Salt and Blood (20 page)

The silence was long and deep. I could imagine him sitting there in his wheelchair with all that upper body strength trapped and anchored, but I couldn't even guess at what would be in his mind. I heard him expel a deep breath. ‘I appreciate that, Hardy. Okay, I'm on my way to the gym—Lakemba Fitness Centre, Haldon Street, near where we had coffee.'

‘I'll find it,' I said. ‘I could do with a workout myself. Visitors welcome?'

But he'd rung off.

The further west I went the hotter the day became. By the time I got to Lakemba the temperature had to be pushing 30 degrees and the Muslim women's robes and veils started to make some sense. I trawled along looking for the gym and prepared to be frustrated because, in my experience, such places in residential areas tend
to be tucked away, half-hidden by struggling used car yards and small drive-in shopping centres. The Lakemba Sports and Fitness Centre conformed to the pattern. It was the poor relation beside a supermarket, a computer supplies store and a medical complex grouped around a lumpy bitumen parking area where the white lines had been almost obliterated by oil stains.

I hauled my gym bag out of the boot and approached the entrance to the centre. A white Honda Civic stood in one of the handicapped parking spots and I could see the tracks of the wheelchair leading up the ramp to the front of the building as I took the steps. A young Asian woman who wouldn't have weighed sixty kilos sat behind the reception desk doing paperwork.

‘Yes, sir?'

‘I'm meeting someone here, Brett Hughes. But I'd also like to have a workout.'

‘You have a gym membership in the city?'

‘Yes, at Leichhardt.' I found the card in my wallet.

‘Welcome to Lakemba. Ten dollars, please.'

I changed and went through to the weights room where a very mixed bag of humanity was working out—men and women of all shapes and sizes and ethnic origins. I saw Hughes moving massive weights at a seated bench press. He completed his set, looked up and saw me and went back to work. I did fifteen minutes on the treadmill and then wandered around the unfamiliar location, picking out the machines I was accustomed to and doing my usual, unadventurous sets.
After a session of pull-downs I ended up near Hughes, who was doing curls with free weights somewhere in the 50-kilo range. His wheelchair was parked in the corner of the room.

‘How're you doing?' I said when he'd finished his set.

He was sweating freely and he reached for his towel. ‘Getting there,' he said. ‘I can haul myself around from machine to machine in here. I'll be through in ten minutes.'

‘The coffee place?'

He picked up a weight that would've broken my wrist if I'd tried to lift it from the rack. ‘Fuck that, I'm due a beer. Pub on the corner.'

I did another ten minutes on the treadmill set to 8 with an incline of 5. Trotting. Then I went to the pub. It was an old one re-vamped, with poker machines and a screen flashing keno numbers.

Hughes wheeled himself into the bar, greeted a few regulars and shook my hand. ‘Mine's a schooner of New,' he said.

Sounded good. I made it two and took the drinks over to the table where he'd installed himself with a pencil and a keno ticket. He filled in the ticket and one of the drinkers took it across to the counter for him.

‘Good luck,' I said.

‘Don't strain yourself in the gym, do you?'

‘I'm toning.'

‘Bullshit.' He took a drink and checked his ticket against the screen. ‘Not quite. Okay, Hardy, what's on your mind?'

‘Before we get to it, what's your take on the
police service these days? Are you well disposed, or what?'

He picked at one of the calluses on his left hand. ‘I don't know that I've got an attitude to it overall. They're treating me right over the disability, no worries there. I'd say I see it as a collection of individuals. That's a bad thing.'

‘Meaning?'

‘You should be able to see it as a whole and support it as a whole but you can't. There's good and bad in it, very good and very bad. Between you and me, I'm writing a book on the subject.'

Another writer. What he'd said was encouraging, though, particularly that he'd confided in me. ‘Won't you need some sort of clearance to publish a book?'

He shrugged. ‘If I decide to go that way. Come on, Hardy, stop beating around the bush.'

‘Right. Take your mind back to when you were in the station and you'd put Rodney Harkness in the cells after he'd raved on about what he'd done.'

