Salt and Blood (21 page)

‘If he's got one.'

‘And his pistol.'

‘Likewise. At least I know where that bullet you gave Glen is. I can get it tested.'

‘And you can find out what we need to know about Sexton.'

‘If I agree to help you.'

I didn't say,
Glen needs this to be closed.
I didn't have to. I wolfed down a couple of the potato chunks. Sherrin seemed uninterested in the food but he played with his drink while he thought it all over. I didn't rush him. I was tired at the end of a long day. I wanted to talk to Jerry.

Sherrin surprised me then. ‘What does your psychiatrist girlfriend think?' he said.

‘This all came together today. I haven't had a chance to talk to her.'

‘This is the first drink I've had since I came up to Broken Beach and collected Glen. Mind you, I had a few on board then.'

I'd noticed that he'd lost weight since the last time I'd talked to him. ‘Must be tough.'

He nodded. ‘Funny you should bring this to me just now. I'm on a course that'll give me a promotion into Internal Affairs if I do all right. They're
a hard-drinking mob, trying to prove they're still the boyos. They think I'm a wuss.'

‘They might think a bit different if this works out.'

He drained his drink and got up to get more. I wasn't going to stop him. I'd get a taxi home if need be. He went off chewing on a couple of wedges. When he came back he said, ‘
If
I do it, it'll be for Glen's sake, not mine and not yours.'

‘Understood.'

‘Did Glen say anything about me when you saw her this morning?'

‘Only that she was giving you a hard time.'

‘Tell me this—have you still got any intentions towards her?'

I shook my head. ‘Other inclinations.'

‘Right. Well, I reckon I ought to back off a bit.' He picked up a couple of wedges, dipped them in the sour cream and ate them. Then he had a couple more. The food seemed to aid his resolution. ‘Tell you what I'll do. I'll go back to my place tonight and go in as normal tomorrow. I'll leave you to get Glen home and settled and you can tell her what we're doing.'

‘You're saying you're in?'

‘I am. Yes. We've got computer time tomorrow. I'll see what I can dig up and get back to you, say by mid-afternoon. Let's see how Glen takes to it all. If she's okay and we've got anything to work on we can pick it up from there. Sort of keep her in the loop. See if it works. If she's still too fragile, I don't know. We'll have to think again.'

It was a good result, holding to his desired line
and potentially getting me what I wanted, and I agreed to it in every detail, although I asked him to phone the hospital and give his authority for me to stand in for him. He agreed. ‘It's all bullshit anyway,' he said. ‘I'm not really her husband. Not anymore.'

This time we shook hands.

I'd had four Scotches and was tossing up whether to get a taxi as I stood by my car with the keys in my hand. ‘Be smart,' I said aloud. ‘You have to be over here tomorrow morning anyway.' A few passers-by looked at me.

My mobile rang and I answered it, glad to be able to put the decision off. It was Jerry and I realised that I'd forgotten to ring her with all that had been going on.

‘Coming over?'

‘Can't,' I said. ‘I …'

‘Are you pissed?'

‘I've had a couple but I'm okay.'

‘Get a cab.'

I unlocked the car and sat in the passenger seat. I explained what had happened and how I'd agreed to collect Glen the following morning and why. The silence wasn't golden.

‘Sounds to me like she needs professional help.'

‘I'm sure you're right, but I have to do this. I have to cooperate with Sherrin and …'

‘I'm beginning to wish … no, I
do
wish I hadn't agreed to back you on this. Turn it over to the police, Cliff.'

‘We haven't got enough.'

‘Right. And how're you going to get more? Break into his house? Can't you see a few problems with that? The two of you are fumbling around on account of this woman. For a smart and experienced man you're not thinking clearly.'

‘You might be right.'

‘Stop patronising me. If I'm right, if you
see
that I'm right, act accordingly.'

It was the wrong tack for her to take with me after the events of the day and when I had some alcohol on board. Enough to make me feel right and clever. I probably sounded more brusque than I meant to. ‘I'm going to do it this way.'

‘Okay,' she said and hung up.

