by Peter Corris
“What did you tell him?”
“Relax, Frank. I didn’t even hint that you want to use his kid for bait.”
We both showed the strain on the drive back to Glebe. I was feeling some relief, some apprehension at the conflict coming up between us, some guilt. Why would he tell me not to name names in front of Spotswood if he meant to knock him off? I thought. There was some comfort in that.
I drove badly, skidding on the wet roads and misjudging the turns. Parker was sitting stiffly; he swore when I hit a pothole.
“Sorry,” I said.
He didn’t speak, but took his hand out of his jacket pocket with the piece of Spotswood’s shirt he’d used as a gag in it. I looked quickly sideways at him; he was chewing at his lower lip, really digging the teeth in.
“Come on, Frank. You’ve seen it before.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen them pushed—I’m wondering if there’s any difference.”
It was late when we got back, but Hilde was still up, waiting for Frank. She gave him a kiss and he grabbed and hugged her and they nuzzled each other without caring whether I was there taking pictures or not. I left them in the front of the house and went to make coffee and get out the scotch, what there was left of it.
Hilde came out first and stood in the doorway; she was wearing a white overall and a red T-shirt; her pale face was slightly pink where it had been rubbed by Frank’s beard.
“What kind of a session is this going to be, stone-face?" she said.
“A hard one.”
“I think I’ll go to bed.”
“If we need the woman’s point of view we’ll call you.” She came into the kitchen, stepped up and kissed me on the cheek—my first such salute from her, or maybe the second. There were no smells of oily water, stale urine, and death about her; she smelled of shampoo and toothpaste. “Don’t be a shit, Cliff,” she said. “It doesn’t suit you.”
She went out and they did some wrestling on the stairs; then Parker walked in, looking like a policeman. He took in my coffee-making sourly, pulled out the piece of cloth, went across to the sink and burnt it. The dark wisp of smoke curled up to the roof like a votive offering.
“Sit down, Frank, and have a drink. We’ve got a problem—call it a conflict of interests.”
He lowered himself into a chair and stuck out his long legs—they stretched halfway across the kitchen. I poured the coffee and we both added some whisky to our cups.
“Keegan,” I said. “I know the soldier in the photo as Keegan. He’s Guthrie’s wife’s first husband—if you can follow that this late.”
He sipped his coffee and seemed to fight for a civil response. “That’s one of Collinson’s aka’s—an early one. Let me tell you about Collinson first. To be fair about this you have to have the full picture on him.”
“Okay.” I drank some laced coffee.
“Nothing to smoke, I suppose—cigar, cigarillo …?”
“Hilde despises smokers. Calls them EC’s.”
“What’s that?”
“Emphysema candidates. Get on with it.”
“Collinson got into the big-time in the Vietnam War days. He was one of the conduits the Yanks used to ship the heroin out of South-east Asia back to the States.”
“How did they get it down here? Why bother?”
“A hundred ways. GI’s and Australians on leave brought it in; vehicles coming down to be serviced; the post; parachutes for re-packing was a good way, they tell me. Well, Collinson was a collection point and he passed it on to people who took it Stateside. Then he got into that angle himself. Why? Australia was thought of as squeaky-clean in those days. What did the bloody Yanks know about the place? Kangaroos and tennis players. Nobody looked twice at stuff and people coming in from here. It’s different now, after the Mr Asia thing.”
“I bet.”
“Collinson was in the big money, very big. He used it to expand—supplied girls to the brass, supplied the drugs where they were needed. Did you know that some of the U.S. boys wouldn’t fight unless they had their grass?”
I shook my head.
“That’s right. Wouldn’t fight. Or they’d collaborate to get it.”
“Well, some wars are just big arms deals, really.”
“Yeah. Collinson had more cash than he knew what to do with, and he set up a loans and finance firm to launder it. He’s an accounting genius as well as a crook. One thing led to another; the war ended, and he had these links with organised crime in the States.”
