by Peter Corris
Porter looked at his slim, digital watch. ‘Just why are you here, Mr Hardy?’
One good question deserves another. ‘Is anything missing, Mr Porter?’
‘I told you, I simply don’t care, nothing here is mine.’
‘What about the painting?’
He spun around, nearly spilling his drink and looked through the arch into the living room. ‘Christ’, he said. ‘It’s gone.’
‘Tell me about it’, I said.
‘It was worthless. Who’d want to steal that?’ He walked through the arch and looked at the blank space. ‘I used to spend some time at Susannah’s place and she was often here. A civilized arrangement, you understand?’
‘Yeah’, I said.
‘Well, we each left things in one place or another, moved things back and forth. I took a liking to this painting; don’t know why, it was hardly finished really.’
‘Where did it come from?’
‘I don’t know, it just turned up in the house. She was always hanging around artists, I assumed it was just something one of them knocked up. I don’t know anything about art, but this had something I liked… call it spontaneity.’
‘Was it signed?’
‘Oh yes, something illegible, Castlemaine, something like that. Now what’s all this about? I suppose it connects with Susannah’s death?’
‘Yeah, what do you know about that?’
‘Nothing, except what I read and was told. I was upset of course, a horrible thing to happen. But I hadn’t seen her for over a month, we were finished.’
‘What finished you?’
He shrugged. His dark clothes were well cut and expensive; so were the shoes with lifts in them that brought him up to about five foot eight. The woman in the chair was taller, tall enough to see the bald spot near the crown of his head. He looked at his watch again, he seemed anxious to get into a position where bald spots wouldn’t show and didn’t matter. ‘Susannah wanted me to help finance an art gallery, a crazy idea.’ He opened his hands and spread them shoulder-high. ‘Besides, I don’t have any money.’
I nodded and got up. ‘Forgive the intrusion. You were lucky, the guy who busted in here took a swing at me earlier in the night.’ I touched my head.
‘Good God! Do you think he’ll be back here?’
‘Thanks for the sympathy. No, I think he’s got what he wants.’ I finished the drink and said goodnight to Porter whose colour wasn’t so good. He looked a bit unsure of himself for the first time. The tall woman in the chair held out her glass for a refill and I gave her one of my wicked smiles and left.
I cleaned up the head wound, took some aspirin and went to bed. In the morning the head was still tender, but I’d had worse, and was anxious to try to bring about a meeting with the guy who’d given it to me. I used the telephone, and at ten o’clock I was inside Dr Bruno Ernst’s study. He lived in a little sandstone cottage in Balmain down near the wharf. The house looked small because it was full of books and paintings, without them there would have been enough room in it for people, but apart from Ernst himself the only other thing that appeared to live there was a cat. There would probably have been some silverfish. Ernst was a short, squat guy with a fringe of white hair around a bald head, and a spade-shaped white beard. He pushed a typewriter aside on his desk and started to pack a curved pipe with tobacco. Outside a cold wind was rippling the water and flapping the ropes on boats tied up at the wharf. I sat and waited until he’d puffed enough smoke into the air.
‘I understand you’re an expert on Charles Castleton, Dr Ernst.’
‘Bruno’, he said. ‘Not strictly true, no-one is an expert on him, in a way there is nothing to be expert on. I have some knowledge and an interest, yes.’
‘You authenticated a Castleton belonging to a Miss Woods a few weeks back.’
‘That’s right.’ He puffed smoke and looked a little uncomfortable. ‘I was never happy about it.’
‘Why not?’
‘It was unusual. There are lost Castletons, of course. He led an erratic life, gave pictures away, paid debts and liquor bills with them. In 1884 Castleton held an exhibition in Sydney, a little tin-pot affair, but it was reported in the papers of the time and some of the paintings were described. Do you know about this?’
‘Not in detail.’
‘The newspaper report only came to light fairly recently, and it is now taken as the best guide to Castleton’s later period. Most of the paintings mentioned can be accounted for, two cannot.’
‘And Miss Woods had one of them?’
