The Washington Club

by Peter Corris

  11

  Bolton said he’d need to talk to Claudia at some point but for now he let her sleep. He allowed me to write her a note. How do you tell someone her lawyer’s just been murdered and her new lover’s off to the police station and will be back sometime, all in a note? I did the best I could, told her not to be alarmed if a policewoman was there, propped the note up on the bedside table centimetres from her head and left a card in case she’d lost the first one with my home address and phone number on it as well as the office and mobile numbers. I said I’d phone her as soon as I was clear and that I wanted her to stay where she was or come to me and go nowhere else. There was no way for her to feel safe or act as if she was. I hoped she’d remember my advice about her personal security. If I’d known her better I could have suggested the name of someone to come over and keep her company. Maybe, but my snooping tended to make me think that there wasn’t any such person. That didn’t make leaving the flat any easier.

  As police stations go, North Sydney was better than average. The lighting was muted rather than the harsh brain-searing stuff which used to be standard and you still get sometimes, and the room they put me in had been softened down by a couple of bright prints on the walls and a pot plant or two. If you really want to intimidate someone, you interrogate them under a light in the middle of a dark room, where they come to feel danger and threat in the space around them, especially behind. Here, the desk with the chairs on either side of it was tucked in a corner, almost cosily. The video equipment looked to be state of the art. There was no sign that anyone had ever smoked in the room since it had undergone its last revamp. That’d be a problem for some people, but perhaps they interviewed the really tough guys who smoked cigarettes somewhere else.

  ‘Your car’s been searched and sniffed at, Mr Hardy,’ Bolton said, before he activated the recording. ‘Seems no reason to impound it. It’s here for when you need it.’

  I took the electronic alarm and locking device out of my jacket pocket and showed it to him. ‘You mean your people by-passed everything? I’m impressed.’

  Bolton smiled and flicked a switch. Machinery hummed.

  ‘What about my gun?’ I said.

  Bolton frowned and turned the hum off. ‘When this is over we can talk about that, okay?’

  I shrugged. Flick. Hum.

  ‘North Sydney police station. Detective Sergeant Craig Bolton OIC. Interview with Mr Cliff Hardy of . . .’

  Bolton recorded the date and time of the interview, my address, PEA licence number and other formal details. As he was running through the circumstances that had led to the interview I realised how tired I was. I felt my head growing heavy and my body started to cry out for a level surface to stretch out on. Bolton switched off the machine.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m tired. It’s been a bastard of a day and a hell of a night. I’m whacked.’

  He pressed a button on the desk and a voice came over the intercom. ‘Yes, Craig?’

  ‘Two coffees in here, please. Strong. Sugar and milk on the side. Quick as you can.’

  ‘Coming up.’

  ‘The departing chief here installed the machine as a gift to the station,’ he said. ‘Makes good coffee.’

  I grunted my thanks.

  Bolton grinned at me. The frown line stayed, even though he was almost smiling. It gave him an ambiguous, hard-to-read look. ‘I never knew a murderer who felt like a kip afterwards, unless he was all bombed out on drugs. Relax, Hardy, I’ve checked you on our computer and spoken to Frank Parker who vouches for you. You’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  Frank, now a Deputy Commissioner in the New South Wales Police Force, was an old friend. ‘Just a dead mate and a lady in very serious trouble.’

  ‘Maybe you’d like to tell me something about that.’

  A uniformed constable knocked and brought in a tray with two mugs of coffee on it along with some mini-cartons of long-life milk and sugar cubes wrapped in paper. I took mine with everything—three milks and three sugars. By the time I’d stirred the milk and sugar in the drink was warm rather than hot but I drank it anyway. Whoever had prepared it had taken Bolton at his word—the coffee was very strong and I could feel the caffeine and sugar kicking in as Bolton flipped the switch again . . .

  It was 2.30 a.m. when I left North Sydney. The Camry was in the station car park and the electronic gadget and everything else worked just fine. The ignition key was in my pocket but the car had a few more kilometres on the clock than when I’d left it. Made you wonder how good these security gizmos really were. I sat behind the wheel for a few minutes, mulling over what I’d told Bolton and wondering what to do about Claudia. Bolton had been easy, almost friendly. I worried about that. In the old days there’d have been shouts, threats, cigarettes offered and denied, shoes against chair legs. I felt as if I was getting late-’90s treatment and didn’t know how to cope with it.

