Helga's Web

by Jon Cleary

  He had no principles against hitting a woman; some of them deserved no better. He had been married twice and both wives had left him because of his ill-treatment of them; but he had never felt that he had been in the wrong, had always been convinced that they had asked for the beltings he had given them. But he had not come here to belt this dame, only to hint that she might get done over if she didn’t take his advice and get out of Sydney. He had thought that no more would be necessary. He had never warned off a woman before, but he had played the game with several men and they had taken the hint and quietly disappeared.

  It had been different with this piece. “If Mr. Gibson sent you, you go back and tell him I’m not frightened of him! I’ll come to see him tomorrow and I want the money!”

  He had smiled at her because just then he did not believe her opposition would amount to more than a few hot words. “Old Grafter dunno anything about this. I just run a little something on the side and I’m telling you—it’s none of your business!” His voice grated, but he was not really angry yet; it was all part of the act of frightening her. “All you gotta do is get outa Sydney. Go back to Europe—anywhere you like-but blow! I’ll give you the fare.”

  “Everyone’s trying to put me on a plane!” He wrinkled his brow at that; had old Grafter himself been on the blower to her? “Well, it’s not going to work! Now get out!”

  She went to push past him, to open the front door. It was then that he hit her, not a heavy blow by his standards. But she staggered back, the red mark of his hand on her cheek. She glared at him, her mouth open; then abruptly she whirled and picked up the glass Helidon had left on the side table. Bixby ducked, but he was not quite quick enough; the glass bounced off his shoulder and crashed into fragments against

  the wall behind him. He moved in on her as she rushed at him with her fingers clawed. They met like lovers in the middle of the room, but there was no love in their embrace: her fingers clutched at his face, he took hold of her throat. She tried to scream, but he pressed tighter.

  “Shut up, you bitch!”

  He had never had to deal with a woman who fought as she did. She scratched his face, tore at his eyes, tried to twist her head to bite the hands at her throat; she kicked him in the shins, the knee and the crotch; and every blow she made wrote her death warrant. He could feel the fury taking hold of him, the mixture of anger and sexual excitement; he drew her body in under him as he tightened his grip on her throat. He bent her back beneath him, cursing obscenely as she struggled like a woman in a storm of passion, and he could feel the sex rising in him as to the moment of climax. Then suddenly she went limp beneath him and at the same instant his blurred gaze cleared. He took his hands from round her throat and let her drop to the floor.

  Now he sat in the chair and stared at her. The gown was wide open and her nude body sprawled on the carpet like that of a woman exhausted and sated by sex. But he had never felt less like having a woman; he even shuddered, as if he found the thought of her as a woman repulsive. Jesus, what a mess! All because he hadn’t been able to control his bloody temper. What the hell was he going to do?

  He should have waited till another day, maybe tomorrow, before coming to lean on her. He had arrived in Double Bay an hour or so ago and had come to the flats, been halfway up the stairs when he had seen the bloke in the dark suit and dark glasses letting himself into Helga’s flat. He had gone outside again, crossed the road and sat on one of the seats in the small park opposite. After a while he had seen the man come out, still wearing his dark glasses, and hurry off down the street. He had waited a while; then he had crossed to the flats and was just about to go in when a woman, also wearing dark glasses, had pushed in the front door ahead of him. She had looked at the names on the mailboxes just inside the door, put her finger on the one marked Helga Brand, then gone up the stairs. Bixby had seen all this from just outside the glass front door; at once he had turned round, re-crossed the road and sat in the park again. Later he had seen the grey-haired joker, Savanna, arrive and go into the flats and a moment later the woman in the dark glasses come rushing out. Christ, it had been busy. Helga looked like she had more visitors than the bloody Prime Minister. He had waited a while, then, not wanting to be recognized by Savanna when the latter came out of the flats, he had got up and decided to go down to the pub for a beer. He had just begun walking down the street when out of the corner of his eye he had seen Savanna coming out of the flats. He had kept walking, not quickening his pace, hoping the grey-haired poofter wouldn’t have seen him.

