Appeal Denied: A Cliff Hardy Novel (11 page)

‘Lee,’ I said, ‘sounds as if most of this is all news to you.’

‘It is,’ Townsend said. ‘Jane has been very guarded. She gave me a few more hints when she heard I’d made contact with you.’

‘Why’s that?’ I said.

‘Because I want protection,’ Jane said. She broke off and took in another deep breath. ‘You’re driving, Lee. Can I get a brandy?’

Townsend ordered two—one for her, one for me. Not my favourite drink by a long way, but I wanted to give her some kind of support and Townsend was bound to get the best stuff. I’d do my nocturnal sobering walk trick if necessary. The drinks came and Jane took a slug. Me too. Smooth.

‘I’ve got a plan,’ she said.

Jane Farrow’s plan was for her to meet with Vince Gregory, who was unhappy about her having broken off their affair. She intended to confirm that it was all off between them, to insult him and then tell him she was planning to report the corruption within the Northern Crimes Unit to the police ombudsman.

‘He’ll go nuts,’ she said. ‘He’ll be furious with me on both counts, but he’s a cold, calculating bastard and he’ll try to persuade me not to talk. I’ll say I need certain guarantees from Gary Perkins, he’s the Chief Super, and pretty much at the heart of the corruption, or very close to it.’

‘They’ll kill you,’ Townsend said.

She nodded. ‘They’ll try, but we set the meeting up so you can film and tape the discussion and the deal we strike, and we rely on Mr Hardy here to protect me. We film the attempt on me as well. A bit before it gets too heavy, I hope.’

‘It’s madness,’ Townsend said. ‘Far too dangerous.’

Then I got an insight into the obsession that had hold of her. She became almost coquettish: ‘Don’t you want the story, Lee?’

Townsend said nothing and she turned her attention to me. ‘If we get Gregory and Perkins on toast, they’ll dob in the others. They’ll talk. They’ll deal. It’s your best chance at getting a line on who killed Lillian. They’ll know.’

‘You’d give me a free run at them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Off-camera?’

She shrugged. ‘Why not?’

Obsessed, ruthless. Trustworthy? Impossible to be sure
.

‘Jane,’ I said, ‘I can see what’s in it for Lee and possibly for me, but what have you got to gain? Just supposing it goes according to your plan, and I wouldn’t bet on it, you’ll be finished in the police force. A lot of mud’ll stick to you. Your future’d be pretty bleak. You might write a book, might sell the film rights, but …’

‘It stinks,’ Jane said. ‘People are getting hurt. It sickens me. Call me a martyr.’

The use of that word worried me a lot. In my book, martyrs of all kinds are deluded—paradise doesn’t exist and neither does a clean city. To do him credit, Townsend, who had most to gain, was as uncertain as me.

‘It’s not something to rush into,’ he said. ‘There might be other ways.’

‘There aren’t,’ she said.

‘When were you thinking of making your move?’

‘I can’t stand it much longer. As soon as possible—a week?’

Townsend shook his head. ‘It’d take that long at least to set up the locale and other necessary arrangements.’

Jane finished her brandy. ‘Ten days, max!’

‘Or?’ I said.

‘Or I find someone else to do it with.’

That’s where we left it. Townsend paid for the dinner and took Jane off, whether to her place or his I didn’t know or care. I watched them walk away, holding hands. She was ten centimetres taller in her flatties, but Townsend held himself so well and moved so fluently the difference wasn’t as noticeable as it might have been.

I decided that I was sober enough to drive, but I went for a long walk anyway. I had a lot of thinking to do and walking helps. The rain held off, but those Chatswood canyon winds got to me and made me step up my pace. Lily and I used to walk around the streets at night, in Glebe and Greenwich, burning off the evening meal calories, processing the booze, talking. We talked about politics, books, films, people. We told stories from our past that helped to bind us together. When someone knows that much about you and you know a lot about them, there’s a connection. It helps you to avoid mistakes, anticipate needs, keep things flowing. I missed those walks.

I found myself thinking more about Lily than Townsend and Jane Farrow and her extraordinary claims and proposal. I got lost, and had to concentrate to find my way back to the car park, so I stopped thinking about the evening’s developments altogether. I retrieved the car, paid the fee and drove out into heavy rain. More thoughts of Lily, who’d always mocked my clunky wipers.

