Authors: Peter Corris
‘I had visitors.’
‘Nasty stuff.’
She went upstairs, and I turned my attention to the manuscript. The new sections were calculated to give Lambert cardiac arrest. He was right about the drive and intensity; Mountain seemed to be constructing the thing in a series of cliff-hangers, a series of climaxes building towards a grand climax as he drew the threads together and hurled characters into collision. The self-destructive theme, hinted at earlier, became an obsessive, schizophrenic battle heightened by drugs. I read with fascination, until I remembered that I was supposed to be reading for enlightenment and information about the writer. Even in its sketchy form the account of the social drug scene, and the woman the protagonist involved himself with, jelled with Artie Henderson’s information. The woman had rape fantasies, and it appeared that the book would delve into her real life encounter with a would-be rapist and its effect on her sexual psychology. And on the hero’s. Some of the language suggested that Mountain had read a bit in the field, or listened closely to Dr Holmes.
‘Elizabeth Groves’ was Deirdre Kelly and ‘Morgan Shaw’ was William Mountain, but who else was he?
I was re-reading intently when Hilde came back. She coughed politely.
‘I’ve got to go, Cliff. How does it look now?’
‘Bloody sticky. Didn’t do any psychology along with the dentistry, did you, love?’
‘Not much. Why?’
‘Are schizophrenics suicidal, d’you reckon?’
‘God, is it that heavy? I suppose so—some of them.’
‘Know anything about rape fantasies?’
‘Ugh, no. My fantasies are a lot more gentle.’
‘You must tell me about them some time.’
‘If you go first.’ She hefted a bundle of clothes onto her hip as if she was practising for motherhood. I grinned at her.
‘I’d have to think about that. Is Frank at work now?’
‘Should be.’ She blew me a kiss and went off down the passage. I missed her as soon as I heard the door close. I got my notebook and took it over to the phone.
‘Parker.’
‘Gidday, Frank, it’s Hardy. I’ve just been talking to Hilde.’
‘That puts you up on me, I haven’t seen her for nearly twenty-four hours. Is she okay?’
‘Never better. I need some help, Frank.’
‘Jesus, Cliff. It’s a bad time.’
‘Quick file job. Policewoman Bennett could handle it.’
‘She’s moved to Vice. Never mind, I’ll get someone. What is it?’
I told him as much as I needed to get the files checked and he said he’d get back to me in half an hour or sooner. That gave me time to make a sandwich and re-heat some of Hilde’s coffee. I’d taken two bites and was adding the milk, when the phone rang; he’s a fast worker, Frank, and he likes to have fast workers around him.
‘There’s not much on it,’ he said.
‘Anything.’
‘Your voice sounds strange.’
‘I’m chewing; excuse my manners. I promise I won’t spit. I’m also drinking some coffee Hilde made for me.’
‘That doesn’t sound right; I’m at work and doing little chores for you and you’re drinking my woman’s coffee.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Just be eternally grateful to me for bringing you two together.’
‘I am. Well, wanna hear it?’
I swallowed for an answer.
‘Okay, Deirdre Kelly, age thirty-six, Montague Street,
West Pymble, lives alone, divorced, no kids, runs a travel agency in the city. Doing well, blah, blah. She alleged she was attacked in the car park … quoting now, she presented with hysterical symptoms, unquote. She was a bit scratched up, nothing serious. Assailant had a knife, didn’t want money. She didn’t say what he
did
want.’
‘How did she get clear?’
‘Screamed the place awake, ran around a bit. A neighbour came out and helped her. Do you want the resident’s name?’
‘Is that the neighbour, the resident?’
‘Yeah. God, I’m out of line giving you this.’
‘Don’t think I need the neighbour’s name, or the resident’s. Did this person see the attacker?’
‘Ah … no.’
‘Who filed the report.’
‘Christ, the signature’s written in Martian. Constable Selwyn. He seems to be the one with the medical grasp, talks about contusions, would you believe.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Scouted the vicinity, interviewed a few residents …’
‘And?’
‘Found nothing.’
‘Action?’
‘None. Only odd thing detected, and I use the word advisedly, by the alert Selwyn, was that Kelly said she’d driven herself home, but one of the residents had the impression that another car had come into the car park just before the ruckus.’
I grunted. ‘Kelly sticks with “unknown assailant”?’
