Salt and Blood Read online

  ‘It could have just been some crazy. Pot-shotting,’ Glen said.

  ‘Two shots, well grouped, from concealment. Quick exit. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Someone after you?’

  ‘Can’t think of anyone just at the present. Not likely to either.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s be practical. Will telling them make our jobs easier or harder?’

  I considered. ‘Easier, maybe. Sit Warren down. Tell him. Ask him if he knows of anyone who had it in for Rod that much. He might have made all sorts of enemies, who knows?’

  ‘What about her?’

  I shrugged. ‘Leave her in the dark. Divide and rule. Let Warren decide whether to tell her or not.’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘So, have you made a start on tracking the wife?’

  ‘Yes. I’m running credit checks on her under her unmarried and married names. Car registration. All that. Plus I’ve got a contact in Immigration checking women leaving the country around the time of the last letter. Her father’s dead; mother could be alive and I’m looking. Plus she had a brother and I’m looking for him, too. Warren says there was a missing person report filed and I’m trying to get the file on that from the police. That sound all right to you?’

  ‘Sure. Can I get copies of these letters she wrote to Rod?’

  ‘I suppose. Why?’

  ‘Just to be up to speed. Another thing, when I dig the bullet out of the back seat of my car, can you get it appraised for me? You’ve got the contacts.’

  ‘All right.’

  I felt I couldn’t avoid the question any longer. ‘What medication is he on?’

  ‘Didn’t they tell you at the institution?’

  ‘They told me bugger-all and the little prick who was releasing him had a Gestapo look to him. Hang on.’ I got up and took Rod’s jacket from the chair where he’d dropped it. The long envelope wasn’t sealed and I opened it and took out some papers.

  Glen gave the closed door a quick look and then joined me in inspecting the papers. There was a form for his release on the court order, several documents from Rutherford House indicating dates of review of his case and a certified copy of a statement by a Dr Jerry Weir advising that Harkness was fit to rejoin society. There was a list of recommended therapists. Nothing about medication. Maybe Rutherford House was wary about revealing what he’d been on.

  ‘I think I might have a talk to this Dr Weir,’ I said. ‘He seems to be one of the good guys.’

  ‘A shrink. He won’t tell you anything.’

  ‘You never know. Meanwhile I suppose I’d better stay here tonight and keep an eye on him. Though we’re going to have to give him some time on his own if we’re going to do any useful investigating.’

  ‘Yeah, but not right away.’

  ‘No, I’ll stick close for a couple of days at least, but I need to nip out now for a few minutes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have to get something to drink.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Do you mind waiting, or are you going out somewhere?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘You’re all dressed up?’

  She delayed answering by carefully folding up the papers and restoring them to the envelope and the jacket. She kept her head turned away. ‘I do it from time to time to make me feel better.’

  Over the next few days I did what I’d been expecting to do with Rodney Harkness, which was hang out with him. He seemed to recover from his fugue and made no reference to it the next day. We stayed local. Bondi. Bondi Junction. Nothing fell from a great height. No drive-by shooting. He drew out some money and shopped for food, things for the flat and some clothes. He bought some expensive coffee and a top-line grinder, ground it himself and drank quite a lot of it. If he was missing the grog he didn’t show it. It turned out that he could cook and he did and seemed to enjoy it. He joined the Waverley Library and borrowed some books, mostly biographies.

  He asked me a few questions about Glen and I filled him in as much as I thought necessary.

  ‘Were you on with her?’

  ‘For a time. Quite a while ago. It ended amicably, more or less.’

  I didn’t tell him about her drinking or AA. Her business. The third day I left him at a movie and checked my messages at home and at the office. Glen left a message to say that Warren had arranged the flat and bank account himself and that no one else knew about it. She’d got Warren to phone Rutherford House and he’d been told that Rod wasn’t on any medication. Nothing else important except that the car was ready. In the afternoon we got a bus up to the northern beaches and collected the car. They’d done a good job on the roof and the windscreen and there didn’t seem to be any glass inside the car. But there would be; there always is.

