by Peter Corris
“One of each: one big, one small.”
“Fair or dark?”
She shook her head. “Uh huh, don’t remember.”
“Anything else?”
She frowned and looked again out over the water.
“Shit, I don’t know. Nothing. No! I remember now, one of them had a sort of shine to his suit. Yech! And he wore white shoes. Does that help?”
The busy woman at the other desk hung up her phone noisily. We both looked at her.
“I don’t mean to stickybeak, Jess, but …”
“Don’t worry, Val. What?”
I was amazed that she could stickybeak as well as doing all those other things. I wished I could get a look at her feet.
“Couldn’t help hearing,” Val said. “I saw that man in the awful-looking shiny suit. He had those terrible shoes on, too.”
“You saw him when?” I said.
“Just last week. Right here. He came in here, and asked for Ray.”
“What did you say?" Jess asked.
Val stubbed out her cigarette and got ready to get another going. “I told him I didn’t know where Ray was. I said I wished I did know. It was lovely having him around here. Oh, sorry, Jess …”
Jess was looking upset again, frowning and shuffling the Satisfaction sheets. I took them from her and made a neat stack of them. Compulsive. She pulled herself together.
“Did you ask his name, Val?”
“No, sorry, I didn’t.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I know his name.”
It was my turn to gaze out over the comforting water. Of course, he wasn’t the only spiv in town; but shiny suit and white shoes precisely fitted my recollection of the unwelcome appearance of Liam Catchpole.
That gave me plenty to chew on as I drove back to the city. Big and small meant Spotswood and Catchpole, and I’d never heard that either was a fisherman, although the scuttlebutt had it that Spotswood wasn’t a stranger to the waters of Sydney Harbour at night. Ray Guthrie’s connection with Catchpole went back to the time when he first exhibited signs of disturbance, as the psychologists would say. But it wasn’t continuous; and since Val hadn’t said that Catchpole was obnoxious (apart from his suit), that meant he was on good behaviour—which meant that he was seriously concerned. It was reasonable to assume that Catchpole was a part of whatever was bugging Ray Guthrie. But Catchpole was involved in everything—drugs, prostitution, intimidation, the lot. There were no clues there, except that we could rule out anything honest.
One side of my face had got sunburned while I was on the boat; it felt flushed and uncomfortable on the drive back and it reminded me that I’d missed my day on the beach. My tan would fade; would that make me less desirable for Helen Broadway? Was I desirable to Helen Broadway? Did I want to be? This kind of stop-start thinking was appropriate to the movement of the traffic, which was heavy and impatient. I was weary from the gear and clutch pedal work when I got back to town. The soft-top should be an automatic, I found myself thinking.
A weaker man, one less dedicated to his craft, might have heeded the over-heated engine and the ache in his bones and headed for home and a drink. But not Hardy—with a client’s cheque in the pocket and a puzzler in the brain he goes on and on, like Christopher Columbus. I found myself sliding into this nonsense as the city skyline came into view. Maybe it was the motor fumes, maybe I couldn’t handle a can of light beer and a glass of white wine in the middle of a working day anymore. Disturbing thoughts to be pushed aside as I ploughed on to police headquarters to have a chat with my favorite law-enforcement officer, Detective Sergeant Frank Parker. We could talk about under-convicted villains and the corruption of youth. Besides, Frank might ask me over to his pub for a drink.
Frank Parker had impressed me with his flair and imagination when we’d first met a little over a year ago. By that I mean that he didn’t arrest me on principle, and didn’t try to prove that he was tougher than me or better at staying up late at night answering meaningless questions in unpleasant surroundings. I’d helped him and he’d helped me on that occasion; we had a drink together from time to time, and there was an understanding between us that one would help the other again if the time came. This looked like it, for me.
I parked near the police building in a section they keep set aside for impounded vehicles. I’ve never had any trouble in this spot—coming or going—and I’ve never known why. I told the cop on the desk which bars the way to the stairs and lifts who I wanted to see, and he looked at me oddly.
