The Greenwich Apartments

by Peter Corris

  ‘You know that the police idea, that Carmel was involved in a pornographic racket, is bunk?’

  ‘You’re too modest. You’ve shown that. We’re grateful. I couldn’t see the point when Leo said he was going to hire someone, but something good has come of it. All that video girl rubbish, it was … awful.’

  Her voice was low-pitched, educated Sydney, without affectation. She didn’t seem like a strong woman though, more one who held up well when the going was good and not so well at other times. She was going to be hard to talk to if there was anything she wanted to hide. It felt as if she’d crack if dropped. ‘Do you know why Leo wants me to … persist, Mrs Wise?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘I think he wants to have a good memory of Carmel. To understand what happened. To be rid of doubts.’

  She smiled. ‘Oh, that’s Leo all right. He doesn’t like doubts.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘No doubt he’s right. Oh, a pun, of sorts.’

  I nodded, drew a breath myself, and plunged in. ‘I’ve talked to lots of people who knew Carmel. They all liked her, all thought she was a great artist. I’ve seen her film and I agree. It was a fine piece of work.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘There was only one person who expressed anything but dismay and loss at Carmel being killed.’

  ‘And who is that?’

  ‘If you and Carmel were close, if you talked together and shared things, I think you know who it would be.’

  ‘Barbara de Vries.’

  ‘That’s right, Mrs Wise.’

  ‘What does she have to do with this?’

  ‘Please tell me about Dr de Vries and Carmel, then I’ll answer your question. Leo thought Carmel had never had a serious relationship, but this thing with de Vries was serious, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Very.’

  ‘Why didn’t Leo know?’

  She made fists of her hands and rubbed them together. ‘Carmel asked me not to tell him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was so unsuitable—married, a radical …’

  ‘You should see his house in Lane Cove. His lifestyle is about as radical as Marcos’.’

  ‘I see. Still, I couldn’t see any future in it for Carmel. Neither could she.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They fought all the time. It was on and off, on and off. Carmel used to get very upset.’

  ‘What did they fight about? Did she want him to leave his wife?’

  ‘No, no. Carmel is … was … was always an unconventional girl. No. They fought about the work they were doing.’

  It suddenly seemed warm in the room. There was a slight draught from somewhere lifting the covers of the magazine I’d looked at, but it wasn’t enough. I felt hot. I was sure I was getting close to the heart of it. ‘What work were they doing, Mrs Wise?’

  ‘I’m not really sure. I didn’t see Carmel all that often, about once a week, sometimes not.’

  ‘But you talked when you did?’

  ‘Oh, yes. we talked. You’ll have seen that we were alike, physically?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Emotionally too, I think. We could always understand each other … sympathise …’ She was close to tears now; her head was bent and she was fighting for control. I sat very still and sweated. After a minute she got the control. Her head came up and she was dry-eyed. ‘That’s why it’s so terrible. I miss her so badly, you see. As you might miss a friend. But more than a friend. Do you have any children, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  This is a bad break for Leo, I thought. But I didn’t want it to turn out like that. This woman deserved better luck. I felt like a blackjack dealer, slipping out the cards. ‘I have to know about the work, Mrs Wise. It’s important.’

  ‘To whom?’

  I went out on a limb. ‘Don’t you think Carmel would want you to understand what happened? Why she died? Why?’

  She took a long time to answer, as if she was checking back over her daughter’s twenty or so years of life, day by day, before deciding. The deep brown eyes opened wide as she looked at me. ‘Yes, I believe she would.’

  ‘Then tell me two things—first, about the work.’

  ‘It was political. They were compiling dossiers, on film, on people they … disliked.’

  ‘People like Marjorie Legge and … who’s that husband of hers?’

  ‘Monty Porter,’ she said automatically.

  ‘Right, and Phil Broadhead?’

  ‘I don’t know actual names, but, yes, I think … people like that. Politicians too.’

