Williams kept her attention on Ray, leaning towards him, touching his arm. Like him she was drinking beer. Catchpole and the other man were drinking spirits. His back was turned to me; it was a very big back, wide at the shoulder and wide all the way down to a thick, spreading waistline. The dark hair had departed from the top of his head, leaving him with a fringe around a bald dome. The exposed skin was very dark, so was the flesh of his thick neck.
I began to move around the bar to get another angle on the group. Catchpole was doing the talking now: four heads leaned forward towards the centre of the table like footballers in a huddle. Catchpole shut up and drank-they all pulled back and relaxed. That’s when I took the first picture by cupping my chin in my hands and shooting through the opened fingers. I shifted the grip and took a few more so as not to end up with only arty finger close-ups.
The huddle again, and I moved to get a better view of the big, dark man. In profile he looked even more bulky; the depleted hair was carefully cut and his dark, fleshy face was shaved close. Everything about him-his business shirt with the gold cufflinks, the quiet tie with gold bar, the trousers so well cut that his pockets sat flat and his gut didn’t stretch the pleating, said cop.
The crowd in the bar had thinned out a bit; I wanted more pictures, but if he was a cop it wouldn’t be a good idea to be caught candid-cameraing him in the Noble Briton. He turned towards me and I took a chance; knuckling my eyes, I got one of him almost full-face. He had a meaty nose and a puffy, down-turned mouth. This guy had changed a lot, and all for the worse, since his mum had had him on her knee.
I tucked the camera away and backed off, leaving the next move to them. Their move was to have another round of drinks and do some more talking. Williams and Ray Guthrie stayed in eye contact; Catchpole and the man who I had privately dubbed ‘the cop’, talked intently, occasionally consulting the others. There was nodding and head shaking. I didn’t think they were discussing existentialism, and I would have loved to know what they were talking about, but there was no chance of that. Catchpole and ‘the cop’ were evidently old hands at the discreet conversation. Liam would have picked up the elements in the slammer.
When they got ready to go it seemed to be at ‘the cop’s’ say-so. I had my back turned as they went past me and I let them get well clear before I followed. Catchpole had on the white shoes which were his trade mark, and they twinkled in the multi-coloured lights from the shop windows as he trotted along. He was shorter than Dottie Williams, who was a head shorter herself than the other two men, even in her high heels. She was wide in the beam and wore a tight skirt with a split in the back; she and Guthrie fell back behind Catchpole and ‘the cop’. She tottered on her four inch heels, Ray steadied her and once she let her hand drift out and touch him on the buttocks.
The streets weren’t crowded and the road traffic was light; I was quiet enough in my Italian shoes with the rubber heels, but I kept well back and thought about crossing the road to tail less obviously. They were about fifty metres ahead when, abruptly, they turned a corner. I heard a car door slam and I increased my pace. I rounded the corner, hugging the building line: the two men waiting for me had arranged themselves across the footpath to block me. They were both big, one in shirtsleeves the other wearing a jacket and tie.
‘Stop right there, you!’ The jacketless one held up his hand like a traffic cop.
I didn’t stop. I side-stepped and tried to get around them on the road. A car turned the corner then and crowded me back towards them. The man in shirtsleeves told me to stop again; he wore a pistol in a hip holster and he had the cop’s voice as well as gestures. I had a pistol too, but if you’re smart you don’t duel with the police in the Cross after dark.
In fact, if you can, you run; which was what I did. They were both bulky and slow and the adrenalin rushing through me countered the alcohol, or perhaps blended with it and made me nimble. I feinted to one side, ducked under the swinging arm of the man in the jacket and got past. If they shoot, I’ll stop, I told myself as I ran down the steep road. They didn’t shoot and they didn’t shout a warning, which told me that their business wasn’t legitimate. The camera bounced in my pocket, the beer swilled in my belly and the gun stuck into my backbone. But I had my light shoes on and I felt I could run. I had to run, because they were running after me.
The two of them clattered behind me and I heard one wasting his breath with a stream of obscenities as he ran. It was downhill and around the corner and into Elizabeth Bay Road. I had a discouraging flash of memory of the one time I’d run in the City to Surf race; I’d fallen twice and pulled up lame, but I kept going then, and now. Now seemed about a thousand times more important. I had good wind, the product of my year off cigarettes and was fairly fit from regular tennis with Hilde; I felt I was gaining on them. But an uphill stretch would even us out-I never was any good on the hills.
The streets were empty of people and cars. A man sitting on a bus stop bench said something as I ran past but I didn’t catch it. It certainly wasn’t ‘I’ll take care of this’. I wanted there to be more people to cut down on the risk of shooting, but everyone was inside worshipping the VCR. All I could do was try not to run in a straight line.
I risked a look back and saw that I had gained some more, almost enough to think about hiding. My heart was pumping and the breath was loose in my chest. I didn’t have much more left in me. I avoided the street that led down to the dead-end of the water, turned a corner and the street name jumped out at me-Billyard Avenue. The street where you live. I had the number in my head and I sprinted for it, trying to get there before they made the turn. The building was a huge, white pile in which one architectural style seemed to give way to another as it went up. The entrance was a deep portico, a lousy permanent hiding place, but adequate for temporary concealment. I gambled. I ducked in, checked her name on the tenant list and nearly fractured my finger ringing the bell.
Be home, lady, please, I thought.
‘Yes.’ Her voice on the intercom was deep, with no sound of sleep in it.
‘Helen’, I croaked. ‘It’s Cliff Hardy-from the other night at Roberta’s. Let me in, please, urgent!’
‘But…’
‘Please, let me in!’
The buzzer sounded loud enough to wake the street; I said ‘sshh’ to it, idiotically, and went through the door and flattened myself against the wall inside.
I waited for the running footsteps; they came and they turned into walking footsteps and lost any rhythm. My breath was a harsh pant, and my eyes suddenly started to stream from the effort I’d put in. The footsteps retreated. I eased off then, and put my hands on my hips to allow my chest to expand, the way runners do after a race. Running away from danger is hard work. Then I looked around.
There was a deep carpet under my feet and a chandelier overhead, two chandeliers. The moisture in my eyes was blurring everything, and my gasping breath was making the images jump. I was in a wide passage which led to a wide set of stairs. The stairs and balustrades were of old wood the colour of blood, highly buffed. The place smelt of wood polish, fresh paint and money.
Helen Broadway appeared at the top of the last flight of stairs. She was wearing a cream-coloured garment somewhere between a nightdress and a dressing-gown. It came all the way down to her brown, bare feet.