If I hadn’t been so busy worrying about money and my carburettor-the sort of problems that beset your average private detective in the spring-I would have taken note of them out in the street. The car I did notice-a silver Mercedes, factory fresh. But then, that’s not an impossible sight in St Peter’s Lane. We get the odd bookie dropping by, a psychoanalyst or two, the occasional tax avoidance consultant. I also saw a man and a woman in the car, nothing discordant about that really, as I went into the building and up to my office to move the bills and accounts rendered around
I was at my desk wanting a cigarette (but fighting against it), with a slight breeze from the open window disturbing the dust, when the door buzzer sounded. I got up and let them in. The woman walked over to the solidest chair and plonked herself down in it; she needed everything the springing could give her-she must have been close to six feet and wouldn’t have made the light heavyweight limit. Her hair was jet black and her make-up was vivid. Of women’s clothes I’m no judge; hers looked as if they’d been made for her out of good material. She got cigarettes in a gold case out of a shiny bag, lit up, and waited for the man to do whatever he was going to do.
He was a plump, red-faced little number with lots of chins and thin hair. His dark blue suit had been artistically cut, but the unfashionable lines of his body had easily won out. He looked like a funny, little fat man, but I had a feeling that his looks were deceptive.
‘I’m Horace Silverman, Mr Hardy’, he said. ‘This is my wife, Beatrice. I’m in real estate.’
I nodded; I hadn’t thought he was a postman.
‘We are concerned about our son’, Silverman went on. ‘His name is Kenneth.’ I opened my mouth, but he lifted a hand to silence me. ‘Kenneth left home a year ago to live with other students. He was attending the university.’
‘Was?’ I said alertly.
‘Yes. He suspended his studies; I believe that’s the term. He also changed his address several times. Now we don’t know where he is, and we want you to find him.’
‘Missing Persons’, I said.
‘No! We have reason to believe that Kenneth is in bad company. There may be… legal problems.’
‘How bad?’
‘The problems? Oh, not bad. A summons for speeding, a parking violation. Others may be pending.’
‘It doesn’t sound serious. You’d be better off using the police, scores of men, computers…’
The red deepened in his face and his big, moist mouth went thin and hard; any affability he’d brought in with him had dropped away.
‘I said no!’ He slammed his palm down on my desk. ‘I’m involved in some very delicate business negotiations; very delicate, with a great deal of money involved. The slightest complication of my affairs, the slightest hint of police hanging about, and they could fall through.’ He got the words out with difficulty through the rising tide of his anger. He seemed intolerant of opposition. Maybe Kenneth knew what he was doing. The woman blew smoke and looked concerned but said nothing.
‘Okay, okay’, I said. ‘I’m glad of the work. I charge seventy-five dollars a day plus expenses. You get an itemised account. I take a retainer of two hundred dollars.’
He dipped into the bulging pocket of his suit coat and fished out a chequebook. He scribbled, ripped and handed the cheque over-five hundred dollars.
‘Do you want them shot, or tortured to death slowly?’ I said.
‘Who?’
The woman snorted ‘Horace’, crushed out her cigarette in the stand and levered herself up from the chair. I gathered that they were going.
‘Not so fast. I need names, addresses, descriptions, photographs
…’
He cut me off by hauling a large manila envelope out of his other pocket and dumping it on the desk. I hoped his tailor never saw him out on the street.
‘I’m busy’, he said shortly. ‘All you’ll need is there. Just find him, Mr Hardy, and report to me.’ He’d calmed down; he was happiest telling people what to do.
‘It could be unpleasant’, I said. ‘He might be smoking cigarettes, taking the odd drink…’
‘A full report, no punches pulled.’
‘You’ll get it.’ I opened the door and he bustled out. She cruised after him, still looking concerned. He seemed to have brought her along just to prove that the boy had a mother.
I sat down at the desk again, propped the cheque up in front of me and opened the envelope. There were three photographs, photostats of a parking ticket and a speeding summons and of a letter, dated two months back, from the Registrar of the University of Sydney. It was directed to Kenneth at an address in Wahroonga. There was also a sheet of Horace Silverman’s business paper half-covered in type.
The typed sheet gave me the low-down on Ken. Born in Sydney twenty-one years ago, six feet tall when last measured and slim of build, fair of hair with no marks or scars. The last meeting with his parents was given and dated-a dinner eight weeks back. Two addresses in the inner suburbs were listed, and it was suggested that the Registrar’s letter had been sent to Ken’s home address by mistake. His interests were given — tennis, bushwalking and politics. His major subject at university was psychology, and a Dr Katharine Garson was listed as his student counsellor.
The photos were black and white, good quality, good size. They showed a young man in his late teens or around twenty, all three shots roughly contemporaneous. Kenneth Silverman had it all-thick, wavy hair, even features, broad shoulders. I’d have taken bets that his teeth were good. One of the pictures showed him in tennis gear, and he looked right; in another he was leaning against a sports car and he looked right in that too. I couldn’t see any resemblance to Horace, maybe a little to Beatrice. There were none of those signs-weak chin, close-set eyes-that are supposed to indicate, but don’t, character deficiencies. Kenneth Silverman looked healthy and happy.
