Richard was waiting outside a side entrance to the house, putting the finishing touches to the polish on a white Mercedes. I wondered whether owning a Merc was another sign of faith in the future. Probably. Coleman and I got in the back and I settled into a leather seat that felt as if it had been hand-built, specially for me.
Coleman said, ‘Mr Fanfani’s place, please, Richard.’
‘Sir.’ Richard put the Merc into drive and we slid forward without feeling anything so vulgar as the turning of wheels. Richard used a remote control device to open the gates and we cruised out onto Oppenheimer Street with scarcely a pause.
The car wasn’t quite a limousine-there was no bar, TV or stereo-but it was opulent enough. Coleman gazed out of the window at the houses where, in all likelihood, some of his carpets were laid. I was still feeling some contrition about the way I’d hit Coleman with the question about Greta. The feeling had made me compliant, up to a point, but now I was getting impatient. ‘This is impressive. I like the feel of a good car. But would you mind telling me where we’re going?’
‘To see a man named Antonio Fanfani. He lives in Loftus, not far away’
‘I didn’t think anyone lived in Loftus.’
‘I sometimes think that people like yourself, who work and live in places like Darlinghurst and Glebe, are a different species from us suburbanites. What do you think?’
‘I think you’ve done some checking up on me.’
‘Yes. And I telephoned Mr Fanfani as soon as I finished talking to you.’
“Who is he? What’s he got to do with this?’
‘I believe in letting people speak for themselves. You had your say and I had mine. We should let Antonio do the same. I will tell you this-he was a member of that organisation I formed.’
‘The fathers of rape victims thing?’
‘Yes. That was very ill-advised. It bred distress rather than comfort.’
We were going north-east, on the Princes Highway, with the National Park to our right. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘sounds pretty natural to me. If I had a daughter and she got raped I’d want to do some damage to the rapist.’
Coleman nodded. ‘Of course. That’s a phase of the reaction. But you can’t do that damage without damaging yourself and others who depend on you. You have to find some other way of coping with those feelings.’
‘God?’
‘For me and my wife, yes. Not for Antonio Fanfani, unhappily.’
Nothing more was said on the drive. The Mercedes pulled up outside a big house with a three-car garage, white pillars and lots of white plaster work around the top floor balcony. It looked like the sort of house put up by people who’ve spent most of their time living in two rooms. The concrete drive was wider than it needed to be, the lawn smoother, the front gate higher. There was a fountain in the centre of the front lawn with a small religious shrine built into it.
‘Mr Fanfani’s a building contractor,’ Coleman said. ‘That’s how we became acquainted. He was a very good customer of mine, still is.’
We got out of the car. Coleman gave Richard a few errands to perform and the Mercedes purred away. We went through the open gates. There was a small car and a boat in the garage, plenty of room left for a Merc. ‘I thought builders were feeling the pinch,’ I said.
We walked on a series of concrete circles set in a meandering pattern in the smooth lawn towards the tiled, colonnaded porch. ‘It’s a matter of strategy,’ Coleman said. ‘If your business is dependent on the vulnerable part of the system you’ll feel the pinch, as you put it. If not, not.’
‘How’re you fixed?’
He smiled as he pushed the bell. ‘Most of my business is with the government and its agencies. Also with banks and insurance companies and big contractors who deal similarly.’
Chimes sounded inside the house and a stout, middle-aged woman answered the door. She beamed when she saw Coleman and the two exchanged a quick hug.
‘Rory, so good to see you.’ Her English was heavily Italian-accented.
‘Hello, Anna. God bless you. How are you?’
‘Not bad. Is this the man?’
Coleman stood aside. I felt I should bow, but I contented myself with getting through the door onto the white shagpile carpet and doing a little head-bobbing. ‘Mrs Fanfani.’
‘This is Mr Clifford Hardy. He’s a private investigator,’ Coleman said.
Her heavily-ringed hands flew up towards her face. She was a handsome woman in a fleshy, conventional way. ‘Oh, Tony wants to see him so much, I know. He’s in… that room, Rory. You know the way. I’ll bring coffee into the den, or perhaps Mr Hardy would like something else?’
Coleman had arranged his face in what I took to be teetotal lines; I was tired of playing by his rules. ‘I’d like some beer, Mrs Fanfani, if you have it.’
‘Foster’s or Resch’s?’
Someone in the family didn’t spend all their time praying and being polite. ‘Resch’s, thank you.’
Coleman led me through glass doors that opened onto a vast living room and down a passage to a part of the house where everything seemed to be on a smaller scale. He knocked on a plain door and a voice behind it said, ‘Si.’
