‘Pity. Well, I can try.’
‘Thanks. Whose movements were checked when it happened?’
‘The wife’s. All clear. Freddy Ward at his place in the country. Tom McLeary; movements accounted for by employees- not too firm, that. A few others-guy who worked on Singer’s yacht, an old girlfriend-all okay.’
‘Can I have the names and addresses?’
‘Sure.’ He read them off
‘Listen, Frank, how many people know that those dental records were Singer’s?’
‘Just me. I photocopied the dentist’s stuff and blanked out the name. Standard procedure. Why?’
‘I’d like to keep it that way. Not knowing who I was working for gave me an edge on Ward and I’d like to keep it.’
‘You think Freddy Ward killed Singer?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What’re you going to do now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re lucky you don’t have to write reports.’
‘I know that. I think of it every month when I can’t meet the mortgage.’
‘I can’t meet the mortgage, either.’
‘You smoke’, I said. ‘I don’t.’
‘I’m stopping. Today.’
‘Bet you don’t.’
‘You’re on. What’ll it be?’
‘A bottle of Glenlivet.’
‘How long do I have to go?’
‘I’ll pay in a fortnight for a clean slate.’
‘How do I prove it?’
‘I’ll ask Policewoman Reynolds.’
He snorted at that and rang off, but I thought I had a bet. Also I did know what I was going to do next-investigate privately, and that meant without telling Frank Parker.
I rang Ann Winter at Bondi and the whisky voice gave me the number for Point Piper.
‘How’s your knee?’ she said.
‘Fair. I can just get around with a stick.’
‘Your stocks are high out Bondi way just now. Do you fancy older women?’
I thought about it. ‘Depends on who they’re older than.’
‘I know a few who’d give you a good time. That Clovelly place really gave them the horrors.’
‘Me, too. Listen, Ann, I want to talk to that woman who was at the wake. The one in the pink who said she knew the Singers. Where can I find her?’
She answered immediately. ‘Back bar of the Royal Oak in Randwick.’
I was working again.
19
I was under strict medical instructions not to move around more than necessary, but who ever took any notice of strict medical instructions? When I see a rise in the percentage of thin, fit doctors, I’ll start paying more attention to their strict instructions. Besides, the physical good I might have got by sitting on my bum at home would have been countered by the emotional disturbance. I had to know what was going on. I took a few red Codrals for the pain and put myself and my stick in a taxi. First stop was the bank for cash in various denominations, then Randwick.
The taxi driver naturally assumed I was going to the races and that I was a man of leisure.
‘Got anything good?’ He spoke with the mixture of respect and distrust a working man feels for someone who comes out of his house casually dressed in the middle of a weekday. I hadn’t looked at the horses since the Singer case started.
‘Is Roderick Dhu running?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘In the fourth.’
The horse was trained by a friend of mine, an ex-boxer who hardly ever fought an honest fight or ran a dishonest horse. ‘Get on that, each way.’
The Royal Oaks is just far enough from the track for someone to walk over, forget his or her losses and think about punting another day. I limped from the taxi into the back bar, knocked the knee on a chair and was glad to get up on a bar stool and start work on a scotch. The lady in pink was there all right, in mauve that day, drinking and smoking in an experienced sort of way. She had a companion who looked middle-aged, but after Ann’s revelation of my subject’s age I was not confident about reading how many years these women had on the clock. She wasn’t young. They were both blowing the smoke around and not talking much; it didn’t look like anything that couldn’t be broken up with a little money. Ann had told me that she was going by the name of Peggy Harrison just then and that old Peg was a barrel of fun.
They finished the round and the companion came up to the bar and bought the next one. I drank slowly and when Peggy came up for her shout I had a ten-dollar note out and flapping in the breeze.
‘Peggy?’ I said.
‘Two Bacardis and coke, sport,’ she said to the barman, then she turned a magnificently bloodshot eye at me. ‘Yes? Do I know you?’
‘I was at Leon’s wake with Ann Winter.’
The drinks came and naturally that was what she was most interested in. She grabbed them with the excessive caution of someone who has a slight load on board. But she’d caught sight of the ten.
‘Nice girl, Ann.’
‘Yes. Would this buy a little information?’ I nudged the note. The barman was interested and trying to hover within earshot. I looked at him as if he had something in his nose and he backed off.
‘Depends.’ Her mate shouted, ‘Peg!’ from across the room and Peg ducked her head at her angrily. Peg’s hair was dyed red, she wore a lot of makeup and her body was strapped in tight. She looked as if she’d spent a little money on herself since I’d last seen her. ‘Depends,’ she repeated. ‘It might buy a little bit of some information.’
I took out another ten. ‘Get rid of your friend and we’ll have a chat.’
The friend didn’t like it much, but she put her Bacardi down fast and went out. I walked across to the table with my second scotch and a fresh Bacardi.
‘Cripple, are you?’
‘Just temporary,’ I said. ‘Hang gliding.’ I gave her the twenty dollars straight off and she offered me a menthol cigarette in return. I refused.
She sucked in the smoke. ‘Safer than hang gliding.’ She gave the sort of cackle that no person under sixty should be able to produce. Where the makeup had flaked off, her skin was a raddled ruin; her hair was thin and retreating like Glenda Jackson’s as Elizabeth I, and all the alcohol and tobacco on her breath couldn’t disguise the smell of poor teeth and lousy food. But through all that you could see she had once been beautiful, that her ruined features had once had a sort of perfection. And she still had guts.
‘Don’t look at me,’ she said sharply. ‘I look like garbage. What d’you want from me?’
She pulled hard on the cigarette and took a deep drink as if she wanted to hasten the decay.
‘Singer,’ I said. ‘John Singer and his wife. I understand you know a bit about them.’
‘Knew. Singer’s dead.’
‘Okay, knew.’
‘Any more money?’
‘It’s my turn to say “It depends”, Peggy. I’ll pay well for something interesting.’ I tapped her glass. ‘Bit flush, aren’t you?’
She sighed. ‘Good double and had both of ‘em each way. Once in a bloody blue moon. Nearly all gone now. What’s your game?’
‘Private investigator. Did you read about that house in Clovelly?’
She was wearing a thin yellow cardigan draped over her shoulders. She pulled the sleeves across her chest and shivered. ‘I read about it.’
‘I helped close it down. That’s where I got the dicky knee.’
‘You must be all right, then. Shit, what a place! Were they really
…”
I didn’t want to go down memory lane so I cut her off. ‘The Singers, Peggy. What do you know?’
‘I know a bit.’
‘How come?’ I hadn’t meant to let the implication slip in- that she was light years removed from the Singers socially and financially, but she was smart and she caught it.
‘I’m a mess, I know. Wasn’t always. But my girl Sandy was on with Singer for a year or more. Then he dumped her. She was just a kid, eighteen or so, and she took it bad.’
‘Singer’d be a bit long in the tooth for an eighteen-year-old, wouldn’t he?’ I said sceptically.