The Greenwich Apartments ch-8

by Peter Corris

  She’d turned her head away and was examining the view again. ‘It was cheap,’ she said softly. ‘I thought it was cheap.’

  I felt crummy of course. My eye was aching and my throat was dry. I was hungry and thirsty; the sexual feeling had gone, leaving us washed up on separate beaches.

  ‘I’m sorry, love. I could be wrong.’

  She stood up. ‘Yep, you might be. I’ll check it out on Monday. Well, I’d better be off. Dr Stivens’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Mister Stivens.’

  ‘You’re the expert.’ She bent and kissed my cheek: the touch thrilled me and I wanted to unsay everything. Shit, why couldn’t I move to Bondi? What was sacred about Glebe? ‘Helen, I could…”

  ‘Bye, Cliff. I’ll come and get you at ten tomorrow.’

  ‘We’ll go and look at your flat.’

  She smiled from the door. ‘Have a nice suture adjustment. Bye.’

  Stivens arrived with light and mirrors and surgical gloves. He took off the patch, put drops in my eye and fiddled for a few minutes. I didn’t feel a thing.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Not everyone can take that.’

  ‘I couldn’t say I enjoyed it. What’s the outlook? Sorry, I can’t seem to stop saying things about looking.’

  ‘It’s a common response. The prognosis is very good. Look after yourself…’

  ‘You’re doing it too.’

  He smiled. ‘Take care. Use these drops I ‘m going to give you as often as you like. When you need them. Keep it covered at night and try not to lie on it. I’d like to see you in a week.’

  ‘No lasting damage then?’

  ‘You were lucky.’ He packed his bag. ‘You said some strange things under the anaesthetic, Mr Hardy.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You talked about Bermagui. Lovely spot, I’ve got a small place there I get down to now and then. Have you got a place on the coast?’

  I shook my head which hurt a lot. I winced.

  ‘You’ll have to watch that. No violent movements for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Sex?’

  ‘Gently does it.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘Well, thank you. All I have to do now is pay for it all.’

  He busied himself with his bag; they never like to discuss the sordid side. ‘You have medical insurance surely, in your profession?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Most unwise. Well, I suppose you sustained the injury in the line of duty. Your employer could be liable.’

  ‘Maybe. Thank you, Mr Stivens.’

  ‘Call my rooms on Monday for an appointment.’

  ‘See you in Macquarie Street.’

  ‘Good evening, Mr Hardy.’

  That, of course, left me with thoughts of Carmel and Leo Wise and the case I’d had with all the threads. Suddenly, most of the threads had been pulled and they’d led nowhere. It was hard to accept that the Agnew-Bourke trail was a red herring but there it was. I tried to think about what remained of the case but the effort made my eye throb.

  Stivens had left some pain-killers and I took them with water. I wanted something stronger but there was no prospect of that. Helen had brought some books-Elmore Leonard’s La Brava and something by Clive James. I started on the Leonard and got interested but it was hard work reading with one eye. It watered, I swore and put the book down. I rang for the nurse and she told me that I’d missed the evening meal which had been served while Stivens was at work. I swore again.

  ‘Don’t speak like that to me. It’s not my fault.’

  ‘I hear you’ve got a strong union now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I bet you’re guaranteed your evening meal.’

  ‘I can bring you a cup of tea and a snack at nine.’

  ‘Coffee,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  I was asleep long before it came.

  15

  Helen drove me home in her Holden Gemini which was better sprung than the Falcon but harder to get in and out of. She was solicitous but quiet. I got comfortable on the couch in the front room-books, the Saturday papers I’d missed, my pills and eyedrops, wine and TV-all to hand. We ate a salad for lunch; some wine and pain-killers made me feel woozy.

  ‘I’m going over to Bondi,’ Helen said. ‘Talk to some of the people in the flats, see what goes on.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  She shook her head. ‘You’d be asleep by the end of Glebe Point Road. Take it easy, I won’t be long. There was a message from Mr Wise on the machine. Want to hear it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She moved the phone and the recorder closer to me and jiggled her keys. ‘Don’t get up, will you?’

