by Peter Corris
He burrowed into Manny’s pockets, showing him as much respect as you’d show a scarecrow. He got a lot of blood on his hands, but he also got the keys and opened the door.
‘What’s that?’ He’d turned on the light and pointed at the tub.
‘Glue factory. They’ve been boiling down the senior citizens. See the tools outside? They’re for burying the hard bits.’
‘Shit! Can you stand up?’
‘No. Can you get me some brandy or something?’
He yelled for assistance. The noise felt like a rain of bricks on my head, but a bottle came. I took a pull on it; it wasn’t French, but it did something for that spreading cold.
‘Did you get the other one-the woman?’
‘No.’
‘In a van.’
‘No van.’
‘She’ll see all this a mile off. She runs this bloody place.’
‘We’ll get her. Take it easy.’ He yelled again and I heard the word ‘ambulance’.
‘What happened to your face?’ He lit a cigarette and I didn’t want one.
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Looks like you took on Sugar Ray Leonard.’
‘That bad?’ I was sweating and cold, scared and angry at the same time. I groaned and heard the whine in my voice. ‘Studded belt. Shit.’ I ran my tongue around inside my mouth but there was no extra damage there.
‘Where am I bleeding?’
‘Ear,’ he said. ‘Torn pretty bad.’
‘Did Ann fill you in? Where is she?’
Yeah, enough. She’s okay. Is this where the guy you’re looking for ended up?’
‘Looks like it.’
He prowled about, puffing on his cigarette. A man came down and whispered something to him and he issued instructions about ambulances and hospitals.
‘They’re in a bad way up there,’ he said.
‘Yeah. Frank, get a spade and poke around in the garden. Use my torch.’
He took the torch and went out. Stretcher-bearers arrived and lifted me aboard. I clenched my teeth against the pain.
One of them took the bottle from me and said, ‘Who gave him this?’
‘St Bernard,’ I said. I was feeling lightheaded and had a crazy impulse to wave my arms around. Ann Winter’s face swam up and I tried to smile at it, but blood dripped into my mouth.
‘God,’ she said.
They carried me out and made the turn to go up the path. I could see the light weaving about in the shrubbery and heard the spade bite into the earth.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Frank?’
His voice sounded as if he had a mouthful of ground glass. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘It’s a fucking graveyard.’
18
I was in hospital a week, and if I had had to pay my own bills it would have meant that I would have just about broken even on the Singer case. It’s a muzzy professional and ethical area, medical bills run up in the course of duty. It’s not wise to mention them in the initial interview in case you look accident-prone, but failure to do so can lead to unpleasantness later.
Anyway, they stitched up my ear without any trouble and put a few other stitches in my face, which would add to my tally of fetching scars in time. I had two broken ribs; again, time heals. The knee was the problem: there was ligament damage and chipped bone to worry about. An operation looked likely for a while, and I didn’t fancy that. I never heard of anyone who’d had an operation on his knee ever being any good at what he did again. Eventually they decided to leave it alone and let physiotherapy and clean living repair the damage.
The cops came and took a detailed statement. Frank Parker visited and was almost non-official for ten minutes or so. Hilde visited, Ann Winter called in and one of their visits coincided. They got along very well.
‘She’s a beautiful girl, your lodger,’ Ann said. Hilde had left after delivering a clean nightshirt and Garp. It was two days before I left hospital; I was sitting up in a chair and I had a stick to walk with. With the bandaged ear and all I thought I looked pretty dashing, very World War II and Battle of Britain.
“D’you reckon?’
‘Yes. What a beautiful skin.’ The way she said it made me wonder about Ann Winter. She seemed much more interested in Hilde’s beautiful German skin than in dashing old me.
I’d made the hospital staffs lives miserable until they gave me a telephone. I rang Mrs Singer and her voice on the line was cool, or cooler.
‘I’ve had a spot of bother,’ I said.
‘I read about it.’
