Wet Graves

by Peter Corris

  “Where to find Rhino Jackson. Tonight.”

  Campisi wet his lips. “I don’t know. I …”

  Clink. Clink. “Yes, you do.”

  He was tempted but very afraid. The noise in the room had mounted, along with the level of smoke and the fumes of whisky; the women’s perfume was giving the air an extra tang. To addicts such as Lou Campisi it was like the kiss of life. He wanted to go on breathing it, suck it in deeper, but …

  He shook his head. “I don’t know where he is.”

  The reluctance in his voice told me that he did know and something else—he almost wanted me to force him to tell. I gripped the .38 in my pocket and lifted it up a few inches so that Campisi could see it. “Feel like knocking this place over with me, Lou? We could do it.”

  He turned pale and the hand holding the cigarette for nonchalance shook violently. “Are you crazy? Get away from me!”

  I held his arm and kept him from backing off. “Listen, Rhino’s trying to put me out of business. I go up in front of a court next week and I’m history. But it’s just a misunderstanding. We can sort it out.”

  He wavered, “I dunno …”

  “If this thing goes through and they lift my licence I’m done for. I can’t make a living. I’d just as soon take what they’ve got in here and blow. Leave Sydney. Go north with a big piece of cash.”

  “You’re crazy. This place is protected. Look at that big cunt over there. One man couldn’t handle him.”

  “Two,” I said.

  “No.”

  I sniffed and let a wild look come into my eyes. “I’m going to do it and you’re in.”

  “No, no! Shit, Hardy. Take your hand outa your pocket. All right, all right. I’ll tell you where Jackson is. Just back down, will you?”

  I let him see both hands and began tossing the chips from one to the other. “Yes, Lou?”

  “You won’t let on it was me told you?”

  “Lou, would I?”

  “An’ you’ll give me the chips?”

  “You’re doing an awful lot of asking, Lou, and not giving anything.”

  “He’s on a houseboat.”

  “That’s nice. Where?”

  “I don’t know. It moves around.”

  “Come on, Lou. You’re playing games. The wheel’s going to go cold on you.”

  “Look, all I know is, he’s in partnership with Reg Bailey, who’s an ex-cop, like him. They’ve got this houseboat with all the gambling gear on it—high-class stuff. It moves around. Goes from one, what d’you call it?”

  “Mooring?”

  “Right. From one mooring to another. What the fuck do I know? From Palm Beach to … anywhere on the fuckin’ harbour. I’ve never been on it. It’s a top-class thing—trainers, owners, politicians, doctors—big money.”

  Lou’s association of certain professions with big money would have been of interest to sociologists; for me it gave his statement the ring of truth. But not the ring of helpfulness. I let the chips stay in one hand and closed my fist over them.

  “Hardy,” Lou begged, “that’s all I know.”

  “Boats have names, Lou. Even houseboats. Give me the name and we’re in business.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “They wouldn’t register that.”

  “The Paravotti.”

  “What?”

  “Paravotti, Pavarotti, like that. Bailey’s some kind of music nut, I heard. The boat’s named after an opera or somethin’. Hardy …”

  I poured the chips into Campisi’s sweaty palm. “Thanks, Lou,” I said. “Big help.”

  “Fuck you.”

  7

  I went back to the Crown, got hold of another glass of dollar red and the yellow pages. Ten years ago I’d have been able to telephone all the marinas on the harbour, but not now. At a rough count there were about a hundred of them. Some weren’t possibilities, of course—glorified boatsheds where you couldn’t tie up anything much bigger than a dinghy. But there were still too many imposing-sounding ones—‘Middle Harbour Moorings’ ‘Peninsula Marina’, ‘Clearwater Luxury Marina’—that could, presumably, accommodate a houseboat, to make a ring-around possible.

