week?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Thank you.’
She hung up. I continued my search without doing further damage to the phone book. The office of Andrew Perkins and Associates was in Phillip Street. Where else? I knew the old buildings where the legal eagles had their chambers-rabbit warrens of twisting corridors, steel-cage lifts and solid oak doors. A man could barricade himself inside a place like that, or slip out very easily if he knew his burrow well. It was beginning to look as if I’d have to make a call on Mr Perkins at home. That would take some work. I wondered if Miss Shaw had anticipated his non-cooperation. I wondered whether he had come to her, or vice versa, when he was her ‘client’. I wondered a lot of things.
Pleasant as it was, especially with the prospect of the bar opening soon, I couldn’t hang around the airport any longer. I drove back to the city with only the intrigue of the Shaw matter and the comfort of a couple of hundred bucks in the bank to keep me from feeling jealous and deserted.
I hadn’t gone into the private inquiry game without some preparation in the form of a long talk with Ernest Glass, who’d been a private eye since he got back from World War II. Ernie had been an MP for most of his stint, although he’d seen some action here and there. Along with a few tips about getting through locked doors and extracting information from neighbours, he’d had one critical piece of advice.
‘Cultivate a relationship with a policeman, boy,’ he’d said. ‘Better still, with a couple of policemen, and the less they know about each other the better, if you get what I mean.’
I already had a friendship with Grant Evans, who I’d served with in Malaya. It had proved useful while I was working in insurance, but I hadn’t tried to widen my net. Maybe this was the time. I drove to the Darlinghurst station and asked to see Detective Colin Pascoe. The desk officer recognised my name from the paperwork attached to the Meadowbank killing.
‘You armed?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘We had a fuckin’ nutter in here yesterday. Yugoslav, as you’d expect. Pulled out this fuckin’ great gun and threatened to kill everyone unless his missus was brought back to him.’
‘I don’t see any broken glass. What happened?’
The desk man thumped his meaty fist down on the papers in front of him. ‘They’ve cleaned up the blood. One of our blokes flattened him, but good. The prick. You’ll find Detective Pascoe one floor up and along to the right. Room 6.’
Down led to the interrogation rooms, up to better things. I knocked on a glass-panelled door and opened it when I heard someone say, ‘It isn’t locked.’
The speaker was Pascoe-shirt-sleeved, bulging with a combination of fat and muscle, perched on a desk and abusing someone on the telephone. His assistant of the night before was head down and arse up at a desk, working his way through a stack of files. Pascoe waved me to a chair and with his free hand mimed the action of rolling a cigarette. I took out my tobacco, made two and handed him one. He dipped his head towards the light. He sucked hard on his first drag and the rollie was nearly half-consumed. I sat and waited for him to finish his call. The young plain-clothes man was expressionless but taking everything in.
Pascoe banged the phone down. ‘So, the private dick. The tough guy who rolls his own and chucks things at hitmen. What can I do for you?’
I shrugged. ‘I dunno. Just staying in touch. Thought you might have mug shots for me to look at, might want to talk about an identification parade.’
‘Bullshit,’ Pascoe said.
‘Menzies wants to know if his client’s a suspect.’
‘That’s more like it. Yeah, why not? Tell him there’s a lot of self-made widows around. We catch a few of them. Not many. Our inquiries are proceeding. Anything else?’
‘I was wondering about my camera. When can I get it back?’
‘Got some more snooping to do, Hardy? Why don’t you earn an honest living? You look like a capable bloke. Evans speaks well of you.’
‘I’m hoping for better things. The camera?’
Pascoe turned to the younger man. ‘Why don’t you go out and get a cuppa tea, Ian?’
Ian moved with alacrity. ‘D’you want something, Colin?’
‘No, son. Just to be alone with my friend here.’
The door closed. ‘I should’ve asked him to get cigarettes,’ Pascoe said.
I started rolling.
‘The way things work,’ Pascoe said, ‘is that I pass this over to Homicide. But I still have an interest. If I come up with anything and hand it on and if it’s useful in some way…’
I gave him a cigarette and lit him up.
‘Thanks. And if it’s useful, I can still score points. You follow me?’
I nodded and lit my own smoke.
‘You’re in my bailiwick, Hardy. St Peters Lane, Darlinghurst. I can be useful to you or I can be a fuckin’ awful nuisance.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘So, have you got anything to tell me?’
The plain fact was, I didn’t like his style and I trusted him even less. Ernie Glass would have called me a fool or something worse, but I stood up and squashed out my cigarette. ‘No. Nothing. How about my camera?’
‘Piss off.’
I went out quickly and took the stairs going down three at a time. I waved to the man on the desk and left the station. As I stepped onto the footpath I collided with someone coming the other way. We both lost balance and apologised. It was Pascoe’s offsider. I said I was sorry again and moved away.
‘Mr Hardy.’
I turned back. He was extending his hand. I shook it.
‘Ian Gallagher. I just wanted to say I thought you handled yourself pretty well the other night.’
‘I don’t think your boss agrees with you.’
‘Colin hasn’t got… ah, a lot of imagination. Now me, for example, I don’t think you came in just to ask about your camera.’
‘No?’
‘I think you might have been looking for a little reciprocity, some give and take. That’s not Colin’s style. You might do a bit better with me.’
He was a medium-sized, fair man with the Robert Redford kind of good looks. When I examined him a bit more closely I saw that, like Redford, he wasn’t quite as young as he seemed. There were slight crow’s-feet around his eyes and his skin was roughened by quite a few summers and winters. His blue eyes had a reproachful look. Could be a bit of frustrated ambition here, I thought.. ‘I haven’t got much to give,’ I said.
‘I’ll take an IOU. Colin Pascoe’ll never get anywhere with this. I’ve got a feeling about it. There’s something subtle behind it. Now, you haven’t just dropped it, have you?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘OK My guess is you’re still working for one of the lawyers or maybe for the widow. I’ll give you something. Viriginia Shaw, remember her?’
‘Miss Shaw,’ I said. ‘Meadowbank’s companion.’
‘Right. She gave us a cock and bull story about meeting Meadowbank at a business lunch and becoming attracted to him. Hard to picture, isn’t it?’
I shrugged. ‘Ava Gardner married Mickey Rooney.’
‘Virginia Shaw’s a high-class whore. She’s almost a professional co-re. Been up twice already. Three’s about the limit in that game before questions get asked. She wouldn’t come cheap and she’s got some nasty friends.’
‘Like who?’
He grinned. ‘That’s enough from me. I can see you’re interested, which means I was right-you’re still involved. So I’ve got something out of our talk after all. Just remember who to talk to first if you need any help. But
