out on this. I’ll be back in Bondi tomorrow.’
‘Why don’t you give yourself a few days off?’
‘It’s worse here than there, believe me. Come on, I’ll show you back out to the real world.’
We went back the way we’d come, noiselessly.
‘The police’ll be onto you soon. I was a bit vague about you when I talked to them. I’d be grateful if you could be a bit vague about me.’
‘No worries,’ she said. ‘I’ll be feminine, it’s the only way with cops.’
I drove off wondering how feminine wiles would work on Frank Parker. Then I wondered how masculine wiles would work on Ann Winter.
Hilde was still up and watching television when I got home.
‘That killing in Bondi,’ she said. ‘I saw it on the news. Nothing to do with you, was it?’
‘You didn’t really see it. Yeah, it was everything to do with me. I found him.’
‘Ugh. How was it?’
I was tired and frustrated, full of confused half-thoughts with no connections. Like most people, I take those moods out on someone else and Hilde was the nearest to hand. ‘How do you think it was?’ I snapped. ‘It was fucking messy. You work in a pink and white world don’t you, Hilde, love?’
She tried to weather the storm with a light touch. ‘There’s some yellow in it.’
‘Well, intestines, guts, are grey and green. Did you know that?’
She didn’t say anything, just looked blankly at the shimmering screen. She’d turned the sound down and people with orange faces and blue hair were whispering to each other. Within seconds I was sorry for what I’d said. I told her so.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You get like that. It’s stress.’
‘Why don’t you move in with an apiarist?’ I said. ‘I’m told they’re the most unstressed people around.’
She examined me as she might a chipped tooth-worth saving, maybe, but a lot of work. ‘Where would I find a landlord who’d let me get so far behind with the rent?’
‘Well, you’re helping me defraud the income tax people.’ Saying that swung my mind back to John Singer. His tax records would be interesting. Maybe he owed a bundle and had decided to default.
‘Income tax,’ Hilde said. ‘I’m looking forward to paying some, lots.’
I grunted. Youthful idealism is hard to take. ‘How’s your love life?’ I was thinking of my big empty bed upstairs, the useless stirrings and the occasional dreams with unhappy endings.
‘Lousy.’ She stretched up for the ceiling; her small, hard breasts rose up under her shirt and I got a glimpse of her flat tennis player’s stomach. ‘There’s a lecturer I fancy. Lovely guy with a bitch of a wife. Nothing doing.’
‘Probably too old for you, anyway.’
‘Mm, thirty at least.’
Ancient, I thought, past it, ready for the monkey gland injections. I left her to the television and went upstairs, thinking about her and Marion Singer and Ann Winter. Tenant, client, and what?
My bedroom was dusty and there were more coffee cups in it than in the kitchen. I made a nest of them and swore to take them down in the morning. The pile of paperbacks had toppled over on the dresser and knocked the transistor radio onto the floor. I picked it up and heard it rattle ominously when I shook it. I put it down, deciding to let the full force of that disaster wait until the following day.
In the morning I tramped virtuously down with the coffee cups but Hilde hadn’t left the customary pot on the stove. I drank instant grumpily and leafed through the phone book until I found William A. Winter of Point Piper. After getting past a woman with strong public school vowels, I had Ann on the line.
‘God,’ she said. ‘I’m hung.’
‘Shocking. Any cops yet?’
‘No, they’ll be at the dump I expect. No-one much knows about the Travelodge here.’
‘Bruce mentioned this wino on the tape, Leon. You said you knew him too. D’you know where I can find him?’
‘He sleeps in a sort of chookhouse out in the back yard of a place in the street behind Bruce’s. I don’t know the number but you can’t miss it. It’s a three-storey terrace, free-standing, chunder-green.’
‘Okay, thanks.’
‘What’s the time?’ Her voice was blurry and she was having trouble hitting the hard consonants. Southern Comfort.
‘Nine-twenty. Why?’
‘At ten you’ll find Leon on the steps of the Haworth Arms.’ She spelled the word out.’
‘I’ve read the book,’ I said. ‘I’ll try there first. You okay?’
‘I will be when I’ve had a shower and some coffee and a hair of the dog. When will I see you next?’
‘What about Manny’s tonight, at six, say?’
‘Right.’
My parents had lived in Bronte some time before I was born. My sister remembers it; she says that that when they quarrelled he threatened to drown her at the beach. She’d just laugh at him and go off to the pub. It wasn’t so different from what I remembered happening when we lived at Maroubra. I can remember my father walking with me along that big, empty Maroubra beach while my mother was in the pub.
I had more leisure for these pleasant thoughts on this drive to Bronte. It was a bright, mild day and the council workers carving up a section of Oxford Street were whistling. I drove through the cutting and past Bronte beach which is scaled right down from Bondi-the sand, the grass, the changing sheds, the lot-and up towards the Waverley cemetery where the dead are laid out in rows on a headland, eternally oriented towards New Zealand.
A jogger strained up the grade and took a rest leaning on one of the sandstone horse troughs outside the cemetery. It was a long time since a horse had taken a breather there. I drove down beside the cemetery to take a look at the water before I plunged into pubs and rundown, chunder-green boarding houses. The dark blue sea, white-flecked and streaked with deep greens and silvery patches, rolled away forever to the east. The waves were high and even, occasionally rolling over and dumping with deep, resonant crashes. The board riders still defied them, but the waves could wait.
I located the Haworth Arms in my Guide to Sydney Pubs and headed for it. The warm day wouldn’t matter one way or the other to the step-sitters; their skins would be permanently tanned from years of walking the streets and sleeping rough. Leon, with a chookhouse to doss in, would be an aristocrat amongst them.
There were five of them on the steps, warriors of the bottle, who looked old but who probably weren’t. I addressed myself to the most awake-looking, a character with grey hair to his shoulders and a face as seamed as W. H. Auden’s.
‘I’m looking for Leon,’ I said.
‘Ain’t here. Got the price of a schooner, mate?’
I gave him a dollar and he put it carefully into the inside breast pocket of the ancient suit coat he wore.
‘I heard he was always here.’
‘S’right, but he ain’t. First time in I dunno how long.’ He turned to a small fat man who was rolling a cigarette out of what looked like cannibalised butts. ‘Seen Leon, Clyde?’ Clyde shook his head. I wondered if he thought that was worth a dollar, but he evidently didn’t because he didn’t look up. I carry a few cigarettes with me to prove that I’ve beaten the habit fair and square. I passed two across to Clyde, who put them cautiously into his makings tin.
‘Ta. Leon’s sick, probably, or dead.’
I jumped. ‘Why d’you say that?’
‘Stands to reason. He ain’t here, usually means a man’s sick or dead. Right, Stan?’
The man with the ploughed paddock face nodded. ‘Right.’
I drove back to Henneberry’s place and parked across the street. The sun hit the rounded white section of the flats, giving the building an exotic, Moorish look. I wondered how long it would take the landlord to re-let and decided it would depend on the carpet; he’d be slowed up if he had to replace it.
Life got a bit tougher in the streets further back. The houses were small and cramped; there was no view from here but some of the buildings actually grovelled down below street level as if emphasising the fact. The