“You sure?” he said.
“Yeah. Why?”
He shrugged and called the detectives’ room. Parker must have given him the okay because he pointed his thumb suavely at the lifts. I rode up two levels and went along the corridor where the thick clumps of multi-coloured official paper hang off the notice boards like grapes.
I knocked on the door of the room Frank recently acquired when he moved up a grade: he only had to share it with one other detective.
“Come in, Cliff.”
I pushed at the door which only went halfway before it was stopped by a cardboard box on the floor. Parker was in his shirt sleeves, shovelling papers into another box. There was a bulging green garbage bag on top of the swept-clean desk. Parker lived and worked in a blizzard of paper; it was his habitat. To see him in a bare, stripped room was a shock.
“Moving again, Frank?” I said. “You a Deputy Commissioner or something, now?”
He grinned at me and dusted his hands. “You’re behind the times, Cliff. You see me at the end of what looks like being my last day in the New South Wales Police Force.”
5
He filled me in at the pub—not the usual copper’s watering hole, but another a few blocks from the station. He made a point of this as we breasted the bar.
“See, changing the patterns already.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about the promotion crack, Frank. Didn’t know anything like this was happening.”
“No reason you should. They kept it all very dark.”
“It?”
The beers came and we reached out at the same time. We moved over to a window seat, out of earshot of the other drinkers.
“It’s simple enough,” Parker said. “I’m guilty of taking bribes. That’s what the internal investigation found, and the tribunal believed. I’m suspended—I’ll appeal, but it’ll be confirmed. I creamed off more than fifty grand over the past few years.”
“Bullshit!”
He raised his glass. “Thank you for the vote of confidence, Cliff Hardy.” He took a long pull on the middy.
“What sort of bribes?”
“All sorts. For impeding the course of justice, for passing information, for intimidating witnesses.”
I said “Bullshit” again, which wasn’t much help to anyone.
“You don’t have to tell me, mate. I’ve been lying awake over it for six weeks.”
“What’re you supposed to have done with the money?”
“There was a bookie who I placed a lot of bets with, apparently. Since gone on a long holiday—no one knows where. I bought a car and wrecked it—dealer no longer in business, it seems.”
I finished my beer and tried for a lighter tone. “It just doesn’t sound like you, Frank. ’Course, you never know.”
“That’s right, but I’ll tell you this—when all this was supposed to be happening, I was too bloody tired to have a split personality.”
“Set up?”
“Right.” He went over for another round. Frank is a fraction taller than me; he used to be a little heavier but he wasn’t anymore. The waistband of his pants was crinkled where his belt had drawn it in a notch or two. He came back with the drinks and set them down.
“I’d give the world for a smoke.” His face under the blue beard-shadow had a hollow, eaten-out look.
“Fight it,” I said. “Build your character. You must have some idea of why you got screwed.”
“Yeah, well, to tell the truth,
the problem is an oversupply of ideas. In this game what d’you make but enemies? Don’t get hurt, Cliff.”
“I’ll try not to. Treading on toes internally, as it were?”
He grinned. “Jesus, you butcher the language. Yeah, every day. Impossible not to. Ah, I don’t know. It happens. I’m not the first.”
“What’re you going to do? Take up drinking professionally?”
He looked at the glass in his hand. “No,” he said quietly. “I’ve hardly had a drink since it started. No one to drink with, much. Nola’s gone.”
He meant his wife of ten years. I’d only met her once—had no clear image. “That’s tough, Frank. I’m sorry. Was that connected with …?”
“The screwing of Frank Parker? Not really. Shit, I was never there and dead tired when I was. There was no money to speak of, and no fun. She found someone who could give her a bit of both. Who could blame her? We both changed, and in different directions—I got harder, she got softer. Thank Christ we didn’t have any kids.”
“You still haven’t told me what you’re going to do about it.”
