I stayed the night. We made love again and slept and in the morning we walked down the gravel road to the beach which was clean and bright apart from a few things left on the sand by the tide. Glen walked along collecting plastic bottles and other rubbish and deposited it in the one bin on the beach. The bin was rusted and holey and the smaller bits of debris fell straight through onto the sand. I scraped them up and wrapped them in a plastic bag that had been half buried in the sand.
Glen shook her head. ‘Animals. I saw a kid get off his board with a broken ankle strap. Would have been the easiest thing in the world to bring it up here, but he just tossed it on the sand. We don’t deserve these beaches.’
‘Looks like you do what you can,’ I said.
‘I have to go to work; she said. ‘You could get to Horrie Jacobs’ place by foot from here if you wanted to. Just go to the end of the beach and you’ll find a track. It’ll bring you out down below his place. The walk’ll do you good.’
She gave me a quick kiss and moved away. I knew what she was doing-drawing some kind of a line under last night, avoiding goodbyes. I wasn’t going away, just walking on the beach. She’d showed me where the key to her house was. I had her phone number. We were still co-operating as investigators. Anything else would develop, or not, according to whatever laws govern these things. As I walked towards the far end of the beach I felt something like the kids at Redhead-seizing the time. It was a good feeling.
There was less wind than yesterday and the promise of a warmer day, building on what had been left behind. The beach was wide and the grass and shrubs on the low dunes seemed to have a good purchase. There were shallow pools on the rock ledges and the couple of streams that ran down from the heights cut only shallow channels. Suede shoes and drill trousers weren’t quite the right gear for beach walking and I was hot, with my shirt sticking to my back, by the time I found the path leading up through the timber. When it rained the track would be a watercourse but now it was just a rocky path, easy to negotiate, nicely shaded in spots, but steep. My breath was short when I made it to the top. I imagined little Horrie Jacobs bounding up it in his shorts and sneakers, and Oscar Bach…
I walked through the stretch of reserve to the bottom of Bombala Street and up the hill to the Jacobs’ house. There was no-one in the shaded front yard, so I went up the steps onto the deck and around to the back of the house where the sun would reach. I found Horrie Jacobs sitting in a bright patch of sunlight at a wooden table with the newspaper and the remains of his breakfast in front of him.
‘Cliff. Where the hell did you spring from?’
I told him I’d been talking to a police officer in Whitebridge, without giving him any of the intimate details. He poured me some coffee, then shook his head. ‘It’s cold. I’ll make some more.’
‘Don’t bother. This’ll be fine. I haven’t got any good news for you, I’m afraid.’
‘You believe Oscar was killed though. I can see it in your face. And you’ve got a policeman on side, haven’t you?’
He was seeing something, but not what he thought. I nodded.
‘But you don’t know who did it?’
‘There’s a few candidates.’
He bristled. ‘What does that mean?’
I told him, keeping it simple, not coming on too strong. I told him about Mark Roper and Gina Costi and about Greta Coleman and the prison term and the name change. I didn’t tell him about the knife and the map. Something about the way he took the news, the way he drew himself up and sat rigidly, alerted May, who had been sitting inside the house with a view of the deck. She came out quietly and sat down next to Horrie. She heard some of it. Enough.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said.
‘The evidence is all in my car. I can have it here inside an hour. Senior Sergeant Withers can verify it all. I’m sorry.’
‘He was my friend,’ Horrie muttered. ‘My only friend.’
May reached out and took his hand. He didn’t resist, didn’t seem to notice. The healthy colour had drained from his face and he looked old and frail. The woman looked at me and shook her head. I mouthed the words ‘I’m sorry’ again and she nodded and gave a slight shrug. A cloud moved across the sun and the deck was all at once in shade and cool. I shivered in my still damp shirt.
‘You’d better go, Mr Hardy,’ May said. ‘I always knew that nothing good would come of this.’
