Evans and his offspring went to work and school respectively. As I tidied up the bedding, I realised that I had a hangover from last night’s wine. Not a bad hangover, but not a thing to take up in a pressurised plane. I mentioned the fact to Jo and she came through with the sort of non-judgmental practical advice Grant had benefited from for twenty years.
‘There’s a spa and sauna close by that Grant uses for his hangovers. Why don’t you give it a try?’
Every passing moment made it seem like a better idea; I got the address, gave Jo my thanks and went out to the car. The morning was clear and cold; I wiped moisture from the windows and finished up with a handful of grey, oily tissues that made me feel decidedly worse. The Executive Spa was a concrete building with tinted glass windows and deep carpet, even in the changing room. Another item on Terry Reeves’ bill.
I hired swimming togs and ploughed up and down the little heated pool until arm weariness and boredom forced me to stop. I soaked in the spa, massaging all the working parts with the bubbles, and sat in the sauna until I’d sweated out all the toxins.
I towelled off and sauntered into the well-equipped gym. I set the Nautilus machine shamefully low and did some light work on that. Then I skipped a bit and tapped away at the heavy bag, putting more into moving my feet than my punches. The gym instructor bounced across the way they do.
‘You’ve done it before,’ he said.
‘Just amateur, fair while ago.’
‘You’ve got into some bad habits-you’re opening your fist, slapping.’
I closed my fist and punched again.
He nodded approvingly. ‘Where’re you from?’
‘Sydney. Going back today.’
He sighed. ‘Jeez, I wish I could go to Sydney. Did you know that sixty-eight per cent of people in Melbourne wish they were somewhere else?’
Great place, Melbourne, you can get sociology from gym instructors.
The treatment worked. I felt so good when I got on the plane at Tullamarine that I slept all the way to Sydney.
I’d left the Falcon on an upper level of the airport car park, slotted in next to a wall. The car looked lonely now with empty spaces all around. My sprightly feet rang on the concrete and I reached, without fumbling, into the right pocket for my keys, feeling alert and competent. That’s when they jumped me. Perhaps it was the restorative effects of the spa, or the gym workout or the nap on the plane, but my reactions were sharp. The first one, a big, flabby-looking guy, tried to grab me to give his mate something to work on: he got my bag swung hard into his face and then my fist driving in under the nose and up, which hurts. He bellowed with pain and backed away. That left the smaller man grabbing empty air: I brushed his wild swing away, moved in close and jolted him under the heart. He grunted and folded in two; I kept my fist classically closed and hooked him below the ear. He sighed and went down on one knee. The big man came back but I was in a crouch by then, still moving, and I came up from the crouch and butted him in the stomach. My head was hard, his belly was soft; he took the butt with all my moving weight behind it in the worst place. He collapsed, twisted onto his side and was violently sick.
We were only a few feet from my car; the blood was pounding in my head and I felt as if I could lift them both up and throw them over the parapet for a five-storey drop.
I half wanted to. Instead, I half-nelsoned the smaller man to his feet, rushed him forward and banged his face into the side of the Falcon. While he was thinking about that I opened the door and got the Colt. 45 out from its clip under the dashboard.
I took a punt that the smaller man was the smarter of the two. I rolled the sick one over with my foot and showed him the gun. He was pale already and at the sight of the gun he went a bit paler. He was fat and didn’t seem to have the temperament for the line of work he was in.
‘Pick up the bag and put it in the car.’ I jerked the Colt to underline the order and he got up slowly, bent painfully for my bag and went across to the car. He stepped around his groaning colleague and put the bag on the passenger seat.
‘Now say goodbye to your mate for a while and piss off.’ Another gesture with the gun and he was on his way. I’d been lucky; no-one had come up to the level while the fracas was on and he looked very lonely as he limped off down the ramp. I couldn’t expect the luck to last, so I swung the gun around and dropped onto my knee beside the other man. We were sheltered behind the car and he looked very scared.
‘Get in the car,’ I said. ‘Do everything right and you still have a chance.’
He swore, to give himself courage, but he got into the car. As I got in, a car roared up the ramp and into a space a few metres away. I looked at my companion; he had an acne-scarred face, sparse lank hair and an expression that suggested he was out for revenge against the whole world. If I’d been drawing up the battle orders I’d have sent him in ahead of Flabby. All things considered, he’d recovered pretty well from the battering he’d had; his wind was coming back and he was working on it, taking medium deep breaths slowly.