  ‘Only for nature.’

  She kissed me on my stubbled cheek. ‘I’d like to hear about this case when I get back. I’m interested. Cliff.’

  ‘Okay. Hope the flat’s good. What I was going to say when you left yesterday was that maybe I could move. I don’t have to live in Glebe.’

  She smiled; when Helen smiles she looks even smarter than when she’s not smiling. ‘That’s something to think about. Okay. See you.’

  I played the message tape of Leo Wise’s firm but troubled voice. ‘Leo Wise, Hardy. I heard you got hurt. I hope it’s nothing serious. If it’s to do with Carmel I’ll be happy to pay the bills and so on. But I’d like to hear developments. This is my weekend number. Call anytime, ah… as soon as you’re up to it.’ He gave the number and hung up. I called it and he came on the line immediately.

  ‘Hardy. Good. You all right?’

  ‘So-so. I’ve had an eye operation, nothing too serious but I’ll have to go quiet for a few days, week maybe.’

  ‘Sorry to hear it. How did it happen? I mean was it…?’

  ‘It was sort of related to your daughter’s death, sort of.’ I told him about the Bourke-Agnew red herring. He listened and didn’t interrupt.

  ‘Are you sure this Williamson was telling the truth?’

  ‘Hard to be sure. But I’d say so, yes.’

  I heard his sigh. ‘Well, I thought it might be something like that. You know, Carmel just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t look that way. Of course I’m going to run a few checks on Williamson, but my instinct tells me he’s straight. How’s your wife?’

  ‘Just fair. So, have you got any other leads?’

  ‘Only one. I’ll get on it as soon as I can. Later in the week. Oh, I saw Carmel’s film. I thought it was great.’

  ‘Yes. I watched it myself the other night. A mistake that was. Moira cried.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Do you know anything about this documentary she was working on-ah, the lives of the rich, or something?’

  ‘Not really. She was always on about that. How the rich take the bread out of the mouths of the poor.’

  ‘Did you fight about it?’

  ‘No. She was very smart, Carmel. She said she had selected her targets and I wasn’t one.’

  ‘Targets?’

  ‘Figure of speech. No, we didn’t fight.’ There was a long pause, so long I felt uncomfortable as you do when you wait for a stammerer to get the words out. ‘I think we had the same sort of sense of humour,’ he said. ‘We didn’t fight.’

  ‘Okay, Mr Wise,’ I said. ‘I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’

  Good about the medical bills, I thought. Not so good about the wife. I wanted badly to help Wise but I wasn’t optimistic. I had a short sleep, eased the patch off and used the drops in the eye which was gritty and sore, and I drank some wine. Helen had left Bermagui in the VCR. I hit the play button and watched the movie again. That’s how good it was-good enough to watch twice in 48 hours. I didn’t cry like Moira Wise but I was feeling melancholy and uncertain when Helen got back.

  ‘Whatcha been doing?’

  ‘I watched Bermagui again.’

  ‘Shit! I was going to do that tonight.’

  ‘I think I could see it again. How’s it look at Tamarama
?’

  ‘You really want to know?’ She poured some wine into a coffee cup for herself and some more into my glass. She swilled it down. ‘Phew. That’s good. I’ve been talking non-stop and tramping up and down stairs.’

  ‘Sounds like my job.’

  We laughed and she reached over and kissed me. ‘Poor you. It was hell. And the results were a bit uncertain.’

  ‘Yup,’ I said. ‘That’s the way it is.’

  ‘Mm. There’s a building down the road that has what you said. Concrete cancer. Definitely. And this one, mine, was built by the same mob.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘But not everyone agrees that mine has the problem. Doesn’t look the same. The other one’s buggered, mine just looks… worn.’

  I drank some wine and thought about it. ‘Still looks good, the view and all?’

  ‘Terrific. Yes.’

