‘Bad timing,’ she said. ‘Ramsay’s with a woman named Regina Kipps. She’s fat and fifty and she lives in Concord. She’s in the book. Goodnight, Cliff.’
12
I creaked and groaned through my routine at the gym next morning and then met Peter Lo in the same place as before. He was his usual cheerful, well-exercised self, while I was still feeling the effects of my encounters with Stivens, one whisky too many and a late night. I was also feeling guilty about not returning Tess’s call of the day before. Truth was, I wasn’t sure what to say to her.
‘So, Cliff,’ Peter said after taking in some coffee and a chunk of blueberry muffin, ‘I hear you’re mixed up in a murder down Lugarno way.’
I drank some coffee. ‘I wouldn’t say “mixed up in”. As you boys would say, I interviewed the deceased before he was the deceased.’
‘You wouldn’t catch me using language like that. Not long before, I gather.’
‘That’s right. Is this on the record? I didn’t kill him.’
Lo grinned and munched on some more muffin. ‘No-one thinks you did, but some people think you could’ve been more helpful.’
‘What is this, Peter? It sounds as though you’ve spent more time chatting about me than asking about the drug scene down there.’
‘The two matters are kind of connected, wouldn’t you say?’
‘What’re you telling me?’
‘They did the autopsy yesterday. Jorgensen had a considerable amount of coke and heroin in his system.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Weird bit of overkill, what with the other signs. The thing is, I just had to make a little noise or two about drugs down there and this all came up, including your name. So what’m I going to do? Play dumb and when someone later finds out I do know you and I was showing an interest, what’re they going to think? You follow me?’
‘I don’t want to get you into trouble.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m not. The thing is, the way the job is these days, you just can’t afford to leave question marks in people’s minds.’
‘So.’
‘So I went to Stankowski and told him that I knew you from the gym.’
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s all. He said he’d seen you and wanted to see you again. I’m surprised he hasn’t already. No, I’m not surprised. You must’ve left home at around six.’
‘That’s right. So you didn’t pick up anything useful, or if you did you won’t tell me.’
‘How good’re you at lateral thinking, Cliff?’
‘About as good as I am at transcendental meditation.’
‘You ought to try that. I can tell that you’ve got a lot of unresolved internal conflicts.’
‘I wouldn’t know what to do without them. What’s the point?’
‘Just this, Inspector Beth Hammond has been assigned to liaise on the Jorgensen case with Stankowski.’
‘I don’t know her.’
‘You don’t want to know her. She’s a bluestocking with a rat-trap mind. That’s not the point.’
I swilled my cool coffee around and drank it down. It tasted bitter, unusual in Paolo’s place, but the taste might just have come from the knowledge that a cop was seeking me out and I was being asked to play guessing games. It was one of those moments when in the old days I’d roll a cigarette, fiddle with it, and hope for enlightenment. Nothing to fiddle with now and I wasn’t going to start biting my fingernails. Peter was about to speak but I stopped him. ‘A woman.’
He smiled. ‘That’s right. Somehow there’s a woman’s angle to the business.’
Peter left and I ordered another coffee to wash away the taste of bitterness and considered what to do next. It seemed to me that the field was narrowing down. Jason had said that a woman had threatened him over what he knew about drug selling and now he was dead of physical and pharmaceutical assault. There were two women involved with him — Sammy and Danni — and both could be candidates, unless the cops had some others, always a possibility. But from where I stood it didn’t look as if Marty Price was headed for a happy outcome. Me either. From what I’d seen of Sammy I judged her to be capable of many things, but I didn’t rate her as either a drug tsarina or a murderer. Conclusion inescapable — it was time to take a look at Danni.
I rang Price and caught him before he went to work. The clean-up must have been pretty good and Sammy must have had a good explanation for her injury because Price didn’t mention anything untoward happening.
I asked him whether his daughter was at home and whether he knew her movements.
‘She tells me nothing. We leave notes for each other.’
‘Did you leave her a note about Jason’s death?’
‘No. She’s left her skateboard and protectors in a heap by the front door so I guess that’s where she’s going. I’ve got to rush, Hardy. If you have anything to communicate call the office.’
And speak to Junie, I thought. I said I would and hung up.
Kingsgrove was not one of those places touched by the magic Olympic wand. Nothing significant had gone on or passed through here. The rain of the day before had cleared and the sun was shining, showing the place in its best light, but it still wore a slightly depressed and neglected look. The railway station looked much the same as it had since its last facelift quite a few years back. The skateboard park, going by the name of Skate City, was in a barn-like building tucked away in a lane behind the main drag, Kingsgrove Road.
It wasn’t the sort of place a man my age could blend into. I was too formally dressed as well, even though I was tieless and jacketless in drill trousers and a dark shirt. I parked as close as I could in the lane and stayed in the car. The skateboarders, male and female, waiting for the place to open, wore a uniform of back to front caps, baggy pants to just below the knee, loose T-shirts and sneakers. Hairstyles varied from number ones to ponytails. Backpacks were almost universal.
The skaters ranged in age from the pre-pubescent to the early twenties and at least half of them, young and old, male and female, smoked cigarettes. Most of them arrived on their skateboards, wheeling in, jumping gutters and slaloming through other riders to come to what looked to me like ankle-snapping halts. There was a small car park, littered with signs warning: LOCK YOUR CAR, wedged between the building and an anonymous structure with no apparent function. I kept an eye on that space for Danni’s Honda. That was a mistake. Skate City opened and the riders filed in, feeling in their pants leg pockets for money or passes. A low-slung car pulling into the car park took my attention and by the time I was sure it wasn’t Danni’s I was too late to get more than a fleeting look at a group of three rollerbladers who arrived together at speed: I got an impression of smarter clothes, helmets, colourful knee and ankle protectors and smooth styles before they disappeared into the building.
Could be her. It was dumb of me to have thought she’d drive up. Inviting a snapped aerial or worse. I got out and did a slow recce of the surrounding streets. A racing green Honda sports coupe carrying the registration number Price had given me was parked in a No Parking zone a block and a half away. The inside of the car was in the same condition as Danni’s bedroom, if not worse — clothes, magazines, drink bottles, cigarette packets, food wrappers. I could see the strap of a shoulder purse sticking out from under the front seat where it had been carelessly shoved and I wondered briefly whether it’d be worth my while to break in and take a look. But the Honda was almost new and the security alarm was bound to be working, and by now there were people on the street and traffic on the road. Nothing for it but to get a look at her in motion and then tail her to wherever she might be going.
I shifted my car to a legal position a short distance from hers and then walked back to the skateboard park. I could hear the noise of the place from a considerable distance — a series of resounding metal clangs and clashes. There’s an open-air skateboard run in Glebe behind the Harold Park Paceway so I had some idea of what to expect — a dipping, swooping, swirling surface with flat sections at either end. The Glebe kids perform amazing sweeps and flips and other manoeuvres that look potentially fatal, each pass ending with the skateboard slamming down on the metal surface. They seem to find it fun and they do it for free. I wondered what you got for your money inside Skate City.