White Meat

by Peter Corris

  “Ah yes,” he crooned, “black beauty.” His voice was still chirpy and his step was jaunty. I expected him to break into a dance routine.

  He went over to the far wall, pulled on a handle and a seven-foot long, three-foot wide tray slid out soundlessly.

  The attendant twitched the calico sheet aside. The naked body was pale under the harsh light, scarcely darker than a suntanned European, but it was the same colour all over. I looked down at the corpse but it wasn’t like looking at a person. There was no face. The mangled head had been sprayed with something which had made it a dark, featureless blob. I leaned over and looked closely at the left side of the chest. The flesh had been burned and shattered by the shotgun blast. Bone and other matter obtruded from the hundreds of small wounds which added up to a massive injury. The attendant looked at me oddly.

  “Something?” he asked.

  I straightened up. “I wanted to see whether he had a scar on his chest, here.”

  “It should be on the report. Oh, I see what you mean. I’ll get the report anyway. Finished?”

  I said I was. He slid the tray back and we left the room. In the cubicle at the foot of the stairs a couple of rows of clipboards with papers affixed hung on hooks. He reached one down and scanned the top page.

  “Male Aboriginal, aged . . . about twenty-five years . . . ah . . . no, . . . scar on leg . . .” He flipped the page. “Autopsy . . . massive haemorrhage . . .”

  “Any mention of an old chest wound?”

  “Ah . . . no, but then you wouldn’t expect it, would you, not with that lot.”

  I said I supposed not and thanked him for his help. He gave me a cheery smile and ducked back into his cubicle. I had my foot on the first step when he stuck his head out.

  “Here, take your card back. The old chap who came to see him nearly left his here too.”

  I went back and took the card.

  “What old chap?”

  “Old Abo. Down here . . . let’s see . . . yesterday. Had a police pass. Relative of some kind. He just took one quick look and left. They’re superstitious about the dead aren’t they?”

  “Yeah. So am I. About this man.” I described Rupert Sharkey to the attendant but he shook his head.

  “No, nothing like that. This man was short and stocky . . . an’ older than what you’re saying.”

  “What was the name on the card?”

  “I don’t remember. He’ll have it up at the desk.”

  I thanked him again and went up. Hatchet-face looked displeased to see me but showed off his efficiency by producing the black man’s police pass within seconds. It carried the name Percy White and an address in Redfern. I handed my card in and left the place puzzled, unenlightened — but alive.

  I celebrated my condition with a beer in the Forest Lodge hotel up the street from the house of the dead. I bought tobacco and smoked a few cigarettes and let the fumes of liquor and weed take away the stink of death.

  Half-way through the second beer I called Sharkeys’ number in La Perouse. Sunday was there and I filled him in with what I had on Moody’s contract with Trueman. He said Williams had seen Moody and warned him not to sign anything further and the fighter had agreed. Nothing more had been heard from Penny. I asked Sunday about Percy White but he’d never heard of him. As far as he knew, and that was pretty far, Simmonds had no such relative. The description I had could fit a hundred men in La Perouse alone. I asked him if Ricky Simmonds had a scar on his left leg. He laughed.

  “I never knew an Aborigine who didn’t — falls, burns, sores, insect bites, you should see me.”

  I grunted something and rang off. I finished the beer, left the pub and walked across to the university library. A quick check of an old city directory told me that the address “Percy White” had given in Redfern didn’t exist.

  This heavy detecting took me until midday. I bought some Vogel bread sandwiches outside the library and stretched out on the lawn that overlooks Victoria park. The buildings around the quadrangle loomed up behind me, solid and gothic and echoing to the footsteps of the learned. The neophytes gathered on the lawn giving me, an outsider, a wide berth. Almost to a man and a woman they wore jeans, forbidden dress at university back in the days when I’d played briefly at the experience. Otherwise nothing much had changed; the sexes basically grouped apart with only a few of the stars from each side coming into collision. But the lawn lunch-eaters weren’t representative. Behind closed pub doors and in smoky studies the drinkers and hairy politicians gathered to plot the overthrow of society within the next semester. The deadly swots were still in the library and the smooth-talking professionals who would control this place and most others like it in a few years, were debating, or running the tennis club or sipping sherry somewhere with their masters. I ate the sandwiches and watched a pair of tight-jeaned women parade slowly across my field of vision. Their breasts jogged gently under linen shirts, their bottoms rode high and tight and their legs seemed to go on forever. I sighed, got up and brushed grass off my clothes. I was sweating. It was a fine day. Maybe I was too warmly dressed.

