remembered from my last visit and several Asian faces. Some of the better old hardheads like Grant Evans, who’d stretched the rules for me a few times when I first got into the PEA game, would have struggled to accommodate these developments and made the adjustment more or less. But Grant had gone down to a force nine coronary a few years back, and I didn’t like to think how close we were together in age.
The needle on the parking meter swung into the expired zone just as I reached the Camry. I gave it the finger, deactivated the alarm, opened the door and the mobile phone buzzed.
‘Hardy,’ I said, crouching into the car.
‘Cliff, this is Claudia. I’ve been trying to get you on the other numbers, but… ‘
There was an edge to her voice, not hysteria or panic but in that territory. I sat behind the wheel and tried to project reassurance. ‘Okay, Claudia. I’ve been running about. Where are you, at home?’
‘Yes, yes. Kirribilli, although nowhere feels like home any more.’
‘I understand. I’m coming over there now. Is that what you want? Is there something wrong? Something I can deal with?’
‘Jesus, wait a minute till I get a cigarette.’
I hung on, hoping the call wouldn’t drop out. I’ve got no faith in mobile phones. A parking attendant rounded the corner and began checking the meters. Ten or so before she got to me-nine, eight…
Claudia was back on the line, sounding more calm but more angry. ‘Those bloody journalists. Christ, I hate them.’
Seven, six…
‘What’s happened?’
‘We had a power shut-down here for an hour this morning and it turned my answering machine off. A call came through just as I was waking up from the Mogadon. The phone kept ringing and I couldn’t understand why and I answered it.’
Five, four…
‘Yes. Who was it?’
‘I forget her name. Some smarmy bitch. She sounded so pleased to have got through to me. She had a story just on that account I suppose. I was dopey. I could hardly understand what she was saying. I probably sounded drunk. Cliff, are you there?’
Three, two…
‘I’m here.’
‘She said… Jesus, she talked about how the murder of my lawyer would mean a delay in the trial. I hadn’t even thought of that! I can’t remember what she said, I was still too fuzzy, but I could grasp the implication.’
One…
‘Cliff, they’re going to say I did this too! To gain time… ‘
‘That’s ridiculous.’
The attendant glanced at me as I waved at her. She took it all in-the car, the mobile, the agitation-and took her revenge. She must have been Sydney’s fastest infringement notice writer; she had the ticket made out and under the wiper and was past me and moving on before I could say a word, not that there was anything I could say with the phone to my ear.
‘Cliff! Cliff! Are you listening to me?’
‘Yes, of course. That’s all crazy. You don’t have to worry about that.’
‘But I abused her when I got her drift. God only knows what she’ll write about me. And I will have to get another lawyer, won’t I? And he might not want you to… I just don’t know what to do.’
‘We can fix all that,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m on my way.’
‘No. No, don’t come here. I can’t stay in this place. You must have things to do. I’m going to go away for a few days. I need to think about everything.’ The sharp edge was back in her voice. Along with the huskiness it made her sound slightly frantic.
‘Don’t do that,’ I said urgently. ‘You can come to my place. We.. ‘
‘Don’t be mad! I need to think about you among other things. Can’t you see that? You can’t run around doing what you have to do and baby-sit me as well. I’ve got to get myself together. I’ll call you, Cliff.’
‘Claudia, don’t… ‘
She hung up. I swore, dialled the number and got the engaged signal. I looked in the rear-vision mirror and saw the parking attendant coming back. Can you be booked twice for the same offence? I didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. I slammed the phone down, started the car and drove off. I headed up towards Oxford Street and stopped outside a pub. I looked longingly at it. It was an old-style Sydney pub with one of the Resch’s pictures, showing a slender woman in a grey evening dress sharing a drink with a bronzed bloke in a dinner suit. These days, in that neck of the woods, the bloke was more likely to be in the dress and the woman in the suit. The thought amused me as I removed the parking ticket and dropped it on the passenger seat. I crossed the street and bought a take-away coffee.
I phoned Pete Marinos and got him in person for once. I told him that Claudia Fleischman was about to take off somewhere and that I wanted his watchdog to stick with her all the way.
‘Can do, amigo.’ Pete likes to play the all-round wog.
‘This is serious, Pete. She’s supposed to report to the cops regularly. She could be running out on that. She could be in danger. Is this guy any good?’
‘He’s good. Where’s she going?’
‘I don’t fucking know!’
‘Take it easy, Cliff. I heard about Sackville. I get the picture. My man has to know if it’s interstate, overseas or what.’
‘Is it the same guy I found in the garden?’
‘Yeah. But… ‘
‘Interstate just possibly, not overseas. No passport. Mostly likely Sydney local or environs-you know, Blue Mountains, like that.’
‘OK. I’ll give you his mobile number. You can stay in touch with him if it’s in range.’
I wrote down the number and slowly drank my coffee, trying to remember how I handled all this stuff back before pagers and car phones and faxes. As far as I could recall, I put many miles on the odometer of the Falcon before last, got very sore feet and lost plenty of coins in vandalised phone boxes. I remember Cyn, my ex-wife, looking at the dusty car with its coat-hanger aerial and the overflowing ashtray and the box of twenty-cent pieces and shaking her head.
‘Why do you do it?’ she’d said.
She was an architect, worked in a smart office in Edgecliff, drove a Fiat. People came to her, she didn’t have to go to them.
I can’t remember my response. Anyway, it didn’t convince her and she was soon on her way out of the marriage and headed back to the North Shore whence she hailed. Nowadays, I’d been told, she had an advertising executive husband, a couple of kids and was a competitive sailor. I could imagine all that and wished her well. She’d have been surprised at the Camry and the mobile phone, but not at my sexual involvement with a client, the parking ticket or at my decision of what to do next. The responsibility for the break-up of the marriage was a fifty-fifty split.
Haitch Henderson had a son named Noel. I’d found this out when I’d come up against Haitch the first time. Noel’s mother was a prostitute and Haitch wasn’t proud of the connection. But there’s a little good in everyone, even a low-life like Haitch, and he’d accepted the boy and provided for him after a fashion. The fact that Noel, as a teenager, had adopted pimping and drug selling as occupations wasn’t Haitch’s fault, unless you believe that criminality is passed on in the DNA. I’ve never been able to decide on the point.
Peter Corris
CH19 — The Washington Club
I knew that Noel did business in a block of flats in Earlwood. The flats were in a building mounted high up above the Cooks River, high enough to make it look, on a good day with a blue sky, like something other than the industrial sewer and stormwater drain it was. Noel owned at least three of the flats, rented a couple more, scattered through the block, and he kept whores in them, selling drugs in different flats listed under different names
