Guilt hit me when I jockeyed the Falcon into my street and saw Glen’s red Nissan Pulsar parked outside my house. She’d left it at a garage for some repairs and made arrangements for it to be delivered back to me. The keys would be in my gas meter box and I was to drop a cheque Glen had left with me off at the garage with the amount entered. One of those little domestic things lovers do for each other whether co-habiting or not. Glen took good care of the car, much better care than I took of mine and the sight of it brought my feelings for her back with a rush.
I’d had a lot of trouble driving from Rozelle to lan’s surgery and then home. Each gear change was an agony and I’d annoyed many drivers by trying to negotiate in second. The driving had left me sweaty and irritated and a conscience didn’t help. I slammed into the house, kicking angrily at the pile of mail that had come through the slot and, consequently, losing balance and instinctively reaching out with my left hand to steady myself. The pain was like a pulled muscle, a sprain and a severe cramp all at once. The answering machine in the living room was winking and I gave it the finger as I went past. I blundered on through to the kitchen, hoping that there was something for the cat to eat because I knew it’d be in from its wandering life as soon as it heard movement in the house.
Sure enough, it jumped through a window and rubbed against my legs. It was in luck because there was a chicken carcass in the fridge-the detritus of a meal I’d long forgotten. I stripped off the meat and fat and put it on the plate for the cat who then thought of me as a king. Some king. My clothes were overdue for a wash and a good airing. I stripped off and shaved in the bathroom, accustoming myself to using the razor without employing my left hand to check for missed areas. As with the shirt problem, it was like learning to shave all over again. My face was puffy and bruised where Baldy had hit me.
As I shaved I thought of my paternal grandfather who I remembered as a big, but decaying old man with an Irish brogue. Hardy isn’t an Irish name, and the story in the family was that grandad had left his true name behind on some army muster or ship’s company list when he’d deserted or jumped ship. My sister, who’s interested in such things, is pursuing the matter. She was convinced about O’Halloran some time back, but that may have changed. The old boy died when I was about five, but I distinctly remember the pinned-up sleeve of his striped pyjama jacket. Having outlived his wife, a rare thing for a man then and now, he occupied a sleep-out behind the house of Aunt Grace, one of my father’s sisters in Drummoyne. He’d lost the arm in a south-coast coal mine, but I could recall him telling me that he suffered rheumatism and arthritis in it, just as in the heavily tattooed limb that remained. He was full of blarney as I later realised, but I experienced a surge of sympathy for him across the years-my left arm was useless, but it hurt like hell.
Perhaps sensing my mood, the cat ate and left. I finished cleaning myself up and put on fresh clothes. I ate dry biscuits and cheese and drank white wine from a cask. The messages on my answering machine were routine-a man getting back to tell me that his wife had returned and that I needn’t bother looking for her, and one from the garage asking when I was going to pay the bill on the Pulsar. I’d never intended to look for the wife-the signs that she’d absented herself to throw a scare into him were as obvious as her motives. He was rich and she was poor; he was old and she was young. I hadn’t expected to make any money out of that one. The woman would probably do all right in the end. I took Glen’s cheque from between the leaves of the Macquarie Dictionary and looked at it sourly, telling myself that her signature was the bold flourish of someone who had money in the bank.
I was sinking into a torpor of self-pity and guilty rationalising. How was I to know who she was screwing when she was away on tour? What about those young constables she admired and those older officers who could be very useful to her career? What could I offer her except sex and some laughs and a slice of my seedy, underpaid, heavily mortgaged, over-regulated semi-professional life?
It was early afternoon; I had a slight buzz on from the wine and was beginning to think about another dose of pain-killers for the arm. Very positive stuff. Ian had told me about several exercises useful for frozen shoulders. I stood in a door frame and screamed as I tried to raise the left arm up to the lintel.
As I swore and raged there was a knock on the front door. I was just in the mood for a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness. I tramped down the hall and jerked the door open ready to snarl.
A motorcycle courier stood on the step swinging his helmet from one hand. His machine was ticking in the street. ‘Mr Hardy?’
I nodded and he handed me a large envelope. ‘No signature needed. Have a nice day.’
I took the package and he was helmeted and astride his bike before I could think of a response. ‘I’ll try,’ I said as he gunned his motor and shot off down the street. I got Glen’s keys and the garage bill from the meter box and took the whole lot inside. The envelope was a big padded postbag, sealed by a strip of masking tape with my name and address printed in block capitals on the outside. No indication of where it had come from. I flexed it uninterestedly, thinking it was probably something from my accountant-some new superannuation plan or savings scheme I didn’t need. I dumped it on the kitchen bench and looked at the garage bill. Three hundred and fifty-two dollars and sixty-five cents for work on the electrical system and brakes.
‘Automobiles are the curse of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,’ I said aloud. I filled in the amount on Glen’s cheque and put it with the account.
My arm was hurting and I wondered if the effect of twenty-five years’ use of pain-killers was cumulative. I took a couple more with wine and used my Swiss army knife to slit open the envelope. I up-ended it. The files I’d found in Scott Galvani’s office and had taken from me a few hours later fell out.
