by Peter Corris
Flat 6 was on the second level at the back. The entrance was through a handsome door in a tiled, balustraded porch. It was one of those doors that was opened electrically from inside the flats but it wasn’t locked. I looked down and saw that the door had snagged on a piece of uplifted carpet, just enough to prevent the lock from engaging. Conclusion: the young man didn’t live here and didn’t know that you had to give the door a shove to get the security you were paying for. I went into a quiet, cool lobby with cream walls and dark timber and up a flight of stairs. I tried to give my knock on the door of number 6 the authority that brooks no denial.
The man who answered the door was middle-sized and fair in colouring except for his slightly flushed face. He’d taken off his suit jacket and loosened his tie. He held an opened bottle of champagne in one hand. “What do you want?” he said.
I flashed the licence folder quicker than a camera shutter. “My name’s Hardy. Sergeant Meredith asked me to have a quick word with you.”
The familiar name did the trick He eased back and I was part way through the door before an objection occurred to him. “He didn’t say anything to my mother or me back at the morgue.”
I fished out my notebook and leafed through, still inching my way in. “Well, he knew your mother’d be distressed. Now you are Mr …?”
“Clive Glover.” He held up the bottle. “I suppose this looks bad?”
“I don’t know, sir. Not necessarily. Could we go inside? Thank you. Now your mother made a formal identification of …?”
We moved down the passage into a large sitting room with a kitchen off it to one side and another passage that probably led to bedrooms. “My father, Mr Colin Glover. Yes.”
He sat down in an easy chair in front of an elaborate marble-edged fireplace. A half-filled tulip-shaped champagne glass was sitting on the tiles in front of the grate. I looked around the room, which showed signs of affluence, taste and an orientation towards the past. The furniture was expensive but old; the decorations owed nothing to modem ideas of design.
One item was of more interest to me than others—of great interest. I’d missed it at first because the bright, late morning light, coming in from a window that gave the depleted view of the harbour, struck the glass and obliterated the image. I moved a little and could see it. Hanging over the fireplace was a large photograph in a heavy black frame. The picture was of the last stage of construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
8
“Well, I don’t care. I hated the old bastard.”
“Mr Glover?”
He leaned forward, filled a glass, lifted it and drained the contents. Then he poured another and sipped. “My father. I’m glad they found him, and I’m glad they found him dead. Being missing was no good to me.”
I sat down on a two-seater couch without being invited. I probably wouldn’t have refused a glass of champagne, but Glover seemed intent on drinking the whole bottle himself He was a nervy type, I decided—inclined to be loud-mouthed and assertive but really pretty unsure of himself. I noticed that his fingers were heavily nicotine-stained a millisecond before he rummaged in the pocket of the jacket he’d dumped on the back of his chair and pulled out a packet of Senior Service. He lit up and sucked the smoke deep. There was no ashtray around. It wasn’t the sort of room where you expected to find one.
“I don’t think I understand,” I said.
“I’m not going to make a secret of it. My father was ruining the business. He wouldn’t listen to me when I said I could save it because he said only engineers understand engineering.”
“And you are …?”
“An accountant. He was wrong. I knew how to save the business. Now I can do it.”
I really wasn’t interested. All I wanted to do was ask about the photograph, but I’d got myself into an odd situation. Usually, quickly assumed disguises are seen through quickly and you’re lucky if you get your couple of questions across. Glover seemed to want to believe I was a cop and to talk, but he’d wake up sooner or later. “The engineering firm, I see. Would that account for the photograph? An engineering marvel, the bridge.”
He glanced up at the photograph and a look of contempt came over his face. “So everyone seems to think. I’ve heard nothing but ‘Grandpa built the bridge’ since I was knee high. I never go over the bloody thing myself unless I have to. I hope it falls down. Probably will one day.”
“Your grandfather built the bridge?” I couldn’t keep the surprise and inquisitiveness out of my voice.