Hughes finished his schooner. ‘If you're going to ask me who was there it's no good. I've tried to remember and it's too long ago with too much fucking happening in between.'

‘Another drink?'

‘No. I just have the one.'

‘All right. I understand what you're saying. I suppose I'd be surprised if you could remember a detail like that. How about I try a name on you?'

‘Go.'

‘Mitchell Sexton.'

He looked up and for a minute I thought he
was checking his keno result again but he had that long stare running down the corridor of memory. ‘Jesus Christ,' he said. ‘Sexy Sexton. Yeah, he was there that night. I remember now. And I told him what Harkness had said.'

‘What did he say?'

‘I can't remember. Not much or maybe nothing. He certainly never reported on it and then Harkness was off the books as it were. Some kind of top brass intervention there. I didn't think any more about it. What's going on?'

I told him that Sexton had been involved with Rodney Harkness's sister and then had been Harkness's wife's lover, one of them. ‘If Sexton blamed Harkness for the sister's death and then heard him confessing to his wife's murder he might well have reason to kill him.'

‘Plus if influence got him tucked away in a comfortable funny farm.'

‘Yeah. What can you tell me about Sexton?'

‘Only that he was an obnoxious prick. Full of himself. Thought everything he said and did was interesting when mostly it wasn't, or not nearly as interesting as he reckoned.'

‘I know the type,' I said. ‘I need another drink to work on this. You sure?'

Hughes shrugged. ‘I'd say it's a two-drink problem all right.'

I brought the drinks back. Hughes tore up his keno ticket and piled the pieces in the ashtray. ‘Any thoughts?'

‘Do you happen to know whether he was a sharpshooter?'

‘Dunno. Sorry.'

‘Likely to go off the rails over something like this?'

‘Hard to say. He was always on the make. Ambitious, like. He was honest as far as I know, but a chip-on-the-shoulder type. I mean, he didn't come from money or anything. Not many of us do … did. I'd say he'd be a bit out of his depth with people like Harkness. Resentful if they got the better of him, but a nutter … a killer, I don't know.'

I drank and thought aloud. ‘He'd have to keep it festering for seven years, so I guess it'd depend how things went for him after Harkness got locked away. You don't know whether he's still on the force?'

‘In the service you mean.'

‘Whatever.'

‘No, I don't know. Wouldn't be hard to find out. You've got the contacts—Frank Parker, Glen Withers …'

‘I suppose.'

‘So what's the problem?'

‘I'd said I'd be straight with you. Investigating a copper, whether serving or not, isn't my idea of fun. Plus I don't know where you stand.'

‘Me?'

‘Suppose I say I'm going to look into him, watch him, talk to his neighbours, root through his rubbish bin, what would your attitude be?'

He finished his beer and pushed the glass firmly aside. ‘You don't think Harkness killed his wife, do you?'

‘A psychiatrist I respect says he didn't.'

‘I heard a whisper he didn't die easy.'

‘He was tortured.'

‘I've got no time for shit like that. Go for it, Hardy. I'm out, but I'll give you a bit of advice. Cover your arse—talk it over with Parker or with someone from Internal Affairs or the fucking Ombudsman. You're right, going up against a policeman isn't easy.'

I thanked him. We shook hands and I walked beside him as he wheeled himself out of the pub.

I had a lot to think about and I found myself driving home to do the thinking. If there were things waiting for me in the office they could wait. The Sexton lead felt solid but I knew I'd need evidence. I wondered if Glen had had the rifle bullet examined before she took off with Rod. To do anything with that I'd need to find the rifle. Was Sexton a shooter? For that matter, was he still a policeman and where did he live? Rodney Harkness had been burnt with cigarettes but no butts had been found at the site. Therefore no DNA. Did that indicate a policeman's professionalism or just commonsense caution? He'd been executed with a pistol shot. Did the police have the bullet? They hadn't told me and wouldn't.

