Having my bacon saved twice in the one night by policemen was an unusual experience. I thanked and complimented Moody, but there was no way to communicate with Meredith. Barry Tobin had shot him twice, in the chest and in the leg, and while I was being interviewed, cross-examined and warned, Meredith was in St Vincents fighting for his life.
Eventually, with the help of Frank Parker, I got things sorted out. The police had the tape and the film and the photographs, and a statement from me which probably didn’t make a lot of sense-it was 3 a.m. and I’d suffered a fair amount of personal abuse-but laid emphasis on my innocence. With my battered head, torn pants and shotgun pellet-ripped jacket, I had credibility as the victim of a conspiracy. Parker assured me that if I had to appear in the magistrate’s court it would only be to receive an apology. I would have been feeling more or less cheerful if it hadn’t been for Meredith.
“He’s pretty tough,” Parker said. “Used to play hockey, they tell me.” Frank was driving me home. It was 3.45. His wife wouldn’t be happy at my keeping her man working so late, but, as my former tenant, she knew my erratic habits.
I was so tired that forming words felt like building a brick wall but, after all the trouble Parker had gone to, it would have been bad form to just nod off there in the car. “Is hockey a game for tough guys?”
“Ice hockey, in Canada.”
“Oh. Yeah. I’m with you.” I’d seen North American hockey games on TV. I remembered watching one with Helen Broadway. She called it an abattoir on ice, which was about right.
Frank turned into Glebe Point Road. Tired as I was, I still instinctively helped him to drive the car, checked the oncoming traffic and mentally changed down. Even crazier in this instance, because Frank’s car was an automatic. Parker glanced at me as I twitched in the passenger seat. “Meredith’s a bright man. Did a postgraduate degree in criminology at McGill University. He’s a bit of a hothead but he had… he’s got a bright future.”
I nodded and wished I hadn’t. Inside my head little popping noises were getting louder and louder. I could hardly hear what Frank was saying, and my own voice sounded thin and far off. “He saved my arse back there on the houseboat. That’s for sure.”
“Care to tell me how he came to be there?”
“Missing persons case,” I said. “We’re working on parallel lines. I mean our lines of inquiry intersected… Shit, Frank, I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Parker pulled up outside my house.
“It’s all right. I’ll have Meredith’s number two give you a ring. Bloke named Wren, Ralph Wren. He’s OK.”
“Make it the day after tomorrow,” I said. “I’m knackered.”
“Right. Need a hand?”
I opened the car door and almost fell out onto the pavement. Parker moved as if to get out of his seat, but I shook my fist at him. “I’m OK, Frank. Thanks for every-thing. Go home to Hilde. I’m OK. I’ll try to see Meredith tomorrow.”
Parker reached over and closed the door. The window had been open because I’d wanted the cold air on my flushed face. “Get some sleep, Cliff,” he said, “and don’t do anything on your case until you talk to Wren.”
I saluted and lurched towards the front gate. I didn’t have my gun or my oilskin any more. I’d lost some brain cells and several inches of skin from various parts of my anatomy. But I had my key. I scratched and scraped until I got it in the lock and turned it. I was thinking of a hot bath. Maybe a hot drink as well. Rum and hot water. It’d probably knock me out and I’d drown in the bath. But the bath leaked and if I had one I’d have to mop up the water in the morning. I couldn’t face that. Not a wet mop! Not ever again! I went into the musty, closed-all-day, no-fun-being-had-here-smelling house, turning on lights and trying to feel human.
The daybed in the sitting room beckoned me, but I made it to the kitchen and a tap. I washed my face at the sink and dried it on a dishcloth which smelled of cat food. Where was the cat? I looked around and called out to him in a voice I hardly recognised. If I’d been a cat I wouldn’t have come to that voice. The cat didn’t. I drank two cups of water, staggered through to the day bed and lay down. I jerked up like a marionette to pull off my jacket and thought about turning off the lights. Thought about it, didn’t do it. I passed out into a black and grey zone of sonar booms, drifting smoke and bright flashing lights that made sounds like the little, ten-for-a-penny Tom Thumb firecrackers I used to let off when I was a kid.
