Walking across the harbour bridge nowadays must be about as risky as street-marching in Beijing. The approaches- narrow paths, slender traffic islands, high-speed zones-were not pedestrian-friendly. Still, there were people, dwarfed by the huge grey metal superstructure and the big sandstone towers, walking across on both sides of the bridge. I drove. Trains rumbled past at twice the speed of the road traffic; only the motorcyclists, weaving between the cars, gave them any competition. I saw a jogger stop, pull off his Walkman headphones and tap the mechanism. All that metal must play hell with the radio reception.
I drove across from the south side, necessarily slowly on account of the evening rush, turned in North Sydney and crawled back. I hadn’t asked which side of the road the person who might have been Brian Madden had been walking, but it didn’t matter much. The footpath on the west side was crammed between the train tracks and a two-and-a-half-metre-high fence. Same sort of fence on the east- solid metal to waist height, then cyclone wire stretched between uprights that curved over away from the gap for the last ten centimetres or so. Three strands of barbed wire on top. A reasonably active person could climb it and a strong man could get a 70-kilogram weight over it, but there the possibilities ended. Anyone going over that fence either wanted to or went because someone else wanted them to.
The sun was going down as I stop-started along in the lane for drivers who didn’t have the right money to pay the toll. The sky was clear and the water turned red-gold. The ferries and sailing ships seemed to be skating across a sheet of beaten bronze. I was buying fifteen minutes of a hundred-million-dollar view for a dollar fifty-a bargain. I found it strangely disconcerting to think of the work going on to tunnel under the harbour. It seemed wrong somehow, a violation.
The city skyline was impressive, irregular and cranky-looking, the way a skyline should be. A good many of the tall buildings were owned by insurance companies and housed insurance officers. They were the sorts of places I might have ended up in if I’d stayed in the insurance game. Even being stuck in the harbour bridge traffic was better than that. I turned on the radio to listen to the Law Report and got quite involved in a discussion on the niceties of defamation, remembering something about it from long ago. Before I was an insurance investigator I had been a soldier and before that a law student. Life’s twists and turns. I paid my toll and threaded my way back through the city streets to Darlinghurst. Lawyer A said that the defamation laws were fine as they were; lawyer B said they should be changed to enhance the public’s right to know; lawyer C said they should be tightened to protect privacy. They were very polite to each other, which seemed to disappoint the programme’s presenter.
Frank was waiting for me in the hotel with a half-drunk light beer in front of him and a worried look on his face. The bar has a door onto Riley Street and one onto Oxford Street, and there seemed to be more people coming in through both doors than going out. Frank had reserved me a stool with a folded copy of the evening paper and no doubt the frequent use of his tough cop look. Frank had been a very tough cop when he was in Homicide, and a very smart one. I wasn’t sure just how tough he still was. I bought two middies of light and occupied the stool. The television was off, and the drinkers were talkers rather than shouters.
“So,” I said.
Frank folded the newspaper and stuffed it in the pocket of his jacket-okay in his Homicide days, no way to treat the sort of suit he wore now. “Contacted Sackville yet?”
I drank some beer and shook my head.
“Don’t take this lightly, Cliff. It’s big trouble.”
“I hoped you’d have it sorted out by this.”
“Forget it.” He leaned closer to me out of old habit, born of the days when he talked mostly to crims and fizz-gigs and other cops who liked to whisper. “A witness in the Lenko trial says you helped to set up the meeting between Didi Steller and Lenko, using Rhino Jackson as the go-between.”
“That’s crazy. Who is this witness?”
Frank took a sip of his beer. “When did you last see Jackson?”
The question surprised me, not because it was tricky in any way but because Frank was playing the copper rather than the friend. It was my turn to drink beer.
“Cliff?”
“I’m thinking. I’m wondering whether you really reckon I’d help to set up a hit, or whether you’re puzzling over who’d be trying to frame me.”
Frank rubbed his chin and the hard, day-old bristles rasped like Scotchbrite. “I’m sorry. All the crap I’m processing these days leaves me wondering if there’s an honest man left in the world.”
“Apart from yourself.”
Frank took another drink and stared up over my shoulder at the TV set, which showed film of some uniformed men using batons and fire hoses on young people wearing jeans and T-shirts. The street where this was happening looked hot and dusty; it could have been any-where. “You know how they send the apprentice jockey for the left-handed whip, that sort of thing?”
I nodded.
“When I made it to plain clothes they put me in Vice. First job was go around the brothels picking up the take. Do it right and get a good mark. Don’t do it right and your papers get marked ‘not suitable for plain clothes’ and you can look forward to ten years in Woop Woop. Of course, once you’ve done it the sergeant’s got some-thing on you, just as the senior sergeant’s got something on him and so on up.”
“Nice. How did you handle that?”
“I found out what the senior had on the sergeant and used it against him to avoid the job. My papers got marked ‘not suited to this squad’ and I went over to Homicide.”
“They didn’t get you to kill anyone?”
Frank grinned. “I was lucky I wasn’t sent to armed holdup.”
“This is fun, Frank,” I said, “shooting the breeze. D’you want to talk about Hilde and my namesake next?” Hilde Stoner was a former tenant of mine who’d married Parker a few years back; they had a son named after me.
“No. Let’s get back to it. The witness hasn’t got a name. She’s in a witness protection programme.”
