‘I’m sorry. I know it’s a mess. I didn’t know what I was doing.’
I felt guilty for the sarcasm. ‘All right. It happens. We have to work out what to do. Where to look for him.’ I got a bottle of brandy which Helen had left behind. It was from her husband’s tiny vineyard, Chateau Helene, and it wasn’t bad. I put a shot in my third and Greenway’s second cup of coffee. It was after four o’clock; that’s late enough when there’s been a death or a birth or a marriage or a horse has won or lost. I felt like working on the bottle itself, Greenway sipped moodily; booze wasn’t one of his problems.
‘Have you ever had a phone call from someone who seems to know you but you’ve never heard of them?’ I said. ‘Just a quick call that leaves you puzzled about how the caller got on to you or even got your number?’
‘Mm, I suppose.’
‘This is a bit like that. You have to sit down and build up a story that hangs together. Like-well, he must’ve known so-and-so and got my number that way.’
Greenway grunted, unimpressed. I finished my coffee and poured some more brandy into the cup. I added the few drops of coffee that were left. ‘That’s what we have to do,’ I said. ‘If we assume whoever hired you got to Annie somehow and killed her, or helped, how could that be? What circumstances make that possible?’
We both stared at the walls for a while. Greenway sighed; I drank my spiked coffee.
Greenway shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. Nothing comes.’
‘Try this: Mr X was watching you from the minute he made the approach. He saw you come to me, saw us go to the hospital and followed me back here. Then he saw Annie come here. He’d seen you and Annie in company before and figured she must… ‘
‘Must what?’
‘It gets harder here. Must… know something, or have seen something. So he waited until I left and made a move. He used the smack to talk his way in.’
‘Well, it fits,’ Greenway said slowly. ‘But where does it get us?’
‘If we knew what he wanted from Annie we’d be on our way. Assuming it’s about the hospital, did she tell you a lot about the place?’
‘Not much. She didn’t like talking about it. I just checked on the routines a bit, you know. That was all I wanted.’ Suddenly he straightened up from the slump he’d been sitting in. The look of tiredness and semi-shock left him.
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘Annie kept a diary! She said she could look in her diary when I asked her about something, some little thing. I said it didn’t matter.’
‘It matters now,’ I said.
Annie had arrived without bag or baggage and she certainly hadn’t had a diary on her. So she’d left it, presumably with what she’d called her ‘stuff with ‘those creeps’. All I knew was that she’d tried to score in ‘the flats’ and some hoods in a red Mazda had given her a bad time. I told this to Greenway who nodded. ‘There’s a source in those flats down by the water. What’s her name?’ He snapped his fingers in the first theatrical gesture I’d seen from him since our first meeting when he was doing nothing else but. ‘Barbara-Ann. She’s got a straight front as a caterer but she deals in a pretty big way.’
‘I wonder if she’s got a red Mazda,’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t know.’ Greenway adjusted his jacket. ‘Why don’t we go and find out?’
I had a vision of Greenway breaking in a door and waving his Nomad with the one shell in the chamber and the safety catch on. ‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘You’ve got other things to do.’
‘Like what?’
‘You’re going home to wait for the phone call. You’re also going to keep a very close watch on your own back. If you’re still being observed you might be able to observe the observer. That’d be a help.’
One part of him didn’t like it, wanted to be in on the gung-ho stuff; the other part wanted to play it safe. I helped him out by saying that I didn’t expect any excitement, just a quiet talk. He knew which part of the big complex Barbara-Ann lived in but not the precise number of her apartment. I told him I could manage and sent him back to Bondi with a promise to call when I knew anything. I wanted to take the Nomad from him but I didn’t; he was confused and green, but he had some pride.
I went out into the street, collected the keys from the glove box of my car and locked it. I strolled around the neighbourhood; I got some looks from people who’d seen the ambulance and one enquiry. I didn’t tell the enquirer anything she didn’t know already. It was after five, the air was cooling and the TV sets were being switched on and the drinks were being poured. I walked to the open section before the road dips down into the blocks of flats and stood looking across the water towards Pyrmont. The water was still; the light faded. I moved quickly into the shelter of the trees that fringe the walkway around the water and scanned the landscape behind and above me. I saw no flashes of spectacles, no quick movements. I waited; no car engines started, no birds broke cover and wheeled about in the evening sky.
11
I went home, fed the cat and myself and waited until dark. I wore sneakers, pants that were a bit big so that I needed a belt to keep them up, and a loose sweater. The. 38 went inside the waist of the trousers, under the belt. I walked down to the flats where lights were burning in most of the windows. I moved through the parking areas on to the concrete path that wound between the different blocks. Some of the windows on to the balconies were open; rock music and television made a confusing mixture of conflicting sound.
The phone book had supplied the lacking information. In the sections for caterers there was a small ad: ‘Barbara-Ann, Home Catering, small functions, Apartment 5, Block 3, Harbourside, Ludwig Street, Glebe.’ The place was in one of the better locations, high enough to command a good look at the water and with its fair share of waving trees to shut out the less salubrious views. The parking bay allotted to Apartment 5 held a red Mazda coupe.
There was no point in being subtle about it. No reason to throw pebbles at windows or climb up the ivy on to the balcony. There was no ivy anyway, and the balcony to Apartment 5 was ten metres up. I went through the glass door into the lobby and climbed the stairs. I knocked at Number 2. A middle-aged man in a cummerbund and dress shirt came to the door and said his name wasn’t Williams and that he didn’t know any Williamses in the block.
I thanked him after getting a good look at the security chain: not much good-a heavy shoulder, properly delivered, would tear it from the frame. I hoped my stiff neck wouldn’t hold me back. Up another flight to Number 5; I listened at the door-music and talk. I smelled marijuana smoke. Hardy, with all senses on the alert.
I took out the gun and held it low and out of sight. I knocked and pressed my ear to the door. The occupants didn’t fall silent or start cocking machine guns. The door opened ten centimetres and I saw a small woman with a mass of curling, red-gold hair.
‘Barbara-Ann?’ I said.
Her pupils were dilated and her eyes were red the way some pot smokers’ get. ‘Mmm,’ she said.
I hit the door with everything I had. The chain tore out and the door flew open whacking her in the knee and hip. She staggered back and I bullocked through the opening. I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her down the short passage to a living room with a white carpet, white leather and chrome fittings and air like at a NORML smoke-in. There were two men in the room, stoned and slow-reacting. One wore his shirt collar turned up. He was the pale-faced driver of the Mazda.
‘Hey, what’s this?’ he said.
I shoved the woman into one of the white chairs and stood behind her. She swivelled around to look at me. That made three pairs of eyes focussing on the. 38. Paleface was half out of his seat; I waved him back down. The other, a flabby-faced kid, dropped the fat, smoking joint on the carpet.
‘You’d better pick that up or you’ll have a nasty burn there,’ I said. He bent slowly and recovered the cigarette.
‘We don’t want any trouble,’ the woman said.
‘Neither do I.’ I moved around and stood to one side from where I could have shot any one of them except
