Lugarno (15 page)

‘Excuse me. I'm hungry.' I pulled the stool nearer the wall and sat down and began to eat. She took a gold pen from the breast pocket of her jacket and a notepad from her shoulder purse.

‘You don't seem surprised to see me.'

‘I was told about you.'

‘By whom?'

Great grammar. ‘I forget. Detective Sergeant Stankowski maybe.'

‘I hope you're not going to make this difficult, Mr Hardy.'

I chewed and swallowed, drank some wine. ‘No more than it has to be, Inspector.'

She glanced at her notebook although I could tell she didn't need to. ‘You interviewed a man only hours before he was murdered and your fingerprints have been found in a house where a
woman died under suspicious circumstances. That puts you uncomfortably close to two deaths in the space of two days.'

‘I'm certainly not comfortable about it myself.'

‘Your attitude isn't helping,' she said. She seemed to think she'd scored a point though. ‘But at least you don't deny being in Mrs Samantha Price's house. What is your connection with these people?'

I ate some more of the food and drank some wine although my appetite was fading fast. ‘As I told your colleague, I'm pursuing an investigation and I'm not at liberty to talk about it.'

‘You won't be at liberty at all if you don't.'

Nice comeback. ‘Still no clues on the Jorgensen thing, huh?'

She glared at me. ‘I'm questioning you, not the other way around.'

‘I thought perhaps an exchange of information might be in order.'

‘Certainly not.'

I shrugged. ‘Mexican stand-off then. Why a
Mexican
stand-off, have you ever wondered?'

‘I advise you to take this seriously.'

‘I do. I only met Jason Jorgensen and Mrs Price once. They were young and not bad people as far as I could tell. If I find out what happened to them before you do I'll let you know, but I've got a client to protect.'

‘I could arrest you for obstruction.'

‘You won't do that. You know that my lawyer'd have me out in no time and you'd have gained nothing.'

‘Your last word?'

‘Not at all. I'll talk to my client in the morning and see what room there is to manoeuvre in.'

She stood up and tucked her pad and pen away in her purse. I guessed her age as early thirties and her IQ as high. Also her ambition. ‘You'll be at Hurstville Police Station at nine-thirty tomorrow morning, with or without your lawyer, to make a statement. Otherwise, a warrant will be issued for your arrest.'

I nodded and followed her down the passage towards the door. She walked tall but I had a sense that the interview had disappointed her and she was re-grouping. Before she reached the door she span around and sucked in a breath. It wasn't deliberate, but her breasts rose, her lips parted and there was colour in her smooth-complexioned face. She hated to do it but she said, ‘You made a remark about an exchange of information?'

I opened the door and motioned her forward. ‘Sorry,' I said. ‘The moment passed.'

My finest hour: two cops pissed off at me and a client who didn't know what he wanted to happen next. I put the leftover food in the fridge and poured a last glass of wine. I didn't blame the police for coming after me but I knew I couldn't help them in any substantial way and they threatened to be a hindrance to the job I had on hand. I settled by the phone, rang Viv Garner and told him the state of play.

‘I take it you didn't kill them?' he said.

‘Ha, ha.'

‘If they've tapped your phone, mate,' he said, ‘you've told them all they'd be likely to get. True?'

‘I suppose.'

‘When did you last have it checked?'

‘Yonks ago.'

‘So it could be tapped?'

‘What're you getting at, Viv?'

‘I take it you don't want to front up in the morning?'

‘That's right. I've got other things to do and I owe you too much money as it is.'

‘Didn't you hear a funny clicking then?'

‘C'mon, Viv.'

‘I could ring them tomorrow and say you've instructed me that your phone has been tapped and that they therefore know all you know. That'll surprise them and set the cat among the pigeons. Should buy you some time. With any luck Stankowski will suspect Hammond of stealing a march on him and vice versa.'

‘You didn't learn that in law school.'

‘I've forgotten most of what I learned in law school. Have you caught up with the bloke enrolled at Lachlan yet?'

