by Peter Corris
I drove badly, shaken myself by thoughts of desperate fathers, lovers and friends. Sometimes it seemed that my work threw me in at the deep end with all the floundering lovers and haters and left me to thrash around, trying to save a few of them, and myself. I realised that I was tired and not thinking anything useful. I occupied myself for the rest of the drive with impressions of Glen Withers—her smell and the texture of her skin, how it had felt as our bodies slapped together. That kept me occupied for the rest of the way to Glebe. I went into the house warmed by the recollections and looking forward to ringing her. The cat wasn’t around, there was no mail, nothing to distract me. I took out my notebook, stripped off my jacket and threw it in the direction of the hooks on the wall under the stairs. Sometimes I hit, sometimes I don’t. This time I missed. There was a dull thump and I remembered that I’d put my pistol in the pocket of the jacket as I left the car. Sloppy. I went to the phone. There was one message on the answering machine. I pushed play as I opened the notebook to look for Glen’s number.
My voice delivered the message, the beep sounded and then Helen’s voice came through: ‘Cliff. Helen. I’m sorry for the way I left it when we spoke. Give me a call, hey? I’d like to hear from you and the latest on the Jacobs case. Hope you’re having fun.’
I was reaching for the phone when a punch landed in the region of my kidneys and a kick collapsed my right knee. I went down and a voice said, ‘Fun’s over, Cliff.’
18
It’s strange the way physical attack affects you. Sometimes you just go under, recognising superior force and hoping to fight another day. Or you kick back against the same odds and take a bad beating. Other times, training, anger, desperation or something else cut in and you can’t be stopped. I was tired, stressed, in a confused state of sexual excitement and not ready to lie down for anyone. I came back up off the floor, ricked knee and all, and threw myself against Ralph Jacobs as if I wanted to hammer him through the wall.
I hit him hard and low in his softening gut. There was a whoosh as the air went out of him and I hit him again, higher, wilder, hurting my hand against bone. I yelled and used the pain and the momentum I had to butt him, elbow him, bring my knee up, all in a sequence that would have delighted Sergeant O’Malley. Ralph had no answer. He staggered back, bleeding and defensive and I hacked his feet out from under him with a sweep that brought him down. I fell over myself as the knee gave out. This might have spoiled the effect except that I landed near where my jacket lay on the floor. I realised then that I hadn’t just missed the pegs—I’d hit Ralph as he waited under the stairs. So what? I pulled the Smith & Wesson out of the pocket and jammed it up into the blood flowing from Ralph’s nose.
‘You’re wrong, Ralphie,’ I said, ‘the fun’s just beginning. See these?’ I touched the cuts on my face. ‘Your boy with the crowbar gave them to me.’ I jiggled the gun. ‘How about I work you over a bit with this by way of return?’
Ralph’s first expression had more of surprise than anything else. I don’t suppose the Wrecker had lost many one-on-ones over the years. But now fear was showing in his fleshy, well-tended face. Blood was dripping onto his shirt and the fancy cream cotton jacket and the pressure I was keeping on the gun was hurting his nose cartilage. It was also stopping him from speaking so I eased off a little.
‘Do I call the police and charge you with break and enter and assault, or do we talk?’
He ground out one word. ‘Talk.’
I gave him a light shove as I took the gun out of his face and edged away from him in a half-crouch. ‘Okay. I haven’t shot anyone in my own house in years. It’s messy afterwards and I don’t like cleaning up. But I’ll do it if you give me any trouble. Get over there and sit down.’
I motioned him to a chair in the corner of the room. He dragged himself a metre or so and then seemed to regain enough self-respect to straighten up and complete the trip in an almost normal posture. He was still shaky though, and glad to sit down. I wasn’t in much better shape myself. I made it to another chair without actually hobbling, but the back of my leg hurt like hell and I was sore where the kidney punch had landed.
I rubbed the sore spot. ‘You better hope I don’t piss blood, Ralph. I get very angry when someone causes me to piss blood. Now what the hell’s this all about?’
He wiped his face with the back of his hand, saw the blood and dug in the pocket of his jacket for a handkerchief. He found one, but got a lot of gore on the jacket. ‘I spoke to Mum on the phone today. She said you got Dad all upset. He’s very sick. I warned you to keep off.’
