‘Ever do anything dodgy?’
‘Who? Me?’
‘I’m told there was a time when he sailed a bit close to the wind. Moved things that perhaps should’ve stayed where they were.’
He grinned the way a man with good teeth can. ‘I neither confirm nor deny, and I don’t have any details.’
‘D’you know anything about his painting?’
He held up his hand. ‘You’ve had your whack, Cliff. Give a little.’
I told him that his name was on Barnes Todd’s lips when he died. O’Fear was no hypocrite; he took the information as an interesting fact, not an occasion for sentiment.
He nodded but said nothing.
‘Do you know what that might mean?’ I said.
‘You think he was murdered, do you?’
‘Why d’you say that?’
‘I’m guessing.’ He sat back in his chair and showed the million-dollar teeth in his ten-dollar Irish mug. ‘I think I can help you,’ he said.
My cut hand was throbbing. I rubbed it lightly and looked up at the dirty window. ‘If?’
‘If you get me out of here.’
‘I suppose I could have a word with Dolan.’
‘Bugger Dolan. Irish prick. Who’s your lawyer?’
‘Cy Sackville, as you very well know.’
‘What sort of money d’you make these days, Cliff boy?’ He reached over and took the lapel of my jacket between his thumb and forefinger. ‘You never put it on your back, but you look prosperous enough.’ He ducked his head under the table. ‘And you’re wearing shoes!’
I sighed. ‘I’m on a flat ten thousand fee for this job.’
His toothy grin became a broad smile. It was the sort of smile he used to flash in the smoky folk clubs before he broke into ‘The shoals of herring’. He held out his left hand for me to shake. ‘There you are, now. Sure it must be part of a grand plan.’
We shook, left-handedly, which is probably bad luck or something. Anyone watching might have thought we were members of a secret society. Perhaps we were-the friends of Barnes Todd.
12
‘Why don’t you get Sackville to do it?’ Michael Hickie said.
I juggled the coffee Jenny had brought me on my knee. ‘It’s good experience for you, Mike. You don’t want to become a grey corporate lawyer, do you? All balance sheets and no balls? This is where the action is-posting bail, “on his own recognisances” and all that.’
‘What happened to your hand?’
‘I cut it cleaning up the glass the burglar broke in Felicia Todd’s kitchen. See what I mean? That’s the workface.’ I was in a good mood and I knew why. The prospect of visiting Long Bay had been depressing me and I felt the load float away after I’d done the job and left. Also, I was glad to be putting one over on O’Fear. He thought he was getting Sackville and he was getting Hickie instead. Tough luck. You had to keep your guard up with O’Fear; he tended to favour the steamroller approach.
Hickie grinned. ‘I could feel patronised, but I don’t. I’ll get onto it straight away. Shouldn’t take more than a day or two.’ He squinted down at the notes he had taken from me about O’Fear. ‘You said there was something else?’
‘Two things. First, Mrs Carboni is putting together a profile of Barnes’ business activities. I assume that’s the operational end. Would you know about the contracts, correspondence and such?’
He nodded. ‘You’d get most of it from Anna. Barnes believed in open government. The people who worked for him could see the paper on the deals if they wanted to. I’ve got a few things, strictly legal, that wouldn’t be at Mascot. If Felicia okayed it, you could see them. What did you think of Bob Mulholland?’
‘Great bloke.’ I told him about the incident at Mascot.
‘Stanley Riley’s a madman, according to Barnes,’ he said. ‘Good thing you were there.’
‘Everything’ll be tighter now that things are running again. How busy will they be?’
‘Very. Quite a few jobs on hold to clear. I can go ahead with some leasing of space for storage and make applications for licences to ship some stuff.’
‘What?’
‘Chemicals. You need special trucks, special licences. It was all going through when Barnes died.’
‘Why was he getting into that?’
Hickie shrugged. ‘He said it had to be done, so it might as well be done right. The money’s good.’ He saw me looking dubious and he went on, ‘I should tell you that he was moving towards transporting radioactive waste.’
I groaned. ‘Jesus, this gets worse and worse. The greenies might’ve taken him out.’
Hickie put on what I took to be his pragmatic face. ‘You said there were two things you wanted.’
‘Yeah. I’m interested in a Yank Barnes had some dealings with last year. Felicia knew about him, but she didn’t know his name. What can you tell me?’
The coffee was cold; I put my mug on the desk, but Hickie drained his as if he needed to do something to help him think. ‘An American? Barnes dealt with a few of them.’
‘Felicia said Constable something, or something Sheriff. Like that.’
Hickie’s frown disappeared. ‘Marshall Brown. Oh yes, I know all about him.’
‘Give me a description.’
‘Let’s see. Southerner, late fifties, aggressive and ingratiating. He’s in the demolition business. Wanted Barnes to throw in with him. Brown thought Barnes’ local contacts could be useful. I don’t think Barnes was very interested, but he saw quite a bit of Brown at one time.’
‘Did he like him?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Hickie laughed. ‘They went clay pigeon shooting one time and Barnes nearly got shot. I remember that. Some kind of accident. He joked about it.’
‘How do I get in touch with Mr Brown?’
Hickie got up and opened a filing cabinet. ‘Must be something on him. Yes, here we are. Brown amp; Brown. Office and plant in St Peters… ah… Ashley Road. What’s your interest?’
I copied the phone number and address from the letterhead he showed me into my notebook, and shrugged. ‘Nothing to it, probably. Just something to check.’
‘How’s Felicia?’
‘She’s fine. Could you get cracking on O’Fearna now and give me a bit of a rundown on the business stuff, say tomorrow?’
‘I’ll try,’
That was fair enough. There was no reason why he should reorder his life for me.
It was early in the afternoon and the day was fine. I could have gone calling on Marshall Brown. I could have found out some more about Todd’s violently disposed competitor Riley, and paid him a visit. I could have gone through my police contacts to get a registered owner for the car whose number plate I sort of knew. Instead, I went to Redfern. I got no answer to my knock at the house in Chalmers Street, but the big windows to the upstairs balcony were standing open and I had the feeling that Felicia Todd wasn’t far away.
I found her in the park. She was sitting on the grass in the shade of a poplar tree and she was sketching a corner of the park and the street and houses beyond. I came up quietly and stood, not wanting to break her concentration. After a few minutes she stopped making rapid passes across the paper, looked up and saw me.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Stay there and I’ll draw you.’
‘Come on. Don’t waste the charcoal.’
‘Don’t move!’
I stood on the grass, feeling like a fool and admiring the curve of her neck and the sureness of her movements. She pushed up the sleeves of her blue-and-white-striped shirt and sketched fast, shooting occasional quick glances at me. She was wearing a blue skirt, long and flowing, and sandals with leather ties that wrapped around her ankles. Her hair was nut brown in the sunlight and her skin was tanned. It was the first time I had seen her in natural light, and it seemed to give her an extra vitality. I was pleased to see that she had a camera on a strap around her neck. She finished with a flourish.
‘Come and have a look,’ she said. ‘Don’t pretend you’re not curious.’
I walked across and looked at the pad. She’d made me look every day of my age and hard and stern, like an exacting athletics coach who expects his charges to do better.