The story of the old people held in captivity and defrauded of their pensions had had a long run in the papers. The tabloids had eked it out for days and one of them had come up with ‘The Black Hole of Clovelly’. With some relatives who came to light and the investigations by the Social Security people, who were turning up a three-or four-year history, there was a major paper-selling item. A lot of bones and skulls had been found in the backyard and analysis was proceeding.
‘Mrs Singer, we need to break confidentiality, at least a little.’
‘Why?’
‘I want you to arrange to release your husband’s dental records to the police. I’ll try to keep it as quiet as I can, but a technician or two might find out what’s going on.’
She was silent.
‘I take it your husband did go to the dentist in the time you knew him?’
‘Twice, I think.’
‘That’ll do. Will you do what I say?’
‘Of course.’ I thought I detected some relief in her voice; certainly, she sounded less hostile. ‘You don’t really expect John to have been one of the victims, do you?’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s fantastic’
‘You’re right, it is. You saw the papers. One of the men in there had been a QC
‘You’re right, Mr Hardy. I’ll contact the dentist.’
‘Tell him to get the records to Detective Frank Parker with a covering note stressing confidentiality.’
I rang off; it wasn’t the moment to try her out on the medical expenses. I couldn’t gauge her reaction. She didn’t seem to take the dental check very seriously and I didn’t know how serious about it I was myself. It would be a neat ending but somehow I hated to think of anyone I’d been connected with, even indirectly, finishing up as one of Manny and Mahoud’s discards.
I needn’t have worried. Frank rang me the day I got home. I was installed on the couch downstairs with the phone to hand.
‘How’s the hero?’
‘Crippled. Doubt if I’ll ever hurdle again.’
‘Tough. Brace yourself, Hardy. We checked your chopper charts.’
‘And?’
‘First place, the skulls were mostly female; only two men. Second place, no Singer. Nothing like it.’
‘No mistakes? Good man on the job?’
‘The best. No mistakes. The soil of Clovelly is a great preserver.’
‘I’ve still got a case, then.’
‘Yeah. Who’s interested in Singer, if I may ask?’
‘Wife. D’you know anything about it?’
‘No, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll pull the file and take a look. Anything interesting I’ll pass on.’
‘Thanks, Frank. Any sign of Mahoud?’
‘No. You mentioned money in the house in your statement.’
‘Right. She tried to buy me off with it. I didn’t find any, but I didn’t do a complete search.’
‘We did. No money. Could she have been lying?’
I thought back to the waves of desperation coming from behind that locked door. ‘I don’t think so. Looks like she took off with it.’
‘Could have been a bundle. Kertez had a fair bit in the bank, but nothing like what they were making.’
‘Who?’
‘Kertez, Manfred Kertez. The late Manfred.’
‘Oh.’ I shifted on the couch as the knee gave me a twinge. ‘The late’ tag was comforting; I’d had one nightmare about being alon
e in a forest with Manny and his shotgun. There had been snow and I had had no shoes; it must have all been terribly Freudian, but that didn’t help.
‘With a lot of money she’ll be hard to catch,’ I said.
‘True. Well, we shut the place down and we can close the file on Henneberry. Did you see the knife?’
‘I saw it.’
‘It checks out. The senator’s happy… well, you know what I mean.’
‘When can you get back to me on the Singer file?’
‘This arvo.’
I rang Mrs Singer with the good news, if that’s what it was.
‘I’m not in the least surprised,’ she said. ‘Will you keep looking?’
‘I’m just out of hospital. I’ve got a bad knee and a very big hospital bill.’
‘I’ll pay the bill. Will you keep on?’
‘Yes.’
I used the stick and the furniture to get out to the kitchen for a drop of wine and a bit of cheese to aid thought. I was back on square one unless something in the police file on Singer put me on square two.