‘Did she tell you she’d hired me to go on looking into Oscar Bach’s death?’
‘No. I …’
‘Sounds like you did more talking than listening. Your nose is bleeding again.’
He lifted the handkerchief. I flexed my leg and put the gun down on the floor beside the chair. We were both crocks, too old for this game. ‘I should’ve brought someone with me,’ he growled.
‘How’d you know I’d be coming here?’
‘Kept tabs on you all day. You saw the Toyota but I had another car pick you up after that. What’ve you been doing down south? Anything to do with my old man?’
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘You’ve been following me all day? Reporting in by car phone, that sort of thing?’ He nodded and some more blood flowed.
‘Why?’
‘I do a bit of that as a sort of sideline. Favours for people. I put a man on you to give him some practice.’
‘Shit, Ralph, you’ve got some nasty habits. Let me tell you what’s going on.’
I told him in some detail, partly to straighten things out for myself, partly because I wanted him off my back, once and for all. He listened, nodding occasionally. I left out the names although they were clear enough in my mind—Gina Costi, Renato ‘Ronny’ Costi, Mark Roper, Angela Fanfani. I finished and he didn’t say anything.
‘Family man, are you?’ I said.
‘Two boys, two girls.’
‘How does it grab you, then?’
‘I knew that Oscar was creepy. Only met him once, but I knew. I can’t understand how Dad got taken in by him.’
‘You’ve got too simple a view of human nature, Ralph. I’ve known some real nice blokes who liked doing very nasty things when the mood was on them.’
‘And Mum wants you to find out who did him? You’ll tell Dad and everything’ll be okay?’
‘What d’you reckon?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It’s beyond me. I never thought our family’d get involved in anything like this.’
I suppose it was then that I warmed a bit towards Ralph Jacobs. He came clean with me, admitted that he was a bit strapped for cash and had been hoping to put the bite on his father. He didn’t want anyone siphoning off the loot, like a private detective who might bleed the old man for months or even blackmail him. He said the crowbar kid had exceeded his orders which, given the kidney punch and the knee kick, I doubted. But Ralph wasn’t a happy man. I could sense that he was under pressure—business or personal, or both.
‘Your mother’s holding things together up there,’ I said. ‘I think she could use a bit of help.’
He nodded. ‘Never seem to find the time. I’ll try. You reckon you know who it was, this wog?’
‘Show a bit of class, Wrecker,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you ever meet an Italian who could run the bloody legs off you?’
He grinned. ‘Yeah, yeah, sure I did. And tackle, too. Okay, this Italian.’
‘I’ve got an idea. But I’m going to have to go carefully.’
‘Maybe I could help.’
I sighed. ‘Ralph, I’ve got the man down south ready and willing to help. He’s a builder. I fancy he could swing a few cement mixers my way. You’ve got friends with Toyotas and car phones and iron bars …’
‘I said he was out of line. I’ll talk to him.’
‘Don’t bother. If I ever see him again without the crowbar we’ll have a chat. My point is,
I’m working with the police on this and …’
Ralph’s grin was a bit lopsided and all the more salacious for that. ‘Yeah, Senior Sergeant Withers. She’s a goer, I’m told.’
That’s when I told him to piss off. He’d recovered a lot of his aplomb by this time. He stood up, took a card from his pocket and set it down on the chair. ‘You can reach me,’ he said. ‘And, Hardy, the locks on this place are lousy. Yours took me about thirty seconds and I’m no expert.’
I said, ‘You see anything worth stealing?’ But he was gone.
When I got out of the chair the pain really hit me. My back felt as if it was on fire and the knee was going to need strapping. I staggered to the toilet but there was no blood. Lucky for Ralph. The bath is old and stained but it’s deep and I can submerge myself in it up to the shoulders. That’s what I did, in water as hot as I could stand it and with a couple of inches of scotch to hand. I breathed in the steam and tried to think open pores, get ye hence toxins, circulate blood, heal wounds. When the water cooled I let some out and ran in some more hot. I was probably in there an hour and felt better at the end of it, although whether it was the bath, the healing thoughts or the scotch that did the trick was hard to say.
