The Undertow Read online

  ‘I didn’t take to him,’ Simmonds said. ‘Pushy, with bad grammar. You have, if I may say so, an altogether more soothing manner despite your rough exterior.’

  ‘And here’s me thinking I was looking my best to call on the Widow Heysen.’

  He smiled. ‘Forgive me. I’m old-fashioned, as you see.

  I take off my tie to go to bed.’

  He said he was surprised that Catherine Heysen was still pursuing the matter. His pale, watery eyes behind the thick lenses retained a keenness about them. He was one of those men—and I’d met a few—that you didn’t lie to because you knew they’d trip you up. Without giving him chapter and verse, I indicated that I was working for another involved party and that had captured his interest and led him to open up so frankly about the late Horatio Mallory.

  ‘What might that defence have been?’

  ‘It would have been difficult at the best of times, with that chap’s confession. What was his name again?’

  ‘Rafael Padrone.’

  ‘Just so. His statement was plausible, perfectly recorded and documented, and Mallory floundered trying to counteract it. I advised a cautious approach, to try and tease out the possibility that someone else might have put Padrone up to it, that perhaps he was under some kind of pressure. But poor old Horatio went at it bull-at-a-gate— blackening Padrone’s name, disparaging his background, his ethnicity. There were a couple of people of Italian descent on the jury. A shambles. And it wasn’t a propitious time for defending doctors.’

  I tried to cast my mind back but couldn’t recall any particularly anti-medico sentiment at the time, other than cartoons suggesting that they didn’t make house calls because they were too busy playing golf.

  Simmonds smiled. ‘Can’t remember, eh? I can. It’s far enough back. I’m in that condition where past events are crystal clear and I can’t recall what I had for lunch. Not quite, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘We all get there.’

  ‘Just so. Well, as I say, it wasn’t a good time to be appearing for a doctor accused of a serious crime. It never is, really. The public rates the profession very highly but takes a dim view when a member of it transgresses. Anyway, there’d recently been a scandal involving doctors in car crash insurance fraud and the Medicare system had recently been modified with the result that some doctors—surgeons, I think—had gone on strike.’

  I nodded. ‘It’s coming back to me. I seem to remember that doctors had a few problems back around then. There was Edelsten and his pink helicopter lifestyle, and Nick Paltos, who got sucked in by the gamblers and tried drug importation as a way out. That sleep therapy nutter couldn’t have helped the image.’

  ‘Not a bit, and when Heysen presented, all puffed up with his own importance, you can imagine the reaction.

  I suppose you’re wondering why a suburban solicitor was brought in on such a serious matter?’

  ‘I have a feeling you’d have been up to it.’

  ‘I was in those days. I did a bit of criminal work, some of it fairly high profile. But the fact is that we handled the conveyancing when Heysen bought the Earlwood house. Not a difficult job, because, for a youngish doctor not long in practice, he had substantial equity. Of course, that was before they had to pay back the cost of their degrees. One of my then partners steered it through and Heysen seemed to have confidence in us, so he came to me when the police homed in on him. Mallory was a mistake. He would not have been my choice, but Heysen had met him somewhere and insisted on him.’

  ‘Did Heysen’s wife attend the trial? I forgot to ask her.’

  ‘Indeed she did, and added to the ill-feeling. She was dressed to the nines, glamour personified, and induced resentment among the female jurors and lust among the males. Altogether unfortunate.’

  ‘It sounds like a nightmare from where you were sitting.’

  ‘Yes, especially as old Horatio was so taken with the wife that he could hardly keep his mind on the business. The joke around the place at the time—trials are full of jokes, as you’d know from experience and television—was that Mallory wanted his client to lose so that he might get a free run at the wife. Nonsense, of course.’

  I liked this man. ‘You’re being very frank, Mr Simmonds.’

  ‘Indiscreet, you mean.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m grateful.’

  ‘No mystery. I’ve heard of you, Mr Hardy. I remember that Viv Garner represented you at the hearing you had to attend in connection with your licence.’