I yawned. “Come on!”
“It’s true—for money-washing mainly; he bought a bank in the Philippines. All this is in the seventies—not the finest hour for legitimate government, you’ll recall. Who could kick? Collinson and blokes like him got away with murder, and millions. But he was smarter than most—didn’t make a splash, kept his head down, confused his identity. He used the phone or intermediaries—no one ever saw him, hardly.”
“Like Howard Hughes,” I said. I’d heard something of this—with other names and deals—from Harry Tickener. It was something I’d always stayed well clear of: it was the world in which the directors of one company were the principals in another which held major stock in company controlled by the one you first thought of.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Parker said. “I’m more parochial in my interest. We’ve got a bloody huge file on him. Now.”
“What about then?”
“He had some very solid protection—police, government, possibly Intelligence—who knows? He’s still got some of it. His operation got blown by the Marchant Enquiry—did you follow that?”
I nodded. Mr Justice Marchant’s brief had been to investigate Customs Department corruption wherever he might find it. But the thing had got out of hand, and had spilled over into the administration of justice and the workings of the financial system. It was still going on—sputtering into life from time to time—despite high-level efforts to snuff it. A lot of big fish had been caught—and even more had been badly scared.
“Our information was that Collinson got wind of the Enquiry’s interest in him, and he started to liquidate. He had a partner … hold on, talking’s making me dry …”
He took a sip of his coffee and I reflected on what a strain it must have been staying abreast of all this changing information. And he’d said he was doing other things as well.
“Barratt,” he went on. “CB Holdings Limited—Collinson and Barratt. That’s where I came in. Don’t know why, but Collinson killed Barratt. Maybe they argued about the wind-up, or maybe Collinson didn’t want anyone around who knew as much as Barratt did. There was a suggestion that he sort of threw him out as a decoy, scapegoat; call it what you like. Anyway, he shot him. Barratt was worth peanuts by then. That’s a year or so ago; Collinson’s thought to be in Australia, in Sydney even. But no one knows where.”
“What’s ‘thought to be’ mean?’’
“Phone calls get made—they’ve been recorded. Things still get done.”
“Why wouldn’t he skip?”
“Don’t know. Thinks he’s safe? Got a woman? He’s sick? Scared of flying? Don’t know.”
I’d finished the coffee and scotch and was thinking about another. I decided against it. I hadn’t even had my say yet. I poured some coffee, straight.
“You seem to know a hell of a lot about him.”
“Might sound that way, but I don’t know. I’ve got facts and dates and figures, but I don’t feel that I understand him. Don’t know what makes him tick.” He flexed his fingers. “They put me in charge of a task force.” He snorted. “Task force! We didn’t come up with anything solid so they disbanded us. Then they disbanded me.”
“You’re taking it personally, Frank. I don’t blame you, but look at it from my angle. Hayes and Catchpole are using young Guthrie as some sort of bait. Let’s say they’re corrupting him, really screwing him up. All that to get at Collinson, who doesn’t mean a dog’s fart to me.”
Parker d
rained his cup and gave himself a short whisky. He didn't respond, didn’t even blink as I went on.
“I know what you want. You want to let Hayes and Catchpole get on with it. Flush Collinson out—just so long as you’re there when he surfaces. You won’t care who gets hurt.”
“I suppose that’s about it.”
“I can’t let that happen. My job is to unravel the Guthrie kid’s problems and straighten him out. Maybe I can do that just with a good heart-to-heart, knowing what I know now.”
“I doubt it.”
“I’ve got the Brisbane stuff to work with, remember. Hayes did a job on Ray Guthrie’s brother—got him hooked on junk, it looks like. That’ll count for something.”
“If that kid’ll confirm it.”
“I think he will.”
“You have to consider the hold Dottie Williams might have on him. That could be bloody strong—he’s just a kid, Dottie could be his dream woman.”
“Yeah.”
We faced each other silently across the table; Parker rubbed his bristle, moving his hand tiredly in a clockwise motion.