I drove carefully in the sort of moderate to heavy traffic that seems to be on the move in most parts of Sydney day and night. For a couple of kilometres I found myself behind one of those drivers who hit the brakes unexpectedly and too often, and change lanes without signalling. I surprised myself by remaining patient. I turned the radio on but I could scarcely hear it over the drumming of the rain. I was back in my own territory before my mind could focus on the shape of things again. One thought came through clearly:
Find out a lot more about Jane Farrow.

part two

14

T
ownsend rang me the next morning. Hank Bachelor had left a note saying that he’d found the bugging device and removed it. He’d also installed an up-to-the-minute alarm system geared to a private security mob he recommended.

‘We have to talk,’ Townsend said.

‘I’ll say we do. I’ve had this phone debugged, so we can talk on this line.’

‘I’m on my mobile. Should be okay.’

Thank God he didn’t call it
my cell
. ‘Is she with you now?’

‘No. She’s back on the job, bright and early. Have you ever had a relationship with someone you knew was obsessed, maybe unstable, but you wanted her just the same?’

I thought of Glen Withers, Marisha Karatsky. ‘Yeah, once or twice,’ I said.

‘What happened?’

‘Fun at the time. Didn’t work out well for either party long-term.’

‘What d’you think about Jane?’

‘I’m not sure whether you’re talking about you and her, or her and this scheme she has.’

I could hear his sigh down the line. ‘Neither am I.’

‘I’d like to get her on a polygraph to ask if she was the one who talked to Lily.’

‘No chance of that. She’d drop us like hot scones. I’m not wide-eyed, Hardy. I know she’s using me.’

‘Us.’

‘Right, but at one point you told her she was convincing.’

‘Good recall, Lee. One of the things I wanted to ask— did you have a tape running?’

He laughed. ‘Jesus, I was tempted, but no I didn’t. And just as well. She patted me down, which I didn’t mind, and insisted I leave my briefcase in the car.’

‘D’you have any idea where this safe place she spoke of might be?’

‘Not a clue. I get your drift. It’d help if we could get a look at the material she claims to have.’

‘How was she this morning? How did you read her?’

‘She was very edgy. Dreading going to work, but going just the same. A prime candidate for stress leave. I care about her, and I’m bloody conflicted.’

We talked it over for a bit longer and took some comfort from having ten days before Jane put her head in the lion’s mouth. I suggested to Townsend that he tap his sources for confirmation of some of the details of what Jane had told us about corruption north of the Bridge.

‘I could do that. What’ll you be doing?’

‘Investigating Gregory, Kristos and this Perkins character. Seeing where they live, what they drive, who they fuck.’

‘How will you do that? Through Frank Parker?’

‘And in other ways. One thing I should tell you. Apparently I’ve come into property and money through Lily’s will. Kristos said that made me a suspect.’

‘Fuck, why are you telling me that?’

‘Just so you’ll know how complicated it all is.’

What I didn’t tell him was that the person I was intending to investigate was Jane Farrow. Duplicitous, but what was he keeping back from me? Bound to be something.

A good hacker can get into most computer files and Phil Lawton was one of the best. A long way from being a nerd, he works out at the Redgum gym, runs half-marathons and the City to Surf, and can talk intelligently on quite a few subjects. About the only similarity between Phil and the stereotype of the computer geek is that he has a beard— well, more of a stubble. I went to the gym hoping I might catch him there, but I was told he’d been and gone. My knees were still sore and I didn’t feel like a workout, so I headed for the spa and soaked and thought. Then it was coffee at the Bar Napoli, an often repeated routine, except that my mobile wouldn’t ring with Lily telling me she was heading to Brisbane. Or that she was back from Canberra, and how about dinner?

Phil works at whatever computer experts do, from home in Annandale, where he converted a garage into a temple to Microsoft, Google and the digital solar system— make that the universe. No point ringing him, he never answered.

I drove to his house via a couple of sneaky streets, a route that’d let me know whether I was being followed. No tail. Phil’s street dead-ends at a set of steps leading down to Booth Street. I parked near the foot of the steps and walked up. Exercise wherever and whenever you can. I pressed the buzzer and didn’t need to speak. I knew Phil could see me in full colour from several angles. The house is nothing to look at, but the security is Fort Knox-like. A soft hum sounded and I was able to open the security door. A chime, and I could open the main door after that.

