that none was moving a muscle.
‘I know you,’ Paleface said.
‘You’ve seen me. I wouldn’t call it a relationship.’
‘Who is he?’ The woman was recovering fast; she was slim and lean, like a gymnast, about thirty and with small, hard eyes behind which a lot of fast thinking was going on.
‘My name’s Hardy, Barbara-Ann. I was a friend of Annie Parker. I’m here to invite you all to her funeral.’
‘We don’t know anything about that,’ Paleface said.
‘Shut up, Vic,’ Barbara-Ann said.
‘No, I want to hear about it. I want to hear about how you took her some smack and she OD’d on it. I want to know why.’
‘We didn’t… we didn’t!’ The kid’s voice was shrill. ‘You saw us drive off. We didn’t come back. We just
‘That’ll do then,’ I said. ‘You just what?’
‘Watched your joint.’
‘And what did you see?’
Barbara-Ann and Paleface Vic both looked at the kid. He found some courage among the fear somewhere and clamped his jaw. Barbara-Ann stirred in her chair.
‘You can just fuck off, whoever you are,’ she said. ‘You’ve got no business here.’
‘I’m a Federal policeman, Barbara-Ann. I’ve got business everywhere.’
‘See!’ The kid yelped as the burning joint singed his fingers. He dropped it on the glass-topped table. ‘She was with the narcs. We told you!’
Barbara-Ann and Paleface looked at me trying to make up their minds. I didn’t want them to do too much thinking. ‘It’s the girl I’m interested in,’ I said. ‘Not you lot. I’ll settle for two things-what she left behind her here and what you saw when you were watching my house.’
Barbara-Ann drew in a deep breath and tossed back her cascade of phony-coloured hair. ‘Then you’ll go?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What the fuck do I care? Lyle, get the bag she left.’
The kid got up and scurried out of the room. He came back quickly with a canvas bag. I kept my eyes on Paleface and gestured with the gun for Lyle to open the bag. ‘Let’s see what’s in it.’
Barbara-Ann reached for the bag of grass on the table. ‘We haven’t touched it.’
Lyle pulled out a shirt and some underpants. He stuffed them back and produced two paperbacks and a thick exercise book. Paleface was bracing himself. I told Lyle to put the books back and do up the straps. He did it and I reached for the bag, looped it over my shoulder. I was getting tired of standing up and watching people who didn’t like me. Barbara-Ann rolled a joint.
‘Okay, make it quick,’ I said. ‘What did you see? Hold off on lighting that, Babs, until we’re finished.’ I lifted the gun a fraction, aware that its effect was wearing off.
Lyle was the only one still scared. ‘We saw a guy arrive and go to the door. She let him in.’
‘What sort of a guy?’
‘Just a guy. You know.’
‘I don’t know. Young, old, tall, short, thin, fat? What sort of car did he drive?’
Paleface didn’t like being left out of things. He took the joint from Barbara-Ann, lit it and expelled smoke slowly. ‘A white Volvo. Middle-aged man, like you. Medium everything except for his hair.’ He ran his hand through his own lank, straggly locks, took another drag and handed the joint to the woman. ‘A baldy, with a thick moustache instead. The way baldies do.’
‘Okay.’ The bag was slipping from my shoulder and I shrugged it back up. Paleface must’ve thought this was the time to move. He came up from his chair bent low and ready to club my gun hand down. He was much too slow; I had time to step back and watch him lose balance as his move misfired. I hit him with the back of my hand along the side of his narrow, bony jaw. I felt the shock around the grip of the gun but he felt it more. He groaned and crumpled. A spurt of blood from his nose sprayed and smeared over the white carpet.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ I said. ‘That’ll cost a lot to clean.’
Paleface rolled over on to his back. His eyes were fierce but wet; he sniffed back a nose full of blood. I stepped around him and stood beside Barbara-Ann.
‘Just for that,’ I said, ‘I get another question. Annie was here to score. Did she say anything interesting? Share any thoughts with you?’
‘She was hanging out.’ Barbara-Ann drew on the joint. ‘She had no bread and she tried to con us. That’s it.’
‘You’re a lovely person.’ I put the gun in my belt and walked out. I could smell the marijuana smoke all the way down the stairs and I heard two high-pitched yells and a slap before I was out in the fresh air.
12
I had a white Volvo, a bald man with a thick moustache and an exercise book diary. Not a bad night’s work. All I needed was a drink and a feeling that I could make some sense of Greenway’s crazy, mixed-up case.
I went home and took the drink out on to the balcony for a while. I sat and watched the street. No red Mazda, no skulking figures or firebombers. I wasn’t surprised; they’d probably moved up to something heavier than the grass and were on the way to feeling that they were clever and brave and everything was all right.
I cleared a space on the bench beside the phone, switched on the reading lamp and opened Annie Parker’s diary. Someone said that historians are people who read other people’s letters. I’ve never done any historical research but I’ve read a few private letters and I understand the attraction. A sort of fly-on-the-wall feeling with a touch of taboo. Reading a private diary was much the same. Annie made half page entries, never missing a day. The diary began in the early part of the previous year and stopped two days before she died.
I flicked over the pages, just getting impressions at first. Adults who write a lot or take notes acquire bad habits-personal shorthands and squiggles that mean zero to anyone else. Or they take to typewriters and word processors and almost forget how to write by hand. Annie’s writing was neat and clear, a regular script without quirks, like that of a mature child. I remembered that she’d had a good school record before she went wild.
She kept a simple record of what she’d done, who she’d seen and how she felt. The entries were brief with the identities of people concealed: Saw C.A. and scored. Went to Bondi. Heavily hassled by L. who’s splitting (he says) for Bali. Wanted me to go with him. No thanks. Feeling better about F. She was concerned about her weight: 48 k. Not bad. And her health: Saw Dr Charley and got a prescription for antibiotic. No drinking for three days.
Greenway was ‘G.’. The entries confirmed what she’d told me-that they’d met at a drug clinic and clicked. She knew he was bisexual. For the time they were together the entries were brief and mostly positive: G. is a fantastic fucker and talker and I’m. not real bad myself when I get going. Trouble started between them over the AIDS test. She couldn’t understand ‘G.’s reluctance to have it. Then he disappeared. The entries after the breakup were black: Slept all day. Hanging out. Methadone is murder.
I turned back to her record of her period in Southwood Hospital. Have to hide this, she wrote. No diary keeping allowed Fuck them! Things didn’t improve. She had nothing good to say for the staff or the treatment but she liked some of her fellow patients: M. Mc. is a sweetie and he’s brilliant! Nothing wrong with him. What about A.P.? The writing became crabbed and hasty: Long, creepy interview with DrS. today. No programme. No way! One entry was tear-stained: M. Mc. was done today. He’s finished. No-one home. A few days later the letters ‘E.F.’, ‘J. O’B.’ and ‘R.R.’ were encircled. Then, the day before she left the hospital she recorded: M. Mc, E.F., J. O’B. amp; R.R. have been transferred (they say).
The process by which Annie got out of the hospital was a little hard to follow through the maze of initials and other abbreviations. It happened a few weeks after ‘J. O’B.’ and the others were ‘transferred’. It seemed that a new member of the staff, a ‘Dr K.’t had helped her to secure a certificate of detoxification. A solicitor had done the rest. While in the hospital Annie had read a lot: The Brothers K., W amp; P., The I. of Dreams. She had come
