The Big Drop Read online

  With a thick-tipped pen Mrs Tsang had written 48 Royal Street, Darlinghurst. It was a long step from the Kangri mansion with the vines and the park just across the way, and the glittering water beyond the trees and grass. As always when I drive around Sydney, I left the water with some reluctance. There’s nothing much to be said for driving into Darlinghurst at 5 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, especially since they’ve blocked off all the streets so that you can’t get within three blocks of where you want to go. I parked near one of the barriers and walked through a set of narrow lanes to Royal Street. Number 48 was in the middle of a narrow terrace presenting a flat, blank face to the street. It had the standard bars on the windows and the standard bluestone front step worn concave by more than a hundred years of feet.

  I knocked and waited. After a while a young girl in a man’s singlet came to the door and stood there, blinking at the fading light and rubbing her eyes.

  ‘I’m looking for May Kangri.’

  ‘Who the fuck is it?’ A man’s voice rumbled in the hall behind her. She didn’t look at me or turn to answer; she just spoke into the void above my head.

  ‘Some straight lookin’ for May.’

  ‘Tell him to piss off.’

  ‘Piss . . .,’ she began, but I shouldered her aside and went through the door. The passage was dark but I could see a large shape at the end of it; as I came closer to the shape I began to smell it.

  ‘You tell me to piss off,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you try being polite? You might like it.’

  He was short and burly with massive stubby arms—not someone to wrestle with. ‘May Kangri; this is the last address I’ve got for her and it’s recent.’

  He grunted and tried to kick me in the stomach, I leaned against the wall to make him miss and then felt the breath go out of me and a pain begin in my foot and travel up my leg. He’d turned the missed kick into a stomp faster than the eye could see. I backed off and kept by the wall. He came after me in a fast shuffle and I didn’t know whether to watch his hands or his feet. He lowered his head as if he might try some butting as well and that was a mistake; I used my much longer reach to get a fistful of his thick greasy hair. I yanked it like pulling weeds and he squealed and flailed his club-like arms. I kept clear and bore down hard; it would have scalped him if he hadn’t gone down with the pressure. I got behind him, laced my fingers into the hair and bent him back in a kneeling position so that my knee dug in half way down his spine. I dug in hard and he screamed.

  ‘Come here!’ The girl jumped as I snapped at her: she looked as if she’d been about to run out the door. ‘Your friend’s in pain,’ I said. ‘Where’s May Kangri?’

  ‘Heavy,’ she said.

  The man on his knees spoke in a voice that sounded like heart-broken sobbing. ‘She’s at Rushcutters Bay, on a fuckin’ boat. Let the fuck go.’

  ‘Where at Rushcutters Bay?’

  ‘Marina, next to the fuckin’ yacht squadron.’

  ‘Name of boat?’ I eased back on the knee.

  ‘Poppie, Pansy, somethin’ like that. Shit!’

  ‘When did she go aboard, Captain?’

  ‘Yes’d’day.’

  I let go the hair and pushed him down flat on his face. He lay there gasping and I stepped over him and round the girl. She was still blinking as if she’d stepped out into the noon sun.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I opened the door. ‘Polite, see? I’m sure your friend could get the hang of it if he tried.’

  ‘Piss off,’ she said.

  ‘What’s the matter with you people? Why’re you so bloody aggressive?’

  She sniggered. ‘Wait’ll you meet May.’ Then she slammed the door in my face.

  Back to the water I need never have left had I only known. That’s the story of a private eye’s life; as often as not the trail ends where it began, that’s when there turns out to be a trail at all. This sort of thinking occupied me on the trip to Rushcutters Bay and it either made me tired or made me realise that I was tired already. It had been a week of long drives and late nights on matters personal and professional, and if I’d been Nero Wolf or Whimsey or someone like that I wouldn’t have taken Kangri’s job on grounds of exhaustion. But I needed the money.

  It was close to 7 o’clock when I arrived, the butt end of a mild March day, and the light was almost spent. Beyond the water the city skyscape rose up, jagged-shaped and erratically lit. A half-turn and I could see clear across the water to North Sydney.

