“Mr Hardy?” It was the voice I remembered-private school overlaid by the accents picked up in a working life as a boat charterer and repairer.
“Call me Cliff, Ray. How are you?”
“Just fine. I located that houseboat for you, the Pavarotti. Good name, lousy boat.”
“Where is it?”
“Darling Point.”
I had the yellow pages open again and ran my finger down the listings. “I can’t see a marina there.”
“It’s not at a marina, more of a private jetty. One of the few left around there.”
“It must be a big jetty.”
“Big house, big garden, big jetty. Can you tell me why you’re interested, Cliff? I hope you’re not planning to buy it.”
I laughed. “You wouldn’t advise it?”
“No way. It looks good from a distance, probably looks its best at night, but it’s got lots of problems.”
“I’m told it moves around the harbour a bit.”
“One of these days it’ll move down.” Ray was smart enough to see that I wasn’t going to answer his question, and secure enough not to be offended. He’d married his childhood sweetheart, had a son and a daughter and a good business, why shouldn’t he be secure? Still, he’d had a wild phase once and wild men never completely calm down. “Do you need any help? Like to approach from the water side, perhaps? I’d be happy to…”
I thanked him but refused. He told me that the houseboat had been at Darling Point for two days, and that it generally stayed for a week at wherever it tied up. More thanks from me and a reluctant “See you”, from him. I had to be careful. How did it go again? “A licensed private enquiry agent shall not employ in any way whatsoever in connection with his business as a sub-agent any person who is not a licensed sub-agent.” Section 19(1), or thereabouts.
The day had started cold and wasn’t going to warm up much. The sky was clear, with some cloud over in the west; the wind seemed to be blowing gently from all quarters; anything could happen. I wore a sweater under my jacket and when I tried to stuff a scarf into a pocket I found the gun still there. I put the gun away in the glovebox of the car, but no matter how hard you try you always end up breaking the rules-I wasn’t keeping my notes on the Madden case up to date. I should have made an entry before I set off: “to morgue to view body found in harbour”.
Proximity to the Arundel Street morgue is not one of the reasons I live in Glebe. I’ve visited the liver-coloured brick building more often than I care to remember, and it doesn’t improve on acquaintance: too clean, too smooth, too final. I filled in a form and showed my threatened licence to an attendant, who noted my name down carefully on a list that carried three other names.
“What’s that for?” I said.
The attendant, a young Asian man in a white coat who had several medical textbooks on his desk looked up at me over the tops of his half moon glasses. “For the police. They want the name of everyone who views the body.”
“Good,” I said.
The would-be doctor passed me on to another attendant, an older, tired-looking individual, who showed me through several sets of heavy perspex doors down artificially lit corridors to the chamber where the bodies are stored. It’s like you see in the movies, except that the refrigerated compartments pull out widthwise rather than lengthwise, like a crisper drawer. The attendant, who wore thick rubber gloves, undid two clasps and slid the drawer out a few inches.
“Hands clear,” he said.
I clasped my hands behind me like the Duke Of Edinburgh and leaned forward to look. The deceased was naked, bloated and blue. The body carried a lot of wounds and what I took to be bruises-dark, pulpy discolourations on the shoulders and thighs and around the wrists and ankles.
“Glass bottom,” the attendant said, “if you want to look at the back.”
“Like on the Barrier Reef,” I said.
He didn’t smile and I didn’t need to look at the back of the corpse-the man had been of shorter, blockier build than Brian Madden and had lacked his thick pepper and salt hair. Bald, anonymous and dead. There’s not much to say about a corpse that’s been in the water a while. It’s as if the sea has wiped away status, career, personality, history, the lot. I shook my head and the drawer slid back with scarcely a sound. The label on the front read DROWNED MALE.
The attendant moved a plastic bucket aside with his foot. He’d had it all ready to bring into use. He looked almost apologetic. “You’ve done this before,’” he said.
“Yes.”
“So had the last copper who was here. Didn’t matter. I still had to use the bucket.”
We held the door open and we went out into the corridor where the air was warmer but still smelled of death. “The police are interested in this one, are they?” I said.
He shrugged. Maybe he only liked to talk about buckets.
Back at the desk I surprised the aspiring medico running a pink marker pen through a paragraph in a physiology text-book. He looked guilty. “Important passage,” he said.
“Good luck to you. Can you give me the name of the policeman who asked you to keep that list?”
He tapped his teeth with the pen. “Sergeant Meredith.”
“Did he leave you his number?”
“I think so.” He searched among the books, pens, papers and used tissues on his desk, examined several slips of paper with writing on them, but shook his head each time. “I can’t find it, but it doesn’t matter. He’s due in now with someone to look at the body. You can talk to him in person.”
“Meredith’s personally bringing some-one in to look at the body?”
“Yes, probably a relative.”
“I showed you my private enquiry agent licence before.”
“You did.”
“I’m working on a missing persons case.”
“I guessed that. Not your subject in the drawer, eh?”
“No. What makes you think the sergeant’s got hold of a relative?”
“I think he said so on the phone. He’s a pleasant chap. We’ve talked a bit. I’ve a knack for getting people to talk. When I’m a doctor…”
“Which I’m sure you will be.”
“Thank you. It could be useful.”
“Certainly. Do you know why the police are so interested in this body, doctor?”
He let go one of the few smiles the place would see all day. “I heard the sergeant say something about another bridge case. I didn’t know what that meant. The harbour bridge, I assume. But those injuries aren’t consistent with a fall…”
I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. I was out through the door and down the steps looking along the street for a place to hide. I stood in a shop doorway near the Ross Street corner and watched a young, smartly dressed man climb out of a red Holden Commodore, open the back door and escort a small, middle-aged woman to the steps of the morgue. Another car drew up, parked illegally, and a big man in a rumpled suit got out and joined the pair on the steps. They went in and I waited. When they came out the woman was distressed, leaning on the young man’s arm and holding a handkerchief to her face. The other man, whom I’d tagged as Meredith by now, talked briefly with them, patted the woman’s shoulder and went off to his car. I scooted down the street for mine and was sitting in it, ready to go left or right, when the Commodore, moving slowly as if it was already part of a funeral procession, turned out of Arundel Street.
The Commodore turned left into Parramatta Road, and I had to skip through a second of red light to stay behind. A bad start. Do that to someone who suspects he’s being followed, and it’s like turning on a siren. But the Commodore driver didn’t react. He drove steadily in the centre lane up past the railway and through Surry Hills until he picked up the freeway to the eastern suburbs. A good, considerate driver-the easiest kind to follow. I stayed modestly back, moving up occasionally to catch a light, but not getting any closer than I needed to. I made a mental note of the registration number and tried to guess where we would end up. I plumped for Bondi Junction and was almost right, but on the low side, sociologically. The Commodore slid down the leafy driveway beside a block of flats in Birriga Road, Bellevue Hill.