He had a long, horsey face that needed a pipe stuck in it to bring it to perfection. His eyes were a washed-out blue, and his sandy hair was cut in a severe short-back-and-sides. He looked like the archetypal Aussie; a six footer, a survivor of Lone Pine and the Somme. He was from Taranaki, New Zealand. The black Oxfords were polished, the grey flannels were pressed and his tweed jacket had been expensive and fashionable twenty years ago. The woman with him was fashionable now and anytime; she was a tall, Viking blonde, in a green silk dress with modish accessories. He was Hiram Dempsey, farmer, and she was his daughter Susan, secretary.
We were sitting in my dusty office with the linoleum decor and the streaky windows. Hiram made the introductions, mentioned the New Zealand policeman who’d referred him to me, and then let Susan take over. I could see the pride in his face when she spoke.
‘We want you to look for my brother, Mr Hardy. We understand you’re very good at finding people.’
I tried to look modest. ‘It depends how badly they want to stay lost; some dig in deep, some just stay on the surface. When did you last see this brother?’
She looked at her father. ‘Fifteen years?’
He nodded. ‘Fifteen, near enough.’ He had that slight Scots burr many older New Zealanders have, slurring the hard Y sound.
‘I scarcely remember him’, she went on, ‘I was only seven or so when he left.’
‘Why did he leave and where did he go?’
Hiram looked over my head out at the fierce summer sky. ‘Robert and I didn’t get along. I’m a farmer, he wasn’t. I’m a Christian, he was a sinner.’
‘What sort of sins?’
‘Theft, drunkenness, loose living.’
I thought I had the picture. ‘When you say theft, do you mean robberies or…’
‘Cars.’
‘Right.’ It sounded familiar, a country boy out of his mind with boredom pinching cars, getting pissed and screwing girls. It happens; some of them become public servants.
‘Robert came to Australia, Mr Hardy, to Sydney. My mother, she died three years ago, said that he always talked about the big city and he meant Sydney.’
‘He might have moved on; New York’s bigger, so’s London.’
‘No.’ Hiram said the word harshly. ‘Robert sent his mother a postcard every few years. After she died I found them; they were posted in Sydney.’
‘Do you have them?’
He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a slim stack of postcards held by a rubber band. He passed them across. The cards were mundane-the Bridge, the Opera House, the Zoo. The messages were minimal and written in a firm, round hand: ‘Dear Mum, Hope you are well. All’s fine with me, loving it in Sydney and doing very well. Hope to get over to see you before too long’-that sort of thing. They were dated at two and three year intervals, with a gap of four years in the middle of the sequence of seven. The last card was dated one month ago. Dempsey watched me examining it.
‘He didn’t know his mother had died’, he said.
I looked at him, there was something unyielding about him and I decided that I’d been wrong about the pipe, the prop he needed was a Bible. ‘Can you tell me why you want to locate your son now, Mr Dempsey? I gather you haven’t forgiven him his trespasses.’
‘Don’t blaspheme’, he snapped. ‘I have less than a year to live Mr Hardy. I’ll be joining my wife before long. I have a growth. I’m hoping that my eldest son will farm my land; it’s been Dempsey land for five generations.’ He let out a sound that in a weaker man would be called a sigh. Some of the lines around his eyes which I’d taken to be marks of country hardiness now looked like tiredness, and there was a fragility beneath his resilience. ‘It’s unlikely I know’, he went on, ‘Robert was a wastrel but he might be redeemable.’
‘Sure. Well, we need a starting point. I gather you have another son; would he have had any contact with his brother?’
‘No. William is thirty and settled. He lives in Wollongong, he’s an academic’ He spoke the words without much enthusiasm; Old Dempsey must have been a hard man to please, any son who didn’t have cowshit on his boots wasn’t a son at all.
‘He’d remember him, though. Could I have his address?’ Susan gave it to me as the old man seemed to withdraw into himself. Maybe he was hoping that his Creator was a farmer. I asked for a photograph of the prodigal and she produced an old snapshot and a newspaper cutting. The photograph, which was yellowed and creased, showed a youth in his late teens standing beside a motor cycle. He was smiling broadly and he had a mop of dark curling hair; he was a good-looking lad.
‘That was taken of Robert just before he left’, Susan said quietly. ‘The motorcycle was stolen.’
I nodded and looked at the cutting. It was a press photo of a picket line outside a shop or an office. The caption had been cut off but two words remained of a headline above the picture-’sacks Clarke’. The picketers were carrying placards which were too blurred to read; the head of one of them had been circled in red ink.
‘We found this in mother’s things’, Susan said. ‘We think she believed that to be Robert in the picture.’
I studied the faces; it was possible, some weight had gone on and some hair had gone off. Maybe. The mother’s eye plus intuition could have been right or it could have wishful thinking.
I turned the cutting over, on the back was part of an advertisement for motor cars. There was a picture of a Ford Falcon and the showroom’s address was in Chatswood. I know a bit about Falcons because I own one; this model was a few years younger than mine, say in the early 70s.
‘How would your mother have got a Sydney newspaper?’
‘William used to send them when he thought there was something in them that might interest her. She was a great reader, and he sent the book pages and articles on writers and films and things.’ Susan looked at her father, who was sagging a little from the ramrod position.
‘My father is tired, Mr Hardy. Will you help us?’
I said I would, collected a retainer and their address in Sydney for the next few weeks. They were visiting a few relatives, winding up the old man’s life.
