Torn Apart

I sat and drank. 'There isn't one.'

'No shit?' Vicki said. 'Bet there is. I'll Google it.'

O'Day laughed as she left the room. He logged off and took a swig. 'Good chick, Vic. Shit, I've got rhymes on the bloody brain. What's the reason for the very welcome visit, man?'

'D'you remember a gig you did a few years back at some pub in Hamilton? There was a fight and a fire.'

'Yeah, at the Miner's Arms. That was a bad scene. A woman died, I heard. We got out okay, in fact we helped a few people get out.'

'Who was the owner, or the licensee?'

'One and the same-bloke named Reg Geary.'

'You had dealings with him, did you? What was he like?'

'He was a prick-very tight with a buck. We didn't get paid for the gig. That was natural, I suppose, under the circumstances. We worked there again later, but not for him.'

'How was that?'

'We did a benefit to help them raise money to rebuild the pub. Glad to do it. We had a big following there.' He took another pull on the stubby. 'Why the questions?'

'I was wondering whether he could've been responsible for something that happened here a few days ago. A mate of mine got shot.'

'In Glebe. Yeah, I read about that and saw it on the news. Didn't connect it with you, but. That's rough. Sorry. As I said, Reg was a real bastard and I know he was bitter about what happened. Not just about his wife. I heard that he'd fucked up the insurance somehow and blamed everyone but himself. He lost the pub. He might've been crazy enough to do something like that, I suppose.'

'So he's not in Hamilton anymore?'

'No, he came to Sydney. Tried to get into promotion. Hang on.'

He found his mobile under a CD and punched in some numbers. 'Calling my agent. Hello, Gordon, James. Yeah, look, d'you know how to get in touch with Reg Geary? What? Of course I'm not wanting to work for him. Mate of mine wants to see him about something. Yeah, yeah, that right? Okay. Thanks, Gordie. See you Saturday.'

He rang off, drained his can and scribbled on the back of a magazine. 'Gordie says Geary's in a psychiatric unit in Marrickville. The cops booked him in yesterday after he assaulted a woman at some event he'd tried to promote. Here's the address.'

He tore off the corner he'd written on and handed it to me. 'A nutter. Could be your guy.'

7

You don't just wander up to a psychiatric facility, ring the bell, and ask to speak to an inmate. In the old days, when I was on passable terms with some of the police, I could've found out who arrested Geary and possibly got access to him that way. Not anymore. My doctor, Ian Sangster, wears a number of hats. I made an appointment to see him in the morning.

'Hammond Psychiatric Unit in Marrickville, Ian,' I said. 'Know it?'

'I know of it. I don't think you're a candidate for it quite yet.'

'Very funny. I want to talk to someone there.' 'In connection with what?' 'What else? Patrick's murder.' 'Let me make some phone calls.'

Ian got back to me a few hours later saying that he'd spoken to a doctor at the unit who was willing to allow me a short interview with Geary that afternoon, with an emphasis on the short.

'Dr Galena Vronsky,' Ian said. 'A very good clinician. Could be your type, come to think of it.' 'What did she say about Geary?'

'Nothing much, just that he's a violent paranoid schizophrenic resistant to medication. Have fun.'

Dr Vronsky was a slim, dark woman in her thirties. She was classically beautiful with violet eyes and sculptured features. She wore the standard white coat over a crisp blue blouse and a dark skirt, medium-heeled shoes. She sat me down in her office and I told her why I wanted to see Geary. I left out certain details, although there was something compelling about her and it felt almost shameful not to tell her the whole truth.

'How would you propose to go about questioning him, Mr Hardy?'

'I don't think I'll have to do much. Patrick Malloy and I were almost identical physically. If he killed Patrick and sees me he's bound to show some kind of reaction.'

'Possibly, but he's a very disturbed individual, so much so that it could be very difficult to read his reaction.'

'Do you think what I'm suggesting could do him any harm?'

She smiled and the temperature in the cold room seemed to lift. 'I'm glad you asked that. Ian Sangster vouched for you and your stocks just went up with me. No, I don't think so. He needs detoxing and medicating, and even then…'

She got up. 'Come on, and don't forget I'm in control of this.'

I followed her through a series of passages with rooms on both sides. Some were open and looked more like motel rooms than cells. The place was no bedlam, closer to a sedate rest home. We passed a recreation area where a couple of men were playing table tennis while others were bent over hands of cards. Dr Vronsky opened the door to a warm, glassed-in sunroom. Three men were sitting in armchairs staring out at an expanse of grass. An orderly in a tracksuit sat in a corner working on a crossword puzzle.

Two of the men turned to look at us as we entered and one nodded a sort of greeting. The third man continued to look straight ahead. Like the others, he wore street clothes.

'This is Mr Geary,' the doctor said. 'You have a visitor, Mr Geary.'

He turned slowly and slid his chair around on the polished floor to face me. His face was deeply lined, grey-skinned and slack. His sunken eyes were blank and uninterested. 'Fuck off, shithead,' he said. 'You too, cunt.'

His hands on the arms of the chair were trembling, but as soon as he'd spoken he swivelled around and resumed his former position. I followed Dr Vronsky from the room.

She leaned against the wall, distress showing in her face.

'He's waiting to hear his voice. He was mildly irritated that we interrupted him.'

'He was trembling,' I said. 'This assault, what did he do?'

'He kicked a woman. Kicked her until she fell and then kicked her repeatedly. How was your cousin killed, Mr Hardy?'

'By a shotgun.'

She shook her head. 'Not possible. He has advanced Parkinson's disease. He would be quite incapable of using a firearm.'

A dead end.

'This is a damn fine instrument,' Hank said, holding up Patrick's mobile. 'It's a BlackBerry, the latest.'

'Why do they call it a blackberry? It's a noxious weed.'

'Not in the US it isn't, at least, not everywhere. Anyway, it's one word, spelled with two capital Bs.'

'What will they think of next?'

'It has a speaker phone, wireless broadband, email, huge memory, you name it.'

'So you could get up his phone numbers, his emails, photos, all that?'

'With ingenuity, yeah, in theory.'

'Meaning?'

'He uploaded almost everything to…'

'Where?'

Hank shrugged. 'No way to tell. A server, most likely.'

'You said almost.'

'Do you remember someone taking a picture of the two of you outside some pub or other?'

'Yeah, the Travellers Arms in Dublin. A Japanese tourist took it.'

Hank fiddled with the phone and handed it to me. 'He kept that picture, nothing else.'

I looked at the photograph. Its quality was vastly superior to any of mine. It showed us standing outside the pub; Patrick with his fiddle case under his arm and me with a rolled-up newspaper held in much the same way. For once we were wearing similar clothes dictated by the weather-jeans, sweaters and light slickers. I had a few days' stubble because my shaver had conked out, and we looked like twins again- same height, same build, same pose. I remembered that the obliging Japanese photographer had smiled and said, 'Twin brothers,' as he returned the mobile, and then, 'Brackberry,' and we'd nodded and thanked him.

I took a deep breath and put the mobile on the desk.

'If I'd been there…'

'You'd likely be dead,' Hank said. 'Automatic shotgun, right?'

'Yes.'

'That's a serious killing. He wasn't about to leave any witnesses. It was a Perry and Dick situation.'