Man In The Shadows ch-11

by Peter Corris

  ‘Come,’ the man said. He beckoned with an impatient flick of his fingers.

  The woman shivered and shrank closer to me.

  ‘She doesn’t want to come,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you go?’

  ‘Wife,’ he said.

  ‘No! No!’ She gripped my arm. Blood dripped on to the wet footpath. He reached for her and I stepped forward and chopped at the muscle of his extended arm. He yelped and swung at me but he had to move his feet to do it. One foot came down on some Moreton Bay mush and he started to slip; I helped him with a shove to the shoulder. He slithered and crashed into the side of a car. His leg twisted under him as he went down hard.

  The woman was small and light; I half-carried her to my car, pushed her across to the passenger side and got behind the wheel. As we turned the corner out of the street I looked in the rear vision mirror-the dark man was lurching across the road towards the house and the African Queen was rushing out into the rain to meet him.

  ‘You need a doctor.’ Blood was welling up from a slash across her right forearm; her left arm was giving her pain. She winced as she tried to straighten it.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was just above a whisper, hard to hear with the noise of my old engine, old wipers and the hiss of traffic on a wet road. She was young and pretty with delicate features and a pale amber skin. Her black hair had been held up by combs one of which had fallen out so that she had a half disordered look that would have been very attractive if it weren’t for the blood and the trembling spasms that shook her. Her thin dress was soaked.

  A kilometre from the Woollahra house, I pulled up outside one of the twenty-four-hour clinics that have sprung up around the city in recent times. She glanced out the window and shrieked. Her hands clutched for a hold on the dashboard.

  ‘No, no, not here! No!’

  Jesus, what is this? I thought, but I got moving again.

  ‘Okay, okay, I’ll get you to my doctor. All right?’

  She nodded and slumped down in the seat. When I could spare attention from the treacherous roads I glanced across at her. She wasn’t dead and she wasn’t asleep-half-alive would about describe it.

  Ian Sangster stitched the cut in the right arm and eased the dislocated shoulder back. He put the left arm in a sling. The woman took it all without a murmur.

  ‘Bad cut, Cliff,’ Ian said.

  ‘Dangerous place, the kitchen; almost as bad as the bedroom.’

  Ian sniffed. ‘She’s got some nasty bruises too. There was a big, strong man involved.’

  ‘He’s limping now,’ I said. ‘Tell me, Ian, what d’you think of these clinics-the joints with the leather lounges and cocktail cabinets?’

  ‘A few of them’re all right, some’ll be video shops in six months.’ He snorted. ‘Come to think of it, that’s about what they are now, some of ‘em. Why?’

  ‘No reason.’

  ‘If you’re sick, come to me.’

  ‘I haven’t been sick since I stopped smoking.’

  ‘Wise, very wise.’ Ian smoked fifty a day.

  She gave me a name on the drive home, Lela Somosi, and told me she was a Filipino. That’s all; she was almost unconscious. Shock and exhaustion, Ian had said. I squelched up the path to the front of my house half-carrying her as before-great stuff for the neighbours. Helen let me in and didn’t ask any questions. She put Lela Somosi in a warm bath, gave her a dressing gown and made her some tea. The woman clutched the mug and took a sip. She smiled at Helen.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘We’ll show you where you can sleep in a minute,’ I said. ‘But will you tell me about that house first?’

  She nodded. ‘Women come there from overseas. We are not here legally. We work as prostitutes. For those who are most… happy and the beautiful ones, it can be only three months. For others it can be six months or a year.’

  ‘For what?’ I said.

  ‘To get papers. Real papers. Legal papers for Australia.’

  ‘And what happened to you today?’

  ‘I am not happy. The men do not like me. Richard tells me I will never get the papers unless I change. We fight.’

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘Richard da Suva, he is the boss. He is from Brazil.’

  ‘Who’s the black woman, the tall one?’

  ‘She’s tired, Cliff. Let her sleep,’ Helen said.

  ‘No. I will tell you. She is Riki Marquand, from Brazil.’

  ‘And that doctor you wouldn’t go to.’

  ‘He does things for Richard. I thank you for helping me. I would like to know why you do it, but I am tired now.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Have some sleep. More talk later.’

  Helen took her into the spare room and I made some sandwiches and got out the flagon. I put one glass down quickly and poured two more as Helen came in.

  ‘Saw you,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve earned it, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Mm.’ She drank and took a bite of tomato and cheese. ‘Your client’s hubby’s in the shit, isn’t he?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘What do you mean? A Cabinet minister in some sleazy girl immigration racket? This has to go to the police or the Crime Authority or something.’

  ‘Client comes first.’

  ‘Explain.’ She took a long pull on her wine and nibbled at a crust.

  ‘I wasn’t hired to blow the whistle on Winslow. I just have to report to his wife on what he’s doing.’

  ‘That’s passing the buck to her. She won’t do anything.’

  I shrugged. ‘If I go around reporting to the authorities on everything I find out about people no one will hire me. I’ll be out of business.’

  ‘This is different.’

