by Peter Corris
I was relieved that he got the reference. ‘There’s a wine bar down the street. Meet me there when you’re free and we’ll do some business.’
Hank drove a Nissan Patrol 4WD and lived in Dover Heights. We called by his flat while he explained to his girlfriend, Pammy, an intense, bespectacled young woman, that he was moonlighting for me. She wasn’t pleased. I said it was only for a few hours but she still wasn’t pleased. Hank loaded some of those metal boxes into the Patrol and we were off.
‘Pammy’s not happy,’ I said.
‘Pammy doesn’t do happy. She’ll be okay.’
We went to my office and I could see that Hank loved everything about it-the decor, the smell, Stephanie Geller next door. I didn’t have the heart to tell him about the rent and the plumbing. He went straight to work with his gadgets and in no time flat located listening and monitoring devices in my telephone and fax.
‘You’ve been penetrated, man,’ he said.
‘Thanks. Just leave them be, okay?’
‘You sure? I can-’
‘Have a look at the computer.’
I showed him the message with the hotmail address. The Power Mac isn’t new and he almost curled his lip, but he settled down in front of it and started in with those rapid action things computer experts do that make my head spin. He inserted a compact disc and stared at me.
‘What?’
‘Give me your password.’
I told him and his fingers flicked over the keys. He looked annoyed at the time menus took to come up and be eliminated but he persisted. I made mugs of instant coffee and by the time I got back he was tapping his fingers on the desk. He looked at the mug.
‘What’s this?’
‘Instant coffee.’
‘Jesus. Okay, thanks. It’s tricky, excising an address, but it can be done and it can be traced. That’s the good news.’
‘Give me the bad news.’
‘My kind of guy. This came from an Internet cafe in the city. Sender was good, knew what to do. Have you ever used those things?’
‘Once or twice.’
‘You know how it works. You give your name, Hank, and pay in cash.’
I drank the coffee and Hank didn’t. He played around some more but he couldn’t have found out anything I wouldn’t have wanted him to know. I haven’t had the computer long enough to put many case files on it and from what I’d seen I was beginning to think I wouldn’t in future. There still seemed to be something to say for folders and a strong, locked filing cabinet, maybe with a noxious anti-theft device.
We picked up a pizza and some beer and went to my house where Hank repeated the debugging procedure with similar results. Like any good young entrepreneur he had his own company and was under contract to the security firm O’Connor had employed. He said he’d send me an invoice online.
‘You’ll get a cheque in the mail.’
‘You can pay me online.’
I looked at him as I opened the pizza and handed him a beer.
‘Okay, okay,’ he said, ‘ a cheque it is. But you should move with the times, Cliff.’
We were sitting at the breakfast bench in my kitchen. I waved a slice of pizza at him. ‘I have, and look where it’s got me. Any arsehole who wants to can know my business. I suppose my mobile’s insecure as well.’
He chewed, drank and swallowed, then used one of the paper napkins that came with the pizza. Good manners. ‘Unlikely, and you need some pretty high-tech equipment to intercept cell phone calls, especially if it’s digital. Where is it?’
‘It is digital and it’s in my car at the garage. The NRMA had to tow it for me after the tyres got slashed.’
He was about to take another bite but he stopped and his jaw fell. ‘No shit? What’s this all about? Hey, dumb question. You can’t tell me.’
‘No. Sorry, it’s complicated and I don’t really know what it’s all about myself.’
I used his mobile to leave messages for O’Connor and Lorrie via the guard at the hospital that my office and home phones were insecure and my mobile not available, then we sat and ate and drank for a while. He knew when to keep quiet and when to talk. He inspected my CD, vinyl and cassette collection without throwing up and took an intelligent interest in the books. I was glad of his company and an idea was forming in my mind. We tidied away the remains of the meal and the cans and I put a pot of real coffee on to perc.
‘Are you working tomorrow?’
He nodded. ‘Evening shift. Free in the day.’
‘How’re you in boats?’ I said.