  In keeping with the times, I’d played it selective but pretty straight. I’d begun by pointing out that Cy was a high-profile criminal lawyer of longstanding. Matters he’d worked on in the past or other matters on hand could have explained the attack and I had no knowledge of such things. His death didn’t necessarily have anything to do with my current case. Bolton gave that short shrift and pressed for details. I’d mentioned the grenades in my car (I knew he’d find out about them easily anyway) and the surveillance I’d mounted outside Claudia’s flat which had been all at the wrong time and to no effect. I’d told him about the car I’d seen speeding away after my first visit, but not that I’d identified Haitch Henderson as the driver. I said I’d paid calls on various people connected with the case but declined to name them or provide any details. Getting back at me for that, Bolton had hung on to my gun for testing—minor sparring.

  In days gone by he’d have held me overnight, just on principle, but times had changed and Bolton appeared to be working to the spirit as well as the letter of the law. The record of interview had been fed into a computer and I signed the printout. He said he’d see me again and expressed the hope that I’d cooperate in every way, including securing him an interview with Mrs Fleischman. No leer, no wink.

  It had been a big night for technology and I decided to stick with it. I used the car phone to ring Claudia. Fittingly, I got her answering machine message: ‘This is Claudia. I’m not taking calls just now. Leave a message after the tone if you wish.’

  Not welcoming.

  ‘Claudia, this is Cliff. I’m on the car phone. Just out of the police station. I’m assuming you’re still asleep . . .’ I waited. No response. ‘Okay. Please do as I say in the note. I’m going home to get some sleep, but I’ll be in touch later today. We’ve got lots to do. Stay strong.’ If the policewoman was there and heard the message, so what?

  I drove out of the car park, getting a curt nod from the tired-looking constable on duty. We had that in common—tiredness, if not youth. Not a lot of traffic at that time of the morning, which was just as well. My reflexes were slow and I drove automatically, scarcely registering the stops and turns. I had trouble finding the bridge toll and almost missed the bin as I tossed it in. The action reminded me of basketball games I’d played in the Police Citizens’ Boys Clubs when I was a kid. They’re called something else now. The old name smacks of biases and prejudices that are supposed to have been swept away. Good to think so, but the changes could be cosmetic. I wondered if average-sized kids could still play the game. It used to be a lot of fun and that basket was a high, tough target for sub-six foot adolescents.

  As I drove towards Glebe I was aware that although lots of things had apparently changed, I was still the same as far as women were concerned. I’d never been a casual screwer and had often wished I was—less involvement, fewer complications. Claudia Fleischman had got to me in some deep, connecting way. It was more than just her physical attractiveness and personality. I was drawn to her strengths and weaknesses. I had the old feeling that lay beh
ind several of my relationships—that I could help this woman and be helped by her She needed a supporter and I needed connections to other worlds—to higher education, to Europe, to Jewishness. I’d felt this kind of attraction, and been right, and horribly wrong, in pursuing it before.

  Two TV crew vans were parked in the street near my house along with sundry other reporters’ vehicles. I could image what the more antagonistic of my neighbours were thinking. By necessity, journalists have little respect for privacy, traffic laws or noise pollution regulations. I’d turned into the street and committed myself to going on before I spotted them. No time or space for a three-point turn and a hasty retreat even if I’d been in the mood for it. I nudged the Camry up against a Tarago van that was parked where I’d left the unfortunate Falcon the night before. I wound the window down as they came at me, males and females, like seagulls swooping on a crust.

  ‘Mr Hardy, you’ve been attacked twice today . . .’

  ‘Who was killed tonight in Kirribilli . . .?’

  ‘Are you involved in . . .?’

  I reached through the window and grabbed the nearest of them by the collar. I jerked his head in, forward and up so that it was banging against the roof of the car.

  ‘You tell the driver of that Tarago to move it or I’m going to ram the fucking thing! Now!’

