The January Zone Read online

  I shook my head. ‘I’m full of the stuff. What d’we talk about, Sam? The weather? Jolly good for the time of year.’

  ‘Give it a rest, Cliff. I’m rehabilitating myself. You’d be all for that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I need a story. A good one. With a really good one up maybe you could put in a word with Harry Tickener at The News.’

  ‘You’ve got a fair way to go, Sam. You have to live down that “Dead model left love diary” shit.’ This was a scandal story that had appeared under Weiss’s by-line in one of the tabloids. Everybody denied everything and everybody sued everybody else. Word was the paper had settled out of court for big money.

  ‘I got conned,’ Weiss said. ‘I was trying too hard, over-anxious. I need a solid story. Research in depth, take time to follow things up. You know what I mean.’

  ‘The last thing a man in my business needs is his name in the paper. I’m working for January on the bombing…’

  ‘Bullshit. You’ve signed on as a minder.’

  ‘You’re getting up my nose, Sam. Piss off!’

  ‘I can help you.’

  ‘Yeah, get me in the headlines. People come to me to stay out of the bloody headlines. D’you think I want the sort of people I have to talk to, you know, drop in on and ask if the hubby’s at home or when do you expect your son back, Mrs Kefoops, to recognise me? Be your age.’

  Weiss leaned back and yawned. There was still an air of neglect about him, a smell as if he washed his socks in the bath and his shirt in a dirty laundromat with too much soap powder. But at least he was washing. He was fat but perhaps not as fat as when I’d last seen him and his colour was slightly better. Maybe he was on a comeback. He didn’t overplay it. ‘I can get you together with Tobin,’ he said quietly.

  That was something to think about. I hadn’t seen Tobin for a good few years, not since he was a pushy, hard-nosed, detective sergeant at Balmain. I’d heard that he’d done well since; he’d been involved in some big cases that had come out right and none of the mud that was always flying around in the police world had stuck to him.

  ‘What’s Tobin’s rank now?’

  ‘Inspector,’ Weiss said.

  ‘God help all the sergeants. What’s his part in this? I haven’t been following his illustrious career all that closely.’

  Weiss had his confidence back. He signalled for a coffee. The wet patch on his shirt was drying out. ‘I know he’s been following yours. He had a run-in with your mate Grant Evans one time. Could’ve held him back a bit if Evans hadn’t taken the Melbourne job. He doesn’t like Evans and he doesn’t like you.’

  ‘Don’t push it too hard, Sam. You’ve made your point. If you can get me through to Tobin it’ll be useful. I’ll do what I can for you in return. But you still haven’t told me why Tobin’s in the picture.’

  The coffee came. Weiss looked lustfully at the sugar bowl but didn’t touch it. He ordered a can of Diet Coke instead. He ate the froth off the top of the cup with his spoon and then stirred longer than he needed to.

  ‘Sammy…’ I said.

  ‘I’m thinking. Tobin’s been made head of some special task force. Anti-terrorist thing. All bombings come to him, same with sabotage.’ He grinned. ‘Also strikes, in some cases.’

  ‘Jesus, what do the security boys think about that?’

  Weiss drank some coffee. ‘This is getting to be an unequal relationship already. I’m telling you things and you’re telling me nothing.’

  ‘I’ll talk when there’s something to talk about.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, the security people hate Tobin’s guts. He doesn’t care. He gets first crack at things usually—evidence, statements and so on, and he passes them on when he’s ready. Drives the spooks nuts.’

  ‘I bet. What’s he like these days, Tobin?’

  The Coke came and Weiss drained it in a couple of gulps. He started to tie knots in the straw with his plump fingers. When he’d finished he poked the straw down into the can. ‘Tobin’s fat. Fatter ’n me.’

  ‘How soon can you set up a meeting?’

  ‘Tomorrow or the next day do you?’

  ‘Good.’ He was squirming in his seat. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Bladder trouble.’

  ‘You need royal blood. How come you’n Tobin’re so close?’