I ushered them out, and set about earning their money by calling Harry Tickener at The News. He confirmed that there were people in the organisation who could identify a newspaper from the type and lay-out, and that if the cutting was from one of the half dozen papers published by his employer I could find the issue in a bound copy or a microfilm.
I walked the mile and a half to The News building, stopped to deposit the cheque and to buy some fruit for my lunch. These days I try to walk for an hour and eat fruit for lunch instead of sitting and drinking beer; I still miss the beer. The citizenry of Sydney were out in force in their light summer rigs; it was early summer but a lot of the women were tanned and it was a pity to take them off the beaches. Susan Dempsey had a good tan, I recalled, and looked like she’d play a great set of tennis; I’m pushing forty and the regimen has kept the fat down, but I still feel furtive when I have randy thoughts about females twenty years my junior. There’s a bit of Hiram Dempsey in us all.
Tickener was too busy to talk as usual. He introduced me to a sub on one of the papers, who instantly identified the cutting.
‘The Sunday Post’, he said. He was a little roly-poly man who scratched his head a lot with a pencil. ‘Only ran for a year or so, that narrows it down.’
‘Still a lot of looking.’
‘Yeah. Hold on. Who’s this Clarke?’
I said I didn’t know.
‘Rings a bell’, he said. ‘Yeah, around that time. Come on we’ll look him up in the cuts.’
We went down to the library and he pulled out a metal drawer crammed with quarto size manila envelopes. All had names on them followed by occupations. Some were thin as if they could contain only a single sheet, others bulged fatly. Thomas Clarke’s file was thinnish. He was a unionist involved in a strike at a food processing plant in Wollongong in 1972. Clarke had refused to work with non-unionists and had been sacked. Reading between the lines of the cuttings, the message was that Clarke had been trying to unionise the plant and had run foul of the management. The strike lasted two months, and the unionists won. A large item on Clarke’s sacking had been published in The Sunday Post, and it included my photography. The men were picketing a supermarket in Wollongong which stocked the company’s products; a heavy man in the centre of the picture was identified as Clarke, the others shown were described as his ‘supporters’.
The sub made photostats of a few of the cuttings for me; I thanked him and left the building. Outside it was hot and cheerful, I felt pretty cheerful myself; I like the south coast, especially when someone’s paying me to go there. I walked back to the office, drove home to Glebe and packed a bag. I put in swimming trunks and a towel but I left the snorkel and speargun behind.
If you stay on the highway the drive to Wollongong is a two hour bore, if you turn off and go through the national park and the string of mining towns along the coast from Stanwell Park it’s a lot better. I took the slow route and drove past the camp sites and beaches that would soon be filling up with holidaying hedonists. Packed in between the sea and the scarp on which the land slips so that people can’t hang their timber and glass fantasies off it, the coal towns don’t seem to have changed much in the past twenty years. The ocean was a deep blue and crashing in firmly as if rehearsing for a long, hot summer. There were one or two caravans already in place, forerunners of the tent and caravan cities that would spring up soon and last until April. It was after six o’clock when I reached Wollongong; I checked into a motel down near the beach and went for a swim. My body was winter pale and the water was icy cold. It was a brief visit to the beach. I went back to the motel, showered and changed and watched the evening news on TV. After a couple of beers and a barbecued steak at the pub opposite the motel I was ready to go to work.
Dr William Dempsey lived in one of the fashionable hillside suburbs of Wollongong. I spoke on the telephone to his wife, who was also a New Zealander, and easily intrigued by the story of her husband’s long lost brother. Dr Dempsey was lecturing at the university that evening and expected home soon after eight; I was invited for nine. As soon as I hung up I regretted that I hadn’t asked what subject he taught-in my experience physicists and historians are as different as Afrikaners and Bantus. I arrived on time, and a thirtyish woman with a well-dressed, good figure let me in and took me through to a room which had a big window occupying most of one wall. The house was well up, and in the day the window would be full of first-class ocean view.
She got me a Scotch and soda which was about three times too strong. She stood in the doorway looking agitated, her carefully prepared black hair was a bit astray.
‘I’m sorry he’s late, Mr Hardy. He’s never late as a rule. The meal’s ruined.’
There was a noise from the back of the house and she went off to deal with it. The room had some comfortable chairs, a TV set and a coffee table; there were magazines and books on the table and more books on the floor near one chair and a whole lot more in a big bookcase. I took a sip of the Scotch and went over to look-they were mostly novels and biographies, but here and there other books had been stuck in or lain across the top of the rows. These were studies of workplaces, unions and aspects of the labour movement. Some had Dempsey’s name in them and so did some of the novels. He could be a political scientist, economist or sociologist, it’s hard to tell these days, but the novels ruled out physics.
Mrs Dempsey, who’d introduced herself as Rosemary, came back carrying a Scotch that looked nearly as strong as mine. She was very edgy.
‘That was Graham, our eldest’, she said, Td promised him his father would come in and say goodnight, I don’t know what to do.’
‘Have a drink and sit down.’ She was in that distracted state that comes from listening to your own fears. An outside voice is welcome and usually obeyed. She sat down and sipped mechanically.
‘Have you rung the university?’
‘Yes, just before you arrived. He left the lecture theatre on time.’
‘Would he stop off on the way, for cigarettes, wine?’
She shook her head.
‘Might have had a breakdown.’
