Salt and Blood

by Peter Corris

  She laughed. ‘No, that’s all right. I …’

  I knew I had to jump in while she was uppish. ‘Ms Hansen, I know it’s not your favourite subject but I need to talk about the Harkness family. It’s very important but I won’t take much of your time.’

  There was a pause and I thought I’d lost her. I was looking up at the tower block she lived in. Good security. If she didn’t want to see me she didn’t have to. But she came back on the line. ‘My time’s my own,’ she said. ‘I’m a writer.’

  I crossed my fingers. ‘Glen said. How’s it going?’

  ‘Okay. I’ll tell you what, I’ll talk to you if you agree to answer some questions about your profession. How long have you been in it?’

  ‘You mean the questions start now, on the phone?’

  The laugh again, but a little more uncertain. ‘No, I …’

  ‘I’ve been at it a long time. I’ll be happy to answer your questions.’

  ‘Come on, then. You know where I am, I take it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want you to stand back from the peephole and hold your ID up to the camera so I can be sure.’

  ‘Okay. While I’m down here is there anything you’d like me to bring up?’

  ‘Oh, that’s so sweet of you. Why don’t you surprise me.’

  Women will do that. My ex-wife, Cyn, used to say, ‘Buy me something nice for lunch.’ It puts you squarely on the back foot, which is why they do it. Mind you, she was always happy with what I got, however mundane. I didn’t have much to go on with Birgit except what Glen had told me and how she’d sounded on the phone. I bought a bottle of top line chardonnay and a punnet of strawberries. Wine is sexy, strawberries aren’t. When in doubt, sit on the fence.

  I buzzed unit 50 of 85, announced myself, and the door opened. I took the lift to the tenth floor and found the door. The unit was on the west side, probably not the prime location. The camera was positioned high right, above the doorway. Juggling the wine and strawberries, I rang the bell, held my licence folder up towards the lens and tried to look strong and resolute for the peephole.

  The door opened. She was small, very small, 155 centimetres tops. Silky blonde hair, straight. Olive skin. Big eyes, wide mouth, cheekbones. She wore a white singlet top and black pants, both tight. No shoes. Her finger and toenails were fire-engine red so that taking her hand was like receiving a brightly wrapped package.

  ‘Mr Hardy, I’m so glad to meet you. And look what you’ve brought! What a sweet man.’

  ‘Ms Hansen.’ The air-conditioning was on high but her hand was warm to the touch.

  ‘Oh, Birgit, please. Come in. Come in. The place is a mess but I’m working, you see.’

  I followed her down the pale grey hallway to a pale grey room with French windows leading out to a balcony. If this was a mess my place was a junkyard. The floor was polished, the white rug was where it should be, the leather couch and chairs were precisely aligned, magazines were in their rack and books were aligned just so—hardcovers with hardcovers, paperbacks with paperbacks. I haven’t known many writers but I doubted they shelved their books like that as a rule. Maybe her study was a mess. Coffee stains on the floppy disks.

  She fluttered red-tipped fingers at the couch. ‘Sit. It’s not too early for you is it? Of course not. Private detectives have claret on their cornflakes.’

  She gave a tinkling laugh and floated off to come back immediately with two glasses and a bottle opener. If I had sat I’d have been straight up again. She handed the fixings to me. Couldn’t risk the nails. She plucked the clingwrap from the strawberries, used one of the long nails like an auger to remove the stem and gobbled a strawberry.

  ‘Mm, yum. What’s that movie where he says strawberries bring out the flavour of the wine except he doesn’t drink?’

  ‘Pretty Woman,’ I said. I’d seen it with Glen back when.

  ‘That’s right. How clever. I always forget movie titles.’ She watched me pour the wine and ate another strawberry. ‘I remember important things though.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said. I passed her a glass and held mine out to be touched. ‘To memory.’

  We drank and sat, me on the couch and her on a chair, less than a metre apart. She put the strawberries on a low table to one side and when she bent forward for one the thin singlet stretched over her breasts. Her nipples were hard but I had the feeling she’d excited herself rather than had been excited.

