her talking and filing. The editor told me that she’d gone off to the pub, the Colonial nearby, with some fellow workers. I reached the pub in record time and spotted Pauline drinking in a corner of the saloon bar. I went across and grabbed her arm.
‘Pauline, I’ve got to talk to you.’
‘Piss off.’ She jerked her arm free and some of her drink spilled on the trousers of the heavy-set man on the opposite stool. Pauline giggled; it wasn’t her first drink. ‘Sorry, Stan. I’ll get your pants dry-cleaned if you’ll take them off.’
Stan smiled and lifted his glass. I jolted his arm trying to get another grip on Pauline and his drink spilled down his shirt.
‘Shit! What the fuck d’you think you’re doing?’
Pauline laughed. ‘Stan, defend my honour.’
Stan came off his stool faster than I expected. He was big and thick and moved like a footballer rather than a boxer but he connected on my shoulder with a solid swinging right. I had to let go of Pauline to keep my balance.
‘Keep out of this, you,’ I snarled. ‘Pauline, this isn’t a joke, Byron…’
‘Bugger Byron! And bugger you, too.’
Maybe that was what Stan had been waiting to hear. Stan was certainly eager. He slammed me in the chest and got set to take my head off with another swing. I stepped back, drew him forward and belted him with a quick left hook to the ear. The three or four other drinkers around craned forward interestedly. Pauline shouted something that might have been ‘Stop!’ or might have been ‘Go!’ I didn’t pay proper attention because Stan was in again, swinging. I fended two shots off with my forearms and stepped closer bringing my heel hard down on his toe. He yelped and I uppercut him so that his teeth clicked. He stumbled back and went down.
I gripped Pauline’s arm and pulled her off the stool. ‘Don’t talk. Just come!’
‘You are keen, after all,’ she said.
I hauled her to the car and drove to Glebe. When she was settled with a drink I called Kelly’s flat and got no answer.
‘That’s odd.’
Pauline raised her glass. ‘He’s odd. Did you know he’s kinky? Likes to dress up.’
I stared at her. ‘I don’t believe it.’
She giggled. ‘You’re right. He doesn’t. I do. Wanna play, Cliff?’
‘I want you to stay here while I go and find out what’s happened.’
‘Happened? Whaddya mean happened? Nothing happens to Byron, nothing happens anywhere near Byron, he… ‘
‘Shut up, Pauline. This is serious. Two people
Parsons wrote about in that letter are dead. Byron’s scared you could be next.’
‘I’m sick of hearing about that fucking letter! I hardly looked at it.’ She stopped as if her own words had made an impact on her. She stared at me, trying to focus. ‘Two people dead? You mean some of the shit might actually be rubbing off on Parsons?’
‘Maybe, but Byron… ‘
‘Hold on. I’m going to freshen up. This sounds interesting.’
She went to the bathroom and came back dabbing at her face with a towel. ‘It sounds like a story. I suppose Byron’s told you I’ve used confidential stuff?’
I nodded.
‘I haven’t. He’s paranoid. You said something’s happened. What?’
‘I’m going to Balmain to find out.’
‘Me too.’
‘You’re pissed.’
‘I sober up fast. I’m coming.’
There was no point in arguing. We got back in the car. Pauline lit a cigarette, took deep drags and seemed to be trying to will herself sober. When she finished the cigarette she wound the window down and breathed deeply. She coughed and looked red and sore-eyed but her voice was steadier.
‘Two dead, you said. You mean the bodies, last night and this morning?’
‘Yeah.’ I made the turn into Darling Street. ‘Morrison, I think it was, and… Fuller. Byron knew them.’
‘Jesus. Fuller got Byron his flat. He’s into real estate around here and Byron wanted a place in Balmain. You know how it works.’
I did. I knew that the politicians and their associates were involved in a network of favours and obligations, given and granted, that to some extent governed what they did. Some of them were ‘covered’, as the smart operators put it, by girls, gambling debts, shonky deals. There were a hundred ways.
Byron’s flat was in Duke Place where town-houses are going up as fast as they can pull the old warehouses and chandlers’ sheds down. I parked and twisted the steering wheel so the car wouldn’t roll into Mort Bay. Old habit. The handbrake on my newish Falcon is rock solid. Pauline got slowly and stiffly from the car and stumbled in her high heels as she crossed the road.
‘You all right?’ I said. ‘I understand you’ve got a key to this place. You can show me the way. I was only here once at night.’
‘I’ve never been here. I never used his stupid key.’
‘Got it with you?’
We walked along a pebbled path and skirted some freshly planted silver birch trees. I had a vague idea of the block Byron was in. Pauline produced a key from her bag. ‘A8,’ she read from the tag. ‘He said it’s got a nice view. I swore I’d never come here.’
I looked for the block numbers. ‘Why?’
‘It’s a mistake. We’re finished!’
‘I doubt it.’
I got my bearings and we went up a steep set of concrete steps that took us to a sloping walkway leading to the upper level of the block. Kelly’s flat was at the end, the most elevated and with the best view of the water, the ships and the container dock. I gave it a glance while Pauline handed me the key. I had my Smith amp; Wesson. 38 under my arm and I got it out before I opened the door.
‘What’s wrong?’ Pauline said.
‘I don’t know.’ I unlocked the door and pushed it open. Nothing happened, no shouts, no shots, no cries of welcome. I edged in half a metre, keeping close to the wall, and looking and listening hard.
There was nothing to hear and only some scuff marks and wet stains on the polished wood floor to see.
‘Byron!’ Pauline shouted.
Nothing. We went into the flat. It was sparsely furnished and scarcely lived in. The big room that served as a living and eating and music and view-absorbing space was neat except for an overturned chair, a coffee table pulled askew and a shattered Swedish upright lamp. I stood there and looked at the signs while Pauline rushed into the other rooms.
She joined me beside the broken lamp. ‘What’s happened?’ she said.
I bent and examined the stains on the floor. They were dark, wet, fresh. ‘He’s been taken.’
‘Taken?’
I pointed to the faint, irregular dust marks. ‘He was hit. Showed some fight. Maybe hit a couple of times. They rolled him in a rug.’
‘They? Who?’
I followed the marks and stains back down the passage to the door. The stains stopped at the door; there was a flattened bush ten metres directly below in the garden. One shoe lay on the freshly cut grass. Pauline bent over the rail to look.
‘No,’ she said.
I held her as her legs went rubbery and helped her back into the flat. She was crying hard and rubbing her clenched fists in her eyes. I put her on the couch and went to the phone which was on a table by a sliding window. The balcony outside gave a view of Sydney to gladden a real estate agent’s heart. The water sparkled, the boats