  I nodded. A recent case where the police had found me less than cooperative and insisted that I go before the licensing board. ‘A suspension,’ I said. ‘I took a holiday.’

  ‘So Viv told me. We’re old acquaintances. I’ve got a lot of time for him. Odd expression, in the context of our profession.’

  ‘I’ve done some—once on remand and a short stretch.’

  ‘Inevitable, I’d say, for an energetic enquiry agent, especially back when the police were more corrupt than at present. The point is, Viv Garner vouched for you in the highest terms, so I felt I should be as helpful as possible.

  However, I’m not sure that I have been.’

  Viv Garner had been my solicitor for some years and had seen me through some scrapes in which you could have said I was culpable, and some that were merely misinterpretations. ‘You have been,’ I said. ‘My understanding is that Padrone had pleaded guilty.’

  ‘That’s so.’

  ‘But he could have paid for a defence.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘Just that he must have made some sort of deal on his sentence and treatment.’

  ‘I suppose so, but I know nothing about it.’

  ‘After what you’ve told me I think I can probably put one more question to you.’

  We’d finished the coffee, but Simmonds was a man with a taste for the dramatic. He lifted what must have been an empty cup to his mouth before he spoke: ‘I can anticipate it—do I think Dr Gregory Heysen was guilty of the charge of conspiracy to commit murder?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The man was highly intelligent. I mean exceptionally so. His academic record showed that and I spoke to one of his professors who said that Heysen could have made a brilliant medical researcher, capable perhaps of major work.’

  ‘All news to me.’

  ‘None of this came out at the trial. Heysen refused to allow the professor to give evidence. Can you guess why?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘At this point I was almost sorry for Mallory. Heysen said the man was a Jew and second-rate as a scientist and teacher.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘If Gregory Heysen had arranged the death of Peter Bellamy, I’m quite sure no one would ever have suspected him of it. He would have contrived it in a far more clever way.’

  ‘A hard defence to put up, that.’

  ‘Oh, Heysen would have been all for it, but in that event his sentence was more likely to have been twenty years rather than fourteen.’

  ‘All things considered, fourteen years seems a bit light.’

  Simmonds shook his head. ‘Prejudice against homosexuals and the beginnings of the AIDS hysteria. For all Judge Montague-Brown detested Heysen, he probably hated homosexuals more.’

  I shook my head. ‘Lawyers. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. We’re just a necessary evil. But you’ve jogged my memory. I recall thinking that the police were very . . .

  ardent. Almost as if they—’ ‘Had planted evidence? I’ve seen that.’

  ‘No. Let me think. Don’t put words in my mouth. As if they had something else on Heysen and were determined to get him, one way or another.’

  6

  Rex Wain didn’t call. I went to the Redgum gym in Leichhardt for a workout and then to the Bar Napoli for a coffee. Over the long black, I called two of the other cops who’d been on the Heysen case. The Telstra voice told me that one of the numbers was no lon
ger operating and when I called the other I got a takeaway Chinese food outlet in Carlton. Frank’s information was sadly out of date.

  The day had turned from blustery to stormy with big black clouds piling up against each other. I drove home to batten down the hatches. A big branch from a camphor laurel tree had been brushing against one of the windows and I’d resolved to lop it before the next high wind in case it did serious damage. Of course, I’d put that action off for weeks, months.

  I got home before the sky opened, changed into jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers, and put an aluminium ladder up against the wall of the house. I applied an old, rusted bush saw to the branch. Working upwards is not the way to go but my ladder only reached so far. My father had tried to instruct me as a handyman, but I’d found passing him nails and changing between the Phillips head and the other kind of screwdriver so boring I closed off. Occasionally I regretted not having the facility.

  ‘A workman is only as good as his tools,’ he used to say.

  He was right. I never had the right tools for that kind of work.

  With the sky darkening and the light dropping, I sawed away in the confined space at the side of the house. I was being scratched by thorny branches and sweat was running into my eyes.