‘It’s pretty quiet here,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the windows up as you see, and I can wrap something around this. I can put a bullet in you anywhere I like.’
The new arrival slammed his door and went over in the direction of the lift. The noise was muffled, almost squishy in the closed car.
‘Hear that? The bullet that cripples you can make less noise than that. Understand?’
He nodded and took a slow breath.
‘You can stop working on your wind; you’ve been out-classed; accept it. Now if you want to walk away from here you’re going to have to do some good talking. I’m going to have to be pleased with what you say.’
He nodded again and didn’t move his diaphragm.
‘You’re in with the people who’re nicking the cars?’
‘Sort of.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I know who you’re talkin’ about. I’ve heard of them. But there’s a couple of… there’s people between me and them, like.’
‘What were you supposed to do here?’
‘Get you to tell me where the tapes and the film was.’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘That’s all I bloody know-tape of a voice on the phone and a fuckin’ film.’
‘What sort of film?’
‘I know what’s on it, that’s all. There’s a bloke gettin’ into a car and drivin’ away. That’s all.’
‘And I’m supposed to have these things?’
His bitter look got more bitter, and I moved the gun a fraction to remind him who held the cards.
‘’s right. Yeah.’
‘Next question-who’s the man you go through? Don’t worry about him going through someone else.’
He shook his head. Although he was over thirty, some of the acne scars had an angry recent look as if the condition was occasionally still active. ‘No way. I’m a dead man if I open me mouth on that.’
‘You could be dead if you don’t, or worse.’
He looked at me. Now that he’d recovered from his belting and fright he looked intelligent under the anger, intelligent and maybe capable of judgement.
‘Bullshit. You won’t do a thing. I’m going.’
He lifted the locking button, opened the door and slipped out. Moving slowly away he stuffed his shirt back into his pants, hunched his shoulders and walked. He’d judged me accurately; I watched him go-moving loosely, indifferently, almost strolling and without a suggestion of a backward look.
He looked better than I felt. The adrenalin rush had stopped, leaving me feeling drained and feeble. It was something they warned us about in Malaya and something well-known to the snipers. More men died in the post-battle, let-down period than in the heat of the fight. I started the car and warmed the motor properly; I put the gun on the seat and wound down both front windows for better visibility. Sensible precautions against my attackers having another go, but what I really wanted was a quiet drive home and a steadying drink.
The quiet drive I got, but not the drink because every bottle in the place had been smashed and the wine cask had had a carving knife put through it. The mess upstairs included a cover ripped from my foam mattress, lifted carpets and the overturning of everything that had stood on legs. Books and papers were torn and scattered around and the contents of drawers and cupboards had been emptied out and sorted through with a claw hammer. The technique had been much the same as at Mountain’s- more of a rummage than a search, more of a destructive rampage than a teasing out of hiding places. The work on the bottles and cask was pure malice, reaction to the inevitable failure of the visitation.
I started cleaning up in a haphazard fashion and my mind ran on the obvious track until I came across two sound cassettes that had had their tapes drawn out and cut and my three video cassettes that had been pulverised by a hammer. I mused on taped telephone voices and film of a man driving away in a car. Secret service, undercover stuff. I left the mess and made instant coffee as an aid to thought.
He wouldn’t tape his instructions, film the pick-up and use the material to put pressure on the firm, would he? Then I remembered the conversation Erica Fong and I had had about Mountain and I grabbed the phone which my visitors had left intact. There was no answer at Mountain’s number or at the one listed for E. Fong in Bondi Junction. Centennial Park, who are they kidding? The phone book tells it like it is. I stood in the mess and heard the phone ring ten times. Maybe she’d taken Max for a walk in the park and had got into a deep and meaningful with Patrick White.
I hung up wishing for about the hundredth time that I could be dealt out of this game. I didn’t like my cards and I didn’t like Mountain. Erica would be better off without him. Maybe I could tackle the job for Terry Reeves in another way. Then I saw something on the floor I hadn’t seen before. Helen had given me a copy of The Macquarie Dictionary to resolve our frequent disputes about spellings and pronunciations. The book had been dismembered; pages had been torn out and crumpled and the covers had been ripped from the broken binding. That made it more personal.
I kept ringing Erica as I finished tidying up and throwing things away. I told myself the place had been getting too cluttered anyway. Force of habit took me out to the letterbox which is hidden in a place in a hedge by the front gate known only to the postman and me. I took the priority-paid envelope out and went back into the house, wondering if the ransackers had found the miniature bottles of Jameson’s Irish whisky Cy Sackville had given me, souvenir of a legal conference in Dublin. They hadn’t; the little bottles nestled behind the biscuit tin that hadn’t had any biscuits in it since Hilde left. I got the foil top off and poured the small measure over a couple of ice cubes and silently toasted my Irish ancestors.
