Number eighty-one was a newish block, a modish five storeys with some nice shrubbery around it. There would be no change out of eight hundred bucks a month for a flat. I went up the path hoping to find flat two on the ground floor, but it was one flight up. I was sweating and gritting my teeth when I got there. Life’s a gamble, but I hoped like hell Sandy was at home. The door was a sophisticated job with an unpickable lock; kicking it in wasn’t on just then. As I pressed the buzzer, I wondered about Sandy: Singer had dropped her just over two years before when she had been eighteen. That made her twenty or so now. Twenty can be nursery-school callow or as hard as Ilse Koch.
The woman who answered the bell was Peggy cast back twenty years. She had thick, lustrous red hair, thin, arched eyebrows and a face that would have made John Singer feel years younger than he was. One of the eyebrows went up with practised slowness.
‘Mmm?’
‘I’ve just come from talking to your Mum in the Royal Oaks. I gave her fifty dollars and she gave me your address. I’ll make it up to a hundred for her or give it to you if you’ll give me half an hour of your time.’
She looked at me curiously through the eight-inch gap allowed by the security chain.
‘What would Peggy have worth fifty dollars?’
‘I’ll tell you if you’ll open the door.’
She was a careful lady; she looked me over from top to bottom. I was still wearing a heavy bandage around my ear and the top of my head. Peggy hadn’t commented on it, but I suppose she was used to people falling over and hurting themselves. That plus my hospital pallor might give me an air of fragility that would encourage Sandy to let me in. I leaned heavily on the stick for emphasis.
‘What’s the stick for?’
‘I hurt my leg. I barely got up the stairs and it pains me just standing here.’
‘You might attack me with it.’
I laughed. ‘You’d beat me. I can hardly move without it, but I’ll leave it out here if it worries you.’ I leaned the stick against the wall and got out my licence, letting her see some money sitting in there with it. ‘I’m a private detective. You can call Detective Frank Parker at College Street headquarters to check me if you want to. I don’t attack women.’
It was her turn to laugh. It was a good Sydney sound that suggested she’d had more good times than bad so far.
‘I suppose it’s all right.’ She unfastened the chain. ‘My boyfriend’s due in half an hour, anyway.’
‘Thanks.’ I limped into the hallway and steadied myself against the wall.
‘Get the stick, for God’s sake.’ It wasn’t a bad voice she had; very contemporary, using the rising inflection, but not on every group of words. I got the stick and went down the hall into the living-room. The apartment had big windows which were making the most of the afternoon light. The fittings were good but unremarkable, except for a very nice Persian carpet. There was a big TV set and a lot of silver-banded hi-fi equipment. No books. A gold steering wheel was mounted on a block of wood and the whole thing was about nine inches high, standing on top of the TV set. She saw me looking at it.
‘He’s a racing car driver, my boyfriend.’
I nodded and eased myself down into the chair with the most padding.
‘I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Cliff Hardy. I’m interested in John Singer. I can’t tell you why.’
‘That’d be right,’ she said. She got a Benson and Hedges Extra Mild out of its box and lit it with a gold lighter. ‘What do you want for the fifty dollars?’
‘Tell me about how he went off you.’
It wasn’t polite and she didn’t like it, but I wasn’t going to get anywhere by being too polite with Sandy. The eyebrows and the way she smoked and moved told me that she was a long way from being a kindergarten teacher. She was a woman who’d been valued and who had accepted the going rate. She frowned and tapped ash off the Benson and Hedges.
‘Peggy told you that?’
‘Yes.’
‘How’s Peggy? I haven’t seen her for a while.’
I opened my hands. ‘She’s okay, I guess. Won a bit on the horses, she said. Drinking Bacardi.’
‘That’s her drink when she’s got money.’ She stood and leaned over to crush out her cigarette. She was medium tall with a good figure; her breasts under a black V-neck sweater fell forward heavily when she leaned down. Nothing heavy about the rest of her; she was trim-hipped and snappy as she turned towards a door. ‘Want a drink?’
‘No, thanks. Don’t stall me. Are you going to talk to me about Singer or not?’
She went out of the room and I heard drink-making noises. ‘How do I know she’ll get the money?’
‘I said I’d give it to you if you wanted it.’
She came back carrying what looked like a gin and tonic and sat down on a couch opposite me. She sipped the drink. ‘No, give it to her.’ There were a lot of things in the order-affection, disappointment and disgust as well. She worked on her drink and got another smoke going. Mother’s girl.
‘I liked John,’ she said softly. ‘He was good to me. I was in a bad way when I met him.’ She pointed a long, elegant finger at the Persian carpet. ‘Going down fast, you know? He fixed me up, we had a flat, went out a bit. Good times. He was very, very smart, the smartest man I ever met.’
‘How do you mean, smart?
‘Like, he figured everything out in advance. He’d say, we’ll do this and this and then this’ll happen. And it always did. We had a bit of trouble getting clear of Mac. Have you heard of him?’
I nodded.
‘Well, he had a sort of hold on me, but John outsmarted him.’
‘I get it. How long were you on with him?’
‘A year, bit less.’ She raised a finger to her mouth as if she was going to bite the nail, but pulled it away sharply and took a drink instead.
‘What happened to him?’
‘He just went limp. He wasn’t the same, wouldn’t talk, no more jokes. He seemed to spend all his time thinking.’
‘What about?’
‘No idea. He hardly talked to me at all. I thought Marion was giving him hell about us.’
‘Do you know that for sure?’
‘No. But what else could it have been?’
‘Was he sick?’
‘He was never sick. Fit. You know?’
Fit, I thought, fit, rich and smart. So what went wrong?
‘Peggy said he was impotent.’
She laughed, a touch brutally, as if she had to toughen herself up to talk about this subject. ‘I bet she didn’t say that. True, though. He couldn’t do it. He gave me a car-I’ve still got it- and some money. He paid three months on the flat and that was it. He didn’t explain. I called him everything, but it made no bloody difference.’
‘Did you ever travel with him?’ I asked abruptly.
‘Sure. Queensland… ‘
‘I mean overseas.’
‘Japan once.’
‘He went to the States, didn’t he?’
‘Couple of times. No, I didn’t go.’
The shadows were lengthening on the carpet, deepening the dark blues and reds, and a deep bronze patch glowed in the fading light. A shaft of sun through the clouds and through the window caught on the ornament on top of the TV and made it shimmer. The golden wheel seemed to turn slowly as the light caught it.
I peeled off fifty dollars and put them on the arm of the chair. Mrs Singer’s bill was going to be high. That makes me think of the hospital account, and maybe it was that which caused my knee to give a severe twinge. I bit my lip.
‘You all right?’
‘Yeah. Have you got any painkillers? I left mine at home.’
‘You don’t want a joint? Great for pain.’
I smiled. ‘You’re a drug fiend, too?’
She had her handsome face ready for a friendly expression, but it dropped away. ‘What d’you mean, too?’