  ‘I liked Glen Withers,’ she said. ‘Dynamite lady. Are you and she an item?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. Colleagues.’

  ‘Mm, well matched I’d have thought, but what do I know. All the men I think I match up with go up in smoke.’

  I smiled politely. For the sake of the reading public I hoped her writing was better than this but somehow I doubted it. I drank some wine that wasn’t as good as the price suggested it should have been. Birgit barely tasted hers before setting the glass aside and leaning forward to give me an even better idea of the peaks and valleys. I remembered a phrase Helen Broadway, a girlfriend from the last century, had used about another woman: ‘She’s not the kind of woman that other women trust.’ It seemed to fit Birgit, assuming it worked in reverse. Glen had said she’d given her short shrift whereas now she appeared to have all the time in the world.

  Time to test it. ‘Rodney Harkness,’ I said.

  She shuddered. ‘Slime.’

  ‘You knew he was dead?’

  ‘I read about it. Have they found out who did it?’

  ‘No. That’s what I’m looking into in a sort of a way.’

  ‘I can’t think why. Anyway, I’ll tell you one thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ll bet it was a woman.’

  I was pretty sure it wasn’t; there aren’t many Myra Hindleys in the world, but it was an interesting comment. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘He was poison to women. They couldn’t get enough of him and he couldn’t care less about them.’

  ‘Okay. What I really want to ask you about was Juliet, his sister.’

  Her smooth, olive brow wrinkled but only for a split second. Didn’t want to etch wrinkles in. Great control. ‘Yes, I remember her. She’s a case in point.’

  I sipped some more of the bad wine just for something to do. ‘Can you explain that?’

  She almost hugged herself. ‘This is interesting, isn’t it? I mean you’re investigating and I’m a sort of a witness.’

  ‘Or informant.’

  ‘I like witness better, but, okay, that’ll do.’

  I’d met people like her before. They lived in a fantasy world more or less and were astonished and delighted when their dream world and reality coincided. The trick with them was not to let reality shatter the dream.

  ‘Anything you can tell me about her could be very useful, Birgit.’

  She ate another strawberry and a few drops of the juice spilled down onto her singlet. She didn’t notice. ‘Let’s see. I only met her once or twice. Dark, very good-looking. Younger than Rod and a lot younger than that awful Warren. Oh, I remember now. The rumour was that the old guy wasn’t really her father. You knew the old lady was Jewish.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Double Bay. It didn’t show with Warren and Rodney but the story was that the mother had an affair with a Rabbi and Juliet was the result. Juliet looked very Jewish. Aren’t you going to write this down?’

  Anything to please. I pulled out my notebook and wrote a few words. Something jigged in my memory as I wrote but it slipped away immediately. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Oh, there’s not that much really. Juliet turned out to be even more of a black sheep than Rodney. Although he helped her along.’

  ‘Were they close?’

  She ran her finger around the edge of her wine glass but no note sounded. ‘You knew Rodney, didn’t you?’

  ‘Briefly, yes.’

  ‘Must have been very briefly. Rodney was only close to two people—Rodney and Elvis Presley. God, did
I get sick and tired of those tapes.’

  ‘The Sun sessions,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘And the rest—“Jailhouse Rock” and all. I mean that’s so fifties!’

  I could easily see why the fifties wouldn’t appeal to Birgit—starched petticoats and twinsets and Maidenform bras—but I was getting tired of her attitudes. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She was out with a couple of Rodney’s friends and got killed in a car crash. He just missed being in the same car. Come to think of it, I could’ve been there as well, but I’d dropped him by then I’m glad to say.’

  ‘Do you know any of the names of these people?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, as a writer you know how it is—lists of names. You compile lists and see if they match.’

  ‘Of course. Wow, this is really useful for me.’

  ‘Names?’

