The Undertow by Peter Corris

like me—and settled down with the article and the last of the red we’d had with dinner. If Lil was having difficulty getting the MFP story up and running, she’d had no trouble with this one. She captured the rapacious, unscrupulous character of the doctors who did plastic surgery on the cheap and without proper referrals or investigation of the backgrounds of their ‘clients’.
    Their usual habit was to get people going under the knife to sign waivers exempting the surgeons from responsibility for outcomes. It was amazing how many desperate people –some young and seeking to change their fortunes, some older, trying to recapture their youth—were prepared to do this. Lil implied that some of the surgery was to change appearance to avoid arrest, or re-arrest. No names, no pack drill, but at least one of the dodgy doctors had been tied in with a passport-forging enterprise that had gone wrong and put all parties behind bars. The doctor in question, who carried the nickname ‘the cutter’, had received the lightest sentence for his cooperation with the authorities, but he hadn’t survived six months inside the gaol.
    Lil finished working and came down the stairs yawning. She leaned over me as I jotted down some notes illegible to anyone else, and sometimes to me.
    â€˜It’s a great piece,’ I said. ‘Should’ve got a Walkley.’
    â€˜That’s my ambition. What d’you think I’m hanging around with you for?’
    Time was when Newport was fairly unfashionable and fairly affordable. Not now. Never mind that salt air rusts the guttering and zaps the computers, Sydney people want to be as close to the water as they can. Plenty of money had been spent in Newport since I’d last been there. The old houses had just about disappeared to make way for apartment blocks and the ones that had survived had been renovated and modified so that their original owners wouldn’t have known them.
    The Workers Club was at the south end of Newport beach with a view straight out over the Tasman Sea or the Pacific Ocean, take your pick. I’d stopped in Dee Why to pick up the brandy. I don’t drink the stuff unless there’s nothing else around, and don’t know one brand from another. Hennessy appealed to my Irish ancestry.
    The club building had undergone change like everything else around, and not necessarily for the better. It had that generic look of polished metal and glass, potted plants and photographs of club officials with chins spilling down towards their tie knots. In my slip-ons, clean jeans, blue shirt and blazer, I passed the dress regulations comfortably. The club was affiliated with almost every other club in the state, so my Balmain membership got me full privileges, whatever they were.
    The addicts were feeding the pokies, the alkies were nursing their drinks, and the old surfers were staring out at the rolling waves. The thing about Sydney beaches is that they have a way of looking good whatever the weather. This Monday morning was one that might go this way or that as it developed. There was a mild southerly, good waves, but dark cloud building.
    I was early, a chronic habit. I bought a middy of light and sat at a table where I could see the entrance and keep an eye on the water. I’d surfed here myself in days gone by, but preferred the southern beaches.
    He came in at eleven-twenty. Lil’s description had been accurate and he was easy to spot. After climbing the few steps he was out of breath and clutched the metal handrail as a spasm of coughing seized him. He survived it and lit a cigarette the instant it passed.
    He wore a tweed jacket that had seen much better days and he took it off slowly as he looked around. I stood and he moved towards me, folding his coat over his arm in an oddly old-world gesture. He was dressed in a grey pullover, cream shirt and grey slacks, the jumper and pants streaked with cigarette ash.
    He