Motorcycle couriers all look alike and there was nothing to distinguish the one who’d brought the package from a hundred others. The envelope was completely unmarked. I shook it thoroughly but no note saying ‘Sorry, taken in error’, fell out. I looked through the folders but could see no sign that anything had been removed or tampered with. The delivery of the files in pristine condition increased my already high level of anger. Here was I doing my Lord Nelson act, facing months of incapacity and all for nothing. It would almost have been better to have got them back ripped to shreds or soaked in blood. At least that might have meant something.
I read the files through carefully before phoning the business number for Angela Prudence Cornwall. Ms Cornwall was apparently a partner in a company controlling a number of up-market florist shops. I would have expected the recession to hit hard at the flower business-after all, you can go out and gather them for free if you try-but the addresses were prestigious and the phone operator who put me through to Ms Cornwall sounded very secure in her job.
‘Angela Cornwall.’
‘My name’s Hardy, Ms Cornwall. I’m a friend and former colleague of Scott Galvani who was engaged by you some time before he was killed. You were aware that he was dead, I take it?’
The voice was as cool as a lily. ‘Of course, yes. I was very sorry to hear about it. May I ask how you come to know about my dealings with Mr Galvani?’
I explained to her that I was tidying up loose ends in Scott’s business affairs, had no intention of prying into her circumstances and was bound by the PEA code of confidentiality, having thought the expression up on the spot.
‘I see. Well, what can I do for you?’
‘Did Mr Galvani conclude the enquiry?’
‘Did I pay him, do you mean?’
‘No, not at all. I’m uninterested in that side of things. I imagine his executor and accountant will concern themselves there. I’m talking about the professional aspect.’
‘Very well. Mr Galvani made me an entirely satisfactory verbal report and I sent him a cheque. He undertook to submit a written version and a full accounting, but it hasn’t arrived. I assumed that.. well, what happened to him, prevented that. I’m sorry, did you say that you were a friend of his?’
‘Yes, I was. Thank you for your cooperation, Ms Cornwall.’
‘I liked Mr Galvani. He was knowledgeable about flowers.’
‘Was he? I didn’t know that, but I’m not surprised. He was knowledgeable about a lot of things.’
‘Can you tell me, Mr Hardy, what happens to the records of private investigators in these circumstances? I take it you’ve read Mr Galvani’s file on me. I might say that I’m soon to be married.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘Thank you, but you will understand my concern.’
The question had never occurred to me. My own files, chaotic though they were and some of them no doubt eroded by time and insects, were full of secrets. Some cryptically concealed, others obvious. I wondered what had happened to the records of all our predecessors, stretching back into the ‘Brownie and bedsheets’ era and encompassing almost every known human foible. I had no answer-probably deposited on the various city dumps or burnt-but I decided to play Ms Cornwall straight, the way she’d played me. I told her I didn’t know the answer in general terms, but that I would personally forward her file to her, if that was what she wanted.
‘Thank you, Mr Hardy. That is very understanding of you.’
‘As a last question, how long was it before he was shot that you heard from him? I take it he telephoned?’
‘Not at all. He came to see me in the shop at Double Bay. He told me about the new job he’d taken and, well, he spoke to me for some time.’
‘Could you tell me how he behaved, how he looked and sounded?’
‘I thought there was more to this than you admitted. What are you up to, Mr Hardy?’
‘I haven’t been entirely frank with you. His wife has hired me to investigate his death. I’m in the process of eliminating…’
‘I understand. I wish you luck. I saw Mr Galvani two nights before he died. I would say he was extremely tense and agitated.’
I wasn’t nearly as lucky with the Roberts file. The footballer’s private number didn’t answer and a club official told me that Mr Allan Thurgood, the secretary responsible for inserting the no-drinking clause in Roberts’ contract, was on leave. Brian Roberts, I was informed, would be training at the club’s practice ground in Marrickville later in the afternoon. I decided that I had to get out of the house. Driving the Falcon was out of the question but I thought I could probably manage the Pulsar’s automatic transmission. I collected my bits and pieces and Glen’s keys and went out to the car. After a bit of experimentation, I discovered I could engage drive and release the handbrake with my right hand. By keeping the left hand low on the wheel, steering wouldn’t be a problem and, even if it did hurt a bit, I’d been told that was therapeutic.
The car handled well and I complimented the man in charge at the Newtown service station where I left the cheque.
‘Good. How’s Glen?’ he said.
I used to play football myself in Marrickville when I was a member of schoolboy and junior district teams. Then it was a solidly WASP working-class area, always with a few more churches than I felt comfortable with. It’s changed enormously over the past decades with Greeks, Turks and Vietnamese moving in and giving it life and variety. I drove down Addison Road and took the turn at Livingstone Street just to see how the bizarre three-winged building on that corner was looking. My work rarely took me to this part of Sydney and I hadn’t seen the place in years. The building is like a cross between a Moorish palace and a redbrick university administration block. I’d been told that it was put up by a squatter with a large family and has served many functions since, like a Salvation Army training school. I was pleased to see that it was still standing. At a guess it had been converted into apartments.
