‘Got it.’
‘It’ll all be straightforward, won’t it?’
‘How do you mean, sir?’
‘The insurance and that. The vehicle was stolen from me fair dinkum. I mean, I don’t know who, or why.’
‘We’re looking into it, sir,’ was all the satisfaction that Pam felt inclined to give him. If the job developed instincts, then hers were setting off bells.
But she put that aside and called the phone company. By lunchtime she’d ascertained that three calls had been made on Ledwich’s car phone before midnight on Saturday. The first two, made between 9 a.m. and midday, were to small video libraries. Pam dialled the third number. It rang for some time. The voice that answered was surly, hurried, bitten off, and Pam asked it to repeat itself.
‘Refinery Hotel, I said. Look, you called me, remember?’
Pam explained who she was and said, ‘I wonder if you can help me with a call that was made to this number late Saturday evening.’
The man laughed. ‘You must be joking. This is the main bar. You know how many calls we get here?’
‘Were you working the bar on Saturday, sir?’
‘Me? No way. Right now it’s morning, right? Well, I work mornings.’
‘Could you tell me who was working the bar that night?’
‘Hang on, hang on,’ and Pam flinched as the handset at the other end clattered on to a hard surface, probably the bar.
She waited for several minutes. The man came back with the names of two women and one man.
‘Do you have home phone numbers for them, sir?’
‘Can’t help you, sorry. Try the book, but bear in mind they were working last night, so they’ll be asleep now.’
Pam matched names and phone numbers with the phone book listings and found addresses for all three. She waited until early afternoon before knocking on doors.
At the first address, a ground-floor flat in a small block behind the shopping centre in Waterloo, a cheerful-looking woman told her, ‘Love, we’re generally too busy to pay attention. Sure, sometimes someone wants to speak to one of the regulars.’
‘Do you recall if any of your regulars took a call that night?’
‘No.’
At the next address, a weatherboard house set in weeds behind the Waterloo aerodrome, she learned even less. ‘Wouldn’t know, sorry,’ the barman said.
‘This would be late evening, around eleven.’
The barman yawned and scratched his belly. ‘I always let someone else answer it.’
‘A man-probably a man-wanting to talk to one of your regulars.’
‘Look, try the girls working with me. Maybe one of them took it, Liz or Rina.’
‘I’ve talked to Rina. No go.’
The door began to shut. ‘Try Liz.’
Pam put her foot in the gap. ‘Did you receive a personal call, sir?’
‘Me? Nobody’d call me.’
And the door shut and Pam looked at the weeds and thought that the barman was probably right.
Liz, at the front door of her house in the Seaview Estate, said, ‘Late evening?’
‘Four past eleven.’
‘We don’t get that many calls. Let’s see…’
‘A call either to hotel staff or to one of your patrons,’ Pam said. ‘More than likely a man.’
‘There were two or three like that.’
‘To your patrons?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you remember who?’
Liz laughed. ‘On a Saturday night we get the hard-core regulars, holiday people, locals out for a meal and a drink, plus visiting tennis and cricket teams. Give me a day or two. It’ll come to me.’
As Pam turned away, Liz said, ‘Those other two have quietened down a lot.’
Confused, Pam stopped and said, ‘The people you work with?’
‘No, no, those two coppers, Tankard and that other one. They’ve been keeping their heads down.’
Pam didn’t want her offside, but a cosy chat about van Alphen and Tankard would amount to a betrayal of the line she’d drawn when she was posted to Waterloo, so she said nothing, just nodded and smiled non-committally, and walked to the van.
‘It’s good knowing you’re around, Pam,’ the woman shouted after her.
Pam didn’t remember ever seeing her before.
The telephone rarely rang at the Holsingers’, and so when it rang on Tuesday morning, Danny told his mother: ‘If that’s Joll, tell him I’m not here. Tell him I’ve gone off for a few days.’
‘That moron,’ his mother said.
She picked up the phone. Danny waited, stepping from foot to foot in the kitchen. The way his mother glanced at him then, he knew that it was Jolic on the line. ‘Not here,’ his mother said. ‘Don’t know when he’ll be back. The foreman gave him the rest of the week off, so he’s gone to stay with his auntie up in Sydney. Tell him yourself,’ she said finally, and put down the receiver.
‘You want your head read, hanging around with that moron.’
‘Mum, I’m going around to Megan’s.’
‘Another moron.’
Megan was alone. Danny said, ‘Why don’t we go off together, somewhere new.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Up Cairns way,’ Danny said. ‘Surfers Paradise. One of them.’
‘Just like that. Dump my job, my mum, my friends, and just take off.’
‘Not forever, just, you know, for a while.’
Megan stared at him suspiciously. ‘You in trouble or something?’
‘Me? Nah.’
‘You could have fooled me. Something’s going on and I want to know what.’
‘Nothing, I tell ya.’
‘Is it Boyd Jolic? I bet it is. What’s he got you into?’
Danny chewed his bottom lip. ‘I tell ya, Meeg, he’s mad.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know. What’s he made you do now?’
‘Nothing. But he’s a mad bugger. He’s fire mad for a start.’
Megan’s fingers went to the thin strand of gold at her throat. Danny had given it to her last Sunday. Plain, elegant, classy, except now it felt heavy and grubby, like she had a dog chain around her neck. She took it off. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘Bought it in Myers,’ Danny said, quick as a flash. ‘Look, if he comes looking for me, tell him you haven’t seen me. Tell him I’ve gone off somewhere.’
She stared at him. ‘Like where?’
‘Give us a break, Meeg. I’m scared of the bastard. I want to stay clear of him for a while.’
‘I don’t like this.’
‘So, what do you reckon? Cairns? Noosa? Surfers?’
‘Danny, I’m not leaving. You go, if you want.’
Danny chewed on his lip again. When he put his arm around her, she pushed it away.
‘Come on, Meeg, just a quick one, before your Mum comes home.’
‘That’s all I’m good for, right?’
‘I tell you what, I got this video we can watch, get us in the mood.’
She frowned. ‘What kind of video?’
‘You’ll see.’
After a few minutes, she pulled away from him and scrabbled for the remote control. ‘That’s disgusting. It’s sick. How could you? How could you think I’d be turned on by stuff like that? God, Danny.’
Even Danny seemed stunned by what he’d seen.
That afternoon, van Alphen told Clara, ‘That’s it, finished. Santa isn’t coming any more.’
The look she gave him told him that he’d just shown his true colours, and as she twisted out of his arms he found himself in a foolish tussle with her, made up of an attempt to embrace and console her on his part, and fury on hers. He wanted her to want him as much as he wanted her. He wanted her to listen to stern reason, give up the cocaine, and find her lifeline in him.
But she shook him off finally and yelled at him, bent forward at the waist, thrusting her hate-filled face at him. ‘You think you’re here to save me, right? Think I’ll melt in your arms. I’d have to be fucking hard up, mate, I can tell you. As a root you’re less than average. So if you can’t get me any more blow, I’m going elsewhere.’
She walked to the curtains and jerked them open. Then she extinguished the incense stick in the dregs of her gin and tonic. The light through the window was harsh on her face, the room; a harsh judgment on what van Alphen had got himself into with her.