“We could sleep on it,” he said.
“No, we need some ground rules, right now. We’re about square—neither of us owes the other a thing. We can get up from here and go about it in our own different ways.”
“That couldn’t be the smart thing to do.”
“Did you push Spotswood off the roof?”
He gaped at me. “No.”
“All right, I had to ask.”
“Look, Cliff, I’m a bit desperate about this, I know. I am taking it personally. But it hasn’t got to me that much. We can’t afford to split up. Hayes is good, really good. The fee he’d be on must be enormous. He’ll go all the way for it. The whole thing is bound to be messy.”
“That’s why I should take the Guthrie kid out now.”
“Maybe. If you could find him, and if he’d go. Neither sounds real likely to me.”
“The kid doesn’t know what he’s involved in. He doesn’t know Collinson’s his father. He’s in the dark.”
“That’s tough. But this is bigger than that. Collinson owns policemen, he own politicians. While that goes on no one’s safe, everything’s up for grabs.”
“It was like that in Jericho, probably, and Athens and Rome. I’m not a crusader.”
“It’d be nice to get him.” He named one of the government ministers who’d go down with Collinson, and I had to admit that that prospect had a strong appeal. I could feel myself coming around, and Parker knew it.
“I’ll try not to hurt the kid if it comes to something rugged. You’d be there, that’d be your job. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone except Hayes and Collinson.” He grinned. “Especially not you or me.”
“What would the next move be, then?”
“To check on my bloke in Parramatta. Tiny said they were worried about that. I’ll worry ’em some more.”
“What happened to Tiny could worry them too.”
“Right. I feel we could get the initiative, with a bit of luck.”
That decided me, plus the feeling that I had one long shot that could give me the initiative. I could make my moves about Ray Guthrie when the time came. I looked at Parker’s shadowed, weary eyes—if the thoughts behind them were private, so were mine. I put some whisky in my cup and clinked it with Frank’s.
“Cooperation,” I said.
“Talk some more tomorrow?”
I nodded, he went to the bathroom and then up the stairs. When I heard Hilde’s door close I pulled the telephone over.
Helen’s voice was sexy, I decided, even at 1.30 a.m.
“It’s 1.30,” she said.
“Do you want to see me or not?”
“I do.”
“Keep your finger near the buzzer.”
15
In the morning we did the coffee and toast routine in reverse. It was late when I came into the bedroom, juggling the plates and mugs; the sun slanting in through the window had warmed the room up, and Helen lay naked on her front on top of the bed. I looked at her wide shoulders, marked by the swimsuit straps and the hollows and curves lower down. Her long toes were hooked over the end of the bed and I could see the muscle, like a rounded W in outline, in her calves. She had dancer’s legs. She heard the crockery rattle.
“I’d like you to rub oil into every inch of my body,” she said.
“Can I drink my coffee first? Which hand do you want me to use?”
“And then I want to go to a beach where we can swim naked. Can you take the time, Cliff?”
I put the mugs and plate down by the bed and began rubbing both hands over her back. Her skin was smooth and her spine felt supple and strong, like a whip.
“One phone call and I’m free.”
She half-turned around and reached down for her coffee; it was about the first movement not connected with sex she’d made since my arrival at 2 a.m. She drank the coffee in a couple of gulps, the way I usually do myself. She ate a piece of toast. Then she put her face close to mine and looked at me as if she was counting the crow’s feet.
“Something bad happened last night,” she said. “You fucked me to help you to forget about it.”
“Not exactly.”
“Yes, you did. It was terrific; I’m not complaining.” She held out her cup. “Now I want some more coffee and some toast and the oil, and I want to hear about it.”
Parker sounded grouchy on the phone, as if he and Hilde had struck their first reef. We agreed to meet later in the day to review procedure, but I had a feeling that the Hardy–Parker accord would prove uneasy.
