by Peter Corris
I rolled a cigarette and listened as he told me of his alarm when he heard, first, that Meadowbank was pulling out of the agreement, and then that he had been shot. ‘That was all a bit too sticky for me, old boy. I decided it was best to get out of town and lie low for a spell. I was very perturbed when you turned up, to put it mildly. But I must say you had a brilliant strategy for winning my trust.’
The liquor was making him more confident now and oily. I hadn’t liked him to begin with and the dislike was growing, but I had a lot more to learn. ‘There must be someone behind all this then,’ I said. ‘Someone holding it all together.’
He lit another cigarette and didn’t speak.
‘That’s what I need to know. That name.’
He shook his head. ‘I simply don’t know. I took instructions by telephone.’
‘Come on.’
‘It’s true. Of course, I sniffed around a little and came up with Andrew Perkins’ name and another member of our noble profession was in on it, too. I’m reluctant to name him and I’m sure he knows no more than I do. He’s a timid soul as well, and might have gone to ground. There’s a good deal of surmise in what I’m telling you, Hardy. I have to admit that.’
I felt rather let down. Maxwell’s sketch of what lay behind the deaths and deceptions Virginia Shaw had involved me in was interesting and convincing, so far as it went. But without a name, something to follow up, it all began to feel as fragile as a used tissue. I let my disappointment show by zipping up the bag. ‘This isn’t enough, Dicky. I’m considering hauling you out of here by the scruff of the neck.’
Maxwell shifted towards me on the seat; his soft hand shot out and fondled the bottle. ‘Don’t do that. Matthews would certainly stop you. He’s armed this time and he’s a very vindictive type. I’ll be honest with you. I can’t swear I’d give you that name if I knew it. There’s a lot of power and money behind this thing. But I don’t know it. Give me another drink.’
‘Why the hell should I? What can I do with what you’ve told me? One of the cops I’m in touch with knows there’s something going on. Maybe he’ll be interested to get a few more clues, but that’s not going to get me off the hook. I could ask the police to come and question you, I suppose.’
He sniffed and his tongue licked at the cracked cold sore. ‘If the impression I leave with is that you’re going to send the police here, I’ll be off within the hour, I assure you. Give me a bloody drink. Can’t you see I’m working myself up to tell you something more?’
He was sweating. Beads of moisture had formed where his hatband met his bald head and were threatening to run down into his eyes. He dabbed at the spot with a moist hand. His breath carried to me across the shorter distance between us—sweet from the gin but going sour, tainted with tobacco and fear. I gave him the bottle. He’d drunk about half of the contents and he disposed of another sizeable slug. I looked around and saw Matthews leaning against a tree. He was stripping a twig and crushing the leaves before dropping them to the ground. I was anxious to get away from the place.
‘Okay. You’ve had your drink. Let’s hear it.’
He drew in a deep breath and surrendered the bottle. I let the last couple of inches run out onto the ground and he watched, almost approvingly. I’d seen it before. Now he’d go on the wagon! Like hell he would.
‘If you keep me altogether out of it, I’ll tell you who shot Charles Meadowbank,’ he said.
15
I was back on the highway before the thought struck me that Richard Maxwell might have outsmarted me the way Ernie had predicted. What did I have? A name and a few vague allegations about some prominent people who were well protected from the likes of me. Maxwell could be on his way north or south at that very moment. Somehow, I didn’t think so. He was a very frightened man, past his best and losing his grip. God knows what he would have done when he and his liver were younger and fitter. But as it was, he’d backed me. I was almost flattered.
Lawrence ‘Chalky’ Teacher. The name was familiar but not too familiar. If Maxwell had simply nominated one of the well-known thugs about town I would have had my suspicions. But Chalky Teacher was a more dubious and shadowy figure. I’d heard of him for years, as an associate of criminals, a probable police informer and a man to be careful of. But, as I approached Rockdale and got the first glimpse of the city high-rise, I realised that I had no idea of what Teacher was like physically—big, small or in between. And I couldn’t connect him with a single event, organisation or individual. I couldn’t recall reading about him in the tabloids or a reference to him on television. It was all word-of-mouth stuff, rumour and innuendo.
