The Undertow (4 page)

She shrugged. ‘Like Frank, he was manly. The fashion business is full of effeminates and pansies.'

Perhaps they were well suited, sharing at least one prejudice.

‘I've got a couple more questions, if you're up to it.'

‘I'm not a fragile person, Mr Hardy.'

‘How did you manage to keep the boy unaware of what had happened to his father? I mean, you're still in the same house. There must have been talk.'

‘After the appeal failed, I took William to Italy with me. That's where I did most of the modelling. It pays even better in Europe than here. I have family there on my mother's side. I took their name for professional reasons, Castilione. We stayed for nine years. We told William his father was dead. My family . . . connived, you might say, in this. When we came back the whole matter had died down. Neighbours here had moved away. You probably noticed all the apartment blocks. The whole area had changed. When Gregory died it hardly made a ripple, there was so much else going on. Memories are short.'

‘That's true. The other question is, how did William find out the truth and how did he react?'

Frank had told me, but I wanted to hear it from her. Again, this was the sort of subject that shook her. Just a little. ‘You must understand that William is . . . was a very energetic person. When we returned from Italy he set about adjusting to life here. He attended Cranbrook, where he was a first-class student and a fine sportsman. He was in the school teams for tennis and cricket and would have been for swimming if he'd been able to fit it in. He was popular and socially active as well.'

She drew a breath as if this catalogue of her son's qualities had tired her, but she went on almost at once. ‘He did splendidly in the HSC in science subjects and languages. He could have got into medicine at Sydney, but he opted to study languages. He was fluent in Italian, of course, and true Italian, not a dialect. He studied French and Spanish and got a first-class degree. He went backpacking in Indonesia after finishing and he acquired a proficiency in Bahasa very easily.'

As someone who battled his way through school, especially at science and French, and dropped out of university, I was finding this Rhodes scholar stuff a bit hard to take. ‘And did he live here through all this?' I asked.

‘Oh, no. He lived in college and was only here in the holidays and sometimes at weekends and for family occasions. He was a favourite with the Italian side of my family, naturally. After university he moved into a flat with some other young people. He applied to the UN to work as a translator and was accepted as a trainee. While he was waiting for that to be arranged he worked at SBS, subtitling foreign films. He seemed so settled and stable with a career path ahead of him that I thought I should tell him the truth.'

‘A version of it,' I said.

‘Of course, you're right. I told him what had happened to his . . . my husband. I thought he was mature and confident enough to cope with it. I was wrong.'

Saying she was wrong was not something she liked doing. She paused, as if to try to think of some way to withdraw the admission, but there was none available. I was beginning to dislike her. I had no idea what she meant about true Italian and dialects, but it sounded snobbish. Again, it seemed as if she and Heysen had unpleasant characteristics in common. I started to question Frank's attraction to her, but maybe she was an actress and had projected a different personality to him.

‘William went completely off the rails,' she said. ‘He did some research and of course turned up the lurid tabloid stories about Gregory and all the details that came out at the trial. He turned against me for lying to him, and against the world he'd grown up in. He said he never wanted to see or hear from me again. He left his job and did not take up the traineeship at the UN. The last time I saw him he was heavily under the influence of drugs and he told me that selling them was how he made his living. That he was a criminal, just like his father. It broke my heart. I tried to tell him that Gregory wasn't guilty but he wouldn't listen.'

‘Where is he now?'

‘I have no idea.'

I had to think that over. The job seemed to be double-barrelled. What was the point of exonerating Gregory Heysen, in the unlikely event that that could be done, if the kid to give the good news to was missing?

‘Have you tried to locate him?'

‘How would I do that?'

‘By hiring someone like me. Can't you see that this is two strands of the same story?'

‘I hadn't thought of it that way . . . until now.'

‘You have to consider every angle. What if William reconsidered? He's bright, you say. What if he's trying to find out more about Dr Heysen's conviction?'

‘I suppose it's possible.'

