‘Come in, then. Don’t worry about the dog, he won’t hurt you.’
‘He puts on a good act.’
‘That’s all it is.’ He reached out and we shook hands. It was like touching wood; I felt thickened knuckles and callused fingers and palm-a boxer and an axeman for sure.
We went into the smallish house which was similar in design to the one in Helensburgh but in much better condition. Cousins led me into the sitting room and turned off the TV set. He gestured for me to sit down and I took a chair near the fire and leaned forward to rub my hands in front of it.
Cousins smiled. ‘They used to say you’d get chilblains from doing that. I never did. Tell you the truth, I don’t know what a chilblain is. What can I do for you, Mr Hardy?’
‘I’m looking for young Clinton Scott. He’s dropped out of sight and his family’s worried. I’ve been told he kept company with your daughter. I’m sorry, I know what happened to her and I know this must be hard for you, but I thought you might be able to help me.’
I guessed his age at forty-plus and they hadn’t been easy years. A few of the marks of boxing were on his face-a little scar tissue around the eyes, a flattened and marginally off-centre nose, one slightly thickened ear-but the lines and planes of his face suggested that his usual expression was one of peace and good humour. There was an uppishness to him. At the mention of Angela, some of this fell away.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I thought you might be here about the old-time boxers’ association, something like that. You’ve got the look yourself
‘No, sorry. Not that.’
All my worries about the barriers of ethnicity fell away. This was a man in pain and I’d dealt with plenty of those. ‘I knew a Joey Cousins once,’ I said. ‘I boxed with him in the army. He was a sergeant. Welterweight. Good punch.’
Cousins brightened a little and nodded. ‘My uncle. I was named after him, but my dad was against fighting so I went under the name of Joey Lewis. Sort of joke, you know?’
‘I get it. How did you do?’
He shrugged. ‘West Australian middleweight title. Fought in the west mostly. Got to Adelaide a couple of times. Darwin. Never had the name to get fights in the east. I came east in the late seventies but the game was in the doldrums. Before Fenech and them. I had a few goes in the tents and that was enough for me. Gave it away.’
‘Probably wise.’
‘Yeah. I did all right. Worked in the timber game until that all slowed down. Got a fair package.’
I nodded. We’d covered some neutral ground now and made some connections. He cracked his knuckles and stared at the fire. ‘Well, something to do with Angie?’
I gave him the story in as much detail as I could. He listened, still looking at the fire. The dog padded in from somewhere and curled up in front of the fire, not far from my feet. Cousins reached forward and patted him. The dog didn’t stir.
‘My wife’s at her church group,’ Cousins said. ‘Got very churchy lately. Always a bit that way. Not a bad thing in a woman. Does no bloody good for me though. Fancy a drink?’
‘That’d be good.’
He went out and came back with a longneck of VB and two glasses. He poured the drinks and took a judicious sip. ‘Be easy to get on the piss after all this,’ he said. ‘But I won’t. Wife needs me. Gotta slog on, haven’t you?’
‘Right.’ I drank to that.
‘Yeah. Well, Clinton. Bloody nice kid. Angie brought him around a couple of times. We both liked him. I’ve known a few West Indians here and there. Good people. I remember Julie, that’s the wife, saying that it was a good combination, West Indian and Koori. You know the Saunders family, Reg and them? Reg had a West Indian in the line, grandfather I think. And he was a captain in the army. First Koori officer. His kids’ve done well, too. My Julie was looking ahead… See, Angie’s our only kid and Julie comes from this big family down Bingara way, on the south coast. She’s a Roberts, big mob of them down there. That’s where we met. I mean, she’s real light-skinned and the welfare took her away as a nipper and stuck her in an institution. She only connected up with her people much later. So it’s all very important to her, like. She was thinking about grandchildren.’
He got up and opened a drawer in a dresser. He took out a framed studio photograph and showed it to me. Julie Cousins was many shades lighter than her husband and Angela was the same. They were a good-looking threesome, making allowances for Joe Cousins’ hard knocks. Angela, who looked to be in her late teens, was tall and slight with an athletic carriage and a winning smile. Just looking at her image it was hard to believe that she wouldn’t go on to do great things. In my jacket pocket I had the photograph of Clinton after kicking his goal-similarly promising and future problematical. I handed the picture back and he put it away.
‘Did you see Clinton after Angela went into hospital?’
He nodded and drank some more beer. ‘A couple of times. He was really cut up. Angry as hell. I went in one time and found him after he’d been to see her. He was crying and he was pulling his boot to bits.’
‘What?’
‘A footy boot. He had a sports bag with his gear in it. He’d taken out one of his boots and was ripping it to shreds with his hands. Not easy to do, that.’
‘What did he have to say?’
‘Not much. He’d been drinking pretty heavily I’d say. He nearly got run in by the cops, too.’
‘How’s that?’
‘This was another time. Bit later. He was here. He’d brought us back from the hospital in his car. A copper came to talk to us, you know, about the steroids. It was the first Clinton had heard of it. Julie and me’d only been told the day before. We thought she’d had some sort of attack. Shit!’
He finished his drink and I followed suit. He refilled the glasses and it was as if we were drinking to lost hopes and broken dreams.
‘What did Clinton do?’
‘When the copper mentioned the steroids and asked us if we knew where Angie’d got them, Clinton went wild. We knew bugger-all, of course. Clinton screamed that it was impossible. That Angie wouldn’t do anything like that. That’s what I thought at first, but they explained the tests and all and you couldn’t knock it. Clinton attacked the copper. I hauled him off and we got it calmed down, but he was off his head and it was touch and go for a bit, believe you me.’
That seemed to head off my next question- did Clinton know anything about how Angela made this fatal turning? Joe Cousins nursed his beer, turning the glass in his battered hands.
‘There’s no hope for her, you know,’ he said. ‘She’s going soon. Julie’s just getting her strength up for it. It’s hard. It’s fuckin’ hard. I was disappointed in Clinton if you want to know the truth.’
‘Why?’
He looked at me. His eyes were moist and he rubbed at them in much the same way as Wesley Scott had done. ‘The last night we saw him, after a hospital visit, he said he’d get the people that gave Angie the steroids. He said he’d destroy them. But that’s weeks ago. Julie wanted to talk to him, explain what was going to happen. Talk about a service or something. But his phone doesn’t answer and it was no good leaving messages at the university. We haven’t seen or heard from him since that night.’
‘I’m sorry for your trouble,’ I said. ‘And I’m sorry to have had to bring all this up.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s all right. Better to talk than sit and brood about it. D’you reckon he meant it, about getting the bastard who gave her the steroids?’
‘I think he did.’
‘Good luck to him. I wish I could be there when he does.’
So do I, I thought.
5
Two glasses of beer on an empty stomach was an effective appetiser. I drove to the nearest motel, booked in and found a restaurant that served steak and salad and house wine for a reasonable price. It’d go on Wes Scott’s bill but I never liked to pad the expenses for a friend. The food was good and the red must have been out of one of the better casks because it slid down nicely. The rain had stopped and the sky was clear. The air was cold, moved about by a slight breeze. After a day of driving and sitting I felt the need for exercise. I zipped up the leather jacket and walked around the town for an hour, deliberately keeping my mind off the case.