  ‘We’re brothers-in-law; Tobin married my sister. Also we can be useful to each other. Like you and me.’ He drained his coffee and looked pleased with himself. I was beginning to dislike this job already. Being drawn into a network of obligations with the likes of Tobin and Weiss wasn’t my idea of fun. It was the sort of thing Cyn, my ex-wife, had predicted for me. ‘You’ll get just like them,’ she’d said. ‘Ends will justify means, and the ends will get more worthless and the means will get sleazier.’ I hadn’t seen Cyn for years but some of her criticisms were still useful warnings.

  ‘Where’s Tobin’s office? Is he in College Street with the working coppers or has he got an assault-proof bunker somewhere?’

  ‘You won’t see him in his office, you’ll buy him lunch at the Bourbon Brasserie in the Cross. I told you he was fat.’

  I picked up the file and got out of my chair. ‘Give me a ring when you’ve got it fixed, Sammy. Sorry about your shirt.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ It was an expensive shirt and it had a big green smear all over the back of it where I’d hammered him into the ivy. He turned his head trying to look back over his shoulder and swore when he saw the mark. ‘What about talking to Tickener?’

  ‘If everything works out really well and you play very, very straight and honest. Cripple yourself with honesty. Think you can do it?’

  Weiss wasn’t a fool. He’d lived long enough in the dirty, tempting parts of the world to know his limitations.

  ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you.’

  My old Falcon has developed a quirk; it won’t start in neutral but kicks over beautifully with hardly a lurch when I start it in first. I tell myself it’s a good security device but in my heart I know it’s something serious in the vitals. I drove back to Glebe where the cat would or would not be waiting and where, sooner or later, I’d find an emery board inside a book or something else that would bring on the pangs of missing Helen so much I’d have to go out. I hardly spent any time in the house when she wasn’t in the city and not much when she was. We lived mostly in her flat at Tamarama.

  No cat, some mail, nothing of interest. I had a couple of glasses of wine and looked through the file again. Alcohol sometimes sharpens the senses, makes you see things you’d otherwise miss. Not this time; I had no new thoughts about the file, just some not-so-new thoughts about Trudi Bell. ‘Luscious’ was what Sammy Weiss had called her and it wasn’t too far wrong. Like Jimmy Carter said, men are faithless in their minds a dozen times a day. I wondered if Trudi had an attachment that helped her to say no to Peter January. I wondered if she had a child. I wondered where she lived…

  It was a question of more wine, TV and a book and bed, or the puritan ethic. I put the flagon away, made coffee and sandwiches and sat down to make some notes on the case as it stood. January had originally mentioned a contract but we hadn’t talked about that again. I wrote ‘Terms?’ at the top of the page. Reflecting on it, I realised that this was the first time I’d ever been involved in investigating a death in which the victim had been chosen at random. Usually, killer knows victim and that helps the investigator.

  I’d kept the newspapers that had covered the bombing and I looked through them, mostly for the background on January’s career to see if there was anything important I’d missed but also to do a bit of free associating. I’d read about a case in America where the killer always got himself into the press scene-of-the-crime photographs. That’s how they got him in the end. I scanned the pictures of the chaos outside January’s office on the day of the bombing; I saw myself as a blurred image leaning against a car and January, as if he’d known how the light w
as falling, standing straight and distraught, blood-covered but determined, with a profile like a Roman centurion.

  The cat scratched at the door. I fed it and it went straight out again. ‘Nice to see you,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you stay a while and shit on the rug?’ I was feeling depressed by the comings and goings in my life. I wanted some continuity.

  The crashing of the door knocker disturbed my reverie. Helen had brought the knocker home one day and screwed it on herself. She said she could never hear a knock at the door, especially when we were upstairs in bed. I’d told her that was the idea but she’d gone ahead and done it anyway. I got out of my chair and walked down the passage feeling unsociable.

  ‘Who is it?’

  There was no answer and my instincts, which had been dulled by self pity, started to work. I thought about the gun in the holster under my jacket hanging over the chair in the kitchen. I started back for it. We could be dealing with terrorists here, knee-cappers, Libyans eager for Islam heaven. The banging came again, harder.