Sydney University was just down the road and Silverman’s last known address was in Glebe, my stamping ground. I went down to the street and along to the backyard of the tattooist’s shop where I keep my car. In an ideal world, I’d find the boy in Glebe before three o’clock, deposit my cheque, draw some out and be home in time to invite someone out to dinner.
The Fisher Library of the University of Sydney is a public place, like the whole campus. This statutory fact has been found useful by a few Vice-Chancellors who’ve felt the need to call the cops in. I got there a little after midday and looked up Dr Garson in the handbook-a string of degrees, senior lecturer in psychology. The Psychology Department was in one of those new concrete buidings that academics have allowed themselves to be herded into. They have as much personality as a bar of soap and, in my experience, they have a corresponding effect on the people who work in them. Not Dr Garson though; she’d done her concrete cell out with pictures that actually looked like people and places, and she had a flagon of sherry sitting on the window ledge.
‘A sherry?’ she said when she’d installed me in a chair.
‘Please; then I can show you what good manners I’ve got, how well I can sip and murmur appreciatively.’
‘Don’t bother’, she said pouring, ‘piss is piss.’ She set the glass on the desk near me and took a belt herself. ‘So you’re a private detective? Some of my colleagues wouldn’t allow you on the campus, let alone in their rooms.’
‘It’s a public place.’
She raised one plucked eyebrow. ‘So it is.’ She finished her sherry and poured another. She had fine bones in her wrists and even finer ones in her face.
‘I want some information about a student you counselled.’
She laughed. ‘Unlikely.’
‘I want to help him-find him, that is.’
She sipped. ‘Perhaps he wants to stay lost.’
‘He still can if he wants to.’ I drank some of the sherry, dry. ‘I find him, report to his father and that’s that.’
‘You don’t look like a thug, Mr Hardy, but you’re in a thuggish trade. Why should I help you?’
‘One, you’ve got an independent mind, two, Silverman might be in trouble.’
She didn’t jump out of her skirt at the name but she didn’t treat it like a glass of flat beer either.
‘Kenneth Silverman’, she said slowly.
‘That’s right, rich Kenneth who dropped out and disappeared. His Mum and Dad would like to know why. You wouldn’t be able to put their minds at rest by any chance?’
‘No.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
‘Can’t. I was surprised when he dropped out, he was doing well.’
‘What did you do about it?’
She finished her sherry with an exasperated flick. ‘What could I do? I counsel twenty students and teach another sixty. I wrote to him asking him to contact me for a talk. He didn’t.’
‘Had you counselled him much?’
‘No, he didn’t seem to need it.’
‘It looks now as if he did.’
‘Not really, he became radical at the beginning of the year. It happens to most of the bright ones, although a bit late in his case. The process sends some of them haywire but Ken seemed to be able to handle it. His first term’s work was excellent, he trailed off a bit in early second term, nothing serious, then he just suspended for no reason.’
‘Are you curious about that?’
‘Yes, very.’
‘Then help me.’
She took her time about it. The process involved pouring some more sherry and tossing back the thick mane of chestnut hair.
‘All right.’ She held up her glass and sunlight sifted through the pale, amber fluid. ‘You’d better talk to his girlfriend, Kathy Martin.’
‘How can I contact her?’
‘She’ll be at my lecture at a quarter past two. She’s a blonde with a suntan, you can’t miss her.’
‘You won’t introduce us?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
She smiled. ‘My reputation’, she said.
I finished my sherry, found out where the lecture was held, thanked her and left.
The lecture theatre sloped steeply and had front and back entrances. I killed some time with a sandwich and coffee and was back at a quarter past two watching the acolytes roll up for knowledge. I stood up the back, and tried not to be depressed by their impossible youth. One of the last students in was a blonde with her hair tied back; she had on a simple, sleeveless dress and sandals; her arms and legs and face were very brown. She sat down and got out a clipboard and looked like business as Dr Garson started in on R.D. Laing. I snuck out for coffee I didn’t want and when I got back the students were dribbling out. I approached the blonde girl as she loped out into the quadrangle.
‘Kathy Martin?’
‘Yes.’ Up close, she was the original outdoors girl with a demoralising sheen of good health.
‘My name is Hardy, I’ve been hired by Mr Horace Silverman to look for his son. I understand you were a friend.’
‘Yes.’ I got the impression she wasn’t a big talker.
‘Well, can we have a chat?’
She looked at her watch. ‘I have a tutorial in an hour and I haven’t done all the reading.’
‘It won’t take long.’ I herded her across to a bench. She sat down after looking at her watch again.
‘When did you last see Kenneth?’
‘Nearly two months ago.’
‘Where?’
‘At his place.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘He had a squat in Glebe, Sweatman Street.’ She gave me the number and I wrote it down.
‘Why was he squatting? He had plenty of money didn’t he?’
‘Kenny stopped taking his family’s money. He went left, extreme left.’
‘Did you?’
‘Not so extreme.’
‘Did you quarrel?’
