by Peter Corris
I flicked through a few circulars that comprised most of the mail-install a security system, buy a safe, fit a car alarm. Fear was the name of the game and I was a part of it. I went out of the office and down the corridor to the one bathroom-cum-toilet that services the whole building. I washed my face and combed my hair. I wanted a cup of coffee. There was a broom-cupboard-sized alcove near the bathroom with a shelf and a power point that might work. A birko, Nescafe and some long-life milk would raise my quality of life. The phone was ringing in my office and, as I sprinted down the cracked lino to catch it, I thought about sprinters and shooters. Was the guy who shot at me in the lane the killer of Charles Meadowbank?
Doc Lee had been on to White City and come up trumps. Andrew Perkins was a regular player, a never-miss-it type who could be relied on to be at the courts tomorrow if the weather held.
‘A few sets’d do me good, Cliff,’ Doc said. ‘I’m putting on weight. Might get me playing more often. Inge will bless you. Mind you, it’s her bloody cooking that’s making me fat.’
We arranged to meet at 1.30.
Leaving me with twenty hours to fill in. I found myself reluctant to leave the office. I didn’t like the thought that a gunman could be out there waiting for me. I had a feeling that I was getting involved in something big and complex and had no organisation-like the army or the Greater Eastern Insurance Company-to back me up. No spit ‘n’ polish, no saluting, no keeping office hours, but this was the price to be paid for independence. My Smith amp; Wesson. 38 Police Special was an eight-shot double action revolver with a three-inch barrel. It was comfortable to carry and fire and accurate over a short distance. I cleaned and loaded it and fitted it into a holster that nestles into the small of the back. Pull your shirt-tail out and no-one knows you have death sitting just above your left buttock.
Just to be sure, I went up onto the roof to scout the terrain before leaving the building. You can travel a fair distance over the top and get a look down into the side streets and back lanes for a few blocks around. Everything looked normal and quiet. I peered out over the building next door and found myself looking at Primo Tomasetti’s empty cement slab. There was a door right next to it and I could get into that building from mine. The idea of renting the space suddenly had a much greater appeal. I locked up and left and nothing happened. I banked Virginia Shaw’s cheque just before closing time. No-one had booby-trapped my car; no-one was lying in wait for me in Glebe.
The empty house oppressed me. It had soft spots in the floors, patches of rising damp and Cyn and I had been forced to move our bed to another part of the room because the ceiling had developed a dangerous-looking sag. A couple of uprights were missing from the stair rail. Cyn had said a dozen times that she’d get them replaced. There are woodworkers who can reproduce the exact shape. I had a feeling it would never happen. Outside was no better. There was enough work in the small front, side and back spaces to keep an active man busy for days. I sat in the concreted backyard and smoked.
I went inside and rang the Melbourne number.
‘Yes?’ A male voice. Educated, uninterested.
‘Virginia Shaw, please.’
‘Who’s calling?’
‘Hardy, from Sydney.’
A pause of maybe fifteen seconds and then he was back. ‘Try again in twenty-four hours.’ The phone went dead.
Intriguing.
I stood under a hot shower, had my second shave for the day and put on fresh clothes. I strapped the gun on and went to the RSL for a meal and a few drinks. No-one followed me coming or going and I won $15 on the poker machines.
8
White City resisted change. The grandstands were still made of wood and a lot of the courts were like the hallowed centre playing space-grass. It had an old world air without any pretension. I saw Sedgman win the NSW Open there in 1952, Hoad, Rosewall and Laver a bit later. Newcombe and Roche looked to me to be as good as any of them. I played there myself once, in a schoolboy tournament. Tom Wild and I were eliminated in the second round of the doubles. I wasn’t good enough to play singles, but it was still a kick to play with a net that went all the way down to the ground and have the balls collected by someone else. And Doc was right-there’s something about the living, breathing surface of grass that makes the game on it a better experience.
