The blast rocked the old building to its foundations. The door between January and me and the outer office disintegrated and the glass flew back like shrapnel. January screamed and collapsed forward across the desk towards me. The crisp back and sleeves of his white shirt turned soggy red. I felt everything around me and inside me loosen and the roar seemed to block out all other sounds and all feeling.
I got out of the chair and moved forward by instinct. Incredibly, January was ahead of me feeling for the hole in the wall. We went through a cloud of billowing, acrid smoke and I heard people coughing and swearing. Flames licked along at floor level and then shot up to envelop the far wall.
‘Everybody out!’ January bellowed. ‘Forget the stuff, just get out. Trudi, where…?’
‘She’s okay,’ a man said. ‘Peter, Christ, your back…’ He collapsed into a fit of coughing and January crouched to lift him and push him forward.
I blundered around looking for people or bits of them. It seemed incredible that everyone could have survived the blast. The smoke was getting thicker and I realised I was holding my breath against it and the grit and dust. I couldn’t stay there much longer. January was coughing, trying to cover his mouth and doing the same as me, feeling with his hands and feet. I remembered that he’d served in Vietnam and had probably been in worse than this.
‘They’re all out,’ he gasped.
‘No.’ I felt something soft and still down by a desk near the shattered air conditioner. Blood from January’s back fell on me as he bent over and helped me to pick the body up. I got a solid grip and we staggered out of the room into the smoke-filled corridor. I was sobbing for breath, trying not to breathe the smoke in and wanting to cough my lungs up. January pulled at my sleeve to guide me to the stairs and the door to the street.
We burst out into the fresh air and I sucked it down in great gusts. Someone tried to take my burden from me and I fought them off, twisting my body and screaming. I couldn’t see anything through my tear-flooded eyes and all I could hear were shouts and breaking glass and then the wail of sirens.
January’s voice was close beside me, thin and harsh but still commanding. ‘Put her down, Cliff. Put her down.’
‘She was doing her work experience stint,’ January said. ‘She was 15 years old.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Lay off, I told you I’ll take the job.’ We were back in the office a week later. The bomb had been mostly noise with not much stopping power. It had stopped Alison Marshall, however, and it had put Peter January in the headlines.
‘That’s good, Cliff. Just tell me why you’re taking it and we can get down to business.’ January was in jeans and T-shirt helping with the clean-up. He’d moved back in as soon as the place was safe and made sure the photographers got some shots of him pitching in. But now he was working at it for real, with no photographers in sight. I didn’t understand him.
‘It’s specific now.’ I scooped a pile of ashes together and crushed them into a fine dark dust before they could float off again. ‘It’s murder, terrorism, and someone did it. Maybe I can help find out who.’
‘Hmm.’ January levered at the drawer of a warped filing cabinet. The papers had begun their coverage of the bombing with some shots of January supervising the care of the casualties-blood-drenched shirt and all. He looked brave and purposeful, which he was. ‘I still want you to sniff all around me. And I want you on hand. I have to go to America and…’
‘America!’
Trudi Bell, who was working at the other end of the office with a couple of other helpers, looked up at the sharp sound of my voice. She smiled at me and January waved at her.
‘That’s right. You’ve been there, haven’t you? You’re not banned or anything?’
‘I’ve been. I was hoping to take Helen the next time I went.’
‘Make it the time after next.’ He shoved some chairs around a desk and pushed back a couple of cardboard boxes filled with charred papers. ‘Let’s get a working space here. C’mon up, Trudi, you gorgeous thing, and we’ll have a talk.’
January seemed to realise that he was putting the death of Alison Marshall behind him a little too quickly. He sighed and flopped down into a chair as Trudi joined us. ‘That poor kid.’ He winced as his lacerated back came into contact with the chair. ‘You saw the parents, didn’t you, Trude?’
Trudi nodded and sat. I was too edgy to sit so I leaned against the smoke-stained wall. ‘I saw her mother. Made me glad not to be one.’
‘Bastards,’ January said.
‘Does that mean anything?’ I asked. ‘That plural?’
‘No. Judging from the kind of garbage I get in the mail it could’ve been anyone.’
‘That’s not quite true, Peter,’ Trudi said. ‘You can rule out some of the obviously harmless ones-the rues that want to organise petitions and such.’
‘I suppose so.’ January scratched at his back over his left shoulder. ‘Look, Trudi, Cliff’s coming in on this and he’s going to be around for a while. Security consultant.’ I could’ve sworn he enjoyed the sound of the words. ‘Could you fill him in? Take him through what you’ve got? I have to rush off.’
‘Sure.’ She reached into a big canvas and leather shoulder bag and extracted a thick manilla folder. ‘Hate mail,’ she said.
‘I thought it would’ve been destroyed by the bomb.’
January patted my shoulder as he swung off to leave. ‘Trudi took it home. Loves her work. See you both.’ He strode across the cracked and buckled floor nodding and grinning soberly to the workers. Trudi Bell’s eyes followed him to the door.
‘In his element,’ she said.
‘You don’t like him?’
She turned down the corners of her mouth. It was a wide, generous mouth set in an oval face. She had straight dark hair chopped off just below the ears. She was wearing a white overall with soft boots and a red neck scarf. I’d have called her well-covered rather than plump. ‘Don’t have to like him. I don’t even think about it. Compared to the other animals who could’ve got this seat he’s Bertrand Russell.’
I laughed. ‘Bit like Russell where the women are concerned too.’
‘Yes, well, you just have to keep saying no. My guess is he quits after a hundred.’