  ‘Open up, Hardy. It’s Peter January.’

  5

  JANUARY was drunk but the woman with him was steely sober. She was taller than him, a few years younger and, right then, she seemed to be supplying the qualities January lacked. For one thing, she was in control of her speech.

  ‘Cliff, lissen, gotta talk…shit!’ He’d lurched in the doorway and hit his head against the jamb.

  ‘Mr Hardy,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Karen Weiner. Peter says he wants to talk to you. He’s in no condition to do it but he was going to make a scene in the restaurant unless he came here. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay. Come in. I can sober him up and see what’s on his mind. Are you…ah…?’

  ‘Don’ worry, Cliff. Karen’s m’ right arm. Tell her anything.’

  Karen Weiner and I supported January along the passage and through the sitting room to the kitchen.

  ‘Anything to drink comrade?’ he said.

  ‘Not for you.’ The woman took his weight easily all by herself. ‘Where’s the bathroom?’

  I pointed and she steered him, stripping off his suit jacket as she went. She wore a blouse and loose jacket, trousers with lots of belts and pockets, and high-heeled shoes. I heard a few protests from January as they went down the steps to the bathroom at the back of the house but there were chuckles in the sounds as if he was having fun protesting. I made coffee in the kitchen, kept an ear out for breaking glass and tried to tell myself that Peter January wouldn’t be the first drunken client I’d had—wouldn’t be the 20th even and wouldn’t be the last.

  When he reappeared January was still a mess but he looked steadier. The woman was carrying the jacket and waistcoat of his light grey suit; he’d slipped down his tie and had the shirt cuffs back in the way politicians like to do when they’re pretending to be one of the people. His thick hair was damp and his face was shiny but the slackness was gone from it and the artificial glitter that had been in his eyes was dimmed.

  ‘What did you do?’ I said. ‘Tell him to pretend he was going on “60 Minutes”?’

  January dropped into a chair. ‘Don’t like me, do you, Hardy?’

  ‘I liked the way you handled yourself when the bomb went off. I like the way you want to stop us all from glowing in the dark. That’s enough.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose it is. Did you say something about coffee?’

  ‘I’ll get it.’ Karen Weiner went out to the kitchen and I could hear her opening cupboards and clinking mugs as January and I looked at each other.

  ‘I’m scared,’ he said.

  ‘You must’ve been scared before. What about when you met Prince Charles?’

  He ignored me. ‘I was scared in ’Nam. I was scared the first time I stood up in court to speak and again when I got up in the House. But this is different. All of a sudden I feel outnumbered. I can feel the knives pointing at my back.’

  ‘Caesar complex,’ I said.

  He drew his hand across his face as if he could rearrange his features to be the way he wanted. He wanted patience. ‘I knew you’d bullshit around for a while, but I’m serious.’

  The woman came back with the coffee balanced on a breadboard that she’d wiped clean. She presented us with the mugs and put the milk and sugar where we could reach it. Then she sat down next to January—not too close, not too far away. He smiled at her as he sipped his coffee.

  ‘All I can say is that you’re bloody impatient,’ I said. ‘I’m setting up a meeting with the copper who…’

  January waved his free hand. ‘I don’t expect you to have any results yet. I’ve come to put you in the full picture. It hasn’t been easy, believe me.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean?’

  Karen drank half her mug in a swig. ‘The hardest part is getting away from the press and the minders. That’s partly how Peter got so drunk. We were out-waiting a reporter.’

  ‘They’re never around when you want ’em,’ January said bitterly. ‘You can’t get the buggers to actually read anything you write or quote you accurately. But give them a sniff of death and they’ll wipe your arse and souvenir the paper.’

  ‘Well, I assume you’ve shaken them now,’ I said. ‘I don’t reckon you’d be going around pissed like that if anybody important was about. Pardon my paranoia.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve shaken them for now. They’ve got their first photo of Karen, though. That’ll keep them busy for a while and give them something to chew on.’

  ‘I’ve got a husband,’ Karen said.