‘He’s more than an hour late? She looked at me as if I were an idiotic child. ‘If he had a breakdown he’d call the NRMA and he’d call me!’
‘Let’s give him a few minutes.’ I forced her to talk and learned that Dempsey was a senior lecturer in sociology. He had a PhD from the ANU and they’d been in Wollongong for five years. I sipped the Scotch and tried to think of more to say but her eyes were screaming at me. I got up.
‘Okay, I’ll go and have a look for him. I’m sort of retained by the family anyway.’
She told me that Dempsey was a tall, thin man with spectacles, who’d been wearing light drill trousers and an army-style shirt. The car was a red VW beetle. I told her I’d call as soon as I knew anything and advised her to get a friend over for support. She said she would. I drove the obvious route to the university and heard no sirens, saw no flashing red or blue lights. It was a Monday night, quiet, with four TV channels available.
Dempsey was teaching a special course in industrial sociology, his wife had told me, and most of the students were adults who’d be rushing off to their own families and activities. The lectures were held in a set of halls at the northern end of the campus. I located them on the campus map and parked in the roadway at the front. The lights in the grounds were modern and bright but the lecture halls were in darkness. The doors were heavy jobs of the self-locking kind that could be operated by the last person out. I walked around the building and found a car park about fifty yards back surround by a chest-high hedge. I saw the shape of a VW in the corner of the park and broke into a run.
William Dempsey was lying on the ground beside the car with his feet under the hedge. One side of his face was covered with blood and it had flowed up into his hair and down into his shirt, soaking into one of the pockets. He wasn’t wearing spectacles. He was breathing evenly and the blood still oozed from a cut running along where his hair was parted. I opened the car door; there was a set of keys in the ignition and a briefcase on the passenger seat. Light from the car washed over Dempsey and he groaned. I squatted down beside him and told him to lie still.
He lifted one hand and let it flop back, then he tried a leg. ‘Who’re you?’
I told him and said I was going to ring for an ambulance.
‘No, wait.’ His voice was weak but urgent. ‘Rosemary told me you’d be coming.’ He screwed up his eyes and looked at me. The eye on the blood-smeared side came into life as well as the other, which was a comfort. ‘Don’t call an ambulance, just help me.’
‘Nothing doing’, I said. ‘Your skull might be cracked, you could die in an hour. Lie back and wait.’
‘I won’t.’ Something in the way he said it, something petulant, almost childish and yet determined, made me listen to him. ‘If you go off I’ll get in that car and drive it.’
‘You wouldn’t get out of the car park.’
He lifted his head, groaned and let it fall back. His voice was weaker. ‘Hardy, if you ring my wife she’ll have a doctor waiting for us at home. If he says so, I’ll go to hospital; but I don’t want to if I don’t have to. This is political.’
The last word was spoken so softly I had to bend down to hear it.
‘This bashing, it’s political?’
‘Yes’, he whispered.
It sounded like everything I usually like to avoid. But he meant what he said enough to take a risk and incur some pain saying it. That was worth something, also I admired his taste in novels.
‘I’ll bring my car around, it’s bigger. Take it easy.’ I jogged back to the road and drove around behind the lecture halls to the car park. Dempsey clenched his teeth as I lifted him into the back seat but he didn’t make a sound. Moving him I noticed more blood, down one side of his chest and on his back. I got him more or less stretched out with something soft under his head. He closed his eyes and I lifted the unbloodied lid with a finger; it looked all right.
‘Bag’, he said.
I got his case from the VW and took the keys out of the lock. There was a crook-lock lying on the floor and I put it on and secured it, then I locked the car. I looked back at him before starting; he opened his eyes and tried to give me a wink. I thought about the strong Scotch I’d left on Rosemary Dempsey’s table, and hoped it would still be there. I drove out of the quiet campus and through the almost empty streets as smoothly as you can in a fifteen-year-old Falcon.
Dempsey’s house was unnaturally bright, the way houses are when there’s a crisis on. Rosemary Dempsey had a neighbour, a woman as well-turned-out as herself, with her and they were drinking coffee and smoking when I walked in. When I got into the light I saw that some of Dempsey’s blood had got on my shirt. Rosemary went white when she saw me.
‘Oh, Christ.’ She jumped up and knocked her coffee over, the dark liquid soaked the cloth and dripped on the floor. ‘What happened? Where is he?’
‘Calm down’, I said. ‘He’s in the car and he’s alive.’
We got him into the house and on to a divan on the sun porch. The neighbour turned out to be a nurse and she got busy cleaning Dempsey up and checking him over. He was conscious, but in a lot of pain and not making much sense.
‘He said there was a doctor you could contact’, I said.
Rosemary looked at the other woman. ‘Zelda?’
‘The cut needs stitching’, Zelda said.
‘I’ll call Archie.’ She went out quickly and I followed her through to the sitting room. My Scotch was sitting where I’d left it and I took a good slug of it. Rosemary was holding the phone, waiting for an answer; she pointed to the Scotch bottle on the coffee table and gave me a full candlepower smile. She was a very attractive woman in a slightly sculptured way. I re-made the drink and went back to the sun porch. Dempsey’s colour wasn’t too bad, and Zelda was holding his head up to a glass of water.
‘Who’s Archie?’ I said.
She grinned at me. ‘Archie Pappas,’ she said.
‘He’s the local communist doctor. You knew the Dempseys were commos, of course?’