  Maybe all those visitors, Savanna, the bloke in the dark glasses, the woman, had also been leaning on Helga. Everyone s trying to put me on a plane, she had said. If they all had been leaning on her, putting the arm on her, no wonder she hadn’t been in any mood to listen to him when he’d arrived.

  He reached into his pocket, took out another match and began to chew on it, dropping the first match onto the carpet beside his chair. That old sonofabitch Gibson would kick up a stink about this. He hated to admit it, but he was afraid of Grafter; the old bastard had too much money, too much power. The stand-over stuff, the bashing with a bottle or a piece of iron pipe or a bicycle chain, that was okay with the small-time mugs around Paddington and the Cross; but it was no argument at all against a man who could buy all the protection he wanted, could probably buy even some of the demons if he needed them. They were going to be a problem, too: the demons. He hated the police with a passion that bordered on insanity; twice he had tried to kill a cop and only his poor marksmanship with a pistol had let him down. Each time the police had not known who was shooting at them and so he was still free to kill one of them when the time and his aim was right. But now he had killed, not a demon but a dame, and he was surprised at how he felt. Empty and letdown, the way he felt after he had got out of bed from doing some troll he had taken home for the night. Post-coital blues, he had once heard a bloke call it, though he hadn’t really understood what the joker had meant: it had been a university student who had come onto the trawler as a temporary while one of the crew had been sick. He had lasted two nights, talking all the bloody time about sex as if it was something he was studying for a degree for up at the university: some of the bloody intellectual ones gave more time to the crotch than they did to the brain. Finally Bixby had thrown him off the boat, disgusted with the little creep. Still, whether the jerk had been right or not, that was how he felt now: the post-coital blues. Only there hadn’t been any coitus or whatever they called it. Just murder.

  He stood up, throwing away the chewed match, and looked out the window. It would be dark in another hour; better to wait till then. He went to the front door, locked it and came back into the living room. They’d made a bloody shambles of the place, wrestling the way they had. He wondered if the people next door had heard the commotion; if they had, they must have decided not to interfere. He went into the bathroom, bathed the scratches on his cheek and around his left eye, cursed, spat thick saliva into the bowl, and went out to the kitchen. He did not turn on the light, but moved about in the dusk of the small room. He put on the kettle and made himself a cup of coffee. He found some biscuits in a tin in a cupboard and he stood there in the slowly darkening room, sipping coffee and eating a chocolate biscuit, while he decided what to do.

  He would have to get her body out of here, get rid of her somewhere. If she was found here, there was no guarantee that Gibson, if the heat got too hot for himself, wouldn’t put the finger on him. Maybe not put the demons on him, but hire someone else to get rid of him. Bixby knew that there were always starters in Sydney these days for an elimination job, young mugs who would do it for five hundred bucks and didn’t even want to know who had hired them. He wouldn’t put it past old Grafter paying for such a job if things got nasty.

  No, the best thing would be to get rid of the troll, dump her somewhere where she’d never be found; then go and tell Grafter that she’d taken the hint and already gone back to Europe. He’d collect the air fare from Gibs
on, six or seven hundred bucks, pocket it and write the whole thing off as a neat night’s work. But where the hell was he going to dump her so she’d never be found? No use tossing her into the harbour; even if she was weighted there was no guarantee she’d stay down on the bottom. Anything could release her: sharks, even skin-divers: there were so many skin-divers around these days the bottom of the bloody harbour must look like Pitt Street at peak hour. Someone or something could free her and there’d she be, floating up to the top and coming back to haunt him. He remembered the Shark Arm case, he’d been just a kid then, when a couple of mugs had done in a bloke, got rid of him in the water, and bugger me, a couple of weeks later some fishermen catch a shark out at Coogee, put it into some local baths and the bugger spews up the dead bloke’s arm, complete with tattoos that identified him. No, the harbour wasn’t the shot.

