by Peter Corris
I went down the stairs and out the front door quickly. No Betty Tracey in sight A few curious faces at the louvre windows, but no problems. I went to my car and located Windmill Lane in the Gregory’s. It was a short stroll away. It was a fair bet that the pair who lived in Gladesville arrived together; that made it likely that Dent, who lived close by, was the late one. That was consistent with human nature. The late one was the most likely to have heard me talking to Betty Tracey. I knew I was drawing a long bow. Maybe the man I’d seen enter a house ahead of me in Pump Street on my first visit hadn’t entered 43A; maybe he hadn’t noticed me at all. Maybe he wasn’t Merv Dent. Maybe Stan Livermore had simply fallen and hit his head. I took out my notes and checked through the list of names of men injured in the bridge construction. All three names Lithgow had given me appeared. I shoved the directory back in the glovebox, locked the car and headed for Windmill Lane.
At the top of Pump Street I got another angle on the bridge, different from the view from Lithgow’s window. Now it looked less impressive, as if it was too big for the job it was doing. The water it spanned didn’t seem to need such massive engineering to master it. Still, it was always going to be more interesting than the tunnel. I thought I could see a yellow stain in the water in the area where the tunnelling work was going on. But that might have been my anti-tunnel imagination at work. A few metres down the steep street, and the water and bridge disappeared.
Windmill Street had probably never looked so good before in its long history. The houses had been cleaned up and repainted in colonial colours; the new paving was in keeping with the buildings, and something green was growing in almost every place it was possible for something green to grow. The harmony was putting me in the wrong mood. I was possibly about to face a multiple killer; a man with an obsession that was stronger to him than the claims of human life. A twisted individual: we’re all twisted, but some twists are more dangerous than others … I was trying to build up some aggression. I should have had the taste of tobacco and beer in my mouth, not good dry sherry.
As I turned into Windmill Lane, I realised that my attitude was mainly one of curiosity rather than anger. I had questions rather than accusations. What forces could prompt a man to kill repeatedly? Why had he waited so long to begin killing, or had he waited? The cases of death and disappearance I was confronting now—were they only the tip of an iceberg? How had the executions been managed and what justifications would the executioner have? The lane was cobblestoned in the same way as the area behind the houses in Pump Street. But here the worn-down stones were firmly set, and the gutters had been renewed where years of running water had eaten away the stone. One side of the lane was completely taken up by a succession of brick fences of varying heights. Gardening had been going on here, too. The fences were covered in leafless wisteria and other vines.
The houses were on the other side, facing towards the water. Cute, narrow terraces, very scrubbed up, with brass knockers and painted wrought iron. There were ten houses in the lane, numbering from one to ten. There was no number twenty-two, and this part of the Rocks had been untouched by developer or restorer. There never had been a number twenty-two.
As I rechecked the numbering of the houses in the lane and the streets at either end of it, certain impressions and recollections began to come together in my mind. Now that I was out of his presence, I felt some disturbing familiarity about Charles Lithgow that I hadn’t felt when I was with him. It was as if I’d met him before in another context and the re-meeting had blotted this out. I struggled to remember, to place the feeling, and failed. But I started to walk quickly back to Pump Street. Had I been conned? Had it all been too easy? Something else about Lithgow disturbed me. Some irritant, something not quite right. But I couldn’t locate it.
I re-entered number 43A by the back, went through the porch bedroom into the kitchen and almost fell as my feet tangled with something on the floor. I steadied myself by grabbing the doorjamb and looked down. Betty Tracey was lying on the floor. The back of her head was a dark, pulpy mess. Her grey hair was stained a dark colour near the crown and was streaked dark red for the rest of its untidy length. I felt for signs of life at her wrist and neck the way I had with Stan Livermore, and got the same result The little woman’s head was turned around so that she seemed almost to be looking back over her shoulder. She was even more twisted and hunched in death than she had been in life.
