by Peter Corris
“Wasn’t Hayes himself, was it? At your place?”
“I doubt it. He’s said to be very good at what he does. These three weren’t very good.”
“So what do you want to do now?”
“Who would you say was the softest out of Catchpole, Spotswood, and Williams?”
I thought about it. “I don’t know all that much about them.”
“I do,” Frank said. “I’ve been asking.”
“None of them’s soft, but I’d say Spotswood if I had to pick one.”
“You’re right. He’s the one. Well, we have to figure out a way to get hold of him and scare the living shit out of him.” He banged his fist on the table. “I’m buggered if I’m going to be hunted by an animal like Hayes. I’m going hunting myself. What do you say?”
“Yes. Tonight?”
“Tonight.”
12
I phoned Guthrie again. He told me his wife had flown to Brisbane to see her son.
“Drugs, they said.” His voice seemed to handle the word with difficulty.
“That’s right. But he couldn’t have been using them for very long. When did you last see him?”
“Six months,” he said dully.
“So it’s a good deal less than that. He’ll get over it. Could be a lot worse.”
“But what the hell is happening to my family! He was a student! At university! Now I hear they call him a labourer or something—I just don’t understand. What happened?”
“He was under some kind of pressure. I don’t know why yet. I’m still working on it. I hope to get some answers soon. Any sign of Ray yet?”
“No. Do you need any more money?”
“Not so far. How’s your wife?”
“Bloody strange. She seemed almost glad to get the news from Brisbane. No, I don’t mean that. She jumped at the idea of going up there, almost seemed she wanted to get away from me as much as see Chris.”
“Just glad to have something to do, probably,” I lied. “Just sit tight, Mr Guthrie. I know it’s hard, but it’s all you can do. All I can tell you now is that I’m going to put on some pressure myself—on the Catchpole crowd.”
“That sounds like the right idea. Wish I could help.”
“Be there. Be there for Ray and Chris and your wife.”
“Makes me feel old,” he grumbled. He was active by nature, sensitive enough to know his limitations but energetic enough to chafe under them. All I could do was throw him a bone.
“If you can do anything, like some driving or something like that, I’ll get on to you.”
“Thanks, Hardy. Appreciate it. The Northbridge place feels like a barn with only me in it. We’ve got a flat at the Double Bay marina. I’ll stay there until Pat gets back. You’ve got the number?”
I checked, told him I had it, reassured him again, and hung up. I had a mental picture of him sitting by the phone, which I didn’t like too much—it could be a long sit.
Hilde came home and made coffee. I gave her and Frank some time on their own, and when I rejoined them for the drink they seemed to have spent it well. Hilde passed Frank his coffee and gave his bristles a rub.
“Just like a Hun,” I said, “knuckling under to authority.”
She smiled at me. “Get stuffed, Cliff. How’s it going with the one with the sexy voice?”
I grunted. “It’d go all right if I wasn’t spending so much time with coppers.”
“They’re not so bad.” She ran her hand over the bristles again, almost as if she was just interested in the texture. Almost.
“This is a conspiracy, Frank:, you know that,” I said.
Parker nodded.
“What is?” Hilde said.
I filled her in on what was happening, partly to hear myself review it and partly because Hilde sometimes has a sensible suggestion to make. Sometimes she has a brilliant suggestion to make. But not this time.
“You go out on a limb doing that, Frank,” she said.
“I’m on the limb already. I haven’t got anything to lose.”
“It’s all right for Cliff,” she persisted. “He hasn’t got a reputation to worry about.”
“A policeman hasn’t got a reputation either,” Parker said. His voice was bitter-edged, impatient. “He’s got his job or he hasn’t got it. That’s all.”
“Touched as I am by Hilde’s assessment of my character,” I said, “we can all do without the vocational philosophy. What bloody reputation does a dentist have anyway?”
She flared up. “I’m a dental researcher! And you’d have some reputation if you weren’t so dumb! If you stopped running around at all hours of the day and night … being bashed up.”
