The Greenwich Apartments ch-8

by Peter Corris

  Phillip Broadhead had been investigated and written up in the tabloids so many times that all this was on the public record. There were many entries on him in the indexes to the recent spate of books about organised crime in Sydney. The sorts of books journalists write when they get hold of one hard piece of information, and embellish it with a lot of speculation and off-the-record stuff. Phil was good embellishment but his police record was the best pointer to the amount of protection he had. The mind boggled at the thought of fearless, freelance Carmel Wise sniffing around him.

  All this phoning and cross-referencing took a couple of days. It was interspersed with pill-taking, eyedrops and long sleeps. The house brick effect hadn’t developed, but the right eye was sore all the time and the other got tired from over-use. It was hard to read, hard to watch television, hard to sit still. It was also hard to follow developments regarding Helen’s flat. The more I thought about Phil Broadhead’s mansion at Huntley Point and Jan de Vries’ unhappy-sounding home at Lane Cove, the more I wanted to stay in Glebe.

  ‘The loan looks okay,’ Helen told me on my third night home.

  ‘Oh, good. Can you apply that to any place you find, or is it tied to…?’

  ‘Go on, say it. I know you’ll have some smart name for the place.’

  ‘The cancer ward.’

  She laughed. ‘Shit, Cliff. No, it’s good for a couple of months. Any place that passes inspection.’

  ‘And how’s that going?’

  ‘Still waiting.’

  ‘Still looking?’

  ‘No. I know I should be.’ She poured some coffee and held up the pills inquiringly. When I shook my head she went on. ‘How many houses have you owned?’

  ‘Just this one. Me and the bank.’

  ‘I’ve had a couple. It’s always the same. Once you get interested in a place you start imagining yourself there-shopping, parking, making changes, you know.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be doing it with this joint. Not if it’s going to fall through.’

  ‘Fall through,’ I said. ‘Interesting choice of phrase.’

  ‘Stop it, Cliff.’

  ‘Sorry. When will you hear?’

  ‘Tomorrow, I hope.’

  ‘Shouldn’t there be lots of places going. I mean, with the tax changes? Aren’t people getting out of property as an investment? I read something about it. They’ve got to sell before a certain time to avoid the taxes. It should be a buyer’s market.’

  ‘I like this place.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, tomorrow.’

  ‘What’re you going to do? More phoning?’

  ‘No, I’m finished phoning.’ I told her about Marjorie Legge and ‘Mr Racing’ and the other new threads I had to pull.

  ‘So, what next?’

  ‘Action.’

  ‘Cliff, you can’t..

  ‘Gentle action. I’m going to the police.

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I need them.’

  ‘You always say you don’t need them, apart from Frank Parker. You don’t need the leaks and the paperwork and the lack of imagination.’

  ‘I just need them for tomorrow.’

  17

  I phoned Mercer the next morning before putting through a call to Drew. They call it chain of command or some such thing-I think it’s so they can keep an eye on each other. Drew wasn’t happy about it, but he agreed to let me come to the police building to investigate the evidence they were holding in the Carmel Wise case.

  ‘You want to see the car or what?’ Drew managed to keep the hostility under check, just.

  ‘I want to see the bag.’

  ‘What bag?’

  ‘The bag that the cassettes were in.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Maybe it isn’t her bag.’

  He laughed. ‘You won’t get anywhere with that. Hardy.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It isn’t anybody’s bag, or it could be anybody’s. It’s a supermarket shopping bag, plastic, not new, smeared with prints.’

  ‘I want to seethe videos then.’

  I could see the leer on his face. ‘No, can’t allow that. No facilities here for that.’

  ‘I just want to look at the stuff, I mean, examine it physically, not experience it emotionally.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I just want to look, not play.’

  ‘College Street annexe. Make it 11.30. I’ll give you fifteen minutes.”