“I haven’t decided. Give me a chance. Let’s leave me for a bit.” He took a drink and gave me one of his professional appraisals. “You need a haircut. You haven’t changed much since I last saw you. Why should you? You probably looked forty when you were twenty. You’re that sort.”
I made a fist. “I’ve changed inside, Frank.”
“How are things—inside?”
I hadn’t thought hard about it. How were they? I had all my hair and most of my health. I was independent. I was reading Bartlett and Steele’s biography of Howard Hughes: I was better off than Hughes, but then, everyone in the bar was better off than Howard Hughes. I was all right.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Working for a guy named Paul Guthrie, know him?”
Parker shook his head. “Must be a good clean job if you can tell me who you’re working for.”
“I wouldn’t call it clean, not altogether.”
“There’s no such thing as really clean in your game, or in mine.” He drank and snorted. “Whatever that is now. Nola said it was a dirty game anyhow.”
“What’s her new bloke do?”
“Search me. Why did you come to see me? You’re working for fairly clean Mr Guthrie and …?”
“His son’s run off the rails. Stepson really. He’s put himself out of touch with the family, dropped a girl you’d run to Melbourne for, and he’s keeping bad company.”
“How bad?”
“Liam Catchpole, Dottie Williams, Tiny Spotswood.”
“That’s not good. That’s trouble.”
“Yeah. Catchpole seems to have turned up about the time the kid went haywire. Last week he was looking for him again. The father’s been told his kid was on the piss with the three of them. You can guess what comes next, Frank?”
Parker scratched at his heavy beard; the noise was like amplified radio static. “I’d have to ask around a bit. That wouldn’t be too hard, there’s still people who owe me favours.”
“I’d be grateful,” I said.
He wasn’t listening to me; he was off in the private world the persecuted build for themselves in the long, quiet nights and the slow, slow days.
“Favours … favours. I can put pressure on people—bucket them if I want to. They’re afraid of me. Sometimes I think the whole bloody system runs on terror.”
“Easy, Frank. I don’t want any terror. Just a line on Catchpole—who he’s fizzgigging for at the moment. What might be going on.”
“Why don’t you front him?”
“It might come to that. I’m just trying to be subtle first.”
“Haven’t lost your nerve have you, Cliff?”
“Come on, you know Liam and his sort better than I do. Thumping them does no bloody good. You make it worth their while if you can, or you find someone else who’ll tell you what they won’t. Thumping’s no good unless you’re prepared to go all the way. Liam would’ve got thumped in the cradle.”
“You sound like a social worker.”
“Just ask—will you?”
“Okay.”
“Thanks. Another beer?”
“No, don’t think so.” He stretched his arms out in front of him and shook the imaginary bars of a cage. The old knife-scar showed dirty white on his black-haired forearm. “I reckon I’m glad you dropped by, Cliff.”
“How’s that? Stimulating company, I know.”
“I’m not going to lie down under this. I’m forty-three, I’ve been in the force for twenty years. I like the work. I’ve got a bloody investment in it. And they owe me.”
I nodded and let him talk.
“I’m going to make a stink. That’s where you can help me. Tit for tat.”
“Charmed. How?”
“I’d like to have a session with your journo mate, Harry Tickener. I could tell him a thing or two.”
“Jesus, Frank, don’t just jump into that. Think hard about it.”
“Would Tickener be interested?”
“He’d give an arm and a leg.”
We got up and left the pub. Parker pushed the door out and I followed him on to the street. It was early evening, still very warm, and the traffic was light. People had got to where they wanted to be. Parker stepped off the kerb to anticipate a break in the thin stream of cars. As he did, a shout of “Hey, Frank!” came from across the street. Parker’s head lifted to look for the shooter, but he kept moving forward. I was a step-and-a-half behind. A green Mazda with hooded headlights left the kerb ten metres away and roared toward Parker like a blinded, pouncing beast. I jumped, and clawed at Parker’s shoulder, digging my fingers in, twisting, and pulling him back. We both stumbled and he fell back on top of me. I grazed my hand breaking the fall. The Mazda screamed past.
