Saving Billie Read online

  He was half drunk, fat and good-natured. ‘Coppers come around this time of night. Better get yourself cleaned up.’

  Most of the blood had soaked into my jacket; my shirt was dark so the blood on it didn’t show. I pulled myself up, took off the jacket after finding some tissues in a pocket. I pressed them against the eyebrow cut and went through to the toilet without attracting any attention. The face in the mirror looked like mine but it had aged a bit more than it should have in the last half-hour. I ran the water, used most of the paper towels available to clean up as best I could. I’d need ice for the swelling, a warm bath for the sore balls and a caustic stick for the cut. All available at home a few hundred metres away. Over the years, I’d spent so much money in the Toxteth I didn’t feel I had to compensate them for the broken cue.

  It took me three times longer than usual to get home from the pub and I was glad none of my neighbours saw me in such a mess. The cut had opened wide again and I was bloody from my head to my feet. I stripped off, had a shower and sat for a while in a shallow bath. I used the caustic stick to stop the bleeding. The skin above the eyebrow had been cut and stitched several times. These days they use some kind of clip that doesn’t promote scar tissue, but not in my time. Eventually the blood stopped seeping, but it’d be a while before the swelling went down and the scab came away. Till then, I was going to look like someone who’d been in a fight and I hadn’t even landed a punch.

  I made a pot of coffee and spiked a big mug of it with brandy. I had three painkillers and by the time I was halfway through the second spiked coffee I was feeling solid enough to do some thinking. I ran my mind back over the encounter in the pub and a few things about it struck me as strange. Rhys Thomas could obviously handle himself, so why would he need two heavies in support? I’d got him to repeat his grievance because there seemed to be something almost rehearsed about it as it came out the first time, and even more so the second. I was searching for a lead on the guy with the money and it came to me. He bore a strong resemblance to Jonas Clement. A son? And, although it’s hard to tell from one word, and one phrase, the way he pronounced ‘Out!’ and his use of ‘man’ had a South African touch to them.

  If I was right in my guesses, all that put the pub incident in a very different light. Clement’s son wouldn’t have gone along to support Thomas on a personal affront. More likely he was doing what his dad wanted him to do, which was put the frighteners on me. That meant he knew about my connection with Louise Kramer and was sufficiently worried about it to take some pretty crude action. I called Lou’s home and mobile numbers and got the voicemail. I left a message sketching in a few of my suspicions and suggesting that we get together urgently. Nothing more to be done tonight.

  I went to bed with my coffee and brandy and paracetamol buzz with one comforting thought. There hadn’t been time for Bob Armstrong to alert anyone to my interest in Clement and activate the Thomas heavy brigade. That still left the question of how, when and why Clement came to think me worthy of his plutocratic attention.

  Lou Kramer rang me before eight the next morning. She said she was using some flexi-time she’d racked up before she went on to a part-time contract to work at home and was too busy to meet me anywhere. She asked me to come to her flat. No harm in sussing out the client’s residence. I got a taxi to Balmain and picked up the car. Untouched. I parked with dubious legality, walked a block, and buzzed at the door of the newly and expensively renovated old building in Surry Hills. It stood across from Ward Park, named after Eddie Ward, ‘the firebrand of East Sydney’, a hero of my father’s. Fewer of Eddie’s kind of voters around here now.

  ‘The Surrey Apartments’— six floors and from the top there’d be a great view of the city whichever way you looked.

  ‘Push, Cliff. Fifth floor.’ I pushed and the door released. The lift was smooth and quick and she was standing with the door open when I got there.

  ‘Jesus Christ, you just said you’d been knocked about a bit.’

  ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’

  She beckoned me in and kept staring at my battered face. ‘That reminds me of that joke about Wagner—his music’s not as bad as it sounds. Can you see out of that eye?’

  ‘Sure. So this’s what you pay the big mortgage on? Pretty nice.’

  ‘Location, location, location.’

