Appeal Denied: A Cliff Hardy Novel (3 page)

‘Because your mother and father are dead and there’s no other siblings or kids involved, you’d be next of kin. They’ll want you to make funeral arrangements when the … her body’s released. Are you up for that?’

‘Fuck, no.’

‘Anyone with you who’s had some experience?’

‘Jerry Hawkins, I guess—my manager.’

‘Get him to make the calls—to the police and then to a funeral place. There’ll have to be a notice in the papers. She had a lot of friends, Tony. They’ll want to show up and you’ll have to arrange a thing for afterwards. Can Jerry organise all that? Did he know her?’

‘Yeah. He’ll do it.’

‘Give him my number and tell him I’ll help any way I can.’

‘Okay. Thanks, Cliff. You all right?’

‘No. She wouldn’t want any religion and she’d want a party. Can you make that clear to Jerry?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Tell him I want to say a few words. How about you?’

He was crying and I was close.

‘I’ll … I’ll try. Jesus, Lily.’

Lily was cremated at Rookwood. The ceremony, conducted by one of the writers she’d worked closely with on a Fairfax paper, Tim Arthur, went as she’d have wished—no bullshit, good jokes. Arthur did the honours well. He talked about the stories he and Lily had worked on together, and the couple of Walkley Awards they’d won. He said she’d deserved them more than him but he’d accepted just the same. Struck the right note. I spoke briefly, along with some friends and colleagues. Tony managed a halting, distressed sentence or two that didn’t help the rest of us keep our composure.

The wake was at Tony’s place in Hunters Hill—a sprawling sandstone affair he’d bought with his winnings. Tony was doing pretty well as a world-ranked welterweight contender, fighting mostly in the US. I remembered that he’d got on the web when he’d paid his deposit on the place, and checked the history of the area.

‘Bet some of the nobs think it’s named after that governor bloke, the one who had the stoush with Macarthur over the rum and that.’

Lily and I were having a celebratory drink with him at the time. ‘I thought that was Bligh,’ I said.

Tony shook his head. ‘This Hunter bloke, too. Well, turns out it isn’t. It’s named after some farm in Scotland, so up theirs.’

Tony had been nervous about moving into such an upmarket neighbourhood, but it had worked out all right. His house was one of the old ones designed by ‘some Frenchman’, he told us. Apparently Italian craftsmen had worked on it and that showed. When the neighbours saw that Tony was spending money on restoration rather than renovation, they accepted him.

The day of the wake was cool and fine and the party took place mainly on the big upstairs deck that looked out over the Parramatta River. Jerry Hawkins had arranged the catering and there were masses of finger food and a flood of booze for the eighty-odd people attending. Lily’s favourite blues records—BB King, Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker—were playing and the only thing wrong with the party was that Lily wasn’t there. She’d have liked it.

Two years and a bit with someone, especially the way we played it, isn’t long enough to get to know all a partner’s friends and a lot of the people there didn’t have a clue who I was until someone filled them in. I caught some curious glances and I could imagine the conversations.

That’s her bloke.

What does he do?

He’s a private eye, or was until he got rubbed out.

Are the cops looking at him?

You’d reckon, wouldn’t you?

Tony introduced me to Jerry and I thanked him for the good job he’d done. Tony was on orange juice—unless he’d spiked it. Who could blame him? He was about twelve years younger than his sister—‘an afterthought’ as she called him, and he’d looked up to her from day one. Their mother was a frustrated writer. She’d approved of Lily’s chosen profession. The father was a truckie who’d built up a middle-sized business. Tony was all the late-life son he could’ve asked for. According to Lily, they’d been a successful family until cancer got her mother in her mid-fifties and her father, at sixty-odd, a few years later. It was one of the reasons Lily hadn’t wanted children.

With too many of these memories on my mind, I talked briefly to a few people I knew, but basically wanted to be on my own and let this ‘celebration of Lily’s life’ go on around me. I walked to the deck rail and looked out over the water. There was a good breeze and the boats were making the most of it. It’s not something I ever took to. The few times I tried, it seemed to consist of alternating between being bored rigid and working your arse off while someone yelled at you. I guess if you did it long enough to know what you were about and had enough money, you could get to do the yelling.

