by Peter Corris
I started cleaning up in a haphazard fashion and my mind ran on the obvious track until I came across two sound cassettes that had had their tapes drawn out and cut and my three video cassettes that had been pulverised by a hammer. I mused on taped telephone voices and film of a man driving away in a car. Secret service, undercover stuff. I left the mess and made instant coffee as an aid to thought.
He wouldn’t tape his instructions, film the pick-up and use the material to put pressure on the firm, would he? Then I remembered the conversation Erica Fong and I had had about Mountain and I grabbed the phone which my visitors had left intact. There was no answer at Mountain’s number or at the one listed for E. Fong in Bondi Junction. Centennial Park, who are they kidding? The phone book tells it like it is. I stood in the mess and heard the phone ring ten times. Maybe she’d taken Max for a walk in the park and had got into a deep and meaningful with Patrick White.
I hung up wishing for about the hundredth time that I could be dealt out of this game. I didn’t like my cards and I didn’t like Mountain. Erica would be better off without him. Maybe I could tackle the job for Terry Reeves in another way. Then I saw something on the floor I hadn’t seen before. Helen had given me a copy of The Macquarie Dictionary to resolve our frequent disputes about spellings and pronunciations. The book had been dismembered; pages had been torn out and crumpled and the covers had been ripped from the broken binding. That made it more personal.
I kept ringing Erica as I finished tidying up and throwing things away. I told myself the place had been getting too cluttered anyway. Force of habit took me out to the letterbox which is hidden in a place in a hedge by the front gate known only to the postman and me. I took the priority-paid envelope out and went back into the house, wondering if the ransackers had found the miniature bottles of Jameson’s Irish whisky Cy Sackville had given me, souvenir of a legal conference in Dublin. They hadn’t; the little bottles nestled behind the biscuit tin that hadn’t had any biscuits in it since Hilde left. I got the foil top off and poured the small measure over a couple of ice cubes and silently toasted my Irish ancestors.
The writing on the envelope was unfamiliar. I thumb-nailed it open and took out a couple of photocopy pages and a sheet of tinted, lined notepaper. In a round, young hand Erica Fong had written:
Dear Cliff,
I’ve gone to Nice to try to find him. I got the postcard two days ago. I looked through the house very thoroughly but all I could find was some notes about seeing a psychiatrist. I enclose copy of the postcard and the notes and I’ll get in touch as soon as I find anything out. regards,
Erica F.
Mountain’s two quarto pages of single-spaced notes were perhaps unique in psychological literature. They took the form of an account of the analytical session from the patient’s point of view and included phrases like, ‘Dr Holmes appeared ill at ease’ and ‘Holmes has built a house of fantasy upon foundations of illusion.’ I put the notes aside for closer study later and picked up the other sheets which were copies of both sides of a postcard.
The picture showed a large city square at night. The roads were busy and the pavement cafes were thronged. On a building more or less centred in the picture, the words ‘Hotel des Anges’ were mounted in neon. The card was undated and addressed to Erica Fong. It read:
Dearest Fong,
I am here to check a few people out, including myself. I haven’t had a drink for more than a week and the world’s not as I thought it was — much worse.
A bientot, my dear little sloppy, B.
The ‘B’ was written in the large sloping hand of the notes, but the message on the card was typewritten. I took the photocopied page across to a lamp and studied it under light. There was a slight line around the text that didn’t seem to be part of the card. Conclusion: the message had been typed on a piece of paper which had been stuck onto the card. I didn’t have the faintest idea what this piece of deduction meant, but I was pleased to have worked something out. I was also glad that Erica Fong wasn’t hanging around Sydney somewhere to be visited by people with hammers looking for tapes and films.
I sipped the Jameson’s and tried to recall what I knew about Nice. Not much. Gary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief; Graham Greene wrote about a corrupt mayor; nice beach, they say, and someone named a biscuit after the place. I hadn’t eaten for some hours and I was feeling the effects of the Jameson’s just a little; that was alright with me. I opened the other bottle to feel the effects some more; there’s more in those titchy bottles than you think. What else did I have to do? I was sitting in my ransacked house waiting for a Chinese girl to tell me what she’d found out in Nice. Bizarre, Hardy, I thought. Bizarre. Then the phone rang.
‘Cliff Jameson,’ I said.
‘Oh, God, Cliff. It’s Helen. Are you drunk?’
‘No.’
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘What do you mean, nowhere? I’ve been phoning for a day.’
‘I mean nowhere-I went to Melbourne.’
‘Oh, sorry. Are you alright? I’ve been missing you.’
‘Me too. You, I mean. D’you like polygamy?’
There was a pause and then her voice contained a note of caution. ‘It’s all right, it’s better than celibacy. You’re not being celibate, are you?’
I grunted. ‘It’s been a funny day. I’ve won a fight and now I have to clean up my house.’
‘I’m glad you won the fight. Well, I just wanted to hear your voice. I’m fine of course, thanks for asking.’
‘I’m sorry, love. I’m in the middle of a shitty case. I can’t see the tunnel, let alone the bloody light. Have you ever been to Nice?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nice?’
