by Peter Corris
‘We go out to the end’, I whispered, ‘and if there's nothing there we work around the sides. Keep under cover and listen for a boat, could be a motor, oars, anything.’
Short nodded and we stepped over the gently lapping edge of the water onto a platform. It was slow, nervy work trying to avoid the collapsed and rotting timbers and keep under cover. About half way out we heard noises off to the left. Getting closer I could see movement; shoulders and heads against the light thrown out from the container dock. There was a boat in the pool of light and Selina Hope was sitting up in it; her hands were tied and there was something across the bottom half of her face. Mustard Cleary was picking up a box a few feet back from the water and the other man was untying a rope that ran from the boat to a cleat on the lighters. Short touched my arm and showed me the iron bar he held ready to hit with or throw. His readiness for action impressed me. I stepped out and moved up close with the .38 held out police style.
‘Police’, I yelled. ‘Don't move!’
Cleary dropped his load swearing; he ducked low and rushed the gun. I fired over his head and the sound was cancelled by a metallic crash from the container wharf, but Cleary heard it, and stopped. He bent down to grab something and I came forward quickly and crashed the gun butt down on his neck. He crumpled and I nudged him again on the way down.
When I untangled my knuckles and straightened up I heard heavy breathing and scuffling off to the side and saw that Short had moved to the edge of lighters for a bit of hand-to-hand with the other man. The rope had been untied and the boat had drifted off a little; Selina sat ram-rod straight, watching the action with terror in her eyes. Short's opponent was swinging a bit of timber and Short was giving ground; then he seemed to lose his footing and he was hit on the shoulder. Some more swings, some more backing from Short, then another stumble; the timber swinger jumped forward to go for the head but Short swayed aside and smashed his elbow with the iron bar. The timber hit the platform and Short put the bar to his knee, balls and elbow again, quickly and scientifically. The guy screamed and begged him to stop. I moved in with the gun, feeling a little superfluous.
‘Good’, I said, but Short was hauling on the rope.
We got Selina aboard and free and she babbled and held on to Short as if he were the last sane man in a world gone mad. I eased them apart after a while and suggested that we be on our way.
‘What about them?’ Short asked. I was covering Cleary and his mate with my gun in a vague sort of way; Cleary was conscious but was more in a lying-down than standing-over mood. I gave Short one of my hard looks and held out my hand.
‘Give me the money.’
He looked pained but he handed the envelope over. I put the envelope down beside the man who was rubbing his genitals thoughtfully. ‘Tell Xavier to forget it’, I said. ‘Tell him to go to confession and do the stations of the cross, and forget it. It's over, finished. Got it?’
He nodded and I patted his shoulder. ‘Wait here a while and then you can go home. Unless you'd like another go at him?’
He shook his head. We left them there with their aches and pains and thirty grand and walked across the lighters to the distant shore.
Back at the car Short made a clean breast of things, putting himself in the best possible light. He pleaded necessity, swore he intended to protect her and so on. Selina had been scared witless by Carlton's boys: she said she'd done nothing but scream and cry and hadn't told them anything because she hadn't understood what was happening. She still didn't, properly, but she'd seen Short fight like Lancelot in the lists for her and that was enough. They were both experiencing a sort of danger and deliverance high, and I felt like a voyeur. I drove them to Selina's place and made her promise to ring Athol Groom with the good news before she did anything else.
It was after nine on a clear, mild night but I was feeling far from clear and mild myself. There were things about Colin Short that niggled at me, but I had bigger problems. I stopped at the Toxteth and bought whisky for me and gin for Cyn. Maybe we could sit out on the bricks with the insects and take a little tobacco and alcohol and talk things out. Maybe. The house was dark and the front gate stood open but not welcomingly. I went in and found Cyn's note on the kitchen table: it said she was sorry, it said she had left and would collect her things tomorrow, it said good luck.
I poured a big drink, made some cigarettes and sat down to think. Like every married man I'd fantasised about being free; well, here it was and how did I like it? I didn't like it much. I drank some whisky and I still didn't like it. I thought that the talk wouldn't have gone well anyway and that it would have come to this and it was better to have missed that last fight. I drank and got angry and wanted the fight. She had no right to deny me the fight. Upstairs the bed was made, the ashtrays were empty, the books were stacked. She'd taken some clothes and things for beautifying herself. I looked around and mentally separated her possessions from mine. It was surprisingly easy to do.