“How would I make a living?”
“You’re not dumb. You could be a crime reporter or a crime … writer or something …”
Parker burst out laughing and broke the tension. “Hardy! He couldn’t be a writer! I’ve read one of his voluntary statements—no one believed it.”
“Poetic licence,” I said. “You should read my reports to clients. I’ll show you one, Hilde—I reckon you’d say I should stick to being bashed.”
She was still ruffled but the edge was off the moment. We drank some of her very good coffee, and talked about nothing for a while until I got us back on course.
“How do we grab Spotswood?”
Hilde broke some conciliatory eggs into a bowl. She looked at Parker. “Where does he live?”
“Where does he drink?” I said.
Parker had the answer to that question and to a few others. I knew a bit about Catchpole and Spotswood myself because of their connections with Glebe, but Parker had done some deep spadework. The “Tiny” nickname for Spotswood was ironic. When I’d last seen him there must have been sixteen stone on his six foot four frame and there were no signs that he was interested in dieting. He used to hang around Glebe in the days before the professional classes moved in. Back then, when the freeway was scheduled to go through a thousand bedrooms, and the banks wouldn’t lend on anything closer to the city than Haberfield, almost every street in Glebe had at least one boarding house and there was a drifting population of people who had reasons to drift.
In those days Tiny Spotswood drank at the Toxteth, bet at Harold Park, and exercised his prostate in the place above the barber’s shop in Ross Street. He’d done some boxing in the 1960s and Liam Catchpole and been his manager. Boxing was dying then and people like Spotswood and Catchpole were part of the reason why. When Tiny had taken all the falls on TV and in the clubs anyone could stomach, Catchpole managed a liquor store in which you couldn’t have found an order form or an invoice if you searched for a month. Tiny’s job was loading and unloading the trucks, being around when restaurant and bar owners showed a lack of interest in being supplied by Liam and generally kicking when he was told to kick.
Most of that was before my time in Glebe, although I did arrive before the middle class invasion that changed everything. The boarding houses got changed back into family residences and trees started sprouting everywhere. The mortgage-holders objected to the twenty-four hour clink of bottles and rattle of trucks around Catchpole’s premises—they seemed to think it was worse than the sound of their renovating, even at the weekends. Once-firm understandings broke down and Spotswood got a couple of years for grievous bodily harm. Catchpole moved away. No loss. He and Tiny would have been genuinely shocked by the new power blocs like the Lesbian Mothers Against Rape, anyway.
I couldn’t imagine Spotswood moving to Mount Druitt though, and when Parker told me that he drank at the Crimea in Rozelle I wasn’t surprised. If you ignore Annandale and Lilyfield, Rozelle is just next door to Glebe, really.
The roads were still very wet as Frank and I drove to Rozelle with Hilde’s omelette and coffee inside us. Frank had left his car in Harbord and we were in the Falcon. I showed him the gun clip under the dashboard.
“I think that’s illegal. Aren’t you restricted to carrying your gun on the left-hand side with
a cork up the barrel?”
“Something like that. Can we be sure Tiny’ll be there tonight?”
“My information is that he lives there.”
“Lives in a pub?”
“Yeah. Do you know the Crimea?”
“I know it. I’m not sure I’d even drink in it by choice, let alone live there.”
“I’m glad you changed out of those poncy shoes then.”
“They’re no good for stomping on fingers. So what’s Tiny doing these days? Besides helping Liam Catchpole help the authorities with their enquiries?”
The look he gave me wasn’t friendly. “'Where’d you be if nobody told you anything?”
“Stuffed.”
“Right.”
Not even the cheekiest of real estate sharks would describe the part of Rozelle graced by the Crimea Hotel as “will suit Balmain buyers”. Narrowness is the theme; narrow streets, narrow houses, narrow shopfronts. The section is hilly and the streets run at odd angles but the effect is crippled rather than quaint. The pub, which faces a cramped football ground notorious for its bogginess in winter, juts out awkwardly on a corner, forming a crazy, erratic building line. The dominant colour is dirty grey, and the part of the upper level that hangs over the street looks too heavy for the narrow posts that support it. We parked near the football field pointing in the direction which I thought would get me fairly directly to Victoria Road—in the maze of small streets it’d be hard to be sure.