I parked outside the complex and wandered in, wearing my whites and carrying a towel and my far from new Wilson racquet. Doc was waiting for me by the clubhouse. We shook hands and said how good it was to see each other. I meant it. I liked the old boy with his rough head, stocky body and no-nonsense manner. He came from a long line of well-heeled professionals but it didn’t seem to have polished him too much. He was as much at home with boxers and jockeys as with Macquarie Street surgeons and Vaucluse socialites. He had put on weight, though. His stomach stretched the waistband of his shorts and he was fleshy around the neck.
‘I’ll sign you in and I think we can get a court to ourselves for half an hour. I’ll need that to get the kinks out.’
‘Me too.’
‘Then it’ll be a couple of sets of doubles. D’you want to play men’s or mixed?’
‘Mixed.’
‘Very wise. What about this lawyer chap? Want to play with or against him? I’m told he’s a big man, red-headed. Shouldn’t be hard to spot, although it’ll get pretty busy around here soon.’
‘Shit, no, Doc. I want to follow him home when he leaves. I wouldn’t mind a chance to get a look at him-see whether he can hit a volley or not.’
‘Hmm. This is all to do with the cloak and dagger business you’ve got yourself into?’
We were moving into the clubhouse-parquet floor, big windows and several tons of cut crystal, dull pewter and polished glass. In pride of place was a picture of John Bromwich executing a two-handed backhand. Totally proper in his long trousers and wrist-buttoned shirt and utterly unorthodox in his stroke. It was a great photo. Doc introduced me to the Secretary of the club, a blazer-clad moustache wearer whose name I instantly forgot. He signed me in as a visitor and we went out onto the crisp grass of Court 12. Doc had a tin of pressure-tested balls and we hit up for a couple of minutes. He had powerful, accurate groundstrokes, an erratic volley and a weak second serve. I was solid on the forehand, weak on the other wing, both at the back of the court and at the net. My serve was a reliable, medium-paced kicker.
We played best of three for service and I won. I hadn’t played for almost a year, since a holiday Cyn and I had on the south coast, and I was rusty. I served two double faults, fluffed a backhand, whacked a great forehand volley into the corner, but lost the game when I tried to do it again and missed. Doc’s second serve was very fat- slow with minimum spin. He had me love-thirty with a couple of good first serves and then he faulted with the first ball twice and I passed him easily when he unwisely came in. The game went to deuce and I won it with a good cross-court forehand and a lucky lob.
We both won our serves and were deuce when Doc said we had to surrender the court. I wasn’t sorry, most of the games had gone to deuce with several advantage points-twenty minutes of scampering about in the sun takes its toll when you’re out of practice. Doc went straight into a mixed doubles and after a couple of minutes I was drawn into a men’s with two players about my own standard and one, not my partner, a great deal better. More hard work before we lost seven-five. I sat out for a while and ran my eye over the mob, which had grown markedly as lunchtime receded. They were a well-heeled group to judge from the clothes and accessories-the women sleek and most of the men trying to stay that way, with some notable failures. I played a mixed with a hard-hitting, pretty blonde woman who defended me on the backhand side and we won easily.
I was getting a soft drink from the machine when I spotted Perkins. The club members had their names on magnetised strips fixed to a board. As you joined a foursome your strip was taken from the pool and placed on the board. You went back into the pool after the set until your turn to play came around again. A tall
man in immaculate tennis clothes and with short, crinkly red hair placed his strip beside three others. He carried two racquets and wore a sweatband- all just a bit showy to my mind unless he was very good. I removed my visitor’s strip from the pool and went with my drink to Court 8 to watch Andrew Perkins, Barrister-at-Law, at play.
He was good, very good. He was a bit bigger than me, about six-foot-two and around thirteen stone, and, unlike me, he’d been well-coached and every movement he made was economical and efficient. He hit up like a professional, going systematically through the strokes and letting his service action warm up slowly. He could hit flat and with top-spin off both sides; he had a vicious, swinging serve and he was a tiger at the net. He took longer over the hit-up than the others wanted and I saw the frowns and body language and fidgeting that gave me an idea of Perkins’ popularity. He didn’t care. He sharked at the net and his side won the right to serve. He served first and sent down an ace. He won the game to love and took the only point that was really contested with a down-the-line backhand that might have missed fractionally, but no-one bothered to argue.