It was early in the afternoon when I reached home and I wanted to talk things over with Jerry but it wasn't the time to ring her; heavy consultation time. I collected the mail and went inside to make a sandwich and write a summary of the interview with Brett Hughes and where things
now stood. For no good reason I had a mental image of what it'd be like to be tortured with a cigarette and mutilated with bolt cutters. It put me off the sandwich. I threw it in the bin and sat down with my notebook. I noticed that the light on the answering machine was blinking and as I reached to touch the button my mobile rang. Confused, I paused my finger above the machine and answered the mobile.

‘Hardy? This is Kevin Sherrin. I want to know what you're fucking playing at. I know you saw Glen today. I hope you're happy. She's in the Prince of Wales. She tried to kill herself.'

26

I went straight to the hospital and met up with Sherrin. He was thumbing through magazines in a waiting room on the ward where Glen was being held for observation. Although I knew he had no liking for me, the relief at having something to kick against showed on his face almost like a welcome.

‘How is she?' I asked.

‘Sick, but she'll recover. They say I can see her in a while when they're sure her system's clean. They're going to keep her overnight at least.'

‘What happened?'

He threw the magazine down. ‘That's what I should fucking-well ask you. I was worried about her. She seemed to be better for a while with the AA meetings and all and then she went down again. So I got home as early as I could. I'm still on this fucking course. She was on the bed and barely breathing. There were notes for both of us, you and me.'

He'd got to his feet when I'd come in and now was shaking, partly from anger, partly from distress, partly from exhaustion. The waiting room
was small and hot but we had it to ourselves. I felt very sorry for him. I've been around suicides and attempted suicides and the survivors quite a few times and the dynamics are complicated. When notes are left, at the very least the recipient expects to be the focus of attention. Sharing the receipt of the intended suicide's last message isn't in the script. Sherrin was confused as much as he was hurt and angry and it wasn't hard to encourage him to sit down and talk.

‘She … just told me she was sorry and that she knew I loved her and it wasn't enough for her to go on with. I read your note as well.'

I nodded. I would've done the same.

‘It was all about feeling responsible for what happened to Harkness. She said that seeing you had brought it all home to her and she couldn't handle it.'

He started to sob. ‘Fuck you, Hardy, with your push and shove and never give up. Fuck you!'

There was nothing I could say. I sat and let the moment pass. Eventually he wiped his eyes. ‘She told you to find out who killed Harkness. Fat chance.'

I let that go as well. When he seemed to have calmed down a bit I said, ‘You must've moved bloody quickly.'

‘Huh. Yeah, well, we're trained, aren't we. I had the ambulance there in minutes. She'd gone out and bought a bottle of Scotch to take the pills with. In a way that saved her life.'

‘How?'

‘She was still struggling against the booze even when she was giving up on life. She didn't ingest enough alcohol to make the pills kick in properly. She's tough, Glen. Her body didn't want to die.'

‘Mr Sherrin. You can see your wife now.'

A nurse had appeared at the doorway. Sherrin got up and walked away after her without giving me another look. I sat and thought about him and Glen and Harkness and Jerry and me. About winners and losers and everyone in between. So far, Rodney St John was the biggest loser but I didn't see why any of the rest of us had to fall into the same group.

Sherrin had left the jacket of his suit over a chair in the waiting room so I knew he'd be back. While I sat there I planned what I could say to him. I was still pushing and shoving, still not giving up.

About ten minutes later he walked in and reached for his jacket. He was in that space where other people don't matter and he was scarcely aware of me until I handed him the coat.

‘Don't ask,' he said.

‘I won't, but I have to talk to you and you have to listen for your sake and for Glen's.'

We went to a pub in Randwick and I laid it all on the line for Sherrin. Despite his antagonism towards me and the pressure he was under trying to deal with Glen, the policeman in him came to the fore and he listened and took in what I was saying. We were drinking whisky, pacing ourselves, heavy on the water. Two plates of potato wedges with sour cream. The pub was fairly quiet
but there was enough background noise for us to speak in normal voices.

‘That's bloody thin,' Sherrin said when I'd finished and dealt with the few questions he'd posed.

‘I know. But there's something in it. It just needs bolstering, like finding Sexton's rifle …'