‘Hmm, she had the painting which is called “Stockyards at Jerilderie”.’
‘Fences’, I said.
‘Indeed, a great many fences. This confers value on the work, a puzzling notion.’
‘You’re sure it was genuine?’
He shrugged. ‘I gave my opinion that it was, no-one could be sure. But the woman had another painting of the same subject which was obviously a fraud. The materials were modern, and the technique was crude. She said she had come upon the painting by accident and averted an attempt to produce a fake version. I found this commendable, you see?’
‘Yes, and this helped you to decide that the painting was genuine?’
He scratched at the squared-off beard, disturbing its symmetry. ‘It played a part in my judgement, yes.’
‘I see. Tell me, Dr Ernst, once you’ve inspected and okayed a painting is there any way for anyone to know that you’ve given it the thumbs up?’
‘Bruno. I’m sorry, I do not understand.’
‘Do you mark the painting in any way, Bruno?’
‘Yes, indeed, with a stamp which can only be seen under ultra-violet light. The stamp carried my initials inside an octagon-I marked the Castleton with it.’
I thanked him, and he insisted I have a glass of sherry with him while he showed me his paintings, books and the view. Too many paintings at once numb me, most of the books were in German, but I liked the view. The sherry was okay. As I moved towards the door, he gently suggested that he was due a consultation fee. I wrote him a cheque for fifty bucks and he waved me goodbye with it from his doorway.
I’d left my car in Darling Street, near the police station for safety, but I took a long walk through the Balmain streets trying to order the facts I had. The Woods woman’s story to Ernst sounded phoney, but could possibly be the truth. The only trouble was that there was a third painting in the works. ‘Stockyards at Jerilderie’ would have fitted the picture I’d seen in the Paddington house and I had to assume that Leo Porter’s lost painting was of the same scene. But which one carried Ernst’s mark? That seemed like the vital question, but was it? I worked up a sweat on the uphill stretch from the water and reached into my pocket for something to wipe my face with. I came up with the bit of paint-stained shirt. I looked at it and remembered what Porter had said about his former ladyfriend knocking around with artists. I also remembered the face of the man who’d hit me in the stomach. I hoofed it back to the car and drove through the ill-tempered traffic to the Cross.
Three years’ friendship with Primo Tomasetti seems like a lifetime; I park my car out behind his tattooing parlour for a modest fee and he bombards me with his ideas on the good life- they involve considerable strain on the liver and prostate. Besides tattooing and mural painting, both of which he has brought to a high and erotic pitch, Primo is a bloody good man with a pencil. I stuck the Falcon on the little concrete patch at the back and came up the rear steps into the dark den where Primo plies his trade.
He was tattooing a Kiss-type design on the face of a young girl and he winked at me as I came in.
‘What’s her mother going to think of that?’ I said.
‘She never hadda mudder; she was too poor, right sweetheart?’
The girl didn’t move a muscle. I watched it for as long as I could bear and then I went through to the kitchen and made coffee. Primo keeps an interesting collection of magazines back there, and I browsed through them while waiting
for the coffee to perk. I made two long, strong blacks and took them back into the workshop. The girl was gone and Primo was holding his hands in front of his face and staring at them.
‘I hate what I do, Cliff, he said. ‘It’s a crime.’
‘Rubbish, you love it. And I know you, you put in that stuff you can wash out in six months. She was free, white and seventeen anyway.’
‘I suppose you’re right. Thanks.’ He took the coffee and I arranged some cartridge paper and pencils on his work desk while we sipped.
‘You want a new name-plate designed?’ he said. ‘A black falcon, maybe?’
‘I haven’t got a name plate. When I need the name freshly written on an envelope to pin to my door I’ll let you know.’
He blew steam off the surface of the drink. ‘You got no class, Cliff.’
‘True. How d’you reckon you’d go at one of those identikit jobs? I describe the face, you do the drawing?’
‘Sensational! It’s what I’ve always wanted to do.’
‘Drink your coffee and let’s have a go at it.’