“He was one of the engineers, yes. I .. .” He drew on his cigarette and used the action to give himself time to think. Also, probably, to take a good look at me: leather jacket, no tie, broken nose and hair that needed cutting. “Could I see your ID again?”
“Just a few more questions, sir, and I’ll be on my way. Your father went missing when?”
“A couple of weeks ago. I want to see the ID.”
I reached into my pocket. ‘What’s the name of the firm?”
“You’re not a policeman.”
“I never said I was. You assumed it.”
“You said Sergeant Meredith …”
“I lied. I don’t want to make trouble for you, Mr Glover. You can take over the firm and build Meccano sets for all I care. I just want some information.”
“I’ve nothing to say.”
“How would your mother react if I got her across here and she found you with the champers open?”
“How could you do that?”
I got up, standing as tall as I could, and went across the room to the telephone. “I got the number of the Jag. Two calls and I’ve got the phone number of the silver-haired gent it’s registered to. One more call and I’m onto your Mum.”
“Who are you?”
“I told you at the door. You let me in, remember? Come on, Mr Glover. Be smart. A couple of questions and I’m gone and you can open another bottle and get a couple of girls in. What’s the name of the firm?”
“That’s one question. Glover and Barclay.”
“Who’s Barclay?”
“Two. He was a partner. Son of the original Barclay, like my father was son of the original Glover.”
“Why do you say ‘was’?”
“That’s three questions.”
I picked up the phone.
“Okay, okay. He’s dead. He was killed a few years ago by a hit-and-run driver.”
“Where?”
“On an approach to the bridge. It was in the papers. Bridge builder’s son tilled on father’s creation, that sort of crap.”
I dropped the phone. The noise made him jump. Nervy, just as I thought. I put my notebook away and walked out of the room and down the passage. I heard the bottle clink against the rim of the glass just before the door closed behind me. I’d spoiled his day but I can’t say I was sorry. I flattened the carpet and let the door lock, then I pressed the buzzer for Flat 6. Nothing happened and I pressed it again. When Glover’s shaky voice came over the intercom I said nothing and walked away. The more distracted Mr Glover was, the less likely he was to remember a name and a face. Impersonating a police officer was a charge I didn’t want to have to think about.
I drove down to Bondi to eat fish and chips on the grass and look out over the water. That was the plan but the cold wind drove me to eat the food in the ear and to look at the water through the windshield. Modern life—we see more of the world on film than with our eyes, and more and more of our experience is coming at second hand, through experts, commentators and communicators. I think it must have been a communicator on the radio who told me that. As I munched the food I looked out at the deep blue water, breaking up into whitecaps a hundred metres out and rolling in to the bleak empty beach. The water looked clean, but they tell us it isn’t. It wasn’t the kind of day to go down and find out.
But the water led me to thoughts of the harbour and the bridge, and on from there to consideration of Detective Sergeant Meredith. I didn’t recall any clause in the act
that compelled the licensed private enquiry agent to cooperate with the police, but there often comes a point when that’s the right course of action. The problem is to judge when the moment is right—go too early and the cops can shut you out completely; go too late and they can do you for obstruction or worse. I judged, as I usually do, that it was too early.
I dumped the lunch leavings in a rubbish bin and drove back to Darlinghurst. Another stroll down William Street and through Hyde Park took me to the city library in Pitt Street.’ The library has one of those idiot-proof computer systems where you read the instructions off the screen, touch a marker beside the entry you want and find your way home. I ended up with The Sydney Harbour Bridge by Peter Spearritt and Building the Sydney Harbour Bridge: The Photography of Henry Mallard as the most useful-looking items. Both were on the shelves, which meant that my luck was running strongly this day. The photographs were well worth an hour or so—clear and sharp images, unsentimental, a tremendous record of a tremendous feat. The last photograph in the book showed the photographer himself sitting on a heap of metal high above the water. He wore a suit and hat, and you could just see the tip of his waxed moustache. Probably the engineers, Bradfield, Barclay, Glover, Madden and others looked much the same.