  ‘You talked to people in the building and some say it’s okay and some say it ain’t?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You need to break them down, find out if it’s owners that say it’s fine and tenants that gripe, or what.’

  ‘That’s smart.’

  I coughed. ‘Training and… experience.’

  ‘D’you think it’d be wise for me to look at the minutes of the meetings of the corporate body?’

  I coughed again. ‘Oh, yes, sure.’

  ‘I’m doing that on Monday…’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘… and getting a professional inspection.’

  ‘I hope they say it’ll stand for a thousand years.’

  ‘I’ll make us some dinner. Then you can tell me about this Wise case.’

  I told her, from the beginning. She listened, smoked her Gitane with coffee after we’d eaten and looked at all the paraphernalia from flat one in the Greenwich Apartments, which I could now mail to the Federal police or throw away.

  ‘How old is she?’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The mother.’

  ‘I don’t know. Carmel was 21. Wise says she’s not old, late thirties maybe.’

  ‘He’s right. That’s not too old to have a child. Did you know that it’s often the age of the male that’s the factor in having defective kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s true. It doesn’t get much in the way of press space as a scientific fact, but it’s true.’

  ‘Yes. Well, Wise seems willing to risk it if his wife can get over this.’

  ‘You’ve watched the film twice. Are there any clues in that?’

  ‘Not really. I was interested in what her father said-about her having targets.’

  ‘The flatmate might be able to tell you more about that.’

  ‘And this Jan de Vries.’

  ‘Have you got anything else?’

  ‘Not much. The producer of the TV documentary said she might have been too good for the job, too classy, something like that. I’d like to know what he meant.’

  ‘You think the answer lies in her filmmaking?’

  ‘She doesn’t seem to have done anything else.’

  ‘She must have. You’ll find something. Will he wait?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Wise. You’re not going to be able to do anything for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘I’d go crazy doing nothing for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Cliff. Don’t be an idiot.’

  ‘Nobody said nothin’ about doin’ nothin’. Oh, except Stivens said gently does it when it comes to sex.’

  ‘You asked him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Gently does it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘Let’s see if it does.’

  She helped me up the stairs, she helped me into bed, she helped all down the line. Afterwards, I lay beside her and listened to her gentle breathing as she slept. I fancied I could hear surf beating on a beach and the cries of seagulls. I thought I could live by the beach or I could live in the mountains. 1 could live anywhere within striking distance of the city if I had to. And I would, to have her sleeping beside me at night. Some nights.

  16

  It was over the next couple of days that Helen started to call me what Whitlam had called McMahon, ‘the Tiberius of the telephone’. I made use of the sorts of contacts you build up in this business, to check on Williamson and Rolf. Establishing that they were Federal cops took a while, and finding that, within the usual limits of narcotics law enforcement, they were honest, took even longer.

  Carmel Wise’s flatmate, Judy Syme, remembered me and listened while I described Williamson, Rolf and the other man I’d seen at Shetland Island. My question was, could they have been the men who came to Studio Eight in Randwick before Carmel Wise died.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Positively not. They didn’t look at all like that, none of them.’

  ‘Have you thought of anything else that might be useful, since we talked?’

  ‘No. Oh, one thing. They took a couple of copies of the movie.’

  ‘Carmel’s movie?’

  ‘Yes. That one I lent you. It was put away somewhere. They took the ones that were lying around.’

  ‘Did they say anything about it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. ‘Course, I was so frightened I mightn’t have noticed.’

  ‘Did Carmel ever say anything to you about targets? About having people as targets?’

  ‘N… no, I did hear her use the word on the phone one time.’

  ‘Who was she talking to?’

  ‘Jan de Vries.’

  But there I hit a wall. I phoned the Film amp; Television School and was told that Dr de Vries had not been in for a couple of days and no, that wasn’t unusual. They wouldn’t give me his address or private phone number. I left a message for him-my name and number, my line of work and that it had to do with Carmel Wise. I then got de Vries’ number from Judy Syme. He lived in Lane Cove, close to his work but a long way from the GPO. There I was again, thinking the Inner West was the only place to live. I called the number and got a woman, impatient, upset or crazy.

