by Peter Corris
I tidied up the living room but left the blood patch alone. Salt on red wine, I knew that, but I could never remember whether it was good or bad on blood. Salt and blood—it sounded right but I wasn’t sure. What the hell, I thought, Warren’s up for the bond on the flat. The same went for the damaged door. I pulled it closed and tapped some of the splintered wood back into place and it didn’t look too bad. I doubted that Craig would make another try for the iMac. This time, though, I took the .38 with me.
The traffic was sluggish and I wasn’t feeling super sharp myself. I wondered if the cop look-alike who’d broken into the flat had kept a watching brief on it and was on my tail. I almost wished he was and I flicked my eyes to all three rear-vision mirrors as I went but there was no sign of a red Camry or any other interested vehicle. It was a little after five o’clock when I got to Dr Weir’s house, well before my self-imposed, often violated, drinking hour, but I badly needed one. Maybe Dr Weir was feeling the same.
The street was quiet with no sign of a client’s car as on my previous visit. I went up to the house in the better light more able to take in its features. What they added up to was good taste and a lot of money. I toyed with the idea of going to the client’s entrance but resisted. I realised that I was in a strange mood. The Harkness case had turned out to have bends and curves in it that were hard to negotiate. Finding Glen and Rod were the priorities now, but doing that wouldn’t put us a centimetre closer to the original terms of the investigation. At least in talking to Jerry Weir I was dealing with the up-front and the underlying problems. I was rehearsing what I had to say in my head as I pressed the buzzer. I was a minute or two early again.
This time the door opened almost immediately. She’d been waiting. She wore a red silk shirt tucked into loose white trousers with low-heeled sandals. Her blue-black hair gleamed and her dark eyes looked huge against her pearly complexion. I’m sure I stared and maybe just fell short of gaping.
‘Come in, Mr Hardy. God, what happened to your face?’
‘A kick,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t feel as bad as it looks.’
She tilted her head to one side and I went in. ‘I wouldn’t say it looks bad.’
We went through to the same living space as before and she had that same grace of movement that made you want to watch her and see what she’d do next. She stopped and leaned against the fridge with one long arm extended.
‘A drink?’
‘I was hoping you’d offer.’
She did her glass spearing trick again but this time the bottle had to be opened. She did that with a waiter’s friend, expertly applied. She poured an inch into a glass and tossed it off. She grinned. ‘Just making sure it’s okay.’
‘Good idea. I do that, too.’
She filled the big glasses and we took our seats across from each other with the low table in between. She took a hefty belt of the wine and sighed.
‘I won’t ask if it’s been a hard day,’ I said. ‘You reckon they all are.’
‘That’s right, but I didn’t get kicked in the head, at least. I felt like kicking a few though.’
That surprised me, didn’t sound therapist-like but I could imagine the feeling. I drank some wine and felt almost instantly better the way you do, although the alcohol hasn’t had time to get into the bloodstream. The taste promises that it will and promises are soothing in themselves right up until they’re broken. She put her glass down and stretched. Her breasts rose under the shirt and I could see that her stomach was flat. I heard a few joints creak though; she was over forty at a guess, but not as far over as me.
‘Forty-three,’ she said. ‘You were guessing my age.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Did you get it right?’
I nodded. ‘Close enough.’
‘What about you?’
I told her, shaving a year.
‘Mm, you’ve lived ’em, but your genes are serving you well I’d say. So … tell me what you think you know.’
‘Rodney Harkness believes, or did believe, at least on some level, that he killed his wife and child.’
She picked up her glass, had a drink and put it down again. She placed her palms together and rubbed them like someone trying to start a fire with friction. ‘You put it well. Level’s a good word for what goes on in Rodney’s head. Levels, or layers perhaps. His fantasies and realities and drives and needs all overlie each other and interlap. A very interesting case.’
‘But he was more than just a case to you.’
‘Yes and no. Sex was terribly important to him. It is to me as well. God knows, it’s important to everyone. You agree?’
‘Sure.’
‘I wanted to have sex with him because I was attracted, but also to see how he behaved under those pressures and stimuli.’
‘Aren’t there professional rules about that?’
She laughed, flashing those teeth. ‘What percentage of therapists fuck their patients, d’you think? All things being equal. Did you see The Prince of Tides?’
‘Yeah, but …’
She waved her long, pale hand. ‘Forget it. So where are we? Yes, Rodney’s got that shadow in his mind.’
‘You don’t think he did it?’
‘No. But there’s something else just as bad. Oh, I’m sure he believed that he did it. As you say, on one level.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Never mind. What’s been happening? Who kicked you?’
The wine worked on me and I suppose her experience at extracting stories. I told her just about everything I knew. She listened intently, only breaking off to get us more wine. When I finished she came and sat on the edge of the table with her knees almost touching mine. ‘I doubt she’s in danger,’ she said. ‘Not from Rodney. But this other person …’
‘Has to think that Rodney is responsible and wants to make him pay for it.’
‘Yes. I suppose so. Do you have any idea who that might be?’
