Parker pushed the gun towards me to show he was a good guy and said, ‘College Street, now,’ to show he was a hard guy. He let me follow him to town in my own car, but he noted down the registration number and he didn’t give me back my jemmy.
We went into one of the bleak, soulless rooms at Police Headquarters and I gave a statement to a stenographer that left out certain details such as Mrs Singer’s name and the coffee bar meeting place. Parker looked in from time to time and listened to me talking. He didn’t seem to like what he heard. When the statement was typed up, he brought it to me for signing.
The room was getting to me by then and I had a delayed reaction to the whole foul business. ‘You don’t look too good,’ he said. ‘We’ll get some coffee and go up to the office.’
I could see why he didn’t say ‘my office’. Parker shared a room with three other detectives. They had the nasty view into east Sydney from their windows. Their desks were wedged in between filing cabinets and wastepaper baskets. A colleague at his desk kept his head down and ignored us.
I got a cup of coffee, was offered the comforts of tobacco again and sat at one of the detective’s desks while Parker read the statement. He didn’t seem to have any trouble with any of the longer words. He smoked his filter tip down far enough not to be a wastrel but not so far as to get all the packed-up gunk into his lungs. He finished reading.
‘Client’s name?’ he asked.
I shook my head.
‘Any marks where this kid hit you?’
I wasn’t sure myself; I pulled up my shirt and there was a light bruise, hardly visible. I’d probably made a little too much of it in the statement.
‘Bit slow, were you, Hardy?’
‘I’d had a few drinks.’
‘Have a few more with Henneberry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
I named one of the pubs I’d visited that night. What I’d said probably wouldn’t hold up and the lie could turn Parker nasty, but it was the best I could do off the cuff. It was stuffy in the room and Parker took off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves. He had thin, sinewy forearms and the right one had a long white scar running along it. He saw me look at it.
‘Knife,’ he said. ‘Nasty things, knives. I don’t like to think of someone out there who can use one the way this bloke did. Do you?’
‘No.’
‘You might run into him, and Henneberry’s not going to be around to protect you.’ He got a nice bit of needle into that. ‘There might be no-one around at all. Have you thought of that?’
‘Yeah, but I don’t know if Henneberry’s death has anything to do with my little matter. I’m happy to go on with it for a while.’
‘Go on doing what?’ he asked sharply.
I grinned at him and shrugged. He leaned forward across the paper and files and other bureaucratic junk on his desk. ‘I have to try and find this maniac, Hardy. You look like a nuisance to me. I can keep you out of the area if I want to.’
I knew he could do it, and it was time to decide how to play him. Since Grant Evans got stuck at a high-middle level in the Force and threw it in to take a Deputy Commissionership interstate, I hadn’t an ally in the Police Department. It was a sad lack and maybe Parker could fill the role. I’d liked his style so far, particularly the way he hadn’t threatened to throw me down any stairs.
‘Do two things for me,’ I said. ‘Call Grant Evans in the west and ask him what he thinks of me. I think you’ll be satisfied. If you are, give me two days clear on it. I’ll give you anything I get. In two days I should find out what I want to know, anyway.’
‘Whatever the fuck that is,’ he growled. ‘What do I put in the report in the meantime?’
I reached forward and poked a finger into the paper on the desk top. ‘Reports,’ I said. ‘What’s in these, d’you reckon? You can say what you like in a report. You can say I’ve been warned, if you like. I won’t contradict you.’
He looked at the paper jungle in front of him with distaste. ‘Okay, Hardy. I don’t have to call Evans. We’ve got a note or two about you here and I looked at it while you were yapping. You’re sneaky, you hit a lot of lobs, but your sheet’s pretty clean. Lately, anyhow.’
‘You play tennis, do you?’
‘Yes. Pennant. You?’
‘Yeah, not pennant, though. Do I get the two days?’
His look seemed to measure me, weigh me and estimate my IQ. ‘You know,’ he said slowly, ‘I actually got some sleep last night. Good sleep. You’re benefiting. Piss off, I’ve got a report to write.’
I called Sackville from a phone booth outside the police building and then I called Ann Winter. She coughed as soon as she answered.
‘Sorry, I’ve been smoking non-stop. What’s happening?’
‘Not much. A pretty smart cop is on the job. Can I come over and hear the cassette?’
‘I’m at the dump; there’s no recorder here. Look, come over and get me. We can go to my people’s place and play it. I don’t want to stay here tonight, anyway.’
I drove back to Bondi and located the dump, which it was. The street was two-thirds taken over by apartment blocks and Ann’s place was a set of semi-detached, two-storey houses that looked as if their owners had decided to sell later when the price was right. The houses were blighted; guttering drooped, slates were missing on the roofs and a couple of the windows were blanked out by sheets of tin nailed up behind shattered glass. The brick fence had collapsed and the concrete path to the door of the house on the right was cracked and lumpy. It was a good bet that the other paths would be the same. The whole lot was waiting to be levelled so that ten storeys of glass and pre-poured concrete could rise on the site.
I knocked on the ramshackle door and Ann came down some creaking stairs to open it. A smell of fried food and damp wafted over me. ‘Choice, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ She gave me an address in Point Piper and I drove there, trying to hold myself together against the culture shock. We pulled up in front of a high wall that looked as if it was shielding half a million dollars worth of house. It was like taking Cinderella away from the housework and up to the palace.
8
Ann Winter’s daddy’s house was the sort of place you could visit late at night without waking anyone up. It was built in wings around a swimming pool and a couple of courtyard gardens. I upped the price to three-quarters of a million as we moved through it. We went in by some floor-to-ceiling glass doors and down a carpeted corridor to a bedroom. From the familiar way she threw her cardigan onto the bed and kicked her shoes off against the wall, I took this to be Ann’s room. It had just about everything you’d want: books, a big TV set, a double bed, an exercise bike, a turntable, big speakers and a cassette player.
‘D’you want a drink?’ She waved a hand at a cupboard under the bookcase.
‘No, I want to hear the cassette.’
She took it out of her bag and slipped it into the machine.
‘I’m going to wash.’ She punched the ‘play’ button and went out of the room. Bruce Henneberry’s drawling voice blocked out the sound of water running.
‘October 3,’ he said, ‘One pm. Two items for Cliff Hardy. One, Leon. Talked to him this morning. He knows things and he’ll talk for money. I got an interesting sample-social security scam. Two, the Mellow Yellows. Ashram on Salisbury Street. Guy I saw is Brother Gentle. Off the planet but knows the oldies. Have notes. Have to run, will fill in later.’
I played it through again. Ann came back into the room with a freshened-up look. She leaned against the wall and listened.
‘Pretty cryptic,’ I said. ‘Was it always like that?’
‘No, that’s just a notes tape. It’s not cryptic. Leon, he’s a wino who lives near Bruce. He’s the real thing-picks up cigarette butts in the street, pisses in public. He’s been charged with exposing himself hundreds of times, does a few days or weeks and they let him out. He’s around, no-one notices him, he probably hears things.’