“God, don’t just walk out. What do you think of it? What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know,” I growled. “I’ll talk to some people, then we’ll play it the best way we can.”
“It all seems so strange – I mean for this to happen so long after she disappeared. It seems – I don’t know – oddly managed.”
“You’re the theatre man,” I said.
I brushed him off and left the house saying I’d call him at the theatre when things had been decided. I caught a taxi to Armstrong Street and wondered why I’d replied the way I had to his last remark. I didn’t know. Maybe just to be rude.
Madeline Tarelton opened the door again. She was wearing a lime green trouser suit today and nothing about her had deteriorated since I’d seen her last. She seemed to be bearing up under the strain and her voice was edged with contempt when she spoke.
“Ted’s still in bed. He’ll see you there.”
“Where’s the room?”
“Upstairs, in front.”
I went up. The room was big with two glass-panelled doors letting out onto a balcony. The water was visible through them, shining dull and grey under the thick white sky. In bed Ted was not nearly as impressive as he was when up and around and properly togged up. The skin around his jaw sagged, his rumpled hair looked thin and his body under the bedclothes was lumpy and powerless. The room had pale candy striped wallpaper and a deep pile carpet; it was too fussy and frilled, with fringed lampshades and a brocade bedcover, for my taste and Ted looked uncomfortable in it. I sat on a bentwood chair cushioned with satin while Ted folded up the newspaper and pulled himself straighter in the bed.
“Bad business this, Hardy,” he said. “Fair knocked me. I took a bit of a turn. Crook heart.” He placed his hand over his chest. I nodded.
“Got the note?”
He produced it from the breast pocket of his puce pajamas and handed it over. Identical to James’ except for the extra information.
“I was up early. Meeting on today at Randwick. I went for the papers and there it was, stuck to the door. Madeline had to bloody nearly carry me back here.”
The experience had swept away his usual bluster; I couldn’t tell whether he was most upset by the kidnapping of his daughter or the reminder of his own mortality, but it was obviously the right time to pressure him a bit.
“You can raise the money?” I asked.
“Easy. Reckon I should?”
“Yes. But there’s something weird about this. It doesn’t smell right.”
“How do you mean?” he said listlessly.
“Could the girl be shaking you down?”
Colour flooded his face and he looked about to sound off at me which he undoubtedly would have done if he’d been feeling his usual, successful self. Now he flopped back against the pillows and fidgeted with the quilt.
“Possible, I suppose,” he said lamely. “Is that your theory?”
“I haven’t got a theory, just a feeling. It’s a strange one. I never heard of two ransoms being asked before. Complicates things. Not that they’re not messy enough already.”
“Madeline told me you’d rung the other night. By complicated you mean about the Abo? What’s happened since then?”
I gave him an outline leaving Coluzzi out and not going into details about Noni’s reputation in Newcastle. He couldn’t help on that score; he’d practically lost all touch with the girl from the time his wife had left to when Noni turned up motherless. Ted’s instincts, bred in the SP game and sly grogging, were to avoid the police, so he fell in with my suggestion that we keep the police out of it for the time. I had a feeling, which I was backing, that the girl wasn’t in danger. But the cops wanted to talk to her in connection with Simmonds’ death and if they started poking around and stirring things up it could all turn sour and Noni might suddenly become dispensable. I gave Ted the gist of this and he agreed to raise the money and wait for the contact.
“I think that’s just plain stupid,” Madeline Tarelton said from the doorway. She came in carrying a glass of water and some pills on a tray. She set them down on the bed and gestured at her husband to take them. He did. I pocketed the note and got up from my chair.
“Just a minute,” Madeline said quickly. “This is insane, you must go to the police.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “And your husband agrees with me.”
She snorted. “You’re playing games. I have my doubts about you Mr Hardy. This is a mistake.”
“Keep out of it Madeline,” Ted said sharply. Maybe the pills had done him some good. Madeline swung round on him, surprised, but he cut her off.
“You don’t give a damn about the girl, she’s nothing to you. Alright, fair enough, but she’s my daughter and I want her back safe. We’ll do it Hardy’s way.”
“That’s not fair!” Her composure was disturbed which looked like a rare event. “That girl is a menace, the dregs, she…”
“Shut up!” Ted roared. His face turned purple.
“Don’t shout, you’ll have another attack.”
I left them to it and went down the stairs and out of the house.
I pulled up the hood of the light, plastic parka I was wearing and walked through the drizzle to Oxford Street where I caught a bus to the city. On the bus I read yesterday’s paper. Simmonds’ death got a small notice on page four in between an item on rail fares going up and the birth of an elephant at the zoo. The police appealed to the blonde woman who’d found the body to come forward. The Chev Biscayne was described. The woman and the car were the police’s only lines of investigation. I couldn’t imagine the La Perouse blacks identifying Noni to the police, however much they disliked her, but some back-tracking by the cops could turn her name up soon and then the heat would be on me.
I got off the bus outside The News building and bought the morning paper. There was nothing more on Simmonds but the discovery of an injured woman on her farm near Macleay got a mention. The woman was in a critical condition in Macleay hospital and police were anxious to interview a tall dark man wearing light-coloured clothes and carrying a dark coat. If they were any good it wasn’t going to take the local police long to trace that man from his taxi to his breakfast to his shave. I’d used the name Colin Hocking for the plane ticket but a quick scout about at Newcastle would turn my car up and then I could expect visitors. On the sporting page there was a preview of the fight coming up between Jacko Moody and Tony Rosso. It would be the first main event for them both. They had good, rather similar records, but Moody had KO’d two men whom Rosso had only decisioned and he was favoured to win. It reminded me that I had to get tickets from Harry Tickener for Ted Williams.
The News building is a standard glass, concrete and plastic tower which creates a canyon without and neuroses within. The lobby was hung about with glossy blow-ups of press photographs that showed politicians with beer bellies and worn-out smiles, football players spattered with mud and fashion models of unbearable thinness. I went up to the fourth floor where Harry shares some cramped office space with thirty other reporters. They steal each other’s cigarettes and listen to each other’s phone conversations. I wound through the desks and wastepaper bins. Harry’s typewriter was blasting.
“Hallo Cliff – hang on a second.” He pushed a lock of his thin yellow hair back and stabbed at his keyboard with long, tobacco-stained fingers; three of them.
“Carry on exposing,” I said. I sat down in the hard chair drawn up in front of the desk and rolled a cigarette. The old tobacco had tasted bad enough last night; this morning it was disgusting. Tickener stopped pounding and stretched both hands up in the air. Nothing creaked, he was still young.
“What can I do for you Cliff?”
“Two things; tickets to the Moody fight – a pair. OK?”
“Yeah, no trouble. You coming with me?”
“I hope so. I’ve got something on but it should be worked out by then, one way or another. Remember the guy we met at Trueman’s?”