I straightened up and moved quickly to the stairs. All quiet topside. I went up and saw that the doors to both Livermore’s and Lithgow’s rooms were open. Old Stan’s room had been gone through, quickly but by someone who knew what was where. Most of the files were missing, along with some of the books and photographs. In Lithgow’s room almost nothing remained apart from the furniture and the wine rack. The papers, books, photographs, tool box and other things I’d remarked were all gone. I pulled out the drawers and opened the cupboards. They were empty but might always have been so. The wastepaper basket, which I now remembered as being crammed with paper, was empty and lying on its side. There was almost nothing of Mr Lithgow remaining, except his soup mug, sherry glasses and wine rack, which contained ten bottles, none of which would sell for less than twenty dollars.
There was no way of sliding out of this one; my fingerprints were in the house, my car had been parked in the street for an hour or more, and I’d been seen at the place previously. Besides, I didn’t want to make an anonymous phone call about Betty Tracey. She might have been an old sharpster, but she deserved more than that. I’d seen a killer and could identify him, although I’d have laid a hundred to one now that his name wasn’t Lithgow or anything like it. I found the house telephone in Mrs Tracey’s dark, musty front room and called the police. While I waited for them to come I did another quick search of Livermore’s and Lithgow’s rooms. Nothing in old Stan’s. In the other room I found a pair of socks that had been left, under the bed. Handy if you were a sniffer dog. I gave the blankets a twitch and something dark and soft fell to the floor. The object was a woollen glove. For no good reason, I sniffed it. It smelt of the sea. For me, smell triggers recall better than any of the other senses—I remembered where I’d seen Charles Lithgow before.
The cops who came must have been reading the papers and going to community policing class. They treated me with extreme gentleness, showed consideration to the older neighbours who were alarmed by the arrival of an ambulance and another police car, and listened patiently to an abbreviated version of my story. The second car brought two detectives, who talked briefly to the uniformed men. I sat on the stairs, feeling drained, tired of the stink of the house, light-headed.
One of the detectives showed me his card. “Campbell,” he said.
I rubbed my face and felt the hardness of the scabs that had formed over my scratches. “Fine Scots name, Campbell,” I said. “I’m Irish myself, mostly.”
“Have you been drinking, Mr Hardy?”
I held up my thumb and forefinger, an inch apart. “A tiny sherry.”
“I think you’d better come with us. Do you have a vehicle?”
I handed him the keys. “Blue Falcon across the street. Don’t put any dings in it, or I’ll sue.”
“Do you have a weapon, Mr Hardy?”
I held my jacket open. ‘Your blokes took it away from me a couple of nights ago. If I go quietly, d’you think you might give it back?”
“Just sit quietly there a minute, sir. We’re waiting for the technical people. When they come, we can go.”
I said, “The Campbells a’comin’.”
“What?”
“Nothing, sergeant. Don’t take offence.”
Campbell made a grunting sound and turned away from me. He nodded conspiratorially to his partner, and for a moment they and the uniformed policemen all stood in the narrow hallway, like train travellers for whom there were no seats. Two men in white coats walked through the front door. The cops all sprang into action.
“Photos, dusting, bagging, blood sa
mples, all the usual things,” Campbell said.
One of the white coats mock-tugged his forelock “Sir,” he said.
“Don’t be funny, Simmo. I’m not in the mood.” Campbell crooked a finger at me. “Mr Hardy.”
I got up and moved towards the door. I took the glove from my pocket and handed it to the white coat. “This is a glove worn by the killer, Simmo,” I said. “You probably should check it for fingerprints.”
I was laughing fit to burst as Campbell and his mate hustled me through the door and into their car.
19
I told parts of the story to Campbell in the car, more to him and another cop in a cold, bare interview room at the Sydney police station in Central Street, and the rest of it to an inspector and Ralph Wren in another more comfortable room in the same building. It smelled of paint; all police stations these days seemed to smell of paint and renovation. We sat on plastic chairs around a conference table with places for another eight participants. Wren had a batch of papers with him; the inspector and I had nothing.
