‘Okay I’ll stop. One last question. What brought you to Canberra?’
‘Marriage.’
We walked through the parking lot and down some streets and across a couple of pedestrian plazas. Canberra has scored a few points against the motor car in the centre of the city, but just a few. The closed-off roads with pot plants and painted barriers look as if they could be swept away easily enough if someone decided they should be. Kay led me to some steps that went down into a big, circular concrete cellar. There was enough light to see by and some kind of matting on the floor. The food was on a serve-yourself system. We got steaks and garlic rolls and salad on our plates and I got a couple of small carafes of white wine. There were about ten plain wooden tables which would seat a dozen people and the drill was to plonk yourself down wherever you pleased. I was surprised to see people choosing to sit near others, obviously strangers, rather than going off by themselves. Kay went over to where a hippie-looking couple were sitting: the woman, who wore a plaid poncho and jeans, was holding a baby on her knee. The man was dark-bearded and thin: they nodded as we sat down, pushed the pepper and salt along and went back to talking quietly about their kid. We started on the food.
‘Good place,’ I said.
She nodded and kept eating.
‘Is there a no-talking rule?’
She shook her head and smiled. She had big white teeth and her smile was a fraction crooked. I looked at her hands — no rings. I drank the first glass of the cold wine fast and poured another — she did the same. Then we both smiled and touched glasses. She put down her knife and fork.
‘Ask,’ she said.
‘It’s a compliment really. What happened to the marriage?’
‘It did what it was supposed to do.’ She picked up her fork. ‘Then it finished.’
‘What was it supposed to do?’
She shrugged. ‘Get him a PhD and a couple of books.’ She didn’t sound or look bitter, more amused. If it had scarred her she wasn’t letting it show. Then she went back to eating and kept at it until all the food was gone. She wiped her plate with bread and put that down. We started on the second carafe.
‘God I needed that. I ran out without eating this morning and I don’t eat lunch. Sorry to be so incommunicative. I was just bloody hungry. Now, are you going to tell me what you’re investigating?’
I suppose I’d known all along that I would and that I’d be needing her help. The wine and food and her company had relaxed me. Little things that had come out in the interview with the Baudins were floating around in my mind, coming to the surface and forming a pattern. Something about this girl, which was how I thought of her although she must have been in her mid-twenties, and something about the ease we felt with each other made me trust her and want to try out the pattern on her. So I told her. I gave her all the details as far as I could recall them and put it all in order as it had happened. She looked concerned when I got to the bit about being bashed, but more interested than concerned. I’d obviously survived to do more sleuthing and that was what mattered to her. To me too. It took some time and the wine was finished when I got to the end. The hippies had melted away into the night early on in my exposition.
Kay toyed with her empty glass. ‘So you think Keir Baudin was lying. He knows more about his brother than he lets on?’
‘Yeah, that’s how it looks to me. He hates Warwick and he reinforces his father’s disappointment with him. The old boy struck me as pretty tolerant so this Warwick must be a real bastard.’
‘Mm, I’ve never heard of him, but I could ask a few people who might have. I could sniff around about Keir too, it sounds as if he’s got things on his mind. Tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, tomorrow.’ I was tired but not too tired, the wine had done me good and I could feel the juices flowing. I stroked her arm, raising the fine, light hairs and smoothing them down again.
‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘What’s next Cliff?’
I laced my fingers through hers. ‘I want to go back to my motel and go to bed with you. Then I want to get up at 4 a.m. and break into Keir Baudin’s house with you keeping watch.’ I took out my licence and put it on the table; the younger, smoother Hardy face mocked up at my battered mug. I wasn’t sure why I’d put it there, unless it was some sort of personal commitment. But to what?
‘That doesn’t license you to break and enter.’
‘No, rather the reverse. They come down hard if they catch you at anything fancy.’
‘Ever been caught?’
I grinned. ‘Yeah, once or twice. The trick is to come out smelling clean at the end — I’ve done that so far.’
She looked at me and the photograph and back to me. We were thinking the same thing — was there a story in it for her and under what terms? That accounted for some of her interest in me I knew, but how much? I thought bleakly of the house in Glebe with nothing waiting for me but the dust and yesterday’s papers and realised that I didn’t care about the percentages. If she was ten percent interested in me that was fine, twenty percent would be a jackpot. If we had an unspoken semi-professional relationship in the making what the hell did it matter? I squeezed her hand confidently.
‘Come on, think about it on the way. If you’re against it I’ll just drive you home. Of course I’ll have to tie you up with knots that’ll hold you till dawn.’
She laughed. I paid the bill and we went out. The air was cool and we drew close as we walked. I put my arm around her and suddenly we were in a shop doorway kissing hard and fierce as if we’d invented it. I took her head in my hands and held it in close; she flicked her tongue into my mouth. We pressed together from knee to nose and I liked it, then we broke apart, both breathing hard.
‘Yes then,’ she said. ‘Yes.’
I didn’t say anything, just kept close to her all the way back to the car. I kissed her again before I started up and she let her long legs slide down in front of her. After a few minutes she fumbled beside her on the seat and came up with one of the bottles of Irish. I’d told her about Brain but not about the whisky.
‘Do you drink this stuff much?’
‘Not usually. It was to oil Brain’s tongue. I hope he died easier for it.’
She glanced sharply at me and it occurred to me then that this was confirmation of a sort of what I’d told her. I hadn’t thought until then that she might not have believed me — it was pretty weird for a pick-up story though.
She sat quietly with the bottle in her lap, then she said: ‘We’ll have a sip before we go to bed.’
The motel room was dingy and smelled of my washing but it didn’t matter. I could taste the sweet spirit in her mouth when we kissed and I pressed down on her and we connected. She thrust hard back up at me and dug her fingernails into my shoulders; we threw ourselves into it for a while and then she groaned and relaxed and I came hard and she hung onto me with her hands gentle now on my back.
We rolled apart and I reached for the telephone and booked the morning call. We pulled up a sheet and wrapped ourselves together and went to sleep. I woke up a bit later and disentangled; I put out the lights all but one and made a cigarette and looked at her while I smoked. She was lying curled up on her side; her face was hidden by the dark blob of hair; the sheet was down around her waist and her breasts were high set and pointed. Her skin was a faint amber colour like a faded- summer tan or an early summer tan or an all-year tan. She slept still and quietly; I finished the cigarette, lay down, and curved in beside her.
Post coital sleep is deep and a few drops of wine and whisky help things along. I was well under when the light came on and the radio started blaring. Baudin’s secretary or bodyguard or whatever he was stood near the bed. He had a big chrome-plated gun in his hand and although Kay was sitting up bare-breasted his eyes were only for me. He lifted the gun a fraction.
‘Disgusting,’ he said. ‘You’ve only just met.’ Kay pulled the sheet up, her eyes were wide and frightened and she looked at the gun as if she’d never seen one before.
‘Then again,’ he drawled, ‘maybe you have met before. That’s a thought.’
I pulled myself up and tried to get some balance and possible leverage in the bed. It’s not a good place to launch an attack from.
‘You better know what you’re doing,’ I said.
He smiled. He’d taken his tie off and he needed a shave which made him look even tougher. I searched my