  I was getting around the house on my own by this time-showering and dressing, managing the stairs, but the great big outside world was another matter. I almost went headfirst into the gutter trying to get into the taxi, and I bumped my head when I got out. The restricted vision made me slow and tentative on the city footpaths, and hesitant about crossing the roads. Still, it was good to be a part of functioning humanity again.

  I copped my first handicapped person joke from Bill Moore, the receptionist at the police building, an old warrior out to graze whom I knew slightly. ‘Well, what d’you know?’ he said. ‘Private eye is right, just the one, eh, Cliff?’

  ‘Shit, Bill,’ I said, ‘it’s supposed to be a disguise and you penetrated it right off. I’m here to see Detective Constable Drew, in the annexe he said.’

  ‘Lucky you. Hold on.’ He lifted a phone and spoke briefly into it. ‘Okay. I should search you for concealed weapons but if you had one and it was concealed you’d have trouble finding it with one eye, wouldn’t you.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I mimed shooting with two fingers. ‘I close this eye anyway, when I shoot.’

  ‘Through there, Cliff. Look after yourself.’

  I went down some steps, using the handrail, and through a set of heavy glass doors. The place was halfway between a laboratory and a locker room. Scientific equipment was lined up on benches; there were stools and small tables, ropes and pulleys and several well-stocked bookcases. Along one wall was a bank of green lockers. A tall man whose little remaining hair was blonde, sat on a stool near the lockers. He beckoned me over.

  ‘Hardy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Drew.’

  We shook hands. I sensed an immediate dislike of me in him which I was prepared to reciprocate. He had a hard face just beginning to go flabby; the way he sat on the stool and stuck out his hand just far enough, suggested that he expected a lot of things to be done for him and would do bugger all in return.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ he said.

  ‘It’s my time.’

  ‘Well, you’d be getting paid for it, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I hope so. I’m not a public servant though, I can’t count on a pay cheque every month.’

  He digested that with difficulty but evidently decided it wasn’t worth a response. He put his hand in his jacket pocket and produced a key. For a minute I thought he was going to throw it to me but he didn’t.

  ‘Take a look. Fifteen minutes, as I said.’

  ‘That’s about what your boys gave the flat.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I took the key and looked for the number along the rows of lockers. It was hard with one eye and in the dim light. Eventually I located it high on the fourth level. I had to stand on tiptoe to get the key in the door. I opened the locker and brought a stool across, climbed on it and took out everything inside. Drew sat on his stool ten feet away as I laid the stuff out on a bench.

  ‘What happened to your eye. You get it poked while you were peeping in a window?’

  I glanced at him; he was one of those balding men who look as if they’ve never had a hair to spare and have suffered with every one lost. Maybe it wasn’t his fault, but I wasn’t in the mood for his cracks. ‘No,’ I said. I opened the plastic bag. ‘Your wife’s naked beauty dazzled me, know what I mean, pal?’

  ‘Don’t touch that!’ he snarled.

  ‘Stop trying so hard to be the nastiest cop in town, Drew. You’ve got the title. Why don’t you go and have a smoke or
something and leave me in peace.’

  He’d got off the stool and taken two steps towards me but perhaps even Drew balked at belting a man with one eye. ‘I’m staying here and your time’s running out.’

  ‘You’re a prince.’ There wasn’t a lot to see. A supermarket shopping bag with eight video cassettes in it. Four more cassettes were tied in a bundle with string, with a tag reading ‘Car’ attached. There were a few other items which had evidently come from the car-a scarf, a comb and a book-Pauline Kael’s 500 Nights at the Movies.

  ‘What about the things she was carrying? Purse, cigarettes, money?’

  ‘What’re you trying to say?’

  ‘Jesus, Drew. What’s your middle name, Aggression? I’m only asking.’

  He sniffed and wiped his nose. Are bald men more liable to colds? I wondered.

  ‘No purse, no cigarettes. Some money in her jeans. A small amount of marijuana, some papers. That’s there, in an envelope. The clothes were pretty messed up with blood. The… ah, reasonable stuff was turned over to her parents.’