  Paul Guthrie was a client from a few years back. He’d been an Olympic sculler and later a successful businessman. A satisfied client, as it had turned out, he was quite big in boating circles and might know where you’d tie up a houseboat if you happened to have one. The trouble was I didn’t know whether he was still alive. Too often these days when I ring old clients I get recent widows. But I dredged his address up from my memory and found him still listed in the telephone book. Not proof of existence—some widows never change the listing—but encouraging.

  I sat by the same phone as before, fed in the money and punched the buttons. Guthrie’s brisk, no-nonsense voice sounded impatient but was just an indicator of his energy.

  “Paul Guthrie.”

  “Cliff Hardy, Mr Guthrie. You might remember …”

  “Of course I remember, Cliff. Of course I do. How the hell are you? You said you’d drop in on us but you never did.”

  He was right; I always say it and I never do. “I’m sorry. I’ve been busy, I guess. How are the boys?” I referred to his two adopted sons, both in trouble at one time.

  “Just fine. Me ‘n’ Pat’re grandparents. But you don’t want to hear about that. I hope you want some help. God knows I’d like to do something for you after what you did for us.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way. It’s not a big thing. I’m looking for a houseboat called the Pavarotti. I don’t suppose you know it?”

  “No.” There was a lot of regret in the word. “I don’t get out on the water much these days. Getting a bit stiff for it.”

  “Sorry to hear it. I wonder if you could tell me the marinas that could take such a thing? I gather it’s pretty big.”

  “Sure, I’ve got a pretty good idea, and Ray’s here, he’d have an even better one. Can I call you back, Cliff?”

  “No. I’m in a pub. I could call you again in, what, fifteen minutes.”

  “Make it ten. In a pub, eh? Still no home life? What happened to that woman you met? Hannah …?”

  “Helen,” I said. “It’s a long story. Say hello to Ray for me. I’ll ring back in ten minutes.”

  I still had an inch of wine left. As I drank it I tried to think about the good things, about helping Guthrie out of his trouble, trying to keep thoughts of Helen at a distance. To deal with those thoughts I’d have needed a good deal more help than an inch of cask red. When Guthrie came back on the line he sounded pleased.

  “Ray knows the boat. He’s seen it quite a few times. Says it’s a flashy number with a good deal of rot in the hull.”

  “Does he know where it is now?”

  “No, but he can find out for you first thing in the morning.”

  I gave him the home and office numbers and got a number for Ray in return. We exchanged a few more pleasantries and I promised again to visit him and Pat in Cammeray. Maybe this time I would.

  All things considered, it looked as if I was through for the night. But you can’t be too sure. I hung around outside the gambling joint until Lou Campisi staggered out. He had to root around in his pockets for cab fare and since he was drunk this made a pantomime which would have been amusing if you didn’t know that the man had been a good jockey and a good fly half. I tailed the taxi, partly to check whether Lou might have had pangs of conscience or pocket that might take him to see Jackson, drunk and all as he was. Also, it never hurts to stay in practice.

  But the petrol was wasted. The taxi dropped Lou in Newtown; there was an argument about the fare, and then Lou reeled through the gate and up the steps of a boarding house. After a struggle he got a key into the lock and went inside. Lou was tucked up safe for the night; Jackson was sporting himself in a floating casino and my head was hurting again. I was glad Ray didn’t have the location of the Pavarotti to hand—I didn’t feel up to a row or a swim.

  I slept
for six hours, which meant that I was up and making coffee as it started to get light. The house was cold and I turned on heaters and waited for the morning paper to hit the front door. I collected it and tore the front page getting the wrapper off. The tear went right through a report on the bad balance of payments figures, which saved me from having to read it. I picked my way through the rest of the paper without much interest until I spotted a small item on page four. It was headed ‘Body found in harbour’. Apparently the body of a man had been fished out of the water at Dawes Point. As yet unidentified, the body was of a middle-aged man of average build with no distinguishing marks. That gave me something to think about while I ate toast, shaved, drank more coffee and waited for Ray Guthrie’s call.

  “Mr Hardy?” It was the voice I remembered—private school overlaid by the accents picked up in a working life as a boat charterer and repairer.