When I woke up, somewhere around eight a.m., I knew I should have had the bath, plus a massage and a long sleep in a soft, warm bed. The daybed is a hard, unyielding structure that Helen accused me of installing to deter casual, stopover visitors. Maybe she was right; she often was. I levered myself off the thing and moved towards the shower, bent over like a bell-ringer, hoping the hot water would help me to straighten up. In the kitchen the cat confronted me and demanded that I straighten up sooner, preferably with a can opener in my hand. I told it to get lost and went through to the cold, draughty bathroom to get myself some steam.
It took about an hour-steam, coffee with rum toast with honey and a feeding of the cat-but eventually I felt better. Well enough, anyway, to sit down by the telephone and think about what to do next. It would have been nice to just sit there with my second rum-laced coffee and drift for a while. Let things sort themselves out in my mind, wait for connections. Instead, I rang Louise Madden in Leura and asked when I could see her.
“Why?” she said.
“To talk. I might be onto something, but I need to talk to you.”
“Why can’t we talk now? We are talking now.”
“I think my phone might be tapped. Nothing to do with this matter, but…”
“My, my. You are the man of mystery, aren’t you? I’m working on a garden in Castlecrag today. That any good to you?”
It was; it was even a connection of a kind. I arranged to meet her at the address in Castlecrag in mid afternoon. My next call was to Paul Guthrie at Northbridge. Castlecrag and Northbridge, not bad. It could just have easily been Northbridge and Chipping Norton. I told Guthrie that the information Ray had given me had been very helpful, and that I needed Ray’s help again.
“You sound a bit shaky,” Guthrie said.
“I’m fine. I’d like to see Ray. Where would I find him, say, later this after-noon?”
“Right here if you want. You just have to ask, Cliff.”
I didn’t feel good about it. Old fathers have no right to command the movements of their young sons, but the Guthries were a close-knit family, almost sharing the same mind. So perhaps it wasn’t too bad. I said I’d be at the Northbridge house around six, and Paul Guthrie assured me his son would be there. That left me with about six hours to fill and two things to do-recover my car and visit, if that was possible, Detective Sergeant Meredith in St Vincents Hospital.
I had the car keys in my jacket pocket. I walked up Glebe Point Road past the cafes and bookshops and caught a cab just this side of Parramatta Road. In Darling Point I found the Falcon just as I’d left it except that there was a flyer under the wiper. “Protect your Independence,” it read. “Your Independent local member is under threat from the conservative government’s plan to change the com-position of the Parliament. Write to me. Write to the Premier.” I crumpled up the paper and was about to drop it into one of the big plastic garbage bins that help to keep Darling Point clean when I took a good look at the neighbourhood. I thought the ‘local Independent member’ had a right to be concerned-the big, white houses with their gardens and driveways and high walls smacked of conformity rather than independence. I unfolded the notice and tucked it into a wrought iron gate, just above the security lock.
Hospital visits might be some people’s idea of a kick, but not mine. For me, there’s always too much waiting about, too many starched white uniforms and too much of a feeling that the walls are saying, “You’re on your feet now, but you could be on a trolley tomorrow.”
I gave my name at the desk and after seeing two nurses and a policeman-it’s standard procedure to have a cop on duty after a cop has been shot, why I’m not sure-I was allowed to see Meredith.
“He’s out of intensive care,” the ward sister who was escorting me to Meredith’s room said. “He’s such a strong man! He responded to everything the doctors did.”
“You sound surprised, sister. Do most intensive care patients die?”
She looked as if she had things to say on the subject but thought better of it. “Yes, eventually, Mr Hardy. We all do. Even doctors. He’s in here.” She pushed open a door. “Five minutes.”
“And no arm wrestling,” I said. I can’t help it-hospitals and nurses affect me that way.
I went into the room, which was no bigger than it needed to be for the bed and a lot of medical equipment. It smelled of sterile plastic and glass and detergent. I could barely recognise Meredith for tubes and wires running in and out of his face and body. The tubes and wires were hooked up to drips and monitoring devices; lights were blinking on the equipment and blips were dancing across green screens.
“Looks like they’re about to launch you into outer space,” I said.
Meredith’s face twitched. A smile, maybe. “G’day, Hardy.”
“Sorry about all this. What’re they telling you?”
“Bugger all, but I reckon I’ll be all right. Felt worse after some hockey games.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
“Are you talking about the bullet or the hockey?”
“Never played ice hockey. I got a bullet in the leg once. Hurt like hell and still twinges sometimes. Well, I just wanted to look in. Didn’t think you’d be in real trouble. What calibre was Tobin’s gun? Nothing you couldn’t handle?”
