The Big Drop

by Peter Corris

  ‘Easy,’ I said.

  ‘Go on, Kenny,’ one of the men urged, ‘have a go!’

  Kenny bustled forward and swung again. I took it on the shoulder and gave him a quick tap back. He ducked into it and was hit harder on the nose than I’d intended.

  ‘Fuck you!’ he roared. He came in again, swinging and lunging, and I gave ground until we were clear of the other men and I was sure of my footing. He squared up clumsily and I went under his lead and hammered his left side ribs. He almost overbalanced and I helped him down with a left hook under the ear. He sprawled on the dusty bitumen. The others moved threateningly but I pulled out my licence card and held it up.

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘This is a misunderstanding. Don’t get excited.’

  They hesitated and I crouched down beside Kenny who’d twisted his leg on his descent. I showed him the card.

  ‘This is a legitimate investigation. What did you mean—about waiting for me?’

  Kenny did some swearing then looked across at the office. ‘That four-eyed nong in there tried to bribe me to say I’d seen the sheilah. Said someone’d be around askin’. I told him to get fucked and said I’d drop youse. You were a bit good, but.’

  I took twenty dollars out of my wallet and put it on his chest. ‘A misunderstanding, mate. What’s his name?’

  ‘Polly Adams—there ‘e goes!’

  A small man wearing a dust coat that flapped behind him, ran from the office between the loading bays. I took off like a sprinter from the blocks after him. He had a lead but he was no runner. I gained with every stride and the flapping coat caught on the wire that straggled from the cyclone fence where he had to make a turn. The coat ripped, he slowed down and I got my hand on his shoulder and ran him into the fence. he bounced off it and I pinned him back and held him there. We panted in each other other’s face and I realised that I was crouching and holding him up on tip toe. I felt ashamed; he was about five foot three and weighed around eight stone. I let him down and took two fistfuls of the front of his dust coat.

  ‘Just one question,’ I said. ‘Who told you to get a driver to lie to me?’ I shook him and his head wobbled on his thin neck. His breath smelled of cigarettes—no wind.

  ‘Silly bugger,’ he gasped. ‘He just hadda say it might’ve been her. He’s off to the West in a coupla days. There was fifty bucks in it for him.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘I dunno his name. Met him in the pub this morning. Well, I seen him there before once.’

  ‘Description.’

  ‘Big bloke, tall as you ’n heavier. Lot heavier. Red face, flash suit. Looked like a cop. I reckon he could be a cop.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ I let him go and he stayed there with his back against the wire; with his eyes and mouth open in fright and his torn coat flapping he looked like a scarecrow. I walked back to the yard. Kenny was leaning against the pallets with a cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘You all right?’ I said.

  He nodded. I picked up the photograph and walked towards my car.

  Five hours later I was in the car and parked fifty yards from the Stevenson’s house in Cammeray. Jeff Stevenson came out, got into a light-blue Holden Statesman and drove away. I followed him. He drove fast but not very well and I had to cope with some ill-tempered drivers he created around him. He ploughed through to Lane Cove West and took a turn off the Epping Road down towards the river. The street was dark and quiet and the Statesman plunged down into a car park under a block of flats that hid behind high poplar trees discreetly illuminated from ground level.

  I parked in the street, got a torch from the glove box and went down into the bunker. Each resident had two parking bays—one for a visitor. The Statesman was parked next to a new Honda Civic in Bay 36A. I prowled around the block of flats until I located the right entrance. The white stones crunched under my feet; my legs were brushed by ferns. The rents would be high. Flat 36A was occupied by Ann Stevens. I went back to my car, drove to the nearest liquor store for a half bottle of whisky and took up a position opposite the flats with the radio on softly and the bottle on my lap. The Statesman roared up the ramp at a little past 2 a.m. I watched it out of sight, took one more swig on the bottle and drove carefully home.

  I kept up a surveillance of the Stevensons for four days. Jeff Stevenson went to work in the mornings; Jessie slept late, moved like an automaton and went to her analyst. She drank gin in the afternoon. On the second night they went out to a restaurant; both drank a lot and Jessie almost raped him while they danced. The next night Stevenson arrived at Lane Cove West at midnight and Portia came out wearing a wig and a light coat with the collar turned up. They walked the streets, tightly locked together. She was tall and slim and her movements were graceful. She looked up at Jeff adoringly. I photographed them. I went through the rubbish bin for 36A and found a letter signed ‘Jeff’ and the foil from contraceptive pills.