Wren, a small, dark man with a prominent nose and a nervous sniff, took notes. When I’d finished talking he looked up and sniffed. “Concealing evidence,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“The bodies in the harbour.”
“I’d say I discovered evidence, or revealed it or something. I didn’t conceal it. If I’d hauled the stiffs up, you would have done me for unlicensed salvaging.”
The bulky, bald-headed inspector, whose name was Lucas or Loomis (Wren had muttered the introduction) grinned, but Wren’s face didn’t change. “You’re too smart for your own good, Hardy. You’re in trouble here.”
“I don’t think so, Wren. You’re forgetting something.”
“What?”
“I didn’t see inside that canvas. Could be dead cats for all I know.”
“Is this the point?” Lucas or Loomis said. “We can sort all that out later. What about this Lithgow? You’ve seen him twice now, Mr Hardy. At close quarters.” I nodded. I’d told them about my first meeting with Lithgow—on the water under the bridge. The smell on the glove had brought the memory back. Lithgow was the man in the boat made for sailing and rowing who’d hailed us and offered help. It all fitted—the view of the bridge from his window, the calloused hands, his hesitation in saying when he liked a drink. My guess was that what he had almost said was, “After a good sail or a row.”
Wren flicked back through his notes and looked at a computer print-out sheet he’d brought along with him. ‘Your theory is that he killed Mrs Tracey because she might be able to identify him?”
“Right,” I said. “And Stan Livermore for much the same reason.”
Wren gave a sniff and tapped the sheet. ‘You didn’t mention any of this when you made a statement at Woolloomooloo a couple of days ago.”
“Come on, Ralph,” the inspector said. He was ten years older than me, close to twenty older than Wren, and he used his rank and the age differential like a heavier champ using his weight against a contender. “Let’s stick to the point First thing is to pull up those bodies, if that’s what they are.”
“Water police,” Wren said. “Cheeky bastards.”
“And you’ll have to take me along to identify the spot,” I said. “Sorry, Mr Wren, Mr Lucas.”
“Loomis. Are you sure you’re up to it, Mr Hardy? You seemed a bit unsteady back there a while ago.”
Loomis was smarter than Wren and he knew it He’d just managed to tone down my insolence. “I’ll be all right,” I said.
“Good.” Loomis rubbed his hands together. “Think I’ll leave you the paperwork, Ralph, and take a turn on the water myself. Get on the blower to the floaties, will you? And Ralph, we don’t want any reporters or cameras. Got me?”
Wren left the room and Loomis escorted me to the canteen, where we drank coffee and ate surprisingly good toasted sandwiches. He was a relaxed and pleasant man and I felt myself relaxing in his company. I realised that I’d been wound up tight; Loomis knew it He blew on the surface of his coffee and waved to a colleague across the room.
“How’s Meredith?” I said.
“Doing well. I heard you called in on him the other day.”
“He saved my bloody life. You know about the Tobin thing?”
He nodded. I guessed that crooked cops, former and current, weren’t his favourite people. “This is a bizarre case. The bridge has been up for nearly sixty years. Why would anyone suddenly take it into his mind to start killing the sons of the builders?”
I shook my head. “Answer that and you’ve got him.”
“You’ve got no clues, you say.”
“Too many bloody clues. One way and another you can put together quite a list of the people killed or seriously injured on the job. It’d run to a hundred, maybe more. Someone connected with one of those people is the most likely candidate. It’s before the migrants came here and started doing all the hard yakka, remember. They have names like Smith and Jones.”
Loomis drank some coffee gloomily. “People who take phoney names often don’t use their imagination. You’ve got a list like that, have you?”
“Partial only.”
“Any names like Goulburn or Bathurst on it?”
“I don’t remember. My notes’re in my car.”