  The apartment had a short, wide hallway giving on to a big, light, airy living room with several rooms leading off it. The windows ran from waist high almost to the ceiling and the outlook was to the east. I’m always amazed to see how many trees there really are in Sydney. The sky was cloudy and visibility wasn’t good but I suspected there’d be a view of water on a clear day. The room had a good lived-in feel, with books, magazines, CDs and DVDs not put away where they belonged. What looked like the day’s broadsheets lay around, haphazardly folded open.

  At her invitation I sat near a low table on a comfortable chair and she brought in coffee. She glanced at her watch as she set the tray down.

  ‘I won’t keep you long.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s just that I have to make the most of this time for my own work.’

  ‘Understood.’

  She wore loose pants, sandals and a denim shirt. The top of a packet of her anti-smoking gum peeked from the breast pocket. No makeup, hair barely combed. Working, and not bothering about anything else.

  ‘I’ll get to the point,’ I said. ‘Have you told anyone about hiring me?’

  ‘Why?’

  Not the answer I’d hoped for. ‘Because I think Clement was behind the attack on me. There was more to it than just Thomas getting even. By the way, does Clement have a son?’

  ‘Yes, big lump of a lad, a nasty type, did a bit of mercenary work—Jonas Junior.’

  ‘He was there last night. More or less in control. You haven’t answered my question, Lou.’

  ‘I told someone, yes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  I drank some coffee and looked at her. She drank and didn’t look at me. ‘Why not?’ I said.

  ‘I’m not supposed to be seeing him. He’s married and all that.’

  ‘You think I’d spill it to “Stay in Touch”?’

  She shook her head. ‘Of course not. It’s just that I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone. Look, Cliff, I trust him. He wouldn’t . . .’

  ‘Does he have any connection with Clement?’

  ‘I . . . I’m not sure.’

  ‘C’mon, Lou.’

  She wasn’t the kind of woman you could push. She flared. ‘Do you want to back out?’

  I looked around the room again. It had the appearance of a journalist’s place—lots of print, up-to-date media machines, a couple of Whiteley prints and Dupain’s ‘The Sunbather’ on the walls. I finished my coffee and stood.

  ‘Let me see your workroom.’

  ‘Shit, why?’

  ‘Indulge me.’

  She shrugged and pointed to a half-open door. I went into a room with the blind drawn. Bookshelves, filing cabinets and a big pine table with an iMac computer, printer, scanner and thumb drive lit by a desk lamp. The surface was awash with scribbled notes on post-its, notepads covered with scrawled handwriting, pens and pencils. Squinting in the dim light, I browsed the bookshelves. The Paul Barry best-selling jobs on Bond and Packer; Christine Wallace on Germaine Greer; D’Alpuget on Hawke; Watson on Keating; Knightley’s A Hack’s Progress; some Richard Hall and a full shelf on African travel, politics and economics. And much else—Bernard Levin, Clive James, David Leich, Paul Theroux, and Bob Ellis. She was a journalism junkie, with a yen to travel.

  I turned back to see her standing in the doorway. She opened her hands and did a perfect imitation of the guy in the beer commercial who freaks out his girlfriend in the spa.

  ‘What?’

  I grinned. ‘Nothing. What you read you are.’

  ‘Another stolen line.’

  ‘Right. I don’t think I’m getting a fair shake here
. Your cheque’s going to bounce—’

  ‘It’ll clear tomorrow.’

  I ignored her. ‘You won’t tell me your deadline; you say Eddie was murdered but the official version is it was an accident; you won’t name your mystery man . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Tell me the deadline.’

  ‘Oh, all right. I’ve got three months to finish the bloody thing and I’m battling to make it, especially if . . .’

  ‘You don’t find Billie.’

  ‘Yes. Are you pulling out?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s personal now.’

  5

  I told Lou to be careful about where she went and the company she kept. If my suspicion that Clement had tried to frighten me off was right, he wouldn’t be beyond renewing his attacks on her. Except that I was an independent operator in a not-highly-regarded profession and she was in the media, the new aristocracy.

  ‘I go from here to the office and back as it suits me and them. That’s it,’ she said. ‘I phone out for groceries, grog and pizza.’