  I’m going to flog this place, I thought. Get a unit at Coogee and let the body corporate handle the maintenance.

  ‘Hey, Hardy.’

  I was standing on top of the ladder none too securely and, surprised by the voice, I almost fell. As it was I dropped the saw. Bracing myself against the wall, I looked down. Rex Wain was standing three metres below me with his hand on the ladder.

  ‘Gidday, Wain,’ I said. ‘You bloody nearly made me fall.’

  He gave the ladder a gentle shake. ‘That’s exactly what I’m fucking going to do. Let’s see you piss me around with a broken leg.’

  ‘What’re you talking about?’

  ‘You fucking know.’

  He bent to pick up the saw and took his hand off the ladder. I went down two rungs quickly and jumped. He swore and swung at me with the saw but he was slow and impeded by the branches of the shrubs. I ducked under the wing and bullocked into him, forcing him back against the wall. He dropped the saw. I hit him hard about where his right kidney was and he gasped. I jerked his left arm up his back and held him there, pressing his head against the bricks.

  ‘You’re out of shape, Rex. Had enough?’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Only reason I phoned you was to talk about an old case. That’s it. Nothing else. Now you can believe me and come in have a drink or you can have another go and get knocked about. Up to you.’

  He muttered something I couldn’t catch.

  ‘What was that?’

  A couple of fat raindrops fell as a prelude to some heavy stuff coming.

  He eased his mouth away from the wall and turned his head towards me. ‘Nothing about the Logan business?’ His breath stank of booze and bad teeth.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, then. Sorry, sorry.’

  I let him go and picked up the saw. ‘Let’s go inside before it pisses down. No tricks, Rex. A scratch from this rusty blade and you’re a tetanus case, for sure.’

  ‘No worries.’

  I shepherded him around to the front of the house and we went in and down the passage to the kitchen at the back on the ground floor. Wain was a good ten years older than me and not wearing well. His sandy hair was thin on top and his belly ballooned his shirt front out over his belt. He wore a light grey suit that could have done with a clean and was missing buttons. He rubbed the spot where I’d hit him and stroked his nose. His face had hit the wall pretty hard.

  I sat him down at the kitchen bench and gave him a solid scotch. He shook his head when I offered him ice, and tossed it down in one gulp. I poured another and one for myself. The rain came, thundering on the iron roof of the bathroom behind the kitchen—an add-on long after the house was built.

  ‘Who’s Logan?’ I said.

  ‘Shit, it doesn’t matter. Just a pissed-off client. I got into your game after I left the force. I thought he might have hired you to get his money back or something.’

  ‘You don’t seem to be doing too well at it.’

  He tasted his drink this time and looked around the room. ‘You’re not exactly coining it yourself. This isn’t a single malt and this joint’s a dump. Worth a bit though, I suppose.’

  ‘How about we have the talk I wanted to have, since you’re here?’

  Wain was regaining his confidence. He picked bits of shrub and leaf from his jacket and deposited them on the bench. ‘What’s in it for me?’

  ‘Are things that bad, that a professional discussion attracts a fee?’

  ‘Matter of principle, Hardy, you prick. Never liked you and still don’t.’

  ‘It’s mutual, Rex. Let’s say I ask you some questions, and depending on your answers I decide whether what you say is worth any of my client’s money. Otherwise, finish your drink and get on your bloody bike.’

  The recovered confidence was tissue-thin. He drained his glass and pushed it at me. ‘Okay. I’ll have a bit of ice and water this time.’

  It took over an hour and half a bottle of scotch to get anything useful out of him. He hadn’t been the senior man on the Heysen murder but he’d done a lot of legwork and had sat in on all the briefings and progress reports. He was convinced that Heysen was guilty of hiring Padrone to do the wet work.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘We talked to the sister, this hooker. Pammy, Priscilla . . . Pixie, that’s it. William Street prostie. She reckoned Padrone told her he’d done it and that he was going to give her some of the money. Said she never got it, but we thought she was lying.’