I propped myself against the window frame in the front room and looked out. Good blue sky, bit of wind in the trees, ideal day for almost anything. I opened the door and hobbled down to the letter box. There was nothing there, but I liked the feeling of independence. I looked carefully up and down the street. My neighbour Harry Soames had a visitor who drove a jeep; a liquor store was delivering to a house across the road; the dog from the house on the corner was curled up asleep on the bonnet of a Holden. I could see his muddy paw marks on the roof. There were no suspicious-looking technicians working in the street, none up poles or down holes. I doubted that Freddy Ward would have the pull to get my phone tapped, but anything is possible. As I limped back to the house I reflected that if Ward was still interested in me I was probably on square three, more exposed and vulnerable than two.
Frank rang in the early afternoon and was properly cautious.
‘You’d better ask me questions, Hardy. I’ll give you what I can.’
‘Did anything point to Singer being murdered?’
‘No, but nothing pointed to anything. Shit, he could be in Brazil. There’s one thing you mightn’t know, though. Singer took a trip to the US a few weeks before he disappeared. Bit of a mystery about what he did there.’
‘Interesting. Any chance of looking into it?’
‘Why don’t you? Wouldn’t she kick in for a trip to Los Angeles?’
I let myself think about it for maybe thirty seconds. There was the international connection, of course-the ashram, Bruce Henneberry. But I knew it wasn’t on. The answer lay here in Sydney, or there wasn’t one. ‘No, I don’t think I can promote myself a trip to LA out of it.’
‘Pity. Well, I can try.’
‘Thanks. Whose movements were checked when it happened?’
‘The wife’s. All clear. Freddy Ward at his place in the country. Tom McLeary; movements accounted for by employees- not too firm, that. A few others-guy who worked on Singer’s yacht, an old girlfriend-all okay.’
‘Can I have the names and addresses?’
‘Sure.’ He read them off
‘Listen, Frank, how many people know that those dental records were Singer’s?’
‘Just me. I photocopied the dentist’s stuff and blanked out the name. Standard procedure. Why?’
‘I’d like to keep it that way. Not knowing who I was working for gave me an edge on Ward and I’d like to keep it.’
‘You think Freddy Ward killed Singer?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What’re you going to do now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re lucky you don’t have to write reports.’
‘I know that. I think of it every month when I can’t meet the mortgage.’
‘I can’t meet the mortgage, either.’
‘You smoke’, I said. ‘I don’t.’
‘I’m stopping. Today.’
‘Bet you don’t.’
‘You’re on. What’ll it be?’
‘A bottle of Glenlivet.’
‘How long do I have to go?’
‘I’ll pay in a fortnight for a clean slate.’
‘How do I prove it?’
‘I’ll ask Policewoman Reynolds.’
He snorted at that and rang off, but I thought I had a bet. Also I did know what I was going to do next-investigate privately, and that meant without telling Frank Parker.
I rang Ann Winter at Bondi and the whisky voice gave me the number for Point Piper.
‘How’s your knee?’ she said.
‘Fair. I can just get around with a stick.’
‘Your stocks are high out Bondi way just now. Do you fancy older women?’
I thought about it. ‘Depends on who they’re older than.’
‘I know a few who’d give you a good time. That Clovelly place really gave them the horrors.’
‘Me, too. Listen, Ann, I want to talk to that woman who was at the wake. The one in the pink who said she knew the Singers. Where can I find her?’
She answered immediately. ‘Back bar of the Royal Oak in Randwick.’
I was working again.
19
I was under strict medical instructions not to move around more than necessary, but who ever took any notice of strict medical instructions? When I see a rise in the percentage of thin, fit doctors, I’ll start paying more attention to their strict instructions. Besides, the physical good I might have got by sitting on my bum at home would have been countered by the emotional disturbance. I had to know what was going on. I took a few red Codrals for the pain and put myself and my stick in a taxi. First stop was the bank for cash in various denominations, then Randwick.
The taxi driver naturally assumed I was going to the races and that I was a man of leisure.
