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  I needed time to think things through and since Patrick Greenhall’s sister Kate was nearby in Mount Victoria, it made sense to stay in the area. But not in Katoomba when Miller was discovered. Mount Victoria was a safer bet.

  7

  The weather changed as I was driving to Mount Victoria. The sky clouded over and a cold wind had sprung up. People in the towns I passed through were hurrying, their hands buried in their pockets. I had trouble getting the image of the tortured and murdered man on the bed out of my mind. I’d never been subjected to anything that extreme, but I’d come close and I realised that I needed not just time to think, but some soothing peace and quiet around me. I booked into the Mt Vic Motor Lodge, not far from the railway station.

  I keep my gym clothes—towel, sneakers and other bits and pieces—in a large overnight bag in the car, and that passed as luggage for the receptionist. I registered for one night and had no option but to use my credit card and enter my car registration number. If the police had information to follow up on me and looked north I was a goner, but I wasn’t up to camping out in the bush.

  There were eight or nine cars already parked and another drove in as I was registering, making it less likely the busy receptionist would take any notice of me. The place boasted an extensive garden, a swimming pool, still covered, and views of the high country surrounds. The room was cold and I turned the air conditioner up to its warmest level.

  I’d prepared for the mountains by bringing the fully lined parka in which I’d kept my gun and ammunition until Detective McLean had come to call. I put it on and walked down the town’s main street, where I bought bread, cheese, a tomato, mustard, a bottle of merlot and a packet of disposable razors. The wind had a keen edge that suited my mood. I walked for the best part of an hour, not thinking much, just trying to put time and distance between myself and a man who’d died the hard way.

  The room was too warm when I got back and I adjusted the heat level. I opened one of the light beers from the minibar and settled into a chair with that and a packet of crisps and waited for the 5 pm television news, like a cinema-goer waiting with popcorn for the feature. Sitting and waiting in motels was something I’d done hundreds of times all over the country. It had the effect I wanted; it made me feel normal, almost.

  Dusty Miller had made the news. The police had kept the media back but the scene was dramatic enough with police cars, an ambulance and about fifty Bravados swarming around the old workshop. The reporter announced that one of Miller’s mechanics had found him when he turned up for work at two-thirty, the usual Monday opening time. He’d contacted the authorities and also the bikies, being a Bravado himself. As usual, this information was followed by a whole lot of wild speculation that linked Miller to unspecified crimes. The police appealed to anyone with information to come forward. Good luck with that.

  I watched a few of the other news items before switching the set off and laying out the bread, cheese, tomato and mustard and opening the wine. I carved chunks off the small, crusty loaf with my Swiss Army knife and used the motel’s crockery, cutlery and glassware for the meal. As I ate and drank I wondered why I’d used my own money to buy the food and hadn’t had a restaurant meal I could charge to Timothy Greenhall. I was halfway through the bottle when I knew the answer: it was one of those few times when I had doubts about becoming a private detective—discovering dead bodies, dealing with desperate men and women and all that associated sadness. I could have stayed in the army, or persisted with the law degree or even turned pro as a boxer.

  Useless, and I shook the feeling off. I seemed to have stumbled onto something very dark, where people were prepared to go the limit. Had Dusty Miller supplied the gun that killed Patrick Greenhall? I’d never know, but if he had, it was odds-on he was killed by someone out there who’d done business with him, and the police, like me, were going to try to find out who Miller’s clients were. That is, some of the police. What about the others? If there was a rogue police gun-dealing crew, already alerted to me, aware somehow that I’d been in Katoomba around the time of Miller’s death, I’d have to lock all my doors and sleep with a gun, which I didn’t have, under my pillow.

  I realised I was building a paranoiac scenario but I let it build. What if they hadn’t discovered Miller’s guns and thought I had? And what about the bikies? I finished the food and most of the wine and used the motel’s instant coffee. I spiked the coffee with scotch from the mini-bar and tried to watch a film on the television that consisted of such quick cutting, men who mumbled and women with such chirpy New Jersey accents who all looked the same that I couldn’t understand what was being said or what was at stake. I chased across the channels for news but learned nothing more about the dead Bravado.

  I checked the lock on the door, wedged a chair under the handle, stripped to my underwear and got into bed with my lead pipe for company.

  In the morning I showered, shaved with difficulty using soap and a disposable razor, and ate breakfast in the motel dining room. Politics and football had pushed Dusty Miller lower down the news list but there was one item of interest: an unnamed Bravado veteran said the club would do whatever it took to find out who’d killed their ‘brother’.

  I used my laptop to locate Kate’s Organic Nursery. It turned out to be a short distance from the township in an area divided into one-hectare blocks looking out over a valley to the Bell’s Line of Road. I checked out and drove there along a recently built road past weekenders, A-frames and log houses, until I reached the nursery. A tasteful sign announced it and a curving gravel approach ran through flowerbeds and shrubberies to a low-lying timber and glass building painted in muted colours that blended with the surroundings and the rocky cliff that rose up at the back of the block.

