by Peter Corris
12
Longish day. A strong wind had got up while I was with Dr Weir. The tops of the tallest trees in her garden were whipping fiercely and I had to brace myself against the wind as I made my way to the car. I worked my way west, crossing Lane Cove and Tarban Creek to pick up the Gladesville Bridge. I had it in mind to drive to my house in Glebe to check for mail and messages, pick up some clothes and see if the roof had blown off. Halfway across the Gladesville Bridge I was almost regretting the route I’d taken; the wind hit the car like a fist and I had to fight to keep it in the lane. Two solid glasses of wine on an empty stomach could give you breathalyser trouble. That, combined with keeping a weather eye out for anyone on my tail, made for a stressful drive.
My street had a good cover of leaves and windblown rubbish and there were plastic bags trapped in the uprights of my sagging wrought iron fence. The roof was still on and not noticeably flapping. I checked the phone messages, the fax and the email while I heated some tomato soup and toasted some dubious-looking bread. I resisted the impulse to have a drink but packed the half full Scotch bottle into an overnight bag with a couple of shirts, some underwear and socks. I wolfed the food down and rang the Bondi flat. I got my own voice on the answering machine but no pick up.
I made some coffee and rang again with the same result. Where the hell are you? I thought. As I drank the coffee I thought back over the events of the day. Doug Schirer was apparently out of the picture as an antagonist and certainly as a shooter. After my talk with the psychiatrist I felt I hardly knew Rodney St John Harkness at all. What was his deep, dark secret? For no good reason what he’d said after the shooting came back to me. Haven’t you got a gun? I took my Smith & Wesson .38 in its holster out of the locked drawer and stuffed it into the overnight bag. The intrepid detective, completely in the dark but ready for anything.
In Bondi I drove around the block a few times for security reasons and on the lookout for Glen’s Pajero. No sign. The wind was roaring and the night had an uncertain, dangerous feel as if unexpected things might happen. It was an unusual atmosphere for Bondi, a place that has always seemed to me to give off an aura of optimism. I went up to the flat and knocked before I let myself in. No response.
I prowled through the rooms, noting the signs of a great deal of coffee being drunk and time spent at the computer. There were Post-its stuck to the monitor as reminders of functions to perform. I’d straightened the bed I’d slept in before I left. So far I hadn’t seen Rod do anything to his bed but get in and out of it. Now it was neatly made. I went into the room I was using and dropped my bag. A Post-it was on the bed, dead centre.
Cliff— Glen and I have taken some time out. We’ll be in touch. Rod.
I took out the Scotch, went to the kitchen and poured a hefty slug. Not much water. I sat down with the drink, thinking harsh thoughts of both of them. Bloody alcoholics. You can’t expect them to behave properly. I worked on the drink and other ideas began to seep in. There was something worrying about two recovering alcoholics being on the loose together. Would they reinforce each other’s sobriety or fall off the wagon together? If so, how hard? Did whoever was out to get Rod have a line on Glen? Probably not, but you never knew. He knew when Rod was getting out and that knowledge wasn’t supposed to be shared by any except the Harknesses, Glen and me, and some people at Rutherford House. The security didn’t feel watertight.
The Scotch soothed me and I began to feel less angry and more worried. Rodney Harkness was an unknown quantity harbouring some dark, painful secret. I’d seen his violent outbursts and apparent lack of remorse or responsibility afterwards. Glen was tough and resourceful but Rod had got under her guard very quickly and she was vulnerable. Was she safe with him?
I had a refill and went out onto the balcony to drink it and see how the weather was shaping. The wind was howling now; antennas and satellite dishes were wobbling and tall trees were thrashing. I finished the drink and realised that the amount of Scotch I’d taken in had hit me hard and I was half-drunk. Where the fuck are you? I felt like shouting it into the wind. Tomorrow I’d have to think more clearly about it—consider Glen’s favourite places—the Blue Mountains, the Southern Highlands—find out if Rod had any in his former life. Surfing spots most likely. Byron Bay for its point break?