  He was quiet as we began the drive back, taking in the sights. Around Mona Vale he stopped looking and turned his head towards me. ‘Are you going to let me hire you, Cliff?’

  ‘It’s dodgy. I’ve talked about it to Glen because I’m sort of subcontracted to her. Why don’t we let it ride for a while? See how it works out. But since I’m going to try and find out who worked on your release … you know, one thing could lead to another.’

  ‘How are you going to go about that? They wouldn’t tell me. That is, they wouldn’t say who brought my case to the attention of the lawyers.’

  I didn’t want to set him off again by saying I’d talk to the shrink. I told him I’d get some legal advice about accessing the Rutherford House records. I suggested that if the worst came to the worst they could be hacked into. Gave him some mumbo-jumbo about Freedom of Information. He seemed to swallow it.

  ‘I should be thinking about getting back to work,’ he said. ‘Getting my life in order. But with this life threat stuff, and not knowing who’s fucking with me … it’s hard to focus on it.’

  Safe train of thought. Worth encouraging. ‘Will you try acting again?’

  ‘Maybe. Or writing. I saw some weird things in that place. I might try a film script, couldn’t be worse than some of the shit that gets out. I’d have to get an agent of course. Jesus!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t. Not even that mad bastard’d do that.’

  ‘What’re you talking about?’

  ‘I’ve just remembered. I had this agent, Doug Schirer. Bloody hopeless. I reckon he lost me more jobs than he got me by being such a smart-arse. Eventually I told him I was dropping him and then I lucked onto a good thing in a series of commercials. Shit, I got it myself. He didn’t have anything to do with it. Good money. Residuals, you know? He claimed his commission and I told him to get fucked. This was … before. He went under soon after and he said it was my fault, that I’d robbed him of a commission that would’ve kept him afloat and that I’d bad-mouthed him in the trade. I hadn’t. Well, maybe I had, a bit. He said he’d get even with me.’

  I shook my head sceptically. ‘Come on. Seven years ago, Rod. Not very likely.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But the thing is, his hobby was shooting. Bloody Doug was a crack shot, nearly made it to the Olympics.’

  I was only half paying attention to what he was saying because I’d begun to get an uneasy feeling from watching the ebb and flow of traffic in the rear vision mirror. I’d had the feeling before, more than a few times, and it usually means something. I wasn’t sure and I’d have to perform a few manoeuvres to find out, but I had a strong suspicion that we were being followed.

  8

  ‘Don’t look round,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want him to know I’m onto him. I have to think what to do.’

  We were approaching Narrabeen in moderate traffic. The lightness of the traffic had helped me spot the tail. An off-white 4WD. That, and the fact that the driver wasn’t first class at the job. The 4WD stayed well back but had changed lanes when I had capriciously, and when I slowed for no good reason it’d slowed as well. A couple of times it would have been logical for the driver to have passed other
vehicles. Didn’t happen.

  Rod sat silent for a while, then he drew in a deep breath and spoke hesitantly. ‘This is weird. Art and life, you know? I’ve played this scene a couple of times. You know what happened? I was a spy, like an ASIO agent, and I sort of lured the car following me into a place where I could surprise him. It worked okay on TV.’

  ‘This isn’t a film and I’m not going to do anything like that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I concentrated on my driving for a while as I thought it through. ‘It’s a big four-wheel-drive, newish, a Santa Fe, something like that.’

  ‘I can’t tell one of those things from another, never could.’

  ‘Glen’s got a Pajero. I’ve driven it a few times and liked it. I was thinking of getting something like that. I looked at a few. The thing is, I can’t see how many people are in it. Tinted glass.’

  ‘So you don’t like the odds?’

  ‘I don’t like not knowing. I don’t like the odds if there’s more than one and if one of them’s got that fucking rifle.’

  ‘Haven’t you got a gun?’

  ‘Not with me.’

  ‘So what’re the options?’

  ‘Hang on. I’m trying to get the number. Shit, it’s smeared over. This isn’t a game. Have you got any other ideas?’

