Wet Graves (8 page)

“No.” There was a lot of regret in the word. “I don't get out on the water much these days. Getting a bit stiff for it.”

“Sorry to hear it. I wonder if you could tell me the marinas that could take such a thing? I gather it's pretty big.”

“Sure, I've got a pretty good idea, and Ray's here, he'd have an even better one. Can I call you back, Cliff?”

“No. I'm in a pub. I could call you again in, what, fifteen minutes.”

“Make it ten. In a pub, eh? Still no home life? What happened to that woman you met? Hannah …?”

“Helen,” I said. “It's a long story. Say hello to Ray for me. I'll ring back in ten minutes.”

I still had an inch of wine left. As I drank it I tried to think about the good things, about helping Guthrie out of his trouble, trying to keep thoughts of Helen at a distance. To deal with
those
thoughts I'd have needed a good deal more help than an inch of cask red. When Guthrie came back on the line he sounded pleased.

“Ray knows the boat. He's seen it quite a few times. Says it's a flashy number with a good deal of rot in the hull.”

“Does he know where it is now?”

“No, but he can find out for you first thing in the morning.”

I gave him the home and office numbers and got a number for Ray in return. We exchanged a few more pleasantries and I promised again to visit him and Pat in Cammeray. Maybe this time I would.

All things considered, it looked as if I was through for the night. But you can't be too sure. I hung around outside the gambling joint until Lou Campisi staggered out. He had to root around in his pockets for cab fare and since he was drunk this made a pantomime which would have been amusing if you didn't know that the man had been a good jockey and a good fly half. I tailed the taxi, partly to check whether Lou might have had pangs of conscience or pocket that might take him to see Jackson, drunk and all as he was. Also, it never hurts to stay in practice.

But the petrol was wasted. The taxi dropped Lou in Newtown; there was an argument about the fare, and then Lou reeled through the gate and up the steps of a boarding house. After a struggle he got a key into the lock and went inside. Lou was tucked up safe for the night; Jackson was sporting himself in a floating casino and my head was hurting again. I was glad Ray didn't have the location of the
Pavarotti
to hand—I didn't feel up to a row or a swim.

I slept for six hours, which meant that I was up and making coffee as it started to get light. The house was cold and I turned on heaters and waited for the morning paper to hit the front door. I collected it and tore the front page getting the wrapper off. The tear went right through a report on the bad balance of payments figures, which saved me from having to read it. I picked my way through the rest of the paper without much interest until I spotted a small item on page four. It was headed ‘Body found in harbour'. Apparently the body of a man had been fished out of the water at Dawes Point. As yet unidentified, the body was of a middle-aged man of average build with no distinguishing marks. That gave me something to think about while I ate toast, shaved, drank more coffee and waited for Ray Guthrie's call.

“Mr Hardy?” It was the voice I remembered—private school overlaid by the accents picked up in a working life as a boat charterer and repairer.

“Call me Cliff, Ray. How are you?”

“Just fine. I located that houseboat for you, the
Pavarotti
. Good name, lousy boat.”

“Where is it?”

“Darling Point.”

I had the yellow pages open again and ran my finger down the listings. “I can't see a marina there.”

“It's not at a marina, more of a private jetty. One of the few left around there.”

“It must be a big jetty.”

“Big house, big garden, big jetty. Can you tell me why you're interested, Cliff? I hope you're not planning to buy it.”

I laughed. “You wouldn't advise it?”

“No way. It looks good from a distance, probably looks its best at night, but it's got lots of problems.”

“I'm told it moves around the harbour a bit.”

“One of these days it'll move down.” Ray was smart enough to see that I wasn't going to answer his question, and secure enough not to be offended. He'd married his childhood sweetheart, had a son and a daughter and a good business, why shouldn't he be secure? Still, he'd had a wild phase once and wild men never completely calm down. “Do you need any help? Like to approach from the water side, perhaps? I'd be happy to …”

I thanked him but refused. He told me that the houseboat had been at Darling Point for two days, and that it generally stayed for a week at wherever it tied up. More thanks from me and a reluctant “See you”, from him. I had to be careful. How did it go again? “A licensed private enquiry agent shall not employ in any way whatsoever in connection with his business as a sub-agent any person who is not a licensed sub-agent.” Section 19(1), or thereabouts.