She frowned. ‘A bit, but we didn’t split up, if that’s what you mean.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘No, he was around. I saw him, we did what we usually did. You wouldn’t understand.’
‘One day he was there and the next day he wasn’t?’
‘It wasn’t a day-to-day thing.’ She tapped her battered briefcase. ‘Look, I really have to read this stuff.’
‘Won’t keep you a minute. What did you do about it-Kenneth’s disappearance?’
‘Nothing. I said you wouldn’t follow. It wasn’t a disappearance. The people he was in with, they do it all the time-go north, take jobs for money, you know?’
‘So you weren’t worried.’
‘What could I do?’ she snapped. ‘I couldn’t go to the police or anything, they were really out in Kenny’s terms. I didn’t know his family. I just hoped he’d turn up; I still do.’
‘What about the people at the squat?’
‘They were raided. The house was taken over.’
‘This was after Kenneth went missing?’
She paused. ‘Kenneth sounds weird. Yes, I think so, soon after.’
I tried to digest the information and lost her while I did it. She got up and said goodbye in a voice that meant it. I thanked her and watched her walk away with that long, bouncy step and the thought came to me that Kenny had at least one good reason to stick around.
Sweatman Street has seen worse days; the big, two-storeyed, bay-windowed houses had been broken up into flats and rooms until recently, when small, affluent families had taken them over. More European cars and four-wheel-drives than beaten-up Holdens with a rust problem. The street is down near the water and getting more leafy and smart daily and the pockets of poverty in it are not old-style-port and pension-but new-style; dope and dole poverty.
The address Kathy had given me was the last house in a terrace of twenty. It featured weeds and broken glass and peeling paint. The windows at the side and back were set too high up to see in. Around the back, I was surprised to find that all the fences dividing the yards had been removed. This left an immense space which was taken up with trees, rubbish and children’s play gear in about equal proportions.
The broken windows at the back of the house were boarded up and the door was nailed shut. I gave it an experimental tug, and a shout came from behind me.
‘Hey! What’re you doing?’
He was big, with a lot of hair on his head and face. His jeans, sneakers and T-shirt were old and dirty. I stepped down from the door and tried to look innocent.
‘Just looking’, I said.
He was close enough for me to see the aggression pent up in him and something else-there was a nervousness in his movements and a frozen look in his eyes that I’d seen before in speed-freaks and pill-poppers. I opened my hands in a placating gesture which he misunderstood, perhaps deliberately. He crowded up close and bumped me back against the crumbling brick wall. I wasn’t ready for it, and lost a bit of breath.
‘Take it easy’, I said. I put out a hand to hold him back and he swept it aside. His punch was a clumsy looping effort, and I couldn’t resist it; I stepped inside and hit him short, just above the belt buckle. He sagged and I grabbed him under the arms to hold him up.
‘Let him go.’ Another man came from behind the trees; he was slighter and clean-shaven and he dropped into a martial arts pose about ten feet away from me. I let the bearded man slide down the wall.
‘Don’t be silly’, I said. ‘All this is silly; I just want to ask a few questions. I’m looking for someone.’
‘Do him, Chris’, my winded opponent said, and Chris didn’t need any encouragement. He jumped up and let go a flying kick at my shoulder. It was a good, high jump, but the trick with this stuff is not to watch the acrobatics. I ducked under it and kicked the leg he landed on out from under him. He went down in a heap and the stiff-armed chop he came up with might have looked good on the mat but was way too slow in the field. I swayed away from it and hit him just where I’d hit his mate; and that was a mistake because he had washboard muscles there, but I had the combination ready and the next punch landed on his nose where there aren’t any muscles, just nerves to cause pain and bloody vessels to break. He yelped and threw his hands up over his face.
So I had one on the ground and one with a bloody face and no information. Then I heard a slow, ironic handclap; she was standing on the steps of the next house, dark and fat in a shapeless dress and with a cigarette between her lips.
‘I didn’t start it’, I said inanely.
‘Who cares?’ She seemed to find it all funny; flesh on her face shook as she laughed and she puffed at the cigarette without touching it.
I fished out my licence card and waved it in front of Chris and his mate.
‘I’m a private detective. I’m looking for Kenneth Silverman; now who’s going to talk to me? There’s money in it.’
The woman took the cigarette out of her face and tried a fat, pursed-up smile.
‘Now you’re talking’, she said. ‘Come along here.’
‘Don’t talk to him, Fay’, the bearded one said.
‘Shut your head, Lenny. Come on whatever your name is, I’ll talk your arse off.’
I went past my opponents and followed her to a back door in the middle of the row. We went into a kitchen that was neither dirty nor clean. I smelled something vaguely familiar, and sniffed at it.
‘Candles’, she said. ‘No power in here. I can make you a coffee, though.’ She gestured at a small stove hooked up to a gas cylinder.
‘Don’t bother, thanks. Do you know Silverman?’
‘Straight to it, eh? What about the money?’
I got out ten dollars and put it on the cracked linoleum-topped table.
‘And another if I’m satisfied’, I said.
