Appeal Denied: A Cliff Hardy Novel (8 page)

I popped a couple of the capsules from the foil. ‘How secure’s this place?’

‘Solid. Alarm system A1 and connected to a private security mob. Why?’

‘I must’ve been followed through the late part of the day. Getting here I didn’t notice anything, but my skills are obviously down.’

‘I’ll give the guys a ring and tell them to keep an eye out.’

‘You’re not worried on your own account?’

‘You kidding? Think I haven’t had death threats?’

‘That’s what Tim Arthur mentioned.’

‘Right. Well, you can talk to him about old stories he and Lily covered, but I doubt that’s the source of the trouble. Possible, I suppose. Arthur’s a prick but he’s not dumb.’

I swallowed the capsules with the last dregs of the drink. Townsend showed me where the toilet and the spare room were. After I’d had a piss I went back to the kitchen to see him doodling on the lined pad.

‘Last thoughts?’

He looked up, still alert, still energetic. ‘Constable Farrow,’ he said.

I slept soundly in a comfortable three-quarter bed, woke a bit stiff and sore, showered and used one of Townsend’s stack of warmed fluffy towels. He was in the kitchen with coffee brewed and the
Australian
,
Sydney Morning Herald
and
Financial Review
all on the table. I’ve never known a journalist who wasn’t addicted to newsprint.

He barely looked up from one of the papers as I came in. ‘Sleep all right? Coffee’s made. Croissants in the bag there.’

‘Coffee’ll do fine.’ He was wearing a tracksuit and sneakers. ‘Jogging?’

‘Walking,’ he said, still reading. ‘Jogging’s bad for the joints. How do you stay trim?’

‘Trimmish. Gym, walking, diet, worry.’

‘That’ll do it. How’re the head and the knees?’

‘Okay. I might take a couple more of your bombs with the coffee just for insurance.’

I sat and drank coffee, took two more capsules and watched him rapidly process the newspapers while he sipped coffee. He was a picture of concentration; I almost expected him to take notes. Didn’t have the nerve to interrupt him. Eventually he pushed the last paper away.

‘Sorry. Ingrained habit.’

I nodded. ‘Lily was the same. Let’s get down to it. Have you got an opinion on which of the two stories is most likely to be the one that got her killed? That’s if it wasn’t something else altogether.’

‘Like what?’

‘Dunno. That’s one of the things I’ll be taking up with your bête noire, Arthur.’

‘I’m over that, Hardy. Well over it. Yes, I’d go for the media person laundering money. Dodgy politicians will usually only go so far, at least in this country. They stop short of killing people. In the US and the Philippines, some parts of Europe, there’s so much more at stake. I’m going to dig around and see if I can get a whiff of what she was on to.’

‘And a possible connection to Gregory.’

‘Right. One thing though—can you remember which story VER, meaning a minister of religion, cropped up in?’

I tried. I poured more coffee. After the break-in at the house and the attack on me, the quiet sifting through Lily’s work seemed to have happened a long time ago. I tried to recollect my jottings about the codes, their organisation on the page.

‘The money laundering story, I think. Can’t be positive.’

‘Good. It’s a hook. And I do so like to see a God-botherer with his nuts in the blender.’

I was starting to like Townsend.

10

T
ownsend said he’d work on finding out more about the media money launderer, if he could. He had an arrangement to meet Constable Farrow at a wine bar in Chatswood at 6 pm and thought it’d be a good idea if I came along.

‘What’s her grievance exactly?’ I said. ‘She’s taking a risk talking to you, even if she does fancy you, and an even bigger one talking to me.’

Townsend smiled. ‘You underestimating my charisma, Hardy?’

‘I reckon charisma’s overrated in general.’

‘What? Invented by some sawn-off?’

‘Your sensitivity’s showing.’

He laughed. ‘You’re a prick, Hardy, but you’re right. I don’t know what her game is. There’s something wrong in that Northern Crimes Unit. It’s the line to follow though, you agree?’

‘Yeah. But it’s all a bit weird—Gregory, Williams, Kristos, Farrow. Who else? What’s the big picture? What’s the overall structure of the unit?’

‘I thought your friend Parker’d fill you in.’