I had some thinking to do and the hot inside of a not very comfortable car, with my shirt sticking to my back and my head aching from the roughhouse of yesterday and the tension of today, wasn’t the place to do it. I needed a cool, shady beer garden with Nina Simone playing in the background and the ice tinkling in a double scotch. It was Sunday and the nearest thing to that was thirty miles away, outside the metropolitan area. The Balmain-Rozelle RSL Club wouldn’t do and I didn’t want to go home to the empty house. I found myself turning off the highway and taking the road to Sydenham and then to Petersham.
Going to visit an old girlfriend in the condition I was in was a risky move. I knew it, but, after the distasteful Maxwell, I was in need of congenial human contact. Besides, Joan Dare was a journalist and might know something about Chalky Teacher. If she told me he was six-foot-three in his socks, I’d have a simple choice to make—go along with Loggins’ plan to use me as bait or catch the next flight to Cairns.
Joan’s house overlooks Petersham Park It’s a double-fronted cottage, free-standing with a deep backyard. Joan is a passionate gardener and she bought the place because of the space. I jack-hammered up hundreds of square feet of concrete for her during our brief affair which took place while Cyn and I were having one of our separations a few years back. I knew Joan had plans for a prize-winning garden; I’d promised to haul the topsoil. Then Cyn came back and it was over between me and Joan.
Someone else had carried the topsoil. When I pulled up outside the house I had trouble recognising it. In two years the concrete wasteland had been turned into a small jungle. Creepers grew all over the front fence and twined around a pergola between the gate and the veranda. The green-painted concrete slabs in the front yard had been replaced by small-leaved ground cover, flower beds and vines growing out of tubs. I could see shrubs and small palm trees growing along the side of the house and something bushier and taller sticking up at the back. The colours were reds and greens and white and, in the late afternoon, the garden was humming with insects. The place reminded you of how quickly the whole 600 square miles of Sydney would revert back to bush if it was allowed to.
I rang the front doorbell but there was no answer. I wasn’t discouraged. Joan didn’t sit about inside on fine days. I went around the side of the house, pushing my way through fronds and leaves and noting the new paint job on the weatherboards, new plumbing, wiring, the works. Joan earned good money as the editor of the ‘City Life’ section of the Sydney News, and her only vices were red wine and her garden. I found her working on a terraced part of the steeply sloping backyard. She was wearing shorts, tennis shoes and something with red and white spots tied around her chest. It made a thin stripe across her narrow back, suggesting that it was worn more for comfort than concealment.
‘Joan.’
She turned slowly, digging tool in hand. She wore neither sunglasses nor hat and had to shield her eyes against the low sun.
She said, ‘Who’s that?’ and I experienced a jolt, remembering her poor eyesight and her husky, intense voice.
‘It’s Cliff Hardy, Joan.’
She straightened up to her full five-foot-six. She was as lean as I remembered, very tanned with short blonde hair. Thin features, pointed face. She was a few years younger than me and had worn better. She dropped the trowel, pulled off her gardening gloves and wiped sweat from her
face as she edged closer. ‘So it is. Looking like a truck just hit him. Has she pissed off again, Cliff? That it?’
‘No, Joan,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to see you. Have a drink and maybe pick your brains. I’ve gone into the private enquiries game.’
‘I heard.’
‘The garden looks … amazing.’
She snorted. ‘What would you know? You can’t tell a bougainvillea from a banksia.’
‘I busted up the concrete.’
‘So you did. How could I forget? You drank a can of beer for every square foot.’
I laughed. ‘It was bloody hard work. How are you, Joanie?’
‘I’m good.’ She brushed her hands together. ‘Well, I was about to knock off anyway. I’ve got a couple of bottles of rose chilled. How’s that sound?’
‘Great.’
She stepped quickly forward and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Don’t be so stiff. I’m over you a long time, sport. It’s good to see you.’