  I found the envelope and opened it-enough for two or three joints, Tally Ho papers. The sort of thing anyone under 50 might have around. The cassettes were not quite so standard. Some titles had an Oriental flavour- Bam boo Babies, Viet Virgins-and others a military tone- GI Johns, Marine Studs. There was no difference in quality and subject between the two lots of cassettes, those in the bag and those from the car, except that the former had some bloodstains on them.

  ‘Tell me about the car.’

  ‘What d’you mean? Hey, keep those things separate!’

  ‘You’re going to learn something, Drew, my friend. What condition was the car in?’

  ‘All right, except that one of the doors was sprung. You know these sleazos, they’ll drive around with no lights, busted doors

  ‘Yeah, I’ll bet yours is immaculate. Well, you can forget about the porn angle.’

  ‘What the hell’re you talking about?’

  I held up the cassettes. ‘You see these? They’re Beta, right? All the other cassettes in the flats are VHS. Did you know the girl made a film? I’ve seen it on a VHS cassette. VHS in the flat, VHS where she lived. This crap was planted, Drew. It was dropped by the body and put in the car. You need a new angle.’

  It rocked him. ‘Jesus, I told Mercer we had it…’

  ‘Unforgiving type, Mercer.’

  The effort to treat me as a human being almost gave him a hernia. ‘Look, Hardy, have you got anything? I mean…’

  I grinned at him. Grinning hurt the sore eye but it was worth it. ‘Why don’t you put all this stuff away, Drew? Many thanks for the help. If you can be of any further assistance I’ll let you know.’

  18

  My eye ached. I went to a pub and treated it in the toilet-peeled off the patch, used the eyedrops and replaced the pad-then I had a glass of wine and a sandwich. Chewing hurt; I took a couple of pain-killers and felt better, almost cheerful. Using a phone in the bar, I rang Leo Wise and confirmed his opinion that Carmel had no connection with the pornographic videos.

  ‘Thanks, Hardy. Are those cops dumb, or could they be in on it somehow?’

  ‘The one I spoke to seemed genuinely surprised. Doesn’t rule out others of course, but my guess is they’re not involved. Did Carmel ever talk to you about Marjorie Legge?’

  ‘No.’

  Maybe it was the noise in the bar, maybe just discretion, but I dropped my voice and moved the mouthpiece closer. ‘Phil Broadhead?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Or just as anyone might. As a character, you know. What do they have to do with it?’

  ‘Maybe nothing. I’m looking into it. What about Jan de Vries?’

  ‘I’ve heard the name. Who’s she?’

  ‘He. He’s a lecturer at the film school, seems he and Carmel were close.’

  ‘I knew there was someone around she spent time with. But I thought it was to do with work. Are you saying it was something else?’

  ‘Yes. Would her mother know anything?’

  ‘She might. Yes, she might.’

  ‘Would it be all right for me to talk to her? I don’t want to upset her.’

  ‘That’d be okay, I think. When?’

  ‘Well, maybe tonight. It might not be necessary if other things pan out. But it could be tonight.’

  ‘Okay. You know where we are.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How’s the eye?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  I left the pub and walked out into bright afternoon sunlight. I put on dark glasses, which sat awkwardly over the patched eye, and tried to flag down a cab. I couldn’t see the signs properly and I waved at full ones and let empty ones go by. Eventually one pulled in. I lowered myself carefully into the front seat and gave him the Lane Cove address. He shoved the Gregory’s at me and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Look it up for me, will you? I don’t know that area too well.’

  ‘Mate,’ I said, ‘with this eye I can hardly read the meter. Why don’t you get on the road and pull over somewhere in the vicinity and check the address? And put the cigarette out, please. The smoke hurts my eye.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ He was young and only practising at being tough.

  To be perfect, Lane Cove should look different in autumn. There should be a carpet of russet leaves on the ground and the trees should be all soft reds and yellows. It isn’t like that, but it looks as if it should be. The front gardens in de Vries’ street were deep and wide and the side fences seemed designed not to spoil the afforested look.

