Hickie was pretty excited. When he’d calmed down, he told me that he’d started to make the moves to get bail for O’Fear. He hadn’t encountered any serious problems and he had expected his release that day.
‘That is today, you understand? It’s today now.’
‘I understand. What happened?’
‘He got knifed late last night. It happened in one of the recreation areas, I understand. I got the message around eleven. It’s taken me a while to locate you.’
I didn’t ask him how he had managed to do that. ‘Where is he, and how is he?’
‘He’s in the prison hospital. He’s going to be all right, but it was a serious attack. Apparently O’Fearna’s tough and quick. The point is, he can get out today, and he wants to see you very badly. He says you’ve got a lot to talk about.’
‘Is he safe where he is?’
‘I spoke to him on the phone very briefly. He says he’s safe. But he wants you to pick him up tomorrow afternoon.’
‘When’s that?’
‘Two o’clock. At the Bay.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘He said you would be.’
I thanked Hickie and hung up. Felicia had gone off to make tea. She came back with a tray; I dipped the bag in the water until the liquid was black and sipped it. It tasted like burnt stringybark, but I was able to get some of it down. I told Felicia about O’Fear.
‘What does it mean?’
‘I’m not sure. But something’s happening.’ I told her what I had learned the day before about the way Barnes’ car had left the Bulli Pass road. She sipped her tea and had difficulty in swallowing. ‘Poor Barnes,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t he confide in me?’
‘Either he wasn’t sure about the threat and didn’t want to alarm you unnecessarily, or it was too dangerous.’
‘Bloody men. Always sure they can handle it. Are you the same?’
‘Try me.’
‘I want to stay here for a bit. I wanted it to be with you, but if you can’t stay that doesn’t change anything.’
‘I don’t think you should.’
‘There you are. You want to protect me, is that it?’
I nodded.
‘I don’t want to be protected. Just take a look at yourself.’ She touched my nose and put her index finger on two scars-one on my arm and one on the shoulder. ‘What are they?’
I shrugged. ‘From football.’
‘Rubbish. Gun or knife wounds. You can scarcely look after yourself.’ She was looking at me fiercely. Suddenly she grinned and kissed me. ‘It’s all right. I don’t really mean you’re incompetent or anything, I’m just making a point. I want to live my own life.’
‘I don’t want to stop you, Fel. I just… ‘
‘Shh. You want to haul me back to Sydney and stick me away somewhere I don’t want to be. No way. Look, let’s be logical. You can take the paintings to Sydney and deliver them to Piers Lang. He’ll tell everyone he’s got them. So that should take care of any threat from that direction. Right?’
‘I suppose.’
‘And if all this searching isn’t for the paintings, then they’ve looked through my knickers enough now to know that I haven’t got anything they want. Doesn’t that make sense?’
‘Maybe, but I’d feel better… ‘
‘There it is! You’d feel better. I’d feel worse. I’m staying.’
In the morning we drove to a house in Austinmer and loaded up with Barnes Todd’s paintings and photographs. They filled the boot and the back seat. There were also several boxes and thick folders full of sketches and photographs. Felicia’s friend Deborah was a big, overall-wearing woman, who had built her own house and earned her living by landscape gardening and doing building jobs for others. Her hobby was sculpture and, from the way she strode about carrying pictures and boxes, I had the feeling that she’d do big ones. I would have felt happier if Deborah could have taken up temporary residence with Felicia in Thirroul, or vice versa, but it was worth more than my life to say so.
Deborah’s voice rumbled like a coal loader. ‘I’ll run her back in the truck.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll ring you tonight, Fel.’
Felicia bent down to the driver’s window. She kissed me and touched my bristled chin. ‘Why don’t you grow a beard? Might suit you.’
