Gleebooks, the Broadway cinemas and the Dave Sands memorial. I didn’t. It was dark by the time I got there and he’d thoughtfully left a light on above the front door. I went through a neat garden, up a neat path and some well-maintained steps to a porch with tiles that hadn’t lifted and that had been swept clear of leaves. In a quieter mood it would’ve made me feel ashamed of the look of my place.
I rang the bell. Townsend came quickly to the door, opened the security screen and almost took a backward step.
‘What happened to you?’
I hadn’t given any thought to my appearance, but when I looked down I saw that my pants were torn at the knees and when I touched the bump on my forehead my hand came away wet.
‘Come inside and get cleaned up.’
The immaculate exterior of the house was reproduced inside. Townsend showed me down a short passage of polished boards to a bathroom with all mod cons-spa bath, ceiling radiator, heated towel rails.
‘Use what you want,’ Townsend said, ‘and I’ll make you a drink. Scotch, is it?’
‘Thanks. A bloody big one.’
I ran water, used a flannel and towel, and dumped them in the basket provided. I’ve got a milk crate for the purpose, better ventilated. I found bandaids in a drawer and laid one over the graze just below the hairline and above the boxing scars that puckered my eyebrows. I rinsed my hands and mouth and felt considerably better. Out in the passage I heard Townsend talking and went towards the sound.
He was sitting at a pine table in the kitchen with a glass in hand and using his mobile. There was a bottle of Dewar’s, another glass, a carafe of water and ice in a bowl on the table.
‘Gotta go,’ Townsend said and hung up. ‘Sorry, Hardy. Have a drink. I wasn’t sure of your… proportions.’
I sat and poured a generous measure of the whisky and added ice. I took a long pull and poured some more. I was suddenly very tired and wanted to close my eyes.
‘Thanks,’ I said after another drink. ‘Looks like I landed in the right place.’
‘Is anything hurting? You need painkillers?’
I held up my glass. ‘This’ll do.’
You gotta trust somebody, and anybody who offers you the whole bottle has a good chance of getting the nod. I was in a mood to talk and couldn’t see any reason to hold back, so I told Townsend everything from whoa to go. He kept quiet and didn’t react, even when I said that Tim Arthur had badmouthed him. I made no excuses about my carelessness in protecting the record of Lily’s work, and admitted that I had my doubts about Gregory’s involvement. I didn’t mention Harry Tickener’s reference to the small man syndrome.
I worked my way through the scotch in my glass and eyed the bottle when I finished.
‘I’ve got a spare room,’ Townsend said. ‘You can stay the night if you’re worried about driving over the limit.’
I poured another solid one. ‘Thanks. About all I need right now is for the cops to pick me up driving pissed. What d’you make of it all?’
‘How much do you remember of Arthur’s translation of Lily’s codes and initials?’
‘Good point. Got a pen and paper? That fucker took my notebook, not that there was anything in it.’
Townsend went into an adjacent room and came out with a pen and a lined pad. I printed out POW, BW, SB and VER with their equivalents, but not many of the scrambled initials came back to me. I put down IRS, IAD and HON but without any confidence-they could’ve just been echoes of familiar initials. I tore off the sheet and passed it to Townsend, telling him the initials could all be wrong.
‘Not a hell of a lot of help,’ he said. ‘The upside is that it wouldn’t be much help to the opposition either.’
‘No. There was enough detail in the stories, as I’ve outlined them to you, to tell anyone involved what line she was following. He, she, they have the advantage now.’
‘She?’
I shrugged. ‘Avoiding sexism.’
‘Cute. Sorry. This has thrown me a bit. I thought we were on the right lines with Gregory, but you have your doubts. I don’t know anything about this Kristos. From what you said, the line on him is a bit ragged.’
‘Yeah. Frank didn’t know anything about him either, and the identification of him as the one haring away with my computer is very iffy. I’ve been told he was big and that was a strong arm that went round my neck, but…’
I shrugged again and the stiff neck hurt. Townsend noticed, left the room and came back with a foil of paracetamol capsules. ‘You’re done for the day, Hardy. Have a couple of these and get your head down. We’ll look at it all tomorrow.’
I popped a couple of the capsules from the foil. ‘How secure’s this place?’
‘Solid. Alarm system A1 and connected to a private security mob. Why?’
‘I must’ve been followed through the late part of the day. Getting here I didn’t notice anything, but my skills are obviously down.’
‘I’ll give the guys a ring and tell them to keep an eye out.’
‘You’re not worried on your own account?’
‘You kidding? Think I haven’t had death threats?’
‘That’s what Tim Arthur mentioned.’
‘Right. Well, you can talk to him about old stories he and Lily covered, but I doubt that’s the source of the trouble. Possible, I suppose. Arthur’s a prick but he’s not dumb.’
I swallowed the capsules with the last dregs of the drink. Townsend showed me where the toilet and the spare room were. After I’d had a piss I went back to the kitchen to see him doodling on the lined pad.
‘Last thoughts?’
He looked up, still alert, still energetic. ‘Constable Farrow,’ he said.
I slept soundly in a comfortable three-quarter bed, woke a bit stiff and sore, showered and used one of Townsend’s stack of warmed fluffy towels. He was in the kitchen with coffee brewed and the Australian, Sydney Morning Herald and Financial Review all on the table. I’ve never known a journalist who wasn’t addicted to newsprint.
He barely looked up from one of the papers as I came in. ‘Sleep all right? Coffee’s made. Croissants in the bag there.’
‘Coffee’ll do fine.’ He was wearing a tracksuit and sneakers. ‘Jogging?’
‘Walking,’ he said, still reading. ‘Jogging’s bad for the joints. How do you stay trim?’
‘Trimmish. Gym, walking, diet, worry.’
‘That’ll do it. How’re the head and the knees?’
‘Okay. I might take a couple more of your bombs with the coffee just for insurance.’
I sat and drank coffee, took two more capsules and watched him rapidly process the newspapers while he sipped coffee. He was a picture of concentration; I almost expected him to take notes. Didn’t have the nerve to interrupt him. Eventually he pushed the last paper away.
‘Sorry. Ingrained habit.’
I nodded. ‘Lily was the same. Let’s get down to it. Have you got an opinion on which of the two stories is most likely to be the one that got her killed? That’s if it wasn’t something else altogether.’
‘Like what?’
‘Dunno. That’s one of the things I’ll be taking up with your bete noire, Arthur.’
‘I’m over that, Hardy. Well over it. Yes, I’d go for the media person laundering money. Dodgy politicians will usually only go so far, at least in this country. They stop short of killing people. In the US and the Philippines, some parts of Europe, there’s so much more at stake. I’m going to dig around and see if I can get a whiff of what she was on to.’
‘And a possible connection to Gregory.’
‘Right. One thing though-can you remember which story VER, meaning a minister of religion, cropped up in?’
I tried. I poured more coffee. After the break-in at the house and the attack on me, the quiet sifting through
