Appeal Denied: A Cliff Hardy Novel (17 page)

‘They’ve got us on all sorts of counts, Cliff—conspiracy for one. The prohibited equipment—the vests, plus your pistol—give them the terrorism angle if they want to use it. My pension could be at risk and Townsend’s whole career. It’s a lay-down misère.’

Frank knew how much I hated card games and how hopeless I was at them. But his message was clear—don’t stir, not now.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I might play along if I hear a bit more.’

Matthews said the other senior members of the Northern Crimes Unit would be called in for questioning and that their activities and finances would be subject to intense investigation.

‘They’ll be spooked,’ I said. ‘They’ll run for cover.’

Matthews smiled. ‘I understand you were a boxer, Mr Hardy. What did Joe Louis say about … whoever it was?’

‘It’s pronounced Lewis, not Louey,’ I said, ‘and it was Billy Coon. Joe said, “He can run, but he can’t hide”.’

Matthews wasn’t the least put out by my one-upmanship. ‘Exactly,’ he went on. ‘We’ll have two objects. One, to discover the connection between police officers and the deaths of the people Mr Hardy has referred to, and that of Inspector Gregory, of course. Two, to bring to an end the criminality that seems to have prevailed under the protection, possibly with the connivance of …’

‘Of?’ I said.

Mattioli said, ‘That remains to be determined.’

Townsend spoke for the first time since I’d come into the room. No knowing what had gone down before-hand. ‘I noticed that the police at the caravan park kept the media at a distance. D’you think you can sit on this?’

‘We’ll try,’ Matthews said, ‘with your cooperation.’

The soft soap approach. I wondered where Townsend’s lawyer was. I also wondered whether Townsend had been given a chance, or had wanted, to talk to Frank about Farrow’s plan and the Morello photographs. Probably not. My guess was that he’d opt to keep exploiting the evidence we had—and the people involved.

‘Cliff?’ Frank said.

I looked directly at Matthews, taking in the double chin, the stomach bulge over the belt slung below his gut. A self-indulgent man, but not a stupid one. A dangerous combination.

‘What’s our role in your ongoing investigation?’ I said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice but probably not succeeding. Matthews was tired; Mattioli was angry; Frank was resigned; Townsend showed no reaction.

‘Consultative,’ Matthews said.

I said, ‘What does that mean?’

Matthews scratched at a patch of stubble near his bottom lip that was irritating him, but not as much as I was. ‘Hardy,’ he said, ‘it means whatever the fuck I want it to mean.’

22

T
he same policewoman escorted us from the building. My keys had been returned and my car stood immediately outside the police station. They hadn’t returned my gun or the vests. Without speaking, we got in the car and I drove to Leichhardt where I’d picked up Frank and Townsend. Silence all the way. Private thoughts.

‘Sorry for the trouble, Frank,’ I said when I stopped. ‘Didn’t work out quite as we planned.’

Frank opened the door. ‘Things seldom do, Cliff. But it worked out worse for Vince Gregory than for us.’ He reached over and patted my shoulder. ‘Take my advice and keep clear of it.’

‘You know I can’t do that.’

‘I know, but I had to say it anyway. Those two reckon they’ll keep me informed. I doubt it, but anything I hear I’ll pass on.’

‘They’re looking to pin the murders on Gregory and do a bit of housekeeping and that’ll be it,’ Townsend said.

Frank got out of the car. ‘Maybe. I’ll be in touch, Cliff.’

He walked to his car, opened it with the remote, and drove away. Townsend stayed where he was in the back.

‘This is all bullshit,’ he said.

‘What is?’

‘Them saying they’ll look into the finances, their fucking close investigation in inverted commas. It’ll be a cover-up.’

‘Right.’

‘So you’re not going to play along?’

‘Of course not. Frank knows I won’t. Did you hear anything of the discussion between him and Matthews and Mattioli?’

‘No. They seemed to have settled things before they brought me in, but
I
was told I wouldn’t be detained or charged and that I could call off my solicitor. So I did.’

‘And what did you tell them about Jane Farrow and Hannah Morello?’

‘Are you nuts? I told them fucking nothing.’

‘So we’re still after Perkins and Kristos with our original leverage. Vince Gregory was a … distraction.’