  ‘God,’ I said. ‘That’s dangerous. Leo didn’t know about this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you must have suspected … you must have thought her death was connected to this work?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘She was a filmmaker. She might have got something embarrassing on these people, but to kill her …?’

  ‘All right, all right. Yes, sure. Now, Carmel and de Vries fought about this. What sorts of fights?’

  ‘He was more radical than her, in every way. That’s all I know. Surely you could have found out some of this from him.’

  ‘He’s disappeared.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘His wife thought he had run off with Carmel.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’ She realised what she’d said and a hesitant look appeared on her face. Her hands had unclenched as we’d talked but they turned back into fists again.

  ‘Mrs Wise, do you know where Carmel and de Vries went to work and conduct their affair?’

  Again a long silence. She was yielding up her knowledge and interpretation of her daughter piece by piece, and it was painful. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I know.’

  ‘Where? You must tell me.’

  ‘They had a sort of studio in a house in Balmain. On the top floor.’

  ‘Do you know the address?’

  ‘It’s 3A Grafton Street, near the water.’

  I thought I knew the street and tried to picture it. Container wharf, fashionable terraces, townhouse development. ‘You’ve been there?’

  ‘No, Carmel told me.’

  ‘Thank you. You have met Jan de Vries?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you think of him?’

  ‘Charming, but I didn’t like him. I doubt if he’ll tell you the truth.’

  We got up simultaneously and she showed me out. I didn’t see Leo. We didn’t speak again except to say goodnight. Then she went back into the big, empty house.

  20

  SOCOTT had the radio on a rock station. Some melodic and rhythmic sounds were just audible as I got into the car.

  ‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Dire Straits.’

  ‘Nice. Well, any suspicious characters?’

  He straightened his slumped spine. The air in the cab was tobacco-free which showed remarkable restraint. ‘How do you tell? Some people went past. Some looked, some didn’t. I felt like I was standing in the middle of the SCG wearing a dress.’

  I smiled; it was a bizarre image. ‘That probably means no-one noticed you.’ I wondered if I was telling the truth. The only way to check on whether anyone who is any good at it is watching you is to let yourself be watched, you can’t do it by proxy.

  ‘Where to now?’

  ‘Balmain, and you can have a cigarette if you keep the window down and blow it out.’

  ‘Right.’ He started the taxi, checked that the hiring light was out and moved off. The lighted cigarette was in his fist within seconds. I checked for a tail but it’s hard to do as a passenger. You get a different sense of things as a driver. I couldn’t tell.

  ‘Is anyone following us?’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘How would I know? I’ve never been in the movies before.’

  I laughed and listened to some more Dire Straits on the radio. It was the best popular music I’d heard since early Van Morrison.
I wondered what sort of music Carmel Wise liked. That set me off on thoughts of de Vries and Carmel Wise and their personal and working relationship. Judy Syme hadn’t mentioned a place in Balmain and Barbara de Vries didn’t know anything about it. It looked like the best bet as a bolt-hole for de Vries who was frightened of something. Frightened enough to stay away from his wife and kids and work for two weeks. Then the thought hit me for the first time. Maybe he wasn’t staying away at all—maybe he was dead.

  Darling Street was quiet but there looked to be a good deal of life in the pubs and coffee shops. There’d probably be some talk of films in there. Of books, too. Of books being turned into films and films being turned into books and everything being turned into reputation and reputation being turned into money. We reached East Balmain and made the turn. The streets drop sharply towards the container terminal and Galvani was driving on his brakes.

  ‘Hold on!’ I pressed a non-existent brake pedal; Scott braked sharply.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s him! Stay back.’

  I’d seen the face clearly by streetlight as the man had turned out of a lane and begun to tramp down towards the point. A stocky man, wearing a battle jacket and jeans. He was carrying a plastic bag and he flicked dark, straight hair back from his eyes as he made the turn. I saw the drooping moustache and the thrusting jaw. The jaw was bristled with an almost-beard but the man was unmistakably Jan de Vries.

