the hospital I glared at him.
‘Don’t worry, Hardy,’ Smoothie said. ‘We’ve got the documents from your car. We can put two and two together.’
‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘There’s a lot more than two and two in this.’
Sackville arrived; we made statements and were charged with trespass, illegal entry, arson and burglary. Greenway was charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm. Sackville tried to get us out that night but it was no go. We were held in the headquarters lockup, went before the magistrate in Glebe in the morning and were given bail.
When we walked out of the court Greenway and I were unshaven and rumpled. Sackville was his usual dapper self. Frank Parker was waiting in the sunshine. We shook hands. He nodded to Greenway and Sackville.
‘I told you to be careful,’ he said.
‘I was. Now tell me about Southwood Hospital.’
‘We paid a visit. Dr Smith got very confused about this bloke Pope. He made some damaging admissions.’
‘This won’t come to trial,’ Sackville said. ‘I’m rather sorry in a way.’
‘How’s that?’ I said. ‘You hate courts, hate and fear ‘em.’
‘True. But I would’ve liked to see how the prosecution handled the matter of arson of a swimming pool.’
Like most things in life, I never came to a full understanding of it. Dr Krey wasn’t the most rational of individuals and his movements and motives in regard to his hiring and watching of Greenway, his surveillance of my house and some of his other thought processes could only be guessed at. Investigations showed he had a record of intellectual brilliance and emotional instability. Some years back he’d been at the centre of an investigation into radical drug-based techniques for relieving anxiety and depression. He’d come out of the investigation with major financial and personality damage.
Legal proceedings over Smith and Southwood Hospital became very involved. Smith was charged with conspiracy to murder Dr Krey but there was insufficient evidence to sustain the charge. Greenway and I concluded that Smith must have connected Krey with our raid on the hospital, but no one seemed very interested. The hospital’s records had been confiscated but Smith had destroyed or removed some of them in the hours between our break-in and the arrival of the police.
‘That was a terrible job,’ Frank told me. ‘You should’ve made the records secure. It’s a dog’s breakfast now.’
‘I had other things on my mind. That Pope was a dangerous type.’
‘Yeah. Doc Krey got off a lucky shot. Pope’d been shot before and he’d done some shooting. He was a hard case. Southwood had a few of them. And dodgy doctors. A real shithole.’
We were having this conversation in Hyde Park, eating sandwiches and trying to stay warm on a bench in a patch of sunlight on a cold May day. I flipped a crust at a seagull with pleasant markings and watched sourly while another bird got it first. ‘What about the patients who went missing?’
Parker shrugged. ‘Dead is my guess. You know how many people pop off in New South Wales every year?’
‘No idea.’
‘Over forty thousand. It’s a big deck to shuffle and Smith’d be just the boy to shuffle it.’
‘Krey said he found out something about them from Annie Parker. He reckoned Smith’d do anything to get into the big research grants.’
‘Yeah, you told me. And Pope netted junkies like butterflies. That’s not much use to us now, is it?’ Frank crumpled his paper bag and threw it five metres into a bin. ‘That Annie was a second cousin of mine. Didn’t know that, did you?’
‘No.’
‘Neither did I before this. That’s modern life- we’ve got kin we don’t know about all over the place. I’ve probably put a few of mine away. How about your mate, Greenway? What’s he doing?’ Haven’t seen him.’
Greenway phoned me a few days later. He told me he’d gone back to acting and had a part in a stage musical. It was in rehearsal. He’d get me tickets.
Helen likes musicals, I thought. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘You can sing, can you?’
‘And dance. And tell you what, I took the AIDS test. I’m clear.’
‘Great. Now you just have to find somebody the same.’
‘I’ve found him,’ Greenway said.
Cloudburst
Old habits are hard to kill, like old memories. I was sitting in my car waiting for a city light to change so the traffic could trickle ahead. The city fathers were experimenting with traffic arrangements to cope with the construction of the Pitt Street mall. I’m looking forward to the mall but I wasn’t enjoying the stop-start motoring. It started to rain and I instinctively reached for a rag I keep as a stopper for the window where the rubber seal has rotted away. But there was no need; I was in my new Falcon that doesn’t leak. That was better but not everything was better. Back when I had a leaky car I had Helen, more hopes and the traffic moved. I sat and waited, warm and dry, and remembered.
The rain had started at 6 pm on Saturday September 10 and it hadn’t stopped by the following weekend. Everyone could remember the moment of the cloudburst the way you can remember what you were doing when Kerr sacked Gough. I was taking a walk to get a cup of coffee at the Bar Napoli in Leichhardt. I was halfway between home and the coffee and I decided to go on for the coffee. The rain fell as if it had been stored up there for ten years. The floor of the coffee bar was awash when I arrived and the place was crowded with people seeking shelter from the storm. We stood around and drank our coffee and looked out at the sheeting rain and agreed we’d never seen anything like it.
People kept saying it.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ A week later that’s what the NRMA guy who came after a three hour wait to help me start my Falcon said.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Helen Broadway said that night. Helen was with me for six months, on leave from her husband as per her arrangement with him and me. ‘Have you?’
I kissed the back of her neck. ‘That’s what I like about you,’ I said. ‘You’re different. Everybody’s saying they’ve never seen anything like it-you’re the first one to say “have you?” ‘
She turned away from the omelette she was making and looked at me. ‘Well, have you?’
‘Not in Sydney. I’ve seen it as heavy in Malaya but there it lasts for half an hour, this has been going on for what-eight days?’
‘Mm. It’s a funny thing, you know. I was reading that this is common in Sydney, happens every year. You all just forget about it from one year to the next.’
‘Could be. We’re a feckless lot.’
She put the pan under the grill and waved at me to set the table. ‘This is the last of the eggs. We’re going to have to go out again for provisions. You reckon the car’ll start?’
‘Worse than that. I’m going to have to go to the office. I need work.’
‘Nobody’ll want anything done in this weather.’
‘They might. There might be a job for a Senior Swimming Certificate holding detective who rode the waves at Maroubra on a surfboard made of fence palings.’
‘You didn’t, did you?’