  ‘Yes? Yes? What do you want?’

  ‘I’d like to speak to Dr de Vries, please.’

  ‘Not here!’ She hung up vigorously, or miserably or madly.

  My next call was to the producer of the documentary Carmel Wise had worked on. Tim Edwards was one of the principals of Paladin Pictures Inc. He sounded young and keen, eager to talk in a rapid-fire style about filmmaking, and a bit green. In my limited experience old hands in that business don’t say that someone has ‘too much flair’; old hands don’t really say anything that has any meaning.

  ‘Leo Wise? Sure I know him. I got Carmel to introduce us once. Thought he might back a project, him being a rich business man and all.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Wasn’t long before Carmel died. Seemed interested at the time. He might have. Nice guy. How can I help you, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘You’re quoted as saying that Carmel might have too much flair for the project. What did that mean?’

  ‘It means, oops.’

  ‘Come again.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘You did say it though and it could be important to me. What’s the documentary about, exactly.’

  ‘I’ve still got funding hassles with it and distribution problems. I can’t…’

  ‘I’m not in the business. I won’t tell a soul. It could be important. Did she overstep the mark somehow?’

  ‘Yeah. It wasn’t meant to be a revolutionary number, you understand? Not pap but not barricades stuff. We got the permission of these ten… well eight actually, that’s one of the hassles I’ve got… of these rich people to film them and do a few interviews.’

  ‘Sounds like something between Sixty Minutes and that thing about the movie stars…’

  ‘Life Styles of the Rich and Famous, well, yeah, maybe. Carmel, she wouldn’t leave it alone. Kept trying
to get footage they didn’t want taken. She tried to change the scripts, even stuck herself into one interview. Terrific filmmaker, brilliant editor, but lousy judgement. She really hurt me, although she did a wonderful job on editing the footage I can use.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow. Did two of the subjects pull out?’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Sort of as a reaction to what Carmel did?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Come on, the girl’s dead, and no-one knows why.’

  ‘I thought she got caught up in the porno rackets.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’

  ‘I’d like to see a porn movie made by Carmel. I’td sizzle.’

  ‘Forget it. She didn’t make any. Who pulled out?’

  ‘Bastards, why should I care? Marjorie Legge and Phillip Broadhead.’

  ‘Do you have any of the stuff you shot on them?’

  ‘No. I had to give it up. Broadhead threatened to contact the others and get the plug pulled on the whole thing if I didn’t surrender the film. I’m in debt over it. I had no choice.’

  ‘How did Carmel react?’

  ‘Angrily. Look, if that’s all, I’ve got work to do.’

  I thanked him, hung up and looked at the two names I had on my pad. Marjorie Legge had a chain of high fashion boutiques. She appeared on television shows and ghost-written articles signed by her were published in the papers. She had been profitably married several times and her views were extremely right wing. A story was told about her that on a talk-back radio show she had advised an old-age pensioner, calling in to complain of boredom and financial hardship, to take up French cooking.

  She was a scourge of the feminists and one of their chief targets. Targets! Well, well, I thought, there was an interesting word. Maybe I should take up free associating as an analytical technique.

  Marjorie Legge was currently married to a man whose name I couldn’t recall but who was reputed to be a very heavy number. With those connections, Marjorie Legge could be a very dangerous person to offend.

  Phillip Broadhead was known as ‘Mr Racing’. He gave his occupation to the various committees of inquiry that investigated him over the years as ‘commission agent’. No-one knew what that was. but everyone knew what Phil did, which was more or less what Phil had always done. He was the finance behind several leading on-course bookmakers, and also the money and the muscle and whatever else was required, behind Sydney’s major SP operation. Phil had gone to one of the pricier Sydney private schools (where he had probably run the book on the GPS Head of the River). He knew policemen and politicians and trade union bosses and media magnates and everyone else it was useful to know. He had one conviction, back in the forties, for assaulting his then wife.