‘Yep. Dr Selwyn has an opinion, of course. He opines that Kelly suffered a “hysterical fantasy”, probably brought on by rejection.’
‘He sounds like a useful bloke, save you a lot of work.’
‘I don’t know; work is what turns him on. He goes on to say that he thinks Kelly could be dangerous.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Ah, she described the knife in detail and later said she wished she could have turned the knife on the ….’
‘Alleged assailant.’
‘Yeah, thank Christ the press didn’t get hold of that.’
‘Ah-hah,’ I said, ‘the fourth estate.’
‘Yeah. Some reporter picked up the story. Probably got tipped off by a resident. There was a little piece in
The Globe
that tried to tie it in with a few other attacks up there, but it died. No good asking you what you’re poking into I suppose?’
There was nothing to be accomplished just then by search warrants, arrests or formal charges. All the criminality—Mountain’s, Grey’s, possibly Kelly’s, possibly my own—was relative. I thanked Frank, and said I’d see him soon. He heard notes in my voice I wasn’t aware of.
‘Be careful, Cliff. These are violent times.’
‘All times are violent, but some times are more violent than others.’
‘Just keep your head down. My kid needs an uncle.’
He rang off and I looked down at my notepad. I underlined Kelly’s name and addressed and boxed it in; then I shaded around it; I drew a triangle on top of the box and cross-hatched the triangle. The doodle might have meant something to Dr Holmes but it didn’t mean a damn thing to me.
P
YMBLE
is a long way off the track I beat. By reputation, it is inhabited by people who feel good about their big mortgages and tax shelters. They write letters to the papers about capital gains tax and abuses of the welfare system. It is a place light on pubs, corner shops and cars parked in the street—not one I had much impulse to visit, and especially now, with a hard Friday behind me, a phone call to make by midnight, and no very good ideas.
I had a shower and shave in honour of the money in Pymble, and I had a beer and put my gun in the holster under my armpit in honour of Glebe. I was wearing a blue cotton shirt and pants and a denim jacket Hilde had bought me. She said the style was blouson; I said it was good for concealing a gun.
The drive to Pymble took an hour plus. I had to battle against the North Shoreites who were coming into town for a good time. For company, I had the people who were going up to their hobby farms for the weekend. It was like struggling in a river of money with the current going both ways.
In the directory, West Pymble appears as part of the peninsula of residential land that sticks out into the green belt of the Lane Cove river park. The streets were tree-lined with wide, grassy strips outside the broad frontages. To the south, the park was like a dense, dark, whispering sea. The daylight was finished when I arrived at Montague Street, and excessive street lighting must have been considered vulgar in those parts, because I found myself squinting and peering through the gloom
trying to spot the apartment block.
I located it towards the end of the street; it was a new building, set back and masquerading as a hide-out in Sherwood Forest. The architect must have been given plenty of space to play with, because he’d arranged the three-storey structure around a courtyard with subsidiary gardens and discreet car parks. There were no obtrusive, high brick walls, no foot-high letters reading ‘The Gables’, no concrete patches for rubbish bins. It was all so pricey and in keeping with the stately houses in the street that the old-time residents couldn’t have objected.
Kelly’s address was Apartment Seven, another nice touch; no suggestion that there would ever be another apartment block here but this monument to good taste. I parked across the street and approached the entrance to what I was privately calling flat seven. I was behaving completely instinctively, with no plan, and only the vaguest idea of what I was looking for or what I might say.
The cars parked in the area that serviced numbers five to eight were a Honda Accord, a Ford Laser and a Citroen. One empty space; no Audi. Kelly’s apartment had a basement section that took advantage of the sloping land; there were slanted windows, like skylights, to let light into it, on either side of the entrance to the ground floor section, which looked to comprise three bedrooms at least, with plenty of space around them. Patio at the back with French windows; side door letting out onto a flag-stoned path and vine-entwined pergola. Pretty nice if you could afford it, and didn’t mind living this far from the GPO.
There were some lights showing in the apartment, and I thought I could hear a murmur of voices. I went under the pergola and took a peep up at a window; the junction boxes and cables indicated medium-heavy security. I went up the wide brick steps and banged on the door. Nothing happened to the lights or the voices. As I retreated to the steps, a car swung in off the road, mounted the grass at
the side of the gravel path, found the path again and skidded into the courtyard. It was a silver VW with a soft top and a left hand drive; the driver swung the wheel hard at the last moment and the car ended up skew-whiff, half in and half out of the empty parking bay.