The day had started cold and wasn't going to warm up much. The sky was clear, with some cloud over in the west; the wind seemed , to be blowing gently from all quarters; anything could happen. I wore a sweater under my jacket and when I tried to stuff a scarf into a pocket I found the gun still there. I put the gun away in the glovebox of the car, but no matter how hard you try you always end up breaking the rules—I wasn't keeping my notes on the Madden case up to date. I should have made an entry before I set off: “to morgue to view body found in harbour”.

Proximity to the Arundel Street morgue is not one of the reasons I live in Glebe. I've visited the liver-coloured brick building more often than I care to remember, and it doesn't improve on acquaintance: too clean, too smooth, too final. I filled in a form and showed my threatened licence to an attendant, who noted my name down carefully on a list that carried three other names.

“What's that for?” I said.

The attendant, a young Asian man in a white coat who had several medical textbooks on his desk, looked up at me over the tops of his half-moon glasses. “For the police. They want the name of everyone who views the body.”

“Good,” I said.

The would-be doctor passed me on to another attendant, an older, tired-looking individual, who showed me through several sets of heavy perspex doors down artificially lit corridors to the chamber where the bodies are stored. It's like you see in the movies, except that the refrigerated compartments pull out widthwise rather than lengthwise, like a crisper drawer. The attendant, who wore thick rubber gloves, undid two clasps and slid the drawer out a few inches.

“Hands clear,” he said.

I clasped my hands behind me like the Duke of Edinburgh and leaned forward to look. The deceased was naked, bloated and blue. The body carried a lot of wounds and what I took to be bruises—dark, pulpy discolourations on the shoulders and thighs and around the wrists and ankles.

“Glass bottom,” the attendant said, “if you want to look at the back.”

“Like on the Barrier Reef,” I said.

He didn't smile and I didn't need to look at the back of the corpse—the man had been of shorter, blockier build than Brian Madden and had lacked his thick pepper and salt hair. Bald, anonymous and dead. There's not much to say about a corpse that's been in the water a while. It's as if the sea has wiped away status, career, personality, history, the lot. I shook my head and the drawer slid back with scarcely a sound. The label on the front read DROWNED MALE.

The attendant moved a plastic bucket aside with his foot. He'd had it all ready to bring into use. He looked almost apologetic. “You've done this before,” he said.

“Yes.”

“So had the last copper who was here. Didn't matter. I still had to use the bucket.”

We held the door open and we went out into the corridor where the all was warmer but still smelled of death. “The police are interested in this one, are they?” I said.

He shrugged. Maybe he only liked to talk about buckets.

Back at the desk I surprised the aspiring medico running a pink marker pen through a paragraph in a physiology textbook. He looked guilty. “Important passage,” he said.

“Good luck to you. Can you give me the name of the policeman who asked you to keep that list?”

He tapped his teeth with the pen. “Sergeant Meredith.”

“Did he leave you his number?”

“I think so.” He searched among the books, pens, papers and used tissues on his desk, examined several slips of paper with writing on them, but shook his head each time. “I can't find it, but it doesn't matter. He's due in now with someone to look at the body. You can talk to him in person.”

“Meredith's personally bringing someone in to look at the body?”

“Yes, probably a relative.”

“I showed you my private enquiry agent licence before.”

“You did.”

“I'm working on a missing persons case.”

“I guessed that. Not your subject in the drawer, eh?”

“No. What makes you think the sergeant's got hold of a relative?”

“I think he said so on the phone. He's a pleasant chap. We've talked a bit. I've a knack for getting people to talk. When I'm a doctor …”

“Which I'm sure you will be.”

