The phone rang as I was heading for the door. I considered not answering it, but phones are about the only things that incline me to believe in the paranormal- often I can feel who’s calling. Sometimes I’m right. This time, I felt it wasn’t Ralph Wren. Right again. It was Cy Sackville.
“Well, Cliff,” Cy said, coming the breezy barrister, “I’ve poked around a bit and they don’t…”
“It’s off, Cy.”
“What do you mean it’s off? This is a serious matter. It’s your livelihood to start with, and it could be your liberty.”
“You’ve been rehearsing,” I said.
“A little. I’m looking forward to it. The precedents are most interesting.”
“No doubt. I’m sorry but I have to disappoint you. The matter got cleared up the other night. There was a conspiracy against me. I was an innocent victim.”
One of Cy’s strengths is his quick recovery. He’d have shrugged and moved something else up on his agenda, even though this little legal by-way had interested him more than some he’d gone down with me. “I’m delighted to hear it,” he said. “In fact, that was the sort of line I was going to pursue.”
“Thanks, Cy, but it’s not going to go any further. One of the conspirators is dead and one of the others is in custody. They’ve got him for conspiracy to murder and malicious wounding, for starters.”
“I see.”
“Sorry to waste your time.”
“No matter. I learned some things about a piece of legislation. It’ll come in useful some time. And of course I’ll bill you for the work.”
“Of course.”
We both knew he wouldn’t. He’d get payment in kind from me by having me do some work for him, or he’d simply forget. Cy is an old-time, wishy-washy socialist, and guilty about the amount of money he makes. So would I be, if I made a quarter as much.
“Are you okay, Cliff? Are you really in the clear or is there something I can do?”
“I’m in the clear on that matter. Listen, Cy, if someone found some bodies and didn’t report them, what would the charges be?”
“Concealing evidence.”
“Obstructing the police?”
“Yes.”
“Committing public nuisance?”
“Possibly.”
“Imperilling enquiry agent licence?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Neither would I. Thanks, Cy.” I shivered as I spoke. The biggish house was cold; draughts came in under the doors and a decayed window frame was rattling upstairs, troubled by a strong, cold, south wind.
Peter Corris
CH13 — Wet Graves
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Know a good solicitor around here?”
“Paul Hart in Balmain. Why? Look, Cliff, d’you mean your will? If you’re in trouble tell me, I can…”
“I’m thinking about selling this bloody house, Cy. That’s all. Thanks. See you.”
If you can’t carry a gun, carry cash. Very neat. Well, I couldn’t carry a gun because the police had taken mine after the fracas in the Kings Cross alley, and I hadn’t been interested enough at the time to ask for it back. I used to have an unlicensed Colt. 45 which I kept for emergencies in a clip under the dashboard of my old Falcon. But the old Falcon let in water and the firing pin on the Colt had rusted solid. What the hell! I thought. No veteran of the bridge is going to be under seventy. Carry cash. I deposited Louise Madden’s cheque, drew out a couple of hundred, and drove to the Rocks.
17
My reasoning was this: someone connected with the Veterans of the Bridge Society was killing the descendants of the bridge builders. Motive uncertain. Revenge? Retribution? Insanity almost certainly part of the picture. Probably, therefore, the perpetrator was connected with someone who’d been killed while working on the bridge. That gave me the list of names. The list was dauntingly Anglo-Saxon and ordinary-McKeon, Addison, Campbell and the like. There would be thousands of people by those names now living in the city. But it was a starting point. As I drove I recalled a section in Spearritt’s book headed ‘Driven to Death’. According to Spearritt, more than 150 people had suicided by jumping from the bridge. If they were factored in, as the experts on the radio say, the net would be cast even wider. How many people connected with the 150 jumpers would there be? It sounded like a job for Professor Spearritt and his computer. What about people killed in car crashes on the bridge? What about the people whose TV reception was buggered up by all the metal? The more I thought that way, the more I was reminded that there were more than five million rivets in the bridge. It would be hell of a job looking for just one of them.
Pump Street was quiet and oddly dusty. The dust must have drifted from construction sites nearby and settled there, because there was no actual building work going on in the street itself. It gave the landscape an old-world, historical flavour, as if nothing much had changed since the streets were unpaved and there was more horse dung on the road than oil stains. I drove slowly along the street, turned at the end and looked for the laneway that usually runs behind rows of Sydney terraces. No laneway, or rather, there had been a lane but the red brick building I had noticed before, which I now identified as a bond store, had annexed it sometime in the past and there was now no back entrance to the houses. Not good. I didn’t want to be held up again by Betty Tracey nor to provide entertainment for the diversion-starved residents of Pump Street.
I parked opposite number 47, a few doors along from 43A, and saw the solution to my problem. At the end of the terrace, just before a series of semi-detached houses began, there was a narrow gap. I crossed the street and inspected the opening to a passage scarcely wide enough to squeeze through and not passable by anyone really bulky. All Alan Bond’s millions wouldn’t get him down there. I negotiated it, although I felt I had to hold my breath and suck in my stomach. Also I had to twist myself sideways to make the turn where the passage went right, parallel to the street and behind the houses. The opposing wall was high and brick, part of the lane-annexing bond store. The back-yards to the houses were almost non-existent-tiny, bricked or cemented squares with brick outhouse toilets, not even enough space for a Hills Hoist. There were wooden fences, much patched with galvanised iron and other materials and gates from the lane, opening in towards the houses. With the gate open, a rubbish bin in place and a six-pack, the yard would be full to capacity.
Some of the gates had listed so badly they were immovable; the hinges on others had rusted solid; a few had been nailed or boarded shut or simply built over. By squinting up at the backs of the houses and trying to calculate where the divisions of the terrace fell, I reckoned I was able to distinguish the back of number 43A. The house differed in no way from the others-same rusty iron roof, drooping guttering and water-stained walls. But the gate was firm on its posts and the hinges had been recently oiled. The paving in the lane was a sort of cobblestone that had cracked and lifted in places, further impeding the opening of the gates. But at the gate of 43A the paving had been mended, pounded flat. My theory, that someone had been listening in the house when I’d made my enquiry about Stan Livermore and had had the time and means to leave and kill old Stan, was looking stronger. Look for a lean man, I thought, with an oilcan and a mallet.
I braced my back against the brick wall and inched my feet up the solid gatepost until I was high enough to straddle the gate and climb over. The gate had a simple barrel bolt which I slid back experimentally-smooth as silk. I left it open and approached the house. A short light access on the right-hand side, narrow set of brick steps to the back door, and a decayed, unfastened flywire screen with too many holes in it to keep flies out, let alone trouble burglars. On the solid door was a mortised lock, old and loose. A jiggle with a piece of thin metal (plastic never works for me), a downward pressure and twist on the handle, and I had the door open. Not exactly a break
