I only had one more bullet to fire. I picked up Cross’s card and flicked a fingernail against it. ‘I’ll tell you one thing — it isn’t about Jason Jorgensen, because he’s dead.’
10
Think time. I drove around Lugarno for a while as the day turned sour. The cloud that had built up through the morning and early afternoon had turned dark and had those wind-driven light streaks in it that promise a storm. The wind had swung to the east and it looked as if the city was in for a lashing. I drove as close as I could get to the river and looked out at it over the protective strip of reserve. The water was a murky grey now and the knowledge that Jason had been dumped in it just hours before didn’t make it more appealing. I wondered whether the boat that dragged him up had taken the body ashore somewhere else on the river or whether the police had been contacted straight off. Many houseboats have phones, so the second possibility was likely. It hardly mattered. There was no way to tell where the boy had died or where the body had left dry land — boats leave no tracks. Still, it was curious that the dumping place had been Lugarno. Was it noticeably quieter than elsewhere? The police would be pushing shit uphill on this one and if it started to roll back they’d be calling on me.
I got out of the car to stretch and sniffed the conflicting smells of Sydney in the air — the industrial odours of Botany warring with the salty tang of the wide blue Pacific further east and the scents that were being given off by the trees that were bending to the wind and shedding leaves. The rain was only minutes away and the air was getting cooler. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and felt something unfamiliar — Dr Cross’s laminated card. I’d taken it for no particular reason and not looked at it. Now I did. Dr Ephraim Cross’s surgery was located in the Essex Arcade, Burwood Road, Canterbury. He was in Suite 3 and in Suite 4 was the Lord George Introduction and Social Escort Agency.
The sky cracked open and the thunder rolled and lightning forked and the rain came down in sheets. I got soaked just scurrying a few metres back to the car. I drove towards the city and my office to check on the state of my business and because I can sometimes think better in there than anywhere else. There was a good deal to think about. The male mind is a twisted thing; as I drove carefully along the roads with their gutters filling and the traffic crawling, I couldn’t get the image of Samantha Price’s breasts out of my mind. I tried, but I couldn’t clear the screen. She was a damaged creature, shooting God knows what drugs into her system and drinking champagne as she shot up and with her own Dr Feelgood on tap. Her reaction to the news of Jason’s death was hard to interpret. Her expression hadn’t changed much. Had she been stunned? Hard to say. Models seemed to be trained to display aloofness and indifference; maybe Sandy’s training had come into play.
I swerved to avoid a skidding ute going too fast for the conditions and swore at the driver, who gave me the finger. Sammy hadn’t worried about Jason seeing her with her tits hanging out. He’d seen it all before and a lot more in that motel room. It wasn’t hard to figure — the car, the suit, the motel. Jason was Sammy’s lover and she had been giving him the things a young man would find hard to resist. Price had told me that she had money of her own and I could well believe it. Looking the way she did she must’ve earned a fortune in her modelling days. I could guess at the chronology — Jason’s on with spunky Danni first, then Sammy snatches him away with sophistication, better looks and money. Danni takes revenge on her stepmother by getting her hooked when she’s depressed and vulnerable.
So Jason goes to Price, which must’ve taken some nerve, and spills the beans on Danni. All very nasty and with Price not really knowing what was going on. It hung together okay and gave me a handle on things, but it didn’t tell me where Danni got her drugs from unless, just possibly, Dr Feelgood was in the picture.
I parked as close as I could to St Peter’s Lane where I have my office and waited until the rain eased a bit. I had a Drizabone in the back and I pulled it on and splashed off to buy a pizza slice and a takeaway coffee to fuel me. The rain got worse, pelting down so hard it was bouncing up off the footpath making staying even half dry impossible. I stepped gingerly over flowing gutters, ducked away from spewing downpipes and made the back entrance nearly as wet as when I rode the big, choppy, curling ones at Maroubra back in my surfing days.