‘Fair enough.’ She bobbed her head and the fat bounced on her and ash fell down onto her lumpy chest. ‘Yeah, I knew Kenny, he lived down the end there.’ She waved back towards the scene of my triumph. ‘He left when they cleared us out; no, a bit before that.’
‘Who’s “they”?’
‘The developers-Forbes Realty. They own this terrace and a few others. Cunts!’
‘What happened?’
‘Came around one morning, about six o’clock, two big blokes with a guy in a suit. He told them what to do-they dumped all our stuff out; everything, every fucking thing, just out in the bloody street. Then they boarded the place up.’ She laughed.
‘What’s funny?’
‘I was thinking, Lenny lost a fight that morning too-it’s bullshit, that karate crap.’
I grunted. ‘You said Silverman had gone by this time?’
She squinted at the ten dollars, remembering, or pretending to. ‘Yeah, he wasn’t in the house that morning. No sign of him. I think some of his stuff got dumped, but I’m not sure. It was a pretty wild scene.’
‘Why are those two so jumpy?’
She spat the cigarette stub out onto the floor, put her thonged foot on it and fished a packet of Winfield out of her pocket.
‘We’ve only been back a couple of weeks; it’s been quiet, but you never know with that mob.’
I nodded, she lit up and puffed an enormous cloud of smoke at the window. I looked around at the artefacts of the squat-packing case shelves, a hose running in through the window to the sink, the small carton of milk on the table. She read my mind.
‘You’re wondering what a silvertail like Kenny was doing living in a dump like this?’
I pushed the money across to her. ‘Yes.’
She picked it up and put it away with the cigarettes.
‘Kenny and the others were taking on Forbes’, she spoke around the cigarette. ‘Kenny was living here as a political act, that’s what he said.’
‘Who else was in the group?’
‘Chris and Lennie, couple more. I think I’ve said enough, I don’t know a bloody thing about you. Do I get the other ten?’
‘You’re not political yourself?’
‘Shit no, I squat ‘cos it’s easy.’
‘Did they have trouble with the developers before?’
‘Oh yeah, plenty-slashed tyres, windows busted-usual things.’
‘Anything since you moved back?’
‘Not yet.’
‘What sort of action did Kenneth and the others take?’
‘Letters to the papers, attending council meetings, street meetings about the plan. They’re going to build right down to the water, you know? We won’t be able to see the bit we see now.’
I gave her another ten dollars and went across to the dusty, cobwebbed window. Blackwattle Bay was an ugly, oily gleam under the dull grey sky and its Glebe shore was a blasted landscape of car bodies, timber and scratchy grass. The view was a long way short of cheerful but there was water in it, it promised better things; it was Sydney. I thanked Fay and tramped through the back yards; Lenny and Chris weren’t in sight and I pulled myself up to one of the windows of the house Silverman had occupied. It was in bad shape, there were black-rimmed holes in the floorboards, and plumbing had been ripped out and hung limp and useless on the kitchen wall.
I drove to the post office and looked up Forbes Realty. The address in Norton Street, Leichhardt niggled at me as I wrote it down. Back in the car I found out why-Kenneth Silverman’s parking ticket had been incurred in Norton Street.
It seemed like time for some telephone research; I went home, made a drink and called a few people including Cy Sackville, my lawyer, and Grant Evans, a senior cop and friend. The results were interesting. Forbes Realty was a semi-solid firm and the word in financial circles was that it was over-extended. Its two leading shareholders were Horace Silverman and Clive Patrick. Silverman’s interests were extensive and Forbes was a small part of his action. From Evans I learned that Forbes Realty had been burglarised eight weeks back and that enquiries were proceeding, also that a Constable Ian Williamson had stopped MG sports model JLM 113 registered to Kenneth Silverman and booked the driver for speeding. Evans arranged for me to talk to Williamson and that made one favour I owed him.
I reckoned I’d put in a day. It was time to tease out a few loose ends and do some thinking. I needed to know more about Forbes Realty and Kenneth’s tactics, also, I was stalling: I didn’t like the look of things and I might have to play a very careful hand. I bought some Lebanese food on the way home and washed it down with a few drinks. Then I took a long walk around Glebe; they were selling food and drink and fun in the main road and God knows what in the back streets and lanes. I nodded to the shop and street people I knew, and avoided the dog shit and cracks in the pavement by long habit. The water was shining under a clear sky and a slight breeze brought a salty tang to the nostrils. You wouldn’t have washed your socks in the water and every tree in the place was struggling against the pollution, but it was home and I liked it. Its minute foreshore didn’t need blocking out with flats.
I went home and phoned a contact in motor registry. He got back to me an hour later with the information that Silverman’s car hadn’t been sold, traded, stolen or smashed in the last two months. It had disappeared. I went to sleep wondering about how Kenneth reconciled the car with his radicalism; I wondered whether Horace Silverman’s delicate business negotiations involved Forbes Realty, and I wondered whether Dr Garson would accept if I asked her out to dinner.
At ten in the morning I phoned Horace Silverman and asked him about his role in Forbes Realty. He went silent and I had to prompt him.