The football ground was beside the Cooks River to the east of the municipal golf course. The Gregory’s told me that a strip of parkland ran alongside the river for several kilometres, with picnic spots and barbecues. The last time I was close to the Cooks River I would have thought twice about eating anything within a hundred metres of it. I parked near the entrance to the golf club, ducked under a fence and went through a clump of trees and across a stretch of grass to the oval. I seemed to be haunting sporting arenas lately, but this time I had a Smith amp; Wesson. 38 revolver in a holster that sat above my right buttock. It might have made me look a little lop-sided, but a one-armed private detective can’t afford to take any chances.
The afternoon was cool and a couple of players were already jogging around the oval, slinging a ball between them, getting ready for the time when their courage and collarbones would be on the line. I wandered across to the group of watchers, some in shorts and singlets, others in civvies. They were standing in several knots of two or three, watching the ones doing the sweating. A couple of the onlookers broke away and joined the doers. My arm was aching and I hooked my left thumb into my belt and let it hang there. An overweight man in white singlet and shorts and wearing a floppy hat jogged out onto the oval. Despite his size he ran well, an old athlete gone to seed but retaining the moves. He gesticulated and shouted and the players fell into a series of routines, doing his bidding.
I moved into the shade, close to four men, two white and two black, who were standing around a half-carton of beer cans. Resch’s Pilsener. Good beer.
I used to be a Rugby Union man and only got interested in League when I took up with Glen, who is a passionate Newcastle supporter. I’m still divided about the merits of the two codes, and was a little surprised to see that the players seemed to be concentrating on speed and ball-handling skills rather than the more physical stuff. One of the Aborigines, built more on the lines of a tennis player than a footballer, plucked a can from the box and came towards me.
‘Fancy a beer, mate?’
I accepted the can and opened it awkwardly, one-handed. ‘Thanks.’
‘Wouldn’t be from the press, would you?’
I drank some of the cold beer and shook my head. ‘No.’
He finished off his own can and crushed it expertly in his hand. ‘Club supporter, eh?’
‘No.’
Our conversation attracted the attention of another member of the drinking group, who joined us. He wore a blue shirt with white collar and cuffs, striped tie and red braces. He had a can in each hand and offered one to the Aborigine who declined with a shake of his head. This man was red-headed with a fair and freckled skin. He was about my size or a fraction taller, around the 185 centimetre mark. He was ten years younger than me and carried a good deal more flab. Vita would not have approved.
‘Who’s this, then?’ he said.
The Aborigine glanced at the players and winced. ‘Jesus, Brian,’ he said.
I took a long sip of the beer that was warming up fast but still tasting good the way properly brewed beer should. ‘Is Brian Roberts out there?’
‘Who wants to know?’ the redhead said.
‘Told you, I’ve got some business with him.’ I turned to the Aborigine. ‘Could you point him out to me, please?’
‘In the red singlet. Mad bastard.’
‘What’s it to you?’ The redhead again, and the can he was drinking wasn’t his first in recent memory, maybe his fifth or sixth.
‘Told you, I’ve got some business with him.’
I watched the big, dark man in the red singlet and white shorts weave and twist his way down the field, avoiding two men detailed by the coach to stop him, and intimidating another into stepping aside. He seemed to moving from side to side excessively. “Why’s he doing all that fancy side-stepping?’
‘Had a knee problem,’ the Aborigine said. ‘Had surgery on it at the end of the season and now he’s testing it out. Going too hard, like always. He’s my brother. He’s been like that since he could fucking walk, probably before.’
I laughed, put the can down on the grass and stuck out my hand. ‘Cliff Hardy.’
‘Lenny Roberts. What’s wrong with your left hand?’
‘I buggered the shoulder. Frozen shoulder they call it.’
The blow that came almost from behind staggered me. I’d turned slightly to talk to Roberts, and the redhead had thumped me somewhere around the left shoulder-blade. I left the can on the ground and turned back towards him.
‘I’m Bob Grady-Brian’s manager.’
‘Bullshit you are,’ Roberts said. ‘Brian sacked you a couple of weeks ago. Fuck-all good you ever did him.’
This seemed to infuriate Grady and to decide him to take out his anger on me. He raised a meaty, freckled fist and waved it in my face. ‘Some kind of sports agent are you, shithead?’ he roared. ‘Turds like youse are fuckin’ everything up.’
He swung a punch at me from close range, but he was so badly balanced and poorly coordinated it was child’s play to avoid it. The anger that had been building in me since the incident in Eastern Park reached flashpoint. I swayed back from the inept punch and hit Grady three times-all with my right-in the ribs, nose and throat and he went down like a kite when the wind drops.
‘Hey, man,’ Roberts shouted in my ear. ‘Hey, take it easy!’
I realised that Grady had sagged to his knees and that I was setting up to finish him off the way it had happened to me the day before. I pulled the punch and bent down for my can. ‘You’re right. Sorry. I didn’t mean for anything like this to happen.’