The Bat (14 page)

“Someone high up must think I’m useful. Probably it’s a kind of acid test to see how I function under pressure. If I manage this without making an arsehole of myself it may open certain possibilities for me back home, I’ve gleaned.”

“And do you think that’s important?”

Harry shrugged. “There’s not a lot that’s important.”

A hideous, rusty boat flying a Russian flag was under way, and further out in Port Jackson they saw white sails banking but looking as if they were lying still.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked.

“Not a lot I can do here. Inger Holter’s coffin has been sent home. The funeral director rang me from Oslo today. I was told the embassy had organized the transport. They talked about a ‘cadaver.’ A beloved child has many names, but it’s strange for the deceased to have so many.”

“So when are you going to go?”

“As soon as all of Inger Holter’s contacts that we know of have been eliminated from the case. I’ll talk to McCormack tomorrow. I’ll probably go before the weekend. If nothing concrete comes to light. Otherwise this could become a long, drawn-out affair, and we’ve agreed that the embassy should keep us in the loop.”

She nodded. A group of tourists was standing next to them and the whirr of cameras mingled with the cacophony of the Japanese language, seagulls’ screams and the throb of passing boats.

“Did you know that the person who designed the Opera House turned his back on the whole thing?” Birgitta said out of nowhere. As the waves around the budget overshoot on the Sydney Opera House rose to their peak, the Danish architect Jørn Utzon dropped the whole project and resigned in protest. “Just imagine walking away from something you’ve started. Something you really believed would be good. I don’t think I could ever do that.”

They had already decided that Harry would accompany Birgitta to the Albury rather than her catch the bus. But they didn’t have a lot to say and walked in silence along Oxford Street toward Paddington. Distant thunder rumbled, and Harry gazed up in amazement at the pure, blue sky. On a corner stood a gray-haired, distinguished man, impeccably dressed in a suit with a placard hanging from his neck saying: “The secret police have taken my work, my home, and they have ruined my life. Officially I don’t exist, they have no address or telephone number and they aren’t listed in the state budget. They think they can’t be charged. Help me to find the crooks and have them convicted for their misdeeds. Sign here or make a donation.” He held up a book with pages of signatures.

They passed a record shop, and on impulse Harry went in. Behind the counter stood a man wearing glasses. Harry asked if he had any records by Nick Cave.

“Sure, he’s Australian,” said the man, removing his glasses. He had an eagle tattooed on his forehead.

“A duet. Something about a wild rose …” Harry started to say.

“Yeah, yeah, I know the one you mean. ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’ from
Murder Ballads
. Shit song. Shit album. You’d be better off buying one of his good records.”

The man put his glasses back on and disappeared behind the counter.

Harry was amazed again and blinked in the gloom.

“What’s so special about the song?” Birgitta asked as they came out onto the street.

“Nothing, obviously.” Harry laughed. The guy in the shop had put him back in a good mood. “Cave and this woman sing about a murder. They make it sound beautiful, almost like a declaration of love. But it is indeed a shit song.” He laughed again. “I’m beginning to like this town.”

They walked on. Harry glanced up and down the street. They were almost the only mixed-sex couple in Oxford Street. Birgitta held his hand.

“You should see the gay pride parade during Mardi Gras,” Birgitta said. “It goes down Oxford Street here. Last year they said over half a million people came from all over Australia to watch and take part. It was crazy.”

Gay street. Lesbian street. It was only now that he noticed the clothes exhibited in the shop windows. Latex. Leather. Tight tops and tiny silk panties. Zips and rivets. Exclusive, though, and stylish, not the sweaty, vulgar stuff that permeated the strip clubs in King’s Cross.

“There was a gay man who lived nearby when I was growing up,” Harry recounted. “He must have been forty or so, lived alone, and everyone in the neighborhood knew he was gay. In the winter we threw snowballs at him, shouted ‘buttfucker’ then ran like mad, convinced he would give us one up the backside if he caught us. But he never came after us, just pulled his hat further down over his ears and walked home. One day, suddenly, he moved. He never did anything to me, and I’ve always wondered why I hated him so much.”

“People are afraid of what they don’t understand. And hate what they’re afraid of.”