‘Don’t. That joke is prehistoric. Yes, it’s great-good beach, you’d love it. Are we going?’
‘Maybe. You know a big square there, lots of traffic?’
‘Place Massena it sounds like. What’s all this about?’
‘I wish I knew. How’s the farm and the radio station and the winery and the daughter?’
‘Don’t be bitchy, Cliff. I can’t help it if your life’s an empty shell without me.’
‘I miss you, that’s all. First month’s the worst. By the fifth month Helen’ll be just something to go with Troy.’
‘Huh. What’ve you been reading?’
‘The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People.’
‘I’ve read that. Who d’you like best?’
‘Bertrand Russell.’
‘Why?’
‘I like him best at everything. Who’s yours?’
‘Guess.’
I guessed and didn’t get it right and we laughed. It went on like that for a while until she was so real to me again that I felt I could reach out and touch her. It was a good feeling. I had nothing but good feelings about Helen Broadway. I wondered how good old Mike and the kid would feel about a three month rotation.
13
I spent the rest of the afternoon re-stocking the fridge with fluids and solids. I bought some glasses and coffee mugs to replace the broken ones. I scotch-taped some books together and tidied up papers. The cat came home, got fed and went off again. I was moping and I knew it. I sat down with a pen and pad and some wine and tried to do some constructive thinking.
The results didn’t justify the amount of wine consumed. My brain felt slow and tired as if something connected with the Bill Mountain affair impeded its proper engagement. My thoughts kept drifting off onto other subjects, like Nice, the Melbourne gymnasium, Helen Broadway’s nose. In the end, after writing down the names of all the people so far involved and connecting some of them with arrows and covering a lot of paper with question marks, I gave it up. I decided to sleep on it, which sometimes brings results.
In the morning I had my results. Three thoughts had taken form: one, I could locate Mountain’s psychiatrist, Dr Holmes, and pump him; two, I could ask around about the men who’d attacked me in the
car park and try to find out who they worked for; three, I needed to find a spa and sauna in Sydney-beating two men in unarmed combat had made me a convert.
Dr John Holmes’ rooms in Woollahra were in a road that seemed to be shooting for the ‘most leafy stretch in Sydney’ award. It was all high brick fences with overhanging trees; trees along the footpath, trees on a central strip dividing the wide road, trees waving up around the tops of the lofty houses. It cost big money to get a lot of leaves to rake in this neighbourhood, and Holmes had to be coining it-his brick fence was one of the highest and his trees were among the leafiest.
I parked outside Holmes’ place under a plane tree and reflected on how very differently people go about their business. I was here two days after I’d had the idea to come. Me, you can just ring up, and like as not you can come over and see me or I’ll come to you. Or, if you happen to be in St Peter’s Lane, you can walk through the tattoo parlour, romp up the stairs and knock on the door. Not so with Dr Holmes. I’d been given fifteen minutes. There were no free evenings, no lunches, no half-hour before the busy day began. It sounded obsessive to me. I imagined a pale, pudgy creature, eyes luminously intelligent with legs ready to drop off from disuse.
I pushed open the iron gate in the high fence and walked up the leaf-strewn path to the front door. The house was a wide, towering affair, built of sandstone blocks one size down from those used in the pyramids at Giza. It had gracious lines-bay windows, and a wide, bull-nosed verandah over an ornately tiled surface that swept away around both sides of the house.
The doorbell was answered by a tall, slim woman wearing a white silk shirt and jodhpurs. She had a mane of blonde hair and high, expensive-looking cheekbones. Her blue eyes were elaborately made up with long dark lashes that fluttered like car yard bunting.
‘Mr…?’ she said.
‘Hardy.’
‘Oh good-I think he’s ready to see you. I’m going riding.’
‘Not yachting?’
‘A joke. I don’t like jokes. D’you think I look right?’
She backed off; I stepped after her into an entrance hall big enough to canter horses in. She rotated slowly in front of a three metre square mirror.
‘Umm,’ she said. She seemed to have forgotten who I was, in the ecstasy of self-admiration.
‘Hardy. To see Dr Holmes.’
Oh, yes. You go up the stairs and it’s the first door on I he right or left. I can never remember which but you’ll be all right because there aren’t any doors on the side it’s not on. ‘kay?’
‘’kay,’ I said.’
I went up a few stairs and turned back to look at her. She was standing by the door peering out through the peep hole.
The stairs were covered in deep blue carpet and the banister rail was polished, old and grooved and a pleasure to lay your hand on. Like all the best staircases it had two flights with a flat central section at the turn-on these it was about the size of a boxing ring. The door was on the right if you were going up but on the left if you were going down-perhaps that was what had confused the lady in the jodhpurs. I knocked on the door and went inside when a deep, pulsating voice told me to.
The man standing behind the big desk was forty plus, six feet tall with bushy dark hair and a fairways and nineteenth hole complexion. His bulky, still spreading body, displayed in a blue and white striped shirt and grey trousers, owed more to the nineteenth hole than the fairways. He reached across the desk and we shook somewhere in the middle of the vast polished expanse. Strong grip.
