Denise was back, dabbing at her nose. ‘Sorry, Harry.’
‘Sorry, Harry,’ he mocked. ‘Who the fuck’s this you’ve let in, you silly cunt?’
Harry was big, 190 centimetres plus, going on a hundred kilos, some of it blubber, not all. He had a shaven head and his jeans, T-shirt and bomber jacket looked to be in much the same condition as the clothes on the floor in his room. He loomed in the narrow hallway like a Mack truck in a one-way street. I knew the type-his size had won him most of his fights before they even started.
He pushed Denise away savagely when she made a placatory move towards him and that was enough for me. Our relative heights were just right. I put my left shoulder hard into his sternum and gave him a solid right to the ribs at the same time. Double whammy. The fight and the breath went out of him in a long whoosh. It wasn’t too hard to hit him again with the shoulder and send him crumbling down like a deflated windsock. Denise’s eyes were wide open. She’d never seen Harry outplayed before. I made a gesture to show her that I’d finished and crouched down beside Harry who was gasping for breath.
‘Keep your day job, mate, whatever it is. You’ll never make it as a tough guy. Now, I intended to be polite about this but you changed the rules. I’m going to ask some questions and you’re going to answer them if you want to keep your teeth.’ I put a fist under his nose. ‘Understand?’
He nodded.
‘Did Kristina leave anything behind in the room? Anything at all?’
Another nod.
‘What?’
‘C…card.’
‘Where is it?’
He squirmed and reached around for his wallet in his hip pocket. I’d felt something give when the rib punch landed. He was hurting. He fumbled a card out of the wallet and I took it. It was for a brothel in Alexandria- ‘The Silken Touch’-with the usual graphic: couches, tresses, diaphanous gowns. On the back of it was scrawled, ‘Anytime-K.’
‘Going to pay her a visit, were you?’
Denise had seen the card. ‘You bastard,’ she said.
I straightened up. ‘Okay, sorry to upset the domestic harmony here. A few more questions. Why did she leave?’
Denise said, ‘She was dealing and using. We kicked her out.’
‘When was this?’
Denise shrugged. ‘A week.’
‘And she hasn’t been back?’
She shot Harry an evil look. ‘Not as far as I know.’
‘All right.’ I gave her one of my cards. ‘You have any trouble with this bloke you call me. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ Her cold seemed to have gone and I had the feeling Harry would follow it soon. I gave him a pat on his bald head and left the house.
Three o’clock in the afternoon is as good a time as any to go calling at a brothel. They operate around the clock and the manager or an assistant would be there and at least some of the workers. Kristina struck me as a night-time gal, but you never know. Most of these places have some kind of protection, and the protector wasn’t likely to be such easy meat as Harry. I stopped at an ATM along the way and drew out some money.
The Silken Touch was in Botany Road with no danger of offending churchgoers or schoolchildren. It was behind a high wall with the number painted on it, large enough for there to be no mistake about punters coming to the right place. There was a factory on one side and a warehouse of some kind on the other; blocks of flats opposite.
I parked and pressed the buzzer beside a heavy metal gate. A mounted security camera above the gate would have shown them inside that I probably wasn’t an axe murderer and definitely not a Jehovah’s Witness. The gate swung smoothly in and I stepped through and along a short covered walkway to the front of the building. It looked like a Federation house that had undergone more renovation than Michael Jackson. The front porch had been glassed in, a bow window flattened and a bullnose verandah remodelled. Every bit of glass in view was tinted and every surface had a fresh coat of paint.
The front door opened at a touch and I stood in a discreetly lit reception area where a woman sat behind a desk. There were chairs for clients, a flat screen television, a VCR, a rack of videos and magazines and prints on the walls that advertised what was on sale here. The woman remained seated. She was a redhead, at least for now, with a wide, flat face, strong jaw and an oddly small mouth. She wore a rollneck sweater with a heavy gold chain hanging between her impressive breasts.
‘Good afternoon, sir.’ Careful vowels and consonants, a small smile from the small mouth, a semi-welcoming gesture of the hands.
‘Good afternoon. I’m not a client. I’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge here.’
That announcement changed her manner in an instant. She pressed a button on her desk. A door opened behind her and a man came striding towards us. White shirt, dark pants, no tie. He was medium-sized, short-haired and fluid in his movement. Army-trained if ever I saw it.
I took out my licence folder and the photograph of Kristina along with three one hundred dollar notes which I held so that he could see them and the woman at the desk couldn’t.
‘Help you, mate?’
‘Somewhere we can talk?’
He had good eyes; he’d seen the money and taken in the details of the licence. ‘I’ll handle this, Phyllis. Come through here, Mr Hardy.’
I gave Phyllis a wink and followed him past a series of blown-up photographs showing black men and white women and white men and black women, proving, I suppose, that opposites can attract. He opened a door into a room containing a desk and chair and a three-quarter bed. A screen mounted so it could be seen from the bed showed a movie with the sound turned down. Two women with silicone pumped breasts were seesawing on a double dildo. Another screen, placed to be viewed from behind the desk, was blank but with a faint glimmer. He saw me notice it.
‘The camera’s heat-activated. The latest.’
‘Cute,’ I said. ‘You know my name. What’s yours?’
‘Phil. Now, what’s this about?’
I’m no great shakes at sleight of hand but I can do a bit when needed. I made the money disappear and handed him the photograph.
‘D’you know this girl, Phil?’
‘If I do?’
‘Could be trouble. She’s young.’
‘How young?’
‘That depends.’
‘What’s this? Some kind of shakedown?’
‘A nice kind. You tell me everything you know about her and you walk away with the money and that’s it. If you don’t do that there could be… consequences.’
‘I could hurt you.’
‘You could. Army?’
‘Right.’
‘Me too, but a fair while ago. I’d back you in, but why take the risk?’
He thought about it the way a man who enjoys violence does. Dumb ones go for it no matter what, smarter ones pick their moments. ‘Okay, I know the girl. Calls herself Kristina. Looks a lot older than in that photo, though.’
‘You would say that, wouldn’t you? I don’t suppose she’s around now?’
He shook his head.
‘When?’
‘What’s the date?’
I told him.