‘No, not yet.'

‘What about the rich woman paying his bills?'

‘I talked to her. Apparently he's moved on to another one.'

‘And no one in that connection is dead yet? Not bad. I'm moving around a bit tomorrow, Cliff, but you've got my mobile number. Call me if they throw you in the cells.'

I rang off and hoped that was it for the day.
I didn't need any more phone calls or visits. I collected the book about the Burns-Johnson fight from the bedroom and settled down in the living room in the only comfortable chair in the house to read and unwind. There's nothing like an account of two blokes pummelling the shit out of each other to make you feel relaxed. Except that in this case the pummelling was all done by Jack on Tommy.

I read until loss of concentration told me it was time to stop. Just for that moment I was back in the Sydney of nearly a hundred years ago when the men wore waistcoats in summer, the papers called Johnson a ‘nigger' and Hugh D ‘Huge Deal' McIntosh, the promoter and referee of the fight, carried a pistol. A different world and not a better one.

I put the book on the stairs and carried the wine glass out to the sink. I rinsed it and moved away to put it on the draining board. The glass in the louvred window shattered and I was sprayed with fragments which mostly caught me on the side of the head and high up. I dropped to the floor with the glass still in my hand in case there was another shot and felt blood dripping into my ear. I stayed down and watched the blood drip onto the lino. The thought came into my shocked and tired brain that louvred windows and linoleum dated back to the time of the Burns-Johnson fight.

My house is overlooked at the back by a tall block of flats and that's where the shot must have come from. By the time I felt ready to stand up he would have been well away. I mopped at my head with the dishcloth, not a hygienic practice but the glass hadn't hit me anywhere vital. I was cut in several places on the ear and higher up but my hair had taken the brunt of it. Thank you Grandad. At a guess the bullet must have struck in those couple of centimetres where a set of louvres overlapped and been deflected. With the kitchen well lit and me standing relatively still at the sink in front of the window I would've made a good target. I couldn't say how many times people had told me to get the daggy louvres replaced and I'd resisted, more out of inertia than aesthetics. One up to inertia.

The surge of adrenaline that the near miss had pumped through me started to ebb away almost immediately, leaving me drained and spent. I'd been shot at before, hit before, but not by a sniper in quite that clinical way. More than once my ex-wife Cyn had said,
I wish you were dead.
Well, now there was someone out there prepared to
grant her wish. Except that
she
was dead. I wasn't thinking straight. How prepared was I for such things? For a man in my business, my security alarm system is lousy, apt to be short-circuited by cockroaches, but I set it and checked the doors and windows.

I showered and used a caustic stick, something we blade shavers still have on hand, to deal with the cuts on my ear. I dumped my bloodied shirt in the wash, knocked back a stiff brandy and went to bed with my Smith & Wesson for company.

I slept in fits and starts, waking up to all the small noises an old, poorly maintained house is prone to. I got up as soon as there was light in the sky, made coffee and settled down to think about what had happened in the cool calm of day. Was it a professional shot? Hard to say. The distance wasn't great and the target would have been clearly illuminated. I could probably have made the shot myself when I was younger using a good rifle fitted with a decent telescopic sight. Again, it could have been no more than a warning. It was hard to tell where the bullet had hit exactly or what calibre it might have been. I'd be lucky to find the slug among all the weeds in the backyard. The big question was, who would want to kill me or warn me so dramatically?

I drank two cups of coffee and warmed up some of the Lebanese in the bachelor's friend, a newly acquired microwave. Strange breakfast for a strange morning. There was a howling wind outside and I had to hope the piece of galvanised
iron I could hear flapping wasn't on my roof. I'd been in the private enquiry game for more than twenty years and had made my share of enemies, some of them hard men. But the only ones I could think of who'd take such a drastic step were either too old, too dead or in gaol. Conclusion, the hit attempt or warning had to be connected with a current case. Apart from trying to find out about Ramsay Hewitt and keeping Danni Price safe from the arms of the law, my only other cases were minor matters. Nothing heavy.