  17

  I caught a taxi to Paddington and was met at the door by a flushed and anxious-looking Madeline. She had a couple of dresses over her arm and there were shoes on the floor in the passage behind her.

  “Leaving?” I asked.

  She bit her lip. The white chunky teeth went into the moist purple lip and sent a sexual shiver through me. She saw my reaction and it didn’t throw her one degree off course.

  “I am if you must know. Ted’s impossible. All that money for that worthless slut . . . the police . . .”

  “She’s his daughter.”

  “Maybe — if her mother was anything like her who could say?”

  It was nothing to me except that men being left by their wives are apt to act irrationally and Ted couldn’t afford to. I said so and she spun away and started to gather up shoes. I came a couple of steps into the passage and tried to keep my mind off the yard of deadly stocking she was showing under a white crepe dress. She saw me looking, straightened up and smoothed the dress down. My mouth went dry.

  “You haven’t the time,” she said softly. “Ted got a call half an hour ago. He was to wait for another call at his office. He’s there now with the money — off you run, Mr Hardy,”

  “Where’s the office?” I croaked. She walked off down the hall; she’d spent hours on the walk and it was worth every minute. She came back with a card and I took it.

  “Don’t leave,” I said. “See it through. You’re being childish. See how it looks after we get the girl back.”

  She threw the dresses down and burst into tears. She dumped the shoes and ran off down the hall.

  Well done Hardy. Terrific work. So subtle. I closed the door quietly and backed out to the gate. A white Celica was parked outside the house with some clothes on the back seat. The key was in the ignition and Madeline’s perfume was in the air. I slid in behind the wheel, started the car and drove off towards the city. I didn’t like the new twist. It had an amateur feel. It’s easier to watch a house than a city building, easier to spot reinforcements. Then I swore at myself for not scouting Armstrong Street. If there had been a look-out he’d have got the message loud and clear. Maybe it wasn’t an amateur play after all.

  Ted’s office was in a tower block across from Hyde Park. The Celica had a sticker on it that let me drive into the car park under the tower and almost got a salute from the attendant. Ted’s suite of offices had a lot of shag pile carpet, stained wood and tinted glass. Here he was Tarelton Enterprises and looking like he could spare a hundred grand, but you can never tell.

  An ash blonde stopped pecking at her typewriter and showed me into Ted’s lair. The carpet was deeper and the wood more highly polished than outside; there was an interesting-looking bar at the end of the room and that’s where Ted was standing. He greeted me and dropped ice into a second glass and built two Scotches. He walked back to his quarter-acre desk and set the gl
asses down carefully; it wasn’t his first drink and it wasn’t his second. He waved me to a chair; I picked up the Scotch and sat down — it was a drink to sit down with.

  “Got the money?” I asked.

  “Sure.” He reached down, missed his aim and had to steady himself on the desk. He pulled up a black, metal-bound attache case. “Wanna see it?” He was aping confidence and assurance but it was a bad act.

  I nodded. He sprung the locks and pushed the case across the desk. The money lay in neat rows held by the case’s straps. It looked what it was — a hell of a lot of cash.

  Ted said the call was due at four o’clock and we were twenty minutes short of that. I drank and looked at my employer. He seemed to have shrunk inside his clothes; the expensive tailoring hung on him indifferently and his patterned, Establishment tie was askew. Normally Ted had a high colour — the product of good health, good times and good brandy. Today he was pale with a couple of vivid spots. Bristles that had survived a shaky shave outcropped on the pale skin. His hand shook as he scrabbled a cigar out of a box on the desk. I rolled and lit a cigarette. We drank and my nerves started to twang in the silence.

