Faces in the Rain

Allen & Unwin's House of Books aims to bring Australia's cultural and literary heritage to a broad audience by creating affordable print and ebook editions of the nation's most significant and enduring writers and their work. The fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry of generations of Australian writers that were published before the advent of ebooks will now be available to new readers, alongside a selection of more recently published books that had fallen out of circulation.

The House of Books is an eloquent collection of Australia's finest literary achievements.

Roland Perry is one of Australia's best-known authors. Born in 1946, he began his writing career at
The Age
newspaper in Melbourne, starting in 1969. After five years spent in the United Kingdom making documentary films, he published his first novel,
Program for a Puppet
, which was an international bestseller, in 1979. He has since written over twenty-five more books, many of which have gone on to become non-fiction bestsellers, including
The Don
, the definitive biography of Donald Bradman,
Miller's Luck
,
The Changi Brownlow
,
The Australian Light Horse
and
Monash: The Outsider Who Won a War
.

ROLAND PERRY

This edition published by Allen & Unwin House of Books in 2012

First published by Octopus Publishing Group, Melbourne, in 1990

Copyright © Roland Perry 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 Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

www.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74331 497 5 (pbk)

ISBN 978 1 74343 203 7 (ebook)

CONTENTS

PART ONE: SUSPECT

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

PART TWO: FUGITIVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

PART THREE: HUNTER

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

EPILOGUE

AUTHOR'S NOTE

For Christine Georgeff to be taken with coffee in Piazza Di S. Maria in Trastevere

The French, for their part, are almost compulsive exponents of dirty tricks. The bombing of the
Rainbow Warrior
in Auckland harbour and the killing of a member of the anti-nuclear group Greenpeace in the process was just an example where they were caught. The former head of the French secret service has revealed that they carried out about fifty successful operations in the Pacific between 1970 and 1981, including the mechanical sabotage of vessels seeking to monitor French nuclear test at Mururoa.

Brian Toohey and William Pinwill,
Oyster

T
ORRENTIAL RAIN
swept over the Rolls. The windscreen wipers worked at top speed but my vision was blurred, until I found I was driving on the footpath. I slewed the car back onto the road and heeded the warning voice that told me to slow down to one rat power. There was no point in speeding through a flood, especially when I was inebriated after a twenty-year school reunion.

The conviviality at my table of six had been caused by Freddie May, who had regaled us with his adventures in the Pacific. Freddie boasted of riches gained and beautiful women conquered much as he had at seventeen, and then invited us to an apartment with the promise of French champagne and more of the same. In a rare state for me, I had been too far gone to refuse.

I parked the car, as if it was a Jumbo Jet with one wing, in Domain Road, South Yarra and followed a straight line which kept wobbling along Park Street to
the address. It was a new apartment block, all glass and brick and hard geometric lines. It was painted red, and the green check window shades and awnings were unprepossessing. I fell into a lift that deposited me at apartment six on the third floor and was greeted by squat, muscular Freddie. His thick hair had been dyed to smother the greying at the temples, but he had found it more difficult to hide the age of his faded eyebrows.

His lopsided grin – the one I recall when he sprayed ink on the back of masters' gowns – was mischievous as he pulled to him a stunning Polynesian woman in her late twenties. She was tall, with long, dreadlocked black hair. She wore a longish white dress that showed lean angles and flat model's feet, no shoes. Her fine Eurasian features were vaguely familiar.

‘Martine, meet Duncan Hamilton,' Freddie said, ‘the most likely new billionaire before the year two thousand.'

‘I read about you in a magazine,' Martine said with a French lilt. She pushed out a fine-boned hand and I kissed it. She smiled and briefly touched my beard. They ushered me in and I sat in a lounge of soft pastels and pink. It wasn't Freddie's apartment, it was Martine's. Freddie popped a champagne cork as Martine placed a compact disc in a player. She sat beside me.

‘He's always in the news,' Freddie said with a grin as he handed me a glass, ‘if it's not a big takeover, it's the release of a new “wonder” drug. High-profile stuff.'

‘The article I read was a couple of years old,' Martine said frowning as she stretched her memory, ‘I think I was in a doctor's surgery somewhere. You know 'ow they always keep ancient magazines.'

I nodded and readied myself for some probing. A few years ago my private life had become chaotic and public.