I drank some more and self-pity ran strong and I thought sourly about Selina and Short and trust and love. I poured the rest of the whisky back into the bottle, drank two cups of strong coffee and went out to the car.
Breaking into Short's studio took about two minutes, locating his life's treasures took a little longer. Some marks on the floor and a certain artfulness about the ashes in the grate told me that all was not as it seemed. A section of the brick fireplace had been taken out to accommodate the heavy, brass-bound chest. I pulled it out, waited a few minutes to be sure that errant torch beams weren't attracting attention, and tickled it open with a skeleton key.
Colin Short was a great photographer, he had a particular talent for men in the public eye and attractive young women. I recognised a politican and radio announcer and could probably have identified a few other faces if I'd tried. A couple of films had a similar cast list.
One bundle of pictures showed a young, dark woman playing games around a swimming pool with a couple of very interested middle-aged men. The hair was different in style but it was Selina Hope. I took these pictures and a few samples of the rest and put the chest back.
I'd had some more whisky when I reached home so I was feeling rather weathered when I got to Athol Groom's establishment the following mid-morning. He congratulated me and we negotiated a fee. I asked him for the dates of Selina's overseas trips and got them. The poolside pictures had a date on the back which proved to be just two weeks before one of Selina's trips.
‘Hang around, Cliff,’ Athol said. ‘Selina's coming in and I know she'll want to thank you. What d’you make of this bloke of hers?’
I was about to answer when Selina came rushing in with Short tagging behind. She looked tousled and a bit underslept but marvellous. She gave me a peck on the cheek.
‘You look tired’, she said. ‘You must have a rest. I don't know how to thank you.’
I wanted to tell her that Short was vermin, that he'd used her to make dirty money and probably would again. I wanted to see his sheepish bit-of-a-rascal look drop away and to see her flay him. But I couldn't; she was so purely happy, so forgiving and loving that I couldn't destroy it. I knew why I wanted to destroy it and I knew it had nothing to do with justice or her future happiness.
I shrugged. ‘Next time you do an ad for Scotch make sure you get a bottle for me. Could you excuse me, Selina? I want a word with Colin.’
I took Short out into the corridor and showed him the pictures I'd souvenired from his collection. He went pale and plucked at a couple of bits of stubble he'd missed that morning.
‘You're a lying, thieving shit’, I said.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘You've retired as a blackmailer. If I ever hear you've gone back to it I'll drop these in the mail with a covering note.’
‘Don't worry’, he said. ‘I'll burn the lot.’
‘I'm a born worrier. She didn't see Carlton the other day, did she?’
‘No, just those two.’
‘That's somethin
g, maybe Carlton's smart enough to let it lie.’
‘We're going to New York’, he said ‘Getting married’.
‘I'd keep it quiet’, I said. ‘Just a few friends if you have any.’
We went back inside and Athol opened some champagne for the occasion. I had a couple of glasses and got a decent kiss off Selina but it didn't do me any good. Later I went back to Glebe. Cyn had made a good job of cleaning her stuff out; she'd even taken the bottle of gin.
Heroin Annie
You've got to help me, Mr Hardy', the woman said. ‘Our Annie's going to end up in the gutter and I don't know what to do.’ The voice was adenoidal and Cockney, the bright lipstick was askew on her big, plain face and she was dropping cigarette ash all over my desk, but I liked her. Ma Parker lived in the street behind mine; she washed dishes in the local pub and sat in the sun outside her house. We talked about the weather and horses and London. I think she once thought I was a schoolteacher, but now she knew I was a private investigator and she'd brought me her troubles.
‘You remember Annie, Mr Hardy? A lovely kid she was.’
I remembered Annie although I hadn't seen her for five years; back then she'd have been about thirteen and she was already tall. I remembered an oval face under straight blonde hair and not much else except the way she moved—she was graceful when she was tomboying in the street with the spotty boys or dragging home Ma's messages in a string bag.
‘Tell me the trouble, Ma’, I said. I'll be happy to help if I can.’ I gave her a cigarette from a box of the things I keep for the weak—since I gave the habit up.
