A photograph had been torn from its frame and torn to pieces so that it was impossible to tell what it had been. Someone had urinated on the pieces. Along with the smell of piss I could detect cigarette smoke, perfume and something else. I knew what it was.
The staircase was virtually a ladder-very narrow, very steep. I went up. The back room held a moveable clothes rack and a chest of drawers. Clothes were hanging out of the drawers and askew on the rack. A large suitcase lay open on the floor with clothes and shoes spilling from it.
She was in the front room on the queen-size bed that took up most of the space. She was naked under a white silk dressing gown, untied. Her skin was a deep brown and her tightly braided hair was black. The kind of scarf Muslim women wear was ripped and lying beside her. A dark stain spread from under her head across the white satin cover on the bed. Her head was turned and her dark eyes stared blindly at me.
PART TWO
11
I couldn’t afford to be the discoverer of a murdered person a second time in a matter of days. The police would tie me up in knots and the publicity would be disastrous. I gave myself five minutes to search the house for the identity of the dead woman. No sign of a handbag or a purse. I opened drawers using a tissue and probed using a ballpoint pen. No letters, no cards, no post-its, no mobile phone. Some of the clothes on the rack were professional-silk, satin and lace items-but the ones she’d been packing were practical.
I noticed something sticking a millimetre or so out of a pocket of the suitcase cover. I teased out a postcard-sized photograph. It showed three young women standing together in a linked, provocative pose wearing the appropriate clothing. One of them was the dead woman wearing a head scarf; one I didn’t recognise and the other was Mary Oberon. I took the photograph.
I left the way I’d come in except that I stayed in the network of back lanes until I emerged a few blocks from Little Seldon Street. I walked to my car and sat there for a couple of minutes. The dead woman looked to be in her twenties; she was beautiful with a fine body. From her hair and features I guessed she was African. From her voice she was educated, and she’d sounded rational and intelligent. I felt her loss, not just because of the information I’d never get from her, but because she was much too young to die and she’d died a long way from home.
I drove until I found a public phone. I rang the police number and said where to find a dead woman.
‘Sir, please give me your name and address.’
That ‘Sir’ at the start of the sentence. They pick it up from American television. It annoys me. I hung up.
Driving around with five thousand dollars in your pocket isn’t the most comfortable feeling, particularly when you’re heading where I was. The House of Ruby is a massage parlour and relaxation centre in Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross. While being a hard-headed businesswoman, Ruby, the proprietor, is also something of a mother figure and mentor to Sydney sex workers. I’d done some work for her in the past, bodyguarding a couple of her employees and getting a threatening rival off her back. We’re friends.
Marcia, her well-constructed and immaculately groomed receptionist, raised an eyebrow as she buzzed me in.
‘Cliff Hardy, I heard you’d retired.’ Marcia had the voice all brothel receptionists have-smooth, reassuring, comforting, designed to put the punters at their ease.
‘I’m making a comeback. Is Ruby available?’
‘Upstairs, just follow your nose if that’s the only thing sticking out.’
The decor at Ruby’s is muted plush. The stairs are carpeted, the handrail is polished and the mirror at the first landing is set at a flattering angle. I went down a corridor to Ruby’s office. Music was playing inside-classical, which is as far as I could get to identifying it. I knocked and went in.
Ruby retired from active service years ago, but she has maintained her face and figure with a certain amount of surgical help. She was working at a computer and swung around on her chair.
‘Cliff, darling. It’s been a long time.’
She got up and came towards me, moving well, and elegant in a loose satin shirt and tight pants. In her heels she was almost as tall as me. She hugged me and stepped back.
‘Older,’ she said. ‘And wiser?’
‘Don’t know about that.’
She groped me gently. ‘Hornier? I live in hope.’
‘Couldn’t spoil a beautiful friendship.’
She sighed theatrically. ‘Business, as always. Have a seat.’ She turned a knob on the portable CD player beside the computer and the music subsided to a whisper. ‘Haydn,’ she said. ‘You look a bit grim, Cliff. At a guess you’ve just come away from something unpleasant. Drink?’
I nodded. She opened a bar fridge and made two stiff gins and tonic.
‘Lime or lemon?’
‘You choose.’
She chose lime. We clinked glasses. I handed her the photograph. ‘D’you know the girl in the middle, Ruby?’
‘I know one of them. First I have to know what trouble they’re in.’
‘The girl on the right’s not in any trouble as far as I know. The one on the left is dead. The one in the middle is my concern. Mary Oberon. She’s done some iffy things but nothing too serious, I don’t think. She’s involved in something I’m working on and she’s been threatened. I want to know who by because that might tell me who put her up to the things she’s done that have brought her to my attention. I don’t mean her any harm.’
‘You never do, but it goes along with the work you do, right?’
I didn’t respond. She had it exactly.
Ruby worked on her drink, still studying the photograph. ‘I’ve got it now. She’s involved in that Bobby Forrest thing that’s been all over the tabloids. So are you. You don’t think she killed him?’
‘She didn’t.’
‘But she knows who did?’
‘I think so. The African-looking girl said she knew. She implied Mary Oberon had told her. I went to see her and found her dead.’
Ruby raised her glass in a sort of salute. ‘I didn’t know her. The other one goes by the name of Isabella. She’s from the islands somewhere.’
‘Mary Oberon is a Fijian-Indian, I think.’
‘Yeah, partly anyway. You can’t find her?’
I took a good pull on the drink and shook my head. ‘I traced her to where some guy threatened her and that was it. Any idea where she might have gone?’
‘No. Back home?’
‘The African girl said she was illegally here. If Mary Oberon’s the same it’d be tricky to leave. The cops are looking for her, too. What about Isabella? She might be in danger as well if she knows what the African girl knew. Any ideas about her?’
Ruby finished her drink. She used a long fingernail to spike the slice of lime and ate it. ‘You wouldn’t dob them in to Immigration would you, Cliff?’
‘I might threaten to, but I wouldn’t do it.’
She laughed. ‘You’re an honest man, Cliff Hardy. Don’t meet many, especially in this game. All I can tell you is where Isabella works and probably these other girls as well. Place called Black Girls. It’s in Double Bay.’
‘Nice place?’
‘Not very, from what I hear.’
‘What else d’you hear?’
‘That it’s got high-level protection.’
‘Who from?’
She shrugged. ‘Hard to say, but you’d better be careful.’
I thanked her for the information and the drink and left. I heard the music surge up as I walked towards the stairs.