“That’s terrific. Well I’ll just drop everything here. It’s nothing much, a couple of murders and a multi-million dollar extradition job and hurry on over to your place. What shall I wear?”
“Stop joking, I’ve been bombed.”
“You’re always bombed, tell me something new.”
“I mean really bombed, detonator, gelignite, explosion, flames. I’m OK and my client’s OK but a Porsche is dead.”
“You’ve got a client and he’s got a Porsche? Maybe you will pay me what you owe me.”
“She has one. It’s dead now, but she’ll have another tomorrow.”
“You sound more or less sober. Are you dinkum, Cliff?”
“Yes, blood oath I am. Here’s what I’m asking. If you’ve got some cars that aren’t busy picking up the take, send them over to the pub at Watson’s Bay. The sightseers will need dispersing, the car will need towing to your forensic parlour, Miss Sleeman will be requiring a lift to Mosman and I’d like to come down and see you.”
“Charmed. Consider it done, anything else?”
“No. See you soon Grant.”
“Yeah. I don’t like that crack about the take, Cliff.”
“That’s because none of it ever reaches you, mate. You’ve got to put yourself forward, make friends.”
I hung up on his stream of obscenities. Grant Evans was ex-army, ex-Malaya, like me. His sense of humour wasn’t his strongest point, but he was fairly honest like me. That made us mavericks in our respective professions and useful to each other. We were also old friends who’d been under fire and under the weather together too many times to count.
The manager was hovering outside the door. I told him the police were on their way and that I’d probably be able to see that the matter was kept pretty quiet. He looked pleased and showed me through to where Ailsa was sitting in a private room. She doused her cigarette and came up out of her chair to meet me. We put our arms around each other and stood together, not moving. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to do — coming that near to death seemed to draw us close.
“The police are coming,” I said after a minute or so, “they’ll take you home.”
“You saved my life,” she said.
“And mine don’t forget.”
She didn’t move away. “The tough guy’s tough guy.”
“Not really. I nearly spilt the brandy they forced me to drink.”
“You’re a drunk, but you seem to be lucky for me. Will you stay with it? This doesn’t change anything?”
I told her I would and it didn’t and we were still patting each other like timid middleweights in a clinch when the manager came in to let us know that the Rose Bay cops had arrived. Ailsa continued not to do silly things. We walked out to the parking lot and she barely gave the burnt out wreck a glance. She answered a few basic questions from the senior uniformed man and then turned things over to me. Grant had clued the men up and they were willing for her to go home and for me to go down town and give a detailed account of the bombing. A cop picked up Ailsa’s bag from where it had landed after being blown clear by the explosion of the petrol tank. He handed it to her and ushered her into the back of one of the patrol cars. She mouthed “Tonight” at me and I nodded. The cop slammed the door and the car took off. I was surprised to find that I wished I was going with her, but it was time to start earning her money by playing the “bumping pitch and blinding light” stuff with the law.
On the ride I tried to work out how to play the cards I had, or thought I had, but I found myself spending more time admiring the driving of the young detective at the wheel. He whipped the big Holden Kingswood through impossible gaps and caught every light from Watson’s Bay to East Sydney. He didn’t say a word on the journey.
“Great driving,” I said as I got out in front of the central police building. He looked at me and jerked his head at the steps. A specialist.
I went into the building and gave my name to the desk sergeant. He lifted a phone and spoke briefly to someone in Grant’s inner sanctum. The sergeant lifted old, tired cocker spaniel eyes to me.
“You know the way?”
“Yeah. OK to go up now?”
He nodded wearily and turned his attention back to the stolen car sheet. He read it like a form guide maybe hoping that if he spotted a few on the way home he could get out from behind the desk. Then again, maybe it was just a stunt the police PR boys put him up to as something that would impress the public. I went up three flights in the creaking lift. The view from the corridor windows was dull, out across the commercial buildings of East Sydney. The park on the other side was a better eyeful. Grant was still on the dull side but I knew he hoped to go up a floor and cross over. I might be able to help him if I could persuade him at this point with nothing. I pushed open the door and went into the office he shared with two other senior men.
Grant was alone. He was sitting at a desk which was untidy with papers, coffee cups and full ashtrays. He pushed himself back from the desk and waved me into a chair. He took hold of his spare tyre and pinched it.
“I’m getting fat, Cliff, not enough action. Are you going to give me some?”
I sat down. “Could be Grant, could be. I’d better fill you in.”
I told him the tale, an edited version which left some things out and under-played others — especially the events at Brave’s clinic. Grant listened closely, making occasional notes. He ran his hand ruefully across the thinning dark hair on his skull. He was one of those men who took the disintegration of his body hard. His wife still appeared to think of him as the twenty-five-year-old paratrooper she’d married and his three daughters thought the sun shone out of him, but he bemoaned each lost hair and extra ounce. He’d been a superb fighting machine in Malaya and he’d killed three men on active duty as a cop, three hard men. He’d saved my life once in the jungle and kept me out of jail a few times since then. I usually played court jester to his gloomy king.
“Well, you seem to have yourself a nice case,” he said when I’d finished talking.”Well-heeled client, real Lew Archer stuff. What do you want from me?”
“Can you sit on the bombing for a while, keep it quiet?”
“Yeah, I think so. No one really wants to know about car bombings. Everyone assumes they’re about crims and punters welshing on debts. Mostly they’re right. No reporters there?”
“No, not that I saw. The management won’t talk, that’s for sure.”
“Naturally. All right, quiet it is. What’s in it for me?”
I rolled a cigarette and offered him the makings. He hesitated then took them and expertly made a cigarette. We both blew smoke at the stained, cracked ceiling.
“I want to know something about the Gutteridge case. Four years ago, remember it?”
“Yep, I was on it for a while.”
“Did it get sat on? I hear there were some loose ends — an open safe for one.”
“That’s right. He killed himself though. I was the first to see him and it looked real to me. I’ve seen a lot of dead men who got dead in different ways. I’d say this was an auto.”
“Or set up by an expert.”
“Maybe. Unlikely.”
“What about the safe?”
“Puzzling.”
“Look, was it a bloody cover-up?”
He stubbed the cigarette out and dusted his hands. It looked as if he was trying to stop smoking again. He’d tried it a dozen times to my knowledge and it always made him mean. His face set in one of its tough, bloody- minded official masks.
“You’re asking everything and giving nothing. If you want to offer me something juicy out of the Gutteridge case forget it. I don’t want to know.”
“No, it’s not that. I’m working on something connected with the Gutteridge case and I want to know all there is to know about it. It might give me some leverage. I’m pretty confident I can put your name in lights over something which has nothing to do with Mark Gutteridge’s death.”
“Give me a clue.”
“I can’t. You wouldn’t buy it at this stage.”
Grant sighed. He reached into his pockets, pulled the hands out empty and did an isometric exercise against the edge of the desk.
