Choices. Jeff Edwards

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СКАЧАТЬ became the extra add-on to an already unshakable friendship. Having known one another all their lives Rick and Sam were more like twin brothers than mates. Sometimes they seemed to know instinctively what the other one was thinking.

      Not that they were alike in any physical way. Rick was a bull of a man who nowadays sported a wild beard and long hair, while Sam was short and slim, clean-shaven as we had been in the army with close cropped hair. I tended to be somewhere in the middle in all respects.

      The other major factor that defined their relationship were their constant arguments. If a topic of conversation were to crop up that did not directly relate to their own or their family’s wellbeing then a heated debate would ensue.

      Polite discussion of general events would always lead to polarisation, with Sam adopting one viewpoint and Rick the diametrically opposing one, no matter what the topic. I was always left trying vainly to defend the middle ground with both my friends demanding that I adopt their viewpoint.

      Once, I thought I had made a breakthrough and convinced one of them that their friend’s argument was correct on this particular occasion, only to have the other immediately reverse his attitude and argue from the opposite standpoint. I realised at that moment then that I could never win, and ever since had allowed them to espouse whatever side of an argument they wished, joining in only when specifically invited.

      * * *

      After a long hot shower I felt much better and returned to the kitchen.

      ‘When did you arrive?’ I asked.

      ‘Sandy rang us up as soon as you left,’ replied Rick.

      ‘And we started to hear about you on the radio on the way down,’ added Sam.

      ‘What were they saying?’ I asked.

      Sandy was standing at the sink preparing a meal. She disappeared into the lounge room and returned with a paper which she placed before me. It was opened to the third page where an article appeared beneath a headline blaring the words ‘SPIES IN THE RANKS’, and going on to state that a certain Daniel Travers had been uncovered as a suspected ASIO agent by the ICAC, and that he had been working in the New South Wales Police Force. I had supposedly been supplying the spy organisation with confidential information from the police’s computer. It went on to add that the spy’s conduit appeared to be a well-known private investigator by the name of Liam Ryan, and that Ryan had confirmed under oath that he had been dealing with me, but denying emphatically that he and his company had dealings with ASIO.

      ‘The media don’t know what to make of the whole thing,’ said Rick. ‘That’s why they’ve been sitting around waiting for you to get home.’

      ‘I’m surprised that they aren’t knocking on the door,’ I commented.

      Sandy commented dryly, ‘They’ve been ringing the phone constantly. I’ve had to take it off the hook and leave it off. Sammy let me use his mobile to ring Mum and Dad, otherwise they would have been down here as well. Your message bank is probably full of calls as well.’

      ‘It was when I checked it.’

      ‘The only reason that they’re keeping their distance out there is because Rick “removed” a couple of them from the front porch by force.’

      Sandy came over and stood behind my chair, placing her hands on my shoulders. ‘Now we have all that out of the way I think it’s time for you to tell us how you came to be in such a mess.’

      I took a long swig at my beer before beginning. I didn’t know exactly where to start, so I began as far back as I could. ‘You know I was a bit tight with my money when I was in the army?’

      ‘Tight?’ laughed Rick. ‘You even tried to get us to contribute toward the cost of the surfing magazines you had sent over to you.’

      ‘Yeah, well anyway, with our overseas allowances and the rest, by the time we decided not to re-enlist I had a fair nest egg stashed away in the bank. It was the money I had set aside for our overseas surfing trips each year.’

      ‘I always knew you didn’t earn too much as a public servant. Rick and I always had our little cash jobs on the side that the tax-man didn’t know about so we were fine. We wondered how you managed to find your share of the expenses.’

      ‘Well that’s where, except running this place was getting to be more and more expensive over the years, and more and more often I was having to dip into my “cunning kick” to get the regular day-to-day bills paid.’

      ‘You should have told me!’ exclaimed Sandy. ‘I could have helped out. I could have gotten a job.’

      ‘At that time Brook was still a baby, and you were pregnant with Josh,’ I explained, ‘besides, it would only have meant that I couldn’t go on the trips anymore.’

      ‘So what happened?’ asked Rick.

      ‘My boss, Peter Clarke, decided to retire to the Gold Coast, and I applied for his job. I thought the increased pay might help, but the pay scale was so small that it barely made any difference at all.

      ‘Then when he had finished teaching me his job and was just about to leave for good, he invited me to the pub. “I have someone I think you’d like to meet,” he told me.

      ‘Over lunch that day, surrounded by I don’t know how many other people from the police, I was introduced to Liam Ryan.

      ‘Peter Clarke pointed him out to me when he walked in, and I saw him greet a few of the other officers in the room before he sat down at our table.

      ‘Over a steak and a beer, Peter explained that he and Liam Ryan had had a “working relationship” for some time, and asked me if I would be interested in continuing it. I was totally shocked when Peter explained what Liam wanted from me, and I wanted to get out of there and leave the two men to their dirty deeds.

      ‘Peter Clarke could see what I was thinking and asked, “Do you believe that everyone should be able to have a fair trial?”

      ‘“Of course,” I said.

      “‘Well, what happens if you have a matter before the court and it takes a few years to be heard? That happens in a lot of both civil and criminal cases. By the time you’re ready half your witnesses have moved house and you don’t know where they went. Without the witnesses your case will fail, and you won’t get fair hearing that you should be entitled to, so your solicitor has to try to find the missing witnesses on your behalf, and hires Liam here to do that work. Now Liam can do a lot of legwork and run up a large bill to try and find your witnesses, or he can come to someone like me and spend a little bit to find out exactly the same thing.”

      “‘But you can’t do it! It’s wrong!”

      “‘If it were a criminal case and one of their witnesses went missing, the police would use their computer to find the necessary information so what’s the difference? We’re only trying to give people the chance to a fair hearing.”

      If I hadn’t had an unpaid phone bill in my pocket at that very moment, I might have said no to his proposal, but I convinced myself that I only had to do it for a short time till our finances picked up again and then I would tell Liam to go away and find someone else to do his dirty work.’

      ‘But СКАЧАТЬ