It was barely light the next morning when Hank and I lowered the aluminium dinghy I’d borrowed from Clive, my fishing fanatic neighbour, into the water at Birchgrove after making sure Penny’s yacht was still where it had been. We’d transported the dinghy on the top of Hank’s Patrol and the only thing that dampened his enthusiasm was the set of oars.
‘I can get us an outboard, Cliff.’
‘So could I. I want to be quiet. Element of surprise.’
‘I’ve got the tazer. You reckon that shooter’s going to be there?’
‘Do you think I’d go unarmed and take you along if I did?’
‘I guess not.’
‘Right. No, I suppose you could say I’m just fishing.’
I was wearing jeans and sneakers and they got wet, as I expected, but we got underway and I pointed out the direction. Hank’s strong oar strokes were irregular but better than mine. The few times I’ve tried to row I’ve sent the boat in circles. The harbour water was smooth and we made good time. The You Beaut was bobbing gently at its mooring.
‘Nice boat,’ Hank said.
‘The owner says it’s a yacht.’
‘Whatever. You’ve been on it?’
‘In Noumea.’
‘Wow. Okay, we come alongside and then what?’
I pointed. ‘We go up that ladder, if that’s what they call it.’
Hank brought the dinghy to where the ladder reached down almost to the water level and I tied it to the bottom rung. The dinghy bumped against the yacht a few times before it settled into place and I wondered how the sound would carry. We waited a few seconds but no reaction came from above so we went up onto the deck, me first. Hank had the stun gun on his belt and I gestured for him to keep it there.
Up close, the yacht showed signs of wear and tear. The spick and span appearance I’d noticed at Noumea was long gone. The woodwork was salt spattered and the metal fittings were dull. There were seagull droppings in various places and the sails lashed to the masts were stained and tired-looking. I moved forward towards the hatch. The yacht rocked a little, reacting to a slight wake from some other boat. I reached for the handrail and snatched my hand away.
Hank saw it at the same time as me. The handrail was smeared for a couple of metres with something brown and sticky. A couple of flies had been caught in it as it dried and others were buzzing around it now.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ I said.
The hatch was open and I went down the steps keeping my hands to my sides.
It’s always the same-you can hear it and smell it before you see it. The flies buzzed like mini chainsaws and the blood gave off that stink that comes when it meets the air and dries. Add in the emptied bowels. Reg Penny lay on the floor of the saloon where we’d had our uneasy conversation those few weeks ago. No neat kill this. He’d been stabbed several times and the blood had flowed until one of the stabs hit his heart. He was bare-chested, the only way I’d ever seen him, and the wounds were dark on his tanned skin, with dried blood over his torso where the flies were taking off and landing and fighting over the spoils.
Blood was spattered over a fair distance, presumably from when the knife had been thrust home, retracted and thrust again, and again. The floor of the saloon between the body and the door wasn’t bloodied, which was why there were no footprints, but blood-smeared fingers had clutched the rail beside the hatch steps and beyond. I tried to block Hank but he leaned over me and got a
full view of the scene.
‘Jee-zus!’
‘Don’t throw up. The SOC guys don’t like bagging it.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Was. The bloke we came to see.’
‘What do we do?’
I was feeling shaky. This had been a vigorous man, considerably younger than me, dabbling in dangerous matters but alive just twenty-four hours ago and probably for longer than that. I recalled the careless way he’d tossed the beer bottle into the water and sauntered away with his young companion. A moment frozen in time for me and caught on my camera. The weirdness of it made me short-tempered.
‘What do you think? What would they tell you in the TAFE course. To split?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Of course you don’t.’ I sucked in a breath and almost gagged myself. Some mentor. ‘Sorry, Hank,’ I said. ‘This is my third body in two days. It’s getting to me. What you do is you go back up on deck, get in a few breaths of fresh air, and call the police.’
‘You?’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
19
The saloon-cum-kitchen wasn’t hard to search, because there was very little in it and what there was Penny had arranged pretty neatly-the books and magazines, technical manuals about the yacht’s equipment, eating and cooking utensils, maps and charts, tools, playing cards, board games. I picked through it as quickly as I could, disturbing it as little as possible. I was looking for anything that might give me a lead on the Noumea mystery man and/or the young man I’d seen on the yacht the day before. Nothing there.