It was mid-afternoon and I was hungry. Breakfast and the light beer with Tom Bolitho were a distant memory. I’d wolfed down the pizza slice and drunk the coffee and wished I could have seconds, but with the rain coming down like that I wasn’t going out again. There were a couple of faxes and bills and phone messages to deal with and I did them in a routine way with the tangled Price matter still occupying most of my brain space. I opened a folder, put the contract inside, scribbled some notes and dropped Dr Cross’s card in with the lot. I made my usual diagram with names in the corners of an octagon, leaving spaces for more names as they came up, and dotted lines and arrows indicating connections. I had five names so far, six if I included Detective Constable Stankowski — two to go. I figured I might need a bigger diagram and wondered what a ten-sided figure was called.
I was still wondering and still hungry and thirsty when the phone rang. I screen the calls when I’m thinking and I let the machine pick it up.
‘Cliff, Tess. You there?’
I realised that I hadn’t given Ramsay a thought for some time and felt guilty. In cowardly fashion, I let Tess leave a message that only amounted to a wish to know how I was going. I put out my hand to pick up the phone but she cut the call and I let it drop. Come on, Hardy, I thought. You can handle two cases at once. You’ve done it before. That was true, but as a rough rule, when I did that, one case turned out badly.
I could have called Tess back and told her about the Strathfield situation but I didn’t and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I felt I needed something more solid to relay to her, like a meeting with Ramsay. Or maybe I was shying away from that out of my dislike of the man. Tess would be better off disconnected from him. Why not just let him go on doing whatever he was doing? At least he wasn’t at her for money and was apparently healthy. But the truth was I was more interested now in the Price case and not just because it was an earner. It had subtleties to it I was sure I hadn’t yet discerned and that was intriguing.
Although it was still early in the year, the heavy cloud dimmed the light and the late afternoon felt later. Bad weather depresses me, makes me feel heavy and slow, and I slumped at the desk until I got a twinge from my bruised stomach. That was another attraction of the Price matter, the possibility of catching up with Baldy again and being better prepared. It got to be five o’clock which is near enough to six, and I poured myself a modest slug of bargain special Scotch and made plans: for now, a visit to the sauna and spa in Leichhardt to help me get through my routine at the gym the next morning where I hoped Peter Lo would have something helpful for me. Ramsay would have to wait; but then a more forceful visit to the face-lifted lady of Henry Street, Strathfield, would be the next port of call.
I drove through the heavy rain to the sports centre in Leichhardt, paid my money, stripped and hopped into the spa. The water temperature was about right and I played the jets on my stomach and wallowed around like King Farouk. I could feel the warmth and the water relaxing me. Apart from a couple who pretty much clung mutely together in a corner of the spa I had the place to myself. Some rolls of fat in the middle, love handles not too bad, reasonable muscle tone elsewhere. I tried not to look at the grizzled grey hair on my chest. I felt I had a viable work plan mapped out and I tried to concentrate on soothing my body and leaving all things to do with Prices and Hewitt out in the rain.
It pretty much worked and I was well and truly relaxed when I stepped into the sauna and slopped some water on the heat. I put a towel down on the top bench and stretched out on my back to let the steam do its work. I’ve heard of people fucking in saunas but it doesn’t take me that way, rather the reverse. The sweat was pooling in my grey-haired navel and running off me and I’d pulled the towel out from under and was mopping my face when two men entered the room. I didn’t bother to look at them and couldn’t have seen much through the steam anyway. I was about to roll over when one of the men spoke.
‘Mr Hardy my name is Lewis. I represent the Lord George Social Introduction Agency.’
I struggled to recover something from my soporific surrender to the heat. ‘You left out the word escort,’ I said. ‘Not that I give a fuck who you are or what you do.’
‘It would be very unwise of you to take that line.’
I fanned away some steam and saw that the other man was Baldy. I pushed myself upright but I was