‘Got anything good?’ He spoke with the mixture of respect and distrust a working man feels for someone who comes out of his house casually dressed in the middle of a weekday. I hadn’t looked at the horses since the Singer case started.
‘Is Roderick Dhu running?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘In the fourth.’
The horse was trained by a friend of mine, an ex-boxer who hardly ever fought an honest fight or ran a dishonest horse. ‘Get on that, each way.’
The Royal Oaks is just far enough from the track for someone to walk over, forget his or her losses and think about punting another day. I limped from the taxi into the back bar, knocked the knee on a chair and was glad to get up on a bar stool and start work on a scotch. The lady in pink was there all right, in mauve that day, drinking and smoking in an experienced sort of way. She had a companion who looked middle-aged, but after Ann’s revelation of my subject’s age I was not confident about reading how many years these women had on the clock. She wasn’t young. They were both blowing the smoke around and not talking much; it didn’t look like anything that couldn’t be broken up with a little money. Ann had told me that she was going by the name of Peggy Harrison just then and that old Peg was a barrel of fun.
They finished the round and the companion came up to the bar and bought the next one. I drank slowly and when Peggy came up for her shout I had a ten-dollar note out and flapping in the breeze.
‘Peggy?’ I said.
‘Two Bacardis and coke, sport,’ she said to the barman, then she turned a magnificently bloodshot eye at me. ‘Yes? Do I know you?’
‘I was at Leon’s wake with Ann Winter.’
The drinks came and naturally that was what she was most interested in. She grabbed them with the excessive caution of someone who has a slight load on board. But she’d caught sight of the ten.
‘Nice girl, Ann.’
‘Yes. Would this buy a little information?’ I nudged the note. The barman was interested and trying to hover within earshot. I looked at him as if he had something in his nose and he backed off.
‘Depends.’ Her mate shouted, ‘Peg!’ from across the room and
Peg ducked her head at her angrily. Peg’s hair was dyed red, she wore a lot of makeup and her body was strapped in tight. She looked as if she’d spent a little money on herself since I’d last seen her. ‘Depends,’ she repeated. ‘It might buy a little bit of some information.’
I took out another ten. ‘Get rid of your friend and we’ll have a chat.’
The friend didn’t like it much, but she put her Bacardi down fast and went out. I walked across to the table with my second scotch and a fresh Bacardi.
‘Cripple, are you?’
‘Just temporary,’ I said. ‘Hang gliding.’ I gave her the twenty dollars straight off and she offered me a menthol cigarette in return. I refused.
She sucked in the smoke. ‘Safer than hang gliding.’ She gave the sort of cackle that no person under sixty should be able to produce. Where the makeup had flaked off, her skin was a raddled ruin; her hair was thin and retreating like Glenda Jackson’s as Elizabeth I, and all the alcohol and tobacco on her breath couldn’t disguise the smell of poor teeth and lousy food. But through all that you could see she had once been beautiful, that her ruined features had once had a sort of perfection. And she still had guts.
‘Don’t look at me,’ she said sharply. ‘I look like garbage. What d’you want from me?’
She pulled hard on the cigarette and took a deep drink as if she wanted to hasten the decay.
‘Singer,’ I said. ‘John Singer and his wife. I understand you know a bit about them.’
‘Knew. Singer’s dead.’
‘Okay, knew.’
‘Any more money?’
‘It’s my turn to say “It depends”, Peggy. I’ll pay well for something interesting.’ I tapped her glass. ‘Bit flush, aren’t you?’
She sighed. ‘Good double and had both of ‘em each way. Once in a bloody blue moon. Nearly all gone now. What’s your game?’
‘Private investigator. Did you read about that house in Clovelly?’
She was wearing a thin yellow cardigan draped over her shoulders. She pulled the sleeves across her chest and shivered. ‘I read about it.’
‘I helped close it down. That’s where I got the dicky knee.’
‘You must be all right, then. Shit, what a place! Were they really