‘The story was about your separation from your
wife,' Martine said, ‘the cause was the strain put on your marriage because of kidnapping threats.'

‘That was really the last straw,' I said, ‘the marriage was all but on the rocks when that kidnapping business started.'

‘Enough morbid talk about bloody marriage,' Freddie said, turning the volume up.

Martine smiled.

‘I did some modelling for Benepharm advertisements,' she said, dropping the name of my company.

‘Which ones?'

‘Beneherbs. You know, they tone the skin and muscles.'

I remembered seeing her at a screening of those ads.

‘How did you and Freddie meet?' I asked.

‘In hospital,' she said, ‘we both had lymphatic cancer.'

‘I didn't know you'd been ill,' I said to Freddie.

‘Yeah,' he said flopping in a chair, ‘we've both been through it. Chemotherapy, hair dropping out, the whole catastrophe.'

‘We're both out of remission now,' Martine said.

‘Christ, darling!' Freddie said, reaching across and kissing her, ‘you've had it so much tougher than me!'

They hugged.

‘She's had six years of treatment,' Freddie said, still holding her.

Martine looked sad.

‘Seven,' she corrected him, ‘but it should have been a year at most, like yours.'

‘Yeah,' Freddie said, ‘bloody incompetent doctors!'

Martine's eyes welled with tears. Freddie played with the music disc. A Brazilian number began. He pulled her up for a dance and she was soon laughing as he clowned around. I finished my champagne and was thinking
about leaving when Martine asked me to fill her glass. Then she took my arm and danced with me. Close. Freddie looked on approvingly and downed more drink. When the music stopped I wandered to a window and watched the rain. It was still heaving down.

‘The greenhouse effect,' I said, glancing at Martine and then staring out at the sheets of water cascading over the apartment's balcony overlooking Park Street.

‘Shithouse if you ask me,' Freddie remarked irritably.

‘What about the others who were supposed to be coming?' I asked.

‘Guess they wimped it,' he said.

Water was covering the road and drains were blocked. There was little point in attempting to drive in it or in calling a taxi. I would have to sit it out. I planned to go as soon as the rain showed signs of clearing.

But it didn't. One a.m. came and went and I had more champagne. Too much more, because I put my head back and fell asleep while the others were dancing.

Spears of light pierced my eyelids, went right through my brain and came out the back of my head, pressing me against the pillow.

‘What happened last night?' my ex-wife Peggy said as she pulled back the curtains. Odd. She normally wouldn't barge into my home without invitation. I opened my eyes and shut them again.

‘Uhhhh! What time is it?'

‘Time you drove Al to his footy match, and too late to take Samantha to hockey!'

‘What?'

Peggy was annoyed and it took a lot to rile her.

‘It's one in the afternoon and I've already driven Samantha to hockey and back,' she said, in an offended tone, ‘Where were you last night?'

My throat was dryer than the bottom of a birdcage. I felt queasy.

‘Where was I?' I said, thinking it would come to me. But it didn't. I screwed up my bleary face and tried to remember something. Anything.

‘I know you were at that old school reunion,' Peggy said, ‘but I hear you didn't get in until about four.'

‘Who told you?' I said, groping for clues.

‘Your housekeeper.'

The reunion was coming back to me. But after it, what then? It was a void. I rolled off the bed, still in my socks and tuxedo pants. Imperious Peggy stood between me and the bathroom and I was blocked by those dark-blue eyes, lightly wrinkled for warmth.

‘It was so wet,' I proffered unconvincingly, ‘made it difficult to drive.'

‘You stayed out until four? Don't tell me you have a girlfriend at last.'

Peggy had been having an affair with a film director and hoping I'd find somebody too. Apart from a few minor flings, I hadn't. Nor had it bothered me. Benepharm activities, especially a big current project, occupied my time.

‘No,' I grinned sheepishly, ‘really can't remember a thing. Had far too much to drink.'

‘I see. The old Hamilton family trick of not being able to recall anything after a binge. Is that it?'

I gave her a peck on the cheek and staggered for the bathroom. I stepped under the shower, took a deep breath and ran the cold water. The jigging round and
sudden shock caused a memory cell to fire and conjure a vision of Martine. I remembered Freddie and her and bottles of champagne.