The floor was half-covered with crumpled paper when we finished a bit over an hour later. We got it right in the end-Primo prompted me and I abused him, and between us we caught the essence of the man I’d seen in Susannah Woods’ house-his thin, peaked face, cupid bow mouth and dark, low-growing hair. I’d have known him from the drawing and I had to hope others would too. I thanked Primo and paid him a week in advance for the parking spot. He looked hurt.
After that I tramped the art galleries of the inner city for a couple of hours getting hostile headshakes, propositions and indifferent shrugs. I couldn’t tell whether or not they were lying, and by the end of the day I felt like a visitor from Mars. They were a strange lot; most of them expressed indifference to Susannah Woods and I began to wonder what they did care about but they gave me no clues.
I decided that I did care who’d killed the woman and why; I wanted a drink badly and a lead nearly as badly, and gave it one last try by calling Harry Tickener. Harry is a reporter on The News and ten years of snooping around Sydney haven’t dimmed his enthusiasm for his job. He sees a hell of a lot, hears a lot more and remembers almost all of it. I asked him to bring along the paper’s art critic and promised to pay for the drinks. That made it a must for Harry, who is just a bit on the short-armed side.
We met at a pub on Broadway just across from the newspaper office. I fended off a few journos who wanted to talk about boxing-of which there isn’t any anymore. Harry came in half an hour late with a paperweight sort of woman who he introduced as Renee Beale. Harry had a double Scotch of course and Renee had a Campari and ginger ale. We talked about nothing much over the drinks while Harry and the woman smoked and pushed back their hair and gave good impressions of tired workers; maybe they were. Harry lit his third Camel and squinted at me through the smoke.
‘Renee’s got an opening to go to, Cliff, he said.
She held up her glass. ‘I’ll have to write it up tonight. I’ll have two glasses of flagon plonk at the show and work till midnight.’
‘Okay’, I said. ‘I’d like to know if you recognise this man.’ I pulled out Primo’s drawing and handed it across to her.
She put on gold-rimmed glasses and peered at the paper. ‘Hey, this is good!’
‘You know him?’
‘Sure, this is Paul Steele, him to the life.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Well, he…’ She stalled by putting her glasses back in their case and sipping her drink. Then she looked across to Tickener.
‘It’s okay, Renee’, Tickener said. ‘Cliffs a gentleman-he won’t throw him down any stairs or anything.’
I had reservations about that, but tried not to let them show in my face. Renee looked at her watch, drew smoke into her lungs, blew it out and sipped Campari.
‘Paul’s a painter, or was’, she said. ‘He had a bit of a following for a while, did some very nice things. But the money and the junk got to him, and he hasn’t done anything good for a long time.’
‘Has he done anything?’ I asked.
‘Well, he does some restoring…’
‘And copying?’ I said.
‘A bit.’
‘Right, can you tell me where to find him?’
She gave me three possible addresses in Surry Hills and Darlinghurst, finished her drink and went off to her opening. I had another drink with Tickener and told him about the case while he blew Camel smoke around, looked at the women who came and went and scratched at his thinning fair hair.
‘You reckon this Steel character killed her to get the genuine painting, Cliff?’
‘That’s the way it looks.’
‘Why did she want the original copied?’
‘This Castleton’s a bit dodgy I gather, hard to prove if something’s his or not. My guess is she wanted the copy to impress Ernst, help to confirm that she had the real thing- it worked too.’
‘Okay, but why would there be two copies?’
‘I don’t know, I can’t figure that at all.’
Harry grinned, he liked to out-sleuth me. ‘There’s another thing, this is all pretty coldblooded stuff-knocking the woman off, pinching the paintings, this Steele didn’t sound like that sort of a bloke from Renee’s story.’
That was worrying me too although I didn’t like to admit it. I felt I almost had the thing wrapped up but that there were some loose ends that could unravel the whole rug. There was also something else worrying me which I couldn’t quite grab. I looked at the addresses and I looked at Primo’s drawing and Harry and Renee’s dead cigarette butts and I still couldn’t get it. I said goodbye to Harry and went off indecisively to work at it.
