Brown had listened attentively. He shook his head. ‘Can’t help you, I’m afraid. On the business level, all I know is I wanted Barnes to come in with me. He wouldn’t. No hard feelings. We met, we ate, we drank, we talked about the good times. That’s all.’
‘I see.’
He gave me one of his hard, tight-jawed looks. ‘That’s not a bad idea about the memorial, though. Why don’t we do something about that?’
I nodded.
‘Have some more kimche,’ Brown said.
17
Marshall Brown paid the bill. He drove me back to my car and wished me luck. I watched the Volvo until it turned at the end of the street. Brown had handled himself well; if he was lying he was the greatest actor since Olivier. I sat in my car with the thin beer and the exotic food inside me and ruminated: here I was, slightly dyspeptic, fairly sure that a flawed man had been murdered, sexually involved with that man’s wife and teamed up with a gaolbird who could be playing some weird Irish game of his own. It’s a strange way to make a living. I was aware of one big consolation, however-I was thinking less and less about Helen Broadway and all that pain.
I didn’t want to go back to Glebe just yet, either to wait for O’Fear or to find him already there with a bottle and the blarney. Suddenly my mood changed-maybe it was the nakgibokeum. In fact, I told myself, I was doing pretty well on this job, complications aside. I had eliminated the American captain and probably the threat-from- the-art-world theory. The danger to Barnes Todd had come from whatever he had been doing on his nocturnal perambulations with O’Fear. And there was physical evidence of that-photographs and something heavy in a plastic garbage bag. Those things were still being looked for by the opposition, and so could be found. I stared through the windscreen, which had picked up some salt from the spray at Maroubra. I saw fences and buildings and roofs stretching away forever. A set of photographs and a gar-bag suddenly didn’t seem so easy to find.
I started the car and drove without purpose. It was almost dark and I switched the lights on automatically, checked the rear vision mirror for a tail, automatically. I found myself heading for Bondi, drawn towards the sea, as almost everyone as if they’ve ever lived near it for a significant period of time. I cruised down Hastings Parade and parked outside the building where I could live and work, mortgage-free, if I chose to do so. It was part of the estate of a grateful client from the past, now dead. The heirs were still grateful, and I could have the place for a song. It was white, freshly painted. I couldn’t see the water from the street, but I knew that all of the windows along one side of the apartment afforded an eyeful of the Pacific.
This wasn’t sleazy, beachfront Bondi; this was a land where exterior woodwork was painted every year, two videos per household territory, compact disc country-suburbia-by-the-sea. Do you really want to live and work here, out of the smog?
I thought. Where the kids are bright and helpful instead of drug-dulled and suspicious? Where the sun in the morning looks fresh and clean? Where the people who haven’t got money on their minds aren’t likely to last for long? I still didn’t know. If I didn’t decide soon, the opportunity would evaporate, and maybe that would be the best thing. I kissed goodbye for now to my personal shot at paradise, drove away and stopped near an all-night chemist with an orange phone. There was a bottle shop a little further along and I bought a six-pack of Swan Light so that I could get a fistful of change and have something to do with my hands when I phoned Felicia Todd in Thirroul.
She answered, sounding relaxed and pleased to hear from me. I told her I’d delivered the paintings and that I had eliminated the Korean connection.
‘That’s a relief,’ she said. ‘And what has this Irishman told you?’
‘It’d take too long to go into but I’ll fill you in when I can. In the meantime, do you know anything about a set of photographs Barnes took? A special set, relating to his business?’ As soon as the words were out I realised that I could be on tricky ground, if what Piers Lang had said was true.
Felicia’s reply came slowly. ‘No. The only photographs I know about are those you delivered to Piers Lang.’
‘Had you looked through them? Were they all…?’
‘Yes. All subjects, if you know what that means. I’ve almost finished classifying them and relating them to the paintings. They’re not at all to do with trucks or storage or bloody security.’
‘What about a big plastic garbage bag? Heavy.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Did you see Barnes with such a thing? Hiding it, maybe, or doing something unusual?’
‘I only ever saw him put garbage bags out the front of the house. Cliff, what is this?’
‘Evidence. Never mind.’
‘When will I see you?’
‘When are you coming back?’
‘I’m not sure.’
That was pretty clear. She was leaving it to me. Her tone was welcoming, though, and I felt encouraged. ‘I’ll keep in touch and get back as soon as I can.’
‘Good. I hope that’s soon. Deborah’s staying the night and she’s brought her dog along. With the stabbing on top of the housebreaking, I’m not feeling as confident as I made out.’
I rang off after telling her I thought it would be sorted out soon, which was more optimistic than truthful. But I was intrigued, which is a way of being optimistic.
There’s a bolt on the inside of the front door of my house. It had been thrown and my key wouldn’t open the door.
‘Who?’ The voice was soft, immediately behind the door.
‘Hardy, who else? O’Fear?’
The bolt was drawn and the door opened quietly. O’Fear eased himself out and beckoned for me to move into the shadow at the front of the house, where the wistaria hangs down from the top balcony. He was white- faced, moving stiffly and carrying a gun.
‘What’s happened to you?’
‘To me? Nothing. But this idiot followed my cab from Botany to your place. I spotted him in the first half mile. He came in with a shooter and I had to tap him on the head. I hurt my side a bit doin’ it.’
‘What idiot?’
‘He’s inside. A young feller, maybe about thirty, with a twelve-year-old brain.’
‘Unconscious?’
‘He was. He’ll be comin’ out of it soon. I can hit so as to knock you out for a precise time, y’see. This was a half-hour tap at the most. I allowed for his size.’
As always with O’Fear, it was difficult to tell truth from bullshit, but there was no doubt that he was an expert in violence. My first thought was that we had a hostage.
‘I was thinkin’ you might make a few private enquiries of him,’ O’Fear said, ‘although he looks like a tough little nut. Perhaps I should do it meself. I’m rather tirin’ of these fellers havin’ a go at me.’
‘That’s brilliant. What’re we going to do? Torture him?’
‘I wasn’t thinkin’ of bribing him with my share of your ill-gotten gains, I can tell you that!’
‘Perhaps it’s to do with your other trouble?’
O’Fear shook his head. ‘That hasn’t the mileage in it. It’s not a shootin’ matter at all. No, it’s to do with Todd all right. Look, Cliff, he’ll be stirrin’. I put him in your little falling-down bathroom…’
From the back of the house came the sound of glass breaking.
O’Fear waved the gun. ‘Christ, he’ll be out and away.’
I shattered the existing record for getting from my front door into my car. I drove to the end of the street, turned through the new block of flats and stopped on the rise. If he went over the back fence he had to come out down the street from where I was. It would take him a few minutes to negotiate the fences and gardens, but he