  The taxi was barely rolling. ‘What’d we do?’ Scott whispered.

  ‘Pull in. I know where he’s going. Let him get a bit further ahead and drive on around there.’ I pointed ahead; the street ran down to the fence surrounding the container dock and then turned sharp left. There was a townhouse complex at the point of the turn—a cluster of sloping tile roofs and brown bricks that occupied a prime site right on the water. We watched de Vries until he’d made the turn and then Scott drove in the same direction; he turned, past de Vries who was going uphill now, and continued on, to where the street ended at the entrance to another waterfront site undergoing development. There had been a half-hearted attempt to close the site off with metal pickets but the residents had knocked them down and were still parking there as they always had.

  ‘Hop in there,’ I said. ‘And switch off. Can you turn off the interior light?’

  ‘Sure.’ Scott clicked it off and I got out of the cab. It was dark in the street although there seemed to be distant light all around—from the city over the water and the houses higher up on the point. I squinted down the hill and saw de Vries toiling along until he suddenly stepped out of sight, through the gate of one of the big, old terrace houses overlooking the new townhouses which had grabbed the waterfront.

  ‘I’m going in to talk to him.’ I let the car door close quietly.

  ‘You think there’ll be trouble?’

  ‘Could be. I won’t start it. If he won’t let me in I’ll wait till he comes out. I don’t want to push it.’

  ‘Could he sneak out the back?’

  ‘Not usually, not from the top floor. But you could take a wander around if you like. Did you see him?’

  ‘Yeah. Looked like a wrestler.’

  ‘I doubt it. Well, should know something soon.’

  Negotiating an old, inner city footpath with one eye in the dark is no picnic. I stumbled along, almost missed the gutter and had to grab a fence for support once or twice. Anyone seeing me could be forgiven for thinking I was drunk. A car turned into the street and drove purposefully past the terraces. I caught a glimpse of the number 3 on a letter box and pushed the gate beside it open. The rickety paling fence had 3A and an arrow painted on it in crude scrawl. The arrow pointed up the side of the house to a set of steps like a fire-escape. Wrong again, Hardy, there was a back way out.

  Number 3 Grafton Street was in reasonable condition; it had been painted not too long ago and the weeds jutting up from the path had been cut fairly recently. At the rear, however, things were not so good. The back of the house featured some decayed plumbing and a gully-trap that smelled like a sewer. There were several bright lights shining inside on the top floor, as if for a party, but the only sound I could hear was from a turned-down TV set. The light was enough to show me the bottom step and let me get a grip on the handrail to make the ascent. The steps were steep and far apart; I jarred my eye misjudging the distance on the first few.

  I stood outside the door on a small platform high above ground level. The platform’s low rail had come away from the wall; the platform itself creaked. I felt like a trapeze artist. The resident could deal very effectively with Seventh Day Adventists and other unwelcome visitors. It was a doorstep to keep your temper on. I knocked. No answer.

  ‘Dr de Vries.’

  A scuffling noise or maybe nothing at all.

  ‘I saw you go in, Dr de Vries. I’ve identified you from a photograph your wife gave me. I got the address here from Carmel’s mother. I’m working for her father.’ I felt foolish talking to myself up there. I had to do something. I bent and put the photograph and my licence under the door and gave them a shove. ‘This is the photo from your house and these are my credentials. If you’ve got a phone there you could ring Leo Wise and check on me.’

  Now I definitely heard movement inside. I pictured him creeping across and picking up the photo and licence folder. It was like trout fishing. What other bait did I have? I remembered that I still had Leo Wise’s cheque in my wallet. Under the door with it. ‘That’s all I’ve got, Dr de Vries. I think I know what your trouble is. You’d be well advised to talk to me.’