  ‘I suppose we could ram it.’

  ‘Yeah, send it rolling through the guard rail so it bursts into flames and we drive on. End of problem.’

  ‘I wasn’t being serious.’

  ‘Okay. Sorry. The only thing we can do is lose him.’

  ‘Or her. You said your friend Glen drove one.’

  Fuck you, I thought. ‘Okay. My guess is we’re being followed to find out where you’re living. Poor bugger’s been staking out that garage since Sunday. If we lose him or her it’s a win.’

  ‘I thought you said it wasn’t a game.’

  One to him. I didn’t reply, trying to work out a strategy. Not too hard. I tooled along down to Brookvale, showing every sign of intending to stay on Pittwater Road to Manly. But before the fork with Condamine Street I edged over, crossed a line of traffic and took the Harbord turn-off to the east. The Santa Fe, if that’s what it was, was committed to Pittwater Road and there was no way I was going to let it pick me up again.

  ‘That was slick,’ Rod said.

  ‘Thanks. At least we’ve learned that whoever’s after you isn’t tied in to your brother and mother.’

  ‘How do you figure that?’

  ‘They’re looking for you. If they were tied in they’d already know. So it looks like you’re safe in Bondi for now.’

  ‘I can’t stay in Bondi for the rest of my life.’

  ‘No, but you can for a while. Get on that Malibu.’

  I drove on, working my way back to where I wanted to be and keeping a weather eye open. I ran my mind back over all I could remember of what had been said to who by whom since this business began. Something jumped into my head.

  ‘What was all that about your agent?’

  I circled the block several times before deciding that it was safe to park at the flat. Rod Harkness was bearing up well under the pressure of being shot at and tracked. He seemed to be able to put such things aside and get on with his reading and cooking. He went out briefly around six o’clock and I thought, Uh oh, happy hour. But he came back with a yellow legal pad and spent a good bit of the next hour writing on the table in the living room. It was me who went out for a couple of drinks after his passable veal stroganoff.

  I sat in the bar of the Bondi Hotel watching the black and white Kiwis mix with the black and white Australians. You could distinguish them pretty well by their T-shirts—‘All Blacks’, ‘Wallabies’, ‘Sheep Fuckers’, ‘Warriors’, although there were probably some crossovers. They drank and played darts and pool and got on well for the most part under the great comradely influence of beer and tobacco. I nursed a couple of Scotches and thought over what Rod had told me about his ex-agent, Doug Schirer.

  ‘It ended in a stand-up fight,’ Rod had said. ‘And I decked him. I was pissed of course, and Doug was a mad cokehead in those days. It was crazy, but there was a lot of money involved. And with residuals you can go on earning good dough for years if the commercial gets a long run and revivals.’

  ‘Did yours?’ I asked.

  Rod shrugged. ‘I dunno. Everything went to shit after that and I …’

  He stopped there and I didn’t press him, not wanting to push him towards the brink again. Then he got stuck into his writing and I let it slide. But I had a few more questions in mind and thought it might be safe to put them when I got back. I’d sneaked a look at his pad when he went for a piss. He was writing a script about a wife who left her husband. Okay, I thought, let’s hope writing’s as cathartic as they say it is.

  On my return, Rod glanced up from his pad and grinned at me. He looked the happiest I’d seen him. ‘You don’t have to do that, you know.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Sneak out for a drink. I wouldn’t mind if you had a slab in the fridge and a case of Johnny Walker in your room.’

  ‘Better safe than sorry. But are you really that clear of it?’

  ‘I think so. Seven years. Well, no. There was that time early on, Buster Lewis got a couple of bottles smuggled in and then again when Luigi Coppola cooked up some grappa. But otherwise, yeah.’

  ‘Good for you. How’s the writing going?’

  ‘It’s fun. I think I might get a cheap computer and that scriptwriting software.’

  ‘You know about that stuff?’

  He smiled. ‘I read a lot of magazines in there. Had the time.’

  He’d made another pot of his premium coffee and I put a mug of it in the microwave and got it hot. I sat down across the table from him. ‘Okay, a couple of questions.’