“Hang on. More coffee?” I shook my head and the inspector went across to a wall phone. He spoke briefly into it, got more coffee for himself at the counter and returned. ‘Your car’s in the basement. I’ve taken the liberty of asking an officer to bring us your notes.”
“You’re buying the food.”
He drank some more coffee and relaxed in his chair. “If this breaks the way we think it will, it’s going to be a big story. How much of it do you want, Hardy? What’s the extent of your interest?”
“Doesn’t extend very far,” I said. “I’d like to be able to handle my client’s identification of her father, if it’s him down there, before any of the media get hold of it. That’s about it. I’d like to feel that Meredith got his share of the credit for the detective work I took my lead from his interest in missing persons cases with a bridge connection. He was on the right track.”
“Fair enough. More than fair. The trouble is, there’s not going to be much credit to spread around unless we catch the killer.”
“That’s your department. I was hired to find someone. It looks as if I’ve done it.”
“It does, it does. Ah, here we are.”
A female constable appeared at Loomis’ elbow. She ignored me and handed him my notebook and accompanying bits of paper. Loomis lifted his bum off the seat in gentlemanly fashion. “Thank you, constable.”
The policewoman said, “Yes, sir,” turned smartly and left the canteen.
“Can’t get used to it,” Loomis mused. “Especially the guns. Well, let’s see what we have here.” He spread the papers out, sorting them rapidly and efficiently. His hands alighted on the photocopies. “Lists of names. Christ!” It was the first aroused response I’d seen from him. I leant forward and saw that he was looking at the blotchy, grainy photocopy of the picture of the riveter doing his stuff on a narrow ledge a couple of hundred feet up.
“Scary,” I said.
“Mmm.” Loomis ran his eye down the list I’d copied from the Veterans of the Bridge pamphlet. “See what you mean. Smith and Jones. Nothing …”
“Geographical?”
“Right.” He pushed the papers across to me. I patted them into some sort of order and put them in my pocket. “It’s got to be someone who only recently found out that he had a grievance, or only recently acquired the means to do something about it.”
I was impressed. “Death notices early this year. Match ‘em up with the names of the dead and injured.”
“Slow and messy. Have you considered that there could be other people under threat?”
“Of course I have. What about Paul Guthrie? His father helped to build the bloody thing.”
&nb
sp; Loomis shook his head. “From what you’ve told us, this nut has singled out the actual construction phase. Still, you could be right. You evidently admire Guthrie, feel some responsibility to him. Does that affect your position?”
I munched on a last crust from my toasted ham and cheese sandwich and swilled down some cold coffee. It was mid-afternoon. Too early for a drink, but I’d have succumbed if one had been available. “How d’you mean, inspector?” I said.
“Are you really trying, Hardy? Do you want to stop this maniac? Aren’t you embarrassed about the way he fooled you? Watched you while you looked under the bridge?”
“That’s a point,” I said. “He’s a bridge freak. Rows on the harbour. You’ve got the manpower to look into those things. I haven’t.”
“Sent you off on a wild goose chase? Diverted you while he cleaned up his room and bashed an old woman to death?”
I stared at him. “What do you want me to do?”
His high forehead wrinkled. The wrinkles ran all the way up to where his hairline used to be and beyond. This was deep thought being demonstrated. I was aware of a growing hostility between us. “How about this dinghy, sailboat or whatever he was in?”
“What about it?”
“Did it have a name, for Christ’s sake?”
“I thought of that, inspector.”
“And?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Some detective,” Loomis said.
We boarded the water police launch at the pontoon dock I’d seen during my previous excursion on the water. Loomis exerted his heavy charm on the uniformed sergeant and two constables running the boat, and also spread it around the two frogmen, who jiggled and slapped their hands together as if they could hardly wait to get out of this unnatural environment and into their true habitat. They had lights similar to the one Ray Guthrie had used but stronger-looking, and one of them had a waterproof tool kit at his feet. Loomis took a careful look around before giving the signal to move out towards the bridge.
