Tell you what, you let me know if and when McCafferty’s able to talk and I’ll tell you what my connection is.’
‘You’ve got a fuckin’ nerve.’
‘Is it a deal?’
He cut the call but I had a feeling he’d cooperate. The bashing of a prison guard was a fairly important matter whether the man died or not, and if DS Rule had no leads he’d be smart to play along. Couldn’t be sure, though, particularly about how long his patience would last. I rang Lily from home and found she was keen to go for a feed and whatever might follow. Lily lives in Greenwich.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Let’s make it over your side and your bedroom.’
‘I know what that means. Who’s after you-Philip Ruddock, Alan Jones, Mr Big? Never mind, see you when you get here, if you do.’
We had a good night as we always do-a North Sydney eatery, a walk, and long, slow lovemaking-all the better for not being every night. I drove to Paddington feeling in harmony with the world, a mood I had to jerk myself out of-not appropriate in my profession.
Phillip Weiss’s office was in a tiny two-storey terrace in a narrow one-way, closely parked street. I had to circle a few blocks to get the car anywhere near it. The Weiss Literary Consultancy was a small operation with a female secretary who probably doubled as several other things. She was fortyish, bookish-looking and efficient. She said that Phillip had an office upstairs but would be down in a minute and we could have our meeting at her desk while she went upstairs in his place. Meanwhile, would I like coffee?
A voice preceded its owner down the stairs. ‘He’s a bloody private eye, Claire, and it’s after eleven. The man wants a drink.’
Weiss was large in every way-tall and thick through. He had a head of wiry grey hair and the facial features of a man who enjoyed life, with laughter lines and a wide, smiling mouth. He had a long-neck bottle of Coopers in one hand and when I shook the other I wasn’t surprised at its strength. For a literary consultant he’d pass muster as a wharfie. He shooed Claire up the stairs in a non-objectionable, affectionate way, sat down at her desk and waved me to a chair. I took the pile of books from it and sat. He produced a bottle opener, flicked the top off and took two glasses from a shelf behind him. He poured with a practised hand and pushed one glass across.
‘Claire’s note was almost cryptic,’ Weiss said, ‘but my guess is you’re here about Theodore Baldwin.’
'Theodore,' I said. 'I suppose he is, but he's Theo to me. I guess Theodore would look good on a book cover and spine.'
'Certainly would. I hope you're here to tell me the manuscript's on its way. From what Theo told me on the phone I'm not surprised there's a serious level of security involved.'
I studied him closely. I haven't had a lot to do with literary types but I imagine, from all the reading they do, they must know a few tricks about dissembling. But Weiss betrayed no such signs. Maybe it was the residue of my cheerful mood, but I was inclined to trust him. I shook my head.
‘No such luck, Mr Weiss. Things have got sticky.’
I brought him up to speed with everything that had happened. He drank his beer and listened without interrupting. I took a good gulp of my drink when I’d finished.
He put his glass down as the phone rang. He pressed a button and diverted the call upstairs. ‘You say McCafferty might die?’
‘Comas are dodgy. The thing is, it’s all so uncertain. If McCafferty was a regular smuggler-out of stuff from the gaol there could be all sorts of reasons why he’d be attacked-disgruntled former prisoners or pissed-off people on the outside. On the other hand, if Theo’s book is as hot as he says and word leaked out
‘It could be ashes by now. More hopefully, it could be sitting quietly in McCafferty’s house. The funny-no, the strange thing is, not many books are written on typewriters now. With anything done on a computer you have backup options, as I’m sure you know.’
I nodded. ‘I have a journalist partner.’
‘I don’t want to sound heartless, not with a man on the brink…’
Perhaps his true colours were showing now. ‘But you will,’ I said.
‘Just so. The commercial value of this property, given its… provenance, and the possibility of continued criminal involvement, is very considerable. The advances for true crime, non-fiction books can be large, with the film or television potential to be considered. What do you propose to do now, Mr Hardy?’
‘It’s probably better you don’t know.’
‘Let me guess. You’re going to break into the McCafferty residence. I foresee a stunning introduction or preface if you succeed. I trust my verbal agreement with Theodore Baldwin is still in place. I have taped copies of the phone calls. Can’t be too careful.’
I left feeling a bit less friendly towards Weiss than I had at first. But he had the experience in this and you have to respect that.
There are two ways to break in to a house-you have to be either bold, just walk up and do it, or bashful-try to talk your way in. I decided to be bold. I’d taken a good look at the front of McCafferty’s house on my first visit and I didn’t think it’d present any problems. There was a simple Yale lock and no sign of an alarm. The place was rundown and neither the owner nor the tenant seemed inclined to spend money on security.
I drove to Homebush in time to see Ted Davis, the neighbour, drive away in a battered Cortina. The street was quiet with only a few lights showing. I went through the gate, unshipped my picklocks, held a pencil torch between my teeth and had the door open inside half a minute.
I closed the door quietly and stood still to allow my sight to adjust to the gloom. A little light was seeping in from the street through broken slats in the front room’s blind. I worked my way down the passage and turned on a low-wattage light towards the back section-it wouldn’t show from the street and the fence on the freestanding side of the house was high.
I used the torch to probe into the two small bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen and bathroom. The place was dirty and untidy. The kitchen smelled of tobacco smoke and fried food. Two chairs had been overturned in the sitting room and there were a couple of broken bottles and glasses that seemed to have been swept from the table, perhaps by whatever implement had been used on McCafferty. The spattering on the floor and one wall was dried blood.
Other than that, there was no sign of any particular disturbance, no evidence of a search. That gave me heart. The second bedroom held a wardrobe containing various items of clothing including a wrinkled corrections officer’s uniform. A battered overnight bag, crumpled to about a third of its normal size, was shoved into a strut of the iron bed frame. I pulled it out and found I’d been wrong about the search. The bag was padlocked but had been slit open. It contained a pair of socks and a change of underwear. I inspected it closely in the beam of the torch. There were a couple of very small round pieces of foil, a scrap of plastic cling wrap, more fragments of foil and under the loose cardboard base of the bag a mostly decayed white pill. It was pretty clearly Col McCafferty’s drug-smuggling stash, now in the hands of others. So where was the manuscript?
There were no bookshelves, no desk, no filing cabinet, nothing to suggest that McCafferty had ever had a book in the house, let alone a typescript. I searched the bedrooms with no result-no creaking floorboards, no sealed-off fireplaces. The kitchen was the least appealing space, with its smells and the film of grease over the surfaces. It was one of those rooms in which you’re reluctant to even breathe. But the laminex table was piled with a stack of tabloid newspapers, and a thick wad of A4 paper, fastened by a bulldog clip inside a manilla folder held together by rubber bands, was sitting near the top of the pile, with only a few newspapers lying haphazardly over it.
I opened the folder and read in typewritten upper case, ‘MY LIFE OF CRIME amp; THEIRS’. Another rule of breaking and entering is-get out quick. I restored the rubber bands to the folder, turned off the light and left the house. Mission accomplished, and all quiet on this western front.
On the drive back I began to feel that things weren’t as wrapped up as I’d thought on finding the manuscript. My certainty that the assault on McCafferty had to do with his drug dealing would be useful to DS Rule, but I wasn’t prepared to impart that knowledge just yet. On the evidence of the dates on the newspapers, McCafferty had been in possession of the manuscript for some days before he was attacked. Why the delay in passing it on to Weiss when he must have been on a promise of a reward for delivering it? Was he contemplating or in the process of dealing with someone else? And what of Weiss? McCafferty’s name had rolled off his tongue easily after my brief