She puffed smoke and her false teeth clicked. ‘Annie ran off on the day she turned fourteen. She must've been planning it for a long time. I didn't know a bleedin' thing about it but she left me a note saying she had some money and not to worry. Worry! I went out of my mind with worry for nearly a year.’
I thought back but I couldn't recall noticing her distress. ‘I'm sorry, Ma’, I said ‘I don't remember it.’
‘Well, you were busy I expect. She was only a kid and I've got Terry and Eileen to think about. I just kept on, you know,’
I nodded. I knew Ma had buried two husbands; I assumed she had a pension. I'd just let her be a walk-on character in the film of my life, the way you do. With the sensitivity suddenly tuned up like this, I looked at her clothes—they were cheap and clean except where she'd dropped ash. Ma herself seemed to be keeping up appearances okay; we were two of a kind, my clothes were cheap and getting due for a dry cleaning.
‘Nearly a year, you said. How was she after that?’
‘I didn't know her. She was all grown up to look at her. She got some money and took off again. The next time I saw her she was in Silverwater.’
‘What for?’, I asked, but I'd have bet money on the answer.
‘Drugs. Heroin and that—she was using them and selling them. She was giving them to kids younger than her. She got three years.’
‘Where? Some detention centre?’
‘No, Silverwater.’
‘She'd be too young.’
She stubbed out the cigarette; she looked old and worn but she wouldn't have been fifty. ‘She made me promise not to tell them her age, she said she was eighteen.’
‘She wanted to do her time at Silverwater?’
‘That's right, Mr Hardy. I couldn't believe it but what could I do?’ A couple of tears ran down her rouged and powdered face. It was one of those moments when I was glad I didn't have any children; she was puzzled, ashamed and guilty, and all because this criminal was her daughter.
‘What's she doing now?’ I hadn't meant the words to come out so harshly, so fully of hostility. She sniffed and looked at me uncertainly.
‘Perhaps I oughtn't to have come. I was going to pay, you know.’
That did the trick. Next I knew I was brewing her tea, stuff I never drink myself, and feeding her more cigarettes and expressing indifference to money. The story was familiar enough: Annie had done eighteen months, came out on parole and went straight back in again on a similar charge. Now she was out again.
‘Something happened to her in there, Cliff', Ma said. She was almost jaunty now, smoking away and getting down her third cup of tea. It was getting on to midday and watching her drink the muddy stuff made me think of something cold and wet in a ten-ounce glass.
‘Come on, Ma, I'll run you home and you can tell me about it.’ We drove to Glebe and I bought her a beer in the pub opposite the trotting track. She said Annie settled down for a while after her second time inside, had a job and seemed steadier. But recently Ma had begun to have her doubts—she didn't like the look of the men who called for the girl and she had the feeling that she was heading for trouble again. She finished her first beer and I ordered another; she had a wonderful bladder.
‘It's the drugs I'm worried about. She swore to me that she was finished with them, but I don't know.’
‘What do you want me to do, Ma? She must be a big girl now.’
‘She's still a kid really. You know how to investigate people—just watch her for a day or two, see what her friends are like. And tell me if you think she's back with the bleedin' drugs.’
‘What will you do if she is?’
Suddenly she lost interest in the beer; there was a rough, flaky patch of skin near her nose, and she scratched it. To a turned-on eighteen-year-old she must have seemed like a survivor from the days of the Tudors. When she spoke her voice was shaky and tired. ‘You know, there was only ever one thing about me that Annie respected. Know what it was?’
I shook my head.
‘That I was born in London. She's got a real thing about London, even reads about it. Anything on the telly about London she watches. Well, I've got a sister whose old man died a while back; and she hasn't got anyone, and she'd love to see Annie. Been looking at her photos for years and reckons she's the ant's pants. She'd pay for Annie to go over and visit her. It's the one thing that Annie'd toe the line for.’
‘You can't bribe people to be good’, I said.
‘I know that, but it's all I've got. I have to know what she's up to so's I can decide what to do.’
I told her the usual things—that she might not like what turned up or that I might not be able to find out anything at all. But she'd made her mind up that this was how she wanted to handle it. She insisted on giving me fifty dollars and when I protested she turned fierce.