  I cast my mind back to the trial reports. ‘That didn’t come out at the trial.’

  Wain shook his head. ‘Cassidy, the D heading us up— he’s dead by the way—was real pissed off about that. She shot through. We couldn’t find her. Couldn’t make anything of it, like. But it firmed us up on Heysen, you know how it is.’

  I did, and I wondered if this lay behind Simmonds’ idea that the police had more on Heysen than they could use.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘You put the case together—means, motive, opportunity. What was Padrone’s motive?’

  ‘Shit, no worries there. He was dying of cancer and Heysen had been the only one to offer him anything. He offered to pay him enough so he could go to Germany for this special treatment. Padrone hated doctors anyway. Got the dough, did the job and then couldn’t get permission to travel. He was fucked and he knew it, so he decided to take Heysen with him. End of story.’

  Wain poured more whisky and water. When he drank it he showed the brownish teeth of a heavy smoker.

  He wasn’t smoking now and his fingers weren’t stained. He didn’t seem like the type to have given up voluntarily, and I concluded he simply couldn’t afford it. Wouldn’t improve his mood.

  ‘You haven’t told me much.’

  ‘Why the fuck should I? All you’ve given me is a shove around and some third-rate scotch. I don’t even know why you’re interested in this old shit.’

  ‘You don’t need to know. I was thinking of giving you some money if you could . . .’

  ‘Do what? I’m on the bones of my arse, Hardy.’

  ‘Your phone rings.’

  ‘Christ knows why. I haven’t paid the bill in months.

  Can’t be long before I get cut off. Come on, what d’you want? I’ll give it to you if I can.’

  He reached for the bottle but I moved it away. It was just a feeling but the way he’d said end of story didn’t play with me—didn’t sound right for him.

  ‘There was something more about Heysen, wasn’t there? I know he was a prick who no one liked, that he treated you all like shit. I hear what you say about the sister’s evidence that you couldn’t produce. But I’ve got a feeling there was something more. Something to hi
de.’

  That almost seemed to sober him. He rubbed at his bloodshot, defeated eyes and his shoulders slumped. He behaved as if he was looking down a long tunnel with no turning and no light at the end of it. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he mumbled. ‘I thought just me and Cassidy . . .’

  I poured myself a drink. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s time to talk money.’

  ‘I could go a couple of hundred.’

  He shook his head and regretted doing it. ‘Way too low.’

  I considered. He wasn’t an actor. ‘Three.’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Five tops.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s see it.’

  ‘We’ll have to go to an ATM. Time you were on your way anyhow.’

  ‘Let’s go. You can drop me at the ATM.’

  ‘How’d you get here?’

  ‘Fucking bus.’

  ‘We’ll walk. I’ve had a bit too much on an empty stomach to drive.’

  He sneered at me, the confidence returning again.

  The heavy rain had stopped. I put on a jacket and we walked to the Commonwealth Bank ATM in Glebe Point Road. Wain shambled along. He’d never been a solid performer as a detective, either police or private, but now he was a ruin. I drew out the money and we stood on the steps of the bank with the evening traffic passing and the people out to eat Thai, Italian, Indian, Lebanese, whatever, strolling by. The rain started again, lighter.

  I held the folded notes in my hand. ‘What was the whisper, Rex?’

  There was no one close, but he looked around furtively. He appeared to be about to speak but he kept quiet. He cleared his throat and the sound was like a groan crossed with a whimper. I could smell his foul breath and the rain brought out the mustiness of his clothes. He looked hungrily at the money, then shook his head.

  ‘Can’t do it,’ he muttered.

  ‘We had a deal.’

  ‘Fuck the deal. I can’t do it.’

  ‘I might go up a bit if the information’s good.’

  He laughed. ‘There isn’t enough money in this fucking bank.’

  He meant it. He took a step away and turned up his collar. I handed him a fifty. He took it and stumbled down the steps into the drizzle.