“Down here there’s three kinds, much the same as up in town. There’s the ones that don’t give shit. Just get pissed, do what they have to do and die. There’s the whingers and bludgers who moan about bein’ black and disadvantaged and do fuck all about it. Then there’s the goers who try to change things, don’t piss their brains away, don’t whinge.”
“You’re a goer?”
“Bloody oath I am. Penny is too, but in a different way. She’s a bit of a loner, reckoned she wouldn’t take any government money. Make it on her own then hit the whites for everything she could, that was her idea. She was starting to study law. Get the idea?”
“I think so. Why do you talk as if this was all in the past?”
“Well, that’s the trouble. She used to go on with all this stuff, get people’s backs up too, but a lot knew she was talking sense. Then she fell for Ricky… bad – you know? And Ricky’s nothing special, bit of a no-hoper like his Dad. Penny reckoned she could reform him but he didn’t pay any attention, and people laughed at her then. I mean Ricky just didn’t fit in with Penny’s ideas about life. That made Penny crazy on the subject of Noni. You probably saw that yourself?”
“Yes.”
“She’s been heard to say she’d kill her.”
I let out a breath. “That’d be all we need. I better call my answering service to see if she’s left a message.” I was pretty sure there’d be no message. What Penny wouldn’t trust to Sunday she wouldn’t leave with an impersonal recorded voice. I got up to go to the phone and something Sunday had said came through the channels again. I leaned over him resting my hands on the table.
“Don’t take this wrong, it’s all in confidence, but what did you say about Ricky’s father?”
“Said he was a bit of a no-hoper. Right Ted?”
Williams nodded and there was something collusive in that nod. I had the feeling that whatever information I got about Ricky’s father, it wouldn’t be the whole story.
“He did some time,” Sunday went on. “Small stuff. He’s dead now.”
“Sure of that?”
“Must be. Vanished years ago.” He opened his hands.
“Were he and Ricky close?”
Sunday sighed and I knew I was pushing it. “No,” he said.
“How was that?”
“Dunno. Ricky’s old man went off him when he was a nipper. Happens.”
“Not often.”
Sunday shrugged.
“Have you ever heard of a man called Joseph Berrigan?”
“No.” He enveloped the word in smoke.
“You don’t seem sure.”
“It rings a bell. Can’t place it though. Something to do with Ricky.”
I shook my head. “Jesus, this is getting complicated.” I went over to the bar phone and rang my service but there was no message. I got money out and reckoned up with Sadie. The bar was starting to fill up and my fighting hand was throbbing and the beer had made my thinking thick and sluggish. I felt that one more piece of information might make the pattern clear to me, might explain why a girl was running with a man who’d raped her. And fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money to be still missing. Age would not weary it nor the years condemn.
“What’s this about, Hardy? Where’s Noni?”
“Kidnapped, Jimmy, that’s the way it looks anyway.”
Sunday traced a design in the spilt beer. “Always thought it was wrong, Noni and Ricky and that. What’s her chances, Hardy?”
“I don’t know. Is there anything you can think of that might help?”
“You don’t think one of us done it do you?” Williams said gruffly.
“No, but there’s missing pieces everywhere. Ricky, he’s a real mystery.”
“Why?” Sunday snapped. “Flash young bloke, bad boxer, good fucker who liked white meat.”
“So I’ve heard. What was wrong with his boxing? Ted here said it was too much bed not enough sleep.”
“Not altogether,” Sunday said. “That was part of it. You see him fight Ted?”
“No. Just in training, sparring.”
“Yeah, well he was fast enough, his legs were alright and he was game but his left was no good, stifflike. He was in a car crash when he was young, got spiked through here.” He indicated the left side of his chest.
He seemed about to say something more but he stopped himself. I was aware again of their suspicion of me. They held back as a matter of experience and pride. Pride is a hard quality to deal with in an investigation – it holds secrets and distorts facts.
“One last thing Jimmy,” I said slowly. “Where do you put Ricky in that list of yours?”
“Ricky doesn’t go on a bloody list,” Williams said harshly. His emergence from passivity gave his words unusual force. “Rick was different, he had… power.”
“Power,” I said.
“Yeah, some people say he was a bit mad after that accident.” He was sorry as soon as the words were out and ended lamely. “He wasn’t mad, he had power.”
I nodded and knew I had all I was going to get. Sunday gave me the Sharkeys’ telephone number and I said I’d be in touch. Williams grunted goodbye without committing himself.
The rain was a fine mist, veiling the buildings and traffic. I hunched my shoulders against it and ran for a bus stop. After a half hour wait I caught a passing taxi. The alcohol, the tension and the fresh air had done strange things to my brain. I felt I had two heads: one of them was thinking about Sunday, Coluzzi, Moody and boxing; the other about Noni, Berrigan, blackmail and bank robbery. I tried to switch off the first head as we ripped along the freeway back to the second head’s problems.
15
It was close to five o’clock when the taxi dropped me in St Peters Street. I skipped through the rain and used my key on the door of my office building. The other tenants had cleared out for the day. Trade was bad. I went up to my office, picked up the mail from the floor and settled down behind my desk. The one cheque in the collection was small enough to remind me that I had to get some more money from Tarelton. The bills could wait. I dropped them into a drawer. A fat, colourful envelope offered me the chance to win a split-level home north of Townsville with a stud farm, Mercedes sedan and power boat thrown in. I looked at the pictures; nice, pretty house, pretty horses, pretty beach. I fished out five dollars and started to fill in the ticket blanks, then I noticed that it said “No cash. Cheques or money orders only”. I screwed the stuff up and dropped it in the waste bin. Then the phone rang.
“Cliff? Grant Evans.”
I dragged my hand wearily across my face. “Shit, don’t tell me the building’s surrounded and there’s no escape.”
“Knock off the bullshit. I thought you were going to report in?”
“Who said that?”
“That was my understanding.”
“You misunderstood, mate.”
“Like that, is it? Look, this is not time for games Cliff. This thing is hotting up.”
I made a non-committal noise and he went on.
“You’re on the scene up Macleay way, we hear. You get around all the best murders don’t you?”
