One hospital is pretty much like another in my experience. They all use the same disinfectant and have the same bugs in the air conditioning. The Newcastle Community Hospital wasn’t worse or better than average, but slightly more interesting in that it showed some signs of renovation and repair after earthquake damage. Twenty-four hours after the Costi siege Morton, a Chief Inspector named Reynolds and an Italian-speaking Sergeant who was the police ethnic community liaison officer, and I gathered at the bed of Senior Sergeant Glenys Withers.
After a nurse had told us what not to do, we took chairs around the bed. I sat a discreet distance from the patient. She looked good; her hair was brushed and shining and the little bit of weight she’d lost around the face suited her. The white hospital smock didn’t do much for her though, nor the drip feed into her arm. We exchanged smiles while Morton and Reynolds made commiserating noises to Glen about her dad and then approving noises about her and each other. When Glen indicated that she was quite fit enough to talk, Morton invited a stenographer in and we got down to business.
Glen told us that she had set her radio to broadcast the alert signal if she didn’t return within an hour.
‘Sensible precaution,’ Reynolds said. ‘Sound procedure.’
Once inside the house she had requested a private talk with Gina Costi to which the girl had reluctantly agreed. ‘She was terrified,’ Glen said. ‘Quite literally. She’s not very bright and you could see she’d been under a lot of strain.’
‘How did you handle it?’ Morton said.
‘I tried to be discreet. I said we’d received certain information about Oscar Bach and would she like to comment on her relations with him.’
“Who was in the house then?’ I asked.
‘I’d only seen Gina, Mr and Mrs Costi and the… servant, whatever she is.’
‘Housekeeper,’ the liaison man said. ‘Mrs Adamo.’
Glen nodded. ‘At first Gina didn’t want to say anything. I pressed her a little, mentioned Mark Roper. Then it all came pouring out-how Bach had forced her to have sex with him, how Roper had done nothing, how she’d tried to keep quiet about it. She was ashamed, but more frightened than ashamed.’
‘Frightened of what?’ Morton said.
‘Of her brother, of Renato. Apparently he’s completely crazy about the idea of family honour. He’s all hung up on old Italian ideas about virginity and dishonour and vendettas and all that. She’s brainless, but she was sensible enough to be scared that Renato would kill her and Roper and Bach if he got the chance. She said he likes killing.’
I glanced at the liaison man’s notepad. He was writing in Italian, underlining the words and adding exclamation marks. I had the rogue thought that Helen Broadway would have been able to translate his notes for me.
‘Gina got drunk at Christmas last year. The strain of keeping it all in was too much for her and she told her brother Mario. She loves Mario. She says he’s the gentlest of her brothers.’
‘Not hard to edge out Ronny,’ I said.
Morton signalled for me to shut up. ‘Go on, Sergeant, if you feel up to it.’
‘I’m all right, sir.’
She went on to spell out the chain of events as Gina understood them. This was pretty much how I’d worked it out in my own head, much too late for it to be of any use. Mario had told his father that he intended to kill Oscar Bach. For all his mildness, Mario was just as keen on honour as Renato, just more cunning about it. Mario had seized his opportunity in the chaos following the earthquake. He’d been keeping tabs on Bach, come on him just as he’d avoided being injured when the church collapsed and had attacked him with a brick. The trouble was, Bach had fought. Mario had killed him and done enough to make it look as if Bach was a quake victim, but he’d been badly injured in the fight himself and ended up comatose in hospital.
‘This was what Gina and her father pieced together,’ Glen said. ‘Mario had told Sergei Costi all about it and how he planned to kill Bach.’
‘Mario must have really done some work on Bach,’ I said. ‘Somehow he found out that he was Werner Schmidt. Was Mario a drinker?’
‘Gina says he was,’ Glen said.
‘He phoned up Antonio Fanfani when he was drunk. That was just before opportunity knocked on December 28. That explains why Sergei ordered the work to be done on the Ocean Street place. He was hoping to clean away anything that Bach might have left lying around.’
Reynolds consulted a file. ‘Mr Costi wanted to demolish the building, but he was prevented by a regulation requiring buildings over a certain age to be inspected for possible heritage value.’
‘Sergeant,’ Morton said.
Glen was beginning to look tired, but she took a drink of water and went on. ‘Renato was in the house. He listened to all this. He must’ve because… after, I heard him shouting and raving and parroting Gina’s exact words back at her. He must’ve locked his mother and father and the housekeeper away somewhere. Then he burst in on Gina and me. He was completely crazy. We fought over my weapon, but he got it and… he shot me. I heard things after that, but I was in shock and none of it makes much sense until I saw Cliff on the stairs.’