  Terry writhed in the bed. ‘Oh God,’ she said.

  ‘I wore rubber gloves, don’t worry.’

  ‘It’s not funny. What are you going to do?’

  I thought of Jessie Stevenson’s tight, strained face as she drove her car, of the boozy, dazed look she wore at 4 o’clock as she stood, aimless in her front garden. I’d watched her do that for an hour, wondering what she was doing until I saw the two girls in the school uniform turn into the street. Then she went inside. I remembered the way she looked at her husband.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What would you do?’

  The Mongol Scroll

  Dr Kangri hit the button on the slide projector and the image flashed up on the metre-square screen.

  ‘Beautiful, is it not?’ he said.

  It was an oriental drawing showing a couple making love. They were both wearing robes and had painted faces and their hair tied back in severe knots. They were smiling; the man had a big erection and the woman had small, pointed breasts. The erection was between the breasts and they both seemed pretty pleased about it. The colours were brilliant blues, reds and yellows and the lovers were on a thin mat in a sparsely furnished room that seemed to be full of sunlight.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Beautiful’s the word.’

  He showed the next slide and the next, and half a dozen more. They were all in the same mood and communicated the same feeling: extreme pleasure in leisurely, inventive sex. My mouth was a bit dry when he turned the projector off; I could have managed to look at a few more without too much trouble.

  He tidied the slides away and moved the projector aside. Then he sat down behind the big desk in the study crammed with books and paintings and scrolls and I turned my chair around away from the screen and faced him.

  ‘They are very fine,’ he said, ‘but nothing compared to the impact of the scroll itself.’

  ‘The subject’s the same all through?’

  He smiled. Dr Kangri was a small, smooth-faced man in his late fifties. To judge from his house in Vaucluse, the Jaguar in the garage, the furnishings and the art work, his assets would have been in the early millions. ‘Erotic, you mean? Yes, very, Splendidly so and a very rare scroll. Unique.’

  ‘Worth?’

  He shrugged, moving his shoulders fluidly inside his silk shirt. He seemed to have the movements of a much younger man. Yoga? I thought.

  ‘Who can say? Priceless.’

  ‘I’m sorry to be crude about it, doctor. But I need a price, so will the insurance people. You must have paid . . .’

  A few lines of annoyance appeared on the smooth, brown skin and then vanished as if dismissed by an act of will. ‘It is not insured, Mr Hardy. I paid; yes, indeed I paid, but in favours you understand. Services, not cash.’

  I got out a notebook because it looks efficient and can sometimes be useful. I wrote ‘Chinese scroll’ and put a question mark beside a dollar sign. Then I scratched the words out because Kangri proceeded to tell me that it wasn’t a Chinese scroll but a Tibetan scroll in a Mongol style. The scroll was about two metres long and forty centi
metres wide; and had thirty-seven sections, each showing an erotic scene. Apparently the scroll was like the Chinese ‘Pillow books’ which were presented to newly weds to give them the right idea and put them in the mood. ‘Almost all Tibetan art is religious,’ Kangri told me. ‘This scroll is a rare exception.’

  It sounded like a nice exception to me. ‘Old?’

  ‘Fifteenth century. Never before reproduced, hardly known. My edition will make big waves.’

  It was an oddly contemporary expression to come from such a traditional-seeming man. I doubted whether he knew that it was contemporary. I nodded and listened while he told me that he was planning a lavish book, reproducing the scroll along with a scholarly essay and notes by himself. The slides had come his way ten years before, and the work of acquiring the scroll itself and doing the scholarly investigation and occupied him for twenty years.

  ‘When did you get the scroll?’ I asked.

  ‘One month ago. I thought about it for twenty years and had it for a mere thirty days.’