  I shoved him off and the others fell back as he reeled away. I backed off a metre, put the gear in neutral and revved the motor. A man jumped into the Tarago and swung it away from the kerb. I slid into the space, got out of the car and locked it before turning to the reporters. The cameras were running, the mikes were thrusting forward and several held their mini-recorders out in front of them like divining rods. I picked out one of these, a tall, spindly guy in a white denim jacket and wearing shoulder-length hair, and beckoned him forward. When he was within reach I grabbed his arm and used him as a battering ram through the mob. The element of surprise got me passage to the gate.

  I’d been in these situations before and knew how threatening I could look if I got the body language and facial expressions wrong. I tried to stay loose and to keep something like a tolerant grin on my dial.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I said over the babble.

  ‘Todd.’

  I opened the gate and went through, shoving Todd away, keeping him outside. I grabbed his hair and brought his ear closer to my mouth. ‘Tell them I said no comment, Todd. And anyone who touches this fucking gate is gone for trespass.’

  I let him go, banged the gate shut and went up the path which is so overgrown all the cameras would be getting was branches and shadows. Hardy handles the media and scores his first win of the day. But in fact it was the next day and the day that had just slipped away had taken a lot with it. I felt physically and mentally sore as I slammed the door behind me and faced the old familiar smells and sounds.

  I was dog-tired but somehow I didn’t want to go upstairs and climb into my bed with the sheets and pillow covers overdue for a wash and the mattress settling into a one-person-only shape. When Glen was around the bedroom had a kind of symmetry—two clothes racks, books and magazines on both sides, coffee mugs, massage oil swapping from one side to the other, stains on the surfaces. Now one clothes rack was empty; the globe in the reading light on one side had been dead for months and the dusty massage oil bottle was in the chest of drawers.

  For the first time I noticed that there was blood on my shirt and trousers. I had a shower and dropped the clothes into an old topless Esky where I put things destined for the dry cleaners. I had a shower and wandered about with a towel around my waist, rejecting the idea of wine, Scotch or coffee. I thought about taking my unlicensed Colt .45 out from its hiding place in the cupboard under the stairs and rejected that idea too. If I’d known who to shoot maybe I’d have done it, but I hadn’t a clue.

  That led me to thinking about Cy and the times we’d called each other and left affectionate, abusive messages on the answering machines. I noticed that the light was blinking on my machine and I pressed the PLAY button, expecting to hear nothing but routine communications.

  ‘Cliff, this is Claudia. The policewoman was okay. She’s gone now. It’s two o’clock. I got your note. That’s terrible about Cyrus. I’m so sorry. And I know he was your friend. It couldn’t have anything to do with me, could it? There were a whole lot of reporters at the gate but the security people got rid of them. I know you’ll be busy so I’m going to knock myself out with a Mogadon until the afternoon. I’ll be here. Please call me. Again, I’m terribly sorry about Cyrus. If there’s anything I can do you must tell me . . . In fact, I think I need you to tell me what to do next, anyway . . . I’ll wait to hear from you.’

  12

  ‘We never sleep,’ I’d told Cy, but I did—until late in the morning. I came up from the deep sleep more fresh and eager than I’d felt in many weeks and I knew the reason why. I surveyed my body as I dressed—not too bad, love handles but not out of control, more grey hairs on the chest than on the head and overall muscle tone reasonable. Not finished yet. I did a few perfunctory exercises—stretches, knee bends, nothing serious—and then I was reminded of Cy and his extensive exercise sessions before our squash games. They’d exasperated me slightly and made me anxious to have a whack, probably a piece of smart strategising by Cy.

  I shaved carefully, something I’d neglected lately, and ate breakfast, which I rarely do—an almost-past-it orange, toast and two boiled eggs. After two cups of coffee I was ready to face the paper, but Cy’s death had just made the Stop Press and the details were minimal. There was nothing about me, and if the TV boys and girls had got some meaningless footage, dressed it up somehow, and run it early I didn’t want to know. I brushed my teeth several times, regretting the chips and discolourations—talismans of fights, poor dentistry and bad habits—and got out my notes and diagrams to review the state of the matter.

