O'Fear E-Book

Peter Corris

• Herausgeber: Allen & Unwin
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Cliff Hardy Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 256

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The twelfth book in the Cliff Hardy series When Todd Barnes, war veteran and popular drinking mate, leaves Cliff Hardy a tidy sum to find out who killed him, Hardy can hardly refuse - and he needs the money. Todd's widow and some of his cronies are not always cooperative, however, and it's hard to tell friends from enemies, especially when it comes to the mysterious Kevin O'Fearna, known as O'Fear. Hardy's battered Falcon takes him from the familiar mean streets of Sydney to equally dangerous bushland, where he's on his own up against heavy odds. A not-unfamiliar situation for Sydney's most enduring private investigator.

Leseprobe

PETER CORRIS is known as the ‘godfather’ of Australian crime fiction through his Cliff Hardy detective stories. He has written in many other areas, including a co-authored autobiography of the late Professor Fred Hollows, a history of boxing in Australia, spy novels, historical novels and a collection of short stories about golf (see www.petercorris.net). In 2009, Peter Corris was awarded the Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction by the Crime Writers Association of Australia. He is married to writer Jean Bedford and has lived in Sydney for most of his life. They have three daughters and six grandsons.

The Cliff Hardy collection

The Dying Trade (1980)

White Meat (1981)

The Marvellous Boy (1982)

The Empty Beach (1983)

Heroin Annie (1984)

Make Me Rich (1985)

The Big Drop (1985)

Deal Me Out (1986)

The Greenwich Apartments (1986)

The January Zone (1987)

Man in the Shadows (1988)

O’Fear (1990)

Wet Graves (1991)

Aftershock (1991)

Beware of the Dog (1992)

Burn, and Other Stories (1993)

Matrimonial Causes (1993)

Casino (1994)

The Washington Club (1997)

Forget Me If You Can (1997)

The Reward (1997)

The Black Prince (1998)

The Other Side of Sorrow (1999)

Lugarno (2001)

Salt and Blood (2002)

Master’s Mates (2003)

The Coast Road (2004)

Taking Care of Business (2004)

Saving Billie (2005)

The Undertow (2006)

Appeal Denied (2007)

The Big Score (2007)

Open File (2008)

Deep Water (2009)

Torn Apart (2010)

Follow the Money (2011)

Comeback (2012)

The Dunbar Case (2013)

Silent Kill (2014)

PETER

CORRIS

O’FEAR

This edition published by Allen & Unwin in 2014 First published by Bantam Books, a division of Transworld Publishers, in 1990

Copyright © Peter Corris 1990

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia

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ISBN 978 1 76011 012 3 E-book ISBN 978 1 92557 577 4

For Robin and Virginia Wallace-Crabbe

1

‘Did you know a man named Barnes Todd?’ Cy Sackville asked me.

‘What do you mean, did? I do know him. Barnes Todd.’

‘I’m sorry, Cliff. You don’t know him anymore. He’s dead.’

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Everybody’s dying these days. How come you and I aren’t dead, Cy?’

Sackville smiled his expensive lawyer’s smile, the one that means we’re going to win but it’ll cost you. ‘I keep myself fit and I work in a profession known for the longevity of its members. Whereas you …’

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘On both counts. Well, private eyes live longer on average than some people.’

‘Who?’

‘Astronauts. I’m sorry to hear about Todd. He wasn’t that old, was he?’

‘About fifty, bit more.’

Depressing. But I was determined not to be too depressed, there had been too much of that in my life recently. ‘It’s always nice to see you, Cy, but why the sudden summons to your pricy presence? You weren’t Todd’s lawyer, were you?’

Sackville shook his well-groomed head. He’s about my age, which is more than forty, and I rate him marginally brighter and about twenty times richer than me. At five foot seven he’s six inches shorter, and we both weigh about twelve stone. You can see what a good team we make. ‘You don’t seem very upset at my news.’

‘I didn’t know him well!’ I snapped.

Sackville raised one eyebrow. He was sitting behind his big polished desk under a painting with a lot of clouds and light in it. It looked as if it could float off the wall any minute. Then it could float out the window, across Martin Place and maybe down the Pitt Street mall. Since the big stock market crash, I had been in a few plush offices where space had opened up on the walls. But Cy has always been careful and patient. ‘You seem to be under a lot of strain,’ he said.