By the time I'd mulled these things over, shaved and made sure none of my cuts were bleeding, it was 8.30. I rang Viv Garner, caught him as he was about to leave, and asked him to put in his call at about the time I was due at Hurstville.

‘Might have to be a bit later,' he said. ‘I'm in a meeting just then.'

‘Later's okay,' I said. ‘Later's better. Further up their noses.'

‘You're feisty but I haven't got the time to ask why. Will do, Cliff. Call if you need me.'

He was right. I felt pro-active as they say, whatever that means. I rang my Telstra contact, negotiated a fee to be paid into his TAB account, and got an address for the Larson twins in Hunters Hill. I was through being discreet. This thing had become very personal and I was going to talk to Danni Price and not necessarily in a soft voice. I rang Martin Price and he came on the line speaking slowly, the way you do when your head is throbbing with a hangover and every limb and digit feels heavy.

‘Mr Price, this is Hardy. I've got an address for the Larson girls and I'm going over there to see if Danni's around or they know where she is. I take it she hasn't come home?'

‘No. No. The police just called. They want me to make a statement about Sammy and everything. Cathy's advised me to make the statement. She's going in with me.'

‘Right. Does she know anything about all this? About Danni and the drugs? About Junie?'

‘Of course not.'

‘Is she good?'

‘Very.'

‘Experienced?'

‘Yes.'

If she is,
I thought,
she won't let you say anything much, especially if they ask about me.
‘Be guided by her. I'll be in touch.'

He sounded almost panicked. ‘What're you going to say to Danni?'

I gave him back his own medicine. ‘I don't know,' I said and rang off.

Hunters Hill was considered a dangerous place in the old days, what with the insane asylum and the convict barracks on Cockatoo Island nearby. Not anymore. Just about the whole of the district is classified by the National Trust and I'd have to sell my house to buy a unit there. The address I'd been given was close to Kellys Bush, the bit of native bush that residents and the Builders Labourers managed to save from developers in the '70s. Nice area. I pulled up outside a sandstone
squatter's city mansion that had been divided up into flats. Enough of the land the mansion had originally occupied was left to provide undercover parking space for a dozen cars and room in the open for visitors. I drove in and parked about a metre and a half away from Danni's sporty Honda.

The squatter would have had servants and dogs for protection, now there was a state-of-the-art security door and intercom system installed inside a tiled entrance with leadlight windows. I buzzed the flat number I'd been given and a female voice answered.

‘Yes? Who is it?'

‘Ms Larson?'

‘Who is it?'

‘My name's Hardy. I'm a private detective working for Danni Price's father.'

‘You're joking. A private detective?'

‘That's right. I want to speak to her, please.'

‘What makes you think she's here?'

‘Her car's here.'

The intercom cut out and I swore and buzzed again.

‘This is Danni Price. What d'you want?'

‘I want to stop having to press this buzzer. Then I want to come inside and talk to you fast.'

‘Why?'

‘Listen, I know about Jason and your stepmother. I know about your father's mistress. He's making a statement to the police right now. He wants to help you.'

‘I don't need help.'

‘I wish I could say that. I think you do, Danni.
You're probably going to have to talk to the police, but it'd be better if you talked to me first.'

‘No. Go away.'

‘Okay, better get yourself ready to be charged with conspiracy to murder your stepmother.' I left the entrance and walked back to the cars. The wind hadn't let up and there was a bit of an edge to it that made the cuts on my head sting. I opened the car, dug an old poplin jacket out of the mess and put it on. The zipper was stuck but the extra layer was welcome.

Danni came out a few minutes later. She was wearing the same clothes as yesterday—tank top, jeans and sneakers—and she shrugged into a denim jacket as she walked towards me. She was taller than I'd thought from seeing her mostly from a distance or sitting, and bore a strong resemblance to her father. She stopped a metre away and looked me over.

‘I saw you yesterday. At the pub.'

‘I followed you. Doing my job.'

‘Shit. Show me some ID.'