Spearritt’s book was a detailed, readable study of the bridge, from the germ of the idea to build one through all the politicking and chicanery that necessarily followed. He had a ton of information on the actual construction from the technical and human points of view, and chapters on the impact the bridge made on the life of the city. I wished I had time to read it all. Spearritt was no whitewash merchant. He discussed the plight of people who had lost their homes as a result of the construction, and he had a chapter on those who had actually been killed on the job. Sixteen of them, apparently, mostly rivetters, but the casualty list included painters, quarrymen and others. One sentence on page 68 took my eye: ‘Safety regulations scarcely existed, and it is amazing that there were not many more deaths.’
I copied a few pages, including the photograph of the almost closed arch, which lost a lot in the reproduction but still constituted part of my evidence. I sat back in my chair in front of the empty screen. Computers are wonderful, but they can’t actually help you to think. If I entered into a database what I had: two dead engineers and one missing plus a policeman mentioning ‘bridge cases’ and supposing there was a key marked ‘Conclusions’ what would I get? My own conclusion was ‘What else have you got?’
I scrolled back through the catalogue entries in case I’d missed something and came across a pamphlet entitled Your Bridge, Our History. One of the librarians discovered it in a filing case, after a search that threatened to turn into a major stock-take. The pamphlet was just a few pages stapled together. It was published a few years back by something called the Veterans of the Bridge Society. It contained a couple of reminiscences from men who had worked on the bridge, a couple of Mallard’s photographs, a list of the men killed and seriously injured in the course of the work, and a selection of opinions from ordinary people. Some praised the bridge as an engineering marvel, others condemned it for ruining the Rocks area and Circular Quay. The secretary of the Veterans of the Bridge Society was Stan Livermore, and the pamphlet carried his address—43A Pump Street, The Rocks.
All this had taken me a couple of hours, but I hadn’t spent much of Louise Madden’s money. I hadn’t even got a receipt for the photocopies. So a cab to the Rocks seemed not unreasonable.
We pulled up near enough to the Argyle Centre for me to feel that, with the best will in the world, restorers and preservers have an uphill battle. The old buildings were too clean, too sanitised to be convincing, even though every stone in them was original and genuine. Still, since leaving it alone isn’t an option, cleaning it up is better than tearing it down. Around a couple of corners in Pump Street things changed for the better or the worse, depending on your point of view. The narrow houses seemed to be holding each other up and for decades corroded guttering and downpipes had leaked rusty water across stones and cement, leaving a brown stain that would never wear away. Though none of the buildings was more than two storeys high, they blocked out the late afternoon sunshine so that the street was cold and gloomy. No trees, no front gardens sprouting wattle. This was more like the old Rocks—convict-built, working-class-inhabited, drink-loving and police-hating. A large red brick warehouse or bond store dominated the end of the street.
A man in a heavy overcoat turned out of a lane ahead of me and hurried along the narrow footpath. The street was lined with terrace houses and he disappeared into one of them, maybe number 43A, maybe the house next door, I couldn’t be sure Number 43A was a skinny sandstone terrace, one of five built so that you stepped directly from the front door onto the footpath. The balcony above had been boxed in with fibro cement and dimpled glass louvres. The door was scarred at the bottom by generations of collisions with solid boots, and its locks had been changed so many times that the area around the present one was composed of as much old, cracked putty and paint as wood. I knocked and then rubbed my hands together. It was cold in Pump Street, really cold. I jammed my hands into my pockets and waited. A few cars cruised by and a man carrying a half-carton of beer weaved across the street and went into the house at the end of the terrace. To gain admittance he kicked at the bottom of the door. I was getting nowhere, and considered trying a kick. I knocked again and heard a shuffling inside.
“Yes?”
