate. There were designer denim shops and Thai restaurants. I paid more for the wine than I expected to, a sure sign that an area is on the rise. I drove around the park and adjacent streets, partly to familiarise myself with an area that seemed to have changed dramatically since the last time I’d been in it, and partly to see if K blank M 2s and 3s was around. I didn’t see it.
Near the park and for a few streets around, a lot of the houses had been renovated. Big three-storeyed terraces and little single-fronted cottages had all had the treatment. Iron lace was back; the fibro and louvres had been knocked out of the balconies and vines grew out of tubs and tangled round where washing had once hung. Tons of cement had been prised up from front and back gardens and greenery was sprouting over the fences. Even the park had had a facelift; the big old trees looked healthy and there were wild thickets of new growth that contrasted well with the orderly layout of the paths, fountain and war memorial.
The last of the useful light went as I parked in Chalmers Street a few doors from number 505. It was one of