Again the twitch, the possible smile. A couple of sentences had tired him.
“That Moody did all right,” he whispered.
“Bloody tremendous. Well, I don’t want to keep you here any longer than necessary, so I’ll…”
“Hardy.”
“Don’t talk, Meredith. You’re tough, but don’t push your luck. It’ll keep.”
“Bridge… foundry… Samuels an’… Booth… missing. I think…”
I could hear the nurse’s footsteps coming down the hall and I was looking for somewhere to pat him without touching a piece of medical intervention. I touched his broad, meaty shoulder. “Take it easy, sergeant. I know what you’re talking about. Just concentrate on getting better.”
“Don’t…”
“Don’t worry. Is there anything you want?”
Meredith’s hard grey eyes were clouding over with fatigue. A slight movement might have been a shake of the head. I patted his shoulder again and retreated to the door which opened as I got there.
“I was just coming to ask you to leave, Mr Hardy,” the sister said.
“That’s OK, sister,” I said, “in a hospital being asked to leave is OK. Ask me to stay and I’d worry.”
Castlecrag looks good. The streets are wide, the gardens are big and the Council picks up the rubbish. But, at least on weekdays, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of life in the place. Maybe the kids are at boarding school and the wives are playing golf while the husbands take meetings. Maybe the wives are taking meetings too. It’s one of those suburbs where the groceries are delivered. Two-car, two-salary, two-dog territory.
The address Louise Madden had given me was a corner block in one of the widest, quietest streets. There was a tennis court on the property and almost certainly a swimming pool behind the high brush fence. An archery range was a possibility.
I pushed a button at the set of wrought-iron gates mounted on brick pillars. I hoped I had the right address-it would be a fair hike to the front of the house next door. After a moderately long wait, I saw Louise Madden begin the trek down the bricked driveway. She was wearing a denim overall and high laced boots and carrying some kind of hooked implement which I never did identify. Her hair was tied up in a bright scarf and the work gloves on her hands were yellow. She opened the gates, shucked off one glove and shook my hand.
“Mr Hardy,” she said, “you look like you’ve been clearing privet.”
I touched the scrapes and scratches last night’s fun and games had left on my face. “Dealing with pests, certainly.”
She waved me through the heavy gate and let it swing back. “We’ll have to talk as I work. The woman here’s a real bitch-wants it finished yesterday, and I’ll get bawled out if I bend a blade of her precious grass.”
“Fun to work for,” I said. I had to hurry to keep up with her as she strode down the path, which gave way to a series of gravel tracks that wound through the gardens. I was right about the swimming pool and, given the stands of tall native trees, I still considered the archery range an option.
“Some are, some aren’t. She isn’t. I take it you haven’t found my dad?”
“No.”
“And from the look of you, no good news.”
“I don’t think you can expect good news, Ms Madden.”
“He’s dead?”
“Probably.”
“Shit.” She stopped and slashed at a bush with her hook. “How? Why?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s why I have to talk to you. Where are you working?”
“Over here.” She led me across to a steep bank where she was setting railway sleepers into the earth. “Look good, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
She wiped a yellow glove across her face. Tears had cut through a thin film of dust, leaving pale streaks on her skin. She banged her hands together and sat down on a sleeper. “You’d better tell me about it.”
“First, what d’you know about your grandfather?”
“Which one?”
“The who that built the bridge.”
“Oh, Grandpa Madden. Yes.” Through her distress over her father, memories of her grandfather caused her to smile. “He was great. But what’s it got to do with…?”
“Do the names Glover, Barclay and…” I struggled to remember the names Meredith had mumbled and had to resort to my notebook. “… Samuels and Booth mean anything to you?”
She shook her head. The sun went behind a cloud, and suddenly it was cold in the big garden. The light dropped and the elegantly and strategically arranged plants looked grim and lifeless. Louise Madden unhooked a heavy cardigan from where it had been hanging on an embedded sleeper and shrugged into it. “Tell me what you’re driving at.”
“Several men, sons of engineers and others involved in the construction of the bridge, have vanished or died. There seems to be a connection.”
She stood, picked up a mattock and began hacking at the hard earth around a deeply implanted stump. “Got to move this if I’m going to get the layout right for Madam. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Neither do I.”
“What were those names again?”
I gave them to her. She kept hacking, stopped, gave the stump a tug. It wobbled, just a little. “Dad knew a man named Samuels, I think. Yes. And he disappeared. That’s right. I remember Dad talking about it.”
