brain he goes on and on, like Christopher Columbus. I found myself sliding into this nonsense as the city skyline came in view. Maybe it was the motor fumes, maybe I couldn’t handle a can of light beer and a glass of white wine in the middle of a working day anymore. Disturbing thoughts to be pushed aside as I ploughed on to police headquarters to have a chat with my favourite law-enforcement officer, Detective Sergeant Frank Parker. We could talk about under-convicted villains and the corruption of youth. Besides, Frank might ask me over to his pub for a drink.
Frank Parker had impressed me with his flair and imagination when we’d first met a little over a year ago. By that I mean that he didn’t arrest me on principle, and didn’t try to prove that he was tougher than me or better at staying up late at night answering meaningless questions in unpleasant surroundings. I’d helped him and he’d helped me on that occasion; we had a drink together from time to time, and there was an understanding between us that one would help the other again if the time came. This looked like it, for me.
I parked near the police building in a section they keep set aside for impounded vehicles. I’ve never had any trouble in this spot-coming or going-and I’ve never known why. I told the cop on the desk which bars the way to the stairs and lifts who I wanted to see, and he looked at me oddly.
‘You sure?’ he said.
‘Yeah. Why?’
He shrugged and called the detectives’ room. Parker must have given him the okay because he pointed his thumb suavely at the lifts. I rode up two levels and went along the corridor where the thick clumps of multi-coloured official paper hang off the notice boards like grapes.
I knocked on the door of the room Frank recently acquired when he moved up a grade: he only had to share it with one other detective.
‘Come in, Cliff.’
I pushed at the door which only went halfway before it was stopped by a cardboard box on the floor. Parker was in his shirt sleeves, shovelling papers into another box. There was a bulging green garbag on top of the swept-clean desk. Parker lived and worked in a blizzard of paper; it was his habitat. To see him in a bare, stripped room was a shock.
‘Moving again, Frank?’ I said. ‘You a Deputy Commissioner or something, now?’
He grinned at me and dusted his hands. ‘You’re behind the times, Cliff. You see me at the end of what looks like being my last day in the New South Wales Police Force.’
5
He filled me in at the pub-not the usual copper’s watering hole, but another a few blocks from the station. He made a point of this as we breasted the bar.
‘See, changing the patterns already.’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry about the promotion crack, Frank. Didn’t know anything like this was happening.’
‘No reason you should. They kept it all very dark.’
‘It?’
The beers came and we reached out at the same time. We moved over to a window seat, out of earshot of the other drinkers.
‘It’s simple enough’, Parker said. ‘I’m guilty of taking bribes. That’s what the internal investigation found, and the tribunal believed. I’m suspended-I’ll appeal, but it’ll be confirmed. I creamed off more than fifty grand over the past few years.’
‘Bullshit!’
He raised his glass. “Thank you for the vote of confidence, Cliff Hardy.’ He took a long pull on the middy.
‘What sort of bribes?’
‘All sorts. For impeding the course of justice, for passing information, for intimidating witnesses.’
I said ‘Bullshit’ again, which wasn’t much help to anyone.
‘You don’t have to tell me, mate. I’ve been lying awake over it for six weeks.’
‘What’re you supposed to have done with the money?’
‘There was a bookie who I placed a lot of bets with, apparently. Since gone on a long holiday-no one knows where. I bought a car and wrecked it-dealer no longer in business, it seems.’
I finished my beer and tried for a lighter note. ‘It just doesn’t sound like you, Frank. ‘Course, you never know.’
‘That’s right, but I’ll tell you this-when all this was supposed to be happening, I was too bloody tired to have a split personality.’
‘Set up?’
‘Right.’ He went over for another round. Frank is a fraction fuller than me; he used to be a little heavier but he wasn’t anymore. The waistband of his pants was crinkled where his belt had drawn it in a notch or two. He came back with the drinks and set them down.
‘I’d give the world for a smoke.’ His face under the blue beard-shadow had a hollow, eaten-out look.
‘Fight it’, I said. ‘Build your character. You must have some idea of why you got screwed.’
‘Yeah, well, to tell the truth, the problem is an over-supply of ideas. In this game what d’you make but enemies? Don’t get hurt, Cliff.’
‘I’ll try not to. Treading on toes internally, as it were?’
He grinned. ‘Jesus, you butcher the language. Yeah, every day. Impossible not to. Ah, I don’t know. It happens. I’m not the first.’
‘What’re you going to do? Take up drinking professionally?’
He looked at the glass in his hand. ‘No’, he said quietly. ‘I’ve hardly had a drink since it started. No one to drink with, much. Nola’s gone.’
He meant his wife of ten years. I’d only met her once-had no clear image. ‘That’s tough, Frank. I’m sorry. Was that connected with…?’
‘The screwing of Frank Parker? Not really. Shit, I was never there and dead tired when I was. There was no money to speak of, and no fun. She found someone who could give her a bit of both. Who could blame her? We both changed, and in different directions-I got harder, she got softer. Thank Christ we didn’t have any kids.’
‘You still haven’t told me what you’re going to do about it.’
‘I haven’t decided. Give me a chance. Let’s leave me for a bit.’ He took a drink and gave me one of his professional appraisals. ‘You need a haircut. You haven’t changed much since I last saw you. Why should you? You probably looked forty when you were twenty. You’re that sort.’
I made a fist. ‘I’ve changed inside, Frank.’
‘How are things-inside?’
I hadn’t thought hard about it. How were they? I had all my hair and most of my health. I was independent. I was reading Bartlett and Steele’s biography of Howard Hughes: I was better off than Hughes, but then, everyone in the bar was better off than Howard Hughes. I was all right.
‘I’m okay’, I said. ‘Working for a guy named Paul Guthrie, know him?’
Parker shook his head. ‘Must be a good clean job if you can tell me who you’re working for.’
‘I wouldn’t call it clean, not altogether.’
‘There’s no such thing as really clean in your game, or in mine.’ He drank and snorted. ‘Whatever that is now. Nola said it was a dirty game anyhow.’
‘What’s her new bloke do?’
‘Search me. Why did you come to see me? You’re working for fairly clean Mr Guthrie and…?’
‘His son’s run off the rails. Stepson really. He’s put himself out of touch with the family, dropped a girl you’d run to Melbourne for, and he’s keeping bad company.’
‘How bad?’
‘Liam Catchpole, Dottie Williams, Tiny Spotswood.’
‘That’s not good. That’s trouble.’
‘Yeah. Catchpole seems to have turned up about the time the kid went haywire. Last week he was looking for