Parker rolled off me on to his back; he lifted his head off the road. “I forgot to tell you,” he said. “There’s someone trying to kill me.”
***
I went to the Noble Briton that night and on the next night, which was Saturday; both visits had their interest for a student of human nature, but neither Ray Guthrie nor Liam Catchpole showed. I made some discreet enquiries around the Cross but came up with nothing. One of the girls said she thought Dottie Williams had gone interstate for a while but was back now. Big help.
Roberta Landy-Drake had a hangover when I phoned her on the Sunday morning.
“Cliff, you’re not dunning me for your fee are you? That’s not classy. Especially not with the head I have.”
“I wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t classy, Roberta. No, I wanted to know how to get in touch with Helen Broadway.”
“Aha. I wonder if I should tell you. Why should you and she feel good when I feel so bad. Tell me that?”
“Come on.”
She gave me the phone number and the address in Elizabeth Bay. I rang the number, but there was no answer. Well, she said she was doing what she liked and you never know where that will lead you. I wrote the address down, killed some of the day at the Dawn Fraser pool in Balmain, which they’ve cleaned up except for the water, and went home to make my preparations for the evening’s visit to the Noble Briton. Hilde was away for the weekend so I didn’t have to explain why I was having steak and Vitamin B pills for dinner on a Sunday night instead of a bacon sandwich. The reason was to erect a defence against the beer I’d have to consume to maintain my standing at the pub.
It was a mild night; I put on jeans and T-shirt, and a denim shirt with a longish tail over that. Hanging outside my pants the shirt-tail concealed the gun I wore in a holster inside the waistband at the back. I’d splurged recently on some light Italian shoes, which were the only leather shoes I’d ever had which let me forget about my feet. In the breast pocket of the shirt I put a miniature camera which is small enough to hide in your hand and still let you pick your teeth.
I drove up William Street at about 10 p.m. The council has put up a network of barriers in Darlinghurst which blo
ck the streets off and turn them into one-way mazes. The intention and effect is to eliminate cars cruising in the area for street pick-ups. As a result, the rougher trade has moved out to William Street. The girls and girl-boys were almost jostling each other in front of the car showrooms, car accessory joints, and other businesses: three steps across the pavement takes them to the open car window where the negotiation goes on. Then it’s either in and off or back across the footpath to wait for the next one. The whole transaction takes place on the front seat of the car.
A few blocks back, in the closed-off streets, the women work out of houses with doors that open directly on to the street. They don’t exactly stand in the doorway with one leg up, but they aren’t out in the kitchen either. There’s a soft light in the front room, but that’s about all the softness going.
I parked around the corner in Greenknowe Avenue and walked back to the pub in Darlinghurst Road. The Cross seemed to be operating at about 80 per cent voltage on the Sunday night. Nearly everything was open, nearly everyone who should be was there—the spruikers outside the strip joints, the street girls, the cruisers, and the cops—but some of them looked tired as if the seven-day-week which is the norm for the vice business was taking a toll.
The Noble Briton is a survivor, fighting back against the homogenised, imported culture of the eighties. It has the authentic old Australian discomfort—steep, slippery steps to the toilet, cramped bar, and blind spots where the barman can’t see you to serve you. The habitués manoeuvre interlopers into those blind spots. The dimness comes from the miserly low wattage of the electric bulbs rather than from any effort at cosiness.
Trade was good: there was a strong platoon of stool-sitters and bar-leaners; there was a gang of old-timers around one table and an intense young couple drinking gin at another. The pool tables were busy. I squeezed in at the bar, ordered a beer and tried to close my nose against the smoke. There was a low hum from the lubricated voices and occasional appreciative female shriek.
As I drank I tried to keep obvious observation to a minimum. Shadowy figures came and went through the door down to the toilet in processions that suggested something other than the call of nature. Men bent their heads together just out of the pools of light cast by the big tables where the cues and balls clicked. It wasn’t the sort of place in which to pay too much attention to what other people were doing.