  Nothing had changed. There were no new names to add to the equations, only one to subtract. Perhaps Cy’s death had nothing to do with the Fleischman case. For all I knew he could have been representing someone with some connection to Neddy Smith, in which case anything was possible from any angle. But I didn’t think so. Why hit him just there and just then? Why not as he got into the car or got out of it? My gut feeling was that this was directly related to either Fleischman’s death or Claudia’s future. Was it a warning? If so, from whom and with what intent? It pained me to reach the conclusion, but I decided that my courses of action remained the same—protect Claudia, find Haitch Henderson, identify white-sleeve of Watsons Bay and, if possible, communicate with Anton Van Kep.

  Hardest things first, always. I phoned the office of Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Parker and after exchanging wisecracks with his secretary, Abigail, secured an appointment with him for early that afternoon. I didn’t kid myself about my persuasive powers, the police bureaucracy is as impervious to plea and reason as any other; Frank had no doubt monitored the conversation and intervened himself. He’d know that I knew. He might even know what I wanted. It was impossible to wrong-foot Frank. Just to be evenly balanced with him was good going.

  Frank Parker had secured his promotion after the last ICAC enquiry had cleaned out most of the dead wood and rotten apples above him. Frank believed in the cop culture and had done his share of verballing and corner-cutting in the old days, but he had managed to keep himself clean while not stepping on too many toes of the dirty. I owed him more favours than he owed me when you added them up but in Frank’s eyes he’d incurred a debt to me he could never repay—I’d introduced him to the woman who became his wife.

  Hilde Stoner had been a lodger in my house, a dental nurse and an all-round terrific person. Some bad business in Bondi had brought me into contact with Parker and through me he met Hilde. His marriage had collapsed; she was looking for more in life than crowns and root canals and they never took a backward step. They’d been married for going on ten years and had a son, name of Clifford, poor little bugger. Frank k
new and I knew that it was Hilde and the boy that had got him off the bottle and kept him back from all the rancid deals that come the way of cops, whether they’re straight or bent. It was good to have someone of influence feel that grateful to me, even if I’d done nothing to deserve it, except put in the odd good word—and stand aside myself, of course.

  The phone had been ringing pretty steadily—journalists seeking interviews. I ignored the messages and wiped them as soon as they’d finished talking. Three faxes came through in similar vein and I tore them into strips to use as scrap paper by the phone. I knew it’d be the same at the office and I didn’t want to go there. I phoned Pete Marinos and made sure the watch was being kept on the Fleischman apartment. Then I took out the Colt, cleaned and loaded it and put it in a plastic shopping bag which I carried out to the car. There was some evidence of the events of yesterday—fragments of the busted Commodore tail light, oil spill from something that had been fractured in my Falcon, two cigarette packets, a rash of butts and some soft-drink cans from the last night’s visitors. No blood or tissue, making the Glebe asphalt a hell of a lot better than the trendy paving outside Claudia’s front gate.

  Frank was standing by the window in his office in the Darlinghurst Police Centre, looking towards the city. There were a surprising number of trees to be seen in that direction. He swung around as soon as I entered and stuck out his hand.

  ‘Gidday, Cliff. You look pretty good, considering.’

  We shook and I joined him by the window. ‘Considering what?’

  ‘Oh, years on the clock, bottles and glasses, blast grenades, things like that.’

  I grunted. ‘You heard about Cy?’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry, mate. He was a good bloke—great bloke in fact, for a fucking lawyer.’

  He sat on the edge of his desk which was untidy, covered with papers and reports and all the other snowstorm of bumf that descends on bureaucrats. Essentially that was what Frank now was. He was about my height and weight, a few years older but he didn’t look it. He and Hilde were passionate tennis players and they exercised so as not to lose their suppleness. Me, I exercise hard when I’ve got the time and so far I’m holding up reasonably well. Although Frank paid his dues as a beat policeman and detective, he didn’t get his nose broken in the boxing ring, cop malaria in Malay when fighting the Chinese communists and stop a lot of fists and several bullets. That’s my explanation for my treadmarked face.