Once inside, I knew where to go and that I’d be tracked. The workroom door opened when I was two strides away and Phil had swivelled round in his chair to greet me as I stepped into the softly murmuring, light-blinking sanctum.

‘Hi, Cliff,’ Phil said. ‘Can you hang on a minute while I zap this fucker?’

I found a non-electronic place to sit while he spun around and tapped keys. He spun back.

‘So, healing cut and bruise on forehead. Slight stiffness of movement. Same old Cliff. Sorry to touch a nerve, but aren’t you out of business?’

He didn’t know Lily and I didn’t want to go into the details.

‘I’m sort of freelancing,’ I said. ‘Consulting, you might say.’

‘Good for you. So, whatcha want? If it’s in my power …’

Phil was in my debt. One time when he was pushing iron without a spotter, the upright he slotted the weight into gave way. I was there and managed to grab the weight and hold it until he scrambled out from under it. Otherwise, he’d have had a bar with 70 kilos attached coming down somewhere near his chest or head. Almighty crash when I let it go.

I told him I wanted information on a person who’d attended the University of Western Sydney and the Goulburn Police Academy and was a current member of the state police service.

He whistled. ‘Don’t want much, do you? The university’s a snap, but the police stuff. Shit, they’ve got all sorts of firewalls and cut-outs.’

‘Can it be done?’

He waved his hand at the banks of screens and printers and scanners and God knows what else. ‘That’s the beauty of it,’ he said. ‘Everything that’s out there is in here. It’s Aladdin’s cave, mate, and all you need is about a thousand and one ways to say “Open Sesame”.’

‘Right,’ I said.

He moved his chair along to another machine. Over his shoulder he said, ‘Name?’

I told him.

‘DOB?’

‘1980, approximately.’

‘Shit, that’s all? Okay, leave it with me.’

I’m no computer expert, but I’ve paid my fees and have access to the databanks of a few of the broadsheet newspapers. The computer in my office in Newtown is a laptop, even more of a clunker than the desktop one at home, but it can do the job if you’re patient. With cyber stuff, I am—let’s say still a bit amazed at what the bloody machines can do. I hadn’t been to the office in weeks, had given my notice to quit, and would have to clear it out very soon. It had been an okay place to work, hard to get a park though, and on this Friday afternoon I had to circle several blocks to get anywhere reasonably close.

Evidently whoever had broken in and stolen the computer from Glebe hadn’t known about the Newtown office or had reasoned that Lily wouldn’t have worked there. They were right; no self-respecting journalist would have used the old Mac with its antiquated operating system and floppy disks.

The office was grotty at the best of times, but when I was working there regularly I’d occasionally go over it with a broom, duster and a wet cloth. After the recent neglect, the cobwebs had gathered and the room and its small alcove smelled musty. A hundred years of dust sits in the building and filters down. There was a layer over every surface, and a few big cockroaches scuttled for cover from the shelf where I kept the coffee and sugar.

I opened the windows to let the petrol fumes compete with the mustiness and gave the chair, the printer, the mouse pad and space for a notebook a few wipes. I turned the computer on and let it plod slowly through its paces. The coffee was stale but I brewed it up anyway. While I waited for what I wanted to come up, I thought about the few years I’d worked here and some of the people who’d sat across from me with their troubles, their lies, their threats. Some of them I missed, others I wished I’d never laid eyes on.

I trawled through the papers looking for articles by and about the late Rex Robinson. He was an old hand, a freelancer who’d broken a lot of stories back in the seventies and eighties but seemed to have tapered off through the nineties and after. The occasional piece still turned up—crime reporting—but the material was thin and there was plenty of harking back to earlier days when he’d given evidence to enquiries of one sort or another into the police service. One thing was relevant: his later stories, bland though they were, focused on the area covered by the Northern Crimes Unit.

His last published piece had a little more muscle than the others and dealt with the death of an Asian prostitute in North Sydney. The very young woman, who’d overstayed her visitor’s visa, had been released from a detention centre, apparently by mistake. The official verdict was suicide by drug overdose, but Robinson had implied there was more to it. One sentence read: ‘A former police officer from the Northern Crimes Unit said that the coroner’s verdict was “unsafe”.’