I went back inside and rang Glen’s mobile number. I got the recorded message that the phone was out of range or had been switched off. Wandering from room to room, something about the ultra modern, pastel-shaded computer drew me to it. I read the blizzard of Post-its. Glen had set him up with a server for email and the internet. I put the dregs of my drink down on the desk, settled into the chair and turned the computer on. It took me a while with the unfamiliar functions but I remembered how to get onto my server’s mail centre and access my own email. I tapped out a message for Glen. I knew she took a notebook with her everywhere and checked for messages frequently. I deleted the first angry sentence and the next that I mistyped badly because I was half-drunk as well as angry. I ended up with:
Glen—This is unwise. There’s a lot you don’t know and need to know. Get in touch as soon as you see this and tell me where you are.
No sign of jealousy there, surely. No alarmism. Just professional concern with a touch of superior knowledge to engage her curiosity. I looked at the message for a long time, knowing that it was nothing like what I really wanted to say. How could this dysfunctional loser of an actor, this overgrown private schoolboy with his perfect teeth and tight abdominals, turn intelligent women to mush? I clicked on Send harder than I needed to, waited for the message to vanish, and turned the computer off. I realised at that moment that I wasn’t thinking about Rodney or Glen but about Dr Jerry Weir with her curtain of dark hair and her dancer’s grace.
I poured some more whisky, rang Glen’s home number and left the same message on her answering machine, word for word. I felt lonely and self-pitying in the flat and turned on the radio for company. It was tuned to a country music station. Glen again. Her favourite music. Not mine. With Rod, who knew what he liked apart from Elvis? I drowned the Scotch in water and hunted around for the painkillers I’d need sometime between now and the morning. No luck. I heard:
There’s a pain in my heart
Like a lightning bolt,
I’m a little bit lonesome
It’s all your fault.
‘Right,’ I said to the print of a watercolour of nowhere in particular on the wall, and raised my glass. ‘That’s right.’ But I knew in my heart that it was never true.
13
I slept long and deeply, undisturbed by dreams or by the wild night. I was reasonably clear-headed and after a couple of cups of coffee and a shower I was alert enough to take note of a few things like Rod’s missing toilet articles, clothes and overnight bag. The surfboard was gone as well and I could imagine it riding high on the roof rack of Glen’s Pajero. My first thought was, To hell with them, but I wasn’t comfortable with it and out of professional pride I began to think about ways of finding them. The surfboard was a lead. Maybe Rod had favourite beaches. The snag with that was the only person I had to ask was his brother and I didn’t want to let him know that his private eye had flown the coop with the client.
Still mulling it over I punched in the code to check my phone messages at the office. There were three, two of which didn’t matter but the third did. The voice was unfamiliar: ‘Mr Hardy, this is Brett Hughes. Frank Parker spoke to you about me to do with Rodney Harkness. I’m keen to talk to you. I believe you have my number. Give me a ring.’
I’d barely given the ex-policeman a thought since Frank had told me about him but it had been at the back of my mind to contact him to see if he could give me anything I could take to Dr Weir. I didn’t like shelving the question of the runaway love birds, but Hughes’ message had a certain urgency. I dug out my notebook, looked up the scribbled note and rang him. He lived in Lakemba and we arranged to meet at a coffee shop in Haldon Street in an hour.
I shav
ed, put on a clean shirt and went out to the car. Then I cursed myself and went back into the flat to check whether Glen had sent a reply to my email. Nothing. The wind had died down, leaving a clear sky and clean air that quickly became a memory as I went west and battled against heavy traffic going in several directions. Lakemba, with its concentration of Muslim and Asian migrants, has been an unquiet place for some time and more so since the attack on New York and Washington. According to newspaper reports, the initial unthinking racist reaction has died down but it simmers.