  “I pinched your wife’s car,” I said. “I think she was planning on leaving. Why don’t you ring her?”

  “You a bloody marriage counsellor now?”

  “Just an idea. You’re going to need help through this.”

  Panic leaped through the liquor and into his eyes. “Why? You don’t think they’ll . . . they won’t kill her?” He looked at the money.

  “You can’t tell. I don’t think so, but it might not be easy getting her back.”

  “You’re saying she’s in with them? I told you that’s crap. I don’t want to hear any more of that.”

  “Mr Tarelton,” I said wearily, “this is nice Scotch but this isn’t a nice job. You don’t know your daughter, you don’t know the first thing about her. I’ve found out things about her that’d make your hair curl. That’s my job. I rake muck and mostly I keep it to myself when I can. Sometimes I can’t and this looks like one of those times. Please don’t tell me what you don’t want to hear. It doesn’t help.” I’d started to raise my voice. Now I dropped it back to as comfortable a tone as I could manage. “I think it would be a good idea if you called your wife.”

  He was in no shape to fight. He drained his glass and took a long pull on the cigar. “Alright, alright, you know your business. Jesus, I thought I knew about strain but there’s nothing to touch this.”

  He was getting gabby and I had no use just then for the full story of his life. I pointed at the phone and he picked it up and dialled. He held it to his ear for a minute then slammed it down.

  “Engaged,” he snarled. “At least she’s still there. That blasts your theory . . .”

  The intercom buzzed. “I said no calls,” Ted barked. He flicked the switch. “No calls till four!” The black box spoke back: “I’m sorry Mr Tarelton, it’s your wife on the line, she sounds upset.”

  “Put her through.” Tarelton picked up the receiver and swung half-away from me. He suddenly jerked upright in his chair.

  “What!” His voice broke and he stammered, “What? What?”

  I mouthed at him to play the call through and he flicked switches clumsily. Madeline Tarelton’s voice cut harshly into the room, its elocution-lesson tones pared away by fear.

  “Ted, Ted,” she gasped, “there’s a man here with a gun.” Her voice was cut off by a short scream and Tarelton yelped into the phone. “Madeline, Madeline, what does he want? Do what he says.”

  There was a pause and she spoke again, fighting for control. “He just wants me to tell you to do as you’re told.” The line went dead. Tarelton looked at the receiver in his hand. He was clutching it as if he could squeeze more information from it. I got up and took it away from him. Then I picked up his glass, went to the bar and made him another drink; he had another phone call to get through and he wasn’t going to do it without help. I went back and he took the glass.

  “What does it mean?”

  “They’re making sure. It doesn’t change anything.”

  He sensed my uncertainty and turned his cornered frustration on me.

  “It’s your fault, you took her car, she’d have been . . .”

  “Where? Would you rather that? It’s not true anyway. They’d have moved when they were ready. She’ll be alright. Shut up and let me think.”

  He bridled. “Don’t . . .”

  I flapped a hand at him and he subsided, then the box spoke again.

  “A call for you sir. It’s just past four o’clock.”

  “Thank you,” Tarelton said weakly. “Put it through please.”

  “Pay-out time, Ted.” The voice was male, not rough, not educated. Australian, not foreign. Tarelton croaked something indistinct.

  “The money Tarelton. Have you got it?”

  “I’ve got it. It’s here. Let me talk to Noni and if you harm my wife I’ll . . .”

  “Shut up and listen. The girl’s alright. You’ll see her tonight. I don’t know nothing about your wife. Who’s helping you with this — a lawyer, a friend or what?”

  “Nobody. You said . . .”

  “Don’t give me that. You’d have someone. He there with you now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s he look like? Describe him.”

  Tarelton looked unseeingly at me. His colour was bad and he was working at his shirt collar with one finger.