  ‘Nice street,’ the driver said. I’d been quiet on the drive and it seemed to make him nervous. ‘You live here?’

  ‘No. Visiting.’

  ‘How long you going to be?’

  ‘About an hour.’

  ‘Where to then?’

  ‘Glebe, I guess. Why? I don’t fancy holding you here with the meter running.’

  ‘No, no. I need a break. I could take it now and be back in an hour. It’d suit me.’

  ‘Okay.’ I paid him and gave him a reasonable tip, or Leo Wise did. He thanked me and came around to help me out of the car. He was dark, short and strongly built, around twenty years of age and trying to be friendly. I noticed he had a slim, battered paperback sticking out of the hip pocket of his jeans. ‘Thanks. What’re you reading?’

  ‘Dostoevsky, The Gambler. You read it?’

  ‘Long time ago. I read a couple of his short ones.’

  He grinned. ‘Me too. Okay, sir, I’ll see you in an hour.’

  De Vries’ house was a wide timber construction, painted white, and well cared for. The garden featured the appropriate big, but not too big, trees along with some shrubs and a deep mat of ivy as ground cover. It was a pleasant, cool, shady garden in front of a pleasant-looking house. The only thing that wouldn’t be good about it would be the mortgage payments.

  I walked up to the front porch and rang the bell. The woman who answered it was big and fair with pale eyes and lips. She wore a shapeless white dress which badly needed washing and sandals with incongruously high heels.

  ‘Yes?’ She leaned against the doorway and her eye level was nearly the same as mine.

  ‘Mrs de Vries?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose. Who are you?’ She had an accent, somewhere between American and South African, which I hadn’t detected on the phone.

  ‘My name is Hardy. I rang you a day or so back. I need, very urgently, to talk to your husband.’

  ‘You need… very urgently,’ she mocked. ‘So do I.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ She started to close the door and I shuffled closer; maybe I put my patched eye where the shut door would go because she stopped the movement.

  ‘Go away,’ she said.

  ‘Where’s Jan de Vries?’

  ‘Gone. Left. What do you care? What does anyone care?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘See? Who cares? When? Why d’you want to know when?’

  ‘It’s important.�
�

  ‘To you. Two weeks ago. I haven’t heard from him in two weeks. Now, would you please go away!’

  ‘Mrs de Vries, have you ever heard of a woman named Carmel Wise?’

  She pushed back some of the tumbling fair hair and looked hard at me. Some colour came into her pallid face. ‘Yes, I’ve heard of her. Jan’s lover, she is.’

  ‘This is important, Mrs de Vries. Could I come in? I think we need to talk.’

  ‘I haven’t talked to anyone for two weeks. Only the children. Are you a policeman?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ I showed her my licence. She examined it and then my face. For a woman of her size, a man with a surgical eye patch can’t be too frightening. She stood aside.

  ‘Come in.’

  The passage was a sea of newspapers, magazines and children’s toys and books. We picked our way over and through it and went into a living room where a party had been held. There was a glass on every level surface, bottles, cans, overflowing ashtrays, paper plates with food clinging to them and the sickly sweet smell of stale, trapped, over-used air. She flopped into a chair, just missing a paper plate with cheese dip on it.

  ‘We had a party. At the end of the party Jan told me he was leaving me. And he left. I haven’t…’ She waved her hand at the room.

  ‘I thought you had children?’

  ‘Two. They are staying with friends.’

  ‘So should you.”

  She shrugged; her big, loose breasts moved under the stained white dress. ‘I have no friends here.’

  I looked around, stalling for time and wondering how to handle it. The room was big, the windows were big, the carpet was deep and through a door I could see a sunny sitting room with a polished floor. A load of washing had been dumped in the middle of the floor. It was an upper income house and should have been filled with sounds like Mozart on the hi-fi and the buzz of the home computer; instead it felt like an army barracks after the regiment has pulled out.