As a receiver, he seemed bent on humiliation. He lobbed with undisguised enjoyment. His greatest delight was to wrong-foot an opponent. Another couple of games and I’d seen enough. Perkins was a near tournament-standard player with a very nasty streak. His main weakness was a tendency to over-aggression. He missed a smash that he should really have let bounce. His racquet frame paid the penalty for that error.
I played another two sets of mixed doubles, playing once against Doc. He hit some very good shots and was clearly enjoying himself. I did OK, didn’t disgrace myself. I took my strip down after that game and told Doc I’d have to go when Perkins took off.
‘I watched him,’ Doc said. ‘An A-type personality, if ever I saw one.’
I used my towel to wipe away the sweat. Last night’s drinks had been well and truly metabolised. ‘Meaning?’
Doc smiled, ‘Arsehole. Glad you got me out here, Cliff. I was in a rut. Take care of yourself, boy. I won’t shake hands. I imagine you want to put on your cloak and dagger.’
He laughed and walked away, swishing his racquet. When he told me to take care of myself I knew what he meant: Take care of my daughter.
Perkins was playing in a mixed, concentrating his attack on the woman on the other side of the net. She happened to be the blonde I’d played with before and she was standing up to him pretty well. I drifted off towards the members’ car park where there were a good many Volvos, Mercs and BMWs. It came down, I decided, to the black Porsche and the red Alfa Romeo. I took a bet on the Porsche. Back at my car I wriggled out of my shorts and into a pair of jeans. I eased out of the damp tennis shirt, towelled off and put on an old army shirt with a tail that hung down well over the holstered. 38.
I was wrong about the car. Perkins zipped out in the red Alfa two cigarettes later. He seemed to be in a hurry, or perhaps he just drove that way. The tyres squealed on the first turn and he left some rubber on the road at the lights. Maybe that’s what you have to do in a red Alfa. I wouldn’t know. For all the showiness, it was easy to keep up with him. Driving speedway style between the lights in Sydney, you’re lucky to make up any time at all on grandpa out for his weekend spin. I followed him to Double Bay. It was hardly worth the drive. I was surprised he hadn’t jogged it, but maybe the Alfa needed a run. He turned abruptly, barely signalling, and nosed up to the door of a garage, one of a set of eight that seemed to belong to a row of big houses with deep front gardens set up above the road. The garages appeared to be cut into the base of a ridge hill with the houses on the top.
I stopped on the other side of the road just a few yards on and got quickly out of my car. Perkins had used a remote control device to open the garage door. The Alfa slid inside and I went after it into a kind of car cave-sandstone walls, cement floor, fluorescent light. Perkins didn’t notice me until he was out of the car.
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’ He was all aggression off the court as well as on, quickly detaching his sunglasses, raising one of his racquets threateningly.
‘My name’s Hardy. We have to talk.’
He put the sunglasses on the roof of the car with his keys and the second racquet. ‘You were at the courts. I saw you.’
‘Full marks. You play a mean game.’
He half turned towards a door that led somewhere. A tunnel up to the house? ‘If you don’t leave immediately I’ll call the police.’
‘What will you tell them about Virginia Shaw and the bloke who took a shot at me a couple of hours after I called your office?’
He moved forward, gripping the racquet. Not much of a weapon, but he was bigger than me and, I suppose, sure of himself having just won three or four sets. ‘I don’t know who you are or what you’re raving about,’ he snarled. ‘But I’m warning you, get off my property before you get hurt.’
I moved up, too. ‘I don’t like warnings, Andrew. I like to know what’s going on.’
