much use to a woman as a crack in a glass eye. I used the beeper to get the messages on the office answering machine and learned nothing worth knowing. Then to the detective’s secret weapon-the telephone directory. Rory Coleman still operated in the southern suburbs. He had a home address in Engadine and his showroom-there seemed to be only one now, but big-was on the Princes Highway at Heathcote. It was early afternoon on a bright, sunny Friday. Where would an aggressive marketeer like Rory be? In a meeting? On the golf course? In the showroom? My information was sixteen years out of date but I bet on the showroom.
‘Coleman Carpeting. Can I help you?’ Carpeting? She sounded as if she’d stepped out of a Woody Allen movie.
‘Mr Rory Coleman, please.’
‘May I have your name, please?’
‘My name is Cliff Hardy. I want to speak to Mr Coleman about Werner Schmidt. Let me spell it for you, That’s W-e-r-n-e-r S-c-h-m-i-d-t.’
‘Thank you. Mr Hardy. I’m putting you on hold.’
A Christian-message radio station came on- unctuous announcer, a Biblical text and then a band called U2 which seemed to make just as much noise and little sense as the rest of them. My accountant’s hold-music plays Mark Knopfler. I suddenly felt warm towards my accountant. I shook my head in disbelief. It was going on for two p.m. and I hadn’t had a drink. That must be the trouble. The music stopped and a smooth, salesman’s voice came over the line.
‘Rory Coleman.’
‘My name is Cliff Hardy, Mr Coleman. I’m a private investigator.’
‘Yes? You mentioned Schmidt?’
How to play it? If he’d killed Schmidt and he thought I knew, what would he respond to? And if he hadn’t killed him…? ‘I think we should have a talk, Mr Coleman.’
‘Do you now? I take it you’re from the Wilson agency?’
I was confused. Carl Wilson ran a detective agency, not a very good one. I’d have mended car tyres before working for Wilson. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No connection.’
‘I have an arrangement with Mr Wilson. He is to convey any information about Werner Schmidt that may arise to me. I was hoping you were calling to tell me that Schmidt had terminal cancer. I’m sorry, that’s not a Christian thought.’
‘No, but don’t feel bad. He’s dead, Mr Coleman. I think we should meet.’
This is dumb, I thought, he jumps in his Mercedes and off he goes.
Coleman threw me completely. ‘Lord,’ he said. ‘I thank you for the answer to this, my prayer. Let me feel compassion and something of your own mercy and not merely hate. Lord. I thank you.’
I said nothing.
‘Mr… Hardy. I want to hear what you have to say. Can you come to my house in Engadine? Say in two hours?’
What else could I say? ‘Yes.’
‘Bless you, Mr Hardy.’
Oppenheimer Street wound around the northern edge of Engadine. As in most streets in suburbs where the residents are proud of their native gardens, house numbers were hard to find. These people don’t want to paint numbers on the trunks of their Illawarra flame trees and the banksias and other stuff obscure the fences and gateposts. But I found it eventually by trial and error-a large, rambling, ranch-style house with a bit more of the flame trees and banksias and everything else than the houses nearby. It also had a high security fence and gates that looked as if you didn’t just lift the catch and walk in. I parked in the street, which left me a deep ditch and a wide nature-strip to cross before getting to the gate.
There was a squawk box on the gate. I pressed the button and stated my name and business the way the recorded message asked me to. A buzzer sounded, and a smaller gate beside the one that would have let in a coal truck slid open. I went through and up a bricked driveway. Beyond the house I could see deep green slopes that suggested forest and water. I recalled the map in the street directory and figured out that the Woronora river must be just across the way. That put Rory Coleman’s house about as physically close as it was possible for a private citizen to get to the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor. Suddenly, the timbered slopes didn’t look so inviting.
There was nothing special about the house- a million or so dollars buys pretty much the same thing anywhere-plenty of wood and glass, width and depth to all spaces, soft, springy stuff underfoot. A man met me at the door and would have taken my hat if I’d had one. As it was he simply led me down a number of corridors and ushered me into a room which was in the east or west wing of the house-I’d become disoriented. The room had a glass wall that looked directly out towards the Atomic Energy Commission establishment. A man was standing with his back to the door. He turned around as he heard his servant cough.
‘Mr Hardy. Good of you to come. What do you think of the view?’
I was too busy taking him in to spare much for the view. Since his placard-holding, street-fighting days, Rory Coleman had put on a lot of flesh. It would bulge if he gained any more, but for now it was packed pretty tightly on his tall, wide frame. He was an inch or so taller than me, about five years older and twenty times more prosperous. I walked across the white wool rug spread over the polished board floor and shook the hand he held out. He immediately placed his other hand on top of our joined fists and I equally immediately took a strong dislike to him. He was wearing a white shirt, dark tie, grey trousers and glistening black oxfords, none of which helped to correct my first impression.
‘Thank you for seeing me so promptly, Mr Coleman.’
‘The view, Mr Hardy. The view.’
I looked through the glass at the complex which was more or less visible through the trees. Roofs, windows, chimneys, antennae, wires, and the huge white concrete sail-shape dominating everything. I preferred the trees. ‘Impressive,’ I said.
He released my hand. ‘It is indeed. Nuclear power represents the future. I’m a great believer in the future. I built this house as close as possible to the reactor to demonstrate my faith in the future.’
I nodded. It wasn’t a promising start, given that I’d come to talk about the past.
‘Can I get you something-tea, coffee?’
‘Coffee would be good, thanks.’ The servant was still at the door. Coleman said, ‘Coffee for Mr Hardy please, Richard.’
Richard sloped off and Coleman indicated that I should sit in one of the three leather armchairs. I took one facing away from the future, enabling him to sit opposite it and make sure it didn’t go away, if that’s what he wanted to do. It seemed so. He sat quietly looking out the window until Richard came back with a coffee pot and other things on a tray. He got a small table from somewhere in the room and put it by my chair. He left me to pour the coffee-a nice, manly touch.
‘It’s over sixteen years since my daughter was attacked,’ Coleman said abruptly.
‘Yes.’
‘I take it you’re familiar with the details of the case, Mr Hardy.’
‘Yes. And with your behaviour at the trial and subsequently’
‘Ah, yes. All that. It seems to have happened in another life. In a way it did.’
I poured some coffee and took a sip. It was thin and weak. What do you mean?’
‘Are you a Christian?’
‘No.’
‘I thought not. You have a hardness about you. An unforgiving quality.’
‘Did you forgive Werner Schmidt?’
‘In time, Mr Hardy, I did. I found Jesus and he helped me to forgive. You tell me Schmidt is dead?’
I put the cup down. Some of the coffee slopped into the saucer and onto the top of the stool. Another big job for Richard. ‘Yes. It looks as if he was murdered.’
‘Ah, I see. And you’ve come into my house to meet me and decide whether I murdered him.’
‘Or had it done.’
‘Yes. That happens, doesn’t it?’
‘In the best of circles. The person I’m working for doesn’t move in the best of circles but she wants to know