The sleeping quarters consisted of two bunks, three-quarter bed size. The top bunk was unmade with just a mattress and a pillow. The bottom bunk had two pillows and sheets with a light duvet bunched up near the foot. The bunk had been slept in and, at a guess, fucked in. There were stains and traces of cigarette ash. A bottle of massage oil stood on the floor near the bunk along with a box of tissues, personal lubricant and a packet of condoms. It looked as if Penny had practised safe sex, or thought he had.
His clothes hung in a shallow closet and were stacked, neatly again, in a set of drawers. Jackets, trousers, shirts, T-shirts, shorts, jeans, boxers, Y-fronts, socks. Nothing out of the ordinary. I was looking for a diary, a journal, the log, a notebook, anywhere information might be recorded. There was no Rolodex, no laptop. Either Penny was remarkably free of the impulse to record information, names and events, or his killer had got there first. In a folder lying on the top bunk, buff-coloured like the mattress so that I didn’t spot it at first, was a sheaf of financial records relating to the yacht. I leafed through them, but they appeared to be specific and uninteresting, although there were invoices for parts and labour from a ship’s engineer in Noumea, dated the day I’d given Penny the money.
Time was running short. No passport, which certainly suggested an earlier search and removal exercise. Penny’s tobacco packet lay beside the pillow and I moved it to look under the pillow. It felt more solid than it should have. I opened it and found a miniature audio cassette, nestled in with the tobacco and the papers.
Hank’s voice came from above. ‘Cliff, the cops are here.’ I stuffed the cassette down inside my left sock and went through the saloon, past the body and back up into the beginning of the day.
I got Hammond and Carmichael again, and they were even less happy than the day before. College Street again.
‘You didn’t tell us anything about this boat,’ Carmichael said with the tape running. ‘Why not?’
‘You didn’t ask.’
‘How could we? What were you looking for out there- the guy who shot at you?’
‘Yeah. That’s why I didn’t have a gun and took the kid.’
‘Why did you take him?’ Hammond looked concerned.
‘To row the boat. I’m no oarsman.’
Carmichael said, ‘He was carrying a stun gun. They’re illegal.’
I shrugged. ‘That’s what I told him, but he works in security. They probably all carry them, I wouldn’t know.’
And so it went on. I told them all I knew about Penny and his connection with Montefiore and Fay Lewis and Stewart Master. I told them that I’d seen the boat at Balmain the day before. I didn’t tell them about the young man aboard, or the photographs I’d taken or about the cassette that was creating a blister on my foot inside my sock.
They were sceptical, experienced interrogators, but this time around they got no more out of me than I’d wanted to give.
‘We’ll be keeping an eye on you, Hardy,’ Carmichael said when the tape had been turned off.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘With the balaclava boy around I can use the protection. What about Bachelor?’
‘He’ll be charged with possession of an illegal instrument.’
‘Great. That could screw up his career nicely.’
‘Tough,’ Carmichael said. ‘I hope your public liability policy’s paid up, Hardy. That Yank could sue you for everything you’ve got for getting him in this shit. You know the way they are. In fact, I just might give him the idea.’
‘You disappoint me, Inspector. I thought the police service was trying for better relations with the citizenry.’
Hammond looked embarrassed as she wound the tape back, but Carmichael wasn’t fazed. ‘That doesn’t include a cowboy nuisance like you.’
I’d had enough of him. ‘Fuck you, Carmichael. That kid conducted himself well. He didn’t freak when he saw the mess; he kept your crime scene clean and he called in straight off the way I told him to. If you heavy him he’s likely to turn into just another cowboy nuisance like me. That’s how we’re made.’
Carmichael let go one of his patent sneers. ‘Is that so? Well, I’ll have to look into the chances of deporting him.’
