“She’s not dead.”
“Bloody near it. I suppose you saw the grass?”
“Is that what it was?”
“Lot of it Cliff, and there’s an enquiry on.”
“I know.”
“Do you know two Italians, one tall one short?”
“Yeah, Primo Camera and Carlo Ponti.”
“Terrific Cliff, you’re a ball of style and you’ve told all the jokes. Now I’m going to tell one. Heard the one about the private detective who lost his licence for withholding information from the police?”
“No.”
“Yeah, he’s a bus conductor, makes a hundred and fifty bucks a week and gets to wear a nice green uniform. Meets a lot of people and travels all over town.”
“Sounds nice.”
“He misses the glamour. Listen Cliff, I’m serious. We’re under real pressure to look good with these enquiries on. I’m appealing to your better nature.”
“I can’t tell you anything yet Grant. Give me twenty-four hours, maybe thirty.”
“No.”
“You have to. You owe me.”
There was a silence, then he said: “I owe you one. Are you calling it in?”
“I have to Grant.”
“OK.” He paused. “Thirty hours.”
“Thanks. And one thing – where’s Simmonds’ body?”
“Just around the corner from you, cock. Glebe morgue.”
He hung up. The line buzzed emptily and I put the receiver down. I swivelled around on my chair and looked out the window at the city. The light was just about gone and the buildings were drained of colour. They were all grey, and it didn’t matter whether they were insurance offices or churches, they were just shapes. The tops of the park trees were waving in the wind like dark, threatening tentacles. It was a good night to be with someone you knew well, in a place you liked with some good food and wine. The air in the office smelled old and stale as if it had been packaged and put there and was due for a change.
I called Saul James at home and got no answer. They pulled him out of a rehearsal at the theatre and he told me that he’d have the money tomorrow. I said I’d collect it. Madeline Tarelton answered the phone again and said that Ted was out. He’d left a message for me that the money would be ready by noon tomorrow. I told her I’d be around to wait for the call. She seemed to want to talk but I wasn’t in the mood.
“What will you do between now and then?” she asked. There might have been a hint of invitation in that, but I didn’t want to know, not then.
“Investigate the living tonight. Tomorrow morning I’m going to look at a dead black man. A shotgun took his face away.”
It chilled her and she rang off. I left the building.
I caught a bus back to Glebe and had it to myself for most of the way. I got off near the pub, bought wine, and walked the rest of the distance. Harry Soames next door had guests. That meant they would smoke a lot of grass and sit around listening to music through headphones. Soames had installed headphones in the bathroom, in the garden. I didn’t know what sort of music he listened to any more and that suited me fine. I went into the house, drank wine, showered, drank wine, cooked an omelette and drank more wine. By nine o’clock I was as ready to break the law as I’d ever be.
I had on sneakers, darn jeans and sweater and a denim jacket. The wine glow lasted through the bus ride to the university and the tramp across the campus into Newtown. It lasted while I waited for the stragglers to leave the pub across from Trueman’s gym and there was just enough of it left for steady hands and quiet feet as I skeleton-keyed the lock to the old building. I went up the stairs by the thin beam of a pencil torch and the keys took me through the door into the gym as if I owned the place. It wasn’t my first burglary or my tenth, but I was nervous. There aren’t any faithful bobbies on the beat checking the doors and windows these days, especially in Newtown, but unusual lights or noises can still draw attention and I had no excuses. Trueman hated my guts and if I was caught at this he’d play it for all it was worth.
The gym smelled of the day’s sweat and smoke as I sneakered through to the office. The door wasn’t locked. Sammy wouldn’t keep any money here and that accounted for the absence of burglar alarms too. Sammy had had a little celebration it seemed; a Scotch bottle stood empty on the battered pine desk and beer cans and plastic cups were strewn around. The room had a heavy, rich odour produced by liquor, tobacco and human bodies. The party mess only added to what was already a mess. Trueman kept papers on spikes, in drawers, on top of chairs and on the floor. Pictures of past fighters were Sellotaped to the walls and papers were slid in behind them; letters were stuck between the pages of racing guides and bills and receipts bristled from the pocket of an old raincoat hanging on the back of the office door. It looked so unsystematic as to be burglar proof. I wasted minutes flicking through the relics of Sammy’s past failures and found nothing more recent than a picture of Tony Mundine captioned wishfully “The next cruiserweight King”.
I sat in Sammy’s chair and thought as well as my noisy heart would let me. Maybe there was nothing here. Maybe I’d have to try Trueman’s house. That would be a very different proposition; Sammy had a few boys from the country living with him always and I didn’t fancy padding about in the dark in a house full of fighters. Ted Tarelton had a lot of money and I’d probably be covered for the bridge work and jaw wiring, but they say it alters the shape of the face and I was fairly content with the face I had. I fiddled with it now the way you do when you’re thinking hard; moved sections of it about and pulled bits of it. There was no way of getting inside Sammy’s mind to crack his system and that was a disgusting thought anyway. Its whole area was probably occupied by beer, boxing and bathing beauties. That led me alliteratively to books and to the one example of the animal in the office – a half-dead copy of Ray Mitchell’s The Fighting Sands and that led me to Jacko Moody’s contract. Or copies of it.
They were carbons, folded down the centre and tucked inside the book which was lying on top of Medibank forms. The contract tied Moody up for two years and was due to expire in a month. It was the standard thing; Trueman collected expenses and fees out of Moody’s purses and had sole rights to OK and veto matches. It was hard to see what the fighter himself could have been getting out of his penny-ante preliminary earnings. It was legal and binding as far as I could tell but the expiry date made Trueman vulnerable. That is, if another contract hadn’t been signed. With Coluzzi’s schemes still in the planning stage that seemed unlikely. I took one of the copies and put it in my pocket.
I was straightening the papers when a noise out in the gym made me freeze. I clicked off the light and the tiny noise sounded like a gunshot. Four steps took me over to the door which I’d left open and I peered out into the darkness of the big, pungent room. I could hear feet shuffling on the floor and harsh, stifled breathing. I slid out of the office and along the nearest wall. No weapons came to hand and the torch was slim, elegant and useless. There was a muttered curse in the darkness and a floundering, stumbling noise and I used the cover of it io make it across to the locker bay. I pressed myself back against the cold metal and ran a hand across the top of the set of lockers feeling tor a weapon. Nothing… just dust. I was fighting against a shattering sneeze when the light over the ring came on.
A man was standing in the middle of the ring holding his hands up above his head. As a picture of athletic triumph it was spoiled by the bottle in his hand. He kept one hand raised, brought the other, the one holding the bottle, down and took a long, gargling drink. He walked carefully over to the red corner and set the bottle down on the stool. Then he moved back to centre ring and began to shadow-box. He was as drunk as an owl and his movements were a broken, uncoordinated parody of the boxer’s grace. He blundered into the ropes, fell and crawled across to the stool. The sleeve of his coat had come down across his hand; it was a cast-off coat, a derro coat, and he fought for what seemed like minutes to get clear of it and to get hold of the bottle. He made it and took a quick slug. He pulled himself up by the ropes and struck the attitude of a fight announcer. He mimed pulling a microphone down from the roof.
“Ladeez an’ gennlemen,” he bellowed, “fifteen roun’s of boxing, for the lightweight champeenship of th’ world. In th’ red corner,” he pointed to the bottle, “at nine stone nine pounds, Taffy… Taffy Thomas.” He flung out his arm, lost balance and collapsed to the floor. He tried to pull himself up again but thought better of it. He