‘I’ll tell Helen.’
I noticed the thinly plucked eyebrows then which were oddly nice in her full face. She lifted them and opened her lazy dark eyes wide. ‘Is that your wife?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Tell me about the fan mail.’
A sound like a soft cheer went up from the workers. Trudi swung around in her chair. ‘What?’
A young man wearing overalls over his shirt and suit pants gave her a thumbs-up sign. ‘American stuff’s okay.’
‘I thought they’d found the booze,’ I said.
The young man came over and showed Trudi a file box that looked as if a few drops of water might have been spilled on it. ‘You know, it must’ve been rigged so as not really to do that much damage at all,’ he said. Then he remembered and blushed. Trudi took the box.
‘Thanks, Gary. When do the carpenters and painters get here?’
‘They’re late already.’
‘Okay. Take a break.’
I turned my head to look at the file box and wondered if I was cleared to open it. Trudi moved it away. ‘You seem to be in charge here,’ I said.
‘Sort of. Secretary, adviser, hand-holder…’
I looked around the damaged room. The bomb had been placed behind the portable air conditioner which was tucked away in a corner of the office. Alison Marshall had been using the top of it to collate some papers because she didn’t have enough desk space. I’d seen a lot of fires in my insurance investigator days; I guessed this one was electrical and probably an accident.
‘It doesn’t look as if it was meant to take you all out,’ I said.
‘The police have got stuff on that-charges and timers and so on. I heard Peter talking to them. I suppose you’d better too.’
‘They’re likely to tell me to go and do something rude to myself, unless it’s someone I know. D’you happen to know who Peter spoke to?’
She opened a notebook and I thought it was about time. I did the same. I poised a pen over a blank page‘.
‘Inspector Tobin,’ she said.
I drew a cross on the page. ‘One of the worst.’
‘One of the things I’ve been trying to do is match the mad letters to the issues Peter’s been most vocal on. I’ve also been singling out references to bombs and death.’
‘God, this must be heavy stuff. How long has January been getting poison pen letters?’
She laughed. ‘All his life probably. D’you know much about him?’
‘No, not much. Sydney law degree…’
‘Like me.’
‘Ah, you go back a way?’
‘I told you I thought it’d take a hundred no’s.’
‘Yeah. Well, he went to war when he probably didn’t have to…’
‘Like you.’
I realised two things then. One, that Trudi Bell was a very sharp woman who did her homework and remembered what she’d studied; two, that Peter January and I had more in common than I liked to admit. As Trudi told me more about him I felt the familiarity of it: working class background by a surf beach, public schools and an uneasy balance between sports and the books. We’d both studied law at university and then studied death-me in Malaya, January in Vietnam. But he’d gone on with the law and had risen meteorically while I’d…I tried to remember the term for it in one of the books Helen had left…plateaued, that was it, I’d plateaued early.
‘Are you listening?’ she said sharply.
‘Yeah, sure. Issues.’
‘He’s anti-nuclear, of course; anti-US bases…’
‘How’s he feel about smoking pot on the monorail?’
She grinned. ‘He’s against the monorail.’
The monorail was the big local issue-whether an above ground ‘people mover’ should run through the city to the Darling Harbour development. Most movers liked it, most people didn’t. I leaned forward and attempted my January imitation. “Trudi, Trudi, you’re avoiding the question.’
She laughed. ‘That came out more like Cary Grant.’
‘That’ll do,’ I said. ‘Okay, I’ve got what he’s against. I suppose we can throw in crime and corruption too. What about weekend trading?’
‘I don’t think you’re taking this seriously.’
‘I have trouble taking politicians seriously, it’s true. If January’s such a maverick how come he’s as high in the government councils as he is? What is he, a junior Minister?’
‘Without portfolio. It’s complicated. I think they needed someone to look like a genuine leftie somewhere along the line and Peter fitted the bill. They probably planned to dump him when things cooled off but he got attention, made these causes his…’
‘Turf?’
‘I was going to say fief.’
‘Ah, so your name is really Gertrude.’
‘No! I was never a Gertrude! Never! Stop joking.’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t take the political game seriously but the death of that kid’s a different matter. And I don’t like bombing. Don’t like it at all, not in Sydney.’
‘I think I begin to see what you’re on about. You want to keep Sydney the way it was?’
‘Is, no, was. Shit, I don’t know. I’d like to catch the bomber and show everyone what a miserable human being he is…’
‘Or she. You should see the mail.’
‘Him or her. We need a good example to show bombing isn’t glamorous.’
‘Mm, I think Peter would agree with that.’
‘I don’t care whether he does or not. Now, we know what he’s anti. What’s he pro?’
There was a crash behind us in the corridor as a load of timber hit the ground. A bald head came around the scorched door jamb. ‘January?’
‘Right,’ Trudi said.
A stocky man in khaki shirt and pants came into the office and looked around. ‘Jeez, this is a mess. Is he here, Mr January?’
Trudi shook her head and the man looked disappointed. ‘Pity. I wanted to shake his hand. Seen his picture in the paper. Bloody hero, that man. Got any drop sheets?’
Gary had come back into the office with a sandwich bag in his hand. ‘What?’ he said.
‘Drop sheets to cover all this stuff while we work. You’ll get dust in everything, otherwise.’
‘We’ll move what matters into the passage.’
‘No way. We’ll be tripping all over…’
Trudi touched my arm. ‘Let’s leave them to it and get something to eat. We’ll eat in the park-Peter’s pro parks and sunshine.’