  He finished his coffee, put down his cup and saucer and turned to go out of the kitchen. Then he saw the newspaper lying on the shelf beneath the cupboards. The room was quite dark now but for a streak of light that came through the window; he looked out and saw the tall block of flats next door and the bright light that lit up an outside flight of service stairs. The streak of light fell right across the newspaper and he saw the headline: Minister Would Welcome Ideas. Then two words jumped out of the story below: Opera House! Of course! That was it! He trembled with excitement as the idea took hold of him. Just the place!

  He had worked at the Opera House as a labourer for three months about four or five years ago. He had just come out from doing eighteen months for breaking into a factory out at Botany and stealing car radios, and for a while he had found it difficult to get back on the trawlers. He remembered he had been working down below in the Opera House and some gabby engineer, a bloke named Gershwin or Kernel or something, had told them the rooms down there were to be boarded up and never used: they were just part of the foundations. One of those rooms would be just the shot! Dump her in there and she’d never be found, not until they pulled the abortion of a place down and built something else as stupid and useless.

  He went back into the living room and over to the window that faced down on to the street. The curbs had been lined with parked cars when he had come into the flats, but they must have belonged to people who worked at stores in the neighbourhood; there were plenty of parking spaces now, including a couple right in front of the flats. He went into the bedroom, found a handbag on the dressing-table, searched through it and found a key-ring with two keys on it. He went to the front door, quietly opened it and tried one of the keys in the lock: it fitted. Then he stepped out on to the darkened landing, closed the door silently behind him and went down the stairs.

  He was on the second floor landing when he was flooded with light as a globe immediately above his head came on.

  He blinked in the sudden brightness after having been in the dark for almost an hour, bumped against a wall; he opened his eyes, already starting to feel the sweat breaking on him, and looked quickly around for whoever had switched on the light. But there was no one there; and when he peered over the stair-rail he could see no one on the first floor landing or the ground floor entrance hall. He gulped in a deep sigh of relief. The light must have been on a time switch.

  He went out of the flats, walked two blocks, collected his car, a grey Valiant, and brought it back and parked it in front of the flats. He sat in the car for a minute or two wondering if it was worthwhile going back upstairs for the dame’s body. What if some busybody in the flats caught him bringing her downstairs? They’d yell bloody blue murder and have the demons, the fire brigade and probably the bloody army there before he could shut them up. But against that, if he left the body up there in the flat it would be no time before he’d have Grafter Gibson on his neck. And there was the six or seven hundred bucks he’d collect for the air fare the girl was supposed to have used: that wasn’t to be sneezed at. He’d need some sort of worker’s compensation to tide him over till he could find another boat. The Maltese, the drug peddler, wasn’t going to like it when he told him he’d lost his boat and they would not be able to pick up any more drug packages till he’d got a new one.

  He got out of the car, leaving it unlocked, went into the building and quickly up the stairs. He was sweating by the time he reached the landing outside Helga’s flat: not from exertion but from fear that someone would have their front door open, would see him and remember him if and when the demons came poking around here. He fumbled with the key as he put it in the lock, but then the door was open and he slipped quietly into the flat, closing the door behind him. In the darkness he stumbled over a chair, bumping the bruised knee where Helga had kicked him; he gasped with pain, then

  cursed the bitch for what she had done. He crossed to the window, drew the curtains, then fumbled his way back to the light switch.

  He looked about the room, wondering if he ought to do something about cleaning up the mess. But the sooner he got out of here, the better. Eventually someone was going to come here looking for the dame and they would probably get on to the coppers; but people disappeared every day in the week in a city as big as Sydney and most of them never got their names in the papers. Old Grafter might learn she had disappeared and he might wonder if she really had got on a plane for Europe; but if she never came back, and she wouldn’t for sure, then he wouldn’t worry any more about it. Get out of here as quick as possible, that was the shot, and get rid of the body.