“Thank you. It could be useful.”

“Certainly. Do you know why the police are so interested in this body, doctor?”

He let go one of the few smiles the place would see all day. “I heard the sergeant say something about another bridge case. I didn't know what that meant. The harbour bridge, I assume. But those injuries aren't consistent with a fall …”

I didn't hear the rest of what he said. I was out through the door and down the steps looking along the street for a place to hide. I stood in a shop doorway near the Ross Street corner and watched a young, smartly dressed man climb out of a red Holden Commodore, open the back door and escort a small, middle-aged woman to the steps of the morgue. Another car drew up, parked illegally, and a big man in a rumpled suit got out and joined the pair on the steps. They went in and I waited. When they came out the woman was distressed, leaning on the young man's arm and holding a handkerchief to her face. The other man, whom I'd tagged as Meredith by now, talked briefly with them, patted the woman's shoulder and went off to his car. I scooted down the street for mine and was sitting in it, ready to go left or right, when the Commodore, moving slowly as if it was already part of a funeral procession, turned out of Arundel Street.

The Commodore turned left into Parramatta Road, and I had to skip through a second of red light to stay behind. A bad start Do that to someone who suspects he's being followed, and it's like turning on a siren. But the Commodore driver didn't react. He drove steadily in the centre lane up past the railway and through Surry Hills until he picked up the freeway to the eastern suburbs. A good, considerate driver—the easiest kind to follow. I stayed modestly back, moving up occasionally to catch a light, but not getting any closer than I needed to. I made a mental note of the registration number and tried to guess where we would end up. I plumped for Bondi Junction and was almost right, but on the low side, sociologically. The Commodore slid down the leafy driveway beside a block of flats in Birriga Road, Bellevue Hill.

I stopped further up the curving, rising road and walked back to the flats. It was an old block of about ten apartments that had once commanded a majestic harbour view at the back. Even from the road you could see that the modem, multilevel building had whittled this away. Still, a bijou address, especially with the off-street parking. The Commodore was parked in the space along the side of the wide driveway marked ‘6'. I stood around contemplating my next move when a white Jaguar cruised noiselessly up and stopped fair and square across the entrance to the drive.

It was my day for crossing roads and taking cover. I stood behind a VW van parked on the other side of the road and saw a white-haired man get out of the Jaguar and help the woman I'd seen at the morgue into the back of the car. The young man was there too, patting people and murmuring things, but he stayed behind as the Jag drove off. He held a respectful attitude until it was out of sight and then he seemed to loosen up. His step on the way back down the drive was almost jaunty. The wind was blowing leaves along the footpath, and a gust pushed a heap of them up against my feet.
Some detective
, I thought,
stands around being late autumnal while things are happening
. Breaking in on bereavement is one thing, but if the man with the red Commodore had been bereaved he'd got over it awful fast.

Flat 6 was on the second level at the back. The entrance was through a handsome door in a tiled, balustraded porch. It was one of those doors that was opened electrically from inside the flats but it wasn't locked. I looked down and saw that the door had snagged on a piece of uplifted carpet, just enough to prevent the lock from engaging. Conclusion: the young man didn't live here and didn't know that you had to give the door a shove to get the security you were paying for. I went into a quiet, cool lobby with cream walls and dark timber and up a flight of stairs. I tried to give my knock on the door of number 6 the authority that brooks no denial.

The man who answered the door was middle-sized and fair in colouring except for his slightly flushed face. He'd taken off his suit jacket and loosened his tie. He held an opened bottle of champagne in one hand. “What do you want?” he said.

I flashed the licence folder quicker than a camera shutter. “My name's Hardy. Sergeant Meredith asked me to have a quick word with you.”

The familiar name did the trick He eased back and I was part way through the door before an objection occurred to him. “He didn't say anything to my mother or me back at the morgue.”

I fished out my notebook and leafed through, still inching my way in. “Well, he knew your mother'd be distressed. Now you are Mr …?”