I’d had a big scotch on arrival and a glass of wine since, or was it two? I finished the drink, whatever number it was, and thought about another. Against that, if I ate a few sandwiches and had some coffee and took a walk around the streets, it’d probably be safe to drive home. Home—not a lot to feel good about there. I was leaning towards another drink or two and a taxi, when a man appeared beside me.

‘Cliff Hardy?’

‘Yes.’

A small boat about to tip over in the wind caught my eye and I watched it without looking at the man who’d spoken. Rude of me, but for the first time in a while I was looking at some outside action, instead of in at myself.

‘I’m Lee Townsend.’

That got my attention. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was miles away.’

I recognised him. Townsend was an investigative print and television reporter, the sort that get up the noses of politicians, bureaucrats and business types—my kind of guy. He’d broken big stories on police corruption, political cover-ups and government department mismanagement. He’d fronted several television documentaries that had made his image as well known as his written work. He had a couple of spin-off books to his credit that I hadn’t read.

I was facing him now, using the word loosely. He stood about 160 centimetres at the most and his build would have to be described as puny. The magic of television had concealed this.

He saw my reaction. ‘Yeah, I know,’ he said. ‘People think I’m a six-footer like you.’

I shook his hand. ‘Jean-Paul Sartre was one fifty-eight centimetres on his best days,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘Thank you for that. Your eulogy was good. Spot on.’

‘You knew Lily?’

‘A bit in the early days when we were wage slaves. She had the handicap of being a woman, and I was too fucking small to be taken seriously.’

‘You both did okay.’

He placed his glass on the balcony rail. Looked like scotch. He wore an expensive lightweight suit. I was in a dark blazer and dark pants, blue shirt—closest I could get to the suit look. No tie. Lily said ties were as stupid as gloves and she was right.

‘I’d like to have a talk with you,’ Townsend said. ‘Here, if you’re agreeable, or later if you’d prefer it.’

He might have looked different from his TV persona but his strong, resonant, convincing voice was the same. I had a feeling he’d be worth talking to. In a strange way he reminded me of Lily—smaller, of course.

‘Now’d be good,’ I said. ‘Lately I’ve been talking mostly to myself. What about a drink? Was that scotch?’

He nodded. I picked up his glass and mine and headed for the bar. The crowd had thinned out a bit but not much. You can count on journos to form a good, solid hard core at any boozy bash. They’ve always got plenty to talk about and it takes a long while for the grog to make them boring.

Muddy was doing his number: Lily and I had seen the movie of the Band’s supposed last performance—
The Last
Waltz
—before they kept reincarnating. Muddy had done the song in his suit, but still managed to look as if he was down on the delta:

Ain’t that a man?

Ain’t that a man, child?

I did some handshaking and nodding on the way to the bar. I ate a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches while I waited to name my poison. I got my hands around two scotches large enough to sustain a decent talk and went back out onto the deck. Townsend was still there and on his own. I finished half my drink before I even got there. With the first drink and the wines— probably three if I was honest—on board and the emotional drag, the whisky hit me. I was suddenly conscious of the need to walk carefully and watch where I was going.

I put his drink on the rail. ‘What’s on your mind?’

‘It’s a week since Lily was killed. What are your sources telling you about the police investigation?’

‘I don’t have any sources. The few I had don’t want to know me since I got scrubbed. I did have a particular bloke who—’

‘Frank Parker.’

‘Yeah, but Frank’s got other fish to fry. Plus he’s called in a lot of favours over the years, some of them for me. I’d say he’s just about tapped out. Why?’

‘Don’t you want to know who killed her and why?’

‘I don’t give a shit about why.’

‘Understood. Well. I
have
got a police source and what I’m told makes me want to look into Lily’s death as closely as I can.’

‘What does he tell you?’

Townsend picked up his glass, rattled the ice and took a drink. ‘Just a minute. You’re making assumptions. Two things. I’m after a story of course, but I liked Lily. She never put me down for being a short-arse and I admired her work.

And did I say my source was a male?’

A smartie
. I was a bit drunk and a bit annoyed. ‘Okay, okay. You liked Lily and some cop’s been blabbing to you. So what?’