Usually Cy’s affluence, displayed in the wood panelling of his office and the cut of his suits, amused me; today it got under my skin. I shrugged and plucked at the fabric of the chair I was sitting in. I was pretty sure I could get a finger into the upholstery and do some damage. ‘I’ve got a few problems,’ I said.

‘Women?’

‘No woman. That’s one of the problems.’

‘Money?’

‘Ditto. What’s all this about Todd?’

Sackville fiddled with a file on his desk. ‘It’s a bit weird. I got a call from Todd’s solicitor, name of Hickie. One-man show in Bondi Junction. Well, it’s not a bad location for certain kinds of work. Anyway, Hickie got a letter from Todd a couple of days before his death.’

I suppose that’s when I took it in properly—that Barnes Todd was dead. I met him almost twenty years ago when I was happily married and looking for a cheap house. He dabbled in real estate, among a lot of other things. He found the Glebe terrace I still lived in, helped with the finance and a few other problems. I’d seen him perhaps two or three times a year since then—at the pub, in the street or in a restaurant. He was about ten years older than me and he’d served in the Korean war. We used to have a drink and joke about our wars. Mine was the Malayan emergency which had started earlier than Korea and gone on longer, to 1960. I’d been in on the very end of it. The talk drove Cyn, my then wife, nuts. This was years ago, of course. Until recently, war talk has excluded women in our society. Maybe it’s different in the Middle East. Nowadays you can meet female journos and photographers who know a bit about it, but Cyn knew war from books and films, which give you only a shadow of the physical and mental truth. Anyway, I’d liked what I’d seen of Barnes Todd.

The memories didn’t improve my mood. ‘What’s this exchange between legal chaps got to do with me?’

‘You are in a bad way. Have you been playing tennis or doing anything for your body lately?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘My body’s been letting me down. It feels tired in the morning and it won’t sleep at night. Get on with it, Cy.’

‘I had to ascertain that you knew Todd. That you were acquaintances, at least.’

‘You’ve done that. He was a big bloke, bald and getting fat. He didn’t do much for his body either, but I would’ve expected it to last him a fair while longer. How did he die?’

‘Car accident. He went over a cliff down on the south coast.’

I nodded. ‘He had a house down there, I remember. I used to think he was lucky to have it.

Sackville grunted. He has a house at Palm Beach, so I suppose he doesn’t think much of the south coast. ‘Wife. No children. Have you met his wife, Cliff?’

‘No. I thought he was a bachelor with girlfriends. I saw him with a few women over the years. Look, now I come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen him for a year or more.’

‘Hickie tells me he was married about a year ago. To … let me see …’ He opened the file and flicked over a page. ‘Felicia Armstrong. Younger than him. She’s now a fairly rich, fairly young widow.’

I dug the finger under the binding on the chair and felt the stitching. It gave a little. ‘Cy,’ I said, ‘get to the point. As far as I know Todd was a good bloke. If I’d heard about it, I’d have gone to his funeral. Maybe. Like I’d go to yours, or Harry Tickener’s.’

Sackville shuddered. ‘Don’t speak of us in the same breath. Tickener smokes forty Camels a day. It’s very likely you’ll get the chance to go to his funeral. I plan to outlive you.’

‘You’re risking a violent death by playing the close-mouthed lawyer on me. I could be out making money.’ I leaned forward and stared at his face. I saw no lines, good teeth, gold frame glasses and an even tan.

Cy blinked. ‘I’m glad to see you can still clown. I was beginning to worry about you. You look as if you’ve just copped a ten-year sentence with no remissions.’

I had had a few snorts of mid-morning wine and hadn’t stood too close to the shaver. I needed a haircut and my twice-broken nose has wanted straightening for twenty-five years. I let my tainted breath drift across his desk, sniffed loudly and stroked my stubble like Mickey Rourke. ‘What’s the bottom line, Cy?’

‘I remember when you used to play the alcoholic,’ Sackville said. ‘After Cyn left you. It went on too long and it wasn’t all that convincing, or funny. Barnes Todd has left you some money.’

‘Why?’

‘To find out who murdered him.’

I sat back in the chair. Sackville unhooked his glasses and set them down gently on top of the file. He massaged the bridge of his nose and tried to look grave, but there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes. It irritated me, the way a lot of small things had lately. What’s so funny? I thought. I’d been in this business for nearly fifteen years. I’d found murderers before, hadn’t I? Well, stumbled across a couple. ‘How much money?’ I said harshly.

