about being free; well, here it was and how did I like it? I didn’t like it much. I drank some whisky and I still didn’t like it. I thought that the talk wouldn’t have gone well anyway and that it would have come to this and it was better to have missed that last fight. I drank and got angry and wanted the fight. She had no right to deny me the fight. Upstairs the bed was made, the ashtrays were empty, the books were stacked. She’d taken some clothes and things for beautifying herself. I looked around and mentally separated her possessions from mine. It was surprisingly easy to do.
I drank some more and self-pity ran strong and I thought sourly about Selina and Short and trust and love. I poured the rest of the whisky back into the bottle, drank two cups of strong coffee and went out to the car.
Breaking into Short’s studio took about two minutes, locating his life’s treasures took a little longer. Some marks on the floor and a certain artfulness about the ashes in the grate told me that all was not as it seemed. A section of the brick fireplace had been taken out to accommodate the heavy, brass-bound chest. I pulled it out, waited a few minutes to be sure that errant torch beams weren’t attracting attention, and tickled it open with a skeleton key.
Colin Short was a great photographer, he had a particular talent for men in the public eye and attractive young women. I recognised a politician and radio announcer and could probably have identified a few other faces if I’d tried. A couple of films had a similar cast list.
One bundle of pictures showed a young, dark woman playing games around a swimming pool with a couple of very interested middle-aged men. The hair was different in style but it was Selina Hope. I took these pictures and a few samples of the rest and put the chest back.
I’d had some more whisky when I reached home so I was feeling rather weathered when I got to Athol Groom’s establishment the following midmorning. He congratulated me and we negotiated a fee. I asked him for the dates of Selina’s overseas trips and got them. The poolside pictures had a date on the back which proved to be just two weeks before one of Selina’s trips.
‘Hang around, Cliff, Athol said. ‘Selina’s coming in and I know she’ll want to thank you. What d’you make of this bloke of hers?’
I was about to answer when Selina came rushing in with Short tagging behind. She looked tousled and a bit underslept but marvellous. She gave me a peck on the cheek.
‘You look tired’, she said. ‘You must have a rest. I don’t know how to thank you.’
I wanted to tell her that Short was vermin, that he’s used her to make dirty money and probably would again. I wanted to see his sheepish bit-of-a-rascal look drip away and to see her flay him. But I couldn’t; she was so purely happy, so forgiving and loving that I couldn’t destroy it. I knew why I wanted to destroy it and I knew it had nothing to do with justice or her future happiness.
I shrugged. ‘Next time you do an ad for Scotch make sure you get a bottle for me. Could you excuse me, Selina? I want a word with Colin.’
I took Short out into the corridor and showed him the pictures I’d souvenired from his collection. He went pale and plucked at a couple of bits of stubble he’d missed that morning.
‘You’re a lying, thieving shit’, I said.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘You’ve retired as a blackmailer. If I ever hear you’ve gone back to it I’ll drop these in the mail with a covering note.’
‘Don’t worry’, he said. ‘I’ll burn the lot.’
‘I’m a born worrier. She didn’t see Carlton the other day, did she?’
‘No, just those two.’
‘That’s something, maybe Carlton’s smart enough to let it lie.’
‘We’re going to New York’, he said. ‘Getting married’.
‘I’d keep it quiet’, I said. ‘Just a few friends if you have any.’
We went back inside and Athol opened some champagne for the occasion. I had a couple of glasses and got a decent kiss off Selina but it didn’t do me any good. Later I went back to Glebe. Cyn had made a good job of cleaning her stuff out; she’d even taken the bottle of gin.
Heroin Annie
You’ve got to help me, Mr Hardy’, the woman said. ‘Our Annie’s going to end up in the gutter and I don’t know what to do.’ The voice was adenoidal and Cockney, the bright lipstick was askew on her big, plain face and she was dropping cigarette ash all over my desk, but I liked her. Ma Parker lived in the street behind mine; she washed dishes in the local pub and sat in the sun outside her house. We talked about the weather and horses and London. I think she once thought I was a schoolteacher, but now she knew I was a private investigator and she’d brought me her troubles.
‘You remember Annie, Mr Hardy? A lovely kid she was.’
I remembered Annie although I hadn’t seen her for five years; back then she’d have been about thirteen and she was already tall. I remembered an oval face under straight blonde hair and not much else except the way she moved-she was graceful when she was tomboying in the street with the spotty boys or dragging home Ma’s messages in a string bag.
‘Tell me the trouble, Ma’, I said. ‘I’ll be happy to help if I can.’ I gave her a cigarette from a box of the things I keep for the weak-since I gave the habit up.
She puffed smoke and her false teeth clicked. ‘Annie ran off on the day she turned fourteen. She must’ve been planning it for a long time. I didn’t know a bleedin’ thing about it but she left me a note saying she had some money and not to worry. Worry! I went out of my mind with worry for nearly a year.’
I thought back but I couldn’t recall noticing her distress. ‘I’m sorry, Ma’, I said ‘I don’t remember it.’
‘Well, you were busy I expect. She was only a kid and I’ve got Terry and Eileen to think about. I just kept on, you know.’
I nodded. I knew Ma had buried two husbands; I assumed she had a pension. I’d just let her be a walk-on character in the film of my life, the way you do. With the sensitivity suddenly tuned up like this, I looked at her clothes-they were cheap and clean except where she’d dropped ash. Ma herself seemed to be keeping up appearances okay; we were two of a kind, my clothes were cheap and getting due for a dry cleaning.
‘Nearly a year, you said. How was she after that?’
‘I didn’t know her. She was all grown up to look at her. She got some money and took off again. The next time I saw her she was in Silverwater.’
‘What for?’, I asked, but I’d have bet money on the answer.
‘Drugs. Heroin and that-she was using them and selling them. She was giving them to kids younger than her. She got three years.’
‘Where? Some detention centre?’
‘No, Silverwater.’
‘She’d be too young.’
She stubbed out the cigarette; she looked old and worn but she wouldn’t have been fifty. ‘She made me promise not to tell them her age, she said she was eighteen.’
‘She wanted to do her time at Silverwater?’
‘That’s right, Mr Hardy. I couldn’t believe it but what could I do?’ A couple of tears ran down her rouged and powdered face. It was one of those moments when I was glad I didn’t have any children; she was puzzled, ashamed and guilty, and all because this criminal was her daughter.
‘What’s she doing now?’ I hadn’t meant the words to come out so harshly, so fully of hostility. She sniffed and looked at me uncertainly.
‘Perhaps I oughtn’t to have come. I was going to pay, you know.’
That did the trick. Next I knew I was brewing her tea, stuff I never drink myself, and feeding her more cigarettes and expressing indifference to money. The story was familiar enough: Annie had done eighteen months, came out on parole and went straight back in again on a similar charge. Now she was out again.