‘Jesus, Hardy, that’s a bit harsh.’

I swivelled around and looked at him. ‘Gregory called you the poor man’s John Pilger.’

Townsend laughed, then stifled the sound. ‘I’m flattered, I think.’ At that moment he sounded tired. ‘What’s the point?’

‘The point is, I don’t care about Gregory or your feelings or sensitivities. I’m going where I’ve always been going—to whoever killed Lily, and I’ll use you and Jane Farrow and Hannah Morello and anyone else to get there.’

‘I understand.’

‘Do you? I want to carry through with Jane’s plan ASAP.’

Townsend apparently felt at a disadvantage sitting in the back of the car. Vertically challenged as he was, he’d feel at a disadvantage sitting anywhere. He got out quickly and came around to my half-lowered window, taking the higher ground.

‘I can’t see that working,’ he said. ‘The NCU’s bound to be in an uproar. Anyway, her strategy was to work through Gregory and he’s dead.’

His use of the acronym annoyed me. I was strung out from the frustration of the night’s events. ‘Fuck that,’ I said.

‘She switches her focus to Perkins.’

‘I’m not sure she’d—’

‘She carries through on it or I tell Perkins and Kristos she’s an informer and that we’ve got evidence from her of what’s been going on and who’s in the shit and we see where the chips fall.’

He backed off a step. ‘You wouldn’t.’

‘Try me.’

I started the engine and pulled away with minimum acceleration. He took a couple of steps as if he wanted to stop me, but he pulled up. I watched him for a few seconds—growing smaller in the rear vision mirror.

I meant it at the time, but I’m not sure I could’ve carried it through. The odds against it working were pretty long, and the chance that Farrow would finish up dead were good. Someone in the picture was, or had the use of, an unscrupulous killer, and one dead police person more or less wouldn’t make much difference. It hadn’t needed spelling out to Frank and Townsend that we were all in danger from this person, if not immediately then later, depending on how things worked out.

Frank and I could take care of ourselves and I had no doubt Townsend could arrange protection. Besides, now I had house security—not as good as his, but good enough. But maybe the smart play was to let the Internal Affairs people have their way and tackle Perkins and Kristos later when they were demoted, suspended or cut loose, if that’s what happened.

The morning paper had a brief, ill-informed report on a man murdered in Blakehurst. I spent most of Monday cleaning out the Newtown office and convincing myself that sitting tight was the right thing to do. It was a wet, dreary day and my mood deteriorated with the weather. Handling old case files wasn’t calculated to improve things. I’d meant to throw a lot of this stuff away when I’d moved from Darlinghurst but somehow I hadn’t got around to it. I knew there were some things I wanted to keep and I couldn’t find the will to do the sorting. Seemed easier just to bundle it all up and stick it out of sight.

Same thing now.
Why not heave it all?
I thought, but I knew I wouldn’t. Over the years I’d handled hundreds of cases, mostly small, some medium, a few large. There was no pattern to the outcomes, which varied between success, stalemate and failure. As I reached into the back of the lowest drawer of the filing cabinet, the one that always stuck after I’d once kicked it shut in a display of temper, I felt something unusual, unexpected, behind the last bunch of folders I’d left in the cardboard box I’d used to transport them. I pushed the folders out of the way and scrabbled in the back of the box. What I came up with was a bundle in plastic wrapping so old it had gone dry and crisp.

I knew what it was, although I didn’t like to think how long it had been since I’d put it there and completely forgotten about it—a long time, much water under many bridges. Soon after I’d opened my office, a woman had come in and tried to hire me to shoot her husband. She had the gun for the job—a Walther P38. She was in a distraught state over her husband’s infidelity. I calmed her down and persuaded her there were better ways of getting even. I introduced her to a lawyer who shepherded her through a divorce that netted her a solid percentage of the husband’s considerable fortune. I kept the gun, wrapped it up in a couple of plastic bags, shoved it in a box and forgot about it.

The plastic came away easily and the gun was still in good condition as far as I could tell. No rust and the magazine released easily. I expelled the bullets, which also seemed to be as good as new. I doubted that the pistol had ever been fired. How she got hold of it I never knew. I worked the action a few times and it seemed free. I had cleaning equipment at home. What’s a private detective without a gun? Except that I wasn’t a private detective any longer. I put the Walther in the pocket of my leather jacket, zipped it up tight.

