been modified to make him look brutish and humourless. The usual number of crank calls and letters were received by the police and the media, and several of the more inane and perverted of these received some publicity. The outstanding war records of some of the builders’ offspring, male and female, got a mention. This was at my suggestion. There was something about the photo-graph of Lithgow’s father, and his reaction when the topic of war came up, that worked in my mind like a stone in a shoe. But I still couldn’t make sense of it.
Ray Guthrie was interviewed by the police but not troubled further. Louise Madden was not required to identify her father. My recognition plus dental records and the presence of a scar from a minor operation on Madden’s right knee was sufficient. The autopsy revealed that he had died from a blow to the temple, which had caused a massive haemorrhage.
“That would have been quick and probably painless,” I told Louise. She was finishing off the job in Castlecrag and I’d driven out there to give her the news in person.
She used a mallet to knock a heavy stone into place in a rockery she’d constructed. “That’s good. When can I bury him?”
“Soon, I should think.”
“Will you come?”
“If you want me to.”
She nodded and swung the mallet again. The dull thwacks reminded me of the sounds Helen Broadway made when she staked vines on her husband’s land. I’d pleaded with her to leave him and she wouldn’t. I’d pulled up some of the vines and we’d shouted at each other. Louise Madden stopped working and stared at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head to clear the images.
“This isn’t over for you, Cliff, is it?”
“Not really. Not until he’s caught.”
“And what’s happening on that front?” The police and I anticipated that Lithgow would have read my name in the press and put two and two together.
“We’re waiting,” I said.
Lithgow called on the third night. I was in my office.
“You know who this is?” he said.
“Yes.” I switched on the police-provided recording equipment. There was a similar hook-up at home.
“I realise you’ll be recording this, Mr Hardy. I’m not stupid, you see?”
There was nothing to say to that and I didn’t try.
“I want you to go out to a telephone box in William Street-the one opposite the Metropolitan hotel. Have you got that?”
“Yes. When?”
“Now, and don’t contact the police or bring anyone with you when we meet.”
“We’re meeting, are we?” He hung up without answering and I replaced the receiver thoughtfully. I didn’t really want to go up against Lithgow single-handedly, but I also didn’t want to leave him running around loose to kill more people. And I wanted to know why he did it. That’s what he’d be counting on if he knew me. I had a chilling feeling that he did know me and that firmed up my resolve. He could find me whenever he wanted to, which gave me a distinctly uncomfortable feeling. The police had returned my gun. I checked it over carefully before replacing it in the holster under my arm and putting on my sports jacket and a plastic raincoat. The rain was beating steadily against the window and leaking in under the decayed sill. In a situation like this, it was important not to be confused and I wasn’t. I wasn’t doing this for the public or for Louise Madden or because I loved the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I was doing it for me.
My feet were wet before I reached the phone box and I wondered how good a psychologist Lithgow was. Had he contrived to send me out in the cold and rain while he sat by a fire with one of his glasses of vintage red to hand? The lights from the traffic signals and the hotels and the car showrooms blurred in reflection on the wet road. The booth had lost a pane of glass to vandals, and the wind pushed spatters of rain inside, making the shelf and handset oily damp. The phone rang and it almost slipped from my grasp as I snatched it up.
“Hardy.”
“I want to explain.”
“I understand.”
“I wonder if you do. I wasn’t fooled by the stories you planted in the papers.”
Again, it seemed best not to say anything.
“I wasn’t fooled for an instant,” he went on. “It was very crude. But I admit I was hurt.”
“Especially by references to your father.”
His voice was almost a strangled sob. “What?”
“This is all to do with your father, isn’t it?”
“Y… yes.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ballantine.”
I’d read over the names of the injured many times. I hadn’t retained them all, but Ballantine was the second name on the list. I couldn’t go on not responding and my mind raced to find something of sufficient weight to match what he’d revealed. Nothing came. “Ballantine,” I said. “We were working on Goulburn or Bathurst.”
“I told you I wasn’t stupid. I want to talk with you.”
“Okay. Where? When?”
“Where else?”
“On the bridge?”
“I’ll meet you at the midpoint on the westside walkway. You come from the north. It’ll take you about twenty minutes to get there. Come alone, Mr Hardy, and don’t try to trick me. I’ll be watching you, and believe me I know every inch of the approaches and everything about the traffic flow at all times. Any sign that something is amiss will be immediately apparent to me. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve given you my name, which makes me vulnerable to you. Almost as vulnerable as you are to me.”
“I think you want help, Mr Ballantine. I think you were asking me for it when you talked to me in the Pump Street house.”
“Perhaps. I hope I can trust you.”
I said, “You can,” but not before he’d hung up. I hurried back to my car and drove across the bridge. I left the car down near the North Sydney swimming pool and jogged up to the walkway. The rain had stopped and the sky had cleared; the wind was gusty and the water far below was choppy. Traffic on the bridge was very light. Not much of a night for walking. As I moved towards the centre of the bridge I was aware that I had the north end of the walkway to myself. Ballantine knew his business-there were a few joggers on the east side, but foot passengers preferred the side away from the trains. A train rumbled past and I saw a figure, caught in its headlight, approaching from the south side.
We met at about the middle of the span. Ballantine wore a short, padded coat with a fleecy collar turned up. His shoulders were hunched and his head was dipped. It was hard to see his face, but his solid figure was unmistakable. He wore a cloth cap with a short peak. He nodded when we were within a few feet of each other and kept coming. “We’ll walk across and back. This is going to take some time. Have you got a weapon?”
“No,” I said.
“You’re probably not telling the truth, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve got an iron bar in my pocket here. I hope it stays there.”
I turned and we started to walk slowly back the way I’d come. “Whose idea was it to put those filthy stories in the papers?” Ballantine said.
His voice was low and controlled. I couldn’t see any point in lying again. “A policeman named Meredith. He was investigating some of the disappearances — Samuel, Glover and so on. He’d made the bridge connection, or almost, when I blundered in.”
“A policeman, you say? I wouldn’t have credited a policeman with the subtlety.”
I felt I had to go on some sort of attack. “What happened with Glover? The body wasn’t wrapped and it