The first address was a wash-out, no-one living in the blighted old house at all; at the second place I was offered grass but no information. The third house was in a tall, crumbling terrace wedged between rusty, graffiti-daubed factories. The street light was broken and two youths were working by torchbeam to strip a newish Commodore in the alley across from the house. One of them straightened up when I got out of my car and looked across. He picked up something from the ground.
I held up my hand. ‘These modern cars are so unreliable; hope you get it going again. Anyone at home in 88?’
He relaxed and spoke to his mate. The torch beam came up and hit me in the face. I let it hit.
‘Junkies’, one of them said. ‘You a narc?’
‘No.’
‘I think they’re there, why don’t you take a look.’
‘There’s no lights.’
He laughed and spat into the gutter. ‘Squatters mate, they use candles.’
I went back to my car and got the. 38 from under the dash. I let the mechanics see it as I closed the door.
‘Not interested in Falcons, are you?’ I said.
I walked over to the house; the front door was a ruin with some of the panels replaced by cardboard. I pushed one in and put a hand through to undo the catch. In the passage way the floorboards were rotten and the walls smelled of damp. There was a chink of light under the second door along and I pushed it open with the gun held high. There were mattresses around the walls, some clothes scattered about and a candle burning crookedly in the middle of the floor. Two men were lying together on one of the mattresses. One of them turned his head to look at me, the other’s eyes were closed.
‘Trouble?’ The accent was southern US, with a lot of illness and heroin in it.
‘No trouble. Paul Steele here?’
‘Upstairs. I’m glad there’s no trouble.’
I closed the door and felt my way up the stairs. The front room was showing a faint light and I could hear soft, slow voices. I crept up close and listened. There was only one voice, a woman’s, and it was saying, ‘Pauli, c’mon Pauli, Pauli?’ over and over again.
I pushed the door open and the woman gave a scream and jumped off the floor and straight at me. She was big and fat, and she swung a fist into my face and followe
d that up with a fingernail attack. Both did some damage, and it was hard to counter while holding the gun. I gasped ‘Easy’, and tried to duck the next swing and get at her feet, but she was quick, despite her weight. Her hand hit me again and I forgot my manners; I clipped her smartly under the chin, her knees sagged and I rushed her back against the wall which pushed all the breath out of her. I held her there while she struggled for breath.
‘I’m not going to hurt you’, I rasped. ‘Now behave, or I’ll shove something in your mouth to shut you up. Understand?’
She nodded and I let her go keeping a cautious eye on her hands and feet. But all the fight had gone out of her and she slipped down to the floor beside the mattress on which Paul Steele lay. He’d been watching us but there was no interest in his eyes.
I bent down. ‘Remember me, Paul?’
There was no reaction and I reached into my pocket for the piece of cloth. He was wearing the same shirt and I dropped the torn piece onto his narrow, heaving chest.
‘He’s OD’d’, the woman said. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s a murder investigation’, I said. ‘A woman named Susannah Woods got killed. What’s your name?’
‘Morgan Lindsay’, she said. ‘Have you got a cigarette?’
‘No. Where are the paintings?’
‘Over there.’ She pointed to the far corner of the dark room. I picked up a box of matches from the floor and went across to the corner. The three canvases were stacked carelessly against the damp wall. I struck a couple of matches and peered at them but under those conditions it was impossible to tell which version of ’Stockyards at Jerilderie’ was which. The woman was sitting listlessly by the ragged mattress listening to Steele’s breathing which was harsh but even.
‘Where’d he get the money for the heroin?’ I said.
‘Pinched something from that bitch’s house and flogged it. It must be bad stuff though, never seen him like this before. God, I wish I had a smoke.’
I looked at Steele and thought that his colour was bad, he had a sort of nineteenth century opium-den pallor and then one of the things that had been jangling around loose in my mind clicked into place. I had a short talk to Morgan Lindsay and then Steele’s breathing broke up into erratic gusts and we went out to look for a phone.