‘I'm not bleedin' broke, you know. I work for it, and I expect to pay for work done.’
I subsided. We finished our drinks and she left to walk home. I drove back to my place to have some lunch, re-arrange the bills in order of priority and kill the afternoon. Annie worked at a supermarket in Redfern, Ma had told me, and the strategy was to begin the surveillance that evening to determine whether little Annie was or was not treading the path of virtue. I had fruit and wine for lunch and walked it off in the park as the shadows lengthened. It was autumn, and the ground was just beginning to soften from the occasional rain and the afternoon wind had an edge—it was a nice time to walk.
At a quarter past five I was sitting in my car opposite the supermarket. It was Wednesday and traffic and business were light; the shop window was plastered with signs offering cheap mustard pickles and dish-washing liquid. Some of the signs were torn and flapping, as if idle hands and the wind had not believed their promises.
Ma had told me that I wouldn't need a photograph to recognise Annie and she was right. When she came out at twenty to six she was recognisable from her walk; she still moved well, but there was something not proud about the way she carried her head. Her hair had darkened to a honey colour and she wore it short. In a lumpy cardigan and old jeans she headed across the pavement to a battered Datsun standing at the kerb; no-one stood aside for her and she had to push her way through. I saw her face as she got into the car; it was pale and clenched, knotted with anger and resentment.
The Datsun butted out into the traffic and I followed in my ancient Falcon like a
nother old pensioner out for a stroll. We went down into Erskineville and the Datsun stopped outside a tattered terrace house mouldering away in the shadow of a sheet metal factory. A couple of blasts on the Datsun's horn brought a tall, thin character out from the house. He wore denims and sneakers and had to bend himself twice to get into the back of the car. I noted down the number of the house and the street and then the game began again. I don't do much tailing and I don't particularly like it, it feels too much like driving in a funeral procession. The Datsun driver had bad manners; he cut in and bluffed out and raised several citizens’ blood pressure dangerously. I stuck close and we went through the Cross and into the roller coaster of Double Bay. The apartment buildings don't look much from the outside, but the titles go for six figures; Annie and her mates were climbing the social ladder. The next stop was outside a newish three-storey job with a lot of white stones to slip on and the sort of trees that have the bark peeling off them. The beanpole got out this time, and went into the building for a few minutes. When he came back he had a woman with him; in high heels she must have stood close to six feet and the purple jumpsuit affair she wore showed the world that here was someone who thought well of her body. She slid into the back seat of the car like a cat going into its basket; as she snaked her spike-shoed foot in I realised that I'd been holding my breath. I let it go and followed the Datsun down the hill into the gathering gloom.
They parked a few blocks back from Oxford Street and walked up in two pairs. The car driver was a nuggety number in jeans and a short leather jacket. The clothes accentuated the width of his shoulders and he had an easy, rolling walk like a fighter before the punches get to him. He kept his distance from Annie who mooched along with her hands stuck in the back pocket of her jeans. The beanpole and the Flamingo pranced on up ahead and a good couple of feet apart. He had a long, narrow head and crisp, curling hair; the woman had a high-tone, up-market conceited strut. She didn't talk and the first act of communication she made was to take twenty dollars from her shoulder bag and hand it to the shorter man. He went into the bottle shop of a pub on Oxford Street and came out with a couple of bottles. They moved on; Annie drew closer to the leather jacket, and the tall girl tossed back a mane of platinum hair and led them to a restaurant that boasted French cuisine. A menu taped to the window told me that no main dish came in at under fifteen dollars. Through the smoked glass I saw them arrange themselves around a table and take the top off the rose; it didn't seem likely that they'd duck out the back so I walked up past Taylor Square to a pub that has draft Guinness and honest sandwiches. Forty minutes later I was back outside the restaurant and forty minutes after that they came out. There was no wine left over and the blonde had lost some of her aloofness. The guy in the leather jacket was rock steady but the others were showing some signs. They stood on the footpath and debated something for a few minutes while I watched from across the road. A police car cruised down the strip and the blonde jerked her head at it and said something uncomplimentary. Annie lit a cigarette and the flame in her cupped, shaking hands jerked and danced like a marionette. They settled the point and walked up to the Square to a disco dive with a sign outside that read: ‘Drinks till two and do what you want to do’.