We had stopped sparring long ago, but I felt I was on the ropes again. ‘I didn’t mean anything like that. Glamour mostly just scrapes off. But…’
‘Men are attracted to it. Active, successful men in particular. No, I’m sure Barnes had given that life away. I expect he would’ve painted it, later.’
‘Mm. Well, you seem to be able to handle that side of things. What about the implication in the news story that he was drunk?’ This was the line I had been saving and I watched her closely to get her reaction.
She brushed back her hair; it was a plain, forthright gesture but it did good things to her face. ‘No chance. He wouldn’t have had more than a couple of light beers at that party, or a glass of wine. Two at the most. It wasn’t a problem for him.’
‘I’ll have to talk to everyone who was there. Ask. Insinuate.’
‘Sure.’
‘Fel, I have to ask you about the hospital. You saw him before he died?’
She nodded. She wasn’t going to make it easy for me.
‘Spoke with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Not much. He was terribly badly injured. He barely had the breath to speak.’
‘Was his mind clear?’
‘I hope not. He’d have been in terrible pain if it was.’ She sipped at the cold dregs of her coffee. ‘They rang me at the beach house from the hospital. I suppose it was about two a.m. I drove straight in. They’d been going to operate but they decided there was no point, so I knew he was going to die when I went in to see him. Have you ever talked to a dying person?’
‘Yes. Not someone I loved, though.’
‘We’d talked so much in the time we’d been together… stayed up all night talking sometimes, and now there was nothing to say. I couldn’t tell him to fight or anything. It was hopeless. He was all broken inside. I just held his hand, really, and waited.’
‘But he did speak. What did he say?’
‘He said…’ Her voice caught. For a moment I thought all the careful control was about to rupture and spill, but she put the coffee mug on the table and laced her fingers together. ‘He said, “Oh, oh, oh”, like that and then a word I don’t think I understood.’
‘What word?’
‘It sounded like “fear”, but I don’t think it I could have been. I mean, I doubt that he knew what was happening to him. And Barnes wouldn’t talk about fear. He knew me, knew who I was. But he just made these sounds and then he gave a sort of shudder and he was gone.’
I mouthed the sounds, imitating her deep tone. ‘Oh, oh… oh… fear.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Like that.’
‘O’Fear,’ I said. ‘I understand.’
‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘What?’
‘It’s a man’s name, or a sort of nickname. Kevin O’Fearna his name is, but he’s called O’Fear. I didn’t know Barnes knew him, but he could have. They’d be much the same age and O’Fear’s been around. Come to think of it, I believe he was in Korea.’
‘That again. Bloody Korea, I don’t like to think that he was meandering on about that bloody shambles.’
The female view of war again. It looked as if Barnes Todd and I had had some marital as well as war experience in common. But it was a side issue now. I shook my head. ‘I doubt it. He left the note for Michael Hickie about me and then he mentioned O’Fear. There has to be some kind of connection.’
‘You mean this O’Fear could have… killed him?’
‘No, no. O’Fear’s not a killer. Barnes could have meant that he knows something, or could help in some way.’
‘You evidently know him, Cliff. Would he help?’
‘O’Fear’s a funny bloke. He might help you for the price of a drink or he might not even if you offered him a thousand bucks.’
‘Will you ask him?’
‘There’s a snag.’
‘What?’
‘The last I heard, O’Fear was in gaol.’
6
I left Felicia Todd’s house shortly after ten o’clock. I was utterly sober, intrigued by the circumstances surrounding her husband’s death and stimulated by her company. She explained that it was grief and loss that had caused her initially to take such a negative attitude to Michael Hickie and Todd’s note about me. She was still grieving, but she was ready to go on with her life. I persuaded her to call Hickie and discuss the future of Barnes Enterprises with him. I didn’t have to persuade her about the investigation-now she was all for it.
‘If he was killed by someone connected with the galleries, I want revenge,’ she had said. ‘If it was to do with his business, it should be exposed, shouldn’t it? And if it was just an accident, I want to know.’
It was a firm enough foundation for me, firmer than some I had worked from. I told her that I’d use the tried and trusted techniques of my semi-profession-badger people in their houses and offices, knock on doors and use the telephone.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘What about O’Fear?’
I was thinking about O’Fear as I drove back to Glebe. The rain had set in again and the rhythmic swish of the windscreen wipers helped memory and thought. Kevin O’Fearna had been born in Australia of Irish parents. I remember him telling me that he was distantly related to Gene Tunney, the heavyweight who had beaten Jack Dempsey and earned a fortune and the hatred of a generation of American sports fans. O’Fear had worked as a builder’s labourer and sung Irish songs on the Sydney folkie circuit in the 1960s. He made a record that no one bought and went ‘back’ to Ireland for ten years, where he expanded his repertoire, deepened his thirst for Guinness and became more Irish in accent and manner than the Clancy Brothers.
Back in Sydney in the cynical 1980s, living in Glebe where he had always lived, he had done more labouring than singing and, possibly, more drinking than either. He served a term on the Leichhardt Council as a radical environmentalist, which brought him into contact, mostly antagonistic, with union bosses, businessmen and politicians. He had a son by one of his many women. Danny O’Fearna must be almost thirty by now, poor devil, I thought. Danny was a trial to his father, often in trouble with the police. Common opinion was that he was ‘touched’ or ‘a bit slow’.
On the extreme militant wing of the Building Trades Union, O’Fear had been involved in a number of confrontations with heavies hired by the employers, as well as with the police. His t adversaries had never heard of Gene Tunney or Joe Hill or Ewan MacColl or any of O’Fear’s heroes. Only a week or so ago I’d heard in the Toxteth Arms, one of his favourite watering holes where the Guinness was on tap, that O’Fear had taken on the cops and the bosses and was on remand in Long Bay for trespass and assault.
I became aware of the tail when I made a late turn into Foveaux Street, Surry Hills. The car behind me slewed a bit as it turned, and its lights flashed in my rear vision mirror. It followed me along Eddy Avenue and up beside the railway. In better-lit Broadway, it dropped back professionally, but I got a good look at it-a dark sedan, Japanese. I got an impression of the licence number-K something M, 2s and a 3, or maybe 3s and a 2. I signalled, maybe a fraction early, and took the turn into Glebe Point Road. Come on, baby, I thought. Come on down to where it’s dark, and we can have a chat. I glanced in the mirror again before the first set of lights, and that was a mistake. The driver must have realised that I was onto him. Instead of following me down to Bridge Road, he swung left into St John’s Road. I swore and nearly hit a bus by turning abruptly right. I went down the hill until it was clear behind me and U-turned in front of a truck climbing slowly towards the intersection. I turned left against the red light, burned up to the St John’s Road crossing, went right and hit sixty on the straight stretch to Ross
