Torn Apart

'I want to come with you,' she said.

'I don't think so.'

'He'd talk to me. I'm sure he would. He might not talk to you. From what you say he just might shoot you.'

'We'll make sure that doesn't happen.'

'So you'll make it safe. What's the objection then? You tracked him under the name of Cummings, right?'

'It helped.'

'I put you on to that, Cliff. You owe me.'

'It's not a movie.'

'Don't insult me. I know it's not a movie, but it's about my ex-lover perhaps being the murderer of my husband. I've got a stake in this. You say you want to know why. I bloody well want to know, too.'

I thought back to when I suspected she could have been in it for the money and could have been lying about still being married to Patrick. I'd come full circle on those points. She'd barely mentioned Patrick's estate since that first encounter, and she had been helpful. It went against every instinct to take her, but my instincts have been wrong before. Perhaps she could help on the spot.

'You're wavering.'

'What if I say no?'

'I'll be pissed off, and I'll think you're lacking in…'

'What?'

She shrugged. 'I don't know. Something.'

She didn't know it, but she had me cold. I wanted her with me; it was as simple as that. Or almost. What I'd said before about exorcising Patrick held true even more now. I didn't know what Casey would think of it, but I was running things, wasn't I?

'Okay,' I said.

'Thank you.'

'You're crazy,' Jack Casey said when we met again in the Balmain pub.

I'd thought my excuse out beforehand. 'She had me over a barrel,' I said, giving him the whiskey. 'If I hadn't agreed she said she'd go to the police and tell them everything we knew.'

'That'd stuff it for sure. Why'd you tell her in the first place? Sorry, shouldn't have said that. Not my business.'

'That's all right. She matters to me and she's part of it.'

He nodded and we went on to the details of our expedition. I'd emailed the Aussie Irish Travellers' website with details of my Malloy grandmother and my interest in attending the gathering in the company of Sheila Malloy and John Casey. There was a two hundred dollar a head registration fee to cover administrative expenses and a dinner: I paid by credit card. Attendees who wished could camp at the farm. There were also a limited number of powered sites available on a first-come-first-served basis. A block booking at the Valley Caravan and Cabin Park had ensured cut-rate accommodation for others.

'Cold down there this time of year,' Casey said.

'Take a sleeping bag. You can sleep in that bloody huge SUV you drove up in. Sheila and me'll get a cabin. We can make you coffee and a hot water bottle-two hot water bottles.'

Casey smiled. 'Fuck you,' he said.

A good start.

'What d'you think of him?' I asked Sheila following a brief meeting with Casey before we left for Kangaroo Valley. He was still waiting for a message from his informant about the photo of the mercenaries. I had a niggling worry that if Casey and Sheila got to talking he'd find out that I'd lied to him about her threatening to tell all to the cops.

'Too soon to tell.'

It was a two-hour drive. Casey drove his SUV and Sheila and I followed in the Falcon. We skirted the 'Gong, went west at Nowra, and began the climb before dropping down into the valley.

'I came here once years ago,' Sheila said. 'Bloke I was with had an old rust-bucket Holden with a dodgy clutch. He had to go up one of these steep hills in reverse.'

'Yeah? I remember that sort of thing-old bombs with no starter motor so you had to park on a slope; broken windscreen wipers you had to work with a couple of bits of string. All gone now.'

'And good riddance.'

'I suppose so.'

'Come on, they were death traps, those cars.'

An Alfa Romeo passed us at speed on the steep road, rounding a blind bend. 'Those aren't?'

'Seatbelts, child restraints, breathalysers-it's all better.'

'You're right. I drove lots of times right across Sydney half pissed when I was young.'

'Only half?'

'Okay, two-thirds. Jack's going to get there well ahead of us. Let's stop for the view.'

We detoured to the lookout on Cambewarra Mountain. There was a view east across Nowra to the ocean and west across the valley. We stood at the rail, wrapped in our coats and with our arms around each other.

'Nice,' Sheila said. 'You ever fancy a sea change, Cliff?'

'Yeah, sure-Bondi, Coogee, even Watsons Bay.'

She laughed. 'That'd be right.'

By arrangement, we met Casey outside the Visitors Centre in the township where he was studying a brochure and a map and puffing on a cigar. Sheila sniffed the aroma and a look of longing crossed her face.

'The farm's about eight k's out of town on Bendeela Road,' he said, 'and the caravan park's on the same road a bit closer. Of course we've got the option of staying somewhere more flash. What d'you reckon?'

Sheila said, 'Seamus is a campin', huntin', shootin' and fishin' type, or was. I think he'd be in a tent.'

'Doesn't sound like your type, Sheila,' Casey said.

I could see his point. Sheila wore a suede three-quarter length coat over her red sweater, a stylish scarf, designer cords and boots.

'I was younger and I could fuck in a sleeping bag with the best of them, Jack. Blow that smoke away, would you please? I quit recently.'

'We'll go to the farm and register,' I said. 'Maybe we can find out where Cummings is staying. He might have changed his habits. With luck it could be one of these resort joints. I'm not anxious to rough it. Weather looks iffy.'

The clear morning light was dimming with dark clouds gathering to the east.

'Maybe we should have hired a couple of caravans or mobile homes and stayed at the farm,' Casey said.

I shook my head. 'I doubt we could pass as the real thing. I saw these Travellers in Ireland-they've got a particular style. Not gypsy exactly, but not grey nomad either. That's what you and I'd look like, Jack.'

And me,' Sheila said, 'but for superb hair product.'

Casey, who'd been carefully blowing his smoke away from her, gave Sheila an approving nod. 'You tell it how it is, don't you?'

'Always,' Sheila said. And what exactly are you planning to do?'

'We'll decide that when we find him,' I said. 'We've got no proof he's our man. We'll have to see what he does and hear what he says.'

'Circumstantial proof,' Casey said. 'Anyway, my intentions and Cliff's aren't the same. I want to know if he was a member of the Olympic Corps.'

I don't know why, but for some reason when I'd told Sheila about our investigation and assumptions, I hadn't mentioned the name of the mercenary unit.

She snapped her fingers. 'That's it. That's what he called it. I'm quite sure. I can smell…'

'Smell what?' I said.

'Jesus, that triggered it. He said he'd just come back from New Caledonia. In the Pacific. He was smoking Gitanes. I had one.'

Smell sets off memory, usually painful in my experience, better than almost anything else. And memory sets off emotion. Sheila leaned against me.

'I'm not so sure now that I want to do this,' she said.

Casey dropped his cigar on the ground and put his foot on it. 'This is amazing,' he said. 'There was a big blow-up in New Caledonia twenty years ago and talk of mercenaries being recruited. Didn't come to anything much. I have to talk to this guy.'

Sheila had lost colour and was staring up the road, not seeing anything, looking as if she wanted to be almost anywhere else.

'It's all right, love,' I said. 'I'll find us somewhere you can have a rest. Jack, I…'

I turned around. The cigar butt was still smoking but Casey had gone.

24

I booked Sheila into one of the township's motels. 'Sorry to wimp out on you,' she said. 'It's all right. No one likes to relive the bad times.' 'They were bad times. I was a mess back then, booze and drugs and blokes, and remembering that name just sort of brought it all back. Why did Jack take off like that?' 'I don't know, but I have to find out.' 'Sure you do. Just be careful. I'll hunker down here for a while. Maybe get some DVDs and keep doing my crunches. Call me if I can help. Promise?'