white spots tied around her chest. It made a thin stripe across her narrow back, suggesting that it was worn more for comfort than concealment.
‘Joan.’
She turned slowly, digging tool in hand. She wore neither sunglasses nor hat and had to shield her eyes against the low sun.
She said, ‘Who’s that?’ and I experienced a jolt, remembering her poor eyesight and her husky, intense voice.
‘It’s Cliff Hardy, Joan.’
She straightened up to her full five-foot-six. She was as lean as I remembered, very tanned with short blonde hair. Thin features, pointed face. She was a few years younger than me and had worn better. She dropped the trowel, pulled off her gardening gloves and wiped sweat from her face as she edged closer. ‘So it is. Looking like a truck just hit him. Has she pissed off again, Cliff? That it?’
‘No, Joan,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to see you. Have a drink and maybe pick your brains. I’ve gone into the private inquiries game.’
‘I heard.’
‘The garden looks… amazing.’
She snorted. ‘What would you know? You can’t tell a bougainvillea from a banksia.’
‘I busted up the concrete.’
‘So you did. How could I forget? You drank a can of beer for every square foot.’
I laughed. ‘It was bloody hard work. How are you, Joanie?’
‘I’m good.’ She brushed her hands together. ‘Well, I was about to knock off anyway. I’ve got a couple of bottles of rose chilled. How’s that sound?’
‘Great.’
She stepped quickly forward and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Don’t be so stiff. I’m over you a long time, sport. It’s good to see you.’
There was a wooden garden setting on some flagstones near the back of the house under another pergola. Ferns hung in baskets from the cross beams and creepers trailed around the uprights. I plonked myself down in one of the chairs and rolled a smoke while Joan went inside. A shower ran very briefly-Joan was one of the few women I’d ever known to have quick showers-and then she was back carrying a bottle and two stemmed glasses. She’d changed into a long flower-patterned skirt and pale blue T-shirt. Her small, pointed breasts moved as she opened the wine. She poured two glasses full, another attractive habit of hers, and sank into a chair with a sigh. From the accuracy of her pouring I knew she’d put in her contact lenses. Without them, when it came to close work, anything was possible. She once told me she liked to garden without them and that when she surveyed what she’d done the effect was like looking at an impressionist painting. Then she’d put them in and get details right.
‘Cheers. It does look pretty good, doesn’t it?’
I drank some of the cold, slightly spicy wine. ‘It looks terrific. Is it finished?’
She laughed. ‘That’s what you have to understand about a garden. It’s never finished. It’s never over. And it never lets you down.’
‘Joan, I…’
‘Forget it. We were both in the mood at the same time. You got out of the mood first, that’s all. It would have been me a bit later. Roll me one of those filthy fags of yours and tell me all about it.’
I made her a cigarette, lit it and talked for about ten minutes. She smoked, drank her wine and listened. I could tell from her expression and nods that she knew about Meadowbank, and had heard of Andrew Perkins and that the name Bob Loggins wasn’t unknown to her. I toned a few things down, didn’t tell about Loggins’ scheme and left out Richard Maxwell’s name. When I got to the politician and the doctor, Redding and Molesworth, her interest really picked up.
‘Bruce Redding,’ she said, ‘and Dr Leo Molesworth. Well, well.’
‘I’ve heard of Redding. He’s a cabinet minister, isn’t he? Who’s Molesworth?’
‘Redding’s a junior minister, not actually in the cabinet but getting there. Molesworth’s what they call a fashionable Macquarie Street surgeon. He’s a hip replacement man for the rich.’
‘Both with good motives for arranging quiet, smooth divorces?’
‘Redding, certainly. Big Catholic population in his electorate. Molesworth, I’m not so sure about. Do society doctors have to watch their p’s and q’s? I wouldn’t have thought so. Your informant suggested there were others involved?’
‘Yep, apart from Meadowbank. I didn’t get their names though.’
Joan poured the last of the bottle and accepted another rollie. I was feeling a lot better, considerably cooled down externally and internally, and relaxed by her calm, intelligent manner. I was confident that Joan would come up with something to help, but suddenly I remembered how I had sheltered Ernie Glass. I’d got careless, let my tongue run away with me, told Joan very much more than I intended and I felt guilty.
‘Look, Joanie’ I said, ‘this is dangerous stuff. I didn’t mean to spill it all quite like this. I wanted some help with something specific.’
She puffed smoke at me and laughed. ‘Big deal. I’ve got bigger secrets than this inside my head, Mister Hardy. And I’ve got the journalist’s protection, remember? If I get pushed too hard I can publish.’
‘Not if you’re dead, you can’t.’
‘True. It does sound like pretty heavy stuff and I’ve got a feeling there’s more than a batch of easy divorces behind it, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Yeah, but what?’
‘I can do some work on it. Discreetly. Redding won’t be hard to sniff around. The good doctor’s a bit trickier, but there’re ways. Don’t look so worried, Cliff. This is my business. You’re doing me a favour by putting me on to it.’
‘You didn’t see that girl dead in her flat.’
‘I’ve seen ‘em. Now, something specific?’
I drank the rest of my wine and considered what to say. I was imbued with the idea that men protected women, even though I’d met plenty of women who needed no protection from anyone. I’d been shot at by women in Malaya. It was an idea that belonged in mothballs along with cardigans and tea cosies and the non-working wife. My own wife was working a thousand miles away and I’d already told Joan almost as much as I knew. Still, it was a hard idea to shake and I hesitated.
‘You’re pissing me off, Cliff,’ Joan said. ‘You know who hauled all these flagstones in here? Me. I’ve hitchhiked all over this country and Europe and Asia. I’ve got a. 32 Beretta inside and I’ll take you on at target- shooting any day.’
‘The specific thing is Chalky Teacher.’
‘Jesus, how is he involved?’
‘My information is that he killed Meadowbank.’
‘How did your informant come to know this?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me. Can you describe Teacher physically?’
She closed her eyes and leaned back. Her throat was a long slim brown column and the skin around her jaw and neck was taut. ‘I’ve seen him once or twice. He’s a small man. Not more than five-six. About my size, actually. Light build. He used to be a boxer. What’s the division above the one Lionel Rose was in?’
‘Rose was a bantam. The next one up’s featherweight. Nine-stone limit.’
‘That’s it. He was an amateur featherweight boxer. He’s not a featherweight crim, though.’
‘So I gather. How would I go about finding him? Do you know where he drinks? Who he hangs around with?’
‘He doesn’t drink. I know that much. I don’t know about the rest of it off-hand, but I suppose I could find out if I made a few calls. Bit hard on Sunday, though. How urgent is it?’
‘Very. You sound reluctant.’
‘Now it’s me who’s worried on your behalf, Cliff. Teacher is very bad news. You mustn’t even think of going up against him on your own. I won’t help you do that. And if you start asking around about him in the pubs and so on you’ll find yourself in big trouble.’