  There was space for about six cars to park but the only vehicle there was a Land Rover. A tarpaulin-covered trailer stood next to it. The air was crisp and cold but the sun was up with the promise of some warmth later. The main building was flanked by a large greenhouse, where I could see some movement. I approached it and knocked on the metal-framed glass door. A woman inside straightened up from whatever she’d been doing and beckoned to me. I opened the door and stepped into a colourful combination of plants and scents that seemed to belong to another world.

  The woman came towards me. She was tall and heavily built, wearing overalls and an apron and carrying a trowel. She also had on boots, gloves and a woollen watch cap with wisps of dark hair poking out. She stripped off the right glove as she approached.

  ‘Mr Hardy,’ she said. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

  I shook her strong, work-hardened hand. ‘Your father told you about me.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m Kate Greenhall . . . obviously.’

  ‘I’ve come to talk to you about your brother—again, obviously.’

  She smiled, showing white teeth in a weather-beaten, freckled face that was disfigured by a pale, puckered scar running down her right cheek. It was the sort of mark skilful makeup could at least partly have concealed, but her face was scrubbed clean.

  ‘I have to finish a few things here, then I’ll be with you. Would you like to go into the house and wait? I won’t be long.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’

  Turning away, she said, ‘Are you interested in flowers, Mr Hardy? Or organic gardening?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ I said.

  She laughed. ‘Honest. I like that.’

  When people invite you to enter their premises unaccompanied they either have nothing to hide or, if they do, they’re sure you won’t find it. I went into the house, which featured polished pine floors with rugs and serviceable furniture. The sitting room’s brick fireplace was laid but not burning; the house was warm from some other heating source. I browsed the bookshelves, mostly stocked with books about botany and gardening. The CDs were all classical. The hallway had several abstract paintings on the walls that could have been originals, and good, for all I knew. The place had a spartan but moneyed feel.
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br />   A few magazines, again with flowers on the covers, and the morning’s local paper lay on a coffee table in front of the fireplace. Dusty Miller occupied the whole of the front page. In the centre was a photograph of him astride his Harley. With the beard, the ponytail, the sleeveless denim shirt, the studded belt and the leather vest he looked formidable despite the beer fat. It must have taken two or maybe three people to bring him down. I dropped my card onto the paper.

  ‘Our little bit of underbelly,’ Kate Greenhall said. I hadn’t heard her come in and turned to see her without her apron and boots. ‘I’m expecting a spike in sales.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘The bikies’ll lay on a massive funeral, thunderous, and flowers galore.’

  ‘You’re a florist as well as a nursery?’

  ‘Yup, I supply a shop in Katoomba. Come out to the kitchen. I’ll make coffee and we can talk.’

  I waved my hand. ‘What about your business here?’

  ‘Didn’t you notice? There’s a button by the greenhouse door. I can hear the bell anywhere on the block.’

  I followed her through to a kitchen with the same feel as the living room—stylish practicality. She gestured for me to sit at a pine table while she worked at an intricate-looking coffee machine. In her socks she stood about 180 centimetres and I’d have guessed her weight at about eighty kilos. I realised I was evaluating her physically as if she was a man. There was something asexual about her and it was more than the watch cap and the overalls.

  A strong coffee aroma suddenly filled the room and she grinned when she saw my reaction.

  ‘Good, isn’t it? I’m a coffee purist. You only get it black here and you can’t sugar it. Metal should never touch coffee, did you know that?’

  I shook my head. ‘Do you grow it?’

  ‘I wish, but it’s just a bit too cold up here. I get the beans from an impeccable source and I only grind what I immediately need.’

  She poured the coffee into two ceramic mugs, brought them to the table and sat across from me with her legs splayed out. She blew softly at the mug and took a sip. I did the same. The coffee was rich and smooth, tasting as good as it smelled, rare with coffee.

  ‘What d’you think?’ she said.

  ‘I could almost give up wine and whisky.’

  She laughed. ‘No, you couldn’t. Right, now for poor Paddy.’

  ‘Paddy?’

  ‘That’s what I called him. I was three years older and he was a pompous little boy and I called him that to take him down a peg or two.’

  ‘Were you fond of him?’

  ‘I loved him dearly, even after he did this to me.’ She touched the scar on her face. ‘He came at me with a knife when he was high on crystal meth or something. We hushed it up. He went into detox and therapy afterwards.’

  ‘Why did he kill himself, Ms Greenhall?’

  ‘I don’t think he did.’

  That rocked me. If she was right it added a new dimension to the troubled life of Patrick Greenhall and would affect my approach to the case from here on. I took a strong pull on the coffee and felt its effect on me, sharpening my responses to everything around me—the bird calls outside, the humming of the refrigerator, the lingering smell of the ground beans.

  ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard anything like that. The police were satisfied.’

  She shrugged. ‘The police are easily satisfied when they want to be. A man with a history of drug abuse and mental disturbance, working in a job well below his capacities and living with an older woman, is easy to write off.’

  ‘Do you have any evidence?’

  ‘Patrick told me he was in fear of his life because of something he’d seen.’

  ‘Seen? What?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘What did you do about it?’

