that flashed fire at me. I felt leaves and dirt kick up into my face and I fired again and there was a scream and metal rang on concrete.
I rolled off the path and crawled behind a tree. I screwed up my eyes and strained them through the darkness but I couldn’t see any movement up ahead of me. The park had swallowed up the sound of the shots and the whisper of the trees and the wash of the sea took over again and restored the quiet, normal rhythms of the night.
I got to my feet and approached the rotunda, keeping off the path and using the trees for cover. Moon and park light gleamed on metal. I looked down at the big gun and left it where it lay. I hoisted myself up over the railing and came into the circle from the rear. A man was lying on his back in the middle of the pool of water. Water had splashed out all around from the impact of his fall and a section of the pool was nearly dry where the water had seeped into the man’s clothes. I put my fingers on his wrist and waited to hear the blood pumping through, but there would never be long enough to wait. He was dead. There was no sign of the airline bag. I lit a match and held it up to make sure. The flickering light caught and danced over his face; the skin was stretched tight over the sharp, hawkish cheekbones. Bony, bat-winged ears stuck out from his close-cropped skull. The coat of his suit had come open and exposed his tiny bony chest covered by a woollen shirt. I struck another match and bent over him. The shirt front was a sodden, oozing mess that glistened thick and oily in the match-light.
I walked up to the road feeling only marginally like a member of the human race. Each killing of another person diminishes your share in the common feeling that unites civilised people and my stocks were running low. Military service is supposed not to count in this process but for me it did. As I walked I realised that my hand was clenched tight around the butt of the Smith amp; Wesson and I recalled other pistols I’d fired at other men in this city and other guns, all shapes and sizes, growing hot in my hands as I pumped bullets at human flesh. Small soldiers, their hats festooned with jungle camouflage, danced before my eyes and I sweated as freely as I had back in those Malayan (angles.
I found a phone booth and called Ted Tarelton and told him what had happened. I couldn’t tell him anything about the girl except that I’d have to report the whole thing to the police now and her name would come out. He accepted it better than I expected. He didn’t try to talk me out of it and I wondered what he felt now about the girl. His wife had answered the phone and handed it straight to him without comment; even over the impersonal wire I could sense their reconciliation and maybe that’s what mattered most. The money certainly didn’t matter a damn. With Saul James it was harder; he showered me with abuse and almost broke down. When he recovered he put one question coldly:
“She’s dead, isn’t she Hardy?”
I still didn’t think so and that’s what I said but it made no impression on him. He hung up on me. They had one thing in common – neither of them cared a hoot how many men I shot to death.
The Balmain police station is tucked up next to the town hall like a bedmate. I parked the Celica outside, went in and asked for the duty officer. A uniformed constable with pimples asked my name, inspected my licence and wanted to know what it was about. I told him briefly and he showed me through to a cold, cream-painted room with a table and two chairs. I sat down, rolled a cigarette and waited. I stuck my head out of the door to ask for coffee but there was no-one to ask. I memorised the cracks on the walls and the cobwebs hanging from the roof. I took my gun out and put it on the table in front of me. I swore at it and the little black hole at the end of its muzzle stared me down. I put it away.
After fifteen minutes the door opened and two men came into the room. One of them was the new style of copper with a modish, broad-lapelled suit, collar-length hair and a Zapata moustache. His type imagines it can efface itself at a rock concert but it always sticks out like a bull’s balls and never gets offered a joint. The other man was cast in the traditional mould; his face was shaped by grog and collisions with fists and the cut of his hair and clothes owed nothing to vanity. He spoke with the rasping whisper that comes from years of hushed conversations in pubs and stilted evidence-giving in court.
The young one stationed himself by the door, the other swung his leg up and perched on the end of the table across from me. His eyes dropped to my trousers and stayed there. I noticed for the first time that they were smeared with blood. For no reason my reaction to this inspection was cheek.
“You better go down to the park. Someone might take him home as a souvenir.”
The older man turned around to grin at his mate.
“Pathetic isn’t it? Give them an investigator’s licence and they all think they have to be smart.” The younger cop nodded on cue. The veteran settled himself more comfortably on the table.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Hardy, I’m forgetting my manners. My name is Carlton, Sergeant Jim Carlton and this is Sergeant Tobin.”
I said nothing and re-lit my cigarette, which had gone out.
“Yes, well, now that we’re all introduced I think we’d better get on.” Carlton’s voice was friendly in a dangerous way. I prepared myself for the boot that would knock the chair from under me or the slap that would send the cigarette flying, but nothing like that ha ppened. Carlton went on, showing his great weakness; he loved to talk. I relaxed.
“You know I really dislike men in your game Hardy – I always imagine they’ve got beautiful, rich mistresses and good ins with high-up coppers. I know it’s not true. I know you’re all seedy little losers scratching a living around the divorce courts. The reality makes me happy but the image gets up my nose, know what I mean?”
I grinned at him. “You’re an intellectual. Eloquent too. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“You don’t,” he said. “You’re just right. You haven’t got two bob and you’re up to your balls in trouble.”
“You could be right Carlton,” I said. “Why don’t you pick up the phone and talk it over with Grant Evans? He’ll be interested.”
Tobin looked alarmed. “Evans?” The modish moustache twitched. “He’s alright, Evans. Jim, what d’you think?”
Carlton sighed and rubbed his hand over his bristled face. He’d seen it too often before – influence, names, interference. He looked resigned, then angry. He banged his fist on the table.
‘“Alright, you know a Chief Inspector. Big deal, he can’t cover you for this.”
“I don’t need cover. I just have to tell you what happened and I’m willing to do that.”
“How nice,” Carlton sneered. “Talk away.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ve been through this before. You take a statement now, stenographer and all, with my solicitor present, or we go down to the park in a friendly way and I’ll tell you about it. I don’t know the derro scene in Balmain too well, but I imagine you could have some hard cases of alcoholic freak-out if you let corpses lie around in the parks.”
“Stop being clever Hardy. We’ve checked out the park, the body’s being taken care of. I want to hear what you’ve got to say.”
He was throwing his cards away and the younger man could see it. He levered himself off the wall and came forward to lay a hand on Carlton’s shoulder.
“Easy Jim,” he said. “Let’s play by the book. We’re getting nowhere.”
Carlton shook the hand off irritably like a dog shedding water. The difference in their ages and the sameness of their rank was eating at him like a cancer. He bulled up from the table and jerked a thumb at me in a gesture that was meant to be tough but lacked all authority.
“OK Hardy, we’ll play it your way. Guys like you and your tame Chief Inspector make me sick.”
I got up slowly and watched him stalk out of the room. He was probably an honest cop and that couldn’t be any easier in Balmain than elsewhere. The honest ones were edgy and this sometimes prompted them to behave like the dishonest ones. It’s an old trade. Tobin let him go and waved me through the door.
“Have you got rich, beautiful mistresses too, Hardy?” he asked as I passed him.
I grinned. “Just the one.”
We went out into the night and got into a police car. The uniformed man at the wheel gunned the motor and U-turned violently, throwing Tobin almost into Carlton’s lap. The older man swore and pushed him away. The night had thickened and the rain was falling steadily. Carlton stared gloomily out of the window and refused a cigarette from Tobin. I took one and he lit it with a nice-looking gas lighter. Three puffs and we were at the park. We piled out of the car and the driver pulled police issue slickers from the boot. We trudged down towards the rotunda like a set of spies, all distrusting each other and caught in a ritual over which we had no control.
Two heavily built cops were sheltering in the rotunda. One of them stamped out a cigarette as we