  ‘What about when you meet up with Mr X?’

  ‘Oh, I’d be safe enough with him.’

  I left and went to the gym for the lightest of workouts and a long soak in the spa. Back in the office I worked the Internet and the phone. I discovered that Liston was officially one of the thirty most disadvantaged postcodes in the country according to a sociological survey. The suburb had been named after a local farm and had become a dumping ground for battlers needing Department of Housing help in the eighties. Back then, it was at a distance from Campbelltown—out of sight and mind. It had a very high level of unemployment and welfare dependency and a considerable Aboriginal population.

  I had contacts in the parole system and social services and from some of them I got a picture of how the place had changed in recent years.

  Terri Boxall, a parole officer, said, ‘It was a shithole to start with. One of those good ideas gone wrong. They built the houses cheek by jowl all facing this big open parkland with virtually no private space per house. The dead-end kids turned the open space into no-go areas and the rest of the people huddled inside by the tele drinking and producing more dead-end kids.’

  ‘You imply it’s got better.’

  ‘It sure has. The Department turned the houses around—remodelled them so they faced away and knocked some down so there was some private space.’

  ‘I can’t imagine a government department being that imaginative. Worked, did it?’

  ‘To an extent, but the big thing was the introduction of the Islanders.’

  That got my attention. ‘Islanders?’

  ‘Samoans, Tongans, Fijians. They sorted out the car thieves, burglars and yahoos. They’re churchy, you know? Law-abiding, despite their problems.’

  ‘When was this, Terri?’

  ‘It’s been progressive. Probably started eight, ten years ago.’

  ‘That could fit.’

  ‘What’s your interest, Cliff ?’

  ‘I’m looking for a woman named Billie Marchant. Ever heard the name?’

  ‘Sorry, no.’

  ‘I know she’s got friends out there, and she’s got a kid and I’m assuming she’s in touch with him. I don’t know how old he is—maybe fifteen, maybe more. In a photo he looks to be black.’

  ‘What’s his name? Are they in your kind of trouble?’

  ‘No, not directly. I just might be able to help them. Hard to say at this point. I don’t know his name.’

  ‘Good luck. Tell you what, there’s a sort of community protection set-up there. I’ve got a few . . . clients in Liston and these people help me keep tabs on them from time to time.’

  ‘Community protection?’

  ‘Civil rights fundamentalists might call it vigilantism. I wouldn’t. Have a word with John Manuma. Mention my name.’

  ‘Got a phone number?’

  ‘He wouldn’t be interested in talking to you on the phone, Cliff. You’d have to front him, face to face, as it were.’

  ‘As it were?’

  ‘He’s a Samoan, two hundred centimetres or thereabouts.’

  ‘That tops me by a fair bit. Shouldn’t be hard to spot.’

  Terri told me that the community protection office was a shopfront in Liston’s only commercial centre and that it was staffed by volunteers and open seven days a week, so Saturday wasn’t going to be a problem. I wasn’t going out there today because tonight I was going to keep an eye on Lou Kramer, hoping to find out who her Mr X was. She was playing her game by her own rules, and in mine you just can’t be too careful.

  After a quiet afternoon, I was in my car at 6 pm equipped with field glasses and a camera, stationed across the way from the entrance to the Surrey Apartments. Lovers get together on Friday nights if they possibly can, for however short a time. Husbands tell their wives they have to work late cleaning their desks; working wives do the same. For both sexes there’s the excuse of a drink with the fellow workers. Just the one.

  I came into the business as the no-fault divorce laws were taking away work from private investigators. One or two of what were called ‘Brownie and bedsheets’ cases and it was all over. As a beneficiary of no-fault divorce myself I wasn’t sorry, but it took some zip out of the profession, like the end of the Cold War did out of spying. This was about the closest I’d been to it since those days.

  I was still there at 8 pm with no sign of Lou or a likely candidate for her lover. The few men who’d arrived had either been in the company of other men or women or, in the cases of the two who arrived alone, and whom I photographed, they left again within a few minutes, barely time to have given Lou a peck on the cheek.