‘Mr Hardy has been of considerable use,’ Morton said smoothly.
‘Did they find bodies at the house?’ Glen said.
Morton nodded. ‘Two.’
Then I remembered that the only person I’d told about Bach’s interest in the lagoon was Ted Withers and he was dead. It wasn’t the time to make the point. Morton asked a few more questions and invited Reynolds and the liaison man to do the same. There was nothing more of substance to add. He thanked Glen and wished her a speedy recovery.
‘I’d like a to have a word with Cliff, please,’ Glen said.
Morton put his braided cap on. ‘Certainly. I’d like to see you, too, Mr Hardy. In ten minutes, shall we say?’
They trooped out and I went to the bed and kissed Glen’s now slightly damp forehead. Then I took her hand and played with it, the way you do. ‘I’m sorry about your father,’ I said. ‘He gave it a very good try.’
Her eyes were wet. She sniffed and shook her head. ‘He was corrupt. He knew that I knew. It was very difficult. Only a matter of time. I’m glad he didn’t finish up inside or on the front seat of his car with a shotgun. You know’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘What does Morton want with you now?’
‘I don’t know. If he wants to get nasty I’ll say I won’t tell him where the other bodies are.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Where are they?’
‘I think they’re in the Redhead lagoon.’
‘Jesus. I think I want to get out of this place. If I’m fit I might apply for a transfer to Sydney.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ I said.
Assistant Commissioner Morton wanted to debrief me the way he had Glen. I wasn’t too co-operative, but I did tell him about the lagoon.
He shook his head. ‘Weird world isn’t it? You come up here looking for a killer and you find him. You know where Mario Costi is, don’t you?’
‘No.’
‘He’s about two floors above.’
‘What’ll happen there?’
‘Nothing. He’s not improving, close to brain dead. They’ll be pulling the plug pretty soon.’
I didn’t envy the cops what they had to do next-dragging ponds, identifying bodies and informing relatives is not fun, but I didn’t imagine much of that would fall to Morton’s lot. He had something else on his mind.
‘Did you get much of a chance to talk to Ted Withers before he went over the top, Hardy?’
‘Not much. Why?’
‘I just wondered about his state of mind.’
I didn’t say anything and we walked down the hospital corridor to the elevator. Reynolds and the stenographer had gone and we had the lift to ourselves. ‘I’m in a position to do Glenys Withers a bit of good,’ Morton said.
‘I imagine you are.’
‘Or not, as the case may be.’
I nodded. We reached the ground floor and Morton reached for my hand again, the way he had the day before. It was an odd gesture for such a restrained man. ‘There are some ladies and gentlemen from the press wanting to talk to you. Watch what you say, won’t you?’
I did better than that. I jumped back into the lift, went up a few floors to where I could get across to another wing, and left the building through a side entrance. After the siege, the cops had taken me back to my motel. I’d caught a cab to the hospital; now I caught another one to where my car was parked near the police building with an infringement notice flapping in the breeze under the windscreen wiper. I wondered whether Morton was in a position to fix it for me.
I drove to Dudley and pulled up outside the Jacobs’ house in Bombala Street. There was a red BMW parked outside. May Jacobs met me at the door with a smile and a kiss.
‘Ralph’s here,’ she whispered. ‘He’s having a good talk with his father. The first in years. They’re going to the football today.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said.
‘I want to thank you. It was an awful business. Those poor people.’
There had been some rather garbled coverage of the activity in Dudley and Kahiba in the press, but May would have picked up some more solid dope from the locals. I heard a laugh coming from further inside the house. May smiled.
‘I just came to explain a few things to Horrie or try to,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how he feels about Oscar Bach now but
‘We talked last night. He said Oscar must have had a split personality-crazy and not crazy. Even a man who did such awful things needs a friend.’
It seemed as good a way as any to leave it. Bach may have been cultivating Horrie to get at his money or his granddaughters. We’d never know. ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘that’s about it.’
‘I want to pay you, Cliff.’
‘Horrie already paid me. I’ll be going, May. Give them both my regards.’
She kissed me again. ‘Ralph says you beat him in a fight.’
I grinned and the healed cuts on my face hurt a little. I also felt some pain in the knee Wrecker had worked on. ‘It was a draw,’ I said.
I was halfway back to Sydney, heading in the other direction, before I remembered Helen Broadway’s phone message: ‘Give me a call, hey?’ Well, maybe I would, but then again, maybe not. For a man in my game there’s something very attractive about a policewoman who knows the score and has a house on the coast.