Saving Billie

She raised an eyebrow. 'As much as that?'

'I can up it a bit if you'd like.'

'No, that's fine. Can I use your Mac to check on my email?'

She did that and asked me what I was going to do next.

'I'm a bit stymied,' I said. 'I need to check a rego number with my RTA contact and follow up this idea about getting through to Billie, but I can't do either of them today.'

'Pity Craig's not here.'

'Craig?'

'My daughter Sarah's boyfriend. He could probably hack into the RTA computer. Nothing much he can't do in that line.'

'Handy bloke.'

'In more ways than one. He plays football, swims, trouble-shoots for various computer people. He drives a Merc.'

It was getting warmer in the yard and the sun was high and strong. 'Why don't we go to Bondi for a swim?' I said. 'Bet you haven't been there in a while.'

'What? In my bra and knickers?'

'Pick up something down there.'

'You're on.'

We drove to Bondi; Sharon bought a swimsuit and left it on under her clothes. The beach and the car park were busy but I found a spot. We went in a couple of times and we lay on the sand with the other lucky citizens of Sydney.

'You've got a proprietorial look,' Sharon said. 'Raised here, were you?'

I pointed south. 'Maroubra. Spent a bit of time here though. They reckon there's a better city beach in Rio de Janeiro, but this'll do me.'

'Yeah.'

I could see what she meant about her skin. It had that underlying smoky look that would darken quickly in the sun. 'Don't spend much time kicking down doors and shooting people, do you, Cliff?'

'As little as possible.'

She tapped the side of her head, Poirot-style. 'The little grey cells?'

'Not much of that either. More patience and persistence.'

As the sun dropped the day cooled quickly and we decamped and fought the traffic back to Glebe. Sharon prowled around, taking books from the shelves and putting them back. Checking the CD holdings. 'This is getting to me,' she said. 'I want to go home.'

'Give it till tomorrow. Ring your neighbour first thing and your daughter and then you can go.'

'I could go now.'

'You could. Wouldn't if I was you.'

'I suppose you're right. What's on telly?'

She made a big omelette and we ate while watching the news and a few other forgettable programs. She picked out a book-Stephen Scheding's The National Picture, his account of trying to locate a lost, and possibly nonexistent, painting of George Robinson and the Tasmanian Aborigines. She read the blurb and looked at me.

'Have you read this?'

'Yeah.'

'Why?'

'It's a detective story, sort of.'

'Bullshit.'

'Sharon, I read to amuse myself and fill in the time. That's all.'

'Fill in the time-that's sad.'

I shook my head. 'Nope. Some of the time's full to overflowing.'

She nodded, touched me on the shoulder, and went up the stairs.

The swim had done me good and the bruise and contusion around my eye were healing up nicely. I hadn't had the company of a woman in a relaxed friendly fashion lately and I'd enjoyed it. For all its uncertainties so far, the Lou Kramer/Jonas Clement case was having an upside.

I got on the blower early. The RTA employee who risked her job for me, and no doubt quite a few others, gave me the details on the BMW. It was owned by Top Fleet Ltd and leased to the Oceania Securities Corporation.

'Car pool,' I said. 'Dead end individual-wise.'

'I'll walk the extra mile for the extra smile.'

We were both on pay phones, and if anyone out there or in there was picking us up then democracy as we know it is dead.

'Walk.'

'Registered driver is Barclay Greaves, 34 Ralston Place, Manly. Usual. Over and out.'

She likes to think of herself as some sort of undercover agent in the service of God knows what. Why not? We all have to get our kicks.

I'd never heard of the company, nor of Greaves, but it was at least interesting that he was apparently in the big money game and lived in the same neck of the woods as Clement.

Rudi Szabo's boxing operation is a complex affair. He trains and manages fighters and promotes fights. You might think this would also promote conflicts of interest and you'd be right in spades. But conflicts of interest are an integral part of the boxing game. Way back in the bare knuckle days, the connections of fighters took side bets on their opponents and boxers themselves did the same. In the modern era, managers have sacrificed one fighter in order to promote another as a regular manoeuvre. Whatever tricks and tradeoffs remained in the much-reduced boxing scene in Australia, Rudi was a master of. And worse-throw in loan sharking and receiving. He employed people like the Maori ex-footballer Steve Kooti, whose name had come up as a counsellor at the Liston community protection centre, to collect debts and punish competitors. Luckily, Szabo owed me a favour because I'd happened to save one of his genuinely good fighters from getting into a cut-glass brawl in a Rockdale pub.

I drove to Rudi's establishment in Marrickville-a failed supermarket he'd converted to a gym and offices. It was close to the municipal swimming pool, so Rudi had the use of an extra training facility for free. Rudi had no listed numbers and didn't give the unlisted ones out-you wanted him, you went to see him. I parked and went through the automatic door to the reception area, which just managed to present a businesslike front with a guy behind a desk and a few meaningless framed certificates on the walls. I gave the guy my card and said I wanted to see Rudi.

'What's your business?'

'Rudi knows me, and my business. Tell him I'm collecting on the favour I did him.'

He went away, came back quickly, and took me down a short passage to an office that was within earshot and smell of the gym. The unmistakable sound of a heavy bag being hit and the equally recognisable tang of sweat and liniment were in the air like smoke and the click of balls in a pool room.

Rudi met me at what would've been the door to his office if it'd had a door. It didn't.

'Good to see youse, Hardy. Come on in.'

Rudi is a first generation Australian about whom nothing verbal of the previous generations of foreigners lingers. He looks like a Serb or a Croatian or whatever his antecedents were, with the thickset physique, aggressive moustache and balding bullet head, but he speaks broad Australian.

I shook his meaty hand and took a seat while he put his big bum on his desk, closer to me and higher than he would have been on a chair behind it. I guessed that this was one of his managerial negotiating positions.

'You done me a good turn with Ricky that night. I said it, an' I meant it. So what d'you want? Tickets? No problem.'

'Information. You remember Steve Kooti, used to work for you in an

… executive capacity?'

The hooded Balkan eyes suddenly brightened as if the brain behind them had just processed a lot of information and gone on the alert.

'Stevie? Yeah, sure. What?'

'Tell me about him.'

'Why?'

'Look, Rudi, I'm not interested in past history. I don't care what he used to do for you when he was one of your frighteners. I want to know what changed him and what you make of him now.'

That relaxed him. He got off the desk and moved around to his chair. He didn't move in the loose way ex-athletes do, he moved stiffly, like a man used to carrying heavy things. Rudi had started out as a builder's labourer.

'Silly cunt got religion. He ran into some religious freaks and they grabbed him. Dunno how. I've always been a Catholic. Doesn't get in the way of nothin' if you don't let it. But this mob Stevie took up with-can't do this, can't do that. Can't take a piss without thanking God for giving you a prick. Tried preaching that crap to me and I told him where he could put it. In the old days an insult like that and he'd have left me under this desk. And I mean under. But now it's, "Bless you, brother". Bullshit.'