‘I can see you’ve been doing your job, Mr Hardy.’
‘I hope so.’ I was thinking fast trying to guess at his meaning and keep the upper hand. ‘Would you care to tell me all about it?’
There was another pause and then he spoke very deliberately. ‘I don’t know how you found out, but it’s true-Kenneth and I had a falling out over Forbes Realty.’
I breathed out gently. ‘How bad?’
‘Quite serious. He was very critical of the firm, I suppose you know why.’
‘Yeah. You didn’t tell me he’d stopped taking your money.’
‘That’s true too. I’m sorry I wasn’t frank, Mr Hardy. It’s painful to discuss.’
I could imagine his cocky little face expressing the pain, and part of it would be due to having to apologise and explain. It seemed like the right time to suggest that we weren’t looking at a happy ending.
‘I suppose you hoped I’d find the boy quick and easy, and none of this’d matter?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘something like that. I take it it’s not going to be easy?’
‘Right. Now, tell me about Forbes Realty; do those business negotiations you mention concern it?’
He snorted. ‘No, not at all. That’s a very big deal, Mr Hardy, and I don’t want to discuss it on the phone.’
‘Forbes is small beer to you?’
‘More or less, it’s a useful investment.’
‘Are you actively involved with the company?’
‘No, not really. I paid it some attention after Kenneth made his.. allegations.’
‘Were you satisfied?’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t enquire too deeply, other things took precedence.’
I’d heard that before-from parents who wept while children with scarred arms died in hospital, and from husbands who’d come home to empty houses and notes. Silverman broke in on these thoughts: ‘Can you tell me what progress you’ve made, Hardy?’ The Mr had gone, he was asserting himself again, and I wasn’t in the mood for it.
‘No’, I said. ‘I’ll call again when I can.’
It was close to six o’clock when I got to Erskineville; petrol fumes and dust hung in the air and Williamson, a beefy, blonde man, was sitting in his singlet on the front step of a terrace house breathing the mixture and drinking beer. We shook hands and I accepted a can.
‘Evans told me to co-operate’, he said popping another can. ‘What d’you want to know?’
I got out the photostat of the speeding summons and handed it to him. ‘Remember this?’ I drank some beer, it was very cold.
‘Yeah, pretty well. That should have come up by now. What’s going on?’
‘He’s dropped out of sight and I’m looking for him. Can you describe him?’
Williamson took a long suck on the can. ‘He didn’t get out of the car, so I can’t be sure of his height or build-I’d guess tall and slim, maybe, a bit taller and thinner than you. He was dark, narrow face…’ He held up his hands helplessly.
‘Hair?’
‘Not much of it, dark and well back at the sides, peak in front, sort of.’
‘Age?’
‘Forties.’
‘Clothes?’
‘Suit-no shirt and tie, the jacket was on the front seat.’
‘Where did he get the licence from, pocket or glove box?’
‘Can’t remember, sorry.’
‘He was alone?’
‘Right.’
‘Did you see anything in the back of the car-clothes, suitcase?’
‘Can’t be sure, the interior light was only on for a second.’
‘How was that?’
‘Well, when I went up he opened the door as if he was going to get out but then he shut it again, you know those sports cars, they’re short on leg room. Maybe there was something in the back, a bag, a parcel, I don’t know. Why?’
‘Just wanted to know if he was on a trip. You stopped him in Gymea, going south?’
‘Right. He was doing 115, like it says.’ He tapped the document and I reached over and took it back.
‘Drunk?’
‘No, he was driving okay and he looked and smelled okay.’
‘Where did he say he was going?’
‘Didn’t ask.’
‘What was his voice like?’
‘Well, Silverman, I don’t know. He wasn’t Australian, some kind of foreigner.’
I finished the beer and set the can down on the wrought iron rail. ‘Thanks for the help and the drink.’
He waved it aside. ‘What’ll you tell Evans?’
‘I’ll tell him you co-operated.’
‘Fair enough.’
The morning was grey and cool; I showered and shaved and dressed. The Smith amp; Wesson went into a holster under my jacket and I put a couple of fake business cards in my wallet. The wallet didn’t look healthy so I banked Silverman’s cheque and drew out some money in a thick stack of small notes. As I was packing it away I took another look at the speeding and parking tickets. The parking ticket was dated eight weeks back and timed 7.30 am, the speeding ticket was thirteen hours later on the same day.
Norton Street was fairly busy when I arrived but I managed to park exactly where the parking attendant had booked Kenneth’s sports car. The spot gave me a clear view of the Forbes office, which was a converted two-storey terrace house behind a high wooden fence. I could see the windows of the upper level and down a lane which ran beside the building. The parking place was legitimate now, but ceased to be so at 7 am when a clearway came into operation.
I had only the vaguest idea of what I was going to do and I tried to think which of the business cards I had was the least incredible. I decided that I knew something about books and that I might be able to gauge the probity of the firm with the right approach. The small front courtyard behind the fence was covered in bark, and there were flowers in pots on either side of the solid door. I rang the bell and the door was opened by a girl who looked too young to be working; she had big eyes swamped in make-up, a lot of straight blonde hair, five inch heels — and she still looked fifteen. I looked over her shoulder and saw a cigarette burning a hole in a piece of typing paper on her desk.