I took the freeway back to the Princes Highway and was unloading the masterpieces at Piers Lang’s gallery in Riley Street, Surry Hills, not much more than an hour after leaving Austinmer. For long stretches of the drive I had forgotten that I was carrying items that could be worth millions of dollars. I don’t think I believed it anyhow, not on the word of Leon Willowsmith. The gallery assistant who was helping me unload missed his footing and dropped one of the folders of photographs. The string around it snapped and the contents spilled across the floor. I collected the pictures together and saw enough to note the sharp clarity of the shots-you could see the veins of the leaves on the trees, or convince yourself you could.
The assistant relieved me of the folder and dusted the glossy black and white surfaces with his handkerchief.
‘Marvellous,’ he said. He held up one of the framed photographs and looked at it as if he had been waiting for it all his life.
I got a detailed receipt from Lang, a rolypoly little man who seemed wildly enthusiastic about everything. The atmosphere at Lang’s place was completely different from Willowsmith’s. Here there was a stronger smell of paint than of money.
‘Leon Willowsmith’s not going to be too keen on this,’ I said. ‘Maybe you should beef up your security.’
‘Good idea,’ Lang said. ‘Are you in that business?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Would you be interested? God, those photographs.’
I was folding the receipt, ready to leave, but something in his voice stopped me. ‘What about the paintings? I thought…’
‘The paintings are good, too.’
I tried to look as if I knew what he was talking about. He beckoned me into his office-a small room cluttered with paintings, photographs and objects that could have been pieces of sculpture or plastic bottles that had been left in a hot oven. ‘This is sensational stuff,’ Lang said. ‘Potentially.’
I nodded.
‘I think Felicia and I have an understanding. Are you in her confidence, Mr Hardy?’
‘Up to a point.’
‘Tell her everything will be all right and that I’ll make sure the catalogue appears exactly as she wants it to. Now, as to the matter of security…’
‘You’ll have to tell me a bit more about your understanding with Mrs Todd. She’s a subtle woman. If I’m going to be involved at the security end I’ll need to know any… angles.’
Lang passed his hand over the thin dark hair on his rather pointy head. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘maybe I should protect myself. I’m not going into this thing with my eyes shut, you know.’
‘What thing, Mr Lang?’
‘Did you know Todd? Like him?’
‘I knew him slightly. He was okay.’
‘Do you think he was honest?’
‘More or less.’
‘Exactly. He was certainly smart. You don’t think the photographs are his work, do you?’
I tried to remember whether Felicia had actually said so. I couldn’t recall. ‘I assumed it.’
‘Exactly. So will everyone else, and the catalogue will confirm it.’
‘Are you saying he didn’t take the photographs?’
Lang gave me a level look. ‘Did I say that?’
‘Whose work are they?’
‘Who do you think? I’ve said enough. This is all very delicate. What about the security?’
I told him I wouldn’t handle it, but I gave him the name of a firm I occasionally deal with. I didn’t think it would hurt to stay in some kind of touch with the snaps and daubings.
O’Fear eased himself gently into the car. He was wearing a grey suit that was slightly too big for him. He had lost weight in gaol. I put his bag in the back, but I didn’t open any doors for him or offer other help. He would probably have broken my arm.
‘How bad is it?’ I said.
‘Could be worse. Glanced off a rib. A dozen stitches and no ballet dancing for a while.’
‘Where d’you want to go?’
‘Where does anyone want to go after a period of durance vile? To a bloody pub, boyo. Have you got a shooter?’
I nodded and started, the car. We drove to a pub in Chifley near the Star drive-in theatre. It was showing a couple of the Harrison Ford Indiana Jones movies and I wondered who would want to go to drive-ins any more, now that we had videos and all-night TV. Unless it was for the same old reason.
The pub was undergoing a refit and only the saloon bar was open. There was no draught Guinness, so O’Fear accepted a bottle of Sheaf stout. He filled a schooner expertly and drank it down in a couple of long gulps. I had a middy of the same stuff in lieu of lunch.
O’Fear wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, refilled his glass and signalled tor another bottle. ‘Ah, that’s better.’
‘You’re not going to tell me you went all those months without a drink. I could smell it on you the other day.’
