On Saturday morning I got up early and bought the papers, skimmed them, and went to the gym. I sometimes get good ideas on the treadmill where the activity is so boring the brain is forced to make a contribution to help the time pass. I set it at the moderate pace for the first ten minutes and then lifted it for the next twenty. The machine is set to stop after thirty minutes to prevent people from hogging it, simulating a City to Surf run. I built the grade up gradually but not too far, out of consideration for my hamstrings.
An aerobics class was going on in an adjoining room with the appropriate music pumping out at high decibels. Preferable to the inane commercial radio station that occasionally pollutes the air until someone complains. I blank the music out and concentrate on finding a rhythm. I broke into a light sweat, which is about the time the ideas come. It's nothing to do with endorphins because by then I'm feeling the pain.
I ran the case over in my mind, recalling the conversations as I'd written them up and the connections and associations. I sweated, but nothing came except the renewed conviction that Pixie Padrone and Karl Lubeck felt like the keys to the whole affair. Neither of them was old. To judge by Roma Brown's account, Lubeck was in good health, and when last heard of Pixie was in the pink. They should both still be alive, but where? With sweat running into my eyes I looked up at the bank of television sets I usually ignore. One was tuned to CNN and George W Bush was stumbling through a speech. I hoped to hell they hadn't gone to America.
I got home with that depressing thought in mind but my mood lifted immediately when I found that Lil was back. We had a shower together and went to bed for the afternoon-sex, sleep, more sex and more sleep. Come evening and we went to the Taste of India in Glebe Point Road for dinner. A pleasant stroll, well rugged up against the cool night air, wine from the Ancient Briton across the road, Glebe at its best.
The waiters know us and know we don't like fuss and dislike having our wine poured for us. We were both hungry and ate steadily for a while before talking about our work. I filled Lily in on what I'd done and how things looked.
'Early days,' she said.
'Yeah, but the longer it takes the more it costs Frank.'
'He can afford it, can't he?'
'I suppose so, but he had to conceal it from Hilde, which he hates doing, and I feel the same. Anyway, that's me. How's the MFP?'
She snapped a pappadum in half. 'Don't ask.'
'That bad?'
'Worse. I'll be battling to get any juice into it.'
'You will.'
We ate and drank a bit more and I was thinking about asking for our second bottle-we were walking home, after all-when Lily said, 'I've been considering what you've told me, Cliff. I know you, you're a bit stymied, right?'
I told her about the treadmill session, making a joke ofit.
'Masochist,' she said, putting her fork down. 'But it sounds as though this Lubeck could be a plastic surgeon, right?'
'Could be, but probably a fly-by-nighter.'
'Exactly. I did a piece on dodgy plastic surgeons a year or so ago. Before I met you.'
'I wonder that you could have any memory of such a desolate time in your life.'
'Piss off. This bloke was full bottle on that scene. He's a real sleaze. I could hardly bear to talk to him and the thought of him touching me made my skin crawl. But if your bloke's working in that area anywhere in Australia, Norman Belfrage will know about him.'
Doctor Belfrage?'
Lil picked up her fork. 'Was once,' she said. 'Don't open the other bottle, Cliff. I have to work tomorrow.'
10
Lil spent Sunday on the computer and the phone. I went for a long morning walk through Glebe and Annandale and rewarded myself with a beer at the Toxteth. I flicked through the papers without reading anything of interest and did a couple of crosswords, trying to tell myself this was valuable down time, restorative. I wasn't convinced; I wanted to be up and running.
Around 7 pm I took a glass of wine up to Lil and told her I was putting together one of my culinary specialities- a mixed grill.
'Thanks,' she said. 'I'll be down in a few minutes. Don't burn the bangers.'
Over the meal she told me she'd contacted the man she called Nasty Norman and that he'd agreed to meet me.
'For a consideration, I assume?'
'Right. I got him down to five hundred dollars for an hour, plus a bottle of brandy.'
'Thanks, Lil. When?'
'Tomorrow, eleven o'clock, at the Newport Workers Club. He's a ratty little number with a bad comb-over. He's got emphysema but he'll be smoking. Sometimes it takes him five minutes to get enough breath for a sentence.'
'Sounds lovely. Good way to start the week.'
'At least you'll be out and about. I'll still be trying to pump some life into this turkey of a story.'
I poured us both some more wine and used the bit of sausage I'd kept aside to mop up the Rosella. 'Do you have a copy of the piece you wrote on dicey plastic surgery?'
'It's on the thumb drive. I'll print you a copy. The subs butchered it, of course. Won't tell you much.'
'Anything'll be a lot compared to what I know now.'
Lil went back to work. Before starting she printed out her article. I stacked the dishes-very few from a minimalist cook like me-and settled down with the article and the last of the red we'd had with dinner. If Lil was having difficulty getting the MFP story up and running, she'd had no trouble with this one. She captured the rapacious, unscrupulous character of the doctors who did plastic surgery on the cheap and without proper referrals or investigation of the backgrounds of their 'clients'.
Their usual habit was to get people going under the knife to sign waivers exempting the surgeons from responsibility for outcomes. It was amazing how many desperate people — some young and seeking to change their fortunes, some older, trying to recapture their youth-were prepared to do this. Lil implied that some of the surgery was to change appearance to avoid arrest, or re-arrest. No names, no pack drill, but at least one of the dodgy doctors had been tied in with a passport-forging enterprise that had gone wrong and put all parties behind bars. The doctor in question, who carried the nickname 'the cutter', had received the lightest sentence for his cooperation with the authorities, but he hadn't survived six months inside the gaol.
Lil finished working and came down the stairs yawning. She leaned over me as I jotted down some notes illegible to anyone else, and sometimes to me.
'It's a great piece,' I said. 'Should've got a Walkley.'
'That's my ambition. What d'you think I'm hanging around with you for?'
Time was when Newport was fairly unfashionable and fairly affordable. Not now. Never mind that salt air rusts the guttering and zaps the computers, Sydney people want to be as close to the water as they can. Plenty of money had been spent in Newport since I'd last been there. The old houses had just about disappeared to make way for apartment blocks and the ones that had survived had been renovated and modified so that their original owners wouldn't have known them.
The Workers Club was at the south end of Newport beach with a view straight out over the Tasman Sea or the Pacific Ocean, take your pick. I'd stopped in Dee Why to pick up the brandy. I don't drink the stuff unless there's nothing else around, and don't know one brand from another. Hennessy appealed to my Irish ancestry.
The club building had undergone change like everything else around, and not necessarily for the better. It had that generic look of polished metal and glass, potted plants and photographs of club officials with chins spilling down towards their tie knots. In my slip-ons, clean jeans, blue shirt and blazer, I passed the dress regulations comfortably. The club was affiliated with almost every other club in the state, so my Balmain membership got me