  The brow wrinkled again and held the grooves a fraction longer. ‘Only one comes to mind. Her boyfriend at the time. He was somebody Mitchell. No, Mitchell somebody. Mitchell Sexton, that’s it. He wasn’t in the car. It’s a funny name, isn’t it. Sexton suggests church and then there’s sex in it. He was waiting for her to arrive at his place. It was very sad. Her family didn’t like him. He was a policeman. Not good enough, you see. Were you ever a policeman, Cliff? Most private detectives were, I believe.’

  I wasn’t listening to her. Sexton—the name was on the list of Lucille’s lovers. Things were clicking into place and I was hearing the clicks.

  25

  It took me a while to get clear of Birgit Hansen and I promised to stay in touch with her and let her know how things turned out—promises I had no intention of keeping. As soon as I was out of the building I hauled out my notebook and looked up the number for Brett Hughes, the crippled policeman. I hadn’t mentioned Hughes to the police, perhaps because I’d been thrown off balance by his disability and hadn’t taken any notes during our interview. All I had was the scrawled phone number and my eye had travelled right over it when I’d been reviewing the notes.

  I used the mobile now, on the assumption that the chances of catching disabled people at home are better than average. Hughes was Mr Efficiency; he recited the number and then gave his name.

  ‘This is Cliff Hardy, Mr Hughes, remember me?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. And I see you lost your man.’

  ‘That’s right. How’re things with you?’

  ‘Okay. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Well, I’m still on it. I’ve got another client. Sort of insurance matter.’

  ‘Uh, yeah? Well?’

  Not a good start. I didn’t blame him. Policing is a lousy job for the most part, and the thought of those others of us who work the same street for money doesn’t sit easily with honest cops. I was in tricky territory, trying to tease out information about a possibly still serving police officer from someone who wasn’t stupid and was probably still loyal to the service. I thought my chances of getting under his guard were slim. Best to come clean.

  ‘I think you can help me but I want to be straight with you. It might involve another policeman. I think I should fill you in properly and then see if you want to help me.’

  The silence was long and deep. I could imagine him sitting there in his wheelchair with all that upper body strength trapped and anchored, but I couldn’t even guess at what would be in his mind. I heard him expel a deep breath. ‘I appreciate that, Hardy. Okay, I’m on my way to the gym—Lakemba Fitness Centre, Haldon Street, near where we had coffee.’

  ‘I’ll find it,’ I said. ‘I could do with a workout myself. Visitors welcome?’

  But he’d rung off.

  The further west I went the hotter the day became. By the time I got to Lakemba the temperature had to be pushing 30 degrees and the Muslim women’s robes and veils started to make some sense. I trawled along looking for the gym and prepared to be frustrated because, in my experience, such places in residential areas tend to be tucked away, half-hidden by struggling used car yards and small drive-in shopping centres. The Lakemba Sports and Fitness Centre conformed to the pattern. It was the poor relation beside a supermarket, a computer supplies store and a medical complex grouped around a lumpy bitumen parking area where the white lines had been almost obliterated by oil stains.

  I hauled my gym bag out of the boot and approached the entrance to the centre. A white Honda Civic stood in one of the handicapped parking spots and I could see the tracks of the wheelchair leading up the ramp to the front of the building as I took the steps. A young Asian woman who wouldn’t have weighed sixty kilos sat behind the reception desk doing paperwork.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I’m meeting someone here, Brett Hughes. But I’d also like to have a workout.’

  ‘You have a gym membership in the city?’

  ‘Yes, at Leichhardt.’ I found the card in my wallet.

  ‘Welcome to Lakemba. Ten dollars, please.’

  I changed and went through to the weights room where a very mixed bag of humanity was working out—men and women of all shapes and sizes and ethnic origins. I saw Hughes moving massive weights at a seated bench press. He completed his set, looked up and saw me and went back to work. I did fifteen minutes on the treadmill and then wandered around the unfamiliar location, picking out the machines I was accustomed to and doing my usual, unadventurous sets. After a session of pull-downs I ended up near Hughes, who was doing curls with free weights somewhere in the 50-kilo range. His wheelchair was parked in the corner of the room.

  ‘How’re you doing?’ I said when he’d finished his set.

  He was sweating freely and he reached for his towel. ‘Getting there,’ he said. ‘I can haul myself around from machine to machine in here. I’ll be through in ten minutes.’

