‘Going to give me an escort?’
I said it partly to get up his nose, partly to get an idea of how serious this was. Predictably, he took it seriously and had to check with his mate again. More two-way talk and the second cop approached, looking relieved. My guess — no escort.
‘They say it’s in the nature of a request, but if the gentleman shows any signs of resistance we’re to escort him.’
I held up my hands in surrender. ‘I’ll go. I wouldn’t want to take you blokes from Drummoyne to Hurstville. What’s Hurstville got?’
The two-way cop grinned but the other one seemed to be considering the matter. ‘C’mon, Charles,’ two- way said. ‘He’s said he’ll go in.’
Charles, he would be a Charles, looked at his watch. ‘I’ll advise them of the time you started. Drive carefully, Mr Hardy.’
‘Always,’ I said and got back in the car. It was lunchtime or close enough, and I’d be buggered if I’d turn up at a police station for how long I didn’t know without having had lunch and perhaps a couple of quiet nerve- soothers.
Inspector Beth Hammond leaned forward slightly across the desk that separated us. ‘Would you mind telling us why it took you three hours to get from Canada Bay to Hurstville?’
‘I stopped for lunch.’
‘This isn’t a joke, Mr Hardy.’
‘I agree with you. I don’t find anything funny about being stopped by policemen and ordered to go somewhere without being told why.’
Stankowski stood against the wall of the bare and cheerless interview room. Perhaps their version of good cop, bad cop was standing cop, sitting cop. ‘It was a request.’
‘The man making the request put his hand on his pistol.’
The two detectives exchanged a glance before Hammond got back to business.
‘Your client, Mr Price, has made a statement in which he says he hired you to investigate his daughter because he feared she was getting into bad company.’
‘That’s true as far as it goes.’
‘He says as far as he knows you’ve never been to his house. Your fingerprints were found in the house in association with some of Mrs Price’s blood. Coming on top of you being one of the last people to see Jason Jorgensen alive and the professional at the golf club identifying you as a man who misrepresented himself as a sports agent, I think you have some explaining to do.’
I said nothing and thought about it. I was still thinking when Stankowski spoke up. ‘Getting your lawyer to phone in some cockeyed story about your phone being tapped doesn’t help your credibility.’
‘Yours isn’t so hot either, Detective-Constable. I don’t know the status of this interview. You don’t seem to be making a record of it unless you’ve got some sneaky device and I haven’t been told of my rights. If you think I’m involved in a couple of murders…’
‘You’re helping with our enquiries,’ Hammond said.
I nodded. ‘That makes it sound voluntary.’
Stankowski lost patience first which might help to explain why he was out-ranked by Hammond. He pushed off from the wall and would have loomed over me if he’d been a bit taller. ‘Come on, Hardy. You’ve been around. You know the ropes. Something’s going on with these people, this Price and his family and friends. Two of them are dead. Someone brained that kid and dumped him in the river and someone shot that woman up with pure heroin..’
That was news. Hammond gave him a furious look and I knew why. I shook my head and made a movement to suggest I was going to get up from the chair, if not immediately then soon. ‘No way. You’ve got me implicated in two murders. I’m not going to answer any questions without my lawyer present.’
‘We can hold you for a time,’ Hammond said. It was warm in the room and she was beginning to look a little uncomfortable in her suit. Same style as yesterday, blue instead of black.
‘You won’t,’ I said. ‘You know it isn’t worth your while.’
‘I’d do it to take you down a peg or two,’ Stankowski muttered.
‘But you’re not the boss.’
It was the second time I’d faced Hammond down and she didn’t like it. Stankowski liked it even less. In the old days they’d have locked me up, planted something on me or verballed me, had their way. But times have changed. I almost sympathised with them. Almost.
I pushed my chair back. ‘Will that be all?’
They didn’t answer and I walked out of the room. I got to the car and dialled Price’s home number. No answer. I tried the office with the same result. Hope I get you as you’re just about to slip it in, I thought as I punched in the numbers for his mobile.
‘Martin Price.’
Martin now — widower, serious man. ‘This is Hardy. We need to talk.’
‘Yes, we do. Did you find Danni?’
‘I did. Look…’
‘I thought you would. Those police are hopeless. I want to hire you to find out who killed my wife.’
18
‘That’s a crazy idea,’ I told Price. ‘I can’t question people who don’t want to be questioned or get warrants to search places, or offer immunity to informants who might be involved. That’s how it’s done and it’s police work.’
We were in a pub in Bankstown, not far from Price’s office. We were both drinking Scotch and water and I’d told him about finding Danni and how she’d reacted before we got on to his idea.
‘I know that,’ he said. ‘And I don’t mean for you to make a citizen’s arrest or anything.’
‘Then what?’
He had a drink and fidgeted. Off the smokes again. ‘You must have some ideas you could follow up. You’ve been right in the middle of this thing. Anything you come up with could point the police in the right direction. They haven’t got a clue.’
I drank some whisky and thought about it. It was tempting to keep on earning money from something that had twisted and turned and was far from resolved. ‘Let’s clear a few things up first. I believe Danni when she says she didn’t supply your wife with drugs. She said your wife had been using them for years, since her modelling days. But, with one thing and another, it’d got out of hand.’
‘Jesus. But Jason told me…’
‘I don’t think we can put too much faith in Jason. He wasn’t very bright and my guess is that your wife told him that because she hated Danni so much.’
‘I knew they didn’t get along but… hated? Why?’
Was this the time to tell him? I thought it probably was. He was hardly the grieving widower. When we’d shaken hands on meeting I’d noticed a faint perfume on him and it wasn’t his aftershave. In fact he hadn’t shaved and with the stubble and in jeans and a Sydney 2000 Olympics T-shirt he looked younger than in his business gear, despite the haggard face and sleep-deprived eyes.
‘Your wife was having an affair with Jason, or had had one. She kept a photo of one of their meetings among her things. Danni has a photo of Jason as well. Those two women had reason to hate each other. Danni seems to have some special reason she sort of taunted me with. Any idea what that might be?’
‘No. None. This is all news to me. God, what a fuck-up.’
‘When did the police search your house?’
He scratched at the stubble as if doing it would scrape away an unpleasant memory. ‘They arrived just as I was leaving to go and make my statement. I let them go ahead. I didn’t think there was anything to hide.’