  It’s a wonder there isn’t more theft, vandalism and arson on tied-up boats because the security at the average marina is lousy. There was virtually none at Rushcutters Bay. The marina was flanked by closed shops that sold nautical gear, a clubhouse and a slipway with boats drawn up high and dry for servicing or whatever they call it. A weatherbeaten old pipe-smoker leaning against the timber office at the end of the wharf took an uninterested look at me as I stepped over the loose chain and headed for the boats. Maybe it was the patch-pocket jacket that did the trick.

  There was only just enough light to read names by; some I had to squint at, a few I had to guess at. There was no Pansy but a Tall Poppy was bobbing near the end of the better lit stretch of wharf—the part which provided light, water, power and would get cable TV when it came.

  It was a sleek white boat with two masts, furled sails and a lot of glass and brass and pale yellow rope scattered about. I went to the edge of the planking and called down, feeling slightly silly at talking loudly to a boat. A light came on near the stern and I heard a scuffling noise and a few muffled giggles. A woman’s head appeared through a hole in the deck followed by her upper body and legs. She stood up against the night sky and looked to be about seven feet tall. It was an illusion; as she moved closer I could see that she was only six feet tall—long and willowy with cropped dark hair. She was naked apart from a few gold chains around her neck; the chains glinted in the marina lights and her skin, which was about the same colour, gleamed.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘Are you May Kangri?’

  ‘Yes. Who’re you?’

  ‘My name’s Hardy, I’m a private detective, working for your father.’

  She was close now, just a few feet below me on the deck; her body was about perfect as six foot, golden female bodies go. She had the slightly flat face of her father but I wouldn’t have taken many points off for that.

  ‘Who told you I was here?’ Her voice was without warmth, almost hostile.

  ‘The guy at Royal Street.’

  ‘Fuck him.’

  ‘Don’t blame him. He didn’t want to tell me, I had to persuade him.’

  That seemed to interest her; she looked up and her breasts moved and the movement rippled down her body. I tried to keep from gaping.

  ‘You persuaded him. Did you use a gun?’

  ‘No. I pulled his hair a little.’

  She laughed, again without warmth but even she couldn’t manage to laugh with hostility. A voice called from behind her, a female voice, American.

  ‘May, who is it, honey?’

  ‘A man,’ May Kangri said.

  Another head poked up, a blonde one this time, and it was followed by a body wrapped in a towelling dressing gown. The woman was about twice May Kangri’s age—which I guessed to be middle-twenties—and what she lacked in beauty she made up in aggression. She marched forward, elbowed the girl aside and glared up at me.

  ‘What d’you want, mister?’

  The naked, golden body moved, swivelled and one hand came crashing against the side of the blonde woman’s head; she staggered and the combination followed—a sweeping leg that scythed her down like wheat and crashed her to the deck. She lay in a crumpled heap and May Kangri delivered a modest kick to her exposed backside.

  ‘Don’t be bossy with me, Candy. I won’t take it.’

  Candy got up stiffly; tears were running down her swollen face and she limped off towards the hatch. The action had put a light film of sweat on the golden skin and I was finding it h
ard to keep my professional detachment. She smiled up at me—white teeth in a flat, brown face. I’d rather have gone up against the guy in Royal Street again.

  ‘What’s Daddy’s problem?’

  ‘Why don’t you put some clothes on and we can have a talk?’

  ‘I’m not wearing any clothes today. Talk quick, I’m easily bored.’

  ‘Something valuable’s been stolen from your father’s house—a scroll. Do you know anything about it?’

  ‘That ancient, creepy shit? No, what would I know about it?’

  The interview wasn’t turning out to be one of my best. I felt like a combination of perv and head-shrinker. I went direct. ‘You seem to be a forthright young woman, Miss Kangri. You didn’t pinch your father’s scroll either for money or to rub his nose in the shit?’

