O'Fear

Peter Corris

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781760110123
• eBook ISBN: 9781925575774
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

The twelfth book in the Cliff Hardy series When Todd Barnes, war veteran and popular drinking mate, leaves Cliff Hardy a tidy sum to find out who killed him, Hardy can hardly refuse - and he needs the money. Todd's widow and some of his cronies are not always cooperative, however, and it's hard to tell friends from enemies, especially when it comes to the mysterious Kevin O'Fearna, known as O'Fear. Hardy's battered Falcon takes him from the familiar mean streets of Sydney to equally dangerous bushland, where he's on his own up against heavy odds. A not-unfamiliar situation for Sydney's most enduring private investigator.

1

‘Did you know a man named Barnes Todd?’ Cy Sackville asked me.

‘What do you mean, did? I do know him. Barnes Todd.’

‘I’m sorry, Cliff. You don’t know him anymore. He’s dead.’

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Everybody’s dying these days. How come you and I aren’t dead, Cy?’

Sackville smiled his expensive lawyer’s smile, the one that means we’re going to win but it’ll cost you. ‘I keep myself fit and I work in a profession known for the longevity of its members. Whereas you …’

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘On both counts. Well, private eyes live longer on average than some people.’

‘Who?’

‘Astronauts. I’m sorry to hear about Todd. He wasn’t that old, was he?’

‘About fifty, bit more.’

Depressing. But I was determined not to be too depressed, there had been too much of that in my life recently. ‘It’s always nice to see you, Cy, but why the sudden summons to your pricy presence? You weren’t Todd’s lawyer, were you?’

Sackville shook his well-groomed head. He’s about my age, which is more than forty, and I rate him marginally brighter and about twenty times richer than me. At five foot seven he’s six inches shorter, and we both weigh about twelve stone. You can see what a good team we make. ‘You don’t seem very upset at my news.’

‘I didn’t know him well!’ I snapped.

Sackville raised one eyebrow. He was sitting behind his big polished desk under a painting with a lot of clouds and light in it. It looked as if it could float off the wall any minute. Then it could float out the window, across Martin Place and maybe down the Pitt Street mall. Since the big stock market crash, I had been in a few plush offices where space had opened up on the walls. But Cy has always been careful and patient. ‘You seem to be under a lot of strain,’ he said.

Usually Cy’s affluence, displayed in the wood panelling of his office and the cut of his suits, amused me; today it got under my skin. I shrugged and plucked at the fabric of the chair I was sitting in. I was pretty sure I could get a finger into the upholstery and do some damage. ‘I’ve got a few problems,’ I said.

‘Women?’

‘No woman. That’s one of the problems.’

‘Money?’

‘Ditto. What’s all this about Todd?’

Sackville fiddled with a file on his desk. ‘It’s a bit weird. I got a call from Todd’s solicitor, name of Hickie. One-man show in Bondi Junction. Well, it’s not a bad location for certain kinds of work. Anyway, Hickie got a letter from Todd a couple of days before his death.’

I suppose that’s when I took it in properly—that Barnes Todd was dead. I met him almost twenty years ago when I was happily married and looking for a cheap house. He dabbled in real estate, among a lot of other things. He found the Glebe terrace I still lived in, helped with the finance and a few other problems. I’d seen him perhaps two or three times a year since then—at the pub, in the street or in a restaurant. He was about ten years older than me and he’d served in the Korean war. We used to have a drink and joke about our wars. Mine was the Malayan emergency which had started earlier than Korea and gone on longer, to 1960. I’d been in on the very end of it. The talk drove Cyn, my then wife, nuts. This was years ago, of course. Until recently, war talk has excluded women in our society. Maybe it’s different in the Middle East. Nowadays you can meet female journos and photographers who know a bit about it, but Cyn knew war from books and films, which give you only a shadow of the physical and mental truth. Anyway, I’d liked what I’d seen of Barnes Todd.

The memories didn’t improve my mood. ‘What’s this exchange between legal chaps got to do with me?’

‘You are in a bad way. Have you been playing tennis or doing anything for your body lately?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘My body’s been letting me down. It feels tired in the morning and it won’t sleep at night. Get on with it, Cy.’

‘I had to ascertain that you knew Todd. That you were acquaintances, at least.’

‘You’ve done that. He was a big bloke, bald and getting fat. He didn’t do much for his body either, but I would’ve expected it to last him a fair while longer. How did he die?’

‘Car accident. He went over a cliff down on the south coast.’

I nodded. ‘He had a house down there, I remember. I used to think he was lucky to have it.

Sackville grunted. He has a house at Palm Beach, so I suppose he doesn’t think much of the south coast. ‘Wife. No children. Have you met his wife, Cliff?’

‘No. I thought he was a bachelor with girlfriends. I saw him with a few women over the years. Look, now I come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen him for a year or more.’

‘Hickie tells me he was married about a year ago. To … let me see …’ He opened the file and flicked over a page. ‘Felicia Armstrong. Younger than him. She’s now a fairly rich, fairly young widow.’

I dug the finger under the binding on the chair and felt the stitching. It gave a little. ‘Cy,’ I said, ‘get to the point. As far as I know Todd was a good bloke. If I’d heard about it, I’d have gone to his funeral. Maybe. Like I’d go to yours, or Harry Tickener’s.’

Sackville shuddered. ‘Don’t speak of us in the same breath. Tickener smokes forty Camels a day. It’s very likely you’ll get the chance to go to his funeral. I plan to outlive you.’

‘You’re risking a violent death by playing the close-mouthed lawyer on me. I could be out making money.’ I leaned forward and stared at his face. I saw no lines, good teeth, gold frame glasses and an even tan.

