Her hand flew up to her mouth in a gesture that was just a bit too young for her to carry off. ‘Oh, God. Old Tom. That poor old bugger.’
‘He’d be flattered you know his name. He doesn’t know yours.’
‘I suppose he’s told you all about my scarlet womanhood.’
‘As I said, he admires you. But he did let slip a thing or two.’
She said nothing for a moment and then drew in another of those figure-enhancing breaths. ‘Do you have any idea how many women in this city are sick and tired of having sex with their husbands? Oh, they might still love them and be committed to them, but the thought of going to bed with them bores them to tears.’
‘I don’t. Do you?’
‘Not really, but it must be thousands, tens of thousands most likely. I was like that. The tedium of it… Anyway, I provide an outlet, relief, an alternative. Call it what you will.’
‘For a fee?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m not up on this but I’d imagine you’re breaking several laws to do with introduction services and so on, and your tax situation must be interesting. Your power bills’d be worth looking into and I wonder if your building modifications had council approval.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
I swilled the dregs of my drink. ‘Not at all. I couldn’t care less one way or the other about your lonely hearts club. I suppose I’m just encouraging you to tell me about Ramsay Hewitt.’
‘Hmm, you might not have as much leverage as you think. I paid a good deal to steer certain things through the council.’
‘Corruption.’
Peter Corris
CH24 — Lugarno
She nodded. ‘Grease to the wheels of enterprise, call it. And there are a couple of police who are not unaware of what goes on here.’
‘Good for you, but I suspect you’re smart enough to know how easily it could all come tumbling down. Ramsay Hewitt.’
‘I met him on an environmental demonstration. Don’t look so surprised; I have a life apart from this. He was so full of aggression and so vulnerable underneath.’
‘Yeah, and then with a good thick layer of self-pity under that.’
She let that pass. ‘I contributed some money to the cause and then sort of took him under my wing a bit. Not sexually, I thought I’d made that clear to him. I’m on a different path in that regard as I’m sure Tanya told you. But Ramsay turned out to be a very needy boy and I wasn’t about to give him what he needed. So…’
‘So you didn’t give him the Merc and the clothes and pay his university fees?’
She shook her head.
‘He wrote a note to his sister using your notepaper but blanking out the phone number. I’m told he stayed overnight.’
She shrugged. “There’s room.’
I was tired and not in the mood for a jigsaw puzzle. ‘You’ll have to tell me a bit more, Mrs Bonham. I’m puzzled.’
‘Don’t call me that! Call me Prue. I’m not some dried up suburban housewife.’
Her flare-up sparked me a bit and I straightened in the chair. I could tell her reaction wasn’t only to being called something she didn’t like. What was really bothering her was close to the surface now and I just had to ease it up.
‘Tell me,’ I said.
‘Did you take any notice of the men who were here tonight?’
‘Youngish, good-looking. Rent a bloke?’
‘Yes, some of them are escorts. Some are the male equivalents of the females.’
‘Very interesting,’ I said. ‘An overhead for you if you’ll excuse the expression. But where’s this going?’
‘I’m not proud of this. I told Ramsay to leave me alone. He was too clinging. He took it very badly. Before he went, he took some things he shouldn’t have, including cash. He just disappeared. I tried to contact him but I think he felt so guilty about stealing from me that he went to ground.’
‘So, you don’t know where he is now?’
‘No.’
‘He was here not so long ago.’
It was getting late and even under the flattering light she was beginning to wilt and talking to the likes of me about this subject hadn’t helped. But she was game; she got up and held out her hand for my glass. ‘I think I’ll have a drink. You?’
I nodded and admired her still athletic movements — nothing surgically enhanced there. She left and came back quickly, carrying glasses that seemed to hold the same sort of booze. I took a sip; it was better Scotch than she’d given me before. This woman knew the angles.
‘He came around a couple of times. He had a nice car and clothes. I don’t know. He was a little drunk. He paid me back some of the money he’d taken. I felt guilty.’
‘He’s an adult, sort of.’
‘Yes. You’re right. Sort of. D’you know why he’s like that?’
I thought I did, based on my past experiences with Ramsay, but I wasn’t telling. ‘Not sure doesn’t mean don’t know,’ I said. ‘Where do you think he is, Prue?’
‘With some woman, and living off her no doubt, but I don’t know who.’
I had the feeling that there were things she wasn’t telling me and wouldn’t, but I didn’t know what they were or whether I wanted to know. I finished my drink and left. She didn’t see me out.
When I reached the porch I smelled cigarette smoke and there was Silver Hair, standing in the shadows.
‘Hey, Mr Hard-to-get,’ she said. ‘I think I can help you.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I hung around for a bit out here with another prospect but he didn’t work out. I was eavesdropping. I know where Ramsay is.’
‘Where?’
She took me by the arm and steered me away from the house. ‘I’ll tell you, but there’s a price.’
We reached the street and crossed to where our cars were parked. ‘What’s the price… Tanya?’
‘You remembered my name. That’s a start. Come home with me and stay the night. You don’t have to sleep with me. I just can’t bear to be alone tonight. Please.’
‘You can’t be serious. You don’t know a thing about me.’
‘I’m a risk taker. Are you?’
‘When the odds are right. You know where Hewitt is?’
‘I do, as of last week anyway. She boasted to me about getting him.’
‘She?’
‘Right. Are you on?’
Following the Porsche in the Falcon was like a duck following a swan. We ended up in Coogee at an apartment block that overlooked the water. She glided into the underground car park and I found a space on the street. She’d told me the unit number and I buzzed it at the security gate and she let me in. I took the lift to the fourth floor.
‘This is it,’ she said as she opened the door. ‘What d’you think?’
‘Give me a minute.’ The track lighting was held down low and everything under it gleamed — the polished wood, the glass, the paintwork. The living room had a knockout view of the water through a window that occupied the whole wall. The balcony outside it was bigger than my backyard and had more greenery on it. I waved my hands in the air, imitating a conductor. ‘What can I say. It’s fabulous, darling.’
She laughed. ‘You’re right. It’s over the top. It was his, now it’s mine.’
‘Sounds like a Patsy Kline song.’
She sat down on one of the overstuffed leather-covered chairs. ‘Something like that. Thanks for coming back with me. You don’t really have to stay. I just didn’t want to walk into this bloody mausoleum alone tonight.’
She made coffee and we talked. Her very rich husband had left her for a very young woman and it had rocked her badly. Trying to restore her confidence she’d tried escorts and Prue Bonham’s soirees but the artificiality of it wasn’t working for her.
‘What did she say about me?’ she asked. ‘I know she said something.’
‘She said you were still hunting.’
She gave the kind of throaty laugh only a pack-a-day cigarette habit can give you. ‘She’s right. You bet I am. But you’re taken, aren’t you?’
I wasn’t and wasn’t looking to be, so I said, ‘Sort of. Yeah.’
She shrugged. ‘That’s the way it is. Give me a hug and a kiss and I’ll tell you what you want to know.’
We embraced and her firm, slender body sent out a Siren call I responded to despite myself. We kissed and I was carried back twenty years to when every kiss tasted of smoke and no-one cared. I was getting hard and I tried to kiss her again but she eased back.