  Unique or not, the procedure’s much the same when investigating the nicking of something. Where was it kept? When did you last see it? Who knew it was there? Kangri told me he’d kept the scroll in a locked cupboard in the study and he showed me the broken lock. He’d last looked at his treasure four days before and only his daughter, his housekeeper and an academic named Dr Susan Caswell knew where it was kept. I looked around the over-stocked but tidy room, noted the labels on pots and the classification numbers on the spines of the books.

  ‘Was anything else taken?’

  ‘Yes, many things—other scrolls, books, ornaments. Some of value, others not. All insured. A few things were broken, but I have had the study cleaned. I ruminated for several days before taking this action.’

  ‘I’ll have to talk to these people.’

  He nodded. ‘Certainly, but Dr Caswell left Australia for Tibet a week ago on sabbatical leave. Mrs Tsang, my housekeeper, is at your disposal. My daughter may be a little hard to locate, but I assume you have ways of doing that.’

  ‘Yes. Before we get into that, could you tell me why you called me in on this? I mean, I haven’t got any connections with the . . .’

  He smiled again and the skin hardly crinkled. ‘You were going to say “Chinese community” although you know that I am a Tibetan. It’s very difficult for you. Well, Mr Hardy. I made some enquiries when this matter arose. I needed someone discreet, of course, and you come highly commended on that score. But I also learned that you fought against the Chinese communists in Malaya.’

  ‘Yes, well . . .’

  ‘The only successful anti-guerilla campaign in history. I wish my poor country had had such allies. You know of the subjugation of Tibet by China?’

  I knew that the Dalai Lama wasn’t top dog there anymore and that the Chinese didn’t have any trouble going up mountains from the Tibetan side, but my knowledge ended about there. Kangri took silence for assent and went on, ‘I left my country in 1950 when the conquest began. I went to the United States to study and to go into business.’

  ‘What business was that?’ I had the notebook at the ready.

  ‘Importing art objects from my country and India. I prospered, then I came here where I have continued to prosper. My country has been forgotten, overlooked. It is an anachronism, an irrelevance. My edition of the scroll will perhaps correct that. It will show that Tibet had a rich, humanistic culture, that it was not just a society of peasants and priests.’

  I had already classified the good doctor as a pretty shrewd number. I had the feeling that his business might have involved some corner-cutting and I’d have bet that his doctorate wasn’t from Harvard. But all the signs were that he could write a good cheque; and if he wanted to think I’d idealistically thrown my young body into the fray against the communistic menace, instead of just wanting to get out of Australia and having the sense to do what I was told for a while, who was I to disillusion him?

  ‘Does anyone else know you have the scroll? I mean, other Tibetans, scholars?’

  ‘No. Only the people I have mentioned. My daughter would not be interested enough to tell anyone. Mrs Tsang is totally discreet. Dr Caswell would realise the penalties of any publicity.’

  ‘Penalties?’

  ‘Obvious, surely. This is a highly erotic work. The newspapers would fall on it as a spicy story. My edition would be seen in the worst possible light. I shudder at the thought.’

  I could see his point; headlines like ‘Sex Scroll Stolen’ wouldn’t strike the right scholarly note. I had a lot of questions, but some of them I could put to other people. I closed the notebook and stood up.

  ‘Just one question, Dr Kangri; don’t be insulted. As your agent I’m protected if I get hold of the scroll only if it’s your property. Is it?’

  ‘Yes, in every sense.’

  ‘Good. Perhaps you could give me a list of places that would be interested in such things—dealers, collectors.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. You’re slipping into the same mistake, Mr Hardy, assuming I am part of some sort of community in this city. There is no Tibetan community in Sydney. I know of no . . . shop that would have any knowledge of such a scroll as this.’

  ‘If some dealer in oriental things got hold of it would its value be immediately apparent?’

  ‘Not necessarily. I can’t bear to think of such a thing.’

  ‘I’ll have to think of it then. Could I see your housekeeper?’

  ‘Of course.’ He opened a drawer in the desk, took out a cheque book and looked at me enquiringly.

  ‘A hundred and twenty-five dollars a day and expenses,’ I said. ‘Two days fee in advance if that’s convenient.’

  He wrote and handed me the cheque. He stood up with another of those easy, youthful movements and went around the desk. ‘I’ll send Mrs Tsang in here. I’m afraid I have an appointment now, so I will hope to get a report from you soon, Mr Hardy. You appreciate that I am very distressed over this, and I am placing all my hopes in you.’

