I phoned Mercer the next morning before putting through a call to Drew. They call it chain of command or some such thing-I think it’s so they can keep an eye on each other. Drew wasn’t happy about it, but he agreed to let me come to the police building to investigate the evidence they were holding in the Carmel Wise case.
‘You want to see the car or what?’ Drew managed to keep the hostility under check, just.
‘I want to see the bag.’
‘What bag?’
‘The bag that the cassettes were in.’
‘Why?’
‘Maybe it isn’t her bag.’
He laughed. ‘You won’t get anywhere with that. Hardy.’
‘Why not?’
‘It isn’t anybody’s bag, or it could be anybody’s. It’s a supermarket shopping bag, plastic, not new, smeared with prints.’
‘I want to seethe videos then.’
I could see the leer on his face. ‘No, can’t allow that. No facilities here for that.’
‘I just want to look at the stuff, I mean, examine it physically, not experience it emotionally.’
‘Huh?’
‘I just want to look, not play.’
‘College Street annexe. Make it 11.30. I’ll give you fifteen minutes.”
I was getting around the house on my own by this time-showering and dressing, managing the stairs, but the great big outside world was another matter. I almost went headfirst into the gutter trying to get into the taxi, and I bumped my head when I got out. The restricted vision made me slow and tentative on the city footpaths, and hesitant about crossing the roads. Still, it was good to be a part of functioning humanity again.
I copped my first handicapped person joke from Bill Moore, the receptionist at the police building, an old warrior out to graze whom I knew slightly. ‘Well, what d’you know?’ he said. ‘Private eye is right, just the one, eh, Cliff?’
‘Shit, Bill,’ I said, ‘it’s supposed to be a disguise and you penetrated it right off. I’m here to see Detective Constable Drew, in the annexe he said.’
‘Lucky you. Hold on.’ He lifted a phone and spoke briefly into it. ‘Okay. I should search you for concealed weapons but if you had one and it was concealed you’d have trouble finding it with one eye, wouldn’t you.’
‘I don’t know.’ I mimed shooting with two fingers. ‘I close this eye anyway, when I shoot.’
‘Through there, Cliff. Look after yourself.’
I went down some steps, using the handrail, and through a set of heavy glass doors. The place was halfway between a laboratory and a locker room. Scientific equipment was lined up on benches; there were stools and small tables, ropes and pulleys and several well-stocked bookcases. Along one wall was a bank of green lockers. A tall man whose little remaining hair was blonde, sat on a stool near the lockers. He beckoned me over.
‘Hardy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Drew.’
We shook hands. I sensed an immediate dislike of me in him which I was prepared to reciprocate. He had a hard face just beginning to go flabby; the way he sat on the stool and stuck out his hand just far enough, suggested that he expected a lot of things to be done for him and would do bugger all in return.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ he said.
‘It’s my time.’
‘Well, you’d be getting paid for it, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yeah, I hope so. I’m not a public servant though, I can’t count on a pay cheque every month.’
He digested that with difficulty but evidently decided it wasn’t worth a response. He put his hand in his jacket pocket and produced a key. For a minute I thought he was going to throw it to me but he didn’t.
‘Take a look. Fifteen minutes, as I said.’
‘That’s about what your boys gave the flat.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Nothing.’ I took the key and looked for the number along the rows of lockers. It was hard with one eye and in the dim light. Eventually I located it high on the fourth level. I had to stand on tiptoe to get the key in the door. I opened the locker and brought a stool across, climbed on it and took out everything inside. Drew sat on his stool ten feet away as I laid the stuff out on a bench.
‘What happened to your eye. You get it poked while you were peeping in a window?’
I glanced at him; he was one of those balding men who look as if they’ve never had a hair to spare and have suffered with every one lost. Maybe it wasn’t his fault, but I wasn’t in the mood for his cracks. ‘No,’ I said. I opened the plastic bag. ‘Your wife’s naked beauty dazzled me, know what I mean, pal?’
‘Don’t touch that!’ he snarled.
‘Stop trying so hard to be the nastiest cop in town, Drew. You’ve got the title. Why don’t you go and have a smoke or something and leave me in peace.’
He’d got off the stool and taken two steps towards me but perhaps even Drew balked at belting a man with one eye. ‘I’m staying here and your time’s running out.’
‘You’re a prince.’ There wasn’t a lot to see. A supermarket shopping bag with eight video cassettes in it. Four more cassettes were tied in a bundle with string, with a tag reading ‘Car’ attached. There were a few other items which had evidently come from the car-a scarf, a comb and a book-Pauline Kael’s 500 Nights at the Movies.
‘What about the things she was carrying? Purse, cigarettes, money?’
‘What’re you trying to say?’
‘Jesus, Drew. What’s your middle name, Aggression? I’m only asking.’
He sniffed and wiped his nose. Are bald men more liable to colds? I wondered.
‘No purse, no cigarettes. Some money in her jeans. A small amount of marijuana, some papers. That’s there, in an envelope. The clothes were pretty messed up with blood. The… ah, reasonable stuff was turned over to her parents.’
I found the envelope and opened it-enough for two or three joints, Tally Ho papers. The sort of thing anyone under 50 might have around. The cassettes were not quite so standard. Some titles had an Oriental flavour- Bam boo Babies, Viet Virgins-and others a military tone- GI Johns, Marine Studs. There was no difference in quality and subject between the two lots of cassettes, those in the bag and those from the car, except that the former had some bloodstains on them.
‘Tell me about the car.’
‘What d’you mean? Hey, keep those things separate!’
‘You’re going to learn something, Drew, my friend. What condition was the car in?’
‘All right, except that one of the doors was sprung. You know these sleazos, they’ll drive around with no lights, busted doors
‘Yeah, I’ll bet yours is immaculate. Well, you can forget about the porn angle.’
‘What the hell’re you talking about?’
I held up the cassettes. ‘You see these? They’re Beta, right? All the other cassettes in the flats are VHS. Did you know the girl made a film? I’ve seen it on a VHS cassette. VHS in the flat, VHS where she lived. This crap was planted, Drew. It was dropped by the body and put in the car. You need a new angle.’
It rocked him. ‘Jesus, I told Mercer we had it…’
‘Unforgiving type, Mercer.’
The effort to treat me as a human being almost gave him a hernia. ‘Look, Hardy, have you got anything? I mean…’
I grinned at him. Grinning hurt the sore eye but it was worth it. ‘Why don’t you put all this stuff away, Drew? Many thanks for the help. If you can be of any further assistance I’ll let you know.’