The use of his first name annoyed and provoked him as it was intended to do. He swung the racquet at my head, but I’d been ready for that from the first and I ducked under the swing and hit him with a short right jolt, just below the mono-grammed pocket of his tennis shirt. A hard blow above the heart can paralyse anyone who isn’t either trained to cope with it or so full of booze and rage it doesn’t matter. Andrew, for all his flash, wasn’t a boxer or a street fighter. He went down in a heap and lay gasping for wind and strength on the concrete floor. He tried to sit up but his legs were jellied and he fell, getting more oil stains on his tailored, sharkskin shorts.
I’d been wanting to hit someone for the past few days and now I’d done it. Somehow, it didn’t give me the satisfaction I’d expected. I looked down at him as he fought for his breath and dignity and suddenly I had doubts. With the wind knocked out of him, his clothes dirty and his pride hurt he didn’t seem so formidable. Also, he looked genuinely puzzled. He levered himself up on unsteady legs, gripped the car door handle and struggled upright.
‘Who… who did you say you are?’
‘Cliff Hardy — I’m a private detective.’
‘You behave like one. I’m calling the police if you don’t leave immediately. I’m going to take some sort of action against you, anyway.’
He was starting to recover his no doubt considerable confidence and I was losing ground. He wasn’t behaving as I’d expected. ‘I want to talk about Virginia Shaw. She’s my client.’
That got his attention but, perhaps understandably, he was more cautious than interested. ‘I’m not sure that I know anyone by that name.’
‘You know her, Perkins. You set her up with Charles Meadowbank. She hired me to deliver you a message.’
‘You have a strange way of carrying out your commissions.’
This wasn’t going anything like the way it was supposed to. I was on the back foot now and he could see it. He massaged the place where I’d hit him, applied a little pressure and winced. I reminded myself about the phone call to his office and the bullet whining off the bricks in St Peters Lane. We were standing in the garage with the door open to the street. It wasn’t the right place to conduct this sort of business and I felt I had to get some leverage on him somehow. I pointed to his sports bag on the seat of the Alfa. ‘Collect your stuff and close the garage, then we’ll step into your place and have a talk.’
‘Don’t give me orders! You’re trespassing, you’re guilty of assault…’
I pushed him back against the car. ‘Listen, I was there when Meadowbank got shot. You’re involved. Then someone took a shot at me. I’m holding you responsible until something convinces me otherwise.’
He bent and picked up the racquet that had bounced off the wall and lay near the front wheel of the car. I was half hoping he’d give it another try but he didn’t. He reached in for his bag and then shut the car. He moved past me and touched a switch on the wall. The door slid into place on oiled tracks. ‘Very well,’ Perki
ns said. ‘I’ll give you a few minutes, but your PEA licence is hanging by a thread.’
He opened the door at the back of the garage and we went up some steps to a path that led to the house. Perkins took the steps up to the front door three at a time until his bruised chest slowed him down. The massive front door was open. We stepped into a dim lobby.
Perkins started up the curving staircase that was about twice as wide as mine in Glebe and had no missing uprights. ‘I own the top two floors.’
‘Good for you. Anyone live with you?’
‘Not at the moment, no.’
He opened a door on the first level-entrance hall, carpet, high ceiling. I followed him into a sitting room half the size of a tennis court with three doors to other rooms and one wall made entirely of glass. The view was towards Royal Sydney Golf Course with a lot of trees in between. Perkins put his sports bag and racquets down on a chair. The furniture was big and old, the carpet thick and oriental, the paintings big and modern. The room screamed money. Perkins stood in the middle of his carpet and said, ‘You wanted to talk, talk.’
I shook my head. ‘Not here. I feel overwhelmed by your affluence. Where’s the kitchen? I could do with a drink.’
‘Good idea.’ He went to the window and pressed a couple of buttons. Glass panels slid apart and warm air flowed into the stuffy room. Then he opened a door and we went down a short passage to a kitchen that looked as if it had been built last century but fitted out last year. It was all metal and glass, bristling with electrical appliances. The fridge was a double-door monster and you could have roasted a sheep in the oven. Perkins washed his hands at the sink and dried them on a spotlessly white hand towel. ‘Of course, we could have had a drink in the den, but since you prefer the kitchen, what will you have?’