  “Tell him,” I said.

  “He’s tall and dark . . . thin,” Tarelton said desperately. “Thin . . .”

  “Yeah, I caught that. How old?”

  “Late thirties.”

  “What’s he wearing?”

  “Dark trousers, grey pullover, light blue . . .” he searched for the word. I gave it to him: “Parka.”

  “Blue parka.”

  “What the fuck’s that?”

  “A sort of jacket. Look, can’t we settle this reasonably? Just let my wife go and . . .”

  “I told you, I don’t know a bloody thing about your wife, now shut up! Send this character with the money to Elkington park in Balmain at six o’clock sharp. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before he goes tell him to ring Saul James — here’s the number . . .” He gave it in a firm confident voice. “Just tell James he’s acting for Tarelton. He’ll know what to do. Oh, one last thing. Tell your man to go to the park by taxi. That’s it.”

  “But . . .”

  “But nothing. Do as you’re told and the girl’ll be alright. Slip up and I’ll cut her bloody throat.”

  He broke the connection. Sweat was pouring down Tarelton’s face which had settled into creases and lines that aged him ten years. He reached for his drink and gulped it.

  “Take it easy,” I said. “You don’t look well. You could have a long wait and you can’t keep sucking that stuff down the whole time — you’ll crack up.”

  “You’re right,” he pushed the glass away as if he meant it. “What do I do next?”

  “Call your wife.”

  He did. The phone must have been snatched up the second it sounded. Their voices over-rode each other and a great gust of relief filled the room.

  “He’s gone Ted. He just walked out a minute ago.”

  “He didn’t hurt you?”

  “No, he didn’t touch me, not really. I couldn’t have stood it, either.” There was a note of horror in her voice of a kind I’d heard before so I wasn’t surprised when she said: “He was black, Ted. An Aborigine.”

  “Shit,” Tarelton said.

  “Ask her if he was stocky, middle-aged or older, carrying weight.”

  He did and she said it was an accurate description. I thought of “Percy White” holding his gun on a flower of white womanhood in the hundred-thousand-dollar house. It was a bizarre, cinematic image, unreal, but it had been real enough to terrify those comfortable people through to the marrow. It had been totally effective in securing Tar
elton’s consent to the kidnapper’s terms, but the man on the line had affected to know nothing about it. He was either very tough, a good actor or telling the truth. Either way it was confusing. Tarelton found it so too. He promised his wife that he’d be home within the hour and she rang off. Apparently her thoughts of leaving home had been dispelled. Tarelton stroked his jaw as if to reassure himself that the old familiar truths were still intact.

  “What’s with the Abos, Hardy? I don’t get it.”

  I picked up the bag and started for the door, then I noticed that I had an inch of Scotch in my glass and I came back and drained it.

  “I told you, Noni ran in rough company. This is pan of it but I don’t know how it all ties together yet. I’ve got some ideas but this comes first.” I held up the bag. “Marked the money?”

  “Yeah,” he looked ashamed. “That is, I’ve got a list of the numbers.”

  “That’ll do,” I said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I know anything.” He nodded and I went out. I was in the car park before I remembered that I hadn’t asked if I could use the Celica. Neither had I asked for more money but I was carrying more than I’d ever seen in one go in my life and it hadn’t seemed like the right time.

  18

  The Celica took me to Darlinghurst in five minutes. I parked outside James’ house and rang the bell. James opened the door and ushered me in. I could hear voices.

  “Television,” James said apologetically. Maybe he thought I was one of those people who disapprove of tele-viewing in the daytime. Maybe I was. We went through to the kitchen. He was wearing the same sort of clothes I’d seen him in before; soft shades and fabrics to match his character. His hair had recently been combed when wet and I noticed that it was receding a little at the forehead. I slung the briefcase down on the table.

  “What’s that?”

  “Ted Tarelton’s hundred grand. Got your share?”

  He blinked at the harshness of my voice. “Yes, here.” He pointed to a blue airline bag on the floor.