‘Which means he could be in danger.'

‘Why?'

‘You haven't thought this through, Mrs Heysen. If your husband was innocent, then someone framed him. Do you have any idea who that could be?'

I'd thought her story was thin in some way, and it was odd she hadn't tried to find the missing kid. Did she have some other agenda? But now she seemed genuinely alarmed.

‘No.'

‘Let's say you're right and your husband was framed or railroaded by whoever ordered the killing, or by the police, or both. If anyone starts poking around and finds things out, and the person or persons who arranged the frame-up learns of it . . .'

‘I simply had not considered that.'

Her reaction didn't entirely convince me, but at least she could imagine a scenario playing out in which she or her son or both could be at risk. She was silent for a few minutes and revealed her agitation by playing with the chains around her neck. I was tempted to go easy on her at this point but I held back, watching her and saying nothing.

‘Are you going to help me . . . us?'

‘I'll try, but you have to understand I'm more interested in helping Frank. You've thrown him into a spin.'

‘I'm sorry,' she said, but I wasn't sure she was.

5

I
told Catherine Heysen I'd keep her informed. She was happy to see me go. As she ushered me out I wondered how she spent her time. I didn't see any books where books might have been. Getting herself tricked out must have taken time but not all day. I had a sense that her life was as empty as her house.

I had to hope my manner didn't cause her to bother Frank, but I suspected they had an arrangement. I had a number of people to see and this early in the piece there was no particular priority: the order of approach was dictated by geography and availability. Gregory Heysen's solicitor, Michael Simmonds, had an office in Canterbury while Rex Wain, one of the cops, since retired, who'd worked with Frank, was in Marrickville. A toss-up.

I called Simmonds on my mobile. He was in court. I got an appointment for mid-afternoon. Rex Wain I'd run into a few times in the course of business. I had a vague, unfavourable recollection of him as one of the bully boys of whom there were so many back then. Frank hadn't kept in touch but had asked around and got his number. I got the voice message. I left my name and mobile number and asked him to call. The other names on my list—the other ex-cops and cops still serving; the sister of Rafael Padrone, the man who'd fingered Heysen; the pathologist who'd testified about Bellamy's wounds; and several professional associates of the two doctors—were scattered about to all points of the compass.

In days gone by I would've killed the time until my appointment with the solicitor in a pub, but now I don't eat breakfast or lunch and keep my drinking till the evening— mostly, unless it's impolite to refuse. I decided to put in a little more work on Catherine Heysen herself and drove to Kingsgrove where Henry Hamil has his studio.

‘Hercules' Henry, as he was known in his wrestling days, is a fashion photographer. I did some work for him a few years back, when a disgruntled model had hired a bunch of kids to steal Henry's equipment. The kids double-crossed the model and I got the equipment back cheaply. Henry and I had stayed in touch over the occasional drink and attendance at boxing nights.

Henry was as far from Catherine Heysen's stereotype of the effeminate photographer as it was possible to be. He was pushing sixty, twice married with two sets of kids, and kept himself fit by running. He'd had several successful exhibitions of his non-fashion photos, but he knew everybody in that world. No need to call him; he worked out of his studio and people came to him.

I climbed the steps to his studio, which had once been a cheese factory. Henry claimed he could sometimes still pick the smell of a ripe gorgonzola, but I'd never detected it. When I arrived he'd just finished a shoot and was disassembling the backdrop scenery with the help of Samantha, one of his daughters.

‘Hey, Cliff,' he bellowed, ‘come and lend a hand.'

I held and moved and stacked things for a few minutes until the job was done. Henry was massive in a white T-shirt and jeans. His hair was still thick and Aryan blond, but greying at the temples. Samantha was small and wiry, taking after her mother, but I wasn't sure which one.

‘Off you go, love,' Henry said. ‘The cheque's in the mail.'

‘Dad.'

He took some notes from his wallet and handed them over. She kissed him on the cheek, waved to me and slid away.