‘No. That’s the frustrating thing. You’d have to assume it’s someone connected to the wife and I haven’t got any leads on that. Glen’s the one with the information on her.’
‘So you have to find her for that reason as well. You’ve got a job on your hands, Mr Hardy.’
She was very close now. I could smell her perfume and the wine on her breath. I felt an aching need to touch her and had begun to move my hand to hers when I felt her cool palm against my battered face. In a couple of quick head adjustments we were kissing and our mouths were locked together and opening and our tongues were probing and her thin upper lip was hard against mine, pressing against my teeth. We broke for breath and kissed again more slowly and expertly, and then we both stood and our bodies closed hard together, chest to knee.
I wrapped my arms around her and her mouth came up close to my ear on the undamaged side. ‘I liked the look of you the first time,’ she said. ‘You’re the way you want to be, aren’t you?’
With my ex-wife Cyn and other women that had been an accusation; now, with her, it was a plus.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s good. That’s so good. I don’t see much of that. Come with me, Cliff.’
Her bedroom was spartan—polished floor, low queen-size bed, dark cotton sheets, bedside chests, wooden slat blinds. She turned on a bedside light and pressed herself up against me. No words. We undressed each other and our hands ran over each other. She was lithe and muscular, just a bit soft in the places the years most affect. When I was ready she stepped away, took a condom packet from the bedside table, selected one and rolled it onto me with the proficiency of someone who knew what she was doing. I let her set the pace as we lay on the bed kissing and stroking. In the dim light her body was a wonderful array of planes and shadows and I explored it with the sort of excitement and confidence I hadn’t felt for a long time.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘Come into me now.’
I did and our bodies locked together and drew apart and found a rhythm that pleased us both and we stayed with it. Then
she rolled to the side, pulling me with her, and she gasped and I could feel her muscles contracting and gripping and she came in a long, vibrant spasm that seemed to draw me deeper as I slithered in a sweat slick half on top of her. Then I was moaning something into her rose-smelling hair as I came.
‘Ah, no,’ she said as we separated and I stayed as close as I could with one hand cradling her head and the other on her hip. Her hair was damp from sweat and her skin was moist. She had one hand in the greying hair on my chest and the other somewhere else.
‘Good?’ she said.
‘Very good, very, very good.’
‘Mm. Not much else to say, is there?’
‘Not about the sex. Except …’
‘What?’
‘I hope it’s not the only time.’
‘We’ll see.’ She nestled close and sniffed at me. ‘You don’t smoke, do you?’
‘No.’
‘I bet you like a drink after, though, right?’
‘It’s been known.’
‘I’ll have first shower then I’ll make us something to eat and we can finish the bottle and continue our talk. I had the feeling you were going to ask me a question before we started rutting.’
She eased herself away from me and slid gracefully from the bed. She picked up her clothes and hung them on the handles of the built-in wardrobes, another thing I do myself. I enjoyed watching her move.
‘I’m having trouble remembering what the questions were,’ I said. ‘But I guess they’ll come back.’
She took a white silk dressing-gown from the back of the door and slopped into it. ‘Bathroom’s on the right down the passage. Give me a couple of minutes. Don’t snoop.’
She’d read me right. Left alone in someone’s private spaces I find snooping hard to resist. I lay back on the bed looking up at the ceiling rose as the intense pleasure of the encounter slowly ebbed away. I was thinking how strange it was that I was here having sex with the woman who’d been instrumental in getting Rodney Harkness released, while he was off no doubt doing the same thing with my professional partner. The thought of how Lady Rachel and Warren St John would react to this made me smile and she caught me at it. She came back into the room, rubbing with a towel at her wet hair and began to put her clothes on.
‘Pleased with yourself?’
I explained quickly what had made me smile and she gathered up my shirt and pants and tossed them to me. ‘I always thought they sounded like a pair of shits,’ she said.
I showered and dressed and went back to the living room where she’d laid out some dips, cheeses, olives, tomatoes and hot focaccia bread. The wine glasses were full and she was loading up a coffee pot.
‘Help yourself. Nothing fancy.’
I sat on the two-person cane couch hoping she’d join me and she did. We drank our wine and picked at the food and the feeling of her next to me, touching as we ate and drank, was better than food and drink.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’m ready to be interrogated.’
‘Tell me why you don’t think Rod could’ve killed his wife and child. He was an alcoholic and a drug user and has a history of violence.’
She wiped up some soft cheese with a chunk of bread and ate it slowly, giving herself time. When she’d swallowed she said, ‘I had him under hypnosis a couple of times. It’s not infallible of course, but I questioned him on that subject. He didn’t do it.’
‘You said there was something else troubling him.’
‘Well, this is an interpretation rather than something established. He believed he’d killed them but in my opinion that was a sort of cover for something else he either knew or suspected, but couldn’t admit to himself.’
‘Like?’
‘You’re the detective, let’s hear from you.’
‘He knew who had killed them and … shut it out.’
She plastered a piece of bread with sun-dried tomato and olive paste and smoothed it off with a forefinger. Longish, pink-painted nails. ‘Psychiatry is a speculative business, like a lot of science.’