  ‘The coffee place?’

  He picked up a weight that would’ve broken my wrist if I’d tried to lift it from the rack. ‘Fuck that, I’m due a beer. Pub on the corner.’

  I did another ten minutes on the treadmill set to 8 with an incline of 5. Trotting. Then I went to the pub. It was an old one re-vamped, with poker machines and a screen flashing keno numbers.

  Hughes wheeled himself into the bar, greeted a few regulars and shook my hand. ‘Mine’s a schooner of New,’ he said.

  Sounded good. I made it two and took the drinks over to the table where he’d installed himself with a pencil and a keno ticket. He filled in the ticket and one of the drinkers took it across to the counter for him.

  ‘Good luck,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t strain yourself in the gym, do you?’

  ‘I’m toning.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ He took a drink and checked his ticket against the screen. ‘Not quite. Okay, Hardy, what’s on your mind?’

  ‘Before we get to it, what’s your take on the police service these days? Are you well disposed, or what?’

  He picked at one of the calluses on his left hand. ‘I don’t know that I’ve got an attitude to it overall. They’re treating me right over the disability, no worries there. I’d say I see it as a collection of individuals. That’s a bad thing.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘You should be able to see it as a whole and support it as a whole but you can’t. There’s good and bad in it, very good and very bad. Between you and me, I’m writing a book on the subject.’

  Another writer. What he’d said was encouraging, though, particularly that he’d confided in me. ‘Won’t you need some sort of clearance to publish a book?’

  He shrugged. ‘If I decide to go that way. Come on, Hardy, stop beating around the bush.’

  ‘Right. Take your mind back to when you were in the station and you’d put Rodney Harkness in the cells after he’d raved on about what he’d done.’

  Hughes finished his schooner. ‘If you’re going to ask me who was there it’s no good. I’ve tried to remember and it’s too long ago with too much fucking happening in between.’

  ‘Another drink?’

  ‘No. I jus
t have the one.’

  ‘All right. I understand what you’re saying. I suppose I’d be surprised if you could remember a detail like that. How about I try a name on you?’

  ‘Go.’

  ‘Mitchell Sexton.’

  He looked up and for a minute I thought he was checking his keno result again but he had that long stare running down the corridor of memory. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘Sexy Sexton. Yeah, he was there that night. I remember now. And I told him what Harkness had said.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Not much or maybe nothing. He certainly never reported on it and then Harkness was off the books as it were. Some kind of top brass intervention there. I didn’t think any more about it. What’s going on?’

  I told him that Sexton had been involved with Rodney Harkness’s sister and then had been Harkness’s wife’s lover, one of them. ‘If Sexton blamed Harkness for the sister’s death and then heard him confessing to his wife’s murder he might well have reason to kill him.’

  ‘Plus if influence got him tucked away in a comfortable funny farm.’

  ‘Yeah. What can you tell me about Sexton?’

  ‘Only that he was an obnoxious prick. Full of himself. Thought everything he said and did was interesting when mostly it wasn’t, or not nearly as interesting as he reckoned.’

  ‘I know the type,’ I said. ‘I need another drink to work on this. You sure?’

  Hughes shrugged. ‘I’d say it’s a two-drink problem all right.’

  I brought the drinks back. Hughes tore up his keno ticket and piled the pieces in the ashtray. ‘Any thoughts?’

  ‘Do you happen to know whether he was a sharpshooter?’

  ‘Dunno. Sorry.’

  ‘Likely to go off the rails over something like this?’

  ‘Hard to say. He was always on the make. Ambitious, like. He was honest as far as I know, but a chip-on-the-shoulder type. I mean, he didn’t come from money or anything. Not many of us do … did. I’d say he’d be a bit out of his depth with people like Harkness. Resentful if they got the better of him, but a nutter … a killer, I don’t know.’

  I drank and thought aloud. ‘He’d have to keep it festering for seven years, so I guess it’d depend how things went for him after Harkness got locked away. You don’t know whether he’s still on the force?’