  “Call me Cliff, Ray. How are you?”

  “Just fine. I located that houseboat for you, the Pavarotti. Good name, lousy boat.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Darling Point.”

  I had the yellow pages open again and ran my finger down the listings. “I can’t see a marina there.”

  “It’s not at a marina, more of a private jetty. One of the few left around there.”

  “It must be a big jetty.”

  “Big house, big garden, big jetty. Can you tell me why you’re interested, Cliff? I hope you’re not planning to buy it.”

  I laughed. “You wouldn’t advise it?”

  “No way. It looks good from a distance, probably looks its best at night, but it’s got lots of problems.”

  “I’m told it moves around the harbour a bit.”

  “One of these days it’ll move down.” Ray was smart enough to see that I wasn’t going to answer his question, and secure enough not to be offended. He’d married his childhood sweetheart, had a son and a daughter and a good business, why shouldn’t he be secure? Still, he’d had a wild phase once and wild men never completely calm down. “Do you need any help? Like to approach from the water side, perhaps? I’d be happy to …”

  I thanked him but refused. He told me that the houseboat had been at Darling Point for two days, and that it generally stayed for a week at wherever it tied up. More thanks from me and a reluctant “See you”, from him. I had to be careful. How did it go again? “A licensed private enquiry agent shall not employ in any way whatsoever in connection with his business as a sub-agent any person who is not a licensed sub-agent.” Section 19(1), or thereabouts.

  The day had started cold and wasn’t going to warm up much. The sky was clear, with some cloud over in the west; the wind seemed , to be blowing gently from all quarters; anything could happen. I wore a sweater under my jacket and when I tried to stuff a scarf into a pocket I found the gun still there. I put the gun away in the glovebox of the car, but no matter how hard you try you always end up breaking the rules—I wasn’t keeping my notes on the Madden case up to date. I should have made an entry before I set off: “to morgue to view body found in harbour”.

  Proximity to the Arundel Street morgue is not one of the reasons I live in Glebe. I’ve visited the liver-coloured brick building more often than I care to remember, and it doesn’t improve on acquaintance: too clean, too smooth, too final. I filled in a form and showed my threatened licence to an attendant, who noted my name down carefully on a list that carried three other names.

  “What’s that for?” I said.

  The attendant, a young Asian man in a white coat who had several medical textbooks on his desk, looked up at me over the tops of his half-moon glasses. “For the police. They want the name of everyone who views the body.”

  “Good,” I said.

  The would-be doctor passed me on to another attendant, an older, tired-looking individual, who showed me through several sets of heavy perspex doors down artificially lit corridors to the chamber where the bodies are stored. It’s like you see in the movies, except that the refrigerated compartments pull out widthwise rather than lengthwise, like a crisper drawer. The attendant, who wore thick rubber gloves, undid two clasps and slid the drawer out a few inches.

  “Hands clear,” he said.

  I clasped my hands behind me like the Duke of Edinburgh and leaned forward to look. The deceased was naked, bloated and blue. The body carried a lot of wounds and what I took to be bruises—dark, pulpy discolourations on the shoulders and thighs and around the wrists and ankles.

  “Glass bottom,” the attendant said, “if you want to look at the back.”

  “Like on the Barrier Reef,” I said.

  He didn’t smile and I didn’t need to look at the back of the corpse—the man had been of shorter, blockier build than Brian Madden and had lacked his thick pepper and salt hair. Bald, anonymous and dead. There’s not much to say about a corpse that’s been in the water a while. It’s as if the sea has wiped away status, career, personality, history, the lot. I shook my head and the drawer slid back with scarcely a sound. The label on the front read DROWNED MALE.

  The attendant moved a plastic bucket aside with his foot. He’d had it all ready to bring into use. He looked almost apologetic. “You’ve done this before,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “So had the last copper who was here. Didn’t matter. I still had to use the bucket.”

  We held the door open and we went out into the corridor where the all was warmer but still smelled of death. “The police are interested in this one, are they?” I said.

