Carlton glared at me. Cigarette ash had fallen on his waistcoat and his dark stubble was shadowing his cheeks and doubling his chin. He didn’t look spruce and he knew it. He knew that I knew it. Tobin, elegantly arranged against the wall, looked fresh and bright. He got out a cigarette and lit it with a snap of that fancy lighter.
“I still don’t like you Hardy,” Carlton grated. “Your type shouldn’t be running around with licensed guns. You’re a menace.”
I let it pass. It was just guff, old, stale, defeated air. He took out a notebook and began checking off items.
“One, failing to give information concerning a felony – the Simmonds killing. Two, failing to report a felony – the Baker woman. Three, conspiracy in a felony – this ransom balls-up.”
“I’m illegally parked outside the station, too,” I said.
Tobin grinned. He’d contrived to do all the smart talking himself and left the silly, hack stuff to his partner. Suddenly I felt vaguely sorry for Carlton and a sharp dislike for Tobin. But I had to stick with the strength. I shrugged and squashed out a cigarette I hadn’t wanted when I’d made it.
“Book me on it then. I’ll call Cy Sackville and we can all go home to bed.”
Carlton dusted off his hands to release some aggression and worked his heavy body off the table. “Get out Hardy. Piss off.”
I held out my hand as I got to my feet. “Give me my gun back.”
He shook his head. “No way. It’s evidence for an enquiry. I might get you delicensed yet. Why? Do you need it to get from here to your cute little cottage?”
“You never know. I lead a dangerous life. That all then?”
Carlton ignored the question and left the room. Tobin barred my way with a stiff arm across the door.
“Aah, you might mention to Evans that you got a fair shake here.”
He was the second cop to ask me for the same favour in forty-eight hours. It made me feel like a pimp for a venereal whore. I brushed the arm down.
“I might,” I said.
At least he didn’t thank me. I walked out of the station, got in the car and headed for where there would be consolations – cold, wet and alcoholic.
It was close to ten-thirty when I got home. I left the car in the street rather than do the fancy backing and filling it takes to get into the courtyard. The bushes and shrubs whose names I don’t know were heavy with water and I got some of it on me as I brushed past them. A voice hissed my name from the shadows near the front door. I crouched and slapped my hand to where the gun should have been, then let it drop uselessly to my side. I was a sitting target, caught in the glow from the street light and my stomach lurched with the knowledge. Then she stepped out of the shadows, slender as a wand even wrapped up in a donkey coat.
“Mr Hardy, it’s Penny Sharkey.”
She moved into the light and her finely-shaped head picked up a sort of aura. She was wet and breathing heavily; I should have heard that from the path, but it wasn’t my night for professional standards.
My initial feelings were completely erotic. Extreme tiredness can do that to you. I wanted to hurry inside with her and let everything go to hell except sex. The fantasy lasted perhaps a tenth of a second before the veneers of civilisation and notions of professional conduct and God knows what other inhibitions crowded it out. I took hold of her arm and I could feel her shaking. I hung on hard, got the key in the lock and opened the door. She stumbled ahead of me into the passage and threw her hand up over her face when I turned on the light. I clutched her harder, perhaps out of a fear that she’d run away, perhaps from lust. She wrenched her arm back and I felt the pain shoot along and affect her voice.
“You’re hurting me!”
I said I was sorry and let her go. I went past her into the house turning on lights and leaving her to follow me if she wanted to. I opened the refrigerator and got out some wine.
“Drink?”
“Yes, thanks.”
I poured the drink and set it down on the table. I didn’t look at her too closely. I was conscious of the slenderness of my hold on her and she was the only tangible thing I had left of the Noni Tarelton case. If she was part of it at all. Suddenly I was sure that she was. She stood in the middle of the kitchen dripping water on the floor from the soaked nap of her coat. I sat down at the table.
“Take your coat off, Penny, and sit down. I’m sorry I hurt your arm, I’ve had a rough night and I’m not thinking too straight.” I mustered up a smile from somewhere and made unbuttoning motions with my hands. She undid the coat, slipped out of it and dropped it over a chair. A stream of water ran off it and made a pool on the floor. She sat down and drank three inches of wine in one steady pull. The tiny breasts pushed up under her white skivvy and I tried to distract myself with the wine. I drained my glass and poured some more. I held the flagon up enquiringly.
“No, this’ll do.” She sipped the stuff as if it had a name and an age.
“Why are you here, Penny? What’s going on? Sunday told me you wanted to contact me.”
She curled her hands around the glass and wouldn’t look at me.
“I saw Noni. Just by accident. In Balmain. I tried to tell you.”
“Why didn’t you call again?”
“I couldn’t. They left the cafe. I rang Jimmy while they were eating.”
“What were you doing in Balmain?”
“I got a job there, in a solicitor’s office. I started yesterday. I won’t have the job now, I haven’t been in today.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been looking for you, waiting for you.”
“Why me?”
“I want to see Noni in a box. You said you’d let things work out the way they had to. Noni’s with a man who’ll kill her. I’m sure of it.”
I described Berrigan and she nodded vigorously. “Yes, that’s him!”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I was in this cafe having coffee and reading the paper. I was hidden by the paper when they came in. They sat down a couple of tables away and ordered food. I could just hear what they were saying.”
“Which was?”
“They were having an argument, about plans or something. His plans and her plans. And about money. I couldn’t catch the details.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I tried to get you through Jimmy. I got a bit closer to them when I came back. I was wearing these big shades and Noni didn’t look at me. She wouldn’t recognise me easily anyway. She hasn’t seen me often enough.”
“What did you hear this time? Where was this by the way?”
She named an all-night cafe in Darling Street. “I heard him say that if it all went alright they’d have the money anyway. She was saying they’d missed the money or something like that.”
I drank wine and thought about the story. It sounded alright, a bit too pat perhaps but she’d had time to get it straight. It fitted the facts as far as I knew them but it didn’t lead anywhere.
“Anything else?”
She drank some more of the wine, a little nervously I thought. She stood up, went across to the coat on the chair and dipped into a pocket. She came up with some filter cigarettes and I lit one for her. She puffed at it and fiddled with the spent match.
“I know where he… where they’re going after the plan is finished, whatever that is.” She drew in smoke and expelled it through her finely-shaped dark brown lips. The hand holding the cigarette was shaking and she was staring at my face as if willing me to do what she wanted, including, maybe, believe her.
I tried to keep anxiety out of my voice. “Where would that be Penny?”
“I’ll tell you if you promise to take me with you and let me in on whatever happens.”
I shook my head. “No, it could be rough. Besides, I’d have to search you for concealed weapons.”