“You know I really dislike men in your game Hardy – I always imagine they’ve got beautiful, rich mistresses and good ins with high-up coppers. I know it’s not true. I know you’re all seedy little losers scratching a living around the divorce courts. The reality makes me happy but the image gets up my nose, know what I mean?”
I grinned at him. “You’re an intellectual. Eloquent too. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“You don’t,” he said. “You’re just right. You haven’t got two bob and you’re up to your balls in trouble.”
“You could be right Carlton,” I said. “Why don’t you pick up the phone and talk it over with Grant Evans? He’ll be interested.”
Tobin looked alarmed. “Evans?” The modish moustache twitched. “He’s alright, Evans. Jim, what d’you think?”
Carlton sighed and rubbed his hand over his bristled face. He’d seen it too often before – influence, names, interference. He looked resigned, then angry. He banged his fist on the table.
‘“Alright, you know a Chief Inspector. Big deal, he can’t cover you for this.”
“I don’t need cover. I just have to tell you what happened and I’m willing to do that.”
“How nice,” Carlton sneered. “Talk away.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ve been through this before. You take a statement now, stenographer and all, with my solicitor present, or we go down to the park in a friendly way and I’ll tell you about it. I don’t know the derro scene in Balmain too well, but I imagine you could have some hard cases of alcoholic freak-out if you let corpses lie around in the parks.”
“Stop being clever Hardy. We’ve checked out the park, the body’s being taken care of. I want to hear what you’ve got to say.”
He was throwing his cards away and the younger man could see it. He levered himself off the wall and came forward to lay a hand on Carlton’s shoulder.
“Easy Jim,” he said. “Let’s play by the book. We’re getting nowhere.”
Carlton shook the hand off irritably like a dog shedding water. The difference in their ages and the sameness of their rank was eating at him like a cancer. He bulled up from the table and jerked a thumb at me in a gesture that was meant to be tough but lacked all authority.
“OK Hardy, we’ll play it your way. Guys like you and your tame Chief Inspector make me sick.”
I got up slowly and watched him stalk out of the room. He was probably an honest cop and that couldn’t be any easier in Balmain than elsewhere. The honest ones were edgy and this sometimes prompted them to behave like the dishonest ones. It’s an old trade. Tobin let him go and waved me through the door.
“Have you got rich, beautiful mistresses too, Hardy?” he asked as I passed him.
I grinned. “Just the one.”
We went out into the night and got into a police car. The uniformed man at the wheel gunned the motor and U-turned violently, throwing Tobin almost into Carlton’s lap. The older man swore and pushed him away. The night had thickened and the rain was falling steadily. Carlton stared gloomily out of the window and refused a cigarette from Tobin. I took one and he lit it with a nice-looking gas lighter. Three puffs and we were at the park. We piled out of the car and the driver pulled police issue slickers from the boot. We trudged down towards the rotunda like a set of spies, all distrusting each other and caught in a ritual over which we had no control.
Two heavily built cops were sheltering in the rotunda. One of them stamped out a cigarette as we approached and his companion plodded out into the rain.
Carlton marched up to the body and looked down at it. The corpse had about as much emotional impact on him as a pound of potatoes.
“Let’s see your gun,” he grunted.
I handed it over and he sniffed it. He fiddled with it for a minute and seemed unfamiliar with its mechanism.
“We’ll hear the excuses later. You shot him. Where from?”
I retraced my movements up the path and pointed to the approximate spot. “I shot at him,” I said.
“One shot?”
“Two.”
“Why?”
“He was shooting at me.”
“How awful.” He prowled around the path and the body and I heard him cursing the rain and the wind. Tobin came forward and squinted back down the path to the shadowy structure.
“Pretty good shot,” he said, “given the conditions. What was the angle?”
“I was flat on my belly and I was shit-scared.”
“Yeah, I would be too.” He squared his shoulders and marched back to the rotunda. I leaned against a tree with my shoulders hunched against the rain. I heard muttered voices and then one of the cops scurried up the path to the road. Tobin came out of the gloom and joined me under the tree.
“You’ve got a licence for the. 38?”
I told him I had.
He drew in a deep breath and raised his cigarette to his lips. It had gone out in the rain. I looked at the damp butt between my fingers and we threw them away simultaneously.
“There must be quite a story to this Mr Hardy.”
“Why so?”
“The dead man isn’t holding a gun and there’s no other gun around that we can see.”
19
It took more than two hours of questions, coffee, cigarettes and hot tempers to get it all sorted out at the station. Carlton and Tobin went through their version of the heavy-soft routine, but their hearts weren’t in it. They didn’t like me, they didn’t like me dealing with kidnappers and they particularly didn’t like me doing it in Balmain. But they didn’t think I’d criminally killed Berrigan. I told them who he was and how he was connected with Noni Tarelton. I told them about the Baker woman in Macleay but I didn’t make the connections for them, I just had to clear myself on that count. Tobin tried to tie it all together.
“This Berrigan was a nutter, right? He was still hung up on the girl and he killed the Abo who was screwing her. Then he went to Macleay after the money but he didn’t get it. He bashed the Baker woman, then he dreamed up the idea of getting some cash by ransoming the girl. Maybe the girl was in on it – yeah that’d explain it.”
I was tired and would have agreed to anything but he didn’t need the encouragement. Carlton was sneering at him from across the room and that was enough to spur him on.
“It looks bad for the girl,” he continued. “It looks as if she was in on the whole thing and then double-crossed Berrigan. She scooted with the money.”
He was the original wrap-it-up-and-post-it boy. The theory had some merit; I was pretty sure I’d seen two figures at least in the park, and the gun and the money couldn’t have flown away. There were things I didn’t like about it though; I wasn’t sure that the relationship between Berrigan and Noni would have permitted this development. I wasn’t sure the girl would have been cool enough to pick up the money and gun and fade into the night. It looked full of holes, but perhaps I just didn’t want to look failure squarely in the face as I’d have to do if I accepted Tobin’s scenario. Ted Tarelton and Saul James were out a hundred and five thousand dollars and still no girl. I was out a few hundred myself. If I’d belonged to a professional association of private detectives I’d have deserved drumming out. Carlton broke in on my musing.
“That the way you see it Hardy?” The sneer was still on his face. It was also in his voice.
“Yeah. I suppose so.” I hadn’t told them about Coluzzi or the blacks or Noni’s drug habit. They were little private pieces of worry that didn’t need airing. Still, it didn’t say much for Tobin’s power of mind that he didn’t ask how I’d got back from Newcastle or how I’d been spending my time. Mentally, I threw his theory out the window.
“Right,” said Tobin. The word came out smugly. He turned to Carlton and waved him in like a football coach calling a reserve off the bench. “Jim, how do you see Hardy’s position now?”
Carlton looked as sour as a green lemon. The look he shot at Tobin suggested that if the younger man ever got an inch out of line Carlton would pour it straight into the official ear sooner than he could spit. The enmity between them explained the unworkability of the team; Carlton too sour to be imaginative, Tobin too ambitious to be careful. It was a brilliant sadistic pairing and had to mean something within the police set-up. Not my problem.