  ‘Yeah, it is. But the principle remains the same.’

  ‘Principle!’

  We argued it back and forth for a while, drinking wine and getting nowhere. We got heated and exasperated. At about five o’clock Helen looked out the window; there was a fitful glow in the pale sky about where the sun would be, if it ever came back.

  ‘I’m going to a movie,’ she said. ‘ Romancing the Stone, want to come?’

  ‘No thanks. D’you want the car?’

  ‘No thanks. See you.’

  She went and I wandered around the house for a while. I put the wine away and had some coffee; then I got the wine out again and had some more. I looked in on Lela-she was deeply asleep with both damaged arms lying free and looking comfortable. At seven o’clock I walked along Glebe Point Road, stretching my legs for the first time in days and thinking about food and principles. The footpath was drying out in patches and the air smelled and tasted clean. I had some food in one of the coffee shops, bought gin and Gitanes as a peace offering for Helen and came back with the same principles I’d started out with.

  For some reason the gate to my place opens outwards so I always close it when I leave. As I turned into the street I could see the gate hanging over the footpath. I ran. The door to the house was open and banging against the splintered jamb. I raced up the stairs to the spare room. The bed was almost undisturbed but Lela Somosi was gone. I stood in the room blaming myself and building up a head of anger. When I got downstairs Helen had just walked in. I nodded to her, grabbed the phone and dialled Barbara Winslow’s number. I was still carrying the shopping and Helen came across and took it gently from me.

  ‘Mrs Winslow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Cliff Hardy.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Cliff Hardy. I have to talk to you.’

  ‘You must have the wrong number.’ She hung up. I looked stupidly at the receiver, shook my head and pressed the redial button. The phone rang and rang until the connection was broken by the automatic cut-off.

  I stumbled out to the kitchen and watched Helen pour gin over ice. I took the glass and drank half of it in a gulp.

  ‘Don’t say it,’ I snarled.

  ‘I wasn’t going to.’

  ‘No, yo
u wouldn’t. I’m sorry, love. I’ve been so dumb. Bastards!’

  ‘Have you got her cheque?’

  ‘Cash.’

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  ‘Somebody’s worked fast-put me in Woollahra and connected me to Winslow’s wife. God knows how. Ian must’ve got a scare and promised her he wouldn’t do it again.’

  ‘What about Lela?… What are you doing?’

  I was getting my Smith amp; Wesson and the holster from the locked drawer under the hi-fi. ‘I’m going out there to get that da Silva guy. I’ll bend him until he gives me the girl.’

  ‘Go to the police.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to tell them-no witness, no evidence.’

  ‘You’re being dumb again.’

  ‘Probably.’

  I drove like a madman to Woollahra, at speeds that would’ve killed me and others just hours before on the wet roads. But the roads were dry now and the night sky was clear and starry. I held the gun in one hand and wrapped the other in an old sweater. I planned to go through the window and break anything else I had to on the way to da Silva. But Helen had been right. The house was dark and quiet. I let my pulse slow, put the gun back in the car and took out some picklocks instead.

  Inside all that remained was a strong smell of perfume. There was no furniture, no books, no newspapers, no people. The cover-up had started and I knew how it would go on from there. The neighbours would know nothing; the estate agent would have dealt with intermediaries; the property would be owned by a company which was owned by another company and so on.

  I drove to the clinic and parked outside. Now that the rain had stopped and my windows weren’t misted I could see through the plate glass doors.

  There was a statue inside-Michelangelo’s ‘David’. There was also white carpet and Scandinavian furniture-I wondered how David felt about that. Lela had said that the doctor here did things for da Silva. As I understood it, these places had a fluid casual staff. Did she mean the Boss Doctor or Doctor Smith who worked on Wednesday nights? Nothing here either.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said to Helen.

  ‘I found this in a pocket of her dress.’ She held out a scrap of paper which was still damp from the rain. On it was written ‘Luis 818 2456’.

  ‘A friend?’ Helen said.

  ‘That’s what she needed.’ I dialled the number.

  ‘Yes? ^’

  I covered the receiver. ‘How d’you pronounce it?’ Helen shrugged.

  ‘Lewis?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Who is this?’

  ‘I’m a friend of Lela Somosi; I’d like to talk to you.’

  ‘Is Lela there?’ The voice was young, quick and excited.

  ‘No. Can we meet?’

  ‘You are not the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Immigration?’

  ‘No. I took Lela away from the house in Woollahra today.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  I drew a deep breath. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They have taken her back?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  There was a sob in the voice. ‘Then she is dead.’ The sound of weeping, deep and racking, came over the line. I held on to the phone, feeling useless and guilty, until he composed himself. I told him what had happened. He wept again. He told me that he had met Lela at the house where he had gone in the company of his boss. He named him, a union leader I had read about. Luis had tried to persuade Lela to get away from da Silva. She was afraid and had resisted. He’d written out his name and number for her.

  ‘How do you know she’s dead, Luis?’

  ‘I know. I can show you.’