The wood under my feet was polished pine, the whisky in my glass was Black Label. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’
‘Sure’, she said. ‘Raving reds.’
The doctor arrived just as I was finishing the drink. He was dark and squat with a spread waist. He butted a cigarette and bustled across to the divan. After looking at the cut which was clean now and gaping open, he got a medical torch out of his bag and looked into Dempsey’s eyes.
‘He’s bleeding from his side and at the back, doctor’, I said.
‘Who’s he?’ Pappas grunted.
Rosemary glanced at me blankly as if she didn’t know the answer, then she remembered-I was the one who’d brought her husband home and stopped her tearing her hair out. ‘This is Mr Hardy’, she said. ‘He’s a sociologist.’
Pappas kept on doctoring. ‘Oh, really, what’s your field, Mr Hardy?’
‘Criminology’, I said.
Zelda gave an amused snort but the doctor didn’t seem to notice; he prepared a syringe and I got the idea that I wasn’t going to get much information out of Dempsey that night. The needle went in and the doctor cleaned up. ‘He’ll be okay’, he said. ‘I’ve stitched the cut on his head and put a dressing on the ribs. There’s no fracture; concussion, but not too bad.’
‘No hospital’, I said.
He glanced at Rosemary. ‘No, not necessary.’
I stood aside and let Rosemary escort him out. He gave me a nod and went quickly, I heard Rosemary say something to him near the door but not loudly enough to catch it.
Zelda came over and stood closer to me than she needed to. I didn’t mind, she was tall and slim and she had nice eyes. She looked as if she’d have a sense of humour.
‘Funny doctor’, I said. ‘A criminal assault and no questions asked. Are politics really so hot around here?’
‘Sometimes’, she said. ‘Bill Dempsey’s in the middle of something very hot just now. I thought that was why you’re here.’
‘No,’
‘Well, I’m curious; why are you here, Mr Hardy?’
‘Cliff. I’m sorry I can’t tell you, a family matter.’
‘You tell me and I’ll tell you why Bill got bashed.’
‘Sorry, perhaps Mrs Dempsey…’
‘Mrs Dempsey what?’ Rosemary came back into the room and leaned against the door. She looked drawn and tired and her hair definitely needed a comb.
‘I’m prying, Rosemary. I want to know all about this mystery man. Tell him to talk to me.’
‘This is Zelda Robson, Mr Hardy’, Rosemary said wearily. ‘She’s my best friend and you can talk to her. She’ll tell me everything you say anyway. I’m sorry, I don’t think we can do much about your enquiry tonight. Perhaps tomorrow.’
‘Right. I’ll check with you. Just quickly, I take it you don’t know anything about your husband’s brother?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Okay, thank you.’
‘Don’t think me rude, please. I’m washed out, but thank you very much for what you’ve done.’
‘Come on, Cliff.’ Zelda had me by the arm and moved me across to the back door. Rosemary watched us go with an expression that was hard to interpret-it might have been approving, or maybe she’d just seen the film before.
We went across some grass, a paved courtyard and through a gate in a brushwood fence. Zelda’s house seemed to be a slightly smaller version of the Dempsey’s; it boasted a lot of timber and glass and was straining a bit too hard to be natural. She held on to my arm while she gathered up a bottle of Scotch and some ice cubes in the kitchen, and ushered me through to her living room. It was carpeted, with a sofa and a couple of big chairs; these were covered with skins and furs and you could have copulated in comfort almost anywhere in the room. She made us big drinks and we sat down opposite each other, about four ion-charged feet apart.
‘Well.’ Her voice was deep, almost mannish and the bones of her face and jaw cried out for fingers to run along them.
‘Cheers.’ I took a long sip of the Scotch.
She laughed. ‘I think this is called fencing.’ She tucked one bare foot up under her; she was wearing tight black slacks and a white silk blouse. ‘Bill’s trying to save a mine and a railway line and stop a road.’
‘That sounds like fun. Who’s he up against?’
‘Do you know anything about the mines in this neck of the woods, Cliff?’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘They’re basic to the character of the place. Miners are terrific people. There’s a strong democratic spirit around here, the miners keep it alive and they’ve stopped this part of the world becoming a great big MacDonaldland. You know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, I noticed some of the towns coming down; they still look like people might live in them. There must be big money trying to change all that, though.’
‘That’s what the Dempseys are fighting. There’s a mine in behind here, about thirty miles in. It s small but it pays its way and the coal comes out by rail. There’s pressure on to build a road and move the coal that way.’
‘Pressure from who?’
She held up her hand and ticked off on fingers. ‘The truckies want it, people who’ll be paid for the land want it, and believe me, some of them only bought the land yesterday. The big mines want it so they can argue that all the coal here travels by road and they need a subsidy.’
‘What about the unions?’
‘Some for and some against.’
‘Charming, and Dempsey’s leading the fight?’
‘Right. He’s held public meetings, organised petitions, written to everyone who can read. He’s writing a book on the politics and economics of it, hot stuff.’
‘Shouldn’t he be teaching at the university?’
She gave a short, barking laugh. ‘He works it into his lectures, he sets essays on it. He’s had students interviewing truck drivers and mine management.’
‘That’d make him popular. It’s one of this crew that bashed him tonight?’
‘Bound to be.’
‘Where does the Communist Party fit in?’
She leaned forward to pick up her glass; I could see down inside her blouse, see the line and shape of her breasts. ‘That’s another story’, she said.