I had a shirt out over my pants again and Parker watched me sourly as I tucked the gun away behind.
“Where’s yours?” I said.
“Under here,” he tapped his undamaged side, up near the armpit. He was wearing a light poplin zip-jacket and a clean white shirt of mine. At risk to its motor, I’d lent him my shaver and he had his beard down to a flat blueness. “I hope we don’t need the bloody things,” he said.
“Has Tiny got any guts?”
We stepped clear of the car. “Opinions differ,” Frank said. It reminded me of the meaningless, pointless chatter we used to fall into in Malaya before we went in to some place where people were likely to shoot at us. It covered nervousness, or was supposed to. I didn’t like to be reminded of those feelings.
“What else do we know about him?”
Parker adjusted the zip on his jacket. “He’s a boxing freak—knows who KO’d who where and in what round—all that crap.”
I stopped. “Have you got any ideas on how we’re going to get him out of the pub, if he’s there?”
“No. My side is hurting. I’m getting involved with your housemate. I’m confused. I’m too angry for good ideas, or any ideas.”
“Here’s one. The Boxing Commission’s sitting.”
“So what?”
“I could spin Tiny a story about him giving evidence to one of the Commissioners. That could be you, in the car.”
“Why’m I in the car?”
“I’m sorry, Frank. But you look like a cop and you move like a cop.”
“No, I mean why am I in the car if I’m a Boxing Commissioner?’’
“’Cause he’s got a criminal record.”
“Can’t they talk to crims?”
“I don’t know. Tiny wouldn’t know. It might work. If we can just get him out, we’re in business.”
“I don’t …”
I handed him my gun and tucked my shirt in. “Let’s give it a try. If I get in trouble I’ll yell, and you can come and be a cop. You’ll have two guns, you can be as angry as you like.”
He didn’t care for it but he agreed. I watched him walk back to the car and climb in. He settled himself in the passenger seat and gave me the nod. In his clean shirt and light jacket and with his severe profile he looked the part. The Falcon wasn’t too impressive, but it was parked in the shadows and if Tiny was hooked a detail like that wouldn’t unhook him.
I went into the bar pulling out my money as I entered. It was small and hot on the mild night although it looked like the sort of place that would be an ice box in winter. Now the smoke was thick and the beer fumes drifted with the draughts from the open windows and doors. There were about a dozen men sitting around the three-sided bar; the Crimea didn’t offer anything like pool, tables and chairs, or barmaids. It was a man-to-man, middy-to-middy blood-house.
Tiny Spotswood was part of a group sitting along one of the short sides of the bar. He had a wall behind him to lean his bulk against. He’d expanded since I’d last seen him, and all around the equator. He must have weighed eighteen stone and the schooner he was working on now would be one in a very long chain. A good length of zipper showed at the top of his pants where they failed to accommodate his belly. The Hawaiian print shirt he was wearing showed sunsets and palm trees for a holiday resort.
Spotswood and the two nearest him were talking about racehorses, not boxing. It would have been too much to ask to walk into the middle of a bet on whether Dave Sands was ever stopped. I ordered a beer and positioned myself as close to the punting discussion as I could. I was a stranger and therefore intrusive, but they were a tolerant mob, especially as I didn’t have my Italian shoes on.
The man closest to Tiny up-ended his schooner and pulled out of the school.
“Gotta get home,” he said.
“Under the thumb, Bert?” Spotswood jeered. His fleshy face under the thin, gingery hair was loose and uncoordinated, glistening with sweat. He was very drunk. The retirer shook his head.
“Haven’t got your liver, Tiny.”