Early as always, I parked a couple of blocks from the number on the street Hughes had given me to kill some time and look the place over. I hadn’t been there in quite a while and in this business it pays to stay abreast of the changes. There were plenty—Arabic and Korean contended for dominance on the shopfronts and hoardings and beards and veils were prominent on the street. I couldn’t help liking it—the change from the blandness of the eastern suburbs in my youth and the uniformity that still prevails in the privileged parts of Sydney. But I could feel the pressure: some of the bearded men were unfashionably fat but prosperous-looking, and a good many of the Anglo-Celtic youths were thin and poor and with many of the thin, light-boned Asians it was hard to tell.
The coffee shop had an outside pavement area with tables and shade umbrellas. I told them inside that I was waiting for a friend and that I’d order when he arrived.
The woman behind the counter wore an abbreviated version of the female Arab costume but she said ‘No problem’ like a true Aussie. I took a seat and watched the passing parade. I was considering trying to phone Glen’s house and the Bondi flat when a wheelchair rolled up beside me. The occupant was a man a good deal younger than me with wide shoulders and a deep chest. His face was lean and hard. He looked as if he could throw a discus or put the shot out of sight, but he was anchored to the chair. He stuck out a big hand.
‘Mr Hardy? Frank described you. I’m Brett Hughes.’ We shook hands and he wheeled himself in close to the table. I ordered two coffees and, remembering that I hadn’t eaten anything that morning, a toasted sandwich. He didn’t want to eat.
‘Strict diet,’ he said. ‘Big danger of this kind of life is getting fat. I swim and work out but nothing beats normal movement.’
I nodded. ‘Frank said you took a bullet.’
‘Two actually. Zapped my spine. Did he tell you I got the guy who shot me?’
‘No.’
‘He’s dead. I’m not. I win.’ His grin took the bitterness out of it and I admired him. The coffee and the sandwich arrived and we went through the ritual of drinking before talking. I started eating because I figured he wanted to have first say.
‘I was interested when Frank Parker phoned me. I’d always been curious about that Harkness business. I arrested him, you knew that.’
I nodded, said nothing.
‘Yeah, he’d beaten the living shit out of this guy in a pub. I just happened to be there. Wasn’t on duty. I was super fit in those days and I’ll tell you it took me all my time to get him under control. When we got to the lockup he broke free and took to one of the officers there. Tough bloke but Harkness put him in the hospital, multiple fractures. Again, it took three of us to subdue him.’
I finished the sandwich and the coffee. ‘Most of this is new to me,’ I said. ‘I mean the detail. But I had the gist. When you say you were curious about him …’
‘Yeah, well, a couple of the blokes at the station wanted me to go in and give him a good kicking, you know? I might’ve too, I was pretty angry. I went into the cell and he was babbling. Drunk, but not that drunk by now, not after everything that’d gone on over an hour and a bit.’
‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘He seemed to have forgotten all about it. As if it’d never happened.’
Hughes looked surprised. ‘That’s right. I kind of got him to stop talking and tried to tell him what an arsehole he was and he didn’t know what I was talking about. He went right on spewing out this stuff.’
What stuff?’
‘He was saying he’d killed his wife and kid. Not sort of, really. Actually killed them.’
‘He was pissed.’
‘Like I say, not that pissed. Sounded like he meant it.’
‘And you reported this?’
‘No.’ He swivelled and looked along the street at the multicultural parade as if he was gazing backward in time to when he had full control of his body. ‘I shouldn’t, but I’m going to have another coffee. Coffee’s real bad shit, you know. You can’t drink it when you go on a homeopathic course. It’s toxic as hell. You have to clear it out of your system first up.’
‘That right?’ I signalled for the waitress and ordered two more long blacks. When they came he stirred in two spills of sugar, breaking all the rules. ‘I envy you, man. When we finish here you’re going to jump in your car and go chasing after what comes next. Right?’
‘I wouldn’t say jump, but yeah, that’s more or less right. Why didn’t you report what Harkness said, Brett?’
‘I thought about it and I was going to but then his brother and solicitor arrived and I found out he was an actor and that changed my mind. See, what he’d been babbling was like in two voices. He’d say something in one voice, and then something else in another quite different voice. Changing from one to the other real quick. When they told me he was a TV actor I figured he was remembering some old script or something. Sounded just like some of that crap. Then I heard that he was being taken out of circulation and I let it go.’