We went into a cell. The room was tiny- grey painted walls, small window set high up, cement slab floor, camp bed along one wall and three wooden chairs opposite. A man was sitting on one of the chairs. He was cadaverous- dark, folded in on himself. Not old, not young. His skin was olive but unhealthy looking as if it had been deprived of the sunlight it needed. His white hair was thin. He didn’t get up. His hand, a claw coming out of a white cuff under a dark suit jacket indicated that we should sit on the chairs.
‘Antonio,’ Coleman said. ‘This is Mr Hardy’
Fanfani nodded at me. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you.’ He had only a slight accent, more a hesitation before certain sounds.
‘Thank you.’ I didn’t sit down. I wasn’t going to stay in that room one second longer than I had to.
Anna’s bringing coffee to the den,’ Coleman said.
Fanfani nodded. ‘I just wanted you to see this place, Mr Hardy. Before we spoke. This is where I do penance for causing my daughter’s death.’
There wasn’t much to say to that. As a place for doing penance, it looked about right. It was the sort of room in which a smile would be out of place and a laugh unthinkable. We trooped out and up a flight of stairs and along to a room with armchairs, a writing table and a couple of filing cabinets in it. There were several photographs on the walls and I was careful not to look at them, not yet. Curtains drawn across the window kept the light down and if you wanted to call it a den you could. But there was none of that cosiness you associate with the word. It came to me then-everything and everybody I’d seen so far in this house carried an air of sadness.
Mrs Fanfani arrived with coffee and an ice bucket that held two cans of Reschs pilsener. She handed me a can and a frosted glass. We got the pouring and stirring and can opening over and settled back in our chairs. All except Mrs F., so far the least gloomy member of the party. She went out after squeezing her husband’s hand.
‘I had a daughter, Mr Hardy,’ Fanfani said. ‘Angela. Her picture is on the wall there.’
I looked at the family portrait. It showed a younger Antonio with more and darker hair, a slimmer Mrs Fanfani and a pretty, dark-eyed girl in her early teens. The affection between them was palpable, even in the posed, tinted studio portrait. It was obvious in the way they sat and the inclination of their heads.
‘She disappeared sixteen years ago. She would be twenty-nine if she were alive today’
He was talking about big stretches of time but his grief was mint fresh. I’d seen it plenty of times before-the anguish of parents who’d lost, or feared they’d lost, children. Exposure to it may be one of the reasons why I’ve never risked having children myself. There’s no other grief quite like it, and nothing like the relief of finding that it isn’t so. Some people can bounce back from it surprisingly quickly, others never do. Antonio Fanfani was in the latter category. There was plenty of force left in him, possibly even ruthlessness, but something vital had been cut away. I sat quietly, drinking the icy cold beer, and wondered why Coleman had brought me here. Was he proposing Fanfani as Schmidt/Bach’s killer? Somehow, I didn’t think so.
‘I believe that the man who abducted and raped Rory’s daughter was also responsible for the murder of Angela,’ Fanfani said slowly. ‘I tried to persuade the police of this. Tried to get them to talk to.. Schmidt about it. But…’ he opened his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
‘The lawyers prevented this line of enquiry’ Coleman said. ‘Completely cut it off. The prosecution agreed; it had a watertight case. It didn’t want any complications.’
I didn’t really want to know. I didn’t want to get in touch with the kind of pain that would cause a man like Fanfani to suffer for sixteen years, to have a mortification room in his house. I suspected that the fountain shrine was part of the same syndrome. My rational, atheistic spirit rebelled against it all. But I had Horrie and May Jacobs to consider. Professionalism. Connections. ‘Why do you suspect Schmidt was responsible, Mr Fanfani?’ I said. ‘Do you have any evidence?’
‘What did the lawyer call it, Rory? The one I talked to a hundred times?’
‘Circumstantial,’ Coleman said. ‘Angela was last seen on the Audley Road a few weeks before Greta was attacked. She had had an argument with Antonio…’
‘About sex,’ Fanfani exploded. ‘About boys and sex. My god, I wish she had taken a dozen lovers, a hundred. I… ‘ He buried his face in his hands and wept.
Coleman patted Fanfani’s bowed shoulders and went on talking, the man who had come through, who had understood. I felt some respect for him, but still no liking. He told me that Angela Fanfani had admitted to having sex with a boy at her school. Her father had found the contraceptive pills and he had shouted and struck her. ‘They are good Catholics,’ Coleman said, ‘You can imagine the scene.’
I could. I sympathised-with everyone involved, but I was still searching for the connection. Fanfani seemed to sense my puzzlement. He pulled himself together and drank some coffee. His pale claw of a hand brushed tears from his face. I took the opportunity to pop the second can of beer.
‘I joined Rory’s organisation and was one of its most passionate members,’ Fanfani said. ‘I was arrested several times. I was obsessed. I demonstrated at other rapists’ trials. I, what is the word? Lobbied, yes, lobbied, the ministers for stricter penalties for the rapists and murderers of women and girls. I was mad for many years, wasn’t I, Rory?’