“You’re so wise,” Harry said and Birgitta punched him in the stomach. He fell onto the pavement screaming, she laughed and begged him not to make a scene, and he got up and chased her up Oxford Street.

“I hope he moved here,” Harry said afterward.

*   *   *

Having left Birgitta (he was worried that he had begun to think of every separation from her, short or long, as leave-taking), he queued at a bus stop. A boy with a Norwegian flag on his rucksack was in front of him. Harry was wondering if he should make his presence known when the bus arrived.

The bus driver groaned when Harry gave him a twenty-dollar note.

“S’pose you didn’t have a fifty, did ya?” he said sarcastically.

“If I’d had one, I’d have given it to you, you stupid bastard,” he said in eloquent Norwegian while smiling innocently. The bus driver glowered ferociously at him as he handed out the change.

He had decided to follow the route Inger took to walk home on the night of the murder. Not because it hadn’t been walked by others—Lebie and Yong had visited the bars and restaurants on the route and shown the photo of Inger Holter, without any success, of course. He had tried to take Andrew along with him, but he had dug his heels in and said it was a waste of valuable time better spent in front of the TV.

“I’m not kidding, Harry. Watching TV gives you confidence. When you see how stupid people generally are on the box it makes you feel smart. And scientific studies show that people who feel smart perform better than people who feel stupid.”

There was little Harry could say to such logic, but Andrew had at any rate given him the name of a bar in Bridge Road where he could pass on Andrew’s greetings to the owner. “Doubt he’s got anything to tell you but he might knock fifty percent off the coke,” Andrew had said with a cheerful grin.

Harry got off the bus at the town hall and ambled in the
direction of Pyrmont. He looked at the tall blocks and the people walking around them the way city folk do, without being any the wiser as to how Inger Holter had met her end that night. At the fish market he went into a cafe and ordered a bagel with smoked salmon and capers. From the window he could see the bridge across Blackwattle Bay and Glebe on the other side. They had started setting up an outdoor stage in the open square, and Harry saw from the posters it was to do with Australia Day, which was that weekend. Harry asked the waiter for a coffee and started to wrestle with the
Sydney Morning Herald
, the kind of paper you can use to wrap up a whole cargo of fish, and it is a real job to get through even if you only look at the pictures. But there was still an hour’s daylight left and Harry wanted to see what creatures emerged in Glebe after the onset of darkness.

The owner of the Cricket was also the proud owner of the shirt Allan Border wore when Australia beat England four times during the 1989 Ashes series. It was exhibited behind glass and a wooden frame above the poker machine. On the other wall there were two bats and a ball used in a 1979 series when Australia drew with Pakistan. After someone had pinched the stumps from the South Africa game, which used to hang over the exit, the owner had deemed it necessary to nail his treasures down—whereupon one pad belonging to the legendary Don Bradman was shot to pieces by a customer who was unable to wrest it from the wall.

When Harry entered and saw the combination of treasures on the walls and the ostensible cricket fans forming the clientele of the Cricket, the first thing that struck him was that he ought to revise his perception of cricket as a toffs’ sport. The customers were neither groomed nor particularly sweet-smelling, and nor was Borroughs behind the bar.

“Evenin’,” he said. His voice sounded like a blunt scythe against a whetstone.

“Tonic, no gin,” Harry said and told him to keep the change from the ten-dollar bill.

“A lot for a tip, more like a bribe,” Borroughs said, waving the note. “Are you a policeman?”

“Am I so easy to spot?” Harry asked with a resigned expression.

“Apart from the fact you sound like a bloody tourist, yeah.”

Borroughs put down the change and turned away.

“I’m a friend of Andrew Kensington,” Harry said.

Borroughs swiveled round as fast as lightning and picked up the money.

“Why didn’t you say that straightaway?” he mumbled.

Borroughs couldn’t remember having seen or heard about Inger Holter, which in fact Harry already knew as he and Andrew had spoken about him. But as his old tutor in the Oslo Police Force, “Lumbago” Simonsen, always said: “Better to ask too many times than too few.”

Harry looked around. “What have you got here?” he asked.

“Kebab with Greek salad,” Borroughs answered. “Today’s special, seven dollars.”

“Sorry, let me rephrase,” Harry said. “I mean, what kind of people do you serve? What’s your clientele like?”

