I put my licence folder down in front of her. ‘I’ve just been talking to Inspector Withers, upstairs, Senior,’ I said. ‘He recommended that I see you next.’
She examined the photo and the printed details as if she’d never seen a PEA licence before. Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she interviewed people for jobs like hers. If so, what had she been doing in Hamilton on the 28th? She closed the folder and handed it back. ‘Sit down, Mr Hardy.’
She studied me with a pair of very blue eyes with a few fine lines around them that said she was thirty, not twenty. The rest of her, the hair, the nicely shaped shoulders and chest inside the crisp white shirt and the wide mouth, didn’t look any particular age. Just good. I gave her a short version of the story, taking care not to sound as if the police force or anyone else had been remiss. No Royal Commission required. I tried to communicate my own interest in some of the questions that Horrie Jacobs’ allegation threw up. Particularly ones he wasn’t aware of, such as the notion that a rich old man was a target of some kind.
‘I remember when he won all that money. Generally speaking, people said it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke. Unusual reaction. Usually, there’s jealousy.’
‘He’s that sort of a man,’ I said.
‘I don’t see how I can help you, though,’ she said. ‘You had to be here to appreciate what things were like that day’
‘Tell me.’
‘It was dreadful. We were all called out to do one thing or another. I’ve been on the force for ten years and I’ve seen a few things. But nothing like that. The distress and fear in the streets. I hope I never see it again.’
‘You saw Oscar Bach’s body?’
She nodded. The clean, shiny brown hair bounced. She wore two small earrings in the lobe of one ear-a silver and a gold, interlocked. Somehow it made her seem less like a police person. ‘I worked in Beaumont Street, up where the awnings had come down, for a few hours. Then a woman said there was a body under the church. She was hysterical. A lot of people were. I wanted to go on helping where I was but the Sergeant told me to go and take a look.’
‘Do you know who the woman was?’
‘Yes. A Mrs Atkinson. She’s got a drinking problem. Her husband was always leaving her and always coming back when she threatened to kill herself, you know?’
I nodded. I knew. Who doesn’t?
‘She came along with me, down the street. Weeping and carrying on. The church was a mess. The whole of the side section had collapsed. Mr Bach was half-covered by bricks.’
‘Which half?’
She looked at me with dislike and snapped, ‘The top. His feet, too. Are you enjoying this? I had a hysterical woman tearing my arm out of the socket, blood and dust and crap all over me and a man lying there with his head turned to pulp. I didn’t enjoy it, I can tell you.’
‘I’m sorry’ I said. ‘I was in a war once. I know what you’re talking about.’
‘Vietnam?’
‘Similar. Bit before. Malaya. It’s just that I have to be sure Oscar Bach was killed by falling bricks, not by anything else.’
‘Like what?’
I mimed the action of clutching a brick and using it as a bludgeon. She looked at me as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether I was an animal or an insect. Then she frowned. Two grooves appeared between her dark eyebrows and I had an impulse to reach across the desk and put my thumb on them, to smooth them away. ‘It’s possible,’ she said. ‘How could you tell?’
‘Were there any photographs taken?’
‘I don’t think so. As I said, everything was chaotic. Just up the street…’
‘Some people were killed by things falling on them. So it was assumed the same thing had happened at the church. What did Mrs Atkinson do?’
‘I’m getting a bit tired of this. You’re questioning my competence.’
‘I have to,’ I said. ‘People pay me to do that. It doesn’t make me popular and often I’m wrong anyway. Try to see it from my point of view.’
I liked her face, her voice and the calm steadiness of her. She was angry but not letting it block out everything else. I wondered why she was letting me take up so much of her time. I didn’t kid myself it was my rugged good looks. Dad, most likely. She took a packet of cigarettes from her skirt pocket and offered them to me. I shook my head and she lit up. She drew on the cigarette and let the smoke out slowly. ‘Mrs Atkinson waited until the paramedics came and they uncovered the body. When she saw the boots and the overall she knew it wasn’t her husband and she went right off the edge. I had to take her home. They removed the body. I put in a report. That’s all, Mr… ‘ she butted out the cigarette.
‘Hardy,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Do you know where the post-mortem was conducted?’
She reached for the phone on her desk. ‘No, but I could find out.’ She lifted the phone and dropped it. ‘What the hell am I doing?’
I grinned. ‘Assisting me in my enquiries. Inspector Withers cleared me with Sydney.’
‘That goes without saying. He wouldn’t talk to a private detective otherwise. Look, I’ve got work to do here and…’
I wiped the grin and tried to look professional. ‘I get the impression that you don’t like people barging into town and bothering the citizens with a lot of questions. Fair enough. I wouldn’t like it either if I was in your shoes. How about this? You find a few minutes in your busy day to help me-get the autopsy report, anything your people might have had on Mr Bach, a few odds and ends. You let me see them and I get out of your hair so much the quicker.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘Would you have to check with your superiors to do that?’
‘No, not exactly. I was the liaison officer for the emergency unit that was set up. The one the Admiral headed up.’
‘I’m told he did a great job.’
‘Not bad. I think the sorts of things you want would be on file in that unit, at least temporarily. I could get them.’
‘I’d appreciate it. Where and when could we meet?’
She consulted some scribble on a scratch pad. ‘I still don’t know why I’m doing this. I could find some time later this afternoon… I have to be in court tomorrow morning…’
It wasn’t the best arrangement because it gave her a chance to consult with her Dad, but it was the best I was going to get. ‘Outside the court house? Tomorrow at 12.30?’
‘All right.’
I thanked her and left the office, feeling her eyes on my back every step of the way.
For the next hour or so I confirmed my impression that good things had been done on the Newcastle waterfront and at the train terminal. A pedestrian mall had been constructed with walkways leading up over the tracks to restaurants, shops and pleasant spots for just sitting and looking beside the water. I had a light beer and a sandwich in a cafe that afforded me a view across the Hunter River to Stockton. The price would have made old Newcastle identities like Hughie Dwyer blanch, but no-one now could eat the sort of sandwiches Hughie would have been accustomed to, so it all rinses out in the wash.
I unparked my car and drove through the streets to the site of the major earthquake disaster-the Workers’ Club on the corner of King and Union Streets. The area itself surprised me; I got lost and approached along Union from the Hamilton end. I had expected a mixture of the modern plastic and the old basic, but the wide road had palm trees growing along the side and ran past a big park that looked relaxed and gracious.
I’d seen press photographs of the damage to the club but they hadn’t quite prepared me for the reality. The building looked to have been a huge barn of a place, constructed in sections over time, plain to the point of ugliness. Now, it looked as if a giant fist had smashed through the roof, driving upper floors down through those below and dropping the whole lot into the underground car park. There was failed metal everywhere-steel girders twisted like spaghetti and reinforcing rods sticking out of concrete like bones poking through the skin. The whole area was surrounded by a cyclone fence and scaffolding and the demolisher’s sign looked like a puny piece of boasting. In fact, demolition and reconstruction were well underway, but the site still looked as if nature rather than man was calling the shots.