  ‘Alcohol’s good for stimulating questions. So’s tobacco. I can smell public bar on you, Cliff.’

  ‘Shit, you’re not a recovering smoker, too?’

  ‘No. I never smoked except phoney cigarettes on the set.’

  ‘You’re lucky, mate, I did. Just supposing your commercial’s gone on earning big bucks. Who’d be getting the money?’

  ‘It’s not likely but with everything that’s happened I haven’t even thought about it. I suppose it’d be going to Barney Nugent who was my agent when … You know.’

  ‘You haven’t heard from him?’

  ‘No. But I’d better get in touch if this comes to anything.’ He gestured at the pad.

  ‘What was the commercial for?’

  ‘Olympic running shoes. I was the winged god Mercury who gave the shoes to the black kid. I mean it was sentimental crap. Olympic’s like all the rest—uses Asian sweated labour—but actors can’t be choosers.’

  ‘I’ve seen that one,’ I said. ‘It’s been on a lot—world championships, Commonwealth Games. It got a big run around the time of the Sydney games. You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing it. There must be a fair bit in the kitty for you, depending on the contract.’

  Rod shook his head. ‘I can’t remember much about it but I was strong on the residuals. Sometimes they cut out after a couple of repeats but I think I held out for more than that.’

  ‘It sounds like we’d better have a word with both these blokes. One could have it in for you for diddling him out of the money and the other one might not want to hand over what he’s got. Are these agents generally honest?’

  Rod grinned. ‘When it suits them. But it couldn’t be enough money to kill for.’

  ‘How much is that? It varies. What if Barney’s spent it all on blondes and horses?’

  Rod laughed. ‘No way. Barney’s a pussycat. Doug’s another matter. He’s an ex policeman and …’

  ‘That means he could’ve had a way of finding when you were getting out. What if Doug’s in it with Barney?’

  Rod scribbled something on his pad. ‘Good plot point,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  �
�Never mind. So we talk to them, do we? We can look them up in the phone book. What’s that you’ve got?’

  On the way back from the pub I’d opened the car and dug the rifle bullet out of the back seat with my Swiss army knife. I put it on the table and spun it. ‘It’ll have rifling marks on it that can identify the weapon that fired it.’

  ‘Can you tell what sort of bullet it is?’

  ‘Not me, but I know people who can. Glen for one. She did a course on it.’ Mention of Glen set him doodling on his pad. I located the phone directories and looked up Agents—Theatrical. Barney Nugent was there with an address in Paddington but there was no sign of Doug Schirer.

  Rod had gone back to his writing.

  ‘Did this Schirer have a company name?’ I asked. ‘Olivier Theatrical Agency, something like that?’

  Rod barely glanced up. ‘Doug? No chance. Too egotistical.’ He scribbled a bit more and then put his pen down. ‘Sorry. I’m not helping, am I? It’s just that writing feels like a bloody good thing to do. Better than that bullshit therapy back at Rutherford. Okay, Doug. He got into it when he was hired as a consultant for a TV doco on police corruption. He reckoned he was ripped off. He claimed that he coached the actors for the reconstruction scenes, bloody near wrote the script and told the director what to do. Maybe he did. It happens. Anyway, there was a fair bit of that sort of work around at the time—‘60 Minutes’, crimestopper stuff, you know? Doug edged his way in. He had some ex-coppers on his books and ex-crims like Billy Parkinson who’d taken up acting and writing. Did you look up literary agents as well?’

  I hadn’t. I did. Still no Schirer.

  Rod was into the full flood of memory now. He microwaved coffee for both of us and stabbed at his pad with his pen. ‘I went with Doug because that was the sort of stuff I was getting work in around the time—cop shows, pilots and such, and he was aggressive. He got me a few things and took his full whack, let me tell you. Twenty per cent. That was all right. Then the money got to him. He started hanging around with the really big earners and he got on the coke and he was fucking hopeless. Mind you, I was well on the way to being hopeless myself.’