small alcove smelled musty. A hundred years of dust sits in the building and filters down. There was a layer over every surface, and a few big cockroaches scuttled for cover from the shelf where I kept the coffee and sugar.
I opened the windows to let the petrol fumes compete with the mustiness and gave the chair, the printer, the mouse pad and space for a notebook a few wipes. I turned the computer on and let it plod slowly through its paces. The coffee was stale but I brewed it up anyway. While I waited for what I wanted to come up, I thought about the few years I’d worked here and some of the people who’d sat across from me with their troubles, their lies, their threats. Some of them I missed, others I wished I’d never laid eyes on.
I trawled through the papers looking for articles by and about the late Rex Robinson. He was an old hand, a freelancer who’d broken a lot of stories back in the seventies and eighties but seemed to have tapered off through the nineties and after. The occasional piece still turned up-crime reporting-but the material was thin and there was plenty of harking back to earlier days when he’d given evidence to enquiries of one sort or another into the police service. One thing was relevant: his later stories, bland though they were, focused on the area covered by the Northern Crimes Unit.
His last published piece had a little more muscle than the others and dealt with the death of an Asian prostitute in North Sydney. The very young woman, who’d overstayed her visitor’s visa, had been released from a detention centre, apparently by mistake. The official verdict was suicide by drug overdose, but Robinson had implied there was more to it. One sentence read: ‘A former police officer from the Northern Crimes Unit said that the coroner’s verdict was “unsafe”.’
Townsend’s recall on Robinson’s death was accurate. His fairly aged Volvo had gone through a railing and into Sailors Bay at Northbridge. Police divers recovered the vehicle and the body the next day when the broken rail was noticed. The inquest was held soon after and no significant evidence was offered other than the police opinion that the vehicle was in such poor repair that mechanical failure was the likely cause of the accident.
All this had happened when I was in the throes of my trouble with the Police Licensing Board and I was scarcely glancing at the papers. If there’d been anything on television I hadn’t seen it. Now, scanning the follow-up news coverage and somewhat perfunctory obituaries, I gathered, reading between the lines, that Robinson was an unpopular figure. He was an arrogant big-noter who others judged to have achieved, briefly, an eminence far above his merit. Tributes from the journalistic profession were dutiful rather than sincere. I didn’t recall Lily ever having mentioned him.
I printed out some of the material and highlighted bits of the printout, especially the stuff about the sex- worker released from detention and the ‘former police officer from the Northern Crimes Unit’. It had been a sad insight into what seemed like a sad life. No Walkleys, no books, no television spots. Robinson had two failed marriages, a bankruptcy and two DUI convictions. But at least it was some confirmation of what Jane Farrow had told us.
15
Talking to key-tappers and tapping keys is all very well, but it doesn’t feel like real work. I didn’t want to just sit around waiting for people to get back to me with information that might or might not be useful. I felt I owed it to Lily to do something.
I drove home, still cautious about a tail, made a stop at an ATM to draw out some cash, and investigated my closet. I had a blazer, worn but respectable. I had dark trousers and a burgundy shirt, both recently dry-cleaned. I had a matching pair of black socks and slip-on Italian shoes that only needed a touch of the Nugget brush to get rid of the white mould. After a shower, a shampoo and a shave, I reckoned I was ready for a Friday night out at the Lord of the Isles hotel in St Leonards where, according to Jane Farrow, the Northern Crimes Unit brass gathered.
In the past, the bars favoured by the cops around Darlinghurst and the Cross were bloodhouses. The television series Blue Murder got it about right, with a little exaggeration for dramatic effect. There were drunken brawls between the cops, between the crims and between the cops and the crims. The occasional gunshot, the odd thrust with a broken glass. I was there myself once in a while, keeping my head down, but I saw an eye gouged out and half an ear bitten off. Blood everywhere.
I doubted that a modern North Shore police hangout would be in any way similar and I was right. The Lord of the Isles was a fancied-up old pub that was working the Scottish theme to death-tartan everywhere, claymores on the walls, full kilted figures in glass cases, bagpipes. A sign outside advertised a Tuesday trivia night with a well-known stand-up comic as moderator, a mid-week happy hour and Friday night exotic dancing in the Robert the Bruce bar. Hoots! Whoop-de-doo.
It was a bit after nine when I got there and the place was in full swing. The main bar was crowded with the younger set drinking European beers and Jim Beam and cola. The Royal Stuart bar was smaller, quieter, with older people, both sexes more formally dressed-the men, and some of the women, in suits. A few small groups stood at the bar, but most of the drinkers were at tables with bowls of pretzels and nuts, and short drinks.
I went to the bar, ordered a scotch, and saw Vince Gregory and Mikos Kristos at a table with two other men. Nothing advertised them as cops. They could’ve been advertising executives, merchant bankers
… A few other tables were occupied by similar groups of men. Possibly more police.
Gregory saw me first. He spoke to Kristos, who turned around to look at me. The other two didn’t react. Kristos made an elaborate show of finishing his drink and came over to the bar for a refill. He got it and moved along to stand near me, out of earshot of the other drinkers.
‘What the fuck are you doing here, Hardy?’
‘It’s a free country, last I heard. And they take my money here just as they take yours. While money’s being mentioned, what’ll you have?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘What about a wrestle? Graeco-Roman? Remember Roy and HG? That was brilliant.’
He stared at me as if I’d lost my mind, turned on his heel, started to walk away, but Gregory joined him. The musty smell about him was less strong, though still there. Maybe he’d showered and changed his shirt before coming to the pub. He’d had a few drinks and his tie was askew; his thin hair was sticking up at the back. His five o’clock shadow was a ten o’clock stubble. I thought of Lee Townsend’s immaculate grooming and how Jane Farrow appeared to appreciate it. I couldn’t see how she’d be attracted to Gregory. Unless there was a reason that had nothing to do with grooming.
Kristos shook his head and urged Gregory back to their table. I left the bar but I hung around. Gregory and Kristos left the pub soon after, looking worried. The other two went to the Robert the Bruce room to join in the fun. I followed them, bought a drink and took a seat. It was essentially a strip show, again with the Scottish theme-kilts and sporrans, dirks and tam-o’shanters coming off to AC/DC and Rod Stewart. Very tasteful. The room was darkish away from the stage, and I kept out of the eyeline of the two men anyway. One checked his watch and nodded. Soon after they were joined by two stylishly dressed young women. Escorts. A bottle of champagne arrived and their evening got underway.
I’d rattled Gregory and Kristos a bit, I thought, but hadn’t achieved much else. I was about to call it quits when a woman walked into the room, looked around and spotted the group I was watching. She was in her thirties, tall, casually dressed, neither particularly attractive nor plain. She strode through the tables, reached the one where my party was sitting and shouted something I couldn’t hear over the music. One of the men got to his feet and she picked up a champagne glass and threw the contents in his face. She grabbed another glass and emptied it over one of the women.
The man who’d been attacked was sitting now and wiping his face. The other one was dealing with the escort who had champagne ruining her hairdo. By then I was at the table and had the woman by the arm. She was swearing and unsteady, whether from shock or insobriety I couldn’t tell. I got a firm, incapacitating hold on her, and moved her away before anyone at the table could react.
‘Security,’ I said as loudly as I could. ‘I’ll deal with this.’ I half carried the struggling woman out of the room. She fought me, but she wasn’t in a fit state to do much damage and I managed to get her into a quiet corner away from the noisy bars.