‘Now you tell me why you’re here.’
I told her; but I wasn’t far into it before she crossed the gap and we were kissing and she was touching me and I was touching her. We went through to the bedroom and she took her clothes off and my clothes off and there was a good deal of laughing while we got used to each other. It didn’t take long; she lay under me and we moved well together, and we made a very good job of it. After, I held her small, tight breasts in my hands and she held me; she wasn’t shy.
In the morning we did the usual things-drank coffee, hugged and kissed and wondered what would happen next, if anything. I finished telling her about my assignment for the patriarch Dempsey, and I learned that she was divorced, with two children, of whom the father had the custody. She didn’t want to talk about that. I admired her figure and the quick, deft way she did things around the house while I waited to see the Dempseys again. On an impulse, I pulled out a copy of the newspaper clipping and pointed to the man in the crowd scene with his head circled.
‘Know him, Zelda?’
She took a quick, casual look. ‘Sure, who doesn’t?’
‘I don’t. Who is he?’
‘Tommy Gibbons, bad news.’
‘What’s his game?’
‘Don’t know what you’d call him, he’s a sort of bodyguard or protector.’
‘Who does he protect?’
‘Harry Belfrage; he’s a trucker and lots of other things.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, security services, he moves money I think and guards buildings, you know.’
‘Yeah. This Gibbons, he used to be a unionist, why’d he change sides?’
She shrugged, it was nice to watch. ‘I don’t know; I don’t follow this sport myself, I just get it from Bill and Ro. What’s the connection? If Gibbons has any tie-up with the lost brother it means he’s a hood.’
I was staring out of the window at her well-kept but unfussy garden; she preferred trees and shrubs to flowers and there were big stones arranged in a circle that looked to be for sitting and drinking on. She snapped her fingers in front of my face.
‘I see there’s a great mind at work. Look, I have to go out soon, Cliff…’
‘Okay, can I ring the Dempseys?’
‘Ring? They’re just over there.’
‘I don’t have time for the chitchat, and I suspect he won’t be up to seeing me.’
She pointed to the phone, turned hard on her heel and went out. I made the call and got Rosemary, who confirmed what I’d thought. Bill was still drowsy and she wasn’t letting anyone near him. I said I’d call later, and hung up. I sat thinking for a minute and then located Belfrage’s business address in the directory. When I went through the house I found that Zelda had left. I wrote a note on a paper napkin telling her where I was staying and saying I’d ring her later, and left it under the Scotch bottle.
I drove back to the motel for a shave and a shower. They saw me come, knew I hadn’t slept there, saw me go, and not one of them batted an eye. As I drove off I remembered the first time I’d stayed, guilt-ridden, at a motel; the car had stalled and the luggage was faked and the manager had looked like he was about to call the cops. Now you couldn’t faze them if you checked in with Les Girls.
The Belfrage Trucking and Security Company was a huge area enclosed by a high cyclone wire fence. About twenty big trucks, Macks, Internationals and others, were parked on a strip of tarmac that looked big enough to handle a Concord. There were workshops and other buildings inside the compound and up near the front gate a long, low structure with a curved roof like a Quonset hut.
It was past ten o’clock on what was going to be a warm day. I sat in my car with a drop of sweat trickling down my neck and admitted to myself that I only had a vague idea of what to do next. To bust in on Gibbons and Belfrage demanding to see birth certificates seemed a sure way to land in the hospital, if not the harbour. I sat and watched, wishing I could smoke so as to convince myself that I was thinking. But I didn’t smoke anymore. Suddenly, I had something to watch: the door to the main building flew open and a dark, stocky man moved almost at a trot across to a Holden ute parked nearby. I was the best part of a hundred yards away, but I could hear his voice raised in anger and tell from his movement that he was not happy. Another man appeared in the doorway-a big, middle-aged character with a pink shirt and a face to match-and he wasn’t happy either. He was yelling and the first man was yelling, and then a bloke in overalls came sprinting on to the scene. He did a bit of yelling too, and some armwaving as he unlocked and swung open the big gate which held a metal plate with Belfrage Trucking and Security printed on it. The dark man gunned the ute and roared out of the gate; he bounced inside the vehicle as he drove over a gutter and passed within twenty feet of me heading towards town. I got a good look at him; he was the man in the photograph, aged a few years, and with his features distorted by ungovernable anger.
I got out of my car and moved quickly towards the gate. The two men were talking across a distance of thirty feet and the gate stayed open. The overalled man started to swing it to as he saw me. I held up my hand.
‘Business with Mr Belfrage’, I said. ‘That him?’
He nodded and let me through. I walked towards Belfrage who stood in the doorway watching me. He looked unhealthy; his grey hair was cropped short around his bullet head and seemingly thousands of veins had broken in his nose and face. He looked as if he was pumped-up and over-heated, ready to burst. I wiped my hand on my trousers and stuck it out in front of me.
‘Mr Belfrage, my name’s Hardy; I might want to lease a truck-quarrying job.’
He ignored my hand and turned back inside as he spoke.
‘Talk to Eddie.’
It followed that Eddie was the man in the overalls. I went over to him as he locked the gate. He was short, almost jockey-sized, with a sharp intelligent face under a red baseball cap. His overalls had BTS in big blue letters on the pocket. Unlike his boss, he shook my hand. I told him my business and he asked me a few questions about where the quarry was and what sort of material it yeilded. I was vague and tried to get him on to trucks about which I knew more than quarries.
