7
It was late afternoon, the tree shadows would be long in the park and I could sit by the lake and look at the ducks. On expenses, not bad. First I called Helen from a public phone.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Where’re you?’
‘Randwick.’
‘Really? That’s where I might end up.’
‘It didn’t go too well, the flat-hunting?’
‘Lousy.’
‘I’m sorry. Look, I’ve got another call to make. I’ll be home around six or so. We’ll go out. Okay?’
‘All right. Maybe.’ She hung up. After that I didn’t feel like the walk in the park anymore. I didn’t feel like tramping up and down stairs questioning people about a murder either, but I had no choice.
I drove in to the Cross but ended up parked close to White City. Some of the courts were in the shade, some were still fully in the sun. Be nice down there, I thought. Forehand, backhand, lob, smash. I could see people on the courts doing just that-small white shapes darting about. Doing something just for fun; should be more of it. But then, there should be more of a lot of things-rain in Africa, B. B. King cassettes and small flats in Glebe Point, evidently.
I put Bermagui in the glove box and locked it. I locked the car too, took an envelope with a selection of the photographs, including the one of Tania Bourke, and walked. Away from the sporting scene, business before leisure, past the temptation of the wine bar and up the lane to the Greenwich Apartments. A jogger swerved around me-a woman this time, with matching head and wrist bands. Nothing had changed in the courtyard; the arrangement of the flanking buildings allowed a fair bit of the late afternoon sun to penetrate. I sat on the empty pedestal and felt the warmth the bricks had retained. There were two apartment blocks to consider, maybe a dozen places with windows that permitted a view of the courtyard and activity in flat one of the Greenwich. I was there at the right time. It was odds on that the person I wanted was the weird old girl with purple hair. Do weird old girls go out to work? Not usually. I tucked my shirt firmly into my pants, pulled my collar straight and buttoned my jacket. Notebook and licence folder in hand, evidence in an envelope, the private detective goes to work. Bullshit. I went to the winebar and bought a packet of Sterling cigarettes and a bottle of Mateus Rose. I was ready for the purple hair.
I drew six blanks in the building on the left. I tried every apartment with the right aspect: two no answers, two were occupied by young women who weren’t interested once they found I wasn’t there on business. The fifth resident was a middle-aged man who would have talked about anything from the price of gold to the Iran-Iraqui war. Loneliness wailed from the bare room behind him as he stood in the doorway. There was an old woman in the sixth flat; she had a raspy voice like the telephone caller, was about the right age and her windows were in the right place, but her hair was bright, buttercup yellow.
I found her on the second try in the other building. She was small and thin and. her face was creased and rumpled like an old passionfruit. She could have been 80 or maybe she was just a 60-year-old who’d been busy. The purple hair was like a kindergarten kid’s wild drawing; she had bright blue stuff around her eyes and her caved-in mouth was like a sunset-yellow teeth and bright red lips.
‘Yes?’ She teetered on high heels and had to hang on to the door for support. She’d already started, perhaps she never stopped.
‘Good afternoon, Madam,’ I said. ‘I believe we talked on the telephone the other night.’
‘What?’ She had the door on a chain and was peering up at me through the four-inch gap. I showed her the licence.
‘I have to get my glasses,’ she said. She left the door on the chain and I slipped two fingers through and slid the catch free. The door was standing open and I was head and shoulders inside when she got back.
She laughed. ‘I always do that. Someday someone’ll come in and kill me.’
‘You need a gun,’ I said.
‘I had one but I lost it. Well, you’re in. Let me see that paper again.’ She hooked on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and squinted at the licence. ‘Private Inquiry Agent,’ she read. ‘I knew one of them once. Way back in the forties. Drank himself to death. Funny thing, I drank just as much as he did an’ I’m still here. Whaddayou think of that?’
‘You must have a fine constitution,’ I said. I held up the Rose. ‘Haven’t retired, have you?’
‘No fear. Come in. I have to warn you, I can drink all day an’ all night an’ it doesn’t affect me.’
‘You like to talk, don’t you?’
I went into the living room which was full of furniture that all looked too big for her. So did the room itself with its high ceiling, picture rail all around and deep, floral carpet. I went over to the window.
‘Excuse me,’ I said.
I parted the dusty Venetian blinds and looked directly down from one storey into the courtyard. The window of flat one in the Greenwich Apartments was directly opposite.
‘Feel free,’ she said. ‘I’ll get some glasses.’
‘I sat on the arm of an overstuffed sofa, reached across and put the bottle on the glass top of a French- polished table. She came back with two tall glasses-long stems, green tinge, swirling designs cut in the glass. She took the foil off the bottle expertly and poured carefully.
‘Cheers,’ she said. ‘I’m Ellen Barton, Mr Hardy, and I’m very pleased to meet you.’ She drank and hiccupped. ‘Excuse me.’
I drank too. At least it was cold. ‘That was a very dangerous thing you did, Mrs Barton, making that phone call.’
‘Ellen,’ she said. ‘I thought I was anonymous. How did you find out it was me?’
I told her. She nodded and finished her wine. She let about half a minute pass before she poured some more. ‘I remember that day. Gee, she was a nice kid.’
‘So everyone says.’
‘Yeah, a nice kid. So what’s your interest?’
I told her. She listened but she seemed to have trouble concentrating. She twitched a little inside her blue silk dress with its beaded top and wide, unfashionable belt. The buzzing of a fly distracted her; she seemed to be watching motes in the beams of light that slanted through the blinds.
‘Did you see the shooting, Ellen?’
‘Sort of.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Wouldn’t have a smoke on you, would you?’
I produced the silver packet and she pounced on it greedily. ‘Very nice too. You gonna have one?”
I shook my head. She lit up and puffed luxuriously. ‘Remember de Reszke, in the tins?’
‘No.’
‘Ah, they were lovely cigarettes. Not like the rubbish they sell now. ‘Course, these are all right.’
‘The shooting,’ I said.
‘Yes, I saw it. That is, I was looking out the window and I heard the shots and I saw her fall.’
‘You didn’t see who did it?’
‘Not properly. Look, why’re those flats empty over there?’
I told her about Leo Wise’s plans for the Greenwich Apartments. It was hard to keep her mind on a single subject; I couldn’t tell whether the wine was making her that way or whether she’d be worse without it. She had nearly finished her second glass. ‘Tell me what you saw?’
‘A man. That’s all. In the corner. He ran across and down the lane. He…’
‘What?’
‘He jumped over her. Jumped!’
‘Would you recognise him again?’
She shook her head; the purple hair wobbled. ‘Dark. Couldn’t see properly. Bastard!’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why?’