I carted the boxes of files and other things like the coffee maker, the fax machine and the computer and printer back to Glebe and installed the useful bits in the spare room. The files stayed in boxes on the floor. After watching the news—nothing on Gregory—and eating something, I poured a glass of red and amused myself by cleaning the pistol. I was putting off ringing Townsend for an update on Jane Farrow. I’d had a few glasses and was feeling the effects. I thought about my once-legitimate .38 revolver and the illicit .45 automatic and a bit of the Oscar Wilde line popped into my head, with a variation:
To lose one pistol, Mr Hardy …

I was smiling at my own wit when the door buzzer sounded. I assembled the pistol and went to the door. The peephole showed me Lee Townsend standing back so that I could see most of him. Townsend, the short-arse, knew better than to stand close up.

I opened the door, holding the pistol behind my back. He was carrying a bottle. Shaped up as a better guest than I was a host. He came in and saw the gun.

‘Jesus Christ, Cliff. What’re you expecting?’

I laughed. ‘I was cleaning it. I was going to ring you but now you’re here.’

‘You’ve had a few.’

‘Ready for a few more. What’s that you’ve got there?’

‘Wolf Blass. We have to talk.’

‘Right. Through here.’

I led him to the kitchen and handed him the corkscrew, always to hand. ‘Crack it. I’ll get the glasses.’

To do him credit, he didn’t make a survey of the sixties decor or the much earlier structural decay. He opened the bottle with an expert touch. I got two glasses and we perched on either side of the bench. I put the gun on the sink and poured.

Townsend drank half the glass in a gulp. ‘Have you been married, Cliff? Or lived with women? Other than Lily, I mean.’

The wine was several notches better than the stuff I’d been drinking. I sipped it. ‘Yeah, two or three.’

‘Did you ever think you’d made one happy?’

It wasn’t what I wanted to talk about, but something in his manner made me respond. I thought about Cyn, Helen Broadway, Glen Withers …

‘No,’ I said, ‘not really.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Not sure. Partly to do with me, I guess, the way I am.

But I don’t think the women I’ve been with had a great capacity for happiness. Not many women do.’

‘Just women?’

I supposed this was leading to Jane Farrow by a roundabout route so I went along with it, although philosophising wasn’t my strong suit. ‘I think men achieve it more easily, at least for some of the time, from what they do. With women, it seems to be harder. This’s partly the wine talking. Where’s this going, Lee?’

He drained his glass as if he was trying to catch up with me. I poured him some more.

‘Jane tore strips off me when she heard about what she called our cowboy show last night.’

‘That shouldn’t surprise you.’

‘No, what surprised me was some of the things she said about … well, us. I mean, there was mutual attraction, sure. And good sex. But I thought her real interest in me was closely tied in with what I could do for her. But it turned out she was more on about how disappointed she was that I hadn’t trusted her and had gone behind her back and shaken the feelings she was starting to have for me. Coming from someone like her, I tell you it cut through.’

I nodded and we both drank some more wine.

He went on, ‘I got defensive, angry, upset. She wanted to know how it was we weren’t charged and how there was nothing much in the media.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I was tempted to tell her the truth, but my back was up and I lied. I said that Parker had used his influence as a former deputy commissioner to get us off the hook and the police had given the media bugger-all. She seemed to accept that.’

‘Good.’

‘We were at my place. We both calmed down and sort of apologised and we ended up in bed.’

‘Good luck to you. When was this?’

‘This afternoon. She had the day off. The thing is, she wants to go ahead with her plan, and just the way you suggested—targeting Perkins. And she wants to do it soon.

23

I
could think of a number of theoretical objections to the plan, but remembering the character of Jane Farrow, I knew that none of them would sway her. If she was determined to go ahead, that was fine with me and the thing for Townsend and me to do was offer her as much support as we could and look to satisfy our own needs—for me, justice for Lily’s death, for Townsend, a big story and, possibly, the saving of his relationship with Farrow.

I said these things, more or less, as we finished off the bottle of wine. For a small man, Townsend appeared to hold his grog well. He was determined to drive home so I got out some biscuits and cheese as blotter and brewed coffee.