  He went right round the flat, wiping his fingerprints off everything he might have touched. He went out to the kitchen, washed his cup and saucer, dried them and put them on the draining board. He wiped the coffee jar and the biscuit tin and the door of the cupboard from which he had taken them. He went back into the living room, switched off the light, then wiped the switch. He pulled open the curtains again, getting enough light from the street lights outside to see what he was doing, then bent over Helga.

  He pulled the silk dressing gown about her and tied up the cord. Even dead she looked a bit of all right; she’d have made a good tread, he’d have bet on that. He lifted her up to sling her over his shoulder, then felt something in the pocket of her dressing gown. He fumbled in the pocket and brought out the small leather-covered book. A diary: it might be worth hanging on to. He slipped it into his own pocket, then lifted her body on to his shoulder. She was not easy to hold: the silk kept slipping on her body and she felt ready to slide out of it. He grasped her tightly, feeling a certain stiffness already creeping into her. Maybe he had waited too

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  long; he didn’t know how long it took for rigor mortis to set in. He’d better hurry.

  He opened the front door a few inches, using his handkerchief to keep his prints off the doorknob; then he stepped out quickly, closing the door behind him. He went down the stairs, feeling his arm slipping on the silk of the gown but not wanting to stop to take another grip of her; he was in a cold sweat and he had the crazy feeling that his legs were going to give way beneath him. He heard a door open on the top landing, but by then he was on the bottom flight of stairs. He tried to move more quickly, stumbled, lost his grip on the body and it slid off his shoulder. He made a frantic grab, got a grip on the dressing gown and swung Helga round. She seemed to stand up in front of him for a moment, her wide-open, blood-streaked eyes only inches from his own; he jerked his head back, stumbled again and almost fell over. Then he grabbed her, swung her up into his arms, reached the lobby and went out through the front door as he heard the clack of a woman’s heels coming down the stairs.

  A car was backing into a space at the curb two cars in front of him. He hurried across the pavement, jerked open the door of the Valiant, dumped the body into the rear seat, slammed the door and ran round to get behind the wheel. He fumbled with the ignition, pressed the starter and cursed frantically when the engine didn’t fire. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man and a woman, the woman talking a blue streak, come down into the lobby of the flats and move towards the glass front
door. He pressed the starter again, heard the engine cough, then start up. A moment later he was drawing out from the curb just as the man and woman came out of the flats.

  He drove back towards the city, turned down a side road that led to Rushcutters Bay. He knew where he would be able to find a small boat without any trouble. From now it was all going to be plain sailing.

  2

  “You shouldn’t have gone there,” said Walter Helidon. “That was just plain stupid. What did you think you’d achieve?”

  “I don’t know.” Norma, slumped in her chair, stared at the pearls lying in her lap. “I thought she might listen to reason. Sometimes women can talk to each other—” She looked up. “You talked to her, I gather. About me.”

  He poured himself a drink, his third since Norma had come in less than an hour ago. “God Almighty, does Rosa have to have her television up that loud?” From the back of the house, from the small rear wing where the maid had her room, came blurred shouts; if one listened carefully it was possible to detect that the shouts had something to do with dog food: a dog barked and was answered by the poodle somewhere else in the house. “Are Italians deaf?”

  “Some Australians are. I just said something to you. You talked to that girl about me.”

  He took his drink and stood in front of the marble fireplace. No fire had ever been lit in it; Norma had not wanted the marble discoloured by smoke. Everything in the room still looked as if it had just come from the interior decorator’s showroom; varnished with the protective coating of mere possession, the room was designed for show and not for use. We call it the living room, Helidon thought, and how much of our living has it seen?

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” he admitted. “But we’re not going to get anywhere— us, I mean, you and me—if we stay together and you go on throwing her up at me—”