  He shrugged. Maybe he only liked to talk about buckets.

  Back at the desk I surprised the aspiring medico running a pink marker pen through a paragraph in a physiology textbook. He looked guilty. “Important passage,” he said.

  “Good luck to you. Can you give me the name of the policeman who asked you to keep that list?”

  He tapped his teeth with the pen. “Sergeant Meredith.”

  “Did he leave you his number?”

  “I think so.” He searched among the books, pens, papers and used tissues on his desk, examined several slips of paper with writing on them, but shook his head each time. “I can’t find it, but it doesn’t matter. He’s due in now with someone to look at the body. You can talk to him in person.”

  “Meredith’s personally bringing someone in to look at the body?”

  “Yes, probably a relative.”

  “I showed you my private enquiry agent licence before.”

  “You did.”

  “I’m working on a missing persons case.”

  “I guessed that. Not your subject in the drawer, eh?”

  “No. What makes you think the sergeant’s got hold of a relative?”

  “I think he said so on the phone. He’s a pleasant chap. We’ve talked a bit. I’ve a knack for getting people to talk. When I’m a doctor …”

  “Which I’m sure you will be.”

  “Thank you. It could be useful.”

  “Certainly. Do you know why the police are so interested in this body, doctor?”

  He let go one of the few smiles the place would see all day. “I heard the sergeant say something about another bridge case. I didn’t know what that meant. The harbour bridge, I assume. But those injuries aren’t consistent with a fall …”

  I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. I was out through the door and down the steps looking along the street for a place to hide. I stood in a shop doorway near the Ross Street corner and watched a young, smartly dressed man climb out of a red Holden Commodore, open the back door and escort a small, middle-aged woman to the steps of the morgue. Another car drew up, parked illegally, and a big man in a rumpled suit got out and joined the pair on the steps. They went in and I waited. When they came out the woman was distressed, leaning on the young man’s arm and holding a handkerchief to her face. The other man, whom I’d tagged as Meredith by now, talked briefly with them, patted the woman’s shoulder and went off to his car. I scooted down the street for mine and w
as sitting in it, ready to go left or right, when the Commodore, moving slowly as if it was already part of a funeral procession, turned out of Arundel Street.

  The Commodore turned left into Parramatta Road, and I had to skip through a second of red light to stay behind. A bad start Do that to someone who suspects he’s being followed, and it’s like turning on a siren. But the Commodore driver didn’t react. He drove steadily in the centre lane up past the railway and through Surry Hills until he picked up the freeway to the eastern suburbs. A good, considerate driver—the easiest kind to follow. I stayed modestly back, moving up occasionally to catch a light, but not getting any closer than I needed to. I made a mental note of the registration number and tried to guess where we would end up. I plumped for Bondi Junction and was almost right, but on the low side, sociologically. The Commodore slid down the leafy driveway beside a block of flats in Birriga Road, Bellevue Hill.

  I stopped further up the curving, rising road and walked back to the flats. It was an old block of about ten apartments that had once commanded a majestic harbour view at the back. Even from the road you could see that the modem, multilevel building had whittled this away. Still, a bijou address, especially with the off-street parking. The Commodore was parked in the space along the side of the wide driveway marked ‘6’. I stood around contemplating my next move when a white Jaguar cruised noiselessly up and stopped fair and square across the entrance to the drive.

  It was my day for crossing roads and taking cover. I stood behind a VW van parked on the other side of the road and saw a white-haired man get out of the Jaguar and help the woman I’d seen at the morgue into the back of the car. The young man was there too, patting people and murmuring things, but he stayed behind as the Jag drove off. He held a respectful attitude until it was out of sight and then he seemed to loosen up. His step on the way back down the drive was almost jaunty. The wind was blowing leaves along the footpath, and a gust pushed a heap of them up against my feet. Some detective, I thought, stands around being late autumnal while things are happening. Breaking in on bereavement is one thing, but if the man with the red Commodore had been bereaved he’d got over it awful fast.