Helen had a red Camira, one of the kind they drove from Sydney to Melbourne on less than a tank of petrol. The way she drove she’d be lucky to make it to Gundagai. She was a fast, aggressive driver with a good traffic sense, and a fine disregard for the workings of the machine.
Lady Bay is at the top of the peninsula, one bay on from Camp Cove. I thought I knew the way but I gave Helen a wrong direction and we ended up within the bounds of the Naval Base Watson. A land-locked sailor, with one of those shaves you can rub with a cigarette paper and not hear a sound and wearing starched, knee-length shorts, steered us right with a leer.
The deal is that you park at Camp Cove, which is a topless but not bottomless beach, and walk around the cliffs a kilometre or so to Lady Bay. Helen was wearing loose, light-blue trousers, a striped T-shirt and sandals. She climbed the fence, jumped across gaps between the concrete slabs, and negotiated the gun emplacements which were built to repel an invader that never came. Her dark-red, cropped hair shone like polished stone when the sun caught it, and she moved effortlessly, like an expert bushwalker.
I brought up the rear, carrying the bag and the towels and feeling the sweat running down under my shirt. It was hot with no wind; it was too early for the sea breeze, and the still, warm air gave the sea sounds a special clarity—the noise of the birds, the water against the cliffs and the scrape of Helen’s sandals on the rocks.
The nude bathing beach looks to have been designed by Nature for the purpose; you reach it by going backwards ten metres down a ladder attached to a sheer drop. The distance was about the same as Tiny Spotswood’s fall, but here you descended from grass to sand, by wood not metal, and in the full clean light of the sun. The top of the cliff is a flat sward and there, fully clothed, with their legs dangling over the edge, sat three men with their eyes fixed on the people below. I went down the ladder after Helen and we stood on the sand and surveyed the sixty metre beach, flanked at both ends by rocks.
All the sun bathers were men; they were very tanned and most were muscular. They lay and sat, very still, and seemed to be thinking about stillness.
“It’s a tableau vivant,” Helen whispered.
“What’s that?”
“Look it up.”
“You’re the only broad on the beach.”
“Somehow that seems more novel than taking the clothes off.”
We t
ook the clothes off, just dropped them and the bag where we stood, and ran down to the water. It was cool, a bit cloudy and very deep within a few metres of the shore. Helen waded a few steps, dived and went underwater for about ten metres. She surfaced and swam seawards with long, easy strokes. I ploughed along after her with my Maroubra-basic stroke, and we swam well out to where the water was translucent and cold. We trod water and touched each other.
“I was going to say how does a country girl like you get to swim like that, then I remembered that you’re not a country girl.”
“Coogee,” she said. “Remember the trams?”
We paddled around for a while, and then swam in. Stretched out on the sand, side by side, we joined the statuary. A quarter of an hour of that, and Helen started to giggle.
“I can’t take this; it’s like being in Madame Tussaud’s.”
We were back at her place, drinking coffee, when I finally got around to telling her the shape and substance of the Guthrie case. I’d already told her about Spotswood’s fall, this was the context. I sanitised it a bit. I told her about Parker.
“He sounds ruthless.”
“He’s not generally, or I used not to think so. This seems to have made him harder. People don’t realise what being a cop is like, especially a Homicide detective. It’s not all free beers and fucks. In a funny way, a cop is what he does. An honest, energetic cop like Parker is very honest; uncomfortably so, maybe.”
“What about you? Do you become what you do?”
I smiled. “Not as much. That’s one of the reasons I’m not a cop. Tell me about Michael.”
“Mike. No one calls him Michael.”
“I felt Mike was a bit informal, under the circumstances.”
“What are the circumstances, Cliff?”
“God knows. How much of your first six months have you really got left?”
“Hours.”
“Let’s not waste ’em.”
We went back to bed with enthusiasm and success. There was a good deal of tenderness too, for the first time. I learned a bit more about Mike; that he farmed everything from pigs to grapes; that he operated a small cannery; that he worked twenty hours a day.