I had to look a long way down to see the face of the woman who had opened the door a few inches. Even then it was hard. She was a tiny, bent figure with white hair and her back was so bowed the unbuttoned cardigan she wore hung almost to the floor. She turned her head sideways to look up at me—ancient eyes in a face so lined and wrinkled that it looked like an ill-fitting rubber mask. Her head sat stiffly at an odd angle to her shoulders and she had to swivel the upper part of her body to change her line of vision.
“I’m looking for Stan Livermore,” I said. “Does he live here?”
She poked a yellow arthritic claw out from the greasy, turned-back sleeve of the cardigan. “Five dollars.”
“What?”
“I ask everyone who knocks at my bloody door for five dollars. You’d be surprised how many pay up.”
I paid up in coins. She waited patiently while I collected the amount. She stuffed the money in a pocket of the cardigan and shuffled back. “Just a minute,” I said. “I asked you about Mr Livermore.”
“Old Stan?”
“That’s right.”
“Silly old bugger.”
The idea of this crone emphasising the fact of someone else’s age struck me as funny and I smiled.
“What’re you laughing at?”
Even with her head turned like that, dry, moth-eaten hair hanging in her face and the skin around them warty and puckered like a toad’s, the eyes were still serving her. “Nothing,” I said. “Look, madam, it’s terribly cold out here. Could I come in?”
“You might rape me.”
“I won’t, I assure you.” I showed her my licence, as if a piece of paper was some kind of guarantee against rape.
“Hardy,” she said, reading the licence from a distance of a couple of feet. “Knew a woman named Hardy once. Silly bitch.”
“Mrs …?”
“Tracey, Betty Tracey. Have you got five dollars?”
“I already gave you five dollars. They’re in your pocket.”
I was suddenly aware of sounds around and above me. A door had opened in the next house, and a couple of the louvre windows had been operated. I guessed what was going on—old Betty was putting on her show for an always-appreciative audience. It was called ‘Make the stranger look like an idiot’ and it ran for as many acts as he was dopey enough to allow. I didn’t feel like playing. I took out a twenty-dollar note and waved it in front of Betty’s forty-five-degree face. Suddenly she was the bit player and I was the lead. I snapped the note. “If you want this, invite me in.”
She stepped back and let the door open wide enough to let me as well as my money pass through it. But that was as much as she was willing to concede. She let the door sit ajar and moved only a few feet down the hallway. There was almost no light; I had an impression of narrow, steep stairs at the end of the passage and one room off to the right.
“Are you going to give me the money or rape me? Did you see that Lady whatshername got raped? She was older than me.”
She was referring to a wealthy titled north shore woman whose life had ended the way no one’s should—raped, robbed, bashed to death. The recollection made me disinclined to any kind of coercion. Risking the chance that she’d suddenly stand up straight and waltz away up the stairs, I handed her the twenty. “I want to talk to Stan Livermore. I was given this as his address. Does he live here?”
“Old Stan?”
Oh, Christ, not again, I thought. “Yes, old Stan. Is he here?”
“No.”
“Does he live here?”
She folded the note three times and put it in the pocket along with the coins. “Yes.”
“Where is he now?”
She sucked in a deep breath and sniffed. Slowly, she swivelled her head around in a ninety degree turn so that instead of looking up with her head cocked towards her right shoulder, it was cocked towards her left. The manoeuvre seemed to take a full minute. When she was ready she sniffed again and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “What’s the time?”
Here we go, I thought. I looked at my watch. “Nearly half-past four.”
“You’ve got about three-quarters of an hour to catch him, then.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I know where he’ll be till quarter past five, after that it’s anybody’s guess. Might come back here tonight, might not.”
“Right Understood. Where will he be until five-fifteen?”
She paused and I waited for more sniffs, more citations of rape cases or more requests for money. Maybe she considered all three but she settled for a sniff. “He’ll be in the Botanic Gardens, watching the bloody sun go down behind the bloody bridge. Does it every day it isn’t pissing down rain. Silly old bugger.”