It was a good night for a walk and a think, and it's always good to avoid being breathalysed. The car was safely parked and locked and there wasn't anything worth stealing in it. If someone wanted my sweaty gym gear and salty swimmers they were welcome. I was due for new stuff anyway.
At one time, Wednesday would have been an unusual night for a party like the one at Clement's, but these days corporate types work seven days a week and have clocks around them set to London, Tokyo and New York time and a week has taken on an entirely different shape. For us lesser mortals, Thursday still means late night shopping and activity beyond the usual in the streets. I walked down Darling Street to Victoria Road and negotiated my way down to pick up the Crescent. I thought about cutting through Jubilee Park but decided against it. People do private things there at night and I respect their privacy. The Wigram Road hill is a good calf muscle stretcher and I was thinking I might reward myself for my virtue by having a quick one at the Toxteth hotel.
I tried to remember when I'd last been in Campbelltown and couldn't. I knew I'd never been to its outer suburbs and decided I'd do a web search on Liston before I went out there. Couldn't hurt. I was halfway up the hill when I became aware of something unusual. It wasn't much-a feeling that a car light behind me wasn't quite right, a half-heard idling car motor. I didn't turn round but my senses were alerted and before I got to Glebe Point Road I knew there was a car, hanging back, slowing, letting others pass, following me.
I stepped up the pace, crossed over Wigram Road and used the pedestrian crossing over Glebe Point Road. Then I walked briskly past the couple of trendy shops and into the Toxteth. If someone wanted to talk to me they could do it here. If they wanted to do something else they could whistle for it. This was my turf, and I could make it home in ways only someone who'd lived here for twenty years would know.
I went in by the Ferry Road door through the pool area with its swanky blue baize tables. Three of them. Two youngsters, looking barely old enough to be in the place, were smoking, drinking and knocking the balls about- misspending their youth and enjoying it. I went into the bar where there were padded chairs and settees, plus stools and classy framed sporting prints on the walls. I bought a scotch and went back to watch the pool players. A mistake. Three men in suits entered the pub-Rhys Thomas and two others, both very big.
They moved quickly and purposefully, Thomas blocking the Ferry Road door to the street and one of the biggies standing in the wide opening between the pool area and the bar. It's wide, but if he'd spread his arms he could just about have covered the distance.
I put my glass down, and picked up a cue and a ball. The one wearing the smartest suit took two fifties from his wallet, handed one to each of the kids and gestured with his thumb.
'Out!'
They left. He replaced Thomas by the Ferry Road door and Thomas advanced towards me. I moved to put a table between myself and him.
'You made me look foolish in front of my employer, Hardy,' Thomas said.
I mimed being hard of hearing. 'What was that?'
It threw him for a second and gave me a chance to snap the cue under my foot, making it a more dangerous weapon.
'I said you made me look foolish in front of my employer.'
'I heard you,' I said. 'It wasn't hard.'
He advanced and I poked the jagged end of the cue at him. 'Back off. I could take out an eye.'
He retreated but the other man didn't. Anticipating my move, he got close enough to try a karate kick to my leg. I just managed to swing the cue back and down. I don't know anything about karate, but in the movies they always hit the right spot. He didn't. The cue got him squarely on the shin. He yelped and swore and bent double. Points to me, but it gave Thomas his chance. He closed in and swung a punch into my groin. End of story. The pain shot through me upwards, downwards and sideways. I dropped the cue and went into a protective crouch. He brought his knee up, caught me on the forehead and I felt my brain swim and my vision slide away.
'Jesus, man,' I heard one of the suits say. 'That was sweet.'
I was still conscious and, dimly, thought it wasn't nearly enough if Thomas was fair dinkum. Then I realised that my blurred vision was due to blood flowing down into my eyes. Not trickling, flowing.
'I think he's got the message, Rhys. Let's go before you get blood all over yourself.'
