‘I’ll buy the petrol, then,’ I said. ‘You can stop anywhere. Nobody’s looking for me yet.’
We crossed the Nepean River and Anderson stopped at a BP station. A liquor store across the road beckoned and I went across and bought a six-pack. I paid for the petrol, got in the front seat and offered Anderson a beer. He shook his head.
‘Never touch it before five. Can’t in my game.’
‘Which is what?’
‘School teaching.’ He started the car and we headed for Sydney. ‘It’s amazing, you know. That gun was on the front seat the whole time we were there getting the petrol. The garage bloke didn’t see it, or if he saw it he didn’t care.’
‘It’s television,’ I said. ‘We’re learning to love the gun.’
‘Is it yours?’
‘Hell, no. I took it off a heavy back at Sunnybrook Farm.’
He grunted and concentrated on driving. The car was a Datsun with a lot of miles on the clock; it bounced around and I had the feeling that Anderson was nursing it. I sucked on a can, conscious of the delicious cold sting of the beer on my cut mouth. I put the gun on the floor and looked out of the streaky window. The Camden district is littered with sandstone buildings drenched in convict sweat. It’s all worth a look on a relaxed drive, but I wasn’t relaxed.
‘Are you just being the original good bloke, or are you helping me for a reason?’ I opened the second can and put the empty one carefully down beside the Browning.
‘Bit of both,’ he said. ‘I’m curious about that house.’
‘Why?’
‘There’s a mystery about it. No-one seems to know who owns it. It changed hands a while back. Do you know who owns it?’
‘No.’
‘Another thing. I’ve been told that some pretty high-up people in the opposition have been spending some time out there recently. I thought I’d call in and have a look. Do you know anything about that, a political angle?’
‘No. It shouldn’t be hard to trace the owner, though-registers and such.’
‘I did that. It’s a company. I forget the name, but I tried to trace it and got another company.’
‘Ah, ha. Like that.’
‘Yes, and now you pop up all beaten up and carrying a gun. Pretty interesting.’
‘Yeah. Tell you what, I’ll be looking into all this in Sydney. Anything useful I turn up I’ll put you onto. Okay?’
‘Take one of the leaflets.’
I reached back and got one. It advised voters to go for Anderson first up and featured a picture of him with his hair trimmed and wearing a tie and a smile.
‘Office number’s on the back.’
I put the paper in my pocket and finished the can. My head hurt where it had hit the pavement; my wrists hurt where they’d been roped; my shoulder ached and my ribs throbbed. I was in great shape.
The traffic wasn’t too bad at that time of day and we moved along smartly towards the metropolis. When I asked him to stop, he looked across the road, surprised.
‘The university?’
‘Yeah. I’m a professor of philosophy.’
He laughed. ‘Hope to hear from you.’
I wished him luck in the election and he drove away. That left me tramping down Glebe Point Road towards home. The Browning inside my shirt was a bit avant-garde, but the four cans in their plastic collars were just the thing for the neighbourhood.
Hilde was at home and she went straight into action when she saw me. She ran a bath and got busy with the cotton wool, antiseptic and adhesive tape.
Very nasty,’ she said, looking at the shoulder and the ribs. ‘Open your mouth.’
I did and swore because it hurt.
‘Lucky you didn’t lose some teeth.’
I nodded. I’ve lost a few over the years and can’t spare any more. It seemed I’d put a few teeth into my tongue and that one of Rex’s punches had split the skin inside the mouth and pulped up one section of gum a bit. I wouldn’t be chewing on any steaks for a while. While Hilde dabbed at me, I thought of a few of my friends who’d fought professionally in the late 1950s. I could remember the girlfriend of one of them saying that she was the greatest soup maker in Sydney because that’s all her bloke could eat most of the time. I’d walked into a moving piece of two by four in one of my early jobs and Cyn had cried when she saw me. I tried to push the memories away.
‘The ribs worry me,’ Hilde said. She touched a raw rip in the skin, surrounded by a bluish bruise. ‘How did that happen?’
‘At a disco. I fell and they danced on me.’
She snorted and pressed some tape into place, not gently. I put the beer in the fridge, resisted the wine and made a pot of coffee. Hilde went off to Tooth Capping III. I phoned Ann Winter’s less salubrious address and got a woman on the line with a slurred voice and uncertain grammar. She said she’d seen Ann come in the previous night and go again that morning. That was fine, but the woman sounded drunk already.
‘What day is it?’ I asked.
‘Wednesday.’
‘Right. Look, how was Ann? Was she okay?’
‘She was pissed off; someone dumped her at a party or some-thin’. Hey!’ Her voice was suddenly clearer, as if she’d got her tongue working. ‘Are you Cliff?’
‘Yes.’
‘Get stuffed, Cliff.’ She hung up.
It sounded as if my connection to Ann Winter had got looser. That was a pity, but I was relieved that none of the rough stuff had reached her. I shaved around the cuts and abrasions, put on some clean clothes and went off to see my favourite policeman.
14
Frank Parker looked tired. The hours he’d been working were stencilled on his face in the eye pouches and the grooves beside his mouth. His ashtray overflowed with those judiciously smoked butts.
‘What happened to you?’ he enquired.
I touched my swollen lip and was conscious that I was holding myself carefully on account of the ribs. I perched on the nearest desk. The detective who had ignored us before was at his desk ignoring us again.
‘All in the line of work, Frank. You should get out more. Take a good belting on the street. All this paper work isn’t good for you. I thought you were going to get help.’
‘I got help, but so far the help just makes more work,’ he growled. ‘And I have been on the street. We pulled up a kid in a hot car last night. Took eight minutes-the paper work’s taking eight hours.’
‘Nothing on the Henneberry case?’
‘No. You?’
‘Hard to say. I got picked up last night by some hired hands. We went on a drive into the country.’
He groaned. ‘You’re not here to lay charges of assault and abduction?’
‘No. I got out of it with a split lip and a bent rib. They were heavy boys, though. Take a look at this.’ The security is lousy at that place. I’d walked through it with a fourteen shot Browning Hi-Power in my jacket pocket. I put the gun on Frank’s desk on top of a pile of carbon copies of something. He pushed it around with the tip of a pencil so that the muzzle was pointing towards his colleague.
‘You went up against this, Hardy?’
‘More around it. I met the boss. I wonder if you can tell me who he is.’
He lit a cigarette and looked interested. ‘Try me.’
‘His place is out Camden way, pretty nice layout. His boys are named Rex, he’s a snappy dresser with a good hook, and…’ I felt for the name, ‘Tal. He’s a Yank who did the driving. Rex had the Browning there, Tal had some little thing. The boss’s about sixty, tall and thin, looks a bit sick. He’s got what the Americans call a cocksucker moustache.’
Frank blew smoke. ‘Oh, yeah? Why do they call it that?’
‘I don’t know.’ I fingered my upper lip. ‘Small, wouldn’t get in the way?’
Frank’s expression of disgust gave him rock-solid heterosexual credentials.
‘Freddy Ward,’ he said.
‘Who’s he?’
‘One of the boys. He and Singer and Tom McLeary divided up the action in the eastern suburbs. He’s done some rough things in his time, but I thought he was taking it easy.’