‘Hey, your desk’s on fire.’
She spun around, shrieked and snatched at the paper which knocked the butt on to the floor, where it started burning the carpet; she also knocked over a vase of flowers and spread water across the desk. She started to cry, and I went in and picked up the cigarette. I eased the big blotter out of its holder and used it to soak up the water. She stood watching me while I dried the desk and dropped the cigarette and sodden blotter into a tin wastepaper bin. I also read the letter-it advised a shopkeeper in Newtown with an unpronounceable middle-European name that his lease would not be renewed. The door had opened into what would have been the hall in the original house, but the wall had been taken out and it was now a fair sized office with two desks and several filing cabinets. The girl was fumbling on the desk for another cigarette. She got it going and sat down.
‘Thanks’, she said. ‘What can I do for youse?’
I handed her the burnt letter. ‘You’ll have to do this again.’
She looked at it. ‘Shit’, she said.
I gave her the card that said I was a secondhand bookseller and asked to see Mr Patrick.
‘You need an appointment.’ She puffed smoke awkwardly and tried to look eighteen.
‘I just prevented your office from burning down.’
She giggled. ‘What do you want to see him about?’
I pointed at the card. ‘I want to open a bookshop; I need premises.’
‘Oh, you don’t need Clive… Mr Patrick for that; Mr Skelton will do,’ she swung around to the empty desk. ‘He’s not here…’
I leaned forward and dropped my voice. ‘Well, you know, I might have to deal with Clive. You see, this is not just an ordinary bookshop, if you get what I mean.’ I did everything but wink, and she got the message. Just then a short, well-stuffed guy in a pale blue suit bustled into the room. He had a high complexion, and pink showed through the thin fair hair which was carefully arranged across his skull. He shouldn’t have been that heavy and thin on top, he wasn’t much over thirty. The girl batted her eyes at him.
‘Mr Patrick, Mr Henderson here wants to see you about business premises…’
‘Give him an appointment’, he barked. ‘Have you got the letter for that wog yet?’
She made her hands look busy on the desk. ‘It’s almost done.’
‘Snap it up, Debbie.’ He turned without looking at me once and went out of the room. The girl looked helplessly at me.
‘He’s nice really’, she said. ‘Now when are you free?’
The front door swung open and a man came through. He was tall, dressed in a narrow-cut dark suit: narrow was the word for him, he had a long, thin, swarthy face with a sharp nose, his dark eyebrows grew in a V over his yellowish, slanted eyes. He had close cropped black hair which receded on both sides and grew in a pronounced widow’s peak in the front. His wolfish eyes swept over me as if he was measuring me for a coffin, then he dismissed me.
‘Is Clive in, Debbie?’ His voice was light and, although it sounds corny, musical. It also carried a distinct foreign accent. Debbie looked scared, and nodded mutely. He brushed past me and went down the corridor.
‘Not Mr Skelton’, I said.
She pulled on the cigarette. ‘No, Mr Szabo.’
‘What does he do around here?’
She shrugged and pulled the desk calendar towards her.
‘Don’t bother’, I said, ‘I think I’ll look for a more friendly firm.’ She looked hurt behind her cigarette so I was careful not to slam the door. I scouted the building and established that it had only two exits-the front door and a gate that led out to a lane at the side. I dodged the traffic across to the other side of the road, bought a sandwich and two cans of beer and settled down to watch.
A short, plump man with ginger hair arrived after ten minutes. If he was Mr Skelton he didn’t look any more appealing than the rest of the gang. A bit after that Clive Patrick came out and drove off in a white Volvo, probably to a lunch he didn’t need. Then Debbie stepped out and tottered down the street, she came back with a paper bag, a can of Coke and a fresh packet of cigarettes.
I’d finished the sandwich and the beer and was feeling drowsy when Szabo stepped out into the lane. I whipped the camera up and started shooting. The shots in the lane wouldn’t be much good, the one when he reached the street would be better. He sniffed the air like a hunting dog and looked directly across the street at me; I snapped again and could see him registering the car, my face and the camera and then he was moving. I dropped the camera and turned the key; a bus roared away from a stop and held Szabo up. I was clear and fifty yards away when he made it round the bus; I glanced back at him, wolfish visage and widow’s peak-he didn’t look happy.
I’m about as interested in photography as I am in flower arrangement but, like a true professional, I knew the man to go to. Colin Jones was an army photographer in Malaya; if you could see it, he could photograph it. He worked for The News now and we met occasionally over a beer for me to tell him how much I envied his security and for him to say how much he wished his work was exciting like mine. I stopped in Glebe, phoned Colin at the paper and arranged to meet him outside The News building.
When I arrived Colin was standing there, smoking a cigarette and looking like a poet. The printers were on strike and there were picket lines in front of the building. The pickets were harassing the drivers who were loading the papers which were being produced by scab labour. Colin got me past the union men on the door and took me up to his smelly den.