I nodded back at the gate as we walked towards the trucks. ‘What was all that about?’
He grinned. ‘Tommy blew his stack. He must’ve fucked something up again.’
I laughed. ‘You have fireworks like that around here often?’
‘Now ‘n then. They had a blue like that a month ago, always settles down. Gibbo’ll get on the grog for a day. Now what about a Merc? Big bugger, should do the job.’
We talked trucks and I noted down details about tonnage and fuel and tried to look interested. After a while I eased back, saying I’d be looking around for the best deal. The sun was high now and it was hot. I wiped my hand across my face. ‘I could do with a drink; what’s the best pub around?’
‘We use the Travellers.’ He gave me directions and opened the gate. I asked him to tell Belfrage that I’d probably be in touch; he nodded, but I had a feeling that he didn’t believe me. I turned around once on the way back to my car and saw Eddie going in where the rude Mr Belfrage had gone.
The Travellers Arms was a nice old pub about a mile and a half away. The verandah on the second level was supported by thin wooden piles, ideal for the loungers from the public bar to lean against. It had an iron roof from which the red paint was peeling, and a scarred and battered facade that recalled two world wars and a Depression. There was an ancient horse trough opposite the entrance to the saloon lounge.
Gibbons’ ute was standing outside along with a scattering of other cars. I parked a little way off, unwound the passenger window and put the Smith amp; Wesson. 38 on the seat under a newspaper. There were ten men in the bar, not counting the beer puller. Two sat up at the bar talking, there was a group of five in one corner and Tommy Gibbons sat near a window with two other men. They were drinking schooners of old. I ordered a middy of new, sat down at the bar and pretended interest in my notebook. Gibbons had a long Irish face, and although his hair had retreated on the sides there was still plenty of it. He was wearing a sports shirt and slacks; his arms had been developed by work and his body looked firm. One of his mates was a skinny, ginger-haired character wearing a tattered tracksuit top and jeans, the other looked like a retired Rugby League forward; he was massive in the shoulders and upper chest, but a roll of beer fat around the middle made his torso cylindrical. They finished their schooners and Ginger came across to the bar for his shout. The heavy man leaned forward to hear what Gibbons was saying, and then made a muscle-bound flexing movement of his shoulders. ‘Well, why didn’t ya?’ he said.
Gibbons shook his head and looked across towards Ginger, he saw me but nothing registered in his face. They started on their round and I was wondering whether to order another when the red phone on the wall near the school of five rang. One of the men answered it, and shouted for Gibbons. He came across and listened, looked over at me once and I started to move towards the door. Gibbons shouted ‘Get him!’ The redhead stepped in front of me and I swung and got him on the side of the head and he went down. Gibbons was putting down the phone but the front row forward was after me and moving pretty fast. I sprinted to the car and he wasn’t far behind; I slowed down a bit to let him gain, put my hand in for the gun and swung around. He was about to grab me when I split his upper lip with the muzzle of the. 38.
‘Stay there, fatty, or you’re dead.’ He stopped and half-raised his hands. I nipped around to the driver’s seat and had the car moving in record time. I had a flash of Ginger and Gibbons on the move and I thought Gibbons had something in his hand but by then I was concentrating on turning, missing other cars and getting out of sight.
I was sweating freely and the beer was sour in my mouth and belly as I headed towards the Dempseys. He was going to have to talk to me whether he liked it or not. As I pulled up at some lights, I noticed a truckie looking down into the car at the gun on the passenger seat. I put it away in the clip under the dashboard feeling rattled and inefficient. I hadn’t used the gun for a long time, even to threaten, and I didn’t feel easy with it. I parked down on the street in front of the house and ran up the drive. I must have looked pretty wild because Rosemary started building defences against me the minute she opened the door.
‘No, Mr Hardy, he’s very ill. He can’t…’
I pushed her aside not too gently and closed the door. ‘He’s got to see me, this is all getting very sticky. It’ll be shooting next.’
I went through to the main bedroom; Dempsey j was sitting up wearing some kind of oriental robe and reading a paperback. The room was feminine, and Dempsey, unshaven and with rumpled hair, ^ was the only untidy thing in it.
‘Hardy.’ He looked up quickly and then winced as a shaft of pain hit him. ‘Look, I’m very grateful for last night, I…’
‘Skip it’, I said. ‘It was Tommy Gibbons who bashed you, right?’
He looked surprised, and stalled by carefully putting down his book. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘I’ve just seen him, he’s a very angry man, very upset and he’s got a gun. I don’t think it’ll be third time lucky for you, mate.’
‘Third time’, he said slowly.
‘Don’t shit me, Dempsey. Gibbons had a go at you a month or so ago, didn’t he? You need help, and if I know the cops in a place like this they’ll treat a communist stirrer like you as an accident waiting to happen.’
Rosemary was standing in the doorway listening and I had a feeling that she might be an ally. They looked at each other across the room and there was a lot in that look-trust and respect and other things. She gave a slight nod.
‘All right’, Dempsey said. ‘Gibbons had a go, as you say, a month ago, and it was him again last night. He told me to drop the campaign, the usual thing.’
‘Did Gibbons do the bashing?’
‘Well, he pushed me around a bit at first, but no, it was the other one, the heavy one, who hit me most. Gibbons seemed to be holding him back almost. But the big one hit me and kicked me and I think he would have done some more except that there was something that scared them off-a light or a car or something.