  I drank some more coffee and wished I could put some brandy in it but it didn’t seem diplomatic just then. ‘Well, reporters’ve got wives. They’re understanding. The reporters that is, not the wives.’

  ‘Karen’s husband has connections with the other side. It’s going to get sticky.’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘I’m going to marry her.’

  ‘Sticky,’ I said.

  January finished his coffee and poured some more. Either he hadn’t been as drunk as he’d seemed or he had terrific powers of recovery. I had to admit I was interested. Here was abstemious Peter January, notorious womaniser, darling of the media, drunk, talking about marriage and running down the fourth estate. Karen Weiner was an athletic-looking woman with blonde hair drawn back and the sort of features that seemed to be produced, in some mysterious way, by expensive schools and plenty of international travel. She was more tanned than most for the time of year and when I leaned closer to her to get some more coffee I could smell expensive perfume. Something about her bothered me.

  ‘I don’t think he should marry me,’ she said. ‘I’d like it but it’s not necessary.’

  January shook his head and looked stubborn. I started to feel puzzled about my role in things. It had been a long time since a private detective had had anything useful to do with a divorce. I dropped a spoon, bent down to pick it up and saw the light gold chain around her ankle above the strap of her white shoe. Things clicked into place; it was a chain like the one Cyn used to wear and that was who she reminded me of, at least in the exteriors—accent, hair, perfume and ankle chain.

  ‘I don’t get it, Peter. I thought I was looking into the bombing, checking on your fan mail. I…’

  ‘You are but there’s other things you should know.’

  ‘About you and Karen here. Fine with me. Congratulations, but it’s getting late and I’m not sleeping too well lately and I…’

  ‘This is serious!’ January’s voice had a whipcrack in it. ‘I’ve got enemies in the party—bastards who’d like to see me buried.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘All sorts of reasons. My sort of politics is bad news for marginal seats for one thing. Some of them think about their majorities and nothing else.’

  ‘And you don’t have to think about yours,’ Karen said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You’re not telling me someone in a swinging seat would try to kill you?’

  ‘No, but he might
talk to someone who would.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Have you ever heard of Airey Neave?’

  I thought quickly: British polly, something to do with the Nuremberg trials. Killed in the House of Commons carpark by a bomb. ‘Yes, sure. He was Minister for Northern Ireland and the IRA got him.’

  ‘Not everyone believes that,’ January said.

  ‘What do they believe?’

  ‘There’s a theory that the IRA is really run by the British secret service. That they’ve infiltrated both sides—the IRA and the Unionists—and they keep the fire burning.’

  ‘Why?’ I was beginning to feel I couldn’t delay the brandy much longer.

  ‘To keep Belfast on tap as a training ground for the British army in street fighting. It certainly works that way—the Brits cleaned up everything in sight in Port Stanley with a minimum of fuss. Other Europeans send soldiers to Belfast to see how its done.’

  ‘Is there any evidence for this, Peter?’ Karen said.

  ‘Not hard evidence. Inference.’

  ‘What about the Brighton bombing?’ I said. ‘The secret service wouldn’t go along with that, would they?’

  January smiled. ‘They didn’t get anyone important, did they? Didn’t harm a hair of Maggie’s head.’

  Karen licked her lips which were full and dark around very white teeth. ‘What about Mount-batten?’ she said.

  ‘There’s two views on that. One, who cares? What did he matter? The other view is that occasionally a mad dog element in the IRA gets out of control and does something on its own. They get pulled into place later after the damage is done.’

  It was late at night when conspiracy theories have most appeal. ‘Or they bungled something.’ I said. ‘Secret Services are full of idiots, think of ours.’

  ‘I am,’ January said.

  ‘I’ve met some of them through Clive,’ Karen said. ‘That’s my husband. Talk about thick…’

  I was beginning to get January’s drift and I didn’t like it. It made me wish I was working on a nice, safe come-with-me-while-I-deliver-this-money case. ‘What was the point about Airey Neave? He was the Minister for Northern Ireland. If all this stuff was going on he’d have known about it.’