Mrs Singer had been right about John’s penchant for the low profile. The newspapers had reported as fully as they could on his disappearance, but they were scratching to fill the space when it came to background dope. He had extensive business interests concentrated in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, was fifty-eight years of age and president of his tennis club. That last piece of data showed how hard up the papers had been for copy.
There was no photograph of him. I read the reports carefully. Singer had been in the habit of jogging along the roads at first light (not down on the sand, where you couldn’t move for seekers after aerobic fitness). He’d gone for his run early on a bleak August morning and that had been the last anyone had seen of him. A towelling headband he always wore had been washed up on the beach later the following day, and that was it.
My client hadn’t rated a mention in the papers at all; she hadn’t been seen anywhere wearing anything, hadn’t put flowers around the necks of racehorses or danced with the premier. My jottings from these stunning pieces of journalism hardly filled half a. sheet of notebook paper.
I found Harry Tickener belting his typewriter in his latest attempt to win the elusive Walkley Award. Harry has filled out a lot over the years, but his mind is still lean and sharp. I tried the name Singer on him.
‘Nope,’ he said. He stared down at his copy paper as if he might forget forever the next thing he wanted to say. ‘Never heard anything about him. Try Garth.’
‘Thanks, Harry.’
He waved a hand, but already had the other on the keys, chasing the Walkley. Harry will spend a week drinking and going to the races when it suits him, but when he works he works.
Garth Green is known as ‘the bear’ because he’s big and brown and sprouts hair everywhere. He lost his struggle against the cigarette habit and coughs happily along, quoting John O’Hara: ‘When I first lit and inhaled a cigarette I knew I was not taking a Horlicks malted milk tablet.’ I wish I could see it like that. We exchanged the usual insults and I named my man.
‘Singer… Singer.’ He sucked on his cigarette and drew the smoke down to his boots. ‘I heard a bit about him before he went for his dip. A Brit, wasn’t he? Word was he was an ex-commando and as tough as they come. He had to be to make a go of it in the game he was in.’
‘No whispers? Slow gee gees, little girls, little boys?’
‘You’ve got a filthy mind, Cliff. No, not a thing. He ran a solid operation in the eastern suburbs. Tom McLeary has a big part of it and someone else whose name eludes me. Mac’s a tough guy, too.’
‘Mac?’ I said. ‘Would he be a shortish character, built like a bull?’
‘That’s him. Not a nice bloke, but he hasn’t killed anyone recently that I know of. Famous for his bad temper. He’s exploded in public a couple of times and made some lawyers and dentists rich.’
‘How did he and Singer get on?’
‘Don’t know. Uneasily, I’d guess. What’s the story?’
‘Off the record. Someone thinks he might be still alive. I’m sniffing at it.’
A great gust of coughing swept Garth up, doubled him over and left him gripping the edge of the desk.
‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘I thought I was going to see a lung.’
‘No lungs left.’ He lit another cigarette and blew smoke at me.
‘How crooked was Singer, Garth?’
‘Hard to say. Fifty per cent might be right. Some pretty heavy people running things out there, Cliff. You want to watch your step.’
I thumped my chest. ‘I don’t smoke. My wind is sound. I’ll run away.’
It was late in the afternoon and the city traffic was thickening fast. I decided to have a drink while it eased off and then potter around in Bondi for a bit to get the feel of the place. On the off chance, I stuck my head in at the photo room, where they have a thousand pictures of Sophia Loren and one of Bertrand Russell, if you’re lucky. It’s heavily protected territory, out of bounds to all but the properly accredited. Most of the minions enforce the rules but Thelma Clark doesn’t, and she was there when I called in.
‘S for Singer,’ I said.
‘I can’t hear you,’ she said. ‘I can’t see you. Along the right-hand wall and you’ve got twenty seconds.’
I slid in, slithered along the wall and grabbed the box that contained the photographic likenesses of people from Silverman to Sixtus. Marion Singer had been wrong; there was a picture of Singer talking to a judge of the licensing court who was obviously the main subject of the shot. Someone had bothered to tag Singer, too, so he achieved immortality. The judge was pretty well known, so I went over my twenty seconds and looked in his box as well. There were three copies of the photo which did not name Singer. I slipped one of them into my pocket. Thelma didn’t even look up as I went out.
I walked to a pub where they leave the lights on in the saloon bar so you can see what you’re drinking. I bought a scotch and a packet of chips and sat down to study the picture.
It’s hard to tell in photographs when you don’t have a point of reference, and the judge could have been Alan Ladd-sized for all I knew, but Singer looked big. I’d put him at around six feet two with a strong build; he had a large, slightly meaty face with wavy fair hair. He looked a little like Michael Caine, the English actor. I drunk and munched chips and decided that he looked a lot like Caine. That made it instantly impossible to assign any characteristics to him; I thought of Caine in Alfie and The Eagle Has Landed and Singer took on some of that role-switching insubstantiability. I put the picture away and had another drink and thought that an Englishman that big with a face like that shouldn’t be too hard to spot, even if he was looking crook.
I’d been wearing slacks with shoes and white shirt for my meeting with the widow Singer. Very square and all wrong for Bondi of a spring evening, so I drove home to Glebe to change. Things have looked up at home since I took in a tenant. The newspapers, delivered while I’ve been away on high-powered forty-eight-hour surveillance jobs, and the green plastic garbage bags, symbols of collections missed, haven’t built up in the front garden. Hildegarde is twenty-two, a final year dentistry student. She answered an advertisement I put in the local paper for a lodger. She was the brightest-looking applicant, and she told me that she had no unsavoury habits or hobbies. She smiled when she said that and then told me she played tennis a lot. That was good enough for me.
She was making coffee when I went in. I had a lightning-fast shave, put on jeans and a T-shirt and came through, sniffing the coffee aroma. Hilde poured me one.
‘Going out?’
‘Yep, Bondi.’ I sipped the coffee, which was better than I’ve ever been able to make.
‘A yacht party?’
‘There’s no yachts at Bondi, you ignorant Bait.’
Hilde has a clean German skin and long, pale hair which she ties back or lets loose, according to her mood. We’ve been close to going to bed together a couple of times, but haven’t quite got there. I doubt that we will now, although then a long celibacy was nagging me. She’s too independent, I’m too mistrustful. We play tennis occasionally and she beats me.
She drank the coffee scalding, the way she can.
‘Bondi,’ she said, ‘let’s see. Surf. You don’t surf. Rock music. You don’t need it. I don’t know anything else about the place, except it’s got a lot of New Zealanders. Do you speak New Zealand?’
‘Sure. Pakeha, Waikato. I’m working, love. What’ll you do tonight?’
‘Study,’ she said. ‘Root canals.’
I shuddered and blew on the coffee. ‘Torturers all.’
She grinned at me. ‘I need to practise. How about a session in the chair?’
‘Get out of my house. Any mail?’
She pointed to a few envelopes beside the bread box, and I poked at them without interest. I took the picture of Singer from my hip pocket and passed it across the table.