‘Ten thousand dollars. His wife’s not too happy about it.’

2

A rock band was playing in the Martin Place amphitheatre when I left Cy’s office. The drummer and the bass guitarist had shaven heads; the singer and lead guitarist had hair to their waists and both wore leather skirts, high-heeled boots and heavy make-up. I suspected the singer was a man. Twenty years ago they would all have been arrested for creating a public nuisance, but now the shoppers and lunchers walked by or paused to listen while they ate. None was visibly corrupted. The singer screamed, ‘Fuck me!’ into the microphone, but no one did, at least not there and then.

By the time I crossed Castlereagh Street the heavy, jolting music was a thin wail and by Macquarie Street the traffic was making more noise. I’d told Sackville the truth—business was bad and money was short. I bought a sandwich and shared a seat outside the Public Library with a young Japanese couple, clearly tourists, and a woman in a long overcoat who was muttering to herself as she crunched hard frozen peas from a packet. I ate the sandwich and considered the jottings I had made in my notebook.

I had the addresses and telephone numbers of Michael Hickie, the lawyer, and Felicia Todd, née Armstrong, the wife. Barnes Todd had apparently lived in Coogee, which didn’t surprise me. I could see him as an ocean-views, early-swimming type. Hickie’s office was in Bondi Junction, which didn’t mean anything in particular. Cy had given me a report on the accident, if that’s what it was: Barnes Todd’s Holden Calais had failed to hold the road coming down Bulli Pass at 1 a.m. on 26 January. The car had fallen a long way and hit a lot of trees and rocks on the way down. It had exploded, and people at first had taken the noise and fire for a bit of Australia Day whoopee.

I crumpled the sandwich wrapper and bag and tossed them into a bin. The tourists were bent over a guidebook, talking intently. The woman in the overcoat had started tossing the peas to the pigeons, which weren’t very interested.

‘Bloody pigeons,’ the woman said, ‘bloody buggers.’

The Japanese man inclined his head politely. ‘I beg your pardon?’

The woman looked as if she might shower him with the peas so I stood and moved around to block her. ‘She’s talking to the pigeons,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about her. Enjoy your stay.’

‘Thank you,’ the man said. ‘Can you tell us where is Mrs Macquarie’s chair?’

I gave them directions and explained that it wasn’t really a chair, just a rock.

‘This is a very strange country,’ he said.

The woman with the peas had left the bench and was walking towards the street, dropping a pea with every step.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is.’

Since the media barons started selling their papers and magazines and TV stations to each other, it’s become harder for a man in my line of work to keep his press contacts in good order. For years I had relied on my friendship with Harry Tickener to gain access to the resources of the News. Now that paper was part of a package that might or might not be traded, and Harry had taken six months’ leave while they sorted it out. He was at home writing a book, with his door locked and his answering machine switched on, twenty-four hours a day. So I used the Public Library to check the newspaper reports on Barnes Todd’s death.

I had barely glanced at the papers in January. The early weeks had been good or bad for crime, depending on your point of view. There had been several bank robberies and a spectacular payroll grab by seven men with shortened shotguns. That was a lot of firepower, but $1.2 million was a lot of money. Even if I had been reading the papers in my usual inattentive way, I could easily have missed the small item headed ‘“Bonfire” a funeral pyre.’ This wasn’t strictly accurate, because Todd had been thrown clear of the car and had died in Wollongong hospital soon after. Otherwise, the details were pretty much as Sackville had stated. Sergeant Anderson of the Bulli police had his say about the dangers of Bulli Pass. The report gave the names of three witnesses—Mr M. Simpson and Mr C. Bent had helped to put out the fire started by the exploding car after Mr W. Bradley had alerted them. I wondered why W. Bradley hadn’t fought the flames. ‘Mr Todd was alone in the car. He had attended a party in Sydney and was driving to Thirroul to join his wife for a holiday in their beach house.’ Implication—Barnes Todd had got pissed in the city and wiped himself out in the country. An old story.

I flicked through the pages and found the funeral notice. Private, cremation, no flowers. No suspicious circumstances, no inquest. The accident was almost two months in the past. There was no sign that a man had been murdered except some sort of signal from the man himself. I was intrigued, and there haven’t been many days in my life when $10,000 wouldn’t have come in handy.