At least now I had something to take to Jerry Weir, but Hughes had more to say. ‘I wanted to tell you this when Frank Parker told me that you were minding Harkness and that someone had taken a shot at him.’
‘Yes?’
‘Thinking back I don’t reckon he was quoting from a script. I reckon he was confessing to killing his wife and kid. And it’s likely there’s someone out there who wants him for that, wouldn’t you say?’
14
Brett Hughes finished his coffee and began playing with the paper napkin, folding it into smaller and smaller squares. ‘I’ve given you a problem, have I?’ he said. ‘I was sort of thinking I might be helpful. Talking like this, getting that call from Parker. Felt like old times. I miss the job. Still miss it like hell after all these years.’
Right then I was thinking that I could do without my job very easily. It was getting complicated the way it can, with new information piling in on the old and contradicting it or calling it into serious question. I shook my head to make him feel better. ‘No, mate. It’s useful information, I just don’t quite know how to make use of it. The thing is, this woman I’m working with has taken off with Harkness. So it’s a question of how dangerous he is.’
He unfolded the napkin. ‘Very, I’d say. Sorry.’
‘The psychiatrist who recommended his release says he isn’t.’
‘Did he know about the confession? That’s how you could see it now, I have to say.’
‘She. Yeah, I suspect she did. Wouldn’t talk to me about it though.’
Hughes shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘That’s another funny thing now I come to remember. There was this rookie detective around when we were dealing with Harkness. Mary something. She was with the sergeant when they took him some coffee after he’d calmed down. I was a bit keen on her. We all were …’ He broke off and looked as if he might go back to napkin folding but he didn’t. ‘Anyway, I had a word with her afterwards and she reckoned Harkness was the biggest spunk she’d seen in years. And she was a good-looker. From the way she talked about him I reckon he could’ve had her on her back in no time flat.’
‘Yeah, he’s still like that, it seems. But that raises a point. Did you talk to anyone at the station about what Harkness had said about killing his wife and kid?’
Hughes lifted one of his hands and stroked the side of his face. I could see the calluses at the base of the fingers where the mitts hadn’t quite protected his hands from the weights bars. ‘Jeez,
now you’re asking. It’s a long time ago and not that long before all this shit happened.’ He slammed his hands down on his thighs. ‘I remember that I was thinking about reporting it like I said until the acting came up. So I would’ve been thinking about how to write it up. Don’t think I talked to anyone, but shit, I just can’t remember.’
‘Do you remember exactly who was in the station at the time?’
He shook his head. ‘Not right off. I could probably work it out, but. Oh, I get it. You’re thinking about who’d know that he said he killed them. But you’re talking about police officers.’
‘There’s cops and cops,’ I said. ‘No civilians there? Clerks? Drunks?’
‘Don’t think so, but I’d need peace and quiet to think about it.’
I gave him a card with my contact details on it. ‘If you come up with anything I’d be very grateful if you’d get in touch. And thanks for this.’
He grinned. ‘Too easy, and you’re paying for the coffees, right?’
I put money on the table. We shook hands again and it became one of those awkward moments between the able-bodied and the handicapped. He pushed off and I said, ‘Can I … help you on your way?’
‘No, mate. I can drive myself. I’ve got a car all hooked up. I’ll be right. Just stay right where you are if you don’t mind.’
I watched him swivel the wheelchair and scoot away along the pavement. He stopped at a white Honda Civic and with a bit of lifting and shoving manoeuvred himself into the driver’s seat, and for that moment my problems didn’t seem so big at all.
‘Time out’—what does that mean? How long? I had no idea. I tossed up whether to try to talk to Dr Weir and learn more about Rodney Harkness’s ‘confession’ in the hope that it might give me some lead, or to keep after Glen by phone and email. Neither approach seemed promising. I found myself driving back to Bondi with no particular plan in mind, just a vague hope that the Pajero might be there and that ‘time out’ meant twenty-four hours. No such luck.