  He named a place. I met him there. The rain had started again and it kept up, slashing through the dark night sky, while a quiet little Latin American showed me how murder and disposal were done, Sydney style, 1984.

  The next day the harassment began. A cop stopped me and went over the Falcon with a microscope. He found the unlicensed gun and declared the car unroadworthy. I got a three month suspension of my investigator’s licence for the gun. I got unpleasant phone calls and the clicks and rattles that punctuated calls I made from my home and office phones practically drowned out conversation. Winslow was showing me what he could do. I hated it, but I got the message.

  Halfway through the suspension I was sitting in my office writing out cheques of doubtful authenticity when Barbara Winslow walked in. I looked at her and so far forgot my manners that I didn’t even ask her to sit down. She looked ghastly, pale and thin; her fashionable suit hung on her like an op-shop rag.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I know that Ian has been giving you a bad time.’

  I shrugged. ‘He’s a murderer. It could be worse.’

  She shuddered and dropped into the chair. ‘He promised he would stop seeing her. He said he could get clear of all that… mess. He hasn’t done… anything.’

  I put a cheque in an envelope and didn’t speak. I searched the desk for a stamp and didn’t find one.

  ‘A murderer,’ she said.

  I nodded.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked out the window. The sky was dark and threatening; by the time we got there it’d be raining for sure. I stood. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

  On the way I filled her in on the Winslow-da Silva connection and what had happened the night she’d told me I had a wrong number. I took her to the building site on the edge of the Darling Harbour development. The rain started to slant down and the light dimmed. We stood where Luis and I had stood a few weeks back and I pointed things out to her. ‘See the crane there? You get the body, in this case it was a Filipino girl named Lela. She’d have been, oh, maybe twenty, and you attach it to this mechanism at the end of the crane. You can release it from the cabin.’ I traversed the muddy landscape with my finger. ‘See the dark smudges, beyond those mullock heaps? They’re holes for foundations and underground installations. They go down a long way. Lot of water in them now. You can’t approach them on foot; it’s all honeycombed under there, not reinforced yet. Are you following me?’

  Her face was wet with rain and tears. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Okay. You swing the crane out over the hole and you drop the body. You have to be good at it but the men who do it get some practice, courtesy of animals like your husband. Eventually a million tons of concrete and steel complete the job.’

  We walked away, both coatless and hatless and soaked to the skin. I hailed a taxi and Barbara Winslow got into it, moving like a shocked accident victim. Abruptly, she wound the window down.

  ‘I can divorce him,’ she said fiercely, ‘and pull the political plug on him.’

  ‘Do it,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  A month later the Winslow divorce was in the papers. A little after that, Winslow was sacked from Cabinet for misleading the Parliament. An election was coming up and one of the party bright boys, a favourite of the Premier’s, was nominated for preselection in Winslow’s seat. The rain had stopped and the patches of mould that had begun to sprout and spread on my walls retreated and dried out. My suspension period expired and I went back to work.

  High Integrity

  George Marr was the Credit Comptroller at Partner Bros which, if it wasn’t the biggest department store chain in Sydney, was rapidly getting that way. To me, he looked absurdly young for his job, but that might have been because I was feeling a fraction too old for mine. He was a slightly built, fair character with a fresh complexion. His hair was cut short and I suspected that he put something on it to keep it as neat as it was. His white shirt was as crisp and fresh as if he’d just put it on a few minutes before, although it was 11 am.

  ‘Mr Hardy,’ Marr said, ‘have you got a Partner Card?’

  ‘No. I’ve got a Medicare card and MasterCard. I was hoping to limit my card-holding to them.’

  Marr raised one fair eyebrow and looked younger still. ‘You don’t approve of
cards?’

  ‘These days I might have a couple I don’t even know about, the way things are going.’

  ‘Cards are the future.’

  ‘They’re all right for poker.’

  He digested that while I looked around his office. It was neat, stocked with everything he’d need. His secretary was holding his calls and the boldly written entry in the appointments diary open on the desk in front of him showed that I had twenty minutes.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose that attitude will help keep you objective.’

  ‘What is the objective, Mr Marr?’

  His expression showed that he didn’t like jokes that early in the day; perhaps he didn’t like them at all. ‘The Partner Card enables you to credit shop in any of our stores with a minimum of fuss. The system is completely computerised-high integrity, the most sophisticated data base and… ‘

  ‘Hold it. You’ve lost me.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. There are more than 20,000 card-holders, state-wide.’

  ‘That’s more than members of the Liberal Party. It sounds wonderful for your… merchandising. What’s the problem?’

  ‘The card is being forged. The system is being used fraudulently.’

  ‘Ah.’ I sat back in the comfortable seat and thought about what I’d seen on the way to Marr’s office. I’d passed several million dollars worth of electronic junk on the way to a lift which had flashed by three floors crammed with ‘Home’, ‘Fashion’, ‘Style’ and ‘Recreational’ junk. Partners was organised in ‘Lifestyle Themes’; you set out to buy a box of matches and you ended up with a barbecue.