‘We’re getting off on the wrong foot here.’

‘I’m a bit pissed.’

‘Not surprising. Why don’t we leave it till tomorrow.’

I was about to grab him when I realised how silly it’d look. I was twenty-plus centimetres taller and would’ve outweighed him by twenty kilos. He stood his ground.

‘I’d rather talk now,’ I said. ‘Please.’

Townsend glanced around to make sure there was no one within earshot. ‘As you’d expect, the police took away her computers—desktop and laptop—and two thumb drives. I’m told they were wiped clean beyond any point of data recovery. That brought the detectives to a full stop. Their only working theory was that Lily was killed because of something she was writing, or was going to write.’

‘That’s logical. She’d brought down some high-fliers.’

‘Sure, but I think there’re holes in the story. Why wouldn’t the killer just take the computer stuff? How likely is it that the person who shot her had the IT skills to clean the drives?’

‘An accomplice?’

‘Which means a witness. Remember she was shot with a .22—that’s a professional job, as you’d know. How many professional killers are happy to have some computer nerd hanging around the workplace?’

I could see his point. And Lily’s work station was on the glassed-in balcony attached to her bedroom. She liked to be able to jump out of bed and go straight to the keyboard when an idea struck her. I knew that when she’d had the house rebuilt after a fire had destroyed the previous one, she hadn’t wanted any doors between the bedroom and the balcony. A friend had talked about
feng shui
and I could remember Lily’s response.

‘Bullshit,’ she’d said. ‘Breezes and access.’

I told Townsend about the layout. ‘Even assuming that the computer guy came in after Lily was killed, he’d have to be working for some time in full view of her.’

‘I can’t see it, can you?’ Townsend said. ‘A computer whiz who’s that much of a hard case?’

I shrugged. ‘It’s possible. They let them play with computers in jail. And they reckon some of the game players are so desensitised to violence that they could play while their mothers’ throats were being cut.’

‘D’you believe that, Hardy?’

‘No. So what do you think happened?’

‘I told you I have a police source. It’s all a bit vague at the moment, but my suspicion, based on the little I’ve been told, is that the police cleaned the decks.’

4

‘Y
ou’ve got me confused,’ I said. ‘The police’re covering up a murder. Why?’

‘I told you before the
why
was important.’

‘I’m trying to follow you. Lily was killed because of something she was writing that involved police?’

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. It wasn’t her area, was it? More likely some dirty business deal.’

‘Comes back to the same question—what’s the police motive for a cover-up?’

‘Raises interesting possibilities, doesn’t it? Say the detective looks through Lily’s stuff and sees he can go in for some blackmail for the big bucks on the basis of what she’s written. Say he’s got gambling debts, say he’s being blackmailed himself for something else.’

I hadn’t finished the drink and was sucking in some of the rapidly cooling fresh air. Scepticism was setting in. ‘You’re a conspiracy theorist.’

‘Have to be. The blank drives need explaining. The killer wants to eliminate Lily. Not worried about what she’s writing. The cop sees possibilities in what she’s writing. He doesn’t care about who killed her. What’s one unsolved murder more or less? He gets the police IT guy onside. They copy the incriminating material and cook up the story about everything being wiped. Who’s going to contradict them? Look, it’s speculation, I admit, but I really think police are involved—criminally. Of course, I could be quite wrong. I’ll have to work harder on my police informant.’

He’d finished his drink and was standing there, all 160 centimetres of him, in his neat suit. I decided I didn’t like him much.

‘Tell me this,’ I said. ‘Is your main interest in who killed Lily, or in your theoretical blackmailing cop?’

‘And in what he had to sell, you should add.’

Still the smartarse
. ‘Consider it added.’

‘I’m interested in all of it, Mr Hardy, but it’s complicated and dangerous and difficult. That’s why I need your help.’

I thought about the proposition as I stood there with the party going on noisily behind me and the boats below starting to head for home as dark clouds gathered overhead and the wind sprang up. Lily had advised Tony against building a McMansion somewhere and recommended buying this place instead. We were here because of her in two ways and I was missing her in every way. Finding who had killed her wouldn’t bring her back of course, but looking would keep me in touch with her in a way, while doing what I did best.