on the left was a stockman who looked a bit like Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates; the man on the right resembled Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair. A banner read: ‘Their love was thunder, their hatred was fire’. Great cover. I tossed the book into the Falcon and drove home for a drink.
Six hours later I watched from my car the unedifying sight of the bookshop disgorging the launchers. Some of them were pretty well launched themselves. I recognised a batch of well-known writers and a heroin addict artist. There were a couple of journalists I’d drunk with on odd occasions-men and women with a keen eye for the free glass.
A woman answering Thackeray’s description of Carla Cummings was one of the last to leave. She was small, nothing over five feet in her high heeled shoes and she wore a tight, short black dress and a big red wig. She staggered a little and hailed a cab. Two men staggered with her. Cummings’s glittery dress and wig and the white overcoat one of the men had thrown over his shoulders made them look stagey and unreal, like figures in a rock film clip.
If there’s any work more boring that watching other people having a good time, I don’t know of it.
Carla Cummings and her two mates had some people’s definition of a very good time. I followed the taxi to the Cross where it dropped the threesome at a nightclub cum restaurant that boasts a fifties atmosphere. I parked illegally and when I got back Cummings was tucking into a huge dish of pasta. She ate sloppily and dropped her fork; she kept talking and her youngish companions, both well built, one dark one fair, kept laughing. That was the most fun she had. After drinking most of a bottle of red wine she went upstairs and danced with the men in turn. For someone as drunk as she was she danced pretty well, but I saw the strain on the dark guy’s face as he half- held her up. After that they walked-her very unsteadily-along the street eyeing the whores. No one got many giggles out of that so they took a cab to a high-priced apartment block in Potts Point. I sat in my car and listened to the movement of the water as lights went on and off three floors up. The water kept moving but the windows stayed dark and I drove home.
I was back in Pott’s Point at 8 a.m. and after an hour’s wait I was rewarded by the arrival of a silver Honda Accord, driven by a sleek character with a cravat, a yachtsman’s blazer and the trousers and tan to go with it. They drove to a breakfast place in the Cross where you can sit among the bricks and trees and watch the previous night’s crap being swept up and carried away by the lower classes.
The yachtsman looked to be doing some serious talking in the car so I got a table within earshot of the pair and ordered coffee. In surveillance you can work this close just once.
Cummings ordered an iced coffee and the yachtsman had a straight black, like me. When the orders arrived the writer proceeded to demolish a pale brown structure that looked like a model of Mont Blanc. She also had a plateful of croissants on the side. Her hand was shaking and she dropped some of the mixture on her dress where it joined last night’s food and drink stains.
‘I’ve been thinking it over, Leslie,’ she said.
Les sipped coffee and didn’t speak.
‘He’s irritating and moralistic, but he did a wonderful job for the first book.’
‘It sold itself, dear. The thing is-can he do the same again?’
She filled her mouth with pastry and cold liquid; I had to look away, and I had the feeling that Leslie wanted to but he didn’t.
‘I don’t know but that’s not really what I’m worried about just now.’
He leaned forward solicitously. ‘What are you worried about Carla? Can I help?’
She shook her head and crumbs sprayed on the table. ‘I can’t tell you, Leslie, but it is important to everything I do at the moment. It’s driving me mad
‘You haven’t signed a contract with Thackeray, have you?’
‘No, of course not. Don’t hound me, Leslie. It is about Joseph and when I get more reports… when it’s settled I’ll let you know about your offer.’
He smiled, showed beautifully capped teeth, a sagging jawline and an over-used charm that was losing its candle power. There was an air of desperation about him which he was desperately anxious not to show-and it showed. He tilted a thin, brown hand that carried a wide gold ring.
‘Just tell me, are you fifty/fifty in favour or…’
She drained her drink with a soft slurp and blotted up some croissant crumbs with a bony finger. ‘Sixty/forty,’ she said. ‘Can you run me home? I’ve got to change to give some ghastly talk.’
