The tears had made her eyes shine and given her an innocent look she probably hadn’t had since she was twelve.
‘I don’t know how John died. He was a wonderful swimmer. I don’t see how he could have drowned.’
‘That’s what a lot of people think. Mac says Ward fixed it so he couldn’t swim, but he could be wrong. Nasty rumour, though.’
I got up carefully, not putting too much weight on the stick and not letting anything deflect the gun. Tal was doing the thinking now and it didn’t look as though he could do that and try rough stuff at the same time.
I went slowly past them and backed down the passage to the door. I closed it hard behind me and put my ear to it. The first sound I heard was the clink of a bottle against a glass; the second was the sound of a telephone dialling.
22
I had a slight relapse after this activity. The knee hurt like hell on the way down the stairs at Sandy’s place, hurt in the taxi and felt as if someone was hammering four-inch nails into it when I got home. The hospital had given me some analgesics which I’d avoided, but I took them then. They wiped me out for hours and left me wakeful and fretful through the night. Hilde did some early-morning nursing and brought in a big cardboard box from the doorstep before leaving for her lectures. She looked, I noted resentfully, fresh, fit and cheerful.
‘Something here for you to play with,’ she said. ‘Are you comfortable, Cliff?’
‘Like a koala in a tree,’ I growled. ‘What’s in the bloody box?’
She thumped it down on the floor beside the couch. ‘I can hardly bear to leave all this joy and happiness. See you later, sunshine.’
I grunted and lifted the lid of the box. It contained knee-exercising gear-ropes, weights and pulleys-which the hospital was hiring out to me at some expense. Another bill for Mrs Singer. I’m not mechanically minded, and setting up the equipment taxed me. When it was assembled I set it to ‘light work’, put my foot in the sling and lifted. ‘Light work’ was quite heavy enough for the time being. ‘Transverse movement’ sounded a bit on the painful side. The equipment and the elastic bandage that had to be applied before using it took me back to my athletics days, to those third-leg relays and the long and high jumps that seemed to land me on rubbing tables as often as not. Football meant bruises and stitches, until it seemed that tennis was the only game I could play without injuring myself. Eventually I gave up trying to be Bob Matthias and with drinking, smoking and staying up late I got in good shape for snooker.
At mid-morning I got on the phone to Camden. After half an hour I located Bill Anderson at the school where he was teaching history.
‘Hi,’ he said. Another cheerful bastard. ‘What’s been happening?’
‘Nothing much. I’ve got a line on the owner of that house and a few other details that might interest you.’
‘Hang on.’ The line hummed with background sounds-doors opening and closing, yawns and cups clinking.
‘American history,’ he said. ‘I told them to check for lies in Nixon’s inauguration address.’
‘That’s not history.’
‘It is to them. They’ve never heard of him.’
‘What about Roosevelt?’
‘I asked them once. One of the smarter ones thought he was something to do with Breaker Morant. What’ve you got on mystery mansion?’
I filled him in on Ward’s plans for the growth area and the way he was likely to go about them. I apologised for not knowing any of the names.
‘Don’t need ‘em,’ he said. ‘Not hard to guess at a few. It’s very interesting, Mr Hardy. Could help.’
‘Cliff,’ I said. ‘How d’you look for the election?’
‘Just fair. I’m not too worried. I’m having fun.’
I’d never heard a politician say he was having fun before. ‘Would you like to do me another favour?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’m trying to stir the possum a bit. If you could drop the word that Tom McLeary says Freddy Ward bumped off John Singer, it’d help.’
‘Ward responsible Singer murder according to McLeary. That it?’
‘Yeah. Be subtle.’
‘We’ve got a good bowling club out here. Is that the sort of place you’d like it dropped?’
‘Exactly. And a pub or two.’
‘You want to make sure it gets to the Lions and Rotary.’
‘You’ve got the idea.’
He said he’d get on it after school, which meant after lunch. School teaching has changed; my teachers would never have said an American President lied, or have knocked off after lunch. Most of them had worn suits, they had all worn ties, and half of them had tried to pretend they had still been in the army.
I told Anderson I’d get on to my Aunt Lyndall and put her to work with her coffee circle. He asked me what I’d done with the gun and when I said I’d given it to the police he sounded happy.
Ann Winter was still at Point Piper and sounding defensive.
‘I was thinking of coming over to see you,’ she said. ‘Is your lady there?’
‘She’s not my lady. Feel like slumming, do you?’ I was at it again, needling unnecessarily.
‘What’s that supposed to mean, Hardy?’ she snarled. I could picture her working with a thumbnail at the ragged end of one of her rollies and dropping ash on the shag pile.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Reckoned I’ve chucked it, do you? Stopping on here in Disneyland?’ I didn’t say anything and she went on, working herself up. ‘I’m writing. Heard of that? Writing up? You do it away from the field. Malinowski didn’t do it in the fucking Trobriands, he did it in London.’
‘Ann, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s my knee, blame the knee. Listen, are you going back to Bondi soon?’
‘Yes, I have to go back tonight for a bit. Some things I have to check. Oh, did you see Peg?’
‘Yeah, I saw her. She was a big help. You could help me some more if you’d whisper around a certain canard.’
I heard her sigh on the line. ‘You know, I could never decide whether I liked you or not, and I still can’t.’
‘You do,’ I said. ‘You like me. Besides, we saved each other’s lives. It’s a bond.’
‘There’s that, I suppose. What is it-the canard?’
‘That Thomas McLeary says Freddy Ward killed John Singer.’
‘Did he?’
‘Did he what?’
‘Kill him.’
‘I thought you might be asking if McLeary said he did.’
‘Oh, shit. Never mind. All right, if I get a chance I’ll spread it.’
‘Thanks. I’ll take you out to dinner when this is all over and we’ll talk about Radcliffe-Brown.’
‘When will that be?’
‘Soon.’
‘Look after your other leg.’ Click.
I’m not what you’d call a committee man. I get restless if I hear more than two people talking about the same subject because it’s a fair bet that only one of them will be talking sense. So I don’t like teamwork or sub- contracting and only do it when I have to.
Roger Wallace runs a big investigating agency in town and has tried to recruit me several times, without success. We preserve a mutual professional respect. I got past his secretary to a direct enjoyment of his successful voice.