I left them sitting there, close together, the man encased in misery and disbelief and the woman trying to communicate silently with him. She lifted her hand in what I thought was a small wave but she stroked his head. I dropped my own hand and felt like a doctor giving a patient the worst news possible. I slouched around the deck with my own distress building, wondering whether to get back to Whitebridge via the beach or the road. I stood in the carefully tended front garden, undecided, indifferent. I’d decided on the beach when I heard movement behind me. May Jacobs came down the steps from the deck and advanced towards me. She was wearing white track pants and a blue T shirt and she looked capable of jogging down to the beach and back up again.
‘Cliff,’ she said. ‘That’s a very unhappy man you’ve made. Don’t say you’re sorry again. That’s no good.’
‘What would do any good, May? Just tell me.’
‘Now you’re planning to do what?’
‘I didn’t tell Horrie, but Bach might have attacked some other women. I’m working with the police on that. Horrie was right, you know. I think someone killed him and I want to know who.’
‘Why?’
I shrugged. ‘Just to complete things, I guess. A matter of professional pride. I ask a lot of questions and I like to get answers.’
‘You make it sound like Trivial Pursuit.’
It was the first light note that had been struck since I arrived and it was welcome. I smiled. ‘Something like that.’
‘I love that man, Cliff. I can’t stand to see him unhappy. There is something you can do. Find out all you can about who killed that man. Everything. Horrie Jacobs can face the facts. He spent his whole life doing it and he hasn’t changed just because of the money’
I nodded.
‘He’s worried that the money has changed him. It hasn’t. I know. But he worries. Now this. It’s better that he knows everything. Now it’s me that’s hiring you. You understand? I’ll send you a cheque.’
I started to protest but she cut me off with an angry gesture. ‘Find out! And tell us.’
She turned and marched away. I changed my mind and decided to go the road route. The sun came out from behind the cloud and I felt quite a lot better.
The walk to Whitebridge took about half an hour. Near the football ground, flanked by the two pubs, I saw a sign which warned of ‘burning chitter’. I’d seen similar signs on the south coast and it indicated that the oval had once been the pit head. There was probably a shaft under it heading straight out to sea or back under Ocean Street, or both. That also explained the two pubs-an early and a late opener to cater for the mine shifts. I bought a paper in Dudley and glanced through it as I passed the school and the Post Office. Ailing economy, political manoeuvring at home, trouble abroad-nothing new.
Glen had taken Oscar Bach’s box and the evidence it contained as I’d said she could. I was left with my file and photocopies of some of the notes she’d made on her own Bach researches. I had a shower, drank a can of beer from her fridge and left her a note that said a whole lot or nothing, depending on how you looked at it. Being a snoop, I wandered through the house, snooping. It was a very plain place, solid, with what the agents would call ‘tons of potential’. The trouble is, you need money to realise the potential and Glen didn’t seem to have it. The renovations-a larger deck, bigger windows-had been done on the cheap and the lino tile laying and most of the painting had been done by an amateur. She had a few nice pictures on the walls and a family photograph on top of a bookshelf stuffed full of paperbacks, including Lonesome Dove. The picture showed a good-looking woman and the not so good looking Edward Withers with a boy and a girl who could only have been Glen and her brother. Wholesome stuff.
I put the key where it went and drove back to my motel to shave, pack and check out. The cleaner wouldn’t have much of a job to do there. The sun was high and bright and I was sorry to be leaving Newcastle. I tried to enjoy the views as much as was consistent with careful driving. Along the road there were several blocks of land for sale. Two carried Mario Costi Real Estate signs, but they also had fresher signs from other agents. I wondered who was running Mario’s business now. Maybe Bruno. Certainly not Ronny.
I was almost to Belmont before I noticed the dark grey Toyota. It stayed well behind in the thin traffic and I couldn’t get a look at the driver. I considered trying some tactic to intercept it but nothing suggested itself. If I stopped it could pass and pick me up somewhere else. Presumably the driver knew the road patterns. I shrugged and let the car follow me all the way to the Swansea Bridge. It peeled off once we’d crossed the water and I felt like an outlaw being escorted across the county line. I made a mental note to ask May to call Ralphie off.