‘Contacts do?’ he asked as I handed over the film.
I said they would, and wandered around the room looking at the pictures pinned on the walls; about fifty per cent of them were obscene. I used Colin’s fixings to make a cup of instant coffee while I waited; the milk was slightly on the turn and the coffee ended up with little white flakes in it. I fought down the craving for sugar and a cigarette, and did some thinking instead. There wasn’t much to do: Kenneth Silverman had been hanging around the Forbes Realty office one night and he hadn’t been able to take his car away the next morning. That night, a Mr Szabo of that honourable enterprise had been booked for speeding while driving south in Ken’s car, which may have had a bundle in the back. It was looking worse for Kenny every minute.
Colin sauntered in and handed me the prints. The light had been bad and my hands not all that steady, but the long, vulpine mug was there clear enough — identifiable.
‘Brilliant work, Cliff, Colin said ironically.
I pointed at his cigarette. ‘Smoking kills.’
Colin tapped the prints. ‘I’d say this joker could kill, too. When are you going to grow up, Cliff?’
‘And do what?’
He shrugged. I put the prints away and we shook hands. On the drive home I thought about what Colin had said; I was near forty and felt it; I had a house about half paid for, a car not worth a tank of petrol, two guns and some books. I had a lot of scars and some bridge work; on the other hand, no one told me what to do, I had no office politics to contend with and most of the bills got paid, eventually.
Musing like this is dangerous, it means defences are down and self-pity is up. I was still musing when I walked along the path to my house and only stopped when I felt something hard jab into my left kidney.
‘Let’s go inside, Mr Hardy’, a lilting voice said. ‘You’ve taken liberties with me, I think I’ll return the compliment.’
I half turned but the something dug deeper, painfully and I winced and stumbled forward.
‘Take the keys out, slowly, and pretend you’re coming home with the shopping.’
I did it just as he said; the envelope with the prints inside was in my breast pocket and felt as big as a bible. He told me to open the door and I did that too, trying to avoid any jerky movement and cursing myself for not observing some elementary security precautions. A car is the easiest thing in the world to trace and this was just the boy to be getting my registration down as I was driving away in Norton Street. While I’d been exchanging wisdom with Colin Jones he’d been doing his job.
There was no point standing around in the hall. He prodded me with his hand, not a gun. I went, I had no booby traps, no buttons to push to release incapacitating gas; from the way he walked and held the gun I could tell that a sidestep and a sweeping movement aimed simultaneously at his ankle and wrist would get my brains all over my wall. He turned on lights as we went and that put a couple of hundred watts burning in the kitchen. He backed away and I turned around to look at him. His face was like a V-he had a narrow head with a pointed chin; his dark eyebrows were drawn together and down under the hair that receded sharply on both sides.
He moved around a little getting the dimensions of the room straight and then he advanced on me keeping the muzzle of his gun pointed at my right eye. He was good and he’d done all this before. When he was close enough, he kicked me in the knee, and as I bent over he nudged me and I sprawled on the floor. I looked up at him thinking how nice it would be to get a thumb into one of those yellow eyes.
He smiled down at me. ‘Don’t even think about it. Now I see you have a gun under your arm and something interesting-looking in the inside pocket. Let’s have the gun-easy now.’
I got the gun out and slid it across the floor towards him. He lifted the pistol a fraction and I took out the envelope and pushed it across too. I started to pull myself up.
‘Stay there, in fact you can lie on your face.’
I could hear him fiddling with the paper and then I heard a snort.
‘You’re a rotten photographer, Hardy, I’m twice as handsome as this.’
I didn’t say anything; he was either vain or had a sense of humour; either way I couldn’t see what difference it could make to me.
‘Where’s the phone?’ I pointed and he motioned me to get up and go. The knee hurt like hell but it held my weight. The living room has some bookshelves, a TV set and some old furniture, also a telephone. He waved me into a chair and sat there opposite him while he dialled. The hand holding the gun was steady but he glanced uneasily at the photographs a couple of times. He still wasn’t happy.
‘Clive? It’s Soldier, I’ve got Hardy; he’s got a collection of pictures of me taken in Norton Street.’
The phone crackled and Soldier’s knuckles whitened around the receiver.
‘Listen, Clive’, he rasped, ‘you’re in this. If I have to knock off this guy you’re going to be part of it, not like the other one.’
He listened again and when he spoke his voice had lost its musical quality, it was full of contempt. ‘Of course I can’t. We don’t know where he’s been or who he’s talked to. There could be copies of the pictures. It’s a two-man job, Clive.’
Clive evidently said he’d drop by, because Soldier put the phone down and wiped his hand over his face edgily. I didn’t fancy what was coming up. It sounded like a pressure session, and Soldier looked like the boy who knew how to apply it. I felt sick and scared at the thought of what I had to do, but there was no cavalry coming. He told me to get up, and when we were both on our feet I made a slow, awkward lunge at him which gave him plenty of time to lay the flat of his gun along the side of my head. The sound inside my skull was like a rocket being launched and the colour behind my shut eyes was a blinding white, but I’d dipped with the blow a bit, and as I went down I thought I can do it.