I left the library and walked through the Domain and Woolloomooloo to my office in Darlinghurst. The morning had been cool with a southerly breeze and clouds banking up to the east; now the sky had cleared and the air was still. It was hot and I carried my jacket over my shoulder. I sweated freely but my wind was good on the upgrades. I wasn’t a candidate for the City to Surf, but I’d back myself for two lengths of the Bondi promenade against Cy Sackville any day.

Thoughts of Bondi were much on my mind as I turned into St Peter’s Lane. You hear of people who have lived their whole lives in the one house and you shudder, but right now I was yearning for a little permanency. The building that houses my office was up for renovation. I didn’t want to be renovated or to pay a renovated rent. A few of us tenants—such as the painless depilator and the iridologist—had got together and made an approach to the owner. The result had been an avalanche of paper—notices from various bodies declaring the building unsafe and unsanitary, reports indicating how many provisions of the wiring and plumbing regulations were being violated, and the threat of a rent hike anyway. Since then the iridologist had left and my footsteps in the corridors were sounding more and more hollow. I didn’t want to move, but I had had a very attractive offer of a place in Hastings Parade, Bondi.

‘Afternoon, Cliff. Love your hours.’ The depilator, whose office was next to mine, was a fiftyish woman named Paula. Paula had dyed red hair, scarlet fingernails and a mouth painted to match. She always wore red clothes and if her throat got cut some day, it would be a while before anyone noticed.

‘Don’t get the wrong idea. I’ve been at work all night.’

She rubbed hard at the dust on the glass panel in her door with her sleeve, got it satisfyingly dirty and gave me a broad wink. ‘That’s what I mean, lover.’

I blew the dust from the business card that carries my name and is held in place by a drawing pin—my version of the professional nameplate—and bent to pull at a promising-looking envelope. It was stuck under the door. I straightened up, trying not to feel stiff. ‘Have you got any plans, Paula? About moving?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘They can pull it down around me. Don’t pin your dreams on the fat envelope, Cliff. I got one too. It offers you a chance to win a Fiji island, a stud racehorse and a speedboat. There’s a video of the horse and the boat in action.’

‘What d’you have to do?’

She snorted. ‘I didn’t bother to find out.’

‘Maybe I can record over the tape. Get an episode of Miami Vice.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it. Buggers’ve probably fixed it so you can’t.’

I shoved hard and got the door open. The offending envelope was just as Paula had said. To win one of the fabulous prizes you had to invest $10. I put the video cassette on my desk and threw the rest of the information away. There was no other mail, which didn’t surprise me. Things have changed in Darlinghurst: the white ants have made a couple of steps on the second flight of stairs hazardous unless you know them, which my clients naturally don’t, and Primo Tomasetti has moved his tattooing establishment several blocks away, so I no longer have a parking place. As a result, I’ve been doing most of my dwindling business from home, where I installed my only hired help—an answering machine.

But you never know; I once had a client who waited for forty-eight hours outside my office to see me. Another time someone left a telephone number and a cheque for a thousand bucks under the door. I wouldn’t feel right without an office. I brushed dust from the chair and settled down with the telephone and my notebook. Michael Hickie had a secretary who sounded as if she just loved to answer the phone, take down names and consult her boss’s appointments book. So much eagerness is suspicious; when she tried to squeeze me in for tomorrow I suggested later today and she buckled under the pressure. Four-thirty p.m. Maybe Mike and I could commiserate on how slow business was.

The telephone at the Todd residence in Coogee rang for a long time before a woman answered. Deep voice, careful vowels.

‘Hello. Felicia Todd speaking.’

‘Mrs Todd, my name’s Cliff Hardy.’

‘Oh.’

‘I was sorry to hear about Barnes. I think we have a few things to discuss.’

‘Perhaps. Have you spoken to Michael Hickie?’

‘I’m seeing him this afternoon.’

‘Eager, aren’t you?’

‘I’m sorry. What do you mean?’

‘Never mind. I think you should see the solicitor first, then I’ll talk to you if it seems necessary.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Will you be at home later this afternoon?’

‘Where the hell else would I be?’