Rosemary said softly: ‘You say this man Gibbons has a gun?’
‘Yeah, and I think he’s under some pressure to use it. Belfrage stands to gain if the road goes ahead, eh?’
‘He certainly does. He controls the trucking, has an interest in the land and…’ He’d dropped into a lecturing tone and I held up a hand to stop him.
‘I get the idea. All this is known, is it?’
‘Oh, no’, Rosemary said. ‘Bill’s told people of course, but it’s his research that shows what Belfrage is doing-he’s got it all well covered with subsidiary companies and leases and things.’
Dempsey looked modest and I tried to picture it-a know communist slandering a respected business man, boring people silly with details of companies and stand-ins. It sounded as if Belfrage was nicely under cover, while Dempsey was in the middle of a paddock without a bush in sight. Silence fell while I did my thinking and Dempsey broke it with an embarrassed cough.
‘Look, Hardy, I can’t quite see what this had to do with finding Robert. Isn’t that why you’re here?’
For no good reason I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t had breakfast and now it was early afternoon and I was hungry. Also I was curious about Zelda and why she’d taken off so abruptly. You’re not supposed to be like this-distracted, thinking of your stomach-in the middle of an investigation, but it happens. I was confused and finding it hard to get a grip on the things I was supposed to be good at.
I muttered something about it being no good to find one brother and lose another, and then asked Rosemary if she could give me something to eat. She looked surprised but drew on her bottomless well of politeness and agreed to make me a sandwich. I asked Dempsey a few questions about his brother whom he barely remembered, but my heart wasn’t in it. His eyes drooped and his colour wasn’t good and I started to leave the room.
‘I am a bit scared you know’, he said quietly. ‘What do you think I should do?’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any trained fighters on your side-good men with the boot, a gun or two?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I wouldn’t…’
‘Didn’t think so. Well, the thing is to stop Belfrage.’
‘How?’
‘Tell him a story’, I said.
I ate a beef sandwich in the kitchen under Rosemary’s curious eye. She offered to open a bottle of wine for me, but I refused, I couldn’t afford to get into the habit of opening bottles of wine for lunch. I had to get to Belfrage somehow and play the one weak card I had. I told Rosemary about Zelda’s behaviour, and she shrugged.
‘She’s very sensitive, you must have upset her.’
‘Me? With my manners? Never.’
She smiled. ‘I’m sure you can make it up. She’s terrific isn’t she?’
I said she was, but I wondered what she meant. Suburbia, you never can tell. I finished the sandwich and drank some coffee. Rosemary touched me on the shoulder as I rinsed the cup and plate.
‘We’re very grateful for what you’re doing, Mr Hardy. I don’t know anything about guns, neither does Bill. And he has children to think of.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ I’d heard that line before; somehow your life is worth less if you haven’t got children. ‘If you want to return the favour, tell Zelda what a prince I am.’
‘I will.’
I walked down to my car thinking about the Dempseys and wondering what the mother had been like. I had my hands on the wheel when I felt the blade nip me behind the ear.
‘Just sit still, mate’, a reedy voice said, ‘and nothing bad will happen’.
I sat. Tommy Gibbons got in beside me and dug a vicious punch into my ribs. ‘That’s for Stewie’, he said. A green Datsun drove slowly down the street and Gibbons waved to the driver-the muscle man with the split lip.
‘Tell me where the gun is or I’ll get my mate to cut off a bit of your ear.’
I told him and he unclipped the. 38 and put it in his waist-band. ‘Okay, drive.’
‘Where to?’
‘Where you were this morning, you fuckin’ spy.’
The blade moved away and I started the car and drove. Ginger sat in the back smoking and doing a little bit of work on the upholstery with his knife. The upholstery is shot anyway but I still didn’t like it. Halfway across town I noticed that the Datsun had fallen in behind us; he stayed back a bit and on my right which cancelled any ideas of leaping out of the car-if I knew Stewie, he’d put the front wheels over me and smile. When we got to Belfrage’s place Gibbons directed me down a track which ran along the east fence. Near the end, well away from the main building and the trucks, was a gate. Inside the gate was a small shed. I stopped, Gibbons unshipped the gun and we went through the gate and into the shed.
It looked like it had been made out of car crates, the timber walls were rough and there was a crude skylight instead of windows. The afternoon light fell on Belfrage; who was standing inside, leaning against the back wall.
‘Well, well, you did something right for once.’
Gibbons stepped forward, he held my gun in his hand and he waved it crazily. ‘Listen Harry, stop riding me. I won’t take anymore of it. He’s here, now get off my back.’
Stewie came in then which made five of us in the shack. Ginger pulled up a packing case and sat down to work on his fingernails with the knife. Stewie sat on an old sea chest and gave me dirty looks. His lip was puffy and he worked with his tongue at a bottom tooth as if it was loose. That left three of us standing; Belfrage was mean, Gibbons was angry and I was scared.
Belfrage lit a cigarette and coughed as he drew on it. Veins stood out in his face and he let his belly go even slacker when he coughed. He was in bad shape. ‘Okay, Tommy’, he said. ‘Take it easy. Where’d you get him?’
‘Where d’you think’, Stewie growled. ‘At that prick Dempsey’s place.’
Belfrage blew smoke in my face, ‘All right, you. You snoop around here, you spy on my boys in the pub and you hang around with Dempsey; what the fuck are you doing?’
