and out of. She was solicitous but quiet. I got comfortable on the couch in the front room-books, the Saturday papers I’d missed, my pills and eyedrops, wine and TV-all to hand. We ate a salad for lunch; some wine and pain-killers made me feel woozy.
‘I’m going over to Bondi,’ Helen said. ‘Talk to some of the people in the flats, see what goes on.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
She shook her head. ‘You’d be asleep by the end of Glebe Point Road. Take it easy, I won’t be long. There was a message from Mr Wise on the machine. Want to hear it?’
‘Sure.’
She moved the phone and the recorder closer to me and jiggled her keys. ‘Don’t get up, will you?’
‘Only for nature.’
She kissed me on my stubbled cheek. ‘I’d like to hear about this case when I get back. I’m interested. Cliff.’
‘Okay. Hope the flat’s good. What I was going to say when you left yesterday was that maybe I could move. I don’t have to live in Glebe.’
She smiled; when Helen smiles she looks even smarter than when she’s not smiling. ‘That’s something to think about. Okay. See you.’
I played the message tape of Leo Wise’s firm but troubled voice. ‘Leo Wise, Hardy. I heard you got hurt. I hope it’s nothing serious. If it’s to do with Carmel I’ll be happy to pay the bills and so on. But I’d like to hear developments. This is my weekend number. Call anytime, ah… as soon as you’re up to it.’ He gave the number and hung up. I called it and he came on the line immediately.
‘Hardy. Good. You all right?’
‘So-so. I’ve had an eye operation, nothing too serious but I’ll have to go quiet for a few days, week maybe.’
‘Sorry to hear it. How did it happen? I mean was it…?’
‘It was sort of related to your daughter’s death, sort of.’ I told him about the Bourke-Agnew red herring. He listened and didn’t interrupt.
‘Are you sure this Williamson was telling the truth?’
‘Hard to be sure. But I’d say so, yes.’
I heard his sigh. ‘Well, I thought it might be something like that. You know, Carmel just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry, but it doesn’t look that way. Of course I’m going to run a few checks on Williamson, but my instinct tells me he’s straight. How’s your wife?’
‘Just fair. So, have you got any other leads?’
‘Only one. I’ll get on it as soon as I can. Later in the week. Oh, I saw Carmel’s film. I thought it was great.’
‘Yes. I watched it myself the other night. A mistake that was. Moira cried.’
‘I’m sorry. Do you know anything about this documentary she was working on-ah, the lives of the rich, or something?’
‘Not really. She was always on about that. How the rich take the bread out of the mouths of the poor.’
‘Did you fight about it?’
‘No. She was very smart, Carmel. She said she had selected her targets and I wasn’t one.’
‘Targets?’
‘Figure of speech. No, we didn’t fight.’ There was a long pause, so long I felt uncomfortable as you do when you wait for a stammerer to get the words out. ‘I think we had the same sort of sense of humour,’ he said. ‘We didn’t fight.’
‘Okay, Mr Wise,’ I said. ‘I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’
Good about the medical bills, I thought. Not so good about the wife. I wanted badly to help Wise but I wasn’t optimistic. I had a short sleep, eased the patch off and used the drops in the eye which was gritty and sore, and I drank some wine. Helen had left Bermagui in the VCR. I hit the play button and watched the movie again. That’s how good it was-good enough to watch twice in 48 hours. I didn’t cry like Moira Wise but I was feeling melancholy and uncertain when Helen got back.
‘Whatcha been doing?’
‘I watched Bermagui again.’
‘Shit! I was going to do that tonight.’
‘I think I could see it again. How’s it look at Tamarama?’
‘You really want to know?’ She poured some wine into a coffee cup for herself and some more into my glass. She swilled it down. ‘Phew. That’s good. I’ve been talking non-stop and tramping up and down stairs.’
‘Sounds like my job.’
We laughed and she reached over and kissed me. ‘Poor you. It was hell. And the results were a bit uncertain.’
‘Yup,’ I said. ‘That’s the way it is.’
‘Mm. There’s a building down the road that has what you said. Concrete cancer. Definitely. And this one, mine, was built by the same mob.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘But not everyone agrees that mine has the problem. Doesn’t look the same. The other one’s buggered, mine just looks… worn.’
I drank some wine and thought about it. ‘Still looks good, the view and all?’
‘Terrific. Yes.’
‘You talked to people in the building and some say it’s okay and some say it ain’t?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You need to break them down, find out if it’s owners that say it’s fine and tenants that gripe, or what.’
‘That’s smart.’
I coughed. ‘Training and… experience.’
‘D’you think it’d be wise for me to look at the minutes of the meetings of the corporate body?’
I coughed again. ‘Oh, yes, sure.’
‘I’m doing that on Monday…’
‘Uh huh.’
‘… and getting a professional inspection.’
‘I hope they say it’ll stand for a thousand years.’
‘I’ll make us some dinner. Then you can tell me about this Wise case.’
I told her, from the beginning. She listened, smoked her Gitane with coffee after we’d eaten and looked at all the paraphernalia from flat one in the Greenwich Apartments, which I could now mail to the Federal police or throw away.
‘How old is she?’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘The mother.’
‘I don’t know. Carmel was 21. Wise says she’s not old, late thirties maybe.’
‘He’s right. That’s not too old to have a child. Did you know that it’s often the age of the male that’s the factor in having defective kids?’
‘No.’
‘That’s true. It doesn’t get much in the way of press space as a scientific fact, but it’s true.’
‘Yes. Well, Wise seems willing to risk it if his wife can get over this.’
‘You’ve watched the film twice. Are there any clues in that?’
‘Not really. I was interested in what her father said-about her having targets.’
‘The flatmate might be able to tell you more about that.’
‘And this Jan de Vries.’
‘Have you got anything else?’
‘Not much. The producer of the TV documentary said she might have been too good for the job, too classy,
