The Undertow (5 page)

‘Horatio Mallory,' he said in his reedy tones in answer to my question about Gregory Heysen's barrister, ‘was arrogant, superior and bombastic. He met his match in Heysen, and together they destroyed any semblance of a defence that could have been mounted.'

We were in his office in Canterbury Road, a suite three floors up in a new building with all mod cons. Simmonds, dressed in a suit with a waistcoat, explained that his partner and paralegals did most of the work these days and that he was semi-retired.

‘But I keep my hand in, Mr Hardy. Had a goodish win this morning. I miss the cut and thrust. Don't miss the conveyancing, I must say. I've had a bit to do in my time with chaps in your profession. Some stories I could tell you, but I suppose you've heard them all.'

I guess it was nostalgia for the old, heady days that had led him to make me so welcome, or perhaps it was the good win. We were settled in comfortable chairs in a small meeting room adjacent to his office and the cup of coffee I had, although inferior to Catherine Heysen's, was acceptable on a day that had turned cold and blustery. I ran a few names past Simmonds. He didn't remember Frank Parker but Rex Wain rang a bell.

‘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

R
ex 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 longer 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.'