“I reckon it’s what you’d call the underclass.” He gave a forbearing smile. It said a lot about Borroughs’ adult working life and his dream to turn the bar into something.

“Are they regulars?” Harry asked, nodding to a dark corner of the room and the five men drinking beer at a table.

“Yup. Most here are. We’re not exactly on the tourist map.”

“Would you mind if I asked them a few questions?” Harry asked.

Borroughs hesitated. “Those blokes aren’t exactly mummy’s boys. I don’t know how they earn their cash, and I don’t intend to ask them, either. But they don’t work nine to five, let’s put it that way.”

“No one likes innocent young girls being raped and strangled in the district, do they. Not even people with a foot on either side of the law. It frightens people away and isn’t good for business whatever you’re selling.”

Borroughs rubbed and polished a glass. “I’d tread carefully if I were you.”

Harry nodded to Borroughs, and walked slowly toward the corner table so they would have time to see him. One of them got up before he came too close. He folded his arms and revealed a tattooed dagger on a bulging forearm.

“This corner’s taken, blondie,” he said in a voice so gruff that it seemed to be only air.

“I have a question—” Harry started, but the gruff man was already shaking his head. “Just one. Does anyone here know this man, Evans White?” Harry held up the photo.

Until now the two who were facing him had just been staring at him, more bored than outright hostile. At the mention of White’s name, they examined him with renewed interest, and Harry noted that the necks of the two men facing the other way were twitching.

“Never heard of him,” the gruff man said. “We’re in the middle of a personal … conversation here, mate. See you.”

“That conversation wouldn’t involve the turnover of substances that are illegal according to Australian law, would it?” Harry asked.

Long silence. He had adopted a perilous strategy. Undisguised provocation was a tactic you could resort to if you had decent backup or good escape routes. Harry had neither. He just thought it was time things started happening.

One neck stood up. And up. It had almost reached the ceiling when it turned and showed its ugly, pockmarked front. A silky moustache underlined the oriental features of the man.

“Genghis Khan! Good to see you. I thought you were dead!” Harry exclaimed, putting out his hand.

Khan opened his mouth. “Who are you?”

It sounded like a death rattle. Any death-metal band would have killed for a vocalist with that kind of a bass gurgle.

“I’m a policeman and I don’t believe—”

“Ayy-dii.” Khan peered down at Harry from the ceiling.

“Pardon?”

“The badge.”

Harry was aware the situation demanded more than his plastic card with a passport photo issued by Oslo Police Force.

“Has anyone told you that you have the same voice as the singer in Sepultura … what’s his name now?”

Harry put a finger under his chin and looked as if he was racking his brains. The gruff man was on his way around the table. Harry pointed to him.

“And you’re Rod Stewart, aren’t you? Aha, you’re sitting here and planning Live Aid 2 and s—”

The punch hit Harry in the teeth. He stood swaying with a hand to his mouth.

“May I take it that you don’t think I have a future as a stand-up?” Harry inquired. He studied his fingers. There was blood, spit and something soft which he could only assume was pulp from the inside of his tooth.

“Shouldn’t pulp be red?” he asked Rod, holding up his fingers.

Rod scrutinized Harry skeptically before leaning over and looking closer at the white bits.

“That’s the bone, from under the enamel,” he opined. “Old man’s a dentist,” he explained to the others. Then he took a step back and struck again. For a moment everything went black for Harry, but he still found himself standing when daylight returned.

“See if you can find some pulp now,” Rod said with curiosity.

Harry knew it was stupid, the summation of all his experience
and common sense told him it was stupid, his aching jaw said it was stupid, but unfortunately his right hand thought it was a brilliant idea and at that moment it was in charge. It hit Rod on the tip of the chin and Harry heard the crunch of Rod’s jaw closing before he staggered back two paces, which is the inevitable consequence of a perfectly placed uppercut.

A blow of this kind is transferred along the jawbone to the cerebellum, or small brain, an apt term in this case, Harry thought, where an undulating movement accounts for a number of minor short circuits, but also, if you’re lucky, instant loss of consciousness and/or long-term brain damage. In Rod’s case, the brain seemed to be unsure what it would be, a loss of consciousness or just a concussion.