  She drained her coffee mug and clenched her big hands around it. ‘Nothing. I just assumed Patrick was back on the drugs and paranoid. I told him to go back into therapy and he got annoyed and we had a quarrel.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘A week before he died. D’you want some more coffee?’

  I said I did and watched her as she went through the process again. She was an odd mixture of strength and fragility. She seemed to be one of those people who immerse themselves in practical activities to avoid introspection; a bit like me, or so I’ve been told.

  She rinsed the mugs, dried them carefully and refilled them. She put them back on the table and leaned forward.

  ‘I kept quiet about what Patrick had said because I was waiting for something to happen, and now it has.’

  ‘And that is what?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t think my father really cared about who supplied the gun. What he really wants is for you to find out who killed his son and why.’

  I thought back over the interview with Greenhall. I’d had the sense that he hadn’t told me everything but that’s nearly always the case anyway. With those misgivings aside, I’d been convinced that his commission for me was as he’d laid it out. If his daughter was right, I’d completely misread him. I resisted that idea.

  ‘That wasn’t my impression,’ I said. ‘Why wouldn’t he just come out and ask me to investigate his death?’

  ‘I don’t mean he consciously wanted that. He’s a mass of denials, guilts and insecurities. Deep down he suspects . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That Patrick’s death has something to do with the only thing he really cares about.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘His precious bloody business.’

  I thought about that as I drank the strong, flavourful coffee. Kate Greenhall sat quietly drinking her own and seemed content to let me cogitate.

  After a few minutes a noise like an air-raid siren sounded and she jumped up and left the room. I was suddenly becoming aware of the cold and I assumed the central heating had a time switch. Sunlight flooded in through a window. A nice day in the Blue Mountains, except that it was turning out to be a puzzling one.

  She came back rubbing her hands.

  ‘The Bravados?’ I said.

  ‘No, an order for shrubs to make a hedge and I get to do the planting. Where were we?’

  ‘That Patrick’s death had something to do with your father’s business.’

  ‘Before we get back to that, I assume you’ve spoken to Alicia Troy?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘What did you think of her?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought one way or another. She seems okay.’

  ‘My mother hates her like poison.’

  ‘That seems to be mutual.’

  ‘I’m on Alicia’s side there—my mother is poison.’

  ‘What’s the nature of her illness, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘I don’t much and I suppose you’d find out anyway. Call it alcoholism combined with nymphomania and fetishism. She had a thing for uniforms that eventually got out of hand.’

  Psycho city, I thought. ‘So what did Patrick’s death have to do with your father’s business?’

  She looked uncertain for a moment. ‘I don’t know, really. Just a couple of cracks Patrick made about dirty money. He didn’t tell me any details.’

  ‘But you think your father really wants me to investigate whether Patrick was murdered, not just who supplied the weapon?’

  ‘Right. I don’t envy you working for him, Mr Hardy. He’s a very complex and devious man.’

  The second time someone had told me that. I was starting to think they might be right.

  part two

  8

  I drove through Katoomba and its environs with the care of someone down to his final penalty points. Thankfully I wasn’t but the last thing I needed was to register my presence there with the police. The town was quiet, though I imagined the Bravados were making plans to change that big time.

  To say I was confused would be
an understatement. I prided myself on being, if not a great judge of character, then at least a better than average one, due to a lot of experience. I hadn’t judged Timothy Greenhall to be the complex and devious character his daughter said he was. Could she be right? I kept thinking back to the scene in the kitchen. The big, almost mannish woman with her air of detachment had exhibited a feeling of being involved in something else, something deeper than mere suicide or murder. Above it all, almost untouched by it, but seeing it clearly.

  I had two women judging a third to be poison and one of those women judging the other to be the same. Over the years, I’d developed a habit of mentally seeing the people in whatever case I was working almost as actors in a play. I couldn’t get a grip on the character of Patrick Greenhall. Was he a lost soul experimenting with drugs and clinging to an older woman for survival, or a player in some deep game to do with his business-obsessed father? I was used to judging people by their actions and the man had either shot himself or been shot. Big difference.

  I stopped in Medlow Bath for lunch and to check my phone for calls and texts. I’d had the thing switched off since the night before. I still disliked the technology and resisted letting it dictate my movements the way some people do. There was nothing that required my immediate attention.

  I left the mountain road and had to concentrate on the more complex traffic through the outer suburbs. I played Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks for mental relief, something beautiful and meaningless. I tried to shake off the confusion and make plans. Ring Harry Tickener at the Sentinel and try to learn more about Greenhall and Precision Instruments; go through the legal hoops to recover my pistol; tot up my expenses and act like a professional. These practical, manageable things were steadying me as I parked the car more or less outside my house.

  A spring shower broke just as I left the car. With my keys and a plastic bag holding the bread, mustard and cheese I hadn’t eaten in one hand and, in the other, the lead pipe I intended to put back with other junk in the courtyard, I walked up the path, avoiding the broken tiles and with my head lowered against the rain. A figure rose up from the gloom of where the porch was shadowed by overgrown shrubs.