Spotswood stuck a cigarette in his face and laughed around it, just managing to keep the cigarette in place. “Haven’t got a fuckin’ liver,” he roared. “Haven’t had one for fuckin’ years.”
That got him a laugh. There was a space to move into now and there was no point in being shy. I got out a card that said: “Michael Simmonds—Consultant” and flashed it in front of Tiny’s bleary eyes.
“Excuse me, Mr Spotswood. I’m Mike Simmonds—from the Department of Sport and Recreation.”
“What’s that, mate?”
“The New South Wales Government—Department of Sport and Recreation. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Why not?” He waved to the barman. “Cec, the Government’s buying me a bloody schooner.”
The other drinker from the group edged away. “Don’t go away, mate,” I said. “You might be able to help, too.”
“Help, how?” Spotswood looked at me with a mixture of drunken scorn and caution. His schooner came and he took a big pull on it. I drank some of my beer and the other man looked at us with sceptical curiosity. The rest of the bar went about its business.
“I’m told you’re an expert on boxing,” I said.
“Boxing. Yeah, I know a bit.”
“You know there’s an enquiry going on at the moment?”
“Fuckin’ wowsers and poofters!” Spotswood’s face flushed; the heightened colour gave him an over-ripe, ready-to-burst look. “Boxing’s a good sport, right, Phil?”
Phil nodded and sipped his schooner. “Usta be.”
“Could be again, if they’d leave it alone and give it a bit ’a publicity. Fuckin’ good fights in the clubs but do you ever see a fuckin’ word about ’em in the bloody papers?”
“You never do, no,” Phil said.
“There’s still public interest?” I asked.
“Man’s bloody game. They should ban the bloody women like they did in the old days. Then there’d be some fuckin’ goes.”
I leaned closer to him. “That’s a very interesting point of view. That’s original. Would you be willing to give evidence to the Commission? I must say all the evidence so far is going the other way …”
“They gonna bloody ban it?” Spotswood took a belligerent swig.
“They could, unless there’s something said on the other side. The doctors are opposed, the churches …”
“What would they fuckin’ know? Need to talk to a man been in it!” He pushed his face close to mine and I waited for my eyes to water f
rom the beer fumes. “I had thirty-three fuckin’ fights!”
“How many’d you win, Tiny?” asked Phil, who was just possibly a wag.
“Never mind. More’n I lost. ’S not winnin’, ’s bein’ there! Know all about it. What’s a man gotta do? Go ’n talk to some cunt in Parliament?”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “Matter of fact, one of the Commissioners’s in my car outside. Mr Groves. He’s anxious to talk to you.”
He thumped his meaty fist on the bar. “Bring ’im in! Buy ’im a drink!”
“No, he can’t approach you.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t be offended, Mr Spotswood, but it’s a matter of your criminal record. But Mr Groves himself isn’t prejudiced; he wants to get the truth about boxing from all angles. Between you and me, I think he’s the only Commissioner with an open mind. I’m aware, and I’m sure you’re aware, that there are interested parties who’d be grateful to you if you could put the sort of case you’ve been making here to one of the Commissioners. It wouldn’t have to be in public hearings. The word would get around if you know what I mean. Would you come and have a word with Mr Groves? I promise you you won’t be sorry.”
“Awright.” He heaved his swollen body off the stool and stood swaying for a moment, getting his balance. “Back in a minute, Phil.”
Phil nodded and Spotswood lumbered towards the door; I walked behind him wishing we’d dug a bear trap by the car, and had a block and tackle to lift him out and a King Kong cage to keep him in.
“Where is he?” He stood on the footpath hitching at his sagging waistband. I hoped he wouldn’t try to lean against one of the slender posts.
“Over there.” I pointed to the car. Parker appeared to be making entries in a notebook. He wasn’t looking our way but I had the feeling he knew just what was going on. Spotswood walked slowly toward the car and I kept right behind him, chattering.
“You know, Mr Spotswood, I heard some blokes having an interesting bet about Dave Sands.”