‘Sit down, Mr Hardy, I can’t give you long.’
I thought he stressed give the way a man who charges a fortune by the hour might, but I could have been wrong. ‘This won’t take long. Doctor.’ I’d noticed the leather couch as soon as I entered the room but I was careful to avoid even touching it. I sat in a matching leather chair. The chair seemed to have been made exactly for the comfort of my often-stressed back. It immediately relaxed me which made me immediately wary.
He picked up a pencil. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Hardy?’
His voice was one of the best I’ve heard, rich and rewarding. If this voice gave you the news that you were dying of cancer it wouldn’t feel so bad.
‘I gather you haven’t come to see me in my professional capacity.’
‘No, more in mine, although I guess that’s semi-professional.’
He smiled showing the strong white teeth I’d have expected. ‘You’re defensive.’ He looked down at a note pad and touched it with his pencil. ‘A private enquiry agent. Interesting activity?’
‘Occasionally. Your professional path has crossed with my defensive semi-professional one-you have a patient named William Mountain.’
He nodded; on his scale of fees that was probably a ten dollar nod. It forced me to go on.
‘I need some information about him.’
A shake of the head-another ten bucks.
‘Or at least your opinion.’
‘I can’t discuss my patients with you, Mr Hardy. How could I? This is the most confidential branch of the medical profession as you must be aware.’
‘I doubt that it’s more confidential than mine though. Maybe it is. Let’s see. Maybe we can trade confidences.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘I leaned forward from the too-comfortable chair across the table. The table had a beautiful surface and some padding around its edges, like the good doctor. ‘A few days ago William Mountain beat a man to death using, among other things, a bottle. This is known to me and a very few other people. It is not known to the police. Can you get more confidential than that?’
His big, fleshy lips pursed and he ran a broad, capable-looking hand through his bushy hair. ‘Are you sure of that?’
‘Are you surprised?’
‘Not really.’
‘Well, that tells me something. You think he’s a dangerous man?’
‘You can’t outfox me, Mr Hardy. I’m not going to confirm your guesses.’
‘Look, I’m not here to play word games. I’m trying to find this man. He’s in bad trouble and he needs help. His girlfriend wants to help him. I’m more concerned about other things, but I’ve seen some of the harm he’s done and I don’t only mean physical harm.’
That got a lifted eyebrow. No charge.
I think it’s better that he doesn’t do any more harm. There are two paths ahead of him-one leads to court and the other to the crematorium. Believe me. Either way you’re going to be called to talk to the authorities. If he gets a bullet in the head, it could be your fault for not talking to me now.’
‘You’re persuasive, Mr Hardy.’
I’m trying to be. I’m also telling you the truth.’
‘I believe you might be. Who would kill Mountain?’
‘Criminals, obviously.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s involved in something big and dirty. He’s being foolish. He’s threatening people who don’t know about turning cheeks.’
‘It doesn’t surprise me.’ He leaned back in his chair and then came abruptly forward. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘They’re your lungs.’
He got a long thin cigar out of a drawer, unwrapped it and lit. it with a gold lighter. The smoke went down into his barrel chest and came out in a thin hard stream that floated up towards the extravagant ceiling rose. With the cigar in his hand and framed against a big window that ran from knee height almost to the ceiling, he looked like a wrestler on his day off.
‘William Mountain is a very disturbed man. It’s hard to give a name to his central problem. You could call it an identity crisis but it would take a very broad definition of the word “identity” for that to cover it.’
‘Can you predict a likely outcome?’
‘To what?’
I gave him a summary of Mountain’s movements and actions; he drew on his cigar and listened patiently. I held back on the notes Mountain had kept on his sessions with Holmes, because I thought of that as a card I c
ould play if I needed to. When I finished he sat quietly and puffed smoke. I assumed he was thinking, and God knows what his rate was for that. I let my eyes travel around the room taking in the bookcases with the glass fronts, the slimline electric typewriter on the desk and the Impressionist paintings on the walls. He stubbed out the cigar in an ashtray which he put back in the drawer he’d taken the cigar from.
‘It’s very difficult,’ he said melodiously. ‘I wish I could talk to him.’
‘Me too. Is he a likely suicide?’
He spread his hands non-committally.
‘What would you be advising him to do if he was here now?’
‘I don’t advise. I listen.’
‘Jesus, you’re doing pretty well out of listening.’
‘Don’t be offensive.’
For no good reason I looked again at the elegant typewriter on Holmes’ desk. I was letting my mind run free on the subject of Mountain, who had no doubt lain on the couch a few feet away and told Holmes a lot of things, some of them things it could be useful to know. I wondered if Holmes typed up his notes and where he kept them. Holmes followed my gaze. He looked impatiently at his watch.
‘Mr Hardy…’
I got up and took a closer look at the typewriter. It had a sheet in it with a couple of lines of typed verse about a red knight and blue blood that didn’t mean a thing to me. The typeface looked very similar to that on Bill Mountain’s postcard.
‘This is a super-portable, isn’t it-for travelling?’
Holmes sighed. ‘Yes.’