I decided that it was the scotch and had some more. A few painkillers didn’t seem like a bad idea either and after that my bed felt like a cloud. I drifted off into a doped sleep. The cat scratched at the balcony window and I laughed at it. The phone rang and I ignored it. I dreamed I was young again and running to catch a Bondi tram. I’d almost got my hand on the rail when the strength left my legs and the tram pulled away and I stood in the middle of the tracks watching it go.
19
There wasn’t much of the morning left when I woke up and what there was of it was pretty nasty. The storm of last night must have moved out to sea and come back again, bigger and better. The sky was dark and the wind and rain were lashing at the trees that overgrow my balcony. I struggled out of bed, pulled on a tracksuit and went downstairs to make coffee and see if the cat had survived the night. It had, of course. The house is even more vulnerable than Ralph Jacobs thought. The cat had found a way in through a broken section of fibro in the bathroom wall. It was curled up asleep close to the hot water service. Smart cat.
With the coffee came normalcy. Which is to say, confusion. I had enquiries to make in Newcastle and a source of official help—Glen Withers, who by now might have found out other things herself. Then there was Horrie and May and Ralph and Antonio, all expecting things of me and likely to be disappointed. I could have done with some sunshine but the sky stayed dark even though the rain and wind eased a little. I saw myself driving north on the fairly new steel-belted radials. And then what? I reached for the phone to call Glen and saw that the message light wasn’t blinking. I must have hit the reset button by accident when Ralph hit me, deliberately. Through the fog of the encounter with Ralph and the drugged sleep, I tried to remember Helen’s message. ‘Call me, hey?’ was as much as I could recall. Welcoming. More confusion.
I dialled Glen’s work number and waited an age before the phone was picked up. Male voice. ‘Sergeant Withers’ phone.’
‘I’m calling from Sydney. Is Sergeant Withers around?’
‘What is it in connection with, sir?’
‘I’m not at liberty to say.’
‘Sergeant Withers is in a meeting. Can I get her to call you back?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Tell her I’m on my way to Newcastle and that I’ll call her when I arrive.’
His tone changed from the one he used for the innocent public to the one for the villains and fizzgigs. ‘What name?’
‘Write this down,’ I said. ‘Oscar Jacob Dudley Schmidt.’
‘Would you care to spell that?’
I hung up and went off to shave and to locate some clean clothes. A little of Ralph’s blood had got on the shirt and trousers I’d been wearing yesterday. I felt some satisfaction when I saw it. I was getting a little tired of being pushed around, threatened and offered blandishments. I felt like doing some pushing back and a Newcastle lair bikie seemed as good a subject as any. I knew it was all displaced sexual energy working, but what the hell? You have to do something with it.
It was hard to believe I’d been getting sunburned on Redhead Beach a few days before. The rain lashed down all the way up the North Shore and for most of the way to Gosford. I drove carefully but impatiently. I tried the radio but the ABC annoyed me—I felt I’d heard all the talk and opinions and recipes for improvement a hundred times before—and the commercial stations made me want to be on a desert island where no radio wave could ever reach. Plus my back ached. I broke a rule of some years’ standing and had a swig of rum at 10.30 a.m. My old Mum always said I’d join her in the other place—in Nick’s pub, most likely.
The weather cleared after Gosford and by Wyong the sun was making the road steam and I was hot inside my shirt and denim jacket. Impossible to please. I shrugged out of the jacket as I drove and lost a little control, to the justified annoyance of a truckie, who tooted me and gave me the finger as he streamed past.
I diverged off the freeway at the Newcastle sign and hadn’t gone more than a half kilometre before the motor cycle cop picked me up. I checked the speedo and swore. I’d been a fraction over the speed limit, encouraged by the dry road with no traffic on it. I slowed as he hit the siren and roared up beside me, making a macho ‘pull over’ sign with his black-gloved hand. I sometimes have a problem with authority when it’s wearing black leather boots, but sanity prevailed. I slowed down and pulled over like a good, solid citizen.
The cop’s boots crunched on the gravel. ‘May I see your licence, sir?’