I shot a quick, uneasy look at Gibbons and tried to look shirty. ‘Well, it’s hard to say, couldn’t just you and me have a talk about it?’
Belfrage laughed. ‘Bullshit. Stewie, why don’t you show him that I don’t like bullshit.’
Stewie got up slowly and took up his position about three feet in front of me. I felt sick and regretted the sandwich; being hit by blokes like Stewie is no picnic but it was something I had to go through. I swayed away from the first punch and ducked the second but his third swing got me high on the cheek. I felt the skin open and I went down harder and more clumsily than I needed to. Stewie stood over me rubbing his knuckles and grinning crookedly with his battered mouth.
‘What d’you say now, smart arse?’ Belfrage said.
I got up, swayed a bit and rounded on Gibbons. ‘You bastard’, I snarled. ‘You’ve got the gun, use it for Christ’s sake?’
Gibbons’ jaw dropped and he looked down stupidly at the. 38 in his hand. ‘What’re you on about?’
It was too much for Stewie who didn’t react at all, Ginger stopped excavating and looked at Gibbons. Belfrage was getting that over-heated-look again. ‘What’s this?’ he snapped. ‘What’s this?’
I put my hand up to my bleeding cheek and tried to look abject; I was on thin ice and it wasn’t hard. ‘All right Mr Belfrage, I’m a spy, I admit it. Dempsey hired me. But I’m not the only one. Dempsey’s got inside your show properly. He knows everything, Gibbons is working for him too.’
Gibbons gave a forced, throaty laugh. ‘What crap, Harry that’s bull.’
‘Hasn’t he gone easy on Dempsey twice?’ I said quickly. ‘Didn’t you tell him to put Dempsey right out of it this time?’
Belfrage looked at Ginger. ‘Well? You were there, what d’you say?’
Ginger didn’t know which horse to pick- Belfrage in fury or Gibbons with the gun. ‘I dunno, dunno’, he stammered. ‘Tommy went sorta easy but…’
‘He’s Dempsey’s brother’, I said. I’d measured the distance to Stewie’s crotch and reckoned I could get to Ginger before he could do anything with the knife. ‘He’s his older brother, and he’s a commie as well. They’re going to screw you, Belfrage.’
‘No’, Gibbons said weakly, ‘no, it’s not true.’ But he looked at me, and Blind Freddie could see that he was lying. Belfrage was almost purple now and he bent down and picked up a length of pipe from the floor.
‘Harry!’ Gibbons threatened him with the gun. ‘Harry, listen!’
‘I can prove it’, I yelped. ‘I scrabbled in my pocket and pulled out the clipping. ‘Look!’ I held it out to Belfrage. ‘That’s him on the picket line.’
‘So what’, Gibbons sneered. ‘I’ve done a lot of things, Harry.. ’
I checked my distances again before I said it. ‘That clipping came from Dempsey’s mother, Belfrage. She kept it till the day she died.’
‘Died!’ Gibbons voice was an anguished groan. ‘Died, no…’
Belfrage swung the pipe, I put my right foot into Stewie’s groin and nearly tore Ginger’s head off with a roundhouse left: the. 38 cracked twice and a sharp, acrid smell filled the shack. Belfrage went back, buckled and went down. Gibbons let the hand holding the gun drop to his side. I bent and looked at Belfrage; one bullet had taken him in the throat and the other had gone through his jaw and up.
I took Gibbons arm at the elbow and shook it gently; he dropped the gun. ‘I couldn’t kill my brother’, he said.
‘I know’, I said. ‘Why did you stay here?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Harry paid well. I’ve done time. I made a fuckup of everything. I thought I could discourage Bill, talk to him later maybe… I don’t know.’
Ginger was unconscious and Stewie was holding his balls and not taking much interest. Gibbons had a glazed, resigned look and I remembered the proud austerity of the father, the warm hopefulness of the sister.
‘Get moving, Robert’, I said. ‘I’ll give you an hour. I’ll have to tell them you shot Belfrage but I’ll put it in the best light I can, maybe there won’t be too much heat. Go north, go a long way.’
He nodded and went out of the shack. I sat there for half an hour chatting to Stewie and Ginger. When the flies started to settle on Belfrage we went off to look for a telephone.
I told it to the cops pretty straight, leaving out the connection between Gibbons and Dempsey. After our little yarn about assault and abduction Stewie and Ginger were content to let me tell it-Stewie hadn’t understood what happened too well anyway. William and Rosemary Dempsey and I got together over some Black Label, and a couple of policemen interrupted us and it took a while to sort things out. The upshot was that Belfrage was officially unmourned for various reasons as much as I was unwelcomed. I got a much better welcome from Zelda; she forgave me for being work-obsessed that morning and we went out to eat and back to her house for a short session with the bottle and a long session between the sheets. Turned out she was work-obsessed too and we left it that I’d go down again to do some swimming when the weather was warmer.
I drove back to Sydney, and Rosemary and Bill came up to have a pow-wow with Susan. They paid me my fee but I never got to make my report to old Hiram: he went into hospital while I was away and the news was that he was in a coma and sinking fast.
Susan came to deliver the cheque in person; she was elegant but subdued, which made her look even more elegant.
‘What will you do with the land?’ I asked.
‘Keep it, Robert might come back.’
‘Yeah’, I said. ‘He might.’