The writing on the envelope was unfamiliar. I thumb-nailed it open and took out a couple of photocopy pages and a sheet of tinted, lined notepaper. In a round, young hand Erica Fong had written:
Dear Cliff,
I’ve gone to Nice to try to find him. I got the postcard two days ago. I looked through the house very thoroughly but all I could find was some notes about seeing a psychiatrist. I enclose copy of the postcard and the notes and I’ll get in touch as soon as I find anything out. regards,
Erica F.
Mountain’s two quarto pages of single-spaced notes were perhaps unique in psychological literature. They took the form of an account of the analytical session from the patient’s point of view and included phrases like, ‘Dr Holmes appeared ill at ease’ and ‘Holmes has built a house of fantasy upon foundations of illusion.’ I put the notes aside for closer study later and picked up the other sheets which were copies of both sides of a postcard.
The picture showed a large city square at night. The roads were busy and the pavement cafes were thronged. On a building more or less centred in the picture, the words ‘Hotel des Anges’ were mounted in neon. The card was undated and addressed to Erica Fong. It read:
Dearest Fong,
I am here to check a few people out, including myself. I haven’t had a drink for more than a week and the world’s not as I thought it was — much worse.
A bientot, my dear little sloppy, B.
The ‘B’ was written in the large sloping hand of the notes, but the message on the card was typewritten. I took the photocopied page across to a lamp and studied it under light. There was a slight line around the text that didn’t seem to be part of the card. Conclusion: the message had been typed on a piece of paper which had been stuck onto the card. I didn’t have the faintest idea what this piece of deduction meant, but I was pleased to have worked something out. I was also glad that Erica Fong wasn’t hanging around Sydney somewhere to be visited by people with hammers looking for tapes and films.
I sipped the Jameson’s and tried to recall what I knew about Nice. Not much. Gary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief; Graham Greene wrote about a corrupt mayor; nice beach, they say, and someone named a biscuit after the place. I hadn’t eaten for some hours and I was feeling the effects of the Jameson’s just a little; that was alright with me. I opened the other bottle to feel the effects some more; there’s more in those titchy bottles than you think. What else did I have to do? I was sitting in my ransacked house waiting for a Chinese girl to tell me what she’d found out in Nice. Bizarre, Hardy, I thought. Bizarre. Then the phone rang.
‘Cliff Jameson,’ I said.
‘Oh, God, Cliff. It’s Helen. Are you drunk?’
‘No.’
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘What do you mean, nowhere? I’ve been phoning for a day.’
‘I mean nowhere-I went to Melbourne.’
‘Oh, sorry. Are you alright? I’ve been missing you.’
‘Me too. You, I mean. D’you like polygamy?’
There was a pause and then her voice contained a note of caution. ‘It’s all right, it’s better than celibacy. You’re not being celibate, are you?’
I grunted. ‘It’s been a funny day. I’ve won a fight and now I have to clean up my house.’
‘I’m glad you won the fight. Well, I just wanted to hear your voice. I’m fine of course, thanks for asking.’
‘I’m sorry, love. I’m in the middle of a shitty case. I can’t see the tunnel, let alone the bloody light. Have you ever been to Nice?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nice?’
‘Don’t. That joke is prehistoric. Yes, it’s great-good beach, you’d love it. Are we going?’
‘Maybe. You know a big square there, lots of traffic?’
‘Place Massena it sounds like. What’s all this about?’
‘I wish I knew. How’s the farm and the radio station and the winery and the daughter?’
‘Don’t be bitchy, Cliff. I can’t help it if your life’s an empty shell without me.’
‘I miss you, that’s all. First month’s the worst. By the fifth month Helen’ll be just something to go with Troy.’
‘Huh. What’ve you been reading?’
‘The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People.’
‘I’ve read that. Who d’you like best?’
‘Bertrand Russell.’
‘Why?’
‘I like him best at everything. Who’s yours?’
‘Guess.’
I guessed and didn’t get it right and we laughed. It went on like that for a while until she was so real to me again that I felt I could reach out and touch her. It was a good feeling. I had nothing but good feelings about Helen Broadway. I wondered how good old Mike and the kid would feel about a three month rotation.