‘St Mark’s, Harbord.’
‘How long has she been there?’
‘Ten, twelve years, I’m not sure. What are you getting at?’
‘Too soon to say. You’re sure your mother only met Jacobs recently, after your father’s death?’
He hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘You sound uncertain.’
‘Well, I don’t live with her as I told you. I imagined that was the case. I mean, funeral director… who knows such people otherwise?’
It was a typical remark; who knows garbage men, sewer workers, lavatory attendants? Somebody does, somebody loves them, hates them. Matthews said something I didn’t catch, my mind was running along murky channels with bends sinister and causeways suspicious.
‘Who’s your chief investigator, Mr Matthews?’ I asked suddenly.
He was surprised. ‘We don’t have one, this isn’t a big firm, we use the Wallace agency. Really, Mr Hardy, I don’t see where this is leading.’
‘Bear with me. I won’t hold you now. I’ll be in touch.’
I rang off and called Roger Wallace immediately. Roger runs an honest shop and knows how to do a favour for a friend; I almost went to work for him once. After a short wait he came on the line and we exchanged notes on how well we were doing. He sounded tired so he probably was doing well at the usual cost. I asked him a few questions about the Milton outfit, and he promised to call me back at my office.
Primo Tomasetti was bent over a sheet of art paper as I came through his tattooing parlour after parking my car out the back. I leaned over his shoulder to see the drawing; there was a heart, a dragon, an anchor, two flags and the word ‘Mother’ all inter-woven. The effect was bizarre, like a surrealistic sketch of a Freudian nightmare.
‘What the hell is that?’ I said.
Primo turned to look at me innocently. ‘The ultimate tattoo’, he said. ‘I’m going for everything, I mean everything] How do you like it, Cliff?’
I squinted. ‘You haven’t quite got it.’
‘Yeah? What’s missing?’
‘Hells’ Angels, a swastika, a knife for the snake to curl around; come on, you’re not trying.’
He smoothed the paper. ‘You’re right, you’ve inspired me.’ He added a swastika. ‘Tell you what, I’ll put it on you anywhere you like-free.’
‘Put it on yourself, I said.
His eyes opened wide in genuine shock; Primo would die rather than be tatooed.
I pottered in the office for a while until Roger rang with the good, or bad, news-there was a one hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy on Mrs Matthews, and the beneficiary was Charles Herbert Matthews-my client.
That left me only two places to go. Well, the sun was shining, the breeze was soft and there are worse places. I drove the long and winding road back to Manly and fetched up outside Norma Wetherell’s house. I marched up to the door, hammered on it and held my licence card at the ready. She came to the door with flour on her hands and eyed me through the fly wire screen.
‘Back again?’
I held up the licence. ‘I’m afraid I lied to you, Mrs Wetherell; I’m an investigator, not a reporter. I hope you’ll answer a few more questions about Mr Jacobs.’
She rubbed her hands on her apron, some flour fell on the floor and she looked down crossly. ‘Why’d you lie?’
‘I didn’t want to alarm you.’
‘More alarmed by lying’, she grumbled. ‘Well, make it quick.’
No coffee this time. ‘Have you seen Mr Jacobs with a tall woman, white hair, about fifty? Well turned out?’
‘I have, she’s there often. Real lady muck.’
‘For how long have you seen her?’
‘Is there any money in it this time?’ I produced another ten dollars and she let the catch on the door come open far enough to let the money through.
‘Ta. Well, I’d say I first saw her about three years back.’
‘When the second wife was around?’
She grinned and scratched her head, dusting her wiry dark hair with white flour. ‘When she wasn’t around.’
Harbord is one of those places that used to nurture tennis stars and swimming champions. I suppose it looks like anywhere else in the rain, but when the sun shines it looks as if God has laid his finger on it. The hospital was in a road stuck high up above the esplanade, the parks and the wide, blue sea. The sea was so blue and the light so strong that just walking along the street felt like being in a movie filmed in Eastmancolour. St Mark’s was a smallish, private establishment, built of stone when they knew how to build and painted white by someone who knew how to do it. It looked like a pleasant place to work or be mildly indisposed in; for dying it would be just like anywhere else.
I parked up the street a little and did a slow reconnoitre. The place was enclosed by a brick fence, head high. The front, back and one side abutted streets; on the other side the fence was shared with a house that stood on a deep, narrow lot and a block of flats. The land on which the hospital stood sloped so that it had three storeys in the back and two in front; around two sides ran a balcony which gave the paying patients a good view of the ocean. There was a trellis covered with a vine of some sort on a section of the back wall; otherwise the walls were notable for an abundance of big windows.
I went through the gates and ambled up the drive towards the impressive marble steps in front of the building. For a plan I had the idea to engage an underling in conversation, and maybe hand over a little of what underlings don’t have enough of. There were patients and attendants taking the afternoon air on the balcony above me as I walked up the steps; the doors swung open automatically and then I was being watched from the reception desk by a woman in a smart blue uniform. I looked around at the spit and polish as I fronted the desk.
‘Yes, sir?’ She was a thirtyish brunette with good teeth. She looked as if she could head up a cabinet meeting or a commando platoon pretty effectively.
‘I… ah, wanted to know if you have a Mrs Hardy here?’
‘I couldn’t say, sir.’
‘No, well my mother is going to have an operation, nothing too serious you understand, but she’ll need some care while she’s recovering, and Mrs Hardy writes such good things about the place she’s in. She’s an old friend of mum’s and…’
The phone on her desk rang; she said ‘Just a minute’ to me and ‘Reception’ into the mouthpiece. I looked around the lobby which had a spotless parquet floor and a staircase made of the right sort of wood. A set of glass doors swung open and a white-coated man came through talking to a nurse. He was carrying a clipboard and she was listening hard. A woman in a dressing gown was talking on a telephone beside the stairs; a nurse ran in through the front door and bolted up the stairs where she almost collided with Mrs Matthews, who was descending with a stately tread. She checked the nurse and sent her on her way, came down the stairs, looked over or under me, and went out through the glass doors.
I drifted off after her while the receptionist was still occupied; I was hoping to find a cleaning person to charm or an orderly to yarn with but I never got the chance; two big men in white coats appeared at the end of the passage to bar my way. I turned and saw the receptionist making gestures from the other end of the hall. I didn’t wait, I marched back and nodded to her as I passed.
‘I don’t think mum would like it here’, I said.
At the foot of the outside steps I nearly tripped over a parked wheelchair and then the hospital building seemed to lean down and hit me behind the ear. I opened my mouth to yell and got hit again, in the stomach; and I was slammed down into the wheelchair and was moving. I struggled for wind to yell and move with but a hard