  She gave the laugh again, this time with a bit of contempt in it. I felt pretty sure she’d be good at contempt. ‘No, I didn’t. I don’t need money. Candy’s loaded and I’m going for a trip around the world with her on the yacht. We’re off tomorrow. Wanna come?’

  I grinned, shook my head and backed off. She turned around and sauntered off towards the stern; she moved well, like her Dad. Somehow I didn’t think that stealing the scroll would be her style of spite—she’d be more likely to burn the house down.

  That left me with no obvious leads and the slightly defeated feeling that goes with that situation. My hand was greasy from contact with the Darlinghurst stomper and I walked down a few steps from one of the stagings on the marina and had a wash. My face was hot and I dabbed it with the cool salt water. It was dark now and cool with a nice breeze coming off the water, but the park at Rushcutters Bay is no place for a clean living man to hang around in at night. I drove down New South Head Road, ate some fish somewhere, drank a fair bit of white wine and went home to sleep on it.

  In the morning the memory of May Kangri’s exotic body had faded and the need to earn the figures written on Dr Kangri’s cheque asserted itself. The job looked routine again; I rang a few people and found out the names and addresses of some establishments that dealt in rare Oriental items. Most of these places had spotless reputations, but a few didn’t. I drove and walked, heard eastern chimes ring when I pushed open doors and looked into black slanted eyes until I was sick of them. I encountered universal politeness and universal ignorance.

  After two full days on the job I’d earned the advance fee but not a cent more and didn’t look like earning it. I was sitting at home reading Unreliable Memoirs when the phone rang. It was Mrs Tsang inviting me out to Vaucluse to tell me things about the Mongol scroll that she hadn’t told me before.

  She was waiting for me by the front gate. I pulled up outside the house next door which gave me a fair walk back to where she stood. She was wearing the same dark dress and had a light shawl around her shoulders.

  ‘Come this way,’ she whispered, ‘to my flat.’

  We walked on the grass towards a narrow path leading to the dark side of the house.

  ‘Is the doctor home, Mrs Tsang?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps you will want to see him but I must speak to you first.’

  The path ended at a set of wooden steps with a glass panelled door at the top. She went ahead of me into a narrow kitchen that faced the wall of the next house; that left space for a nice patch of garden and a good glimpse of the night sky. Through the kitchen and into a sitting room with cane furniture. The eastern look was dominant as in the main part of Kangri’s house but there were counter-influences—framed photographs with Western faces in them and Australian books and magazines.

  ‘Please sit down, Mr Hardy. Would you care for tea?’

  ‘No thank you, Mrs Tsang. What do you have to tell me?’

  It came out hesitantly, but coherently. Mrs Tsang had taken the scroll herself and faked the disturbance of the study. She spoke very softly and I had to lean forward from my chair to hear her.

  ‘Like Dr Kangri, I am Tibetan,’ she said. ‘But unlike him I am a religious person. Do you know anything of the religion of my country, Mr Hardy?’

  I had to admit that I didn’t.

  ‘It is very ancient and beautiful. It is a Buddhist religion but with many influences from the old religion of Tibet—many wonderful rituals and prayers.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘You are a non-believer, like most Australians. A materialist. It is very sad. Tibetan culture and religion are synonymous, Mr Hardy.’

  ‘What about the scroll?’

  ‘It cannot possibly be genuine,’ she said fiercely. ‘It is impossible that the monks can have produced such a thing. It is counter to all teachings, all beliefs.’

  ‘Dr Kangri believes it to be genuine.’

  ‘He is mistaken.’ She drew a breath. ‘I took the scroll when I could see what he was planning—a book that would bring my religion into the greatest questioning, the greatest disrepute. There are scholars who could prove that it is a fake. Dr Kangri would not consult them.’ She leaned back on her chair, took a handkerchief from her sleeve and patted her moist forehead.

  ‘It’s his property, Mrs Tsang, you must return it.’

  Her brown face was composed again but there was a look of fatigue in the composure. ‘It is not his property,’ she said softly. ‘He acquired it by underhand means. But that is not important. I cannot return it, Mr Hardy. It has been stolen from me in turn.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘My son, my only child.’

