no-one ever asked any hard questions like, ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Of course I can hear you,’ I said. ‘Go away. Let go, Helen. You didn’t want me, not really. Don’t…’
A woman’s voice I didn’t know, not quite, said, ‘Helen?’
‘Helen Broadway,’ Frank Parker said. ‘Girlfriend. Before your time, Glen.’
‘Better be,’ Glen said.
I opened my eyes and saw them standing beside my bed. Frank Parker was wearing a blue suit. Glen had on a green dress.
‘Colours,’ I said.
Glen leaned down and touched my face. ‘What?’
‘I can see the colours.’
Glen looked at Frank. ‘Should we get the doctor?’
Frank shook his head. I wondered what it would be like to shake my head but it seemed like an impossibility. ‘They said he’d be vague for a while. He’s taken an awful lot of dope.’
‘Who’s a dope?’ I said.
I felt something touch my hand and looked down. I supposed I had a hand, but just at present it looked like a bundle of white cloth. ‘You are,’ Glen said.
There were tears in her eyes and I gathered something pretty important must have happened. Nothing seemed real. Little bits and pieces of my life and times came back to me in tantalising snatches. I felt hot and I itched all over. My mouth was dry. Then it hit me, all at once, just like that. The mountains, the house, the fire and all the questions.
‘How long?’ I said.
Glen said, ‘Ten days.’
‘The woman?’
‘She’s dead, Cliff,’ Frank said, ‘along with the man who was in the house. You bloody nearly went with them.’
Glen seemed to sense what I needed. She poured some water from a carafe and held the glass to my lips. My hands were bandaged and I could feel dressings on my face, shoulders and back. ‘You had bad burns on your hands, face and other bits,’ Glen said. ‘Also severe smoke inhalation. You had a temperature of a hundred and four.’
‘I was sick beforehand,’ I said. ‘Where am I now? Hospital at the Bay?’
Frank laughed. ‘You think you get freshly painted walls, TV and young nurses there? You’re in a private hospital in Petersham, near Glen’s place.’
I looked at Glen. She was pale and had lost weight. The last words I had heard from her were angry but there was no sign of anger now. Something else. The look in her big eyes soothed me. Her mouth was slightly open and I desperately wanted to kiss her. ‘All I can see is cops,’ I said. ‘Where’s the young nurses?’
I fell asleep after that. This happened a few times over the following days. Glen would come in, tell me a little bit of the story, I’d feel better, then drop right back into nowhere land. It wasn’t a bad way to live, all things considered. I was in a private room; the treatment I was getting was healing me fast and Glen and I were getting along well in a quiet, foundation-building kind of way. But as I got a better grip on what had happened, the feeling of irresponsibility dropped away. When you feel you have to do something, your time as the pampered patient is at an end.
Patrick Lamberte had died in the fire. The woman who I had tried to save was Karen Livermore, a dress designer aged thirty-eight. She was the sister of Verity Lamberte, my client. Patrick’s wife. She was dead by the time the fire brigade arrived. The house had been completely destroyed and I had been found near death and delirious. The police had discovered the Land Cruiser, identified me, and had questions to ask. I tried to contact my client but her home number didn’t answer and all I could learn from her business associates was that she was ‘on leave’. Glen and Frank fended their colleagues off for a time with the aid of the doctors, but eventually a Detective Sergeant Willis arrived with a policewoman carrying a lap top computer.
Willis was polite. He introduced himself and Constable Booth and asked if I was prepared to make a statement.
‘What about?’ I said.
‘The circumstances surrounding the fire at Salisbury Road, Mount Victoria and the deaths of Patrick Lamberte and Karen Livermore.’
I told it straight: why Mrs Lamberte had hired me and what I’d done and hadn’t done. I hadn’t entered the cabin before the fire started; I hadn’t actually seen Lamberte take the posted package inside; I had no idea of who the woman was and no brief to report on Patrick Lamberte’s romantic associations. I didn’t know where Mrs Lamberte was now and had had no contact with her since the fire. Even when I ran dry Willis didn’t prompt me. Eventually I got through it all. Constable Booth had clattered away, easily keeping pace with me. She shut down her machine and told Willis she’d be back in an hour with a printout.
Willis, a tired-looking middle-aged man with jowls and thinning hair, flopped into a chair. ‘Doesn’t sound too good,’ he said. ‘Even given the fuckin’ stupid job blokes like you do.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘You say you cleaned out the shells?’
I was tired by this time and I simply nodded.
‘Fits. They found a little lump of melted metal. What we don’t know is what caused the fire. You reckon the wife set it up?’
I shrugged, which hurt my burned back. ‘How would I know?’
‘You’ve met her. You’re her boy.’
‘Someone must have interviewed her by this time.’
It was Willis’ turn to shrug. ‘Not really. She was in shock, her quack said. She had a certificate. No-one really got to talk to her. Now she seems to have pissed off. Sure you weren’t rooting her yourself, Hardy?’
I closed my eyes.
‘It’s bad for you that she’s not around. The sister shacked up with the husband?’ Willis shook his head stagily. ‘Makes it hard to believe that you were camped out there in the fuckin’ freezing cold just to keep an eye on things.’
‘I told you. She thought her husband was going to kill her.’
‘Nothing we’ve heard about him makes that likely. He was a wheeler-dealer and an arsehole, but that’s it. And there again, he’s not around to give your story the confirmation it so badly needs. You’re in a bit of a spot, Hardy?’
‘What’s the charge?’
‘We could do something with putting dangerous materials through the post. Could cost you your licence, but you’ve got a bit of pull, I hear. So maybe you can fancy step your way out of that.’
I kept my eyes closed. His voice was a tired drone. With a bit of luck it’d send me off to sleep.
‘Fire could’ve been an accident, I suppose,’ Willis went on. ‘Stove blew up as she was making cocoa. Or they were smoking in bed.’
‘There was an explosion.’
‘So you said. Then again, you were in the army. You probably know a bit about explosives and such.’
‘Not much.’
‘Still, you know the right people. Know someone who can take the bang out of bullets, for example. I’m not sure that’s legal and I don’t think you happened to mention that person’s name. Maybe he’s got a workshop full of jelly and, what d’they call it, plastique?’
‘You’ve seen too many movies. You’re fishing. I’m tired. Go away, Sergeant.’
Willis laughed. I opened my eyes as I heard his chair scrape on the floor. He’d pulled it closer to the bed and now I could smell him-aftershave, bad teeth and beer. ‘I’m sorry you’re tired, Hardy, because that was just the easy part,’ he said. ‘You made your statement and you’ll sign it. Easy stuff. You were in control. You could lie as much as you liked. Thank Parker and your girlfriend for that. But their protection just ran out. Now I want to ask you a few questions and you can take all the usual warnings as given.’
I said, ‘About what?’ But I knew.