They got up, Cummings paid the bill the way she’d done the previous night, and they went streetwards. I let them go and ordered another coffee as an aid to thinking. There was some to do. Thackeray had more problems than he thought: I didn’t like the sound of reports and a settlement. It smelled too much of what I did myself, and that threw up some interesting possibilities.
Thackeray’s notes told me that Cummings was addressing the Hunters Hill Women’s Literary Group later that morning. It sounded as missable as my own hanging, so I decided to widen my terms of reference a little and see what Mr Joseph Thackeray was doing.
Thackeray’s office was in William Street, just a short walk from mine, but I didn’t have to get to his door for things to become interesting. There was a bank across the road from the building Thackeray was in, and as I passed it I saw Rusty Fenton looking out through the smoked glass windows. Now a bank is one of the last places you’d expect to see Rusty. When he has money he gives it to barmen not tellers. Rusty didn’t see me so I went into the bank by a side door and watched him. I’ve never known Rusty not to work in close harness with ‘Bomber’ Stafford and, sure enough, after a minute or so Stafford came hurrying out of Thackeray’s building and across the street. Rusty shot out to meet him, they had a quick confab and ran back across the street, defying the traffic. I watched through the smoked glass: Rusty and Stafford got into a van; Joseph Thackeray came out onto the street and looked up and down expectantly. He had on another silly, spotted bow tie; he still looked narrow and wispy and the smoked glass gave his skin an unhealthy grey sheen. A taxi pulled up,
Thackeray got in and Rusty and Stafford followed it on up the hill towards the Cross.
Out of habit I jotted the numbers of the taxi and the van on the back of a withdrawal slip. I could find out where Thackeray had gone easily enough, but I was more interested in why Rusty and ‘Bomber’ were interested in him. Rusty has a lot of trades-police informer, leg man for a few people in my game, small time fence. ‘Bomber’ Stafford quit the ring after an undistinguished career as a prelim boy and prelim old man. He’d done some standing-over since then and worked for security services and some corner-cutting private enquiry men. He’d do just about anything that didn’t require any brains, he knew his limitations. Working with Rusty topped up their collective IQ, but not by all that much.
A phone call to Thackeray’s office brought me the information that he was attending the opening of a photography exhibition in Paddington. I drove there and parked down the street. Rusty and ‘Bomber’ were sitting in their van drinking beer and watching the place. Rusty put down his beer can and wrote something in a notebook. I shuddered to think of his spelling but I’d have liked to get a look at the notebook. I could have fronted them but even Rusty knows enough to keep his mouth shut when he’s working and ‘Bomber’ might just get lucky with a punch. Things were coming together in my mind: Cummings mentioned reports on Thackeray and here was Rusty Fenton on surveillance, sucking his pencil and making notes. Rusty could report to someone else who could make some sense of what he said and report in turn to Cummings. Who?
It was becoming ridiculous; the only course I could think of was to follow Rusty-I felt I was getting a long way from my brief but hell, anything was better than the Hunters Hill affair. The photography exhibition must have included eats because Thackeray stayed a few hours, and was wiping his mouth with a spotted handkerchief when he left. Rusty had sent ‘Bomber’ for pies; I had no one to send so I missed lunch. Thackeray walked off the canapes with a stroll through some of the pricier streets of Paddo to a tall, well-appointed terrace in the priciest street of them all. Rusty’s van crawled along after him and I crawled along too. It was a wonder the Shark Patrol didn’t spot us and report us for suspicious conduct. It was mid-afternoon and pretty warm; Rusty and ‘Bomber’ seemed happy to park outside the house but then, Rusty could send ‘Bomber’ for beer. I wasn’t prepared to wait.
After Paddington, the back streets of the Cross felt like Bangkok. I parked the Falcon on the concrete patch Primo Tomasetti, the best tattooist in the country, rents to me and went to see the artist himself. My recollection was that ‘Bomber’ had been a client of Primo’s not so long back.