I propped myself up against the leg of the table and drew in several deep breaths. The pain in my groin was bad but I'd had worse from low blows in the ring and a rifle butt in army training. The trick is to suck in air and think of higher things. I wasn't too worried about the blood because I knew what had happened. Thomas's hard, bony knee had split the scar tissue I have over my right eye, a memento of my amateur boxing career. We didn't always wear protective headgear then. I have sharp eyebrow ridges, like Jimmy Carruthers, and, as he did, I bleed there like a stuck pig. It'd look worse than it was. Cautiously, I raised my right arm and wiped at the spot.
'Christ, mate. Are you all right?'
One of the drinkers had drifted in from the bar. I must've been quite a sight.
'This is like the old days,' he said. 'Here.'
He closed my hand around the drink I'd abandoned. I gave my forehead and eyes another wipe and my vision cleared. Massive dry-cleaning bill but not much more damage. I drank the scotch.
'Thanks. Little misunderstanding.'
He was half drunk, fat and good-natured. 'Coppers come around this time of night. Better get yourself cleaned up.'
Most of the blood had soaked into my jacket; my shirt was dark so the blood on it didn't show. I pulled myself up, took off the jacket after finding some tissues in a pocket. I pressed them against the eyebrow cut and went through to the toilet without attracting any attention. The face in the mirror looked like mine but it had aged a bit more than it should have in the last half-hour. I ran the water, used most of the paper towels available to clean up as best I could. I'd need ice for the swelling, a warm bath for the sore balls and a caustic stick for the cut. All available at home a few hundred metres away. Over the years, I'd spent so much money in the Toxteth I didn't feel I had to compensate them for the broken cue.
It took me three times longer than usual to get home from the pub and I was glad none of my neighbours saw me in such a mess. The cut had opened wide again and I was bloody from my head to my feet. I stripped off, had a shower and sat for a while in a shallow bath. I used the caustic stick to stop the bleeding. The skin above the eyebrow had been cut and stitched several times. These days they use some kind of clip that doesn't promote scar tissue, but not in my time. Eventually the blood stopped seeping, but it'd be a while before the swelling went down and the scab came away. Till then, I was going to look like someone who'd been in a fight and I hadn't even landed a punch.
I made a pot of coffee and spiked a big mug of it with brandy. I had three painkillers and by the time I was halfway through the second spiked coffee I was feeling solid enough to do some thinking. I ran my mind back over the encounter in the pub and a few things about it struck me as strange. Rhys Thomas could obviously handle himself, so why would he need two heavies in support? I'd got him to repeat his grievance because there seemed to be something almost rehearsed about it as it came out the first time, and even more so the second. I was searching for a lead on the guy with the money and it came to me. He bore a strong resemblance to Jonas Clement. A son? And, although it's hard to tell from one word, and one phrase, the way he pronounced 'Out!' and his use of 'man' had a South African touch to them.
If I was right in my guesses, all that put the pub incident in a very different light. Clement's son wouldn't have gone along to support Thomas on a personal affront. More likely he was doing what his dad wanted him to do, which was put the frighteners on me. That meant he knew about my connection with Louise Kramer and was sufficiently worried about it to take some pretty crude action. I called Lou's home and mobile numbers and got the voice-mail. I left a message sketching in a few of my suspicions and suggesting that we get together urgently. Nothing more to be done tonight.
I went to bed with my coffee and brandy and paracetamol buzz with one comforting thought. There hadn't been time for Bob Armstrong to alert anyone to my interest in Clement and activate the Thomas heavy brigade. That still left the question of how, when and why Clement came to think me worthy of his plutocratic attention.
Lou Kramer rang me before eight the next morning. She said she was using some flexi-time she'd racked up before she went on to a part-time contract to work at home and was too busy to meet me anywhere. She asked me to come to her flat. No harm in sussing out the client's residence. I got a taxi to Balmain and picked up the car. Untouched. I parked with dubious legality, walked a block, and buzzed at the door of the newly and expensively renovated old building in Surry Hills. It stood across from Ward Park, named after Eddie Ward, 'the firebrand of East Sydney', a hero of my father's. Fewer of Eddie's kind of voters around here now.
'The Surrey Apartments'- six floors and from the top there'd be a great view of the city whichever way you looked.