‘Is that a yes or a no, Jerry?’
She leaned into me and kissed my bruised face. ‘First intimate use of my name. Progress. It’s a maybe, Cliff.’
We did a bit of kissing and groping then and worked on the wine. The coffee machine sparked up and the brewed smell of good, fresh beans wafted through and somehow broke the mood which might have been leading to another trip down the passage. Powerful things, smells.
She broke away and headed for the coffee. ‘Next question.’
‘Did Rod ever talk to you about a favourite surfing spot? Shit, I mean a surfing spot and a place to take women.’
I watched her closely as she considered this. I wasn’t arrogant enough to automatically believe that this highly qualified, sophisticated woman was interested in me, at least not exclusively. She fiddled with the coffee maker for a while, got mugs from a cupboard and seemed to have lost interest in the question until she was sitting back next to me with the mugs, the coffee, a sugar bowl and a cream jug in front of us. She reached out and took my hand and my sun-blasted, thick-knuckled claw looked like a fossil in her smooth, pale fingers.
‘I suppose we’ll get to the life histories if this goes on. All that shit. But … you like me, don’t you?’
My voice was thick in my throat. ‘I do, Jerry. I find you … amazing.’
‘Not scary? Not intimidating?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Men have. I’m glad, Cliff. That’s great. Drink some coffee, because you’re going to have to drive home tonight. I’ll have to look at my files on the computer. I made notes about Rodney and I think there’s something in them along those lines—surf and sex. Sit tight.’
She got up and walked away and I watched her. I wasn’t drunk; it was a long time since that amount of wine could have that effect on me, but I was in a different space from the one I’d inhabited a couple of hours before.
17
Jerry Weir told me that Rodney Harkness had talked about Redhead beach near Newcastle as his favourite place. She got the impression that it was his favourite for more than just surfing. I told her that Glen Withers had lived and worked in Newcastle and had owned a house on the coast.
‘That looks like it, then,’ she’d said. ‘You’ll be off up there.’
I said I would. We drank coffee and I could tell it was time to go. We exchanged cards and laughed—not a bad way to finish a meeting like that, with a laugh.
The sight and sound and the smell and the feel of her were filling my mind as I drove away. I was a serial loser in the relationship game but still interested, still hopeful. I went back over the meeting in all its aspects, trying to assess how much hope to invest in it. No conclusions, but it was there and I was happy about it.
I drove to Glebe to check on the house. That didn’t take long and I headed back to Bondi, still hoping for a message of some kind from Glen. Happiness is bad for caution and I was driving down Bondi Road before I realised that I’d picked up a tail. I made a few turns and he stayed right with me, doing it well, but there’s no such thing as perfect in that business. My first thought was that it was the same interested party that had picked me up when I collected my car. It wasn’t a 4WD but that didn’t signify. I slowed and he got closer than he should and I caught a glimpse of the registration plate. Couldn’t read it but it wasn’t smeared over the way it had been on the 4WD. That didn’t quite compute. But things were different now—I didn’t have Rodney with me and I did have my gun.
I knew Bondi fairly well and knew there were some divided streets that ran on different levels and some dead ends. I turned a few more times until he must have suspected that I was on to him, and then took a long straight, purposeful-seeming run. It brought me out in the split-streets area. One I remembered ended in a small park, but if you didn’t know that you’d think it continued on at the higher level. I drove down it fast and he was slow to make the turn. I stopped ten metres short of the barrier, pulled in a
nd killed the lights.
The other car came on, moving quickly and there was a squeal as he hit the brakes. He started to make a U-turn but I started up, gunned the motor and swung forward to block him. I took the .38 from the recessed clamp under the dashboard and jumped out, holding the gun low and close to my leg. I got to the car, a late model Commodore, in a few strides and wrenched the door open.
‘Out!’
A big, heavily built man in a suit, with thin, greying hair, clean-shaven, climbed slowly from the car, reaching inside his jacket as he did so.
I brought the gun up. ‘Don’t.’
He continued the movement and produced a police warrant card, holding it up for me to see the way they do. ‘I’d put that thing away if I was you, Hardy. I’m Kevin Sherrin.’
I recognised him then. He was Glen’s ex-husband and a Superintendent the last I’d heard of him. I lowered the gun and backed off a step.
‘Why were you following me?’
He flipped the folder closed and put it away. ‘First things first. Where’s Glen?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Watch yourself. I can think of three or four charges to pull you in on. I’ve got some papers Glen has to sign. To do with joint property. Nothing heavy. I’ve been fucking ringing and emailing her and I’ve been to the house. No sign of her. Someone told me she was working with you, so I …’
‘You picked me up in Glebe, right? Why didn’t you just come in? Why the tail?’
‘That’s what I was going to do. But you were in and out too quick. Also you looked like you had something important on your plate.’
It didn’t take long to decide to talk to him. Glen hadn’t told me much about their split but she hadn’t bad-mouthed him. She’d taken it hard and it had led to her drinking problem, but she’d never blamed Sherrin. And the way things stood, a policeman could be useful.