“Was this Samuels somehow connected with the bridge?”
She put down the mattock and took off her cardigan. “I think he might have been. There was always a lot of talk about the bridge when we saw Grandpa. He was terribly proud of it.”
“That’s understandable,” I said. “ I’m proud of it, and all my dad ever did was drive over and help to pay for it.”
“Mm. Yes, now that you get me thinking about it, I believe Dad and Mr Samuels did talk about the bridge. But they played golf together mostly. I don’t think there was a Sons of the Bridge Builders Society or anything like that.”
“No?” I watched her continue her attack on the stump. “I don’t suppose your grandfather ever mentioned any enemies? Men with grudges against him?”
“Grandpa? He was just a sweet old man when I knew him. You’d think he’d have trouble climbing a ladder. But he told me he’d walked across the top of the arch after the bridge was finished, and I believed him. D’you think that could be true?”
I grinned. “Don’t ask. Is there anything else you can tell me about your father, the bridge, friends connected with it. Anything like that?”
“No. Nothing. Did you find the woman? The woman Dad played golf with? You haven’t asked me to…”
“I found her and talked to her. She couldn’t help.”
“What was she like?”
The mattock hung from her hand, forgotten. She was looking for something positive, some shred of comfort in a fatherless world. “Attractive and intelligent. She really cared for your father and I think she misses him badly. But she…”
“Has a husband and property to protect. Kids.” She swung the mattock viciously so that the blade stabbed three inches into the stump. “Fucking heteros!”
It was getting cold sitting there motionless in the shade. I stood and shivered. “I’m sorry to upset you, but these things don’t usually work out too well.”
“You warned me. You’re doing your job. I understand. Give us a hand here.”
I helped her to pull the mattock out of the stump and the moment of friction passed. She gave off a nice smell-of earth and wood and leaves, and I wanted to touch her, to make contact with those good, healing things. She might have sensed this, might have misinterpreted. In any case, she wasn’t going to let it happen. She stepped back. “Do you need any more money, Mr Hardy?”
“No.”
She pointed to my head wounds. “You say they don’t have anything to do with this case. Are you working on a couple of things at once? Not a good idea in my game.” She waved a hand at the sleepers and mounds of earth.
“Nor in mine,” I said. “The other thing’s all cleared up now. I can concentrate on finding out what happened to your father.”
“Good,” Louise Madden said.
I drove around for a while looking for a place to buy a beer and a sandwich. On the way I passed a lot of houses that reminded me of the ones you see in Hollywood on the ‘homes of the rich and famous’ tour. Here, they were the homes of the rich and unknown who preferred to stay that way. I ate the sandwich and drank the beer sitting in the car. From where I’d parked, I had a magnificent view of Middle Harbour. I speculated about why the rich always live in elevated positions and the less rich further down the hill. My scratchy historical knowledge suggested it had been so since mediaeval times. That was an interesting thought. Was the position taken for reasons of safety, the last point to be attacked by an enemy, rather than domination? Were there exceptions in South America? It was the kind of half-baked question Helen and I used to have fun with. The people up here certainly looked safe. Or at least their houses did. There still weren’t many actual people about. I flicked through my notebook again, underlining the names-Madden, Glover, Barclay, Samuels, Booth. Maybe some of them had lived in Castlecrag or similar places. Bellevue Hill was the same sort of location after all. But a lot of those high, mediaeval forts were stormed and taken, if memory served me right. Safety is an illusion.
I still wasn’t fully recovered from my hectic night. I took a couple of aspirin with the swallows of beer for my aching head, and the sun came out again and heated up the car and I dozed off.
I woke up with that panicky feeling of not knowing where I was, or even who. Comprehension came back in a rush as I stared down at the water and the, from this distance, fragile-looking boats: men were dead, men had vanished and I was investigating how and why. Maybe other men were under threat and here I was, sleeping in the afternoon. On the client’s time. It occurred to me that the Glovers, Barclays and others could probably afford the investigation better than Louise Madden. But they probably wouldn’t want to pay me to sleep. The way things were going, billing Ms Madden was going to be tricky. That led to thoughts of Cy Sackville and my court appearance. Maybe I should call him off and save some money. But Cy would be disappointed. Maybe we could sue the state for public mischief?
“And kiss your arse goodbye,” I said aloud. I started the car and drove to Northbridge.