She cut a grapefruit and made coffee while I toasted bread and boiled the eggs. We bumped into each other moving around in the small kitchen. That was nice. We took the food out onto the deck. The sun was well up, but there was a light cloud cover and no wind. The sea was serene; a pale, rippling grey.
Clambering around on a hillside at dawn had made me hungry. I wolfed down the grapefruit. I cut an egg in half, scooped it out and spread it on the toast. Then I shook salt and pepper over it. Felicia scowled at me.
‘Too much salt. Much too much. Your arteries’ll be like cement pipes.’
‘I gave up tobacco and cut down on alcohol,’ I said. ‘Please leave me my salt.’
She shrugged. ‘Your arteries. Tell me about it, Cliff.’
‘I can’t tell you much. I’m mostly guessing. It looks as it Barnes became suspicious of Athena for some reason, did a bit of checking and investigating, and he really came up with something. The men in the photos are unloading a security van at night. They all look pretty edgy, and I’d say they’re handling the proceeds of a robbery. As for the shotgun bits-seven shortened shotguns were used in a big payroll holdup earlier this year. It can’t be a coincidence.’
She stopped chewing her unsalted egg and unbuttered toast. ‘Athena Security men are armed robbers?’
‘That’s the way it looks.’
‘What about her?’
‘It’s hard to know what to think. O’Fear was very vague about where and when Barnes collected the stuff in the bag, and we’ve got no idea of the date of the photos, or of where they were taken.’
‘At the Athena place, surely?’
‘Maybe. It looks as if Barnes sat on the evidence for a while. He was probably trying to work out what to do with it.’
‘Or trying to protect her.’
I filed away sceptical, cynical, subversive thoughts of Barnes Todd the blackmailer. I was determined to get some breakfast and keep the temperature of the discussion low. I ate some more toast and egg and drank some coffee before I replied. ‘Or he could have been trying to find out whether she was involved. It’s a big organisation. She might not know everything that goes on.’
Felicia bit her lip and stared fiercely at the placid sea. ‘You’re defending him and trying to shield her.’
‘Christ! I’ve never laid eyes on the woman.’
Something in my tone alerted her. She swivelled around and stabbed the air with her fork. ‘I bet you have.’
‘Well, yes. I’ve seen her. But… ‘
‘With Barnes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fuck you!’
‘All I’m saying is that we’re in the dark. Totally. We have to examine every possibility.’
‘I don’t see why. We’ve got the evidence. Let’s blow the whistle on them.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s not that easy. Photographs aren’t much good as evidence. They can be faked and denied pretty easily.
‘Especially if the photographer’s dead?
I nodded. ‘The stocks and barrels don’t necessarily mean anything either. Not without O’Fear to testify as to where they came from and to identify the bag.’
‘Fingerprints?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Where is O’Fear?’
‘That’s another thing I don’t know.’ I ate the other egg and another piece of toast.
‘I begin to get the idea,’ she said. ‘You’ve found out a lot of things, but you’ve still got more questions than answers. Is it always like this?’
I nodded. ‘Mostly. Sometimes it never becomes any clearer.’
‘That must be a bastard. Well, what d’you do next?’
‘Investigate Athena and look for O’Fear.’
‘His name was the last sound Barnes uttered.’ Felicia’s top lip trembled as she spoke, but she got it quickly under control. ‘That has to have some significance.’
‘You’re right,’ I said, and left all the other things unsaid.
As we made the turn out of the national park, Felicia said, ‘I suppose you know you’re screwing up my life?’
We had made love before leaving the house early in the afternoon. It hadn’t been as good as the other times and we both knew it. We had both pretended otherwise, and we knew that too.
I had the photographs in the glove box and the gar-bag on the back seat of the Falcon. I was thinking more about them and all the questions surrounding them than about the woman. That was part of the trouble.
‘I’m sorry you feel like that, Fel. I wish you wouldn’t.’
‘I suppose you think we’ll end up just good friends when all this is over. Is this part of your investigative technique? Screwing one of the principals?’
I forced a laugh which sounded false, even to me. ‘I’m more likely to get screwed by the principals. Tell me, did you and Barnes talk much about him and Eleni Marinos?’
She was silent for a while, then she said, ‘Just once.’
‘Can you talk about it?’
She thought for about a mile before deciding she could talk. She told me that she’d found out that Barnes had spent a weekend at Thirroul with Eleni Marinos not long after their marriage. She had tackled him about it. ‘Barnes said it was to break off with her finally. I told him I thought our marriage was supposed to do that. He told me I didn’t understand. Shit!’
She reached into the glovebox for tissues; out of the corner of my eye I saw her hand fall on my gun in its holster. She was close to tears but she started to laugh instead. ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘A businessman who turns out to be a romantic and a tough guy who boils three-minute eggs. I can really pick ‘em. My life’s turning into a fantasy.’ She didn’t cry, so she didn’t need the tissue. She balled it up and threw it over her shoulder into the back seat with the gar-bag.
I reached across her and closed the glovebox.
‘Haven’t you got a licence for it?’ she said.
‘I have. Let’s stick to the point. Barnes must’ve said something more than, “You don’t understand.” He wasn’t an inarticulate man.’
‘Sure. Sure. He said she’d helped him at a time when he needed help. She’d encouraged him when he needed encouragement. I wanted to hear that like I wanted to read my own obituary.’
‘That’s all?’
‘He said she was in a bad way now, and that there was nothing sexual between them. He couldn’t just cut her off.’
‘What did he mean by that? Business or personal trouble?’
We were in Sydenham, negotiating the heavy traffic. I saw an Athena Security van up ahead and nearly braked as a reaction. She saw it too.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m beginning to think that these business types don’t make a distinction. Like you.’
‘Come on, Fel. It’s not like that.’
‘Isn’t it? Well, anyway, I don’t know whether it was the one or the other. I got in a rage and didn’t listen.’
‘Try to remember. It could be important.’
‘Business. Personal. Who knows? There was a name mentioned. God, I don’t know. Reagan? No, that’s not it. Riley. Right. Riley was part of her trouble. Who the fuck’s Riley?’
‘He’s in the picture,’ I said. ‘He owns trucks. And people.’
All the oldtime pirates, bushrangers and bank robbers thought the same-if you’ve got something to hide, they reckoned, stash it somewhere that’s already been searched. Given that principle, I had plenty of hiding places available. I drove to Coogee, keeping a very careful watch for a tail. I circled the block around the Todd house, stopped, parked and pulled out at irregular intervals. It was warm in the car, and the procedure was tedious.
‘When can we stop this?’ Felicia said.
I was doing a careful check of all the parked cars for a couple of blocks in each direction. I had three or four more streets to cover. ‘When I’m sure,’ I said.
‘Wake me.’
I went on with the tour and included the Coogee Bay hotel in the survey. A good pub to while away some time in, but I saw nothing suspicious. Finally I stopped outside the house. I opened the bag, put on my rubber gloves and eased out two stocks and barrels. I wrapped a T-shirt lightly around them and put them with the photographs under the driver’s seat. I put the plastic bag inside my overnight bag and zipped it. ‘Okay, Fel. Let’s go inside.’ I knew what I wanted. I wanted to put the bag in her house and take her back to mine.