Saving Billie

'Understood.'

She wore loose pants, sandals and a denim shirt. The top of a packet of her anti-smoking gum peeked from the breast pocket. No makeup, hair barely combed. Working, and not bothering about anything else.

'I'll get to the point,' I said. 'Have you told anyone about hiring me?'

'Why?'

Not the answer I'd hoped for. 'Because I think Clement was behind the attack on me. There was more to it than just Thomas getting even. By the way, does Clement have a son?'

'Yes, big lump of a lad, a nasty type, did a bit of mercenary work-Jonas Junior.'

'He was there last night. More or less in control. You haven't answered my question, Lou.'

'I told someone, yes.'

'Who?'

'I can't tell you.'

I drank some coffee and looked at her. She drank and didn't look at me. 'Why not?' I said.

'I'm not supposed to be seeing him. He's married and all that.'

'You think I'd spill it to "Stay in Touch"?'

She shook her head. 'Of course not. It's just that I promised him I wouldn't tell anyone. Look, Cliff, I trust him. He wouldn't…'

'Does he have any connection with Clement?'

'I… I'm not sure.'

'C'mon, Lou.'

She wasn't the kind of woman you could push. She flared. 'Do you want to back out?'

I looked around the room again. It had the appearance of a journalist's place-lots of print, up-to-date media machines, a couple of Whiteley prints and Dupain's 'The Sunbather' on the walls. I finished my coffee and stood.

'Let me see your workroom.'

'Shit, why?'

'Indulge me.'

She shrugged and pointed to a half-open door. I went into a room with the blind drawn. Bookshelves, filing cabinets and a big pine table with an iMac computer, printer, scanner and thumb drive lit by a desk lamp. The surface was awash with scribbled notes on post-its, notepads covered with scrawled handwriting, pens and pencils. Squinting in the dim light, I browsed the bookshelves. The Paul Barry best-selling jobs on Bond and Packer; Christine Wallace on Germaine Greer; D'Alpuget on Hawke; Watson on Keating; Knightley's A Hack's Progress; some Richard Hall and a full shelf on African travel, politics and economics. And much else-Bernard Levin, Clive James, David Leich, Paul Theroux, and Bob Ellis. She was a journalism junkie, with a yen to travel.

I turned back to see her standing in the doorway. She opened her hands and did a perfect imitation of the guy in the beer commercial who freaks out his girlfriend in the spa.

'What?'

I grinned. 'Nothing. What you read you are.'

'Another stolen line.'

'Right. I don't think I'm getting a fair shake here. Your cheque's going to bounce-'

'It'll clear tomorrow.'

I ignored her. 'You won't tell me your deadline; you say Eddie was murdered but the official version is it was an accident; you won't name your mystery man…'

‹T› ›

I m sorry.

'Tell me the deadline.'

'Oh, all right. I've got three months to finish the bloody thing and I'm battling to make it, especially if…'

'You don't find Billie.'

'Yes. Are you pulling out?'

'No,' I said. 'It's personal now.'

5

I told Lou to be careful about where she went and the company she kept. If my suspicion that Clement had tried to frighten me off was right, he wouldn't be beyond renewing his attacks on her. Except that I was an independent operator in a not-highly-regarded profession and she was in the media, the new aristocracy.

'I go from here to the office and back as it suits me and them. That's it,' she said. 'I phone out for groceries, grog and pizza.'

'What about when you meet up with Mr X?'

'Oh, I'd be safe enough with him.'

I left and went to the gym for the lightest of workouts and a long soak in the spa. Back in the office I worked the Internet and the phone. I discovered that Liston was officially one of the thirty most disadvantaged postcodes in the country according to a sociological survey. The suburb had been named after a local farm and had become a dumping ground for battlers needing Department of Housing help in the eighties. Back then, it was at a distance from Campbelltown-out of sight and mind. It had a very high level of unemployment and welfare dependency and a considerable Aboriginal population.

I had contacts in the parole system and social services and from some of them I got a picture of how the place had changed in recent years.

Terri Boxall, a parole officer, said, 'It was a shithole to start with. One of those good ideas gone wrong. They built the houses cheek by jowl all facing this big open parkland with virtually no private space per house. The dead-end kids turned the open space into no-go areas and the rest of the people huddled inside by the tele drinking and producing more dead-end kids.'

'You imply it's got better.'

'It sure has. The Department turned the houses around-remodelled them so they faced away and knocked some down so there was some private space.'

'I can't imagine a government department being that imaginative. Worked, did it?'

'To an extent, but the big thing was the introduction of the Islanders.'

That got my attention. 'Islanders?'

'Samoans, Tongans, Fijians. They sorted out the car thieves, burglars and yahoos. They're churchy, you know? Law-abiding, despite their problems.'

'When was this, Terri?'

'It's been progressive. Probably started eight, ten years ago.'

'That could fit.'

'What's your interest, Cliff?'

'I'm looking for a woman named Billie Marchant. Ever heard the name?'

'Sorry, no.'

'I know she's got friends out there, and she's got a kid and I'm assuming she's in touch with him. I don't know how old he is-maybe fifteen, maybe more. In a photo he looks to be black.'

'What's his name? Are they in your kind of trouble?'

'No, not directly. I just might be able to help them. Hard to say at this point. I don't know his name.'

'Good luck. Tell you what, there's a sort of community protection set-up there. I've got a few… clients in Liston and these people help me keep tabs on them from time to time.'

'Community protection?'

'Civil rights fundamentalists might call it vigilantism. I wouldn't. Have a word with John Manuma. Mention my name.'

'Got a phone number?'

'He wouldn't be interested in talking to you on the phone, Cliff. You'd have to front him, face to face, as it were.'

'As it were?'

'He's a Samoan, two hundred centimetres or thereabouts.'

'That tops me by a fair bit. Shouldn't be hard to spot.'

Terri told me that the community protection office was a shopfront in Liston's only commercial centre and that it was staffed by volunteers and open seven days a week, so Saturday wasn't going to be a problem. I wasn't going out there today because tonight I was going to keep an eye on Lou Kramer, hoping to find out who her Mr X was. She was playing her game by her own rules, and in mine you just can't be too careful.

After a quiet afternoon, I was in my car at 6 pm equipped with field glasses and a camera, stationed across the way from the entrance to the Surrey Apartments. Lovers get together on Friday nights if they possibly can, for however short a time. Husbands tell their wives they have to work late cleaning their desks; working wives do the same. For both sexes there's the excuse of a drink with the fellow workers. Just the one.

I came into the business as the no-fault divorce laws were taking away work from private investigators. One or two of what were called 'Brownie and bedsheets' cases and it was all over. As a beneficiary of no-fault divorce myself I wasn't sorry, but it took some zip out of the profession, like the end of the Cold War did out of spying. This was about the closest I'd been to it since those days.