approached and his companion plodded out into the rain.
Carlton marched up to the body and looked down at it. The corpse had about as much emotional impact on him as a pound of potatoes.
“Let’s see your gun,” he grunted.
I handed it over and he sniffed it. He fiddled with it for a minute and seemed unfamiliar with its mechanism.
“We’ll hear the excuses later. You shot him. Where from?”
I retraced my movements up the path and pointed to the approximate spot. “I shot at him,” I said.
“One shot?”
“Two.”
“Why?”
“He was shooting at me.”
“How awful.” He prowled around the path and the body and I heard him cursing the rain and the wind. Tobin came forward and squinted back down the path to the shadowy structure.
“Pretty good shot,” he said, “given the conditions. What was the angle?”
“I was flat on my belly and I was shit-scared.”
“Yeah, I would be too.” He squared his shoulders and marched back to the rotunda. I leaned against a tree with my shoulders hunched against the rain. I heard muttered voices and then one of the cops scurried up the path to the road. Tobin came out of the gloom and joined me under the tree.
“You’ve got a licence for the. 38?”
I told him I had.
He drew in a deep breath and raised his cigarette to his lips. It had gone out in the rain. I looked at the damp butt between my fingers and we threw them away simultaneously.
“There must be quite a story to this Mr Hardy.”
“Why so?”
“The dead man isn’t holding a gun and there’s no other gun around that we can see.”
19
It took more than two hours of questions, coffee, cigarettes and hot tempers to get it all sorted out at the station. Carlton and Tobin went through their version of the heavy-soft routine, but their hearts weren’t in it. They didn’t like me, they didn’t like me dealing with kidnappers and they particularly didn’t like me doing it in Balmain. But they didn’t think I’d criminally killed Berrigan. I told them who he was and how he was connected with Noni Tarelton. I told them about the Baker woman in Macleay but I didn’t make the connections for them, I just had to clear myself on that count. Tobin tried to tie it all together.
“This Berrigan was a nutter, right? He was still hung up on the girl and he killed the Abo who was screwing her. Then he went to Macleay after the money but he didn’t get it. He bashed the Baker woman, then he dreamed up the idea of getting some cash by ransoming the girl. Maybe the girl was in on it – yeah that’d explain it.”
I was tired and would have agreed to anything but he didn’t need the encouragement. Carlton was sneering at him from across the room and that was enough to spur him on.
“It looks bad for the girl,” he continued. “It looks as if she was in on the whole thing and then double- crossed Berrigan. She scooted with the money.”
He was the original wrap-it-up-and-post-it boy. The theory had some merit; I was pretty sure I’d seen two figures at least in the park, and the gun and the money couldn’t have flown away. There were things I didn’t like about it though; I wasn’t sure that the relationship between Berrigan and Noni would have permitted this development. I wasn’t sure the girl would have been cool enough to pick up the money and gun and fade into the night. It looked full of holes, but perhaps I just didn’t want to look failure squarely in the face as I’d have to do if I accepted Tobin’s scenario. Ted Tarelton and Saul James were out a hundred and five thousand dollars and still no girl. I was out a few hundred myself. If I’d belonged to a professional association of private detectives I’d have deserved drumming out. Carlton broke in on my musing.
“That the way you see it Hardy?” The sneer was still on his face. It was also in his voice.
“Yeah. I suppose so.” I hadn’t told them about Coluzzi or the blacks or Noni’s drug habit. They were little private pieces of worry that didn’t need airing. Still, it didn’t say much for Tobin’s power of mind that he didn’t ask how I’d got back from Newcastle or how I’d been spending my time. Mentally, I threw his theory out the window.
“Right,” said Tobin. The word came out smugly. He turned to Carlton and waved him in like a football coach calling a reserve off the bench. “Jim, how do you see Hardy’s position now?”
Carlton looked as sour as a green lemon. The look he shot at Tobin suggested that if the younger man ever got an inch out of line Carlton would pour it straight into the official ear sooner than he could spit. The enmity between them explained the unworkability of the team; Carlton too sour to be imaginative, Tobin too ambitious to be careful. It was a brilliant sadistic pairing and had to mean something within the police set-up. Not my problem.
Carlton glared at me. Cigarette ash had fallen on his waistcoat and his dark stubble was shadowing his cheeks and doubling his chin. He didn’t look spruce and he knew it. He knew that I knew it. Tobin, elegantly arranged against the wall, looked fresh and bright. He got out a cigarette and lit it with a snap of that fancy lighter.
“I still don’t like you Hardy,” Carlton grated. “Your type shouldn’t be running around with licensed guns. You’re a menace.”
I let it pass. It was just guff, old, stale, defeated air. He took out a notebook and began checking off items.
“One, failing to give information concerning a felony – the Simmonds killing. Two, failing to report a felony – the Baker woman. Three, conspiracy in a felony – this ransom balls-up.”
“I’m illegally parked outside the station, too,” I said.
Tobin grinned. He’d contrived to do all the smart talking himself and left the silly, hack stuff to his partner. Suddenly I felt vaguely sorry for Carlton and a sharp dislike for Tobin. But I had to stick with the strength. I shrugged and squashed out a cigarette I hadn’t wanted when I’d made it.
“Book me on it then. I’ll call Cy Sackville and we can all go home to bed.”
Carlton dusted off his hands to release some aggression and worked his heavy body off the table. “Get out Hardy. Piss off.”
I held out my hand as I got to my feet. “Give me my gun back.”
He shook his head. “No way. It’s evidence for an enquiry. I might get you delicensed yet. Why? Do you need it to get from here to your cute little cottage?”
“You never know. I lead a dangerous life. That all then?”
Carlton ignored the question and left the room. Tobin barred my way with a stiff arm across the door.
“Aah, you might mention to Evans that you got a fair shake here.”
He was the second cop to ask me for the same favour in forty-eight hours. It made me feel like a pimp for a venereal whore. I brushed the arm down.
“I might,” I said.
At least he didn’t thank me. I walked out of the station, got in the car and headed for where there would be consolations – cold, wet and alcoholic.
It was close to ten-thirty when I got home. I left the car in the street rather than do the fancy backing and filling it takes to get into the courtyard. The bushes and shrubs whose names I don’t know were heavy with water and I got some of it on me as I brushed past them. A voice hissed my name from the shadows near the front door. I crouched and slapped my hand to where the gun should have been, then let it drop uselessly to my side. I was a sitting target, caught in the glow from the street light and my stomach lurched with the knowledge. Then she stepped out of the shadows, slender as a wand even wrapped up in a donkey coat.
“Mr Hardy, it’s Penny Sharkey.”