There was a wooden garden setting on some flagstones near the back of the house under another pergola. Ferns hung in baskets from the cross beams and creepers trailed around the uprights. I plonked myself down in one of the chairs and rolled a smoke while Joan went inside. A shower ran very briefly—Joan was one of the few women I’d ever known to have quick showers—and then she was back carrying a bottle and two stemmed glasses. She’d changed into a long flower-patterned skirt and pale blue T-shirt. Her small, pointed breasts moved as she opened the wine. She poured two glasses full, another attractive habit of hers, and sank into a chair with a sigh. From the accuracy of her pouring I knew she’d put in her contact lenses. Without them, when it came to close work, anything was possible. She once told me she liked to garden without them and that when she surveyed what she’d done the effect was like looking at an impressionist painting. Then she’d put them in and get the details right.
‘Cheers. It does look pretty good, doesn’t it?’
I drank some of the cold, slightly spicy wine. ‘It looks terrific. Is it finished?’
She laughed. ‘That’s what you have to understand about a garden. It’s never finished. It’s never over. And it never lets you down.’
‘Joan, I …’
‘Forget it. We were both in the mood at the same time. You got out of the mood first, that’s all. It would have been me a bit later. Roll me one of those filthy fags of yours and tell me all about it.’
I made her a cigarette, lit it and talked for about ten minutes. She smoked, drank her wine and listened. I could tell from her expression and nods that she knew about Meadowbank, and had heard of Andrew Perkins and that the name Bob Loggins wasn’t unknown to her. I toned a few things down, didn’t tell about Loggins’ scheme and left out Richard Maxwell’s name. When I got to the politician and the doctor, Redding and Molesworth, her interest really picked up.
‘Bruce Redding,’ she said, ‘and Dr Leo Molesworth. Well, well.’
‘I’ve heard of Redding. He’s a cabinet minister, isn’t he? Who’s Molesworth?’
‘Redding’s a junior minister, not actually in the cabinet but getting there. Molesworth’s what they call a fashionable Macquarie Street surgeon. He’s a hip replacement man for the rich.’
‘Both with good motives for arranging quiet, smooth divorces?’
‘Redding, certainly. Big Catholic population in his electorate. Molesworth, I’m not so sure about. Do society doctors have to watch their p’s and q’s? I wouldn’t have thought so. Your informant suggested there were others involved?’
‘Yep, apart from Meadowbank. I didn’t get their names though.’
Joan poured the last of the bottle and accepted another rollie. I was feeling a lot better, considerably cooled down externally and internally, and relaxed by her calm, intelligent manner. I was confident that Joan would come up with something to help, but suddenly I remembered how I had sheltered Ernie Glass. I’d got careless, let my tongue run away with me, told Joan very much more than I intended and I felt guilty.
‘Look, Joanie’ I said, ‘this is dangerous stuff. I didn’t mean to spill it all quite like this. I wanted some help with something specific.’
She puffed smoke at me and laughed. ‘Big deal. I’ve got bigger secrets than this inside my head, Mister Hardy. And I’ve got the journalist’s protection, remember? If I get pushed too hard I can publish.’
‘Not if you’re dead, you can’t.’
‘True. It does sound like pretty heavy stuff and I’ve got a feeling there’s more than a batch of easy divorces behind it, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Yeah, but what?’
‘I can do some work on it. Discreetly. Redding won’t be hard to sniff around. The good doctor’s a bit trickier, but there’re ways. Don’t look so worried, Cliff. This is my business. You’re doing me a favour by putting me on to it.’
‘You didn’t see that girl dead in her flat.’
‘I’ve seen ’em. Now, something specific?’
I drank the rest of my wine and considered what to say. I was imbued with the idea that men protected women, even though I’d met plenty of women who needed no protection from anyone. I’d been shot at by women in Malaya. It was an idea that belonged in mothballs along with cardigans and tea cosies and the non-working wife. My own wife was working a thousand miles away and I’d already told Joan almost as much as I knew. Still, it was a hard idea to shake and I hesitated.