  Children again, only children, tearing at their parents as if to punish them for something. Mrs Tsang showed me the photograph of Henry, her son, and his father. The father was Australian—long faced and jawed, squint-eyed, sandy-haired, strong on character, short on sense of humour perhaps. The son favoured him; the dark eyes hardly slanted and the jutting Scots physiognomy dominated over the Tibetan flatness.

  Mrs Tsang has met and married Kevin Anderson in Burma after the war. Anderson had served in the country, and had gone back there after demobilisation to work as a plantation manager. He was killed in an accident on the plantation not long after Henry was born. She heard of Dr Kangri’s researches through her contacts with Tibetan priests and joined his household in the United States. The Immigration Department had put no obstacles in her way when Kangri had transplanted to Australia.

  ‘Henry is not a good man. He has had a lot of trouble with the police.’

  ‘What name does he go by?’

  ‘I hardly know. I do not use my married name because it does not please me. Henry would use whatever name suited him, for whatever his purpose might be.’

  ‘What purposes does he have?’

  She closed her eyes and didn’t answer. I was about to ask the question again when she opened her eyes and sat up straight.

  ‘Evil ones. I had the scroll here. He came, looking for money as he often did. He took it. I went to see him to ask for it back and he laughed at me. I stole, and he thought it funny.’

  ‘Did he say why he took it?’

  She shook her head. ‘I was not sure of this when you were here before. I suspected. But now I know it. Dr Kangri is blind to the truth but he is a clever man. He chose you because he believed you could be trusted. I am following him. Will you go to Henry and recover the scroll . . . and not harm my son?’

  It was a tallish order, but Mrs Tsang was a shrewdie too. She’d worked it out that Kangri wouldn’t prosecute Henry for the same reasons as he didn’t want the theft publicised. She wanted Henry in the clear to go on making her life a misery. If Kangri gave her the sack, so be it. In the face of such calculation and forbearance, what could I do? I gave my word not to hurt Henry if it was humanly possible and she told me where to find him.

  I left her in her kitchen making tea and possibly thinking how far off Nirvana was for Henry. The address she’d given me was in Petersham. I went there via home where I picked up some burglary tools and my .38 police special. I hadn’t promised not to hurt Henry if he was trying to hurt me.

  Te
rminal Street runs along the railway line and if you had one of the houses that sat right on the street with no front garden you had trouble, with or without double glazing. The house Mrs Tsang had nominated was one of those, a shabby building at the wrong end of the terrace—the end where the railway was closest and the factory threw the longest shadow. The house was dark in the front rooms and hall; I went around to the lane at the back, hoisted myself up on the fence and peered into a pocket-handkerchief backyard and at the crumbling back of what looked to be a totally dark, empty house.

  I was contemplating the crime of break and enter when a light came on inside. I dropped back into the lane and raced around to the street. The front door of the house stood open and there was a station wagon outside on the wrong side of the street with the kerbside door open and the motor running. I heard feet pounding the stairs inside the house and saw more lights go on inside. Then a shouted curse. I scooted across to my car on the other side of the street, climbed in and hunched down to steering wheel level.

  The man who ran out of the house slamming the door and hurling himself into the car was Henry Tsang-Anderson. He was taller than I thought he’d be and pretty fit to judge by his flowing movements. He was carrying a briefcase which he tossed over the back before slamming the car into gear. He roared off towards Lewisham and I started my motor and followed, not putting on my lights until he’d made his first turn.

  The station wagon was an old Holden, not a good road holder and not hard to keep in sight. I kept my Falcon in the classical position, one back and not trapped on either side, and tooled along behind him. He picked up the Hume Highway and followed it for long enough to make me worry about going to Melbourne, but he swung off in Chullora and drove into the tight web of streets near the railway workshops. The traffic was almost non-existent and I had to keep well back. He stopped and I drove past keeping my head to the front and nearly displacing my eyeballs with sideways looks.