I lay very still and let the blood drip into my ear. There was a lot of blood luckily, and I was so afraid that my pulse must have slowed to ten beats a minute. He bent down to look at me, swore, and went out of the room.
Getting to the bookshelf was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It seemed to take forever, but my eyes were open and I was seeing okay when I clawed out the three volumes of Russell’s auto-biography and got my hands on the old, illegal Colt I keep behind there. I pulled it out of the oilskin wrapping, cocked it and wriggled back to where I’d been. He came back into the room with a wet dishcloth in one hand and his gun in the other; his chest was thin, and covered in elegant beige silk. I shot for his leg but I was in no condition for shooting; the Colt jerked in my shaky hand and the bullet went into the embroidered pocket of the shirt. His yellow eyes flashed as the last messages his brain would ever send went through; and then blood welled and spurted and he went down backwards, awkward, and dead.
I picked up his gun and put it in my pocket and then I got the dishcloth and dragged myself to the bathroom. My face was covered in blood and I suddenly thought about his blood and vomited into the basin. After a bit more of that I cleaned myself up as best I could and went back to the phone. Horace was at home, and I told him to drive to Glebe and call me from a public box in about half an hour. He tried to order me about, but I suppose something gets in your voice after you’ve just killed a man, and he didn’t try it for long.
My head was aching badly now, but I examined it carefully and looked into my eyes and concluded that I had a mild concussion at worst. My treatment for that was time-tested-painkillers and whisky. I took both upstairs and sat on the balcony to wait for Clive.
He arrived in the Volvo and he was all alone. I went down and let him in. He’d sweated a bit into the neck of the pastel shirt, but he was still the image of the over-fed businessman with nothing but money on his mind. I put my gun an inch or two into his flab and moved him down the passage to the living room. I had a lot of blood on me and was feeling pretty wild from the codeine and the whisky and he just did what I said without a murmur. He was scared. He almost tripped over the corpse.
‘Soldier isn’t quite with us’, I said.
He looked down at the bloody mess on the floor and all the golf and Courvoisier colour in his face washed away.
‘You’ve been keeping bad company, Clive’, I said. ‘Want a drink?’ He nodded and I poured him a splash of Scotch. The phone rang, and Silverman told me where he was. Patrick was still looking at Soldier and I had to jerk his hand with the glass in it up to his mouth.
‘We’ve got a visitor’, I said. ‘I’m going to let him in. You sit there, if you’ve moved an inch when I get back I’m going to break your nose.’
I got a miniature tape recorder out of a cupboard in the kitchen, and went through to answer the soft knock on the door.
Silverman started to say the things you say when you meet people with guns and beaten-up faces, but I told him to be quiet. In the living room I sat him down with a Scotch and started the tape. I put Soldier’s gun on the coffee table for added effect.
‘What’s Clive doing here?’ Silverman said.
‘Oh, he belongs, he murdered your son.’
It stunned Silverman into silence, and set Patrick talking as I’d hoped it would. There was nothing much to it. Patrick was in deep financial trouble, and hoped for the Forbes Realty deal on the Glebe land to pull him out. But he was running short of time and he got the wind up when Silverman made a few enquiries about the firm. The squatters really got up his nose; he hired Soldier Szabo and some other muscle to help him there and Soldier was still around when Kenneth was caught snooping in Leichhardt.
‘So you killed him’, Silverman said quietly.
‘It was an accident, Horace’, Patrick muttered. ‘Soldier hit him too hard. It was an accident.’
‘Maybe’, I said. ‘And maybe you killed him when you found out who he was. What else could you do?’
‘It wasn’t like that’, Patrick said quickly.
‘The body might tell us something. Of course you had to get rid of the body-you should have thought about the parking ticket.’
‘There was no ticket when we…’
‘No ticket? Well, tough shit, they blow away sometimes. Did Szabo tell you about the speeding ticket?’
Patrick put his face in his hands. ‘No.’
‘What did you do with my boy?’ Silverman said. All the imperiousness and arrogance had melted away. He was just a little fat man, sad, with quivering jowls and a bad colour. ‘Where’s my boy?’
I gave Patrick a light touch on the cheek with the gun.
‘Answer him!’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked at Szabo; the front of the stylish shirt was dark, almost black. ‘He didn’t tell me.’
‘Clive’, Silverman said desperately, ‘I must know, we’ll get you off lightly. Hardy…’
I didn’t say anything. Something like hope flared in Patrick’s face for a second but it died. He was telling the truth and he had nothing to sell.
‘He didn’t tell me’, he said again.
After that we had the cops and an ambulance, and a doctor who looked at me and put some stitches in my head. I made a statement and Silverman made a statement, and Patrick phoned his lawyer. Eventually they all went away, and I drank a lot of Scotch and went to sleep.
They knocked down the houses anyway and built the home units which look like an interlinked series of funeral parlours. I hear the residents have trouble getting their cars in and out. Clive Patrick went to gaol for a long time, and I got paid, but nobody has ever found any trace of Kenneth Silverman.