Beware of the Dog by Peter Corris

Author:Peter Corris
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781743437971
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 1998-01-08T16:00:00+00:00

I drove straight through Mount Victoria and down to Katoomba before I felt like stopping. The visibility was bad, the road was slick and it took all my concentration to make the run safely. Good. I was in no fit state for letting my mind drift to other matters, to faces and movements and all the other half-collected impressions. Through my association with Helen Broadway, who read philosophy and Jungian psychology, I was aware of the rag-bag of memories and intuitions that make up our unconscious understanding of the world. I resisted them, always. I preferred to deal with the concrete and known—the facts, hidden and revealed, that defined the world in which work could be done, results achieved. I had a sense that I was moving beyond that world and it alarmed and disturbed me as such feelings always have.

I pulled into a shoppers’ car park off Katoomba Street and carefully unfolded the leather jacket. I slid the photograph out of the jacket pocket and opened it as delicately as if it was a three-hundred-year-old buried treasure map. The thick paper had lain inside the nylon lining of the pocket protected by several layers of leather. It was limp but not damp and the folded sections did not stick together. When I was sure it was intact I refolded it and headed for the Paragon Cafe which is the only eating place I know in Katoomba, apart from the pubs. I wanted to sit somewhere quiet, drink coffee and try to sort out the disturbing images that were flitting around in my brain.

The Paragon was dark and the lunch crowd had gone. Seeing the empty seats and booths and the tables with evidence of meals consumed reminded me that I hadn’t eaten. I was suddenly hungry and it was the first time I’d felt that way since I’d woken up in the hospital. I decided it was a good sign and ordered orange juice, a club sandwich, apple pie and a pot of coffee. I downed the orange juice in a couple of gulps and lowered the plunger in the coffee pot. Good coffee. Two sips and I unfolded the picture again and spread it out on the table.

I had never studied the photograph carefully and what I was looking at now was very different from my memory of it. The face was clearer and the features more distinct. Whereas before it had seemed otherworldly, a shot taken through a screen of some kind, now it looked lifelike and immediate. Perhaps that was because I was in no doubt as to who was the subject of the picture. Unmistakable. Same incipient widow’s peak, strong chin, deep-set eyes. I was looking at a photograph of the late Mr Patrick Lamberte.

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