I handed him the plastic card with the photograph that makes me look like a Long Bay resident on day release. He examined it carefully. ‘Do you have a weapon, Mr Hardy?’
That was unusual and I took a closer look at him to make sure he was the genuine article. Cap, vizor up as per regulations, badge in evidence, youngish face carrying a little too much fat. The real thing. I opened the glove box and let him see the .38 sitting there inside its holster. ‘I’m licensed to carry it,’ I said.
‘Not concealed.’
‘It’s in the glove box, for Christ’s sake. What is this?’
‘Please hand me the weapon.’
‘Why?’
‘I have instructions to escort you to Police Headquarters in Newcastle,’ he said. ‘No private citizen entering the building is permitted to carry a weapon.’
‘Why, again?’
‘I’m simply obeying orders, Mr Hardy. If you surrender the weapon you can drive in and everything will be all right. If you resist, I’ll call for help and you’ll be placed under restraint and someone else will drive your car. Either way, you and the gun won’t be together. Which is it to be, sir?’
The ‘sir’ was heavily ironical. He wasn’t as much of an android as he liked to pretend. I gave him marks for that and passed the pistol out through the open window. Quick as a flash I pulled out a felt pen and scribbled on my wrist. ‘I’ve got your badge number, son,’ I said. ‘I hope your saddlebag hasn’t got a hole in it.’
He snapped the vizor down. ‘Follow me, Mr Hardy.’
Quick trip. I was parking the car inside the ‘reserved for police’ section within the hour. The motor cycle cop escorted me to the front desk and handed my pistol over to a civilian clerk who made an entry in a ruled book. One black leather finger touched his cap and he was gone. I was ushered into a lift and up several floors to a conference room. Sitting around the big table with carafes of water and the leavings of a morning tea were two men and a woman.
Detective Inspector Withers looked a bit the worse for wear and tear; his tie knot had slipped down and his collar was wrinkled. He hung up a telephone, one of three on the table, as I came in. His daughter looked pretty fresh. The other man at the table was a thin, beak-nosed individual in an elaborate cop uniform with lots of brass and braid. No one stood u
p when I entered which didn’t surprise me. I nodded at the two members of the Withers family and sat down at the table a few places away from any of them.
‘This is Assistant Commissioner Morton, Mr Hardy,’ Edward Withers said.
I nodded in the direction of the brass and braid. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to him?’
‘I know who you are, Mr Hardy,’ Morton said. ‘I’ve heard all about you from your friends and enemies in Sydney.’
‘Always good to get a balanced view,’ I said. ‘Would someone tell me what this is all about? I was doing ninety-seven in a ninety-five zone, but I hardly think that could be it.’
Withers sighed. ‘I told you he was a smartarse, Leslie.’
I looked at Morton who was reading notes on a pad in front of him. He seemed not to hear what Withers had said. The arrogance of command.
‘I’ll call you Les,’ I said. ‘I don’t take too kindly to being disarmed and escorted into town by an SS type who likes to admire his face in his shiny boots, Les. You tell me what this is about right now, or I walk out and phone my lawyer and a reporter or two.’
Glen shot me a surprised and angry look and I favoured her with one of my best smiles—one with a bit of the back pain and broken nose in it but with lots of promise of laughs to come. She sat back and didn’t react.
‘Take it easy, Hardy,’ Morton said smoothly. ‘The boy may have been a bit over-eager, but better that than sloppy. Wouldn’t you agree?’
I got to my feet. ‘I said I wanted explanations, not blarney.’
‘Oscar Bach may have killed four women,’ Glen blurted out. ‘Maybe more.’
I sat down and shut up and let them tell it. Glen had checked on the four locations marked on the map and come up with missing females, foul play suspected, in each. The circumstances tallied pretty closely with the details of the crime for which Werner Schmidt had been convicted. The females, teenagers, girls, had been last seen on roads around the districts in which they lived. There had been the usual sightings of strangers and vehicles, but the disappearances had remained unsolved. Common to three of the cases was the sighting of a dusty Bedford panel van. Withers slid a piece of paper across towards me—on it was written three different versions of the van’s number plate. I got out my notebook. One of the numbers was way off, but the others were within a digit or two of the number of Oscar Bach’s van.