She hung up and I put the phone down gently. Grief takes many forms and anger is one of them. I could respect that. Greed is another matter and misanthropy another still. They are harder to deal with. I had time to kill before the appointment in Bondi Junction, and I used it to recall everything I could about Barnes Todd. There wasn’t much: he had been a soldier, then he had sold real estate and had an interest in a trucking firm ‘and other things’. I could hear Todd’s voice, usually slightly blurred by alcohol, but always cheerful, and he never seemed to big-note himself.

Not that he wasn’t aggressive. I could recall a couple of fights and near-fights. On one occasion he flattened a smaller man and apologised immediately. He seemed to have a healthy appetite for life. He’d travelled a bit and said he planned to do more. I tried to remember the names of the women I’d seen him with, and couldn’t. They had been varied—some particularly good-looking and not particularly bright, others vice versa. Todd seemed to find them all amusing. I tried to recall Cyn’s attitude to him but that was confusing. I had an idea she wasn’t too keen on him but it might just have been me she didn’t care for.

3

Paying at the car park led me to think about how my fee for this case might be handled. Would it be money up front, or a version of my usual $175 a day, plus expenses? Or payment only for results? That could be tricky. I wasn’t even sure it would be legal. I drove along Oxford Street and onto the short stretch of freeway that runs beside Centennial Park and out to the eastern suburbs. In just a couple of hours the clouds were back. They hung dark and heavy over the high glittering buildings of Bondi Junction to the right of the freeway, as if they were going to press them down to join the surrounding, unimpressive landscape.

I beat another Falcon, a newer one than mine, into a parking place near the bus depot. The driver shrugged and cruised on: we Falcon men are a laidback lot. I was wearing my jacket again and had tucked my shirt in neatly and finger-combed my hair when I presented myself to Hickie’s secretary. She wasn’t impressed—probably the crumpled pants and the stubble. She pointed at a narrow door to the right of her desk.

‘Mr Hickie will be free in a few minutes, Mr Hardy. If you’d like to take a seat?’

The office was bright and freshly painted, but small. The secretary hardly had space for her chair and desk, and the seat I took couldn’t have been more than six feet from her elbow. She pecked at her typewriter.

‘Busy?’ I said.

She smiled brightly. ‘Oh, yes.’ She was young and pretty with a lot of dark hair pulled back and a neat dress. At a guess it was her first job. It might have been Hickie’s first office too; the copies of Time and the Bulletin didn’t go back beyond the previous June. Ah, that Hardy, always detecting. After ten minutes and about twenty words on the typewriter, the door opened inwards and a man appeared in the narrow space. The typewriter went click, click, click, rapidly.

‘Mr Hardy?’ Hickie gestured for me to stand and enter. It was a constrained gesture because he didn’t have much room to make it in. I stepped past him into a room that might have been larger than the outer one, but not by much. Hickie was a medium-sized man wearing a white shirt, striped tie, and the vest and trousers of a three-piece suit. The coat hung on the back of his chair and was crushed flat at the collar where he had leaned against it. He wasn’t as young as I’d guessed, about thirty. He had plenty of brown hair and was good-looking enough not to have to worry about it. Intelligence and anxiety warred in his features.

I shook his extended hand and he waved me into a chair. If I had turned the chair around and stuck my legs out I could probably have put my feet on the bookcase that held his legal texts. He went behind his desk, sat down and did some more suit coat crushing.

‘Cy Sackville gave me your number,’ I said. ‘And some details. I’d be grateful for a few more.’

‘I imagine you would. It’s a curious bit of business.’

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder at the bookcase. ‘Not much about it in those.’

He smiled. ‘That’s right. Sorry to be so formal about it, but could I see some identification?’

I handed over my enquiry agent licence, which carries an unflattering photo. He scrutinised it closely, looked at me and handed it back.

‘Thanks. Sackville spoke very highly of you. He said you’d had some legal training.’

‘He’s being ironic. He probably means time spent being questioned by the cops. I wouldn’t call what I had training. I did a couple of years of law. Failed Contract, disliked Torts.’

He grimaced. ‘Failed a few myself along the way. Took me longer to get the degree than it should have.’

‘I’d never have got it.’

‘Neither would I, probably, without Barnes Todd.’

‘Ah.’

He unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled them back to show thick, strong forearms that had done some hard work in their time. ‘I haven’t been in practice long, as you can probably see. I’m making ends meet, but it’s going to be harder without Barnes.’