'Push, Cliff. Fifth floor.' I pushed and the door released. The lift was smooth and quick and she was standing with the door open when I got there.
'Jesus Christ, you just said you'd been knocked about a bit.'
'It's not as bad as it looks.'
She beckoned me in and kept staring at my battered face. 'That reminds me of that joke about Wagner-his music's not as bad as it sounds. Can you see out of that eye?'
'Sure. So this's what you pay the big mortgage on? Pretty nice.'
'Location, location, location.'
The apartment had a short, wide hallway giving on to a big, light, airy living room with several rooms leading off it. The windows ran from waist high almost to the ceiling and the outlook was to the east. I'm always amazed to see how many trees there really are in Sydney. The sky was cloudy and visibility wasn't good but I suspected there'd be a view of water on a clear day. The room had a good lived-in feel, with books, magazines, CDs and DVDs not put away where they belonged. What looked like the day's broadsheets lay around, haphazardly folded open.
At her invitation I sat near a low table on a comfortable chair and she brought in coffee. She glanced at her watch as she set the tray down.
'I won't keep you long.'
'Sorry. It's just that I have to make the most of this time for my own work.'
'Understood.'
She wore loose pants, sandals and a denim shirt. The top of a packet of her anti-smoking gum peeked from the breast pocket. No makeup, hair barely combed. Working, and not bothering about anything else.
'I'll get to the point,' I said. 'Have you told anyone about hiring me?'
'Why?'
Not the answer I'd hoped for. 'Because I think Clement was behind the attack on me. There was more to it than just Thomas getting even. By the way, does Clement have a son?'
'Yes, big lump of a lad, a nasty type, did a bit of mercenary work-Jonas Junior.'
'He was there last night. More or less in control. You haven't answered my question, Lou.'
'I told someone, yes.'
'Who?'
'I can't tell you.'
I drank some coffee and looked at her. She drank and didn't look at me. 'Why not?' I said.
'I'm not supposed to be seeing him. He's married and all that.'
'You think I'd spill it to "Stay in Touch"?'
She shook her head. 'Of course not. It's just that I promised him I wouldn't tell anyone. Look, Cliff, I trust him. He wouldn't…'
'Does he have any connection with Clement?'
'I… I'm not sure.'
'C'mon, Lou.'
She wasn't the kind of woman you could push. She flared. 'Do you want to back out?'
I looked around the room again. It had the appearance of a journalist's place-lots of print, up-to-date media machines, a couple of Whiteley prints and Dupain's 'The Sunbather' on the walls. I finished my coffee and stood.
'Let me see your workroom.'
'Shit, why?'
'Indulge me.'
She shrugged and pointed to a half-open door. I went into a room with the blind drawn. Bookshelves, filing cabinets and a big pine table with an iMac computer, printer, scanner and thumb drive lit by a desk lamp. The surface was awash with scribbled notes on post-its, notepads covered with scrawled handwriting, pens and pencils. Squinting in the dim light, I browsed the bookshelves. The Paul Barry best-selling jobs on Bond and Packer; Christine Wallace on Germaine Greer; D'Alpuget on Hawke; Watson on Keating; Knightley's A Hack's Progress; some Richard Hall and a full shelf on African travel, politics and economics. And much else-Bernard Levin, Clive James, David Leich, Paul Theroux, and Bob Ellis. She was a journalism junkie, with a yen to travel.
I turned back to see her standing in the doorway. She opened her hands and did a perfect imitation of the guy in the beer commercial who freaks out his girlfriend in the spa.
'What?'
I grinned. 'Nothing. What you read you are.'
'Another stolen line.'
'Right. I don't think I'm getting a fair shake here. Your cheque's going to bounce-'
'It'll clear tomorrow.'
I ignored her. 'You won't tell me your deadline; you say Eddie was murdered but the official version is it was an accident; you won't name your mystery man…'
‹T› ›
I m sorry.
'Tell me the deadline.'
'Oh, all right. I've got three months to finish the bloody thing and I'm battling to make it, especially if…'
'You don't find Billie.'
'Yes. Are you pulling out?'
'No,' I said. 'It's personal now.'