‘Probably spend it on unlistenable-to CDs,' Henry said. ‘D'you like rap?'

I shuddered.

‘Should listen to the words. It's worse than you think. What's up, Cliff? Coffee?'

‘I've just had a couple of cups of the best coffee I've ever tasted, Henry. Wouldn't want to lose the buzz. You go ahead.'

‘Fuck it, I've been working since six am. What about a cold one?'

We settled in a couple of canvas-backed director's chairs with a can each. Henry reached for the ceiling and rotated his trunk slowly, easing his close to muscle-bound frame. He took a long pull on his can.

‘Are you going to invite me to Anthony Mundine's next outing to which you have free tickets, you and many others?'

‘No.'

‘What a disappointment. So?'

‘I'm wondering if you know anything about a model working here in the early nineties. Very beautiful. Italian-looking. Catherine Heysen, or maybe Beddoes.'

‘Doesn't ring a bell.'

‘Hang on, she told me she worked under another name in Europe. Castilone, something like that.'

Henry snapped his fingers. ‘Now you're talking—CC we called her, Catherine Castilione. Now that was one beautiful woman. Wonderful bones. Are you working for her?'

‘Not exactly. Did you photograph her?'

‘Only a couple of times. I heard she came into some money and retired.'

‘Would you still have the shot or shots?'

‘Of course. I've got nearly everything I've done on disc. Young Sam, who you just saw helping, did it for me. Want to see?'

We went over to his computer and he began clicking keys. The images were minutely catalogued and within a few minutes he had those in question up on the screen. One set showed a tall, slender woman in a simple black dress with a string of pearls around her neck. The advertisement was for the pearls but it was hard to take your eyes off the woman's face and body. She looked like the young Sophia Loren and, while there was nothing provocative about her pose, she exuded sex appeal. In another series, she was modelling a severely cut trouser suit. Same effect.

‘Not bad, eh? See the bone structure? Lighting a face like that's a sheer pleasure. How's she look now?'

‘Just as good, in an older way.'

‘Doesn't surprise me. She'll look good till the day she dies, and after that.'

‘D'you remember much about her? I mean, what she said about herself, what you talked about on the shoot?'

Henry shook his head. ‘I could hardly get a word out of her. All I remember is that she was an unhappy person.

Doesn't really matter in this game. Don't want them to look too happy.'

‘She was making a lot of money, she said.'

‘Not that much. The trouble with her was that she looked so good the suspicion was the customers wanted her rather than the product. Different in Europe, where she wouldn't have looked so exotic.'

‘Did she ever mention her son?'

‘Now that's something I'd forgotten. She brought him along to the suit session. Nice enough looking kid, very much like her, not a lot of his dad in him, I guess. Well behaved. As I recall, he sat and read a book.'

‘A twelve-year-old boy reading a book? What kind of book? What about?'

Henry shrugged. ‘Can't remember, probably didn't ask.

A proper book. Hard cover.'

‘What was their relationship like?'

Henry drained his can. ‘Hard to say. They didn't talk much, and then it was in Italian. I no speak. Respectful?'

‘That all?'

‘What're you getting at?'

‘I'm not sure.'

Still with time to kill, I drove back to the Heysen house in Earlwood. I stopped a short distance from it and tried to look at it again through fresh eyes. I still wasn't convinced that a woman like her would choose to stay in such a white elephant of a house. Some of the things she'd told me had checked out solidly with Henry Hamil, but I was by no means sure that she'd told me the truth about everything. Was there some complication regarding the title to the house? Did that explain her hanging on to it over the years? Did she stay there now in the hope her son would contact her there and she'd lose that chance if she moved away? I made a note of it as just one of a number of things I'd have to check with Frank while deceiving Hilde. It wasn't going to be much fun.

Michael Simmonds, the solicitor, was a small man in his sixties who looked as if time was pecking away at him piece by piece—hair, body, voice. But his mind was sharp and his memory for events twenty-plus years ago was acute.