I nodded. I’ve never minded the autobiographical approach to a subject.

‘I worked for him, in the holidays and when I had to go part-time to earn money. Truck driving. He was a great bloke. Gave me a lot of help and encouragement.’

‘And his business.’

‘Yes. After I qualified.’

Hickie seemed anxious to talk, but you can never tell with lawyers. They’re likely to clam up at any moment, especially if you get pushy. ‘I want to ask a lot of questions,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to tell me when to stop.’

‘Sure.’

‘Was Todd doing well financially?’

‘He certainly was. And getting better all the time. He was expanding. Leasing property, developing. He was going into storage in a big way—that’s a coming thing. So I was handling contracts, conveyancing, a few court actions. A few problems came up, but we got along …’

I held up my hand. ‘I wasn’t accusing you of murdering him, Mr Hickie.’

He looked offended. ‘What? Oh, I get it. Well, I didn’t mean to sound defensive. It’s just that I’ve lost the man who put me on my feet personally, you understand? Also a friend and a client and a business associate.’

‘You were involved with him in a business sense?’

‘Just in a small way. But it might’ve grown into something bigger. It still might, if Felicia wants to keep Barnes Enterprises running.’

‘We’ll get to her in a minute. What can you tell me about this bequest to me? This investigate-his-murder thing?’

‘I drew up Barnes’ will. Or re-drew it. There’s nothing remarkable about it. His estate goes to Felicia. There’s a couple of bequests to employees and friends. At the risk of sounding defensive again, I’ll say there’s no bequest to me.’

‘When was this will drawn?’

‘About a year ago. It was one of the first things I did for him. And he’d only got married a few months before that, so the timing was right for everyone.’

The storm that had been gathering broke just then. Rain lashed the window and the light in the room dropped suddenly. Hickie was deep in his story and didn’t seem to notice.

‘I got a letter from him a day before he died. He told me to set aside ten thousand for you to find out who killed him if he died suddenly.’

‘Have you got the letter?’

‘Yes, but I can’t show it to you. Felicia’s considering challenging it. All documents are private until she decides.’

I grinned at him. ‘C’mon, Michael. As one battler to another. Let’s see the copy.’

He opened a drawer in his desk, took out a folder and extracted a photocopied sheet. He passed it to me. I squinted at it in the gloom and he got up to turn on the overhead light. The date was 24 January; the letterhead was Barnes Enterprises with an address in Botany. The handwritten message was simple:

Dear Michael,

If I disappear or get shot or have what’s called an accident, I want you to allot ten thousand dollars from my estate to a private investigator by the name of Cliff Hardy to look into the circumstances. Give Hardy any and all help you can. This could be a false alarm. Hope to see you soon but if not, good luck.

The note was signed, ‘B.T.’

‘You can keep it,’ Hickie said. ‘I’ve got the original and other copies.’

I folded the paper and put it in my pocket. A tap came at the door and the secretary poked her head through.

‘I’m about to go, Mr Hickie. Is there anything …?’

Hickie shook his head. ‘No thanks, Jenny. See you tomorrow. Good night.’

‘Things are slack,’ I said after Jenny had gone.

Hickie sighed. ‘Yeah. I hope I can pay Jenny’s wages next week. It’d help if Felicia could make up her mind about a few things.’

‘Do you think Barnes Todd was murdered?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Was he doing anything that could’ve got him killed?’

‘He was making money.’

‘And enemies?’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t they go together?’

‘I’ll need your cooperation,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to know everything about his business dealings, new and old.’

‘Happy to help. But you’ll have to get past Felicia first. She could hold up settling the estate for a hell of a long time if she wanted to.’

‘I’ve got an appointment to see her tonight.’

‘Good.’ He looked out the window and noticed the rain. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘My car’s in dock.’

‘Where d’you live?’

‘Randwick.’

‘I’m going to Coogee, I’ll drop you.’

We got moderately wet running through the rain to the car. On the drive to Randwick, Hickie seemed tense. We passed a pub and he said: ‘I used to drink in there with Barnes.’

‘He was a good drinker, as I recall.’

‘He used to be before he met Felicia. She put him on a diet. He lost weight. Slept well. Looked years younger.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘I looked it up. It was five weeks before his death. I used to see him more often than that, but we met less and less after he got married.’