‘Not really. Things’ve changed a bit since his day, as he admits. There’s units within units, outsourcing of functions even …’

Townsend shook his head as I moved to rinse my mug at the sink. ‘Cleaner does it all,’ he said. ‘But you’re right again. It’s hard to get a handle on anything these days. The word responsibility has dropped out of everyone’s vocabulary since this federal government took over. It’s all spin, spin, spin, spin.’

On the drive home, I thought over what Townsend had said. It was all true and words were changing their meaning almost daily, as with ‘rendition’, mutilated by the US military. ‘Media’ was a loose term anyway. It could mean almost anything to do with communications—satellite services, internet facilitators, software corporations, as well as the good oldies like radio, print, television and film. What this meant was that anyone or any group seriously involved and seriously threatened had a hell of a lot to lose.

I bundled up Lily’s clothes and took them to the St Vincent de Paul shop as I’d intended. I threw out two pairs of tights and panties and put her few books on the shelves with mine. Getting rid of the clothes made me feel lousy; keeping the books made me feel just a little bit better. Over the couple of years we’d been semi-together, Lily had given me books as Christmas and birthday presents and written in them. I checked a few of the inscriptions and smiled—Lily’s irreverence always made me smile.

Sick of being passive, I hunted out DS Williams’s card and called him on his mobile. Got lucky. Got him.

‘Williams.’

‘Cliff Hardy. I want to talk to you.’

‘What about?’

‘Come on, Sergeant, you know there’s something shitty going on in your unit. It’s leaking information for one thing, or it might be disinformation. Doesn’t matter. And there’s a trail to be followed with a couple of people following it.’

‘You?’

‘And others. Something’s going to blow open sooner or later. Where d’you want to be standing when it happens, and who with? Because I can tell you there’s going to be casualties.’

He wasn’t dumb. ‘If you’re so confident, why do you need to talk to me?’

‘To speed things up.’

A long pause and I could hear the click of the lighter, the inhale and exhalation. Sometimes a sign of tension, but not always. He must have been out and about somewhere. Where, I wondered? Doing what?

‘I suppose we could meet. Where are you?’

Chess
, I thought
.

‘At home. Where’re you?’

‘Milsons Point. There’s a little park down near North Sydney swimming pool. D’you know it?’

‘No. Aren’t there coffee places along there? What about a pub?’

‘Don’t piss me off more than you have to, Hardy. I don’t want to be seen in a public place with a … with you.’

I agreed to meet him there in an hour. That gave me time to retrieve the Colt .45 automatic from under the loose floorboards in the hall cupboard, clean and oil it and check on the quality of the ammunition. Frank was right. I had another gun, but only one. The Colt was heavy and I preferred a revolver, but this had come my way a couple of years back without any trace and had been too good an opportunity to pass up. I kept it wrapped in oilcloth in a cool storage place. I’d tested it a few times and found it was in perfect working order. It had been some years since meeting policemen in the open had been a dangerous thing to do in Sydney, but who could forget Roger Rogerson and Warren Lanfranchi?

I drove across the Bridge and down to Milsons Point. I found a parking spot behind the railway station and walked towards the water past the coffee places, lawyers’ offices and the Random House building. The day was cloudy and there was a stiff, cold breeze. I was wearing a flannel shirt, sweater and leather jacket and needed every layer. The park was a pocket handkerchief affair with a couple of covered sitting areas. Pretty nice in good weather, bleak today.

The harbour was grey under the cloud, but rain was unlikely at least for a while. There was no one else in the park, so it was far from being a good meeting point if you were worried about being seen.

I sat on a hard seat and began to wonder if I was being set up. The place had some high-rise buildings around it— possible sniper points. I had the .45 in a deep pocket in the jacket. I fingered it and told myself not to be ridiculous. The time for our meeting came and went. I decided to give Williams another ten minutes before phoning. I waited, phoned and got no response—no answer, no message.

I tried to gather my thoughts and impressions about Williams. He’d seemed competent and under control in our first meeting. Maybe a bit pressured and rattled by my phone call, but still coping. Puzzling. I waited a little longer, phoned again and got the same result. I left the park and decided to walk around the area a bit in case he was lurking, keeping an eye on me, wondering what I’d do if he didn’t show. The neighbourhood wasn’t as parked up as it would have been in better weather. I doubt there were many swimmers, even in the heated pool. A block away, in a cul-de-sac, I saw a red Camry that fitted my memory of Williams’s car. There aren’t too many of them about in that colour. The street was quiet. I crossed it and approached the vehicle.