I looked at a clutch of men drinking at the bar-rebels who’d ignored the step back order. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“All I can tell you now is that the witness is a woman. She made a very brief appearance in court during Lenko’s first trial. I’m told she wore a wig and dark glasses-her own mother wouldn’t have known her. Since then she’s gone into witness protection, as I say.”
“Why?”
“You haven’t been keeping up, Cliff. A witness didn’t show up and couple of jurors were suborned, or attempts were made to suborn them. Threats, you know. So, mistrial, and Lenko goes up again in a couple of weeks.”
“Who didn’t show?”
“Rhino Jackson.”
“Shit. Are you telling me you can’t find out who this witness is?”
“No. I can find out, given time. But I’d be putting my job on the line if I told you. And I’m sure Sackville’d advise you not to see her. There’s probably been an injunction issued to that effect anyway.”
“Great. So I can’t even know who’s trying to put me out of business. Christ, Frank, this could lead to a conspiracy charge or something, couldn’t it?”
“I said I’d help you. I…”
I took a drink of the light beer, wishing it was whisky. “No. I’m not going to ask you to risk your job for me. You’ve got responsibilities. I haven’t. I’ll handle it somehow. You’re right, I should’ve called Sackville the minute I got the letter. He must be able to throw a few punches for me.”
“That’s right. If he runs into trouble tell him to call me. I’ll do everything I can.”
I thanked him and we drank the rest of our beer. We did get around to talking a little about Hilde and the kid. I agreed to go out to Harbord and see them, and Frank agreed to play tennis soon. We both had our fingers crossed behind our backs. Frank told a few halfway funny stories about the politicians he came into contact with in his new job, and I told him about the client who’d hired me to guard his dog. It was a valuable dog.
The noise in the bar was mounting as the booze took effect. An argument was developing along from us-the voices were getting louder and every second word was “fuck”. The cigarette fug builds up more slowly now that people have come to believe that smoking kills you, but it still builds. My eyes started to water and Frank looked at his watch. He stood, took out his paper, rolled it and tapped it against his open palm like a cop with a baton. His grin was pretty low-voltage.
“You never answered my question, Cliff.”
“What was that?”
“When did you last see Rhino Jackson?” I was carrying my big manila envelope with the police documents and pamphlets inside. I held my paper shield up against his paper weapon. “Hell, Frank,” I said. “You know I charge twenty thousand to set up a hit. And it’s not easy-who can protect that sort of money from the tax man these days?”
I didn’t want to go home. The house is empty apart from the cat, and I don’t even have Harry Soames next door to gripe about and with. I’m in number 57; Soames sold out in 59 to a developer and the owners of 61 and 63 did the same. The word in the street is that a townhouse project is on the way, but the word doesn’t explain why I haven’t even been made an offer. I’d refuse it like I’d refuse the Order of Australia-but I wouldn’t object to the offer. The cat would probably prefer to live in a townhouse.
I drove to St Peter’s Lane and parked in a place where my resident’s sticker allowed me to stay as long as I liked. It had taken several visits to the South Sydney Council office, one to the Department of Motor Transport, two statutory declarations and ten bucks to get the sticker so I made as much use of it as I could. The area is changing, gentrifying fast. Primo Tomasetti’s tattooing parlour has gone, along with the slab of concrete he used to rent me as a parking space. Blocked-off streets are making the place like a maze. I sometimes get the feeling that you can only find your way around in a BMW.
A wind had sprung up and the mild day had turned into a cold evening. The cold made me hungry. I bought a pizza in William Street and headed for my office- a smoke-free zone with weird but gentle neighbours like the painless depilator and the new iridologist-they wouldn’t budge for developers without a fight. There was also the bottle of red in the filing cabinet to add to the allure. The threatened renovation of my building never happened- saved by the stock market crash. The lane has pretty much avoided gentrification; it still features more plastic garbage bags than native plants, and the occasional paint jobs the buildings get aren’t modish. It’s the church that saves us; if the God business goes any further downhill we could be in big trouble.
One change we’ve had to endure is the installation of a lock on the street-level door. I keep my key to it wedged in a crevice of the church’s sandstone wall on the other side of the lane. I keep a spare key to the office door under the lino on the stairs-a bit like in Dial M for Murder. You won’t catch me locked out of building, office and drinks cabinet on a cold Tuesday night.
I got the key out of the wall and had to juggle the pizza and my manila envelope of volunteered information to use it. I ended by wedging the envelope between my knees, balancing the pizza box on my head and working the stiff key one-handed.
He came out of the shadows where there is a recess between my building and the next, and he was quiet and fast. I just caught a glimpse of him and swayed away a little from the thing in his hand that was swishing through the air. It struck hard but the pizza saved me; it took a lot of weight out of the blow, although I felt it down to my toes and the shutters almost came up. I yelled and sagged back against the door. I felt a hand grabbing at me as if the assault was sexual but I realised he was reaching for the envelope between my legs. I hunched over and attempted to butt him somewhere, anywhere. I connected and felt the wind rush out of him. It hurt me too, forcing me to shut my eyes and gasp. I tried to yell again, but my windpipe felt twisted and no sound came out.
I was going down, a perfect target for a boot, when a shout came from above and across the lane
“Hey! What’s going on there?” The voice was coming from the church. Could it be the Almighty? I tried another yell but managed only a choked growl. Shout and growl were enough for my attacker. He stopped groping at me and ran off down the lane, stumbling a bit but with a lot more get up and go in him than I had in me.