  It was just as well he told me. For all the emotion he displayed we could have been talking about a lost sock. We nodded inscrutably at each other and he went out. I wondered if I should go behind the desk but I decided not to. I perched on the edge of it instead. Nice desk, good wood, carved. Nice carpet; good bookshelves; nice cupboard, pity about the smashed lock. Pity about the priceless scroll too.

  The woman who knocked at the door was medium-sized with black hair drawn tightly back and a very erect carriage. She stood straight and still with her knuckles just an inch from the door jamb. I felt awkward in the oppressively scholarly room and even more so now summoning forward someone who lived in the house. I tried a smile and a wave.

  ‘Come in, Mrs Tsang, come in.’ I sounded like a housemaster or what I imagined a housemaster sounded like—we didn’t have them at Maroubra High. She walked in and stood in front of me. I was going to have to go the whole hog.

  ‘Please sit down.’ She sat in the chair I’d vacated, still stiff and straight in her dark plain dress and sensible shoes. Like Dr Kangri she had a smooth brown face and she gave off an air of having lived on this earth for a good spell rather than looking old. Her mouth was thin and straight, her slanted black eyes were still; as Kangri had seemed to minimise emotion she minimised movement.

  ‘You know why I’m here, Mrs Tsang?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Sir, maybe I’d got the housemaster note right after all.

  ‘Can you help me?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Were you in the house when the study was . . . disturbed?’

  ‘Some of the time, not all. I went shopping. The house was not always attended.’

  ‘Did you set the alarm system?’ As a matter of professional habit I’d noticed that the house had a thorough, if not very modern, set of door and window alarms.

  ‘Yes, sir; but the alarm, it does not always work. Dr Kangri has said that the system provides a deterrent and tha
t is enough.’

  She said this, one of the dopiest things it’s possible to say in Sydney where there’s a burglary every five minutes, as if it was a revered, unquestionable statement.

  ‘Did you come into this room that day?’

  ‘No, sir. I dust the room once a week, that is all. I did not come in here until Dr Kangri cried out that the scroll had gone.’ She paused as if for breath. ‘And I have not been in since, until this time.’ It sounded pat, rehearsed, but she had a strange lilt in her voice and it was hard to tell—she might have sounded like that when buying cabbages.

  I ran through the usual questions: see anything unusual that day? No. Any deliveries to the house? No. Gas, phone, electricity men? No. Then I gave her one that made her blink.

  ‘Where is Dr Kangri’s wife?’

  Blink. ‘She died several years ago.’

  I felt that I was getting better at reading her and I guessed that Kangri’s widowhood didn’t displease her. Then the stillness came over her again and she didn’t blink when I asked her where I might find the good doctor’s daughter and what her name was.

  ‘May Kangri,’ she said evenly. ‘She left an address recently for her cheques to be sent to.’

  ‘Cheques?’

  ‘Her father sends her a cheque each month—it is almost their only form of commmunication.’

  Something about the way she spoke made me feel as if I’d been dismissed. I got off the desk and put the trusty notebook in my jacket pocket. I was wearing a cord jacket with patch pockets. For once, I even had leather shoes on and pants with a crease. Mrs Tsang ushered me out of the study and closed the door firmly behind us. We went down a passage decked out with things that looked Chinese to me but probably weren’t. The decor of the sitting room she left me in while she got the address looked Indian but it was probably Nepalese.

  She came back quickly and handed me a folded piece of paper. I left the house through one of the doors guarded by a burglar alarm that didn’t work. The Jag had gone. I wondered if its alarm worked.

  I couldn’t say I felt very hopeful as I went down the path towards the street where I’d left my car. Dr Kangri was like a cryptic crossword with not enough clues, and Mrs Tsang, even if she hadn’t told me all she knew, looked like she could stand a few weeks of torture without squealing. At the gate, I turned and looked back at the house; it was one of those big, solid places with two or three different levels and interesting angles. There were vines growing over some of the white painted brickwork and a big, curved window was reflecting the late afternoon sun. There was not a single Oriental touch on the outside and hardly an Occidental one inside.