  ‘Are you alone out there?’ The American voice was shaky and uncertain, not the way American voices usually sound.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Stand back against the rail. The door opens out. I’ve got a rifle here and I’ll shoot you if you make a wrong move.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’m back as far as I can go. Hurry up, will you? This thing’s bloody unsafe.’

  The door opened and de Vries stood framed against the bright light. He was broad and thick and even from five feet away I could smell the whisky on his breath.

  ‘I don’t have a rifle,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t need one. Let me come in. Maybe we can help each other.’

  He nodded and stepped aside. I walked through the whisky fumes into a large room that must have had five hundred watts burning in it. A couple of double mattresses formed a low bed in one corner; a TV set and VCR plus a big console and screen all covered with switches and blinking lights occupied the middle of the room and there were some chairs, books and clothes scattered about. The whisky bottle and a glass were on top of the TV. I took the photo and the papers away from de Vries. He surrendered them without protest and walked across to the bottle.

  ‘Join me?’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s not the answer.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Do you know who killed Carmel?’

  He shook his head and took a big slug of Bell’s.

  ‘Do you know why she was killed?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘You were compiling a sort of dossier on the movers and shakers, that right?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Carmel’s mother.’

  ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I hope nobody else talks to her. I thought it was just Carmel and me and …’

  ‘Who else? Who knows?’

  He glanced fearfully at the door which he hadn’t quite shut. Then he drank again. ‘Whoever killed her.’

  ‘What sort of stuff did she have?’

  ‘Hot. Shots of people meeting wrong people. She used special mikes and picked up conversations.’

  ‘Didn’t you know how dangerous that was?’

  ‘It was her idea.’

  ‘I was told you were the more radical one.’

  He shrugged. ‘I had the … manipulative ideas but Carmel had the concept.’ He snorted and emptied his glass. ‘Listen to me. I’m talking like a movie producer.’ He reached for t
he bottle and poured another big drink. He was drunk but a long way from incapable. Still, I thought I’d make that his last even if I had to use the .38 to convince him.

  ‘You’ll have to make that clearer.’

  He drank again, flicked back the hair and leaned towards me intently. ‘Look, you have to understand that she was the most brilliant kid with film I’ve ever seen, or heard of.’

  ‘I’ve seen Bermagui.’

  ‘Nothin’. He snapped his fingers. ‘Nothin’, to what she could do. What she did with this footage was amazing—the way she cut it and laid in the conversations and did the voice-overs. Devastating.’

  ‘Who did she film—Legge and Porter, Broadhead …’

  ‘Yeah, and others. Carmody, Gabriani …’

  ‘Jesus.’ Wal Carmody was a renegade policeman who advertised himself as a ‘security consultant’; Carlo Gabriani owned stud farms and helicopters—a few years back he’d owned market gardens and a couple of broken-down trucks. ‘What was the idea?’

  ‘Expose the lot. Get film and sound showing they interconnect, how they meet. They meet in parks a lot, you know that? So they can’t be bugged. Didn’t stop Carmel, amazing judgement on where to put a mike. She could bug a phone, a room …’

  ‘Have you done any of that?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Whose places?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I got scared and I wanted to back away but Carmel kept getting braver.’

  More whisky went down. The only reason I had to believe that he was lying was Moira Wise’s view that de Vries was the more radical, but that’s what I did believe. ‘Her mother thinks you were pushing her.’

  He sneered. ‘Push that chick? Push the Opera House—same result.’

  ‘What did you mean by manipulative ideas?’

  His head dropped forward and I thought he was going to let go of his glass, but, trust a drunk, that’s the last thing they’ll do. His shoulders shook and I realised he was crying. Maybe he was drunker than I’d thought. The sobbing became louder and his shoulders jerked compulsively. Fat bulged at the waistline under the T-shirt and his thighs strained the stitching of his jeans. It was hard to be patient with him; I had the feeling that he was crying not for Carmel, but for himself. I took the glass away and slapped him lightly. ‘What did you mean, Dr de Vries?’