Great work, Cliff, I thought. I walked out of the College Street station into the mid-morning. Hank Bachelor was nowhere around; Lorrie Master was in hospital and I’d possibly buggered up Bachelor’s job prospects. I was at a low ebb, but at least I’d had the sense not to retrieve the cassette from my sock until I was safely inside the cab taking me to Drummoyne, to the NRMA approved garage where I collected my car and paid for four new tyres. They were probably overdue.
It was well on into the afternoon when I got to Glebe and the moment I stepped out of the car I heard a yell.
‘Hey, Cliff, what about my tinny?’
‘Jesus, Clive, I forgot all about it. I had some trouble with the cops and it’s tied up at the Balmain wharf.’
‘I hope the buggers haven’t impounded it.’
‘No, it’ll be right. I’ll get the young bloke onto it.’
Clive said okay and I made a mental note to get him a slab. That reminded me, I’d eaten nothing since before dawn. I microwaved a few slices of the leftover pizza and opened a Hahn light. That all went down well so I heated up some of the previous night’s coffee and took it into the sitting room with the cassette and my recorder. I was about to press ‘Play’ when the thought occurred to me that the room itself might be bugged as well as the phone.
I regrouped in the back yard. It’s about five metres by five, bricked with weeds poking through, and some native plants around the edges struggling against persistent neglect. I brushed leaves and unidentifiable pollution from one of the two deck chairs and was set to go when the mobile, which I’d also brought out to complete the set-up, rang.
‘Hardy.’
‘Hey, Cliff, this is Hank, Hank Bachelor.’
My heart would have sunk except that he sounded so happy. ‘You’re the only Hank I know, Hank, so there’s no need for the surname. I was all ready to apologise but you sound uppish.’
‘Man, am I up? I’ve just had the greatest experience. With the cops and all? The report I can put on to my teacher on policing, surveillance, interview technique? Man, I’ve got it made.’
‘What about the charge for carrying an illegal-?’
‘Instrument? That’s a blast. The security company’s been dying for a test case
on the law. They couldn’t be happier.’
‘I’m not sure I want one of my investigations to become a high-profile test case, Hank.’
‘It’s months away, Cliff. Months away. We’ll have this thing unscrambled by then.’
‘We?’
‘Sure. Here’s my mobile number.’ He recited it and I wrote it down in the notebook I’d had ready to make notes on the tape. ‘I’ll be watchin’ over your lady again tonight.’
I asked him if he could recover the dinghy and deliver it back to Clive and he said he would.
‘Right, Hank. Thanks.’
‘Thank you! We’ll stay in touch, won’t we, Cliff?’
He rang off. I put the phone down slowly. Was there some sort of threat, an implied pressure, in his last remark? No, not Hank. Surely not.
I set the recorder on a brick and hit ‘Play’. There were some indeterminate sounds before a voice spoke clearly.
Montefiore: ‘I’m getting so fuckin sick of this. How long does he say now?’
Lewis: ‘You heard him. Stop whingeing. A couple of days.’
Montefiore: ‘I could do with a drink and a fuck.’
Lewis: ‘Yeah, that’d be right. In that order.’
Montefiore: ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
Lewis: ‘Just go to sleep.’
Montefiore: ‘C’mon, Fay’
Lewis: ‘No, he’ll hear us. Anyhow, you should complain. I’m out of smokes and nicotine’s more addictive than alcohol… and heroin.’
Montefiore: ‘Yeah, yeah. You can smoke yourself to death when we get the money. Shit, sorry, love. Didn’t mean that. This fuckin’ boat…’
Lewis: ‘Is it any wonder I won’t tell you the name? How could I trust you?’
Montefiore: ‘I could make you tell me.’
Lewis: ‘No, you wouldn’t have the guts.’
Montefiore: ‘You’re right, torturing women’s not my scene. Anyway, I know the name, so really you’re just along for the fuckin’ ride, aren’t you?’
Lewis: ‘You don’t know it.’
Montefiore: ‘Eastman, right? Frank Eastman. That’s when he wasn’t Phil West.’