chances and made good time on the freeway and down through Surry Hills to Central Railway. Greenway sat quietly. He ran his hands through his Iongish hair a few times and betrayed the sort of agitation that he’d suppressed on our first meeting.
‘Have you got the gun?’ I asked him.
‘No. Think we’ll need it?’
I let the ‘we’ pass. ‘No.’
‘How did she sound?’
‘You know her better than me. She sounded more stoned than she could cope with.’
‘God. That.’
I made myself unpopular with other drivers down Broadway and Glebe Point Road. The ambulance was standing outside my house when we arrived. The white coats moved around on the footpath and I could see my neighbours’ faces at their fences and windows. I stopped in the middle of the street and walked to my gate. One of the ambulance guys held the gate closed against me.
‘I live here,’ I said. ‘I called you.’
‘Mr Hardy?’
‘That’s right.’
He wrote something on a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. ‘Is the young woman a relation?’
‘No, a friend. How is she?’
‘I’m afraid she’s dead, sir. The police’re on their way.’
I was aware of Greenway standing behind me. The Bondi colour had drained from his face. I drew him away towards the car. ‘Can you drive?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Okay. Just park the car down the street a bit, put the keys in the glove box and get lost. There’s no need for you to be part of this. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I can.’ I gripped his arm and propelled him towards the car trying to look like someone giving and receiving support. ‘No fancy ideas either. Just do as I say!’
He nodded, got into the car, started it and edged forward. I went back to the house and no one stopped me from going inside. Annie was lying on the floor in the living room. The telephone, with the receiver off, was buzzing beside her head. She was wearing my towelling dressing gown and nothing else. The dressing gown had fallen open revealing her pubic hair and one small pale breast. Her hair was wet. The right sleeve of the dressing gown was pushed and rolled up almost to the shoulder. There was an indentation and bruise in the soft flesh above the elbow and a puncture mark in the taut skin just below the crook of her arm.
She’d showered and scrubbed her face. With no make-up and the strain gone, with her wet hair drawn back she looked innocent, like one of the young swimming champions of the fifties. I looked at her and tried to figure out how old she was. Twenty something, not twenty-five, not that much.
The cops found the syringe and sachet in the bathroom along with the belt that had been used as a ligature. They put these things in plastic bags and also bagged all the contents of Annie’s pockets. They put her clothes in a bag and they put her in a bag too and took her away. I gave them a statement: when I’d first met Annie and how; why she was in my house; what she’d said. I gave them as much of the truth as I could and they appeared to believe me selectively.
The detective in charge, a heavy, thorough type named Simmonds, asked me if there had been any heroin in the house when I’d left it that morning.
‘No,’ I said.
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I didn’t have any and neither did she. I searched her stuff while she was asleep.’
‘So she went out and scored?’
‘Or someone came by.’
‘Which?’
‘I don’t know.’
His shrug said it all: another dead junkie, who cares? Just as long as she doesn’t have a famous name-as long as she doesn’t sing or dance or act and isn’t somebody important’s wife or daughter. Annie was none of those things. Simmonds didn’t give me a hard time.
But it’s one thing to walk into a strange house and find a dead junkie and look for the quickest way to file and forget it and another to try to read the signs of what really happened. There were damp patches down the hallway to the front door but none beside the spare bed upstairs where Annie had dumped her clothes. The belt that had bit into her upper arm was hers. Annie had gone to the door after having her shower but she hadn’t taken the belt from her pants unless she’d done it before she went to the door. Why would she? She didn’t have any smack.
So someone had given her the smack and fetched the belt for her. A friend? Some friend. I wasn’t well up on the price of heroin and it really didn’t matter because from the quick look I’d got at the money the police had bagged it seemed that Annie’s twelve bucks were intact. I was sifting this through when there was a loud knock on the door. Feeling ridiculous, I got the. 38 from its hiding place and went to the door. The outline through the misted glass panel was long and slope-shouldered.
‘Greenway?’
‘Yes.’
I opened the door. ‘I thought I told you to piss off.’
‘I did.’ He shouldered past me. He was wearing a light cotton jacket over his striped shirt and I could see a bulge in the pocket. The Nomad, no doubt. I waved him on and we went through to the living and eating space at the back of the house.
‘I saw them take her out,’ he said.
‘Yeah? Then what did you do?’
‘I caught a cab home. He called. I’ve got his voice on tape.’
10
Greenway brandished the tape and looked around. He noted the phone, with its receiver replaced but obviously not in its usual place on the bench. He put the tape in his pocket.
‘Where was she?’ he said.
I pointed.
‘The word in the street was accidental overdose. Is that right?’
‘No. At least not without some help.’
We went through to the kitchen which was dim now that the afternoon sun was low in the west. Greenway leaned against the sink while I made coffee. ‘Was Annie… what happened to her, connected to this other business?’
‘Your case, you mean?’
He nodded.
‘I don’t know. Do you? I see you’re carrying your gun. Does that mean you’ve got some ideas?’
He shook his head.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Guns usually mean no ideas. Have some coffee and let’s hear the tape.’
The voice was slow and deep; the background noise was an intermittent hum: When I can talk to you in person I’ll give you instructions for the delivery of the photographs.
We played it through five times. I drank two cups of coffee. Greenway kept glancing at the place where Annie had died as if he wanted to see her there and bring her back to life. ‘I thought of changing my message,’ he said, ‘leaving something specifically for him. But I decided that was being too clever.’
‘Good. You were right. Same voice, no difference?’
‘The same. Can you make anything of the background noise?’
‘That’s for the movies. I haven’t got voice-printing apparatus either and I can’t tell a southern Hungarian accent from a Romanian.’