DS Colin Williams sat behind the steering wheel, held there by his seatbelt. His head sagged down towards his chest, but he wasn’t sleeping. The driver’s window glass was starred out around a neat puncture and there was a dark hole in Williams’s head—millimetre perfect at his temple.

Williams was a good deal younger than me, had reached a respectable rank in a difficult profession and was, as far as I knew, an honest policeman. Maybe a husband, maybe a father. After Lily’s death, I didn’t have a lot of space for more sorrow, but there was something about that slumped figure that touched me. A shame, a waste, and someone to blame, possibly the same person who killed Lily. That personalised it and I gave the detective a silent farewell.

Deciding what to do next wasn’t easy. I could have just walked away, but there were various means for the police to find out that I’d had an appointment with Williams. An entry in his notebook seemed unlikely, but I’d rung his mobile three times. I decided to play it straight and report it, but there was a problem—my illegal gun. Williams’s wound was from a small calibre weapon and there was no chance I could be accused of killing him. But with my record the police were bound to hold and search me and carrying an unlicensed pistol is a serious offence.

I couldn’t hide it anywhere near the car because they’d set up a pretty wide perimeter and search it carefully. I moved away from the Camry in case me hanging around there looked suspicious to anyone who happened to be watching. I walked back to the park and deposited the .45 in a rubbish bin after wrapping it in discarded newspaper and folding it into an empty pizza box. I hoped I could get back to it before the bin was emptied. No guarantee.

I went to the covered seat where I’d waited and phoned the police, giving my name, my location and the bare details. I was instructed to remain where I was. A car with two uniforms arrived and I took them to the Camry, standing back to let them take their own look. One of them checked his notepad.

‘You say this is Detective Sergeant Williams of the Northern Crimes Unit?’

‘Right.’

‘And your name is Hardy and you were supposed to meet him here?’

‘Hardy, yes. Here, no. In the park where you picked me up.’

‘So you found him here and walked back there. Where’d you phone from?’

‘Back there.’

The other officer’s mobile rang and he had a brief conversation, mostly consisting of grunts at his end. He shut off the phone and took a step towards me.

‘You’re the private detective who got the flick, right?’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘No offence, but I’ll wait for the Ds before I say anything else. Didn’t touch the car, did you, mate?’

I didn’t hear exactly what he said, but I thought I caught the word ‘arsehole’.

A few minutes later an ambulance pulled up with another police car and then an unmarked. The man who got out of it spoke to the paramedics and briefly to one of the uniformed men. He took a quick look at the body, and then stood twenty metres off issuing directions for the crime scene procedures. A photographer arrived and someone I took to be the pathologist. I was standing well back with a policeman—the one I’d probably offended—beside me and shooting me glances that suggested he’d be delighted if I cut and run.

The detective in the smart suit made several calls on his mobile. He smoked a cigarette and dropped the butt through a stormwater grid. As the photographer and the medical examiner got busy, with the crime scene tape going up and the uniforms keeping away the spectators who’d emerged from nearby houses and buildings, the detective walked towards me. He had dark hair and an olive complexion. He stood about 190 centimetres and would’ve weighed in at around 100 kilos. He waved the uniform away.

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Mikos Kristos, Hardy. Northern Crimes. I can’t say I’m glad to meet you.’

A glib reply was on the tip of my tongue but I fought it. Had to be careful.

‘I’m sorry about your colleague,’ I said.

‘Yeah. Good bloke, Col.’

‘I thought so, too.’

‘Close, were you?’

‘I don’t think I’ll say any more until we’re in a controlled situation and I have a lawyer present.’

He pointed to the plaster on my forehead. ‘What happened there?’

Was he baiting me? Hard to tell. I didn’t answer and watched the paramedics stretcher the body, enclosed in a green bag, to the ambulance. At a guess, the police were telling some of the owners of the cars parked nearby that they’d be free to move them soon. I wondered whether any of the spectators would need counselling. Didn’t look like it. Everything was sanitised, clinical.