A woman got out of the car and flicked the door back behind her; the action caused her to over-balance and grab at the car for support. She was tall with long blonde hair. One tanned shoulder, that had either come free of her white dress or was meant to be free of it, gleamed under the dim courtyard light. She pushed off from the car, stumbled and dropped her keys. She giggled; then she bent and clawed the gravel. She stopped giggling and started swearing. I went down the steps, crossed the gravel and grass, bent and picked up her keys. She came up from her crouch reaching for them like a dog begging. She was pretty, with a sharp-featured face and big eyes.
‘Thanks.’ She took the keys and nearly dropped them again.
‘You’re not Deirdre Kelly, are you?’
‘No, I’m not …. Hey, don’t look so disappointed. That’s not nice. Don’t I look good enough?’
‘You look fine. I wanted to see her, that’s all.’
She swayed, and reached back for the fabric top of the car. ‘Won’t be home tonight. Tomorrow for sure.’
‘How do you know—for sure?’
‘Party, boy. Big party tomorrow. Hey, look, would you mind giving me a hand from here. I’m a bit pissed.’ She leaned forward to take a closer look at me, lost her balance and grabbed my shoulders. She dropped the keys again. ‘Not an attacker ‘r anything like that, ‘re you?’ She smelled of gin, perfume and tobacco. ‘Don’t look like attacker. Look like a pilot or something. You a pilot?’
‘No,’ I said. I bent down for the keys, got an arm around her and helped her take a few faltering steps on her four inch heels. ‘Which way?’
She pointed a long, slim arm at number eight, and I
half-carried her along the path and up the steps. She leaned against the wall by the doorway and took off her shoes. I held out the keys.
‘Oh no, no, no,’ she slurred. ‘You don’t leave little Ginny like that. C’mon in and have a drink. You open the door, I couldn’t get it in.’
She did some more giggling while I opened the door; I held it wide, and she tossed her shoes inside.
‘C’m in.’
I was still half-supporting her, and it was beginning to be a job. She was slim, but five feet ten or so of slim, drunk woman is still a fair weight. We went down a thick-carpeted hall towards a light burning dimly in the distance. It turned out to be a kitchen light shining through a smoked glass door. I pulled at the door with my temporarily free hand; she giggled and pushed.
The kitchen was new and glowing. It was one of those things you buy in a package and have installed by a team of men in T-shirts who sing snatches from Gilbert & Sullivan while they work. Ginny supported herself on the bench that divided the room and then made a gliding lunge for a chair set up beside a big, circular pine table. She hit it hard; the chair creaked but held.
‘Get a drink,’ she croaked. ‘What d’you like?’
‘Wine.’
‘Me too. Champagne in the fridge.’
There were several bottles of assorted good brands in the refrigerator. I pulled out the nearest, found some glasses and a tea towel and joined her at the table.
‘’s good stuff. I want fizz.’
She jumped at the pop of the cork and giggled. I poured a full glass for me and a half for her. She smiled loosely, drained the glass in a gulp and held it out for more. I poured again and took a mouthful of the crisp bubbles. She lifted her glass and drained it again.
‘Toast to me,’ she said. ‘Toast to Ginny Ireland.’
‘Ireland?’
‘Like the place. Oh, can’t toast, glass’s empty.’
I filled her up. ‘You sound like an American.’
‘Was. Aussie now, married an’ divorced an Aussie. What’s your name?’
‘Cliff.’
‘Cheers, Cliffy.’
We drank some more. Her big, dark eyes started to take on a faraway look, and I reckoned that the time I had left to question her could be measured in millilitres. ‘Will you be going to Deirdre’s party, Ginny?’
‘Sure, always go to Dee’s. You goin’, Cliffy?’
‘I haven’t got an invitation, I’d like to see Dee though. Got some business to discuss among other things.’
‘Sounds boring, but I guess you’re sorta in the same business.’
I didn’t say anything but let her ramble on until I could pick up my cues. After some hiccupping, it became clear that she’d fixed on the idea that I was an airline pilot. I let her run with that, and agreed with her that I’d be retiring soon and had to look after myself. That seemed to satisfy her in the way of a connection with Deirdre Kelly. She up-ended the bottle and watched it drip into her glass. I had a hand ready to catch it, but she set it down with the excessive carefulness drunks have at this stage.