  At about eight thirty a silver BMW circled the block searching for a park. The driver made two circuits before a space opened up and he slid the car into it. He got out and approached the apartment building, passing within thirty metres of me. The camera could cope with the dim light and I got a good shot of him in profile. For a nasty split second I thought something had alerted him to my presence because he turned full face towards me, but he was only looking at a skateboarder who’d jumped a gutter with a clatter and a bang and was whizzing along the footpath. I didn’t need another picture because I’d seen him before. He was the man at the party who’d been cynical about the pro-Americanism and speaking style of Jonas Clement.

  He went into the building. I got out of my car and walked past his, noting the registration number. I was back behind the wheel when Lou and the BMW driver came out. She was dressed pretty much the way she had been at the party. He was in a business suit, no tie. Probably passed for casual with him. Out of the tailored dinner suit, with his jacket open, he looked less impressive than he had at the party. He was tall and spindly, but carrying ten kilos he didn’t need, mostly around the middle, also around his face and neck. He had thin, dark hair slicked down and a bustling walk. Lou held on to his arm as if he might get away. They stood on the footpath for a few minutes until a taxi pulled up. He handed her gallantly into the passenger side back seat, then went around and got in beside her. I started my engine, waited, U-turned and followed the taxi.

  The cab cruised down Devonshire Street, negotiated the lights at Eddy Avenue and took George until it turned off towards Darling Harbour. It was a slow run through heavy traffic and easy to keep it in sight. It pulled up outside the Malaya restaurant at King Street Wharf and the happy couple went inside. Must have had a reservation because the place is packed most of the time and especially for dinner on Friday night. I could’ve gone a prawn sambal myself but I wouldn’t have got a seat and there was nowhere to park. How the other half lives.

  I drove back and found a semi-legal parking place in Chinatown. A short walk and I was at my favourite Sydney restaurant—the Superbowl in Goulburn Street. No problem for a single diner here as long as he’s ready to share a table. I was and got a seat at a table with a Chinese couple who ignored me. As always, the clientele was ninety-five per cent Asian w
hich, to my mind, is the best indication that the food is good. The service is lightning fast as the object is to move people through as quickly as possible and that’s always fine by me if I’m on my own.

  I had what I always have—shredded chicken with salty fish in fried rice and a big glass of the house white. I ate as much as I could manage of the perfectly cooked and blended meal and left the rest reluctantly. In and out in just under an hour and twenty dollars. I eat there as often as I can, perhaps twice a month. The waiters must know me but they never acknowledge that they’ve seen me before. I like that.

  Anticipating that Lou and Mr X would take longer over their meal, I wandered up George Street, checked out what was on at the movies, had a coffee. Still, I was back in Surry Hills too early and had to kick my heels for a while until the taxi pulled up. Lou and her date stood outside the apartment building for a few minutes. She gesticulated; he shook his head. He leaned down to kiss her and she stepped back, then relented and they kissed briefly. She turned away quickly and headed for the security buttons. He heaved a theatrical sigh, crossed the street and used his remote to unlock the Beemer.

  Very interesting, I thought, but what it meant I had no idea. I considered following him to wherever he was going, but decided against it. A light rain was falling and I wouldn’t have been able to keep pace with the BMW if he decided to open it up. Besides, a bit of voyeurism goes a long way with me and I had enough on him. By office hours on Monday I’d know who he was and where he lived.

  Late night news on TV. The election campaign was in its fourth week of six, but it was hard to get excited about it. The ALP had long ago put Karl Marx in mothballs and embraced Milton Friedman or one of his disciples. The conservatives were continually reassuring us that we were safe and secure, meaning that our houses and investments were—that is, as long as you had a house and investments. If you didn’t you were insecure and it was probably your fault. It certainly wasn’t theirs.

  Pollies in suits, men and women, went around the supermarkets and malls and appeared on television pretending to be ordinary people, when they probably couldn’t tell you the price of a litre of milk or what it cost to register a Toyota Corolla. Not within a bull’s roar.