“What’s that for?” I said.
The attendant, a young Asian man in a white coat who had several medical textbooks on his desk looked up at me over the tops of his half moon glasses. “For the police. They want the name of everyone who views the body.”
“Good,” I said.
The would-be doctor passed me on to another attendant, an older, tired-looking individual, who showed me through several sets of heavy perspex doors down artificially lit corridors to the chamber where the bodies are stored. It’s like you see in the movies, except that the refrigerated compartments pull out widthwise rather than lengthwise, like a crisper drawer. The attendant, who wore thick rubber gloves, undid two clasps and slid the drawer out a few inches.
“Hands clear,” he said.
I clasped my hands behind me like the Duke Of Edinburgh and leaned forward to look. The deceased was naked, bloated and blue. The body carried a lot of wounds and what I took to be bruises-dark, pulpy discolourations on the shoulders and thighs and around the wrists and ankles.
“Glass bottom,” the attendant said, “if you want to look at the back.”
“Like on the Barrier Reef,” I said.
He didn’t smile and I didn’t need to look at the back of the corpse-the man had been of shorter, blockier build than Brian Madden and had lacked his thick pepper and salt hair. Bald, anonymous and dead. There’s not much to say about a corpse that’s been in the water a while. It’s as if the sea has wiped away status, career, personality, history, the lot. I shook my head and the drawer slid back with scarcely a sound. The label on the front read DROWNED MALE.
The attendant moved a plastic bucket aside with his foot. He’d had it all ready to bring into use. He looked almost apologetic. “You’ve done this before,’” he said.
“Yes.”
“So had the last copper who was here. Didn’t matter. I still had to use the bucket.”
We held the door open and we went out into the corridor where the air was warmer but still smelled of death. “The police are interested in this one, are they?” I said.
He shrugged. Maybe he only liked to talk about buckets.
Back at the desk I surprised the aspiring medico running a pink marker pen through a paragraph in a physiology text-book. He looked guilty. “Important passage,” he said.
“Good luck to you. Can you give me the name of the policeman who asked you to keep that list?”
He tapped his teeth with the pen. “Sergeant Meredith.”
“Did he leave you his number?”
“I think so.” He searched among the books, pens, papers and used tissues on his desk, examined several slips of paper with writing on them, but shook his head each time. “I can’t find it, but it doesn’t matter. He’s due in now with someone to look at the body. You can talk to him in person.”
“Meredith’s personally bringing some-one in to look at the body?”
“Yes, probably a relative.”
“I showed you my private enquiry agent licence before.”
“You did.”
“I’m working on a missing persons case.”
“I guessed that. Not your subject in the drawer, eh?”
“No. What makes you think the sergeant’s got hold of a relative?”
“I think he said so on the phone. He’s a pleasant chap. We’ve talked a bit. I’ve a knack for getting people to talk. When I’m a doctor…”
“Which I’m sure you will be.”
“Thank you. It could be useful.”
“Certainly. Do you know why the police are so interested in this body, doctor?”
He let go one of the few smiles the place would see all day. “I heard the sergeant say something about another bridge case. I didn’t know what that meant. The harbour bridge, I assume. But those injuries aren’t consistent with a fall…”
I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. I was out through the door and down the steps looking along the street for a place to hide. I stood in a shop doorway near the Ross Street corner and watched a young, smartly dressed man climb out of a red Holden Commodore, open the back door and escort a small, middle-aged woman to the steps of the morgue. Another car drew up, parked illegally, and a big man in a rumpled suit got out and joined the pair on the steps. They went in and I waited. When they came out the woman was distressed, leaning on the young man’s arm and holding a handkerchief to her face. The other man, whom I’d tagged as Meredith by now, talked briefly with them, patted the woman’s shoulder and went off to his car. I scooted down the street for mine and was sitting in it, ready to go left or right, when the Commodore, moving slowly as if it was already part of a funeral procession, turned out of Arundel Street.
The Commodore turned left into Parramatta Road, and I had to skip through a second of red light to stay behind. A bad start. Do that to someone who suspects he’s being followed, and it’s like turning on a siren. But the Commodore driver didn’t react. He drove steadily in the centre lane up past the railway and through Surry Hills until he picked up the freeway to the eastern suburbs. A good, considerate driver-the easiest kind to follow. I stayed modestly back, moving up occasionally to catch a light, but not getting any closer than I needed to. I made a mental note of the registration number and tried to guess where we would end up. I plumped for Bondi Junction and was almost right, but on the low side, sociologically. The Commodore slid down the leafy driveway beside a block of flats in Birriga Road, Bellevue Hill.
I stopped further up the curving, rising road and walked back to the flats. It was an old block of about ten apartments that had once commanded a majestic harbour view at the back. Even from the road you could see that the modern, multilevel building had whittled this away. Still, a bijou address, especially with the off-street parking. The Commodore was parked in the space along the side of the wide drive-way marked ‘6.’ I stood around contemplating my next move when a white Jaguar cruised noiselessly up and stopped fair and square across the entrance to the drive.
It was my day for crossing roads and taking cover. I stood behind a VW van parked on the other side of the road and saw a white-haired man get out of the Jaguar and help the woman I’d seen at the morgue into the back of the car. The young man was there too, patting people and murmuring things, but he stayed behind as the Jag drove off. He held a respectful attitude until it was out of sight and then he seemed to loosen up. His step on the way back down the drive was almost jaunty. The wind was blowing leaves along the footpath, and a gust pushed a heap of them up against my feet. Some detective, I thought, stands around being late autumnal while things are happening. Breaking in on bereavement is one thing, but if the man with the red Commodore had been bereaved he’d got over it awful fast.
Flat 6 was on the second level at the back. The entrance was through a hand-some door in a tiled, balustraded porch. It was one of those doors that was opened electrically from inside the flats but it wasn’t locked. I looked down and saw that the door had snagged on a piece of uplifted carpet, just enough to prevent the lock from engaging. Conclusion: the young man didn’t live here and didn’t know that you had to give the door a shove to get the security you were paying for. I went into a quiet, cool lobby with cream walls and dark timber and up a flight of stairs. I tried to give my knock on the door of number 6 the authority that brooks no denial.
The man who answered the door was middle-sized and fair in colouring except for his slightly flushed face. He’d taken off his suit jacket and loosened his tie. He held an opened bottle of champagne in one hand. “What do you want?” he said.
I flashed the licence folder quicker than a camera shutter. “My name is Hardy. Sergeant Meredith asked me to have a quick word with you.”
The familiar name did the trick. He eased back and I was part way through the door before an objection occurred to him. “He didn’t say anything to my mother or me back at the morgue.”
I fished out my notebook and leafed through, still inching my way in. “Well, he knew your mother’d be distressed. Now you are Mr…?”
“Clive Glover.” He held up the bottle. “I suppose this looks bad?”
“I don’t know, sir. Not necessarily. Could we go inside? Thank you. Now your mother made a formal
