neat as a new pin. It also smelled of cigarette smoke, perfume, room freshener and basic, underlying dirt. The double bed was precisely made with a black bedspread and a white sheet folded down at the end of the bed the way the working girls do. The decks were cleared for action. The bedside light held a red bulb; the table featured a packet of ribbed condoms, lubricant, dildos in three sizes. There was a strategically placed mirror along one wall, a small TV with a VCR and a stack of videos. The handcuffs were probably in a drawer, the lingerie in the closet.
Lola was in that grey area of the sex business-not flush enough to be in the phone book, but a notch above the streetwalker with the arrangement at a motel. The bathroom was quintessentially feminine except for a few traces of shaved whiskers in the basin.
I slid open the closet doors, probed drawers and shelves. The only thing out of place professionally was a heavy suitcase at the back of a broom cupboard. I pulled it out and released the clasps-no locks. It contained all of Cleve that had remained in the world-some clothes, some shoes, shaving gear, some papers and some photographs in a big manilla envelope. The envelope was old and sealed with old, crisp sellotape until I slit it. I took the envelope and left the flat.
One question occupied my mind as I went down the stairs. Why hadn’t the police examined Cleve Harvey’s effects?
In the office I dealt with a few phone and email messages, keeping business afloat. I emptied Cleve Harvey’s envelope out onto the desk and sifted through the contents: several papers relating to his release after prison sentences; a decree nisi divorce from a marriage to one Rachel Fremantle; a shooter’s licence long expired; a collection of parking fine notices apparently unpaid; and a faded membership ticket for the Painters and Dockers Union.
The bulk of the material consisted of newspaper clippings. Between prison stretches Cleve had been quite a star in his day-a wood-chopping champion, a circus strongman, a long-distance swimmer, a movie and television stuntman, a Commonwealth Games trap-shooting medallist. He’d attracted notice for a one-round knockout of a Rugby League heavy in an off-season exhibition fight to raise money for Police amp; Community Youth Clubs in NSW.
One reason for his savage denunciation of me presented itself-fury that a man older and smaller than himself could beat him in a physical contest not just once but twice. It was hardly enough. I went through the documents again. Something there niggled at me but I couldn’t pin it down. I knew I had enemies, but a dying enemy trying to screw me was a new and unsettling experience.
I trod on eggshells for the next month or so but the police didn’t approach me again and nothing out of the ordinary happened. I got on with the usual run of things-serving notices, a bit of bodyguarding, the tracing of a missing husband. Eventually the Harvey killing surfaced in the papers. Cleve Harvey, it emerged, was a small-time police informer, and he was shot by one of the men he’d dobbed in on a minor matter that eventually led to a conviction on serious drug charges. There was another informer, DNA and a weapon, and the shooter went down for a long stretch. A small-time player who had struck it unlucky hadn’t concerned the police enough for them to probe closely into his life. That explained their lack of interest, but it didn’t explain why Cleve had fingered me. I thought I was within my rights to contact Detective Sergeant Wilson.
‘Cliff Hardy,’ I said when he answered the call.
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘Good result on the Harvey killing. I see you got a mention.’
‘I did.’
‘I didn’t, did I?’
‘Come again?’
‘Don’t piss me off, Sergeant. Did the shooter say anything about me?’
‘No.’
He hung up, leaving me with the question.
The answer came quite a bit later and in a strange way. I’d lost interest in Rugby League after the Murdoch manoeuvre ruined the competition. I was never keen on Union for the mauls and scrums, and I found just looking at the no-hands game frustrating. I began to watch a bit of Australian football and to enjoy it for its positive character-forward passing, hands and feet, the high marks, long kicks, the flow. I was watching a match called ‘the Derby’ between Fremantle and the West Coast when the name hit me. Cleve Harvey had been married to a woman named Rachel Fremantle. The name took me back a couple of years.
With my occasional offsider Hank Bachelor, I was staking out a sports store in Marrickville. The owner had somehow got word that yet another ram raid-he’d already endured two-was to happen. He’d lost faith in the police and hired us to catch the raiders red-handed. We did, two kids in a stolen 4WD. Nothing to it. We blocked them off and they gave up without a murmur. We handed them over to the police, made our statements, collected our fee and that was that. They were too young to go before an adult court and, for one reason or another, we weren’t required to give evidence. One of the kids was a Brian Fremantle.
I had a contact in the relevant section of the justice department and I phoned her to enquire about young Brian.
‘Normally,’ Bronwen Armstrong said, ‘I would be breaking all the rules to tell you anything.’
‘But…?’ I said with a sinking feeling.
‘He’s dead. He was sentenced to a year in juvenile detention and was stabbed to death resisting a rape.’
I let out a long, sour breath. I was at home with a drink I thought I might need to hand. I took a pull on it.
‘Thanks, Bron. Do your records give you the names of the parents?’
They did of course. Cleve Harvey had been Brian Fremantles father. Brian had taken his mother’s name. I doubt that Cleve had done anything much for his boy along the way, but in his own twisted fashion he’d tried to exact a bit of revenge as he went out.
Copper nails
I stood on the balcony in a block of flats in Dover Heights. The view back towards the city was spectacular-a swathe of suburbs grading into city high rise with the promise of the Blue Mountains far beyond. The view towards the water was blocked by a double-row stand of lofty trees. Not quite blocked-there was almost a gap where one of the trees appeared to have withered.
Pointing, Joseph Young said, ‘Some criminals are poisoning those trees. Beautiful Norfolk Island pines. I want it stopped.’
He’d phoned me at my office and asked me to come and visit him. He said he’d pay me for my time even if I didn’t take the job. I had nothing much on and a visit to the eastern suburbs is always a pleasure. I’d toyed for years with the notion of selling my Glebe terrace and moving there. Could never seem to do anything about it though.
Young was in a wheelchair, partly paralysed from a car accident. Insurance and compensation had made him comfortable. He was a widower with no dependents and he owned the flat. One of his pleasures was to look out at the stand of trees. He was a Norfolk Islander himself, a Bounty descendant, and the view reminded him of home.
‘I’m sure it’s a crime,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t the council or the police…?’
He waved the point aside. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if a councillor is one of the culprits. As for the police, they’re too busy worrying about imaginary terrorists.’
There was a row of large houses below on more or less flat land. The trees would block their view of the water absolutely. Standing 186 centimetres and on tiptoe, I could just get a glimpse of the far horizon over the top of the trees, or thought I could. Couldn’t have held the pose for long.
Young was a well-preserved seventy, at a guess. Full head of white hair, neat white beard, casual clothes. His
