‘nothing.’
I gave her a receipt, and she got out a mirror and did a little repair work. I wrote down the addresses and phone numbers she gave me, and we got the whole thing on a business footing. She left and I went to the window and watched her step out on to the street; the first step was faltering but she quickly got into stride and looked like a proud, well-turned-out human being as she turned the corner. I decided she had guts and that she was lying about there being no trouble in the air.
Over the next day and a half I did the things I said I’d do: I checked over Hadley’s apartment and found nothing that you wouldn’t expect to find about a Yank who ran an escort service and had a mistress fifteen years older than himself. He had two girls on the side and I looked them over-nothing. Same result with the four men employed by the Winsome Escort Agency. Two of them were gay and one was black; nothing in the patterns of their lives over the past few days had changed. The seven women were more varied: one was close to Trudi Walker’s age with a similar manner, and one looked like a schoolgirl. Two of them had university degrees and one was a hang-glider. I used the phone till my arm ached and knocked on apartment doors with no result. My last call was on one of the girls-Tracey Talbot, who combined being escorted with freelance journalism. I drank coffee with her in her flat at Rushcutters Bay; it was a warm, soft afternoon and the water looked blue, bright and alive. Her window was full of harbour view. She had posters of world-famous harbours on the walls.
‘I love harbours’, she told me. ‘I’m going to have my ashes scattered out there.’
‘We’re all going to have our ashes scattered out there the way things are going’, I said. I was feeling gloomy; asking the questions dully, now not expecting sparks. ‘You’ve got no idea where Hadley might take off to?’
She shrugged. ‘Not a clue, Mummy’s boy as far as I could see. Tell you one thing though. I reckon Trudi’s not long for this world.’
‘Why d’you say that?’
‘I did a story on cancer victims once, she’s got all the signs.’
I sighed and finished the coffee-ashes and cancer, she’d be a wow of a companion for a night on the town. I used Tracey’s phone to call Trudi, but she wasn’t at the office and her home phone didn’t answer. The receptionist at Winsome said she’d been trying to contact her for some hours without success. I looked at the girl who was dropping cigarette ashes in the dregs of her coffee and stirring them with a finger. I called Trudi’s number again- the phone sounded as if it could go on ringing unanswered until the end of the world.
The apartment building was new and shiny; balconies hung off it out over the water like cars on a ferris wheel. Hadley’s apartment was on the second floor and Trudi’s was directly above it; I went up the stairs fast and stabbed the buzzer. The phone started ringing at the same time and the two sounds blended into a dirge. I pushed the door and felt it give; there seemed to be a lock not quite engaging. I hit it with my shoulder in the middle and applying the pressure upwards the way you should, and it sprang open.
The living room was big and bright; the walls and floor were white as if the room had been designed as a hymn to lightness. There were paintings, a bar, books, a record player and a TV set. The chairs and settee were white pine and the coverings were cream-coloured, except where Trudi’s blood had got on the fabric. She was slumped in a way she’d never have permitted when she was in charge of her body. Her dress had been white, with gold trim, but now half of it was stained a dark red like the costume of a medieval courtier. The dress was also ripped from the neck to the armpit on one side, and on the other side the sleeve was half torn away. I eased the door shut behind me and went up close. She had a big wound in her neck. I looked past her to where a drinks tray sat on a small table; a bottle of brandy was shattered. The bullet had gone through something vital in her neck and there’d been a lot of blood. Her right hand was thrown back across the arm of the settee and it was bloody too; the nails on three fingers were split and broken. Her head had fallen back, drawing the skin tight; her make-up was flawless.
I put my hands in my pockets for safety and wandered around looking. The door was equipped with a heavy dead lock, two safety chains and a light, standard lock-the one I’d broken. The kitchen was uncluttered, the bedroom undisturbed. A cabinet in the bathroom was full of prescription drugs-medicines, capsules, pills. I didn’t recognise most of them but they indicated a serious illness or powerful hypochondria and an obliging physician. In a second, smaller bedroom there was a single bed, a chair and a desk with a lot of locked drawers. I went back to the living room, located her bag and keys and unlocked the desk. The drawers were full of stationery, business letters, tax records, old cheque books. I flicked through the cheque stubs which told me that she spent a hell of a lot of money on clothes. There were records of a couple of fixed deposit bank accounts with a few thousand dollars in each. The papers provided only one surprise-Trudi owned her own apartment and the one Hadley lived in, for which he paid her rent of one hundred dollars a week.
This was all taking time, because I was using a handkerchief to pick things up and a knife blade to turn over the papers. The bottom drawer held a fountain pen and a big bottle of ink. A few small drops of ink had spilt in the drawer-it was the closest she’d come to being messy. I lifted the bottle out, uncapped it and probed inside with the thin blade. A little fishing brought up two small keys on a thin ring. I dried them on a tissue; one had serial number, CI40, on it, the other did not. I took the copy off the ring and dropped the original back into the ink. Then I prowled around the apartment looking for signs, bent twigs, freshly broken blades of grass. I found it down behind the TV set; a section of the high skirting board was hinged and swung out, a strand of hair from a mop or duster had caught at the spot. The safe, about six inches square, was set in the wall behind the board. I dialled CI40 on the combination lock and the key turned smoothly. Inside was a reel of movie film and a plastic envelope. I closed the safe and took the stash across to the window. The film was a standard Super 8 job; the envelope contained about a dozen paper squares and rectangles, some brightly coloured and some dull-postage stamps.
I put the stuff in my pocket, walked out of the flat and down to my car where I stowed it away under the back seat. Then I went to a public booth and called the police, asking for Grant Evans. He came on and I said what I had to say, and he told me to go up again and wait for him.
Grant was puffing a bit when he got to the top of the stairs. He had a youngish, slim policewoman with him and he’d been showing off for her.
‘Cliff, Grant said. ‘Why’d you call from the street?’
‘Didn’t want to touch the phone.’
He grunted and we trooped inside. I told Grant the story while he poked around. He made a few disbelieving noises here and there, just to remind me of the unspoken terms of our relationship-I don’t tell him outright lies and he doesn’t frame me for things. It’s a better set-up than most. I didn’t have to feign surprise when Grant slid open the built-in wardrobes, we both whistled. The space was crammed full of dresses, coats, blouses, slacks and other things I don’t know the names of. There were six fur coats and fifty pairs of shoes, maybe more.
‘Gotta be jewels with this lot’, Grant said. ‘You see an insurance policy, Cliff?’
It was a neat trap, but I saw it in time. ‘No, I told you I didn’t touch anything.’
‘Yeah, and Borg can’t hit backhands.’ We went back into the living room. ‘Well, she put up a fight. Look for a guy missing some skin. How do you see it? Reckon this Hadley bumped her?’
‘Could be.’
‘Has to be. Look at those locks-she let him in.’
‘She was a professional escort remember, she might’ve let lots of people in. I don’t like Hadley, too obvious.’
‘Well, the obvious happens, Cain bumped Abel, Ruby bumped Oswald.’
‘Yeah, but what did Oswald do?’
Grant sneered and asked the policewoman to inspect the rest of Trudi’s personals. We were looking at the view when she came out with a jewel box. Grant opened it.
‘Good stuff?’
Her expression was wistful. ‘Very good, worth thousands and thousands.’
‘Scratch robbery.’ Grant said.
After that the white coats arrived and then it was down to Headquarters for a statement and the usual carry-on.
