So Jason goes to Price, which must’ve taken some nerve, and spills the beans on Danni. All very nasty and with Price not really knowing what was going on. It hung together okay and gave me a handle on things, but it didn’t tell me where Danni got her drugs from unless, just possibly, Dr Feelgood was in the picture.
I parked as close as I could to St Peter’s Lane where I have my office and waited until the rain eased a bit. I had a Drizabone in the back and I pulled it on and splashed off to buy a pizza slice and a takeaway coffee to fuel me. The rain got worse, pelting down so hard it was bouncing up off the footpath making staying even half dry impossible. I stepped gingerly over flowing gutters, ducked away from spewing downpipes and made the back entrance nearly as wet as when I rode the big, choppy, curling ones at Maroubra back in my surfing days.
It was mid-afternoon and I was hungry. Breakfast and the light beer with Tom Bolitho were a distant memory. I’d wolfed down the pizza slice and drunk the coffee and wished I could have seconds, but with the rain coming down like that I wasn’t going out again. There were a couple of faxes and bills and phone messages to deal with and I did them in a routine way with the tangled Price matter still occupying most of my brain space. I opened a folder, put the contract inside, scribbled some notes and dropped Dr Cross’s card in with the lot. I made my usual diagram with names in the corners of an octagon, leaving spaces for more names as they came up, and dotted lines and arrows indicating connections. I had five names so far, six if I included Detective Constable Stankowski — two to go. I figured I might need a bigger diagram and wondered what a ten-sided figure was called.
I was still wondering and still hungry and thirsty when the phone rang. I screen the calls when I’m thinking and I let the machine pick it up.
‘Cliff, Tess. You there?’
I realised that I hadn’t given Ramsay a thought for some time and felt guilty. In cowardly fashion, I let Tess leave a message that only amounted to a wish to know how I was going. I put out my hand to pick up the phone but she cut the call and I let it drop. Come on, Hardy, I thought. You can handle two cases at once. You’ve done it before. That was true, but as a rough rule, when I did that, one case turned out badly.
I could have called Tess back and told her about the Strathfield situation but I didn’t and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I felt I needed something more solid to relay to her, like a meeting with Ramsay. Or maybe I was shying away from that out of my dislike of the man. Tess would be better off disconnected from him. Why not just let him go on doing whatever he was doing? At least he wasn’t at her for money and was apparently healthy. But the truth was I was more interested now in the Price case and not just because it was an earner. It had subtleties to it I was sure I hadn’t yet discerned and that was intriguing.
Although it was still early in the year, the heavy cloud dimmed the light and the late afternoon felt later. Bad weather depresses me, makes me feel heavy and slow, and I slumped at the desk until I got a twinge from my bruised stomach. That was another attraction of the Price matter, the possibility of catching up with Baldy again and being better prepared. It got to be five o’clock which is near enough to six, and I poured myself a modest slug of bargain special Scotch and made plans: for now, a visit to the sauna and spa in Leichhardt to help me get through my routine at the gym the next morning where I hoped Peter Lo would have something helpful for me. Ramsay would have to wait; but then a more forceful visit to the face-lifted lady of Henry Street, Strathfield, would be the next port of call.
I drove through the heavy rain to the sports centre in Leichhardt, paid my money, stripped and hopped into the spa. The water temperature was about right and I played the jets on my stomach and wallowed around like King Farouk. I could feel the warmth and the water relaxing me. Apart from a couple who pretty much clung mutely together in a corner of the spa I had the place to myself. Some rolls of fat in the middle, love handles not too bad, reasonable muscle tone elsewhere. I tried not to look at the grizzled grey hair on my chest. I felt I had a viable work plan mapped out and I tried to concentrate on soothing my body and leaving all things to do with Prices and Hewitt out in the rain.
It pretty much worked and I was well and truly relaxed when I stepped into the sauna and slopped some water on the heat. I put a towel down on the top bench and stretched out on my back to let the steam do its work. I’ve heard of people fucking in saunas but it doesn’t take me that way, rather the reverse. The sweat was pooling in my grey-haired navel and running off me and I’d pulled the towel out from under and was mopping my face when two men entered the room. I didn’t bother to look at them and couldn’t have seen much through the steam anyway. I was about to roll over when one of the men spoke.
‘Mr Hardy my name is Lewis. I represent the Lord George Social Introduction Agency.’
I struggled to recover something from my soporific surrender to the heat. ‘You left out the word escort,’ I said. ‘Not that I give a fuck who you are or what you do.’
‘It would be very unwise of you to take that line.’
I fanned away some steam and saw that the other man was Baldy. I pushed myself upright but I was sluggish from the spa and the steam and he was quick. He pinned me with an arm like a railway sleeper. He held me down without effort — he had the weight and the strength and the leverage. I lay back and blinked to try to clear my eyes and get a better look at them. Lewis was a thin, stringy type with sparse mousy hair that looked even more undernourished in the steam room. The other guy didn’t have to worry about hair on the head or any other part of his body. He was hairless all over. An alopecia sufferer. He was also packing much more muscle than fat on his big frame. He lifted his arm and stood so that he could hit me with either hand on pretty much any part of my body.
‘Represent,’ I said. ‘What does that mean?’
‘In my case, legal matters,’ Lewis said as he took up a squatting position a level below me. ‘In Mr Stivens here’s case, security. Now you appear to be mounting some kind of surveillance on an important client of ours and we’re interested to know why.’
‘How d’you see it that way?’
Lewis wiped his face with the corner of his towel and looked about ready to faint. ‘Too hot for you?’ I said.
Lewis’s head barely moved but it was enough of a signal for Stivens. That RSJ of an arm came down hard across my chest so that I could feel the ribs separate and bend. I let out a gasp of pain.
‘To answer your question. You were seen by Mr Stivens in Kogarah and your activities at the Price home in Lugarno were reported to us. Mr Stivens and I followed you here from your office in order to have this little meeting.’
He’d told me more than he realised but I wasn’t feeling on top of things as a result. ‘You should talk to the police, Mr Lewis. They’re anxious to know what you already know. You could be very helpful to them.’
Lewis coughed. ‘You’re being very foolish. What is your concern with Mrs Price?’
‘I’m in love with her,’ I said. ‘She’s got beautiful tits.’