‘You’re pissing me off, Cliff,’ Joan said ‘You know who hauled all these flagstones in here? Me. I’ve hitchhiked all over this country and Europe and Asia. I’ve got a .32 Beretta inside and I’ll take you on at target-shooting any day.’
‘The specific thing is Chalky Teacher.’
‘Jesus, how is he involved?’
‘My information is that he killed Meadowbank.’
‘How did your informant come to know this?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me. Can you describe Teacher physically?’
She closed her eyes and leaned back. Her throat was a long slim brown column and the skin around her jaw and neck was taut. ‘I’ve seen him once or twice. He’s a small man. Not more than five-six. About my size, actually. Light build. He used to be a boxer. What’s the division above the one Lionel Rose was in?’
‘Rose was a bantam. The next one up’s featherweight. Nine-stone limit.’
‘That’s it. He was an amateur featherweight boxer. He’s not a featherweight crim, though.’
‘So I gather. How would I go about finding him? Do you know where he drinks? Who he hangs around with?’
‘He doesn’t drink I know that much. I don’t know about the rest of it off-hand, but I suppose I could find out if I made a few calls. Bit hard on Sunday, though. How urgent is it?’
‘Very. You sound reluctant.’
‘Now it’s me who’s worried on your behalf, Cliff. Teacher is very bad news. You mustn’t even think of going up against him on your own. I won’t help you do that. And if you start asking around about him in the pubs and so on you’ll find yourself in big trouble.’
She got out another bottle and we talked about it for a while as we lowered the level. Eventually I agreed to go to Gallagher with whatever I got before confronting Teacher. It had been in my mind to do something like this anyway.
‘Promise?’ Joan said.
‘I promise.’
‘Who is this Gallagher?’
‘He’s a D at Darlinghurst. Bit younger than some, bright, ambitious. There seems to be a bit of subtlety about him.’
‘All right. I’ll ring a few people tonight. Might have something for you later or in the morning.’
I thanked her and stood up to leave. She got up as well and we were standing there, only a foot apart, both with a fair bit of wine inside us and conspiratorially involved. I put my hands on her shoulders.
She stiffened. ‘Where is she, Cliff? Cyn.’
‘She’s in Queensland on a job.’
‘How’re things between you?’
; ‘So-so.’
‘Work on it.’ She lifted my hands off, leaned forward and pecked me on the cheek. I wanted more and reached for her but she stepped away quickly. The better part of a bottle of wine hadn’t slowed her down.
‘Not a good idea,’ she said. ‘In fact a very bad idea. Let’s keep this on a business footing. If something publishable comes out of it, I’ve got the inside track, right?’
I picked up my tobacco and lighter. ‘Sure. Of course.’
‘Don’t sulk, Cliff. You’ll be glad when you get home. Let me tell you something. You know when this garden really started to grow properly?’
I shook my head. She took my arm and guided me towards the path down the side of the house. ‘When I finally got over the bloke after you.’
16
Joan didn’t call until around 8.30 the following morning. I’d slept badly and was edgy, wondering if she’d drawn a blank or changed her mind. I snatched up the phone.
‘Hardy.’
‘Don’t say it like a battle cry. This is Joan. I’ve got a line on your man. Do I have your promise you’ll contact that cop as soon as I’ve told you?’
‘Sorry, Joan. Yes, I’ll do that.’
‘Right. Well, Teacher’s around, that’s the first thing. Wouldn’t help you much if he’d been in New Zealand for the last six months, would it? He’s a hard man to pin down though—lives mostly in hotels and “with friends”, if you get the idea. The last address I could get was 103 Botany Street, Randwick, but I’m told that he’s not often there.’
I wrote the address in my notebook. ‘Where is he often?’
‘Your grammar’s lousy. He works for a bookie named Max Wilton. The word is Max is into a few other things as well and needs someone like Chalky by his side. Wilton lives in Randwick, too. Tonier address, Flat 8, 1 Glen Avenue. Said to be quite a pad.’
‘Is he often there?’
‘Better. Yes, and he’s often at the track riding horses and picking up information for Wilton and also in Centennial Park, jogging, and at the Bondi baths, swimming.’