‘Possessed, perhaps,’ Coleman murmured.
I drank some beer. Am I in weirdo territory here? I thought. Are we going on to seances and ouija boards? But Fanfani’s behaviour was acting against this doubt. He sipped some more coffee, blinked his eyes clear and seemed to be pulling himself up to some plane of rationality and strength.
‘Mr Hardy’ he said. ‘I gave up the idea of revenge for the loss of Angela. I still grieve for her and I still blame myself, most definitely. You have seen the room where I do penance.’
I nodded.
‘Rory was a great strength to me, us, through all this. He helped me, more than the priests, to understand that god has a purpose although we don’t always know what it is. He helped me to go on.’
Worth thousands of yards of burgundy Axminster, that, I thought. I didn’t say anything.
‘Eventually, I gave up my wish for revenge. I admit I had spent hundreds of hours thinking about how to kidnap Werner Schmidt and, god forgive me, torture him into admitting what he had done. I would then have killed him most cruelly, slowly…’
‘Antonio,’ Coleman said.
‘I am sorry, my friend. My wife and I have no other children, Mr Hardy. Just Angela.’
I looked at Coleman, hoping to get some clue as to why he’d brought me here. I could tell Fanfani of the possibility that Schmidt/ Bach had committed or planned to commit other attacks on women. But what good would it do to confirm his belief, after all this time? Coleman put down his coffee cup and nodded to Fanfani.
‘Talk to him, Antonio. He’s a reasonable man.’
I was glad of the endorsement but still puzzled. Fanfani cleared his throat. ‘Rory has told me about the death of the man in Newcastle. The man you believe to have been Werner Schmidt. I understand that you are enquiring into this matter.’
‘Yes.’ I said.
‘I have some information for you. I am willing to give you this information in exchange for something from you.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I was very prominent in Rory’s organisation. Like him, I demonstrated and talked on the radio. I went to the court, waved banners…’
The recollection was taking its toll of him. He faltered, then drew a deep breath and went on. ‘My picture was in the newspapers. But, the years have gone by and we have learned to live with our grief, as you see.’
‘Yes,’ I said, wondering what would come next. The only thing I could think of was that Fanfani and Coleman had someone else to dob in.
‘Late last year,’ Fanfani said, ‘I received a telephone call. It related to Werner Schmidt. There are things about this call that would interest you, Mr Hardy’
‘Such as?’
‘Ah, no. Here is where we must strike a deal. If what I tell you leads you to the man who killed Werner Schmidt, you must undertake first, not to harm him and second, to let me talk to him before anyone else-before the lawyers and the police.’
‘That could be difficult to arrange, Mr Fanfani.’
‘Nevertheless, those are my terms.’
‘Would you mind telling me why?’
Fanfani looked stricken. He shook his head and made a gesture to Coleman to take over. Coleman patted Fanfani’s shoulder and, although he scarcely moved in his chair, he seemed suddenly to occupy centre stage. ‘Antonio does not have very long to live, Mr Hardy. Perhaps a year, perhaps less. The thought of dying without knowing what happened to his daughter, without some certainty in the matter, is deeply troubling to him and to his wife.’
Anger flared in Fanfani, giving him a spurt of energy and spirit. ‘The priests tell me to forget my daughter. To compose my soul. I cannot. They are wrong. I must know. I believe that the man who telephoned me knows something about Schmidt and… my Angela. I feel it! I must speak with him.’
Coleman’s voice was a soothing balm. ‘Antonio told me about this telephone call at the time. It was our first contact for many years. I couldn’t think of anything to say to him. But when you reached me with your information, it seemed like an intervention… You wouldn’t understand, Mr Hardy.’
‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘But I can follow up to a point. Mr Fanfani, all I can do is promise you that I’ll try to arrange things the way you want them. I’ll make it a priority.’ It was a professional sounding statement but in fact it was totally wild. I meant it, though, more or less. I drained the second can and wished there was another on offer, or something stronger.
‘That is fair enough,’ Fanfani said. ‘I believe that you are a man of honour.’
‘I believe that, too,’ Coleman said.
So much belief was hard to stomach, especially with nothing but an empty beer can for a prop. I said nothing and sat still.
Fanfani spoke slowly; the hesitation of the non-native speaker getting stronger and making his words almost halting. ‘Two things. One, the telephone call. It was made from outside Sydney. I heard the STD beeps. Two… do you remember my placards, Rory.’
‘Yes,’ Coleman said.
Fanfani almost smiled. ‘They were written in Italian. I have a better command of strong language in Italian than English. This telephone call, Mr Hardy, was from a man who spoke Italian.’