‘It’s not the same.’ We were sitting on bar stools. O’Fear pushed some of the change from my ten bucks across the bar and the barman replaced the empty bottle with a full one. He took some money and put back very little. The walls of the bar were covered with photographs and paintings of cars and horses. I didn’t think Felicia would approve too much of my spending her money in here.
The barman put a clean glass in front of him and O’Fear ignored it. ‘Bloody prat,’ he said, ‘I like to stick to the same glass.’ He drank deeply. ‘This has the breath of freedom in it. Well, Hardy, you almost got me killed, so when are we going to start talking money?’
‘Eh?’
‘This has got to be big. I’m inside there, cruisin’ along and mindin’ me own business. Me only worry is that I haven’t see me boy Danny for a bit. Come to think of it, I could’ve hired you to look about for him. Anyhow, one fine day I talk to you, and the bail’s up and some bastard sticks me. Now, it was worth somebody’s while to do that, so it has to be worth my while to put me life in hazard.’
‘Christ, what do you want? I got you out, didn’t I? That’s my own money I put up.’
‘So it is. And you’ll get it back when I stand trial. What would you say to a fifty-fifty split?’
‘I’d say no.’
‘If I go to Tasmania you’ll lose the lot. I hear the folk scene’s still very big down there.’
‘You wouldn’t be hard to find.’
‘But think of the expense. Come on, boy, you want to know what happened to Todd, don’t you?’
‘Do you know?’
‘I can help you find out. Now, don’t be mercenary about this. We’re in the same boat.’
‘How’s that?’
He finished his drink and licked froth from his lips. He belched deeply. ‘Honour demands that you complete the job and commonsense demands that you be paid for it. I need the money too, and by Christ my honour’s at stake.’
He poured another schooner full and I let him top up my middy. It had been a long time since I’d drunk stout and I wasn’t sure I still liked it. I thought I could probably acquire the taste again. O’Fear sipped at the froth and grinned at me. ‘It’s grand for the pain.’
‘I’m curious about your honour.’
All the lilt and blarney were suddenly gone from his voice. ‘No one puts a knife in Kevin O’Fearna and walks around to boast about it. Have we got a deal?’
I thought about it while another mouthful of stout went down. O’Fear was no one’s idea of a perfect partner. He was reckless; he had a bad temper and he got too drunk too often. On the other hand, if it came to a fight there was no one better to have on your side. And a feeling was growing inside me that this was getting bigger than a one-man job. I had the beginnings of some plans-trap setting and such-all of which would require manpower.
‘I don’t know whether to be flattered by your enthusiasm or overwhelmed by your generosity,’ O’Fear said.
‘I’m being realistic,’ I lied. ‘Maybe you don’t know anything at all.’
‘I know something. But I don’t know enough to make sense of it.’
‘What about your own case? Could this be related in any way?’
He hesitated, but only for a split second. ‘I think not. It’s my opinion that little matter’ll take care of itself.’
I told him about the searches of Todd’s houses and Warren Bradley’s suspicions regarding the way Todd’s car had left the road. He nodded and touched his side tenderly. ‘Like I said, something serious.’
The drink had relaxed me; I was musing now. I allowed myself a thought I wouldn’t have entertained before my conversation with Piers Lang: Maybe Todd was blackmailing somebody. But I said, ‘Somebody’s looking for something Todd had. What would it be? Evidence of some kind. If Todd had evidence, why didn’t he do something with it?’
‘You know the answer to that.’
My mood was almost philosophical now. ‘Yeah. He couldn’t trust the cops.’
‘Or didn’t know which ones to trust. He might have made enquiries though. And where one person can enquire, another can enquire too.’
‘You should have been a lawyer, O’Fear. A judge. Instead of a dumb mick brick-shifter.’
‘I’ve met a few judges. I can’t say that I liked them much.’
‘You’d better tell me what you know. And for five thousand dollars, it better be good.’
He grabbed my hand and pumped it, which hurt me and must have hurt him too. We were a couple of minor casualties. ‘We’ll make a great team, Cliff. But can I tell you something?’
‘What?’
‘You could do with a shave.’