Cy blinked. ‘I’m glad to see you can still clown. I was beginning to worry about you. You look as if you’ve just copped a ten-year sentence with no remissions.’

I had had a few snorts of mid-morning wine and hadn’t stood too close to the shaver. I needed a haircut and my twice-broken nose has wanted straightening for twenty-five years. I let my tainted breath drift across his desk, sniffed loudly and stroked my stubble like Mickey Rourke. ‘What’s the bottom line, Cy?’

‘I remember when you used to play the alcoholic,’ Sackville said. ‘After Cyn left you. It went on too long and it wasn’t all that convincing, or funny. Barnes Todd has left you some money.’

‘Why?’

‘To find out who murdered him.’

I sat back in the chair. Sackville unhooked his glasses and set them down gently on top of the file. He massaged the bridge of his nose and tried to look grave, but there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes. It irritated me, the way a lot of small things had lately. What’s so funny? I thought. I’d been in this business for nearly fifteen years. I’d found murderers before, hadn’t I? Well, stumbled across a couple. ‘How much money?’ I said harshly.

‘Ten thousand dollars. His wife’s not too happy about it.’

2

A rock band was playing in the Martin Place amphitheatre when I left Cy’s office. The drummer and the bass guitarist had shaven heads; the singer and lead guitarist had hair to their waists and both wore leather skirts, high-heeled boots and heavy make-up. I suspected the singer was a man. Twenty years ago they would all have been arrested for creating a public nuisance, but now the shoppers and lunchers walked by or paused to listen while they ate. None was visibly corrupted. The singer screamed, ‘Fuck me!’ into the microphone, but no one did, at least not there and then.

By the time I crossed Castlereagh Street the heavy, jolting music was a thin wail and by Macquarie Street the traffic was making more noise. I’d told Sackville the truth—business was bad and money was short. I bought a sandwich and shared a seat outside the Public Library with a young Japanese couple, clearly tourists, and a woman in a long overcoat who was muttering to herself as she crunched hard frozen peas from a packet. I ate the sandwich and considered the jottings I had made in my notebook.

I had the addresses and telephone numbers of Michael Hickie, the lawyer, and Felicia Todd, née Armstrong, the wife. Barnes Todd had apparently lived in Coogee, which didn’t surprise me. I could see him as an ocean-views, early-swimming type. Hickie’s office was in Bondi Junction, which didn’t mean anything in particular. Cy had given me a report on the accident, if that’s what it was: Barnes Todd’s Holden Calais had failed to hold the road coming down Bulli Pass at 1 a.m. on 26 January. The car had fallen a long way and hit a lot of trees and rocks on the way down. It had exploded, and people at first had taken the noise and fire for a bit of Australia Day whoopee.

I crumpled the sandwich wrapper and bag and tossed them into a bin. The tourists were bent over a guidebook, talking intently. The woman in the overcoat had started tossing the peas to the pigeons, which weren’t very interested.

‘Bloody pigeons,’ the woman said, ‘bloody buggers.’

The Japanese man inclined his head politely. ‘I beg your pardon?’

The woman looked as if she might shower him with the peas so I stood and moved around to block her. ‘She’s talking to the pigeons,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about her. Enjoy your stay.’

‘Thank you,’ the man said. ‘Can you tell us where is Mrs Macquarie’s chair?’

I gave them directions and explained that it wasn’t really a chair, just a rock.

‘This is a very strange country,’ he said.

The woman with the peas had left the bench and was walking towards the street, dropping a pea with every step.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is.’

Since the media barons started selling their papers and magazines and TV stations to each other, it’s become harder for a man in my line of work to keep his press contacts in good order. For years I had relied on my friendship with Harry Tickener to gain access to the resources of the News. Now that paper was part of a package that might or might not be traded, and Harry had taken six months’ leave while they sorted it out. He was at home writing a book, with his door locked and his answering machine switched on, twenty-four hours a day. So I used the Public Library to check the newspaper reports on Barnes Todd’s death.

I had barely glanced at the papers in January. The early weeks had been good or bad for crime, depending on your point of view. There had been several bank robberies and a spectacular payroll grab by seven men with shortened shotguns. That was a lot of firepower, but $1.2 million was a lot of money. Even if I had been reading the papers in my usual inattentive way, I could easily have missed the small item headed ‘“Bonfire” a funeral pyre.’ This wasn’t strictly accurate, because Todd had been thrown clear of the car and had died in Wollongong hospital soon after. Otherwise, the details were pretty much as Sackville had stated. Sergeant Anderson of the Bulli police had his say about the dangers of Bulli Pass. The report gave the names of three witnesses—Mr M. Simpson and Mr C. Bent had helped to put out the fire started by the exploding car after Mr W. Bradley had alerted them. I wondered why W. Bradley hadn’t fought the flames. ‘Mr Todd was alone in the car. He had attended a party in Sydney and was driving to Thirroul to join his wife for a holiday in their beach house.’ Implication—Barnes Todd had got pissed in the city and wiped himself out in the country. An old story.

I flicked through the pages and found the funeral notice. Private, cremation, no flowers. No suspicious circumstances, no inquest. The accident was almost two months in the past. There was no sign that a man had been murdered except some sort of signal from the man himself. I was intrigued, and there haven’t been many days in my life w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• The Cliff Hardy collection
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven
• Chapter Twelve
• Chapter Thirteen
• Chapter Fourteen
• Chapter Fifteen
• Chapter Sixteen
• Chapter Seventeen
• Chapter Eighteen
• Chapter Nineteen
• Chapter Twenty
• Chapter Twenty-One
• Chapter Twenty-Two
• Chapter Twenty-Three
• Chapter Twenty-Four