I sat there with the phone in my hand, feeling empty and let down. The booze buzz died rapidly away leaving me sour and not clever at all. The positives got replaced by negatives.
Do psychiatrists feel jealousy? Aren't they above that?
I shoved across to the driver's seat, started up and drove home.

I was really in no condition to drive, not drunk but probably over the limit and tired, dispirited and underfed with it. Low blood sugar. I drove on auto and got a couple of adrenalin jolts at near misses that helped to keep me alert enough to make it back to Glebe. I don't know what it is but there's something that comforts me about driving down Glebe Point Road. It's not just going home, because that has many sorts of associations, not all of them good. It's something to do with the honest, solid old buildings on both sides of the road, the water at the bottom, the expanse of the park.
Buildings, water, trees—I was thinking about them, how they were more dependable than people, as I turned into my street and realised that the alcohol was still working in me.

I parked and went inside and had a decision to make. The drinker's decision. To have some more and keep this edge I was feeling, this almost philosophical acceptance of things as they were. It's one of the benefits of drinking, but it doesn't usually lead anywhere. Or sober up and think things through—Glen, Sherrin, Jerry—all that. I was still tossing up about it when the phone rang.

I snatched it up. ‘Jerry?'

‘Hardy? This is Lance Matthiesson. I've been leaving messages.'

The light was blinking. ‘Matthiesson? Yeah, okay. What?'

‘Are you all right?'

‘I'm tired. Big day.'

‘Aren't they all? Thing is, we need you to identify a body. The good news is he's in the Glebe morgue. Just down the way from you.'

‘Very funny,' I said. ‘Who?'

‘That's not the way it plays. You be there at 7.30 tomorrow morning.'

My head was spinning, trying to process the information, and I still hadn't resolved the alcohol question. ‘What's wrong with now? Tonight?'

‘Fuck you. Seven-thirty a.m. Sharp!'

27

The morgue is in Arundel Street, across Ross Street, where it trundles down to a dead end just short of Parramatta Road. The building is flat to the footpath, a plum-coloured brick box with big roller doors for the ambulances. The only attractive thing about it is the painted sign above the entrance. It reads ‘Forensic Medicine' and has a set of scales and an open book. Nice touch. There's a pleasant set of single-storey sandstone terraces across the street, but the building's reflecting windows seem to say once you're in, you're in.

‘In here.'

‘I know where to go.'

Matthiesson shepherded me into the soulless space, looking less comfortable than I was, even though he was far from a first-timer. I'd laid off the drink but my sleep had been fitful with thoughts of Glen and Jerry and irritation at Matthiesson's caginess in the mix. We went through the dance with the female attendant who peeled back the plastic cover and stepped away.

He looked younger in death than he had in life
and oddly healthier. There were no wounds on his head and his features were relaxed.

‘Craig,' I said. ‘How?'

The attendant covered him and Matthiesson and I walked away. I was breathing shallowly the way you do, as if sucking in too much of the air in that place would do you harm.

‘Overdose,' Matthiesson said. ‘Hot shot almost certainly. Signs of a struggle, pressure on the carotid.'

We left the building and walked around the corner and into Parramatta Road where Matthiesson was parked. The dirty air and noisy traffic were somehow comforting. ‘You found my card on him,' I said.

‘No. We printed him. Got a match with the doorlock and the keys under the brick. You told us about paying someone to fix the lock.'

‘Are you telling me there was no one else to identify him?'

‘That's right. He was found in a skip at a building site in Bondi. Some change in his pockets. That's all. No room key, no nothing. Probably wearing all the clothes he owned. Lighter, two cigarettes. Looks like he was on the streets. Who kills a harmless junkie unless he knows or sees something he shouldn't? Give me your thoughts, Hardy.'

‘You're sure about the hot shot?'

‘Pretty sure. Blood test says high-quality heroin in quantity. He would have been a skin popper, a sniffer and a smoker more than a mainliner, and he wouldn't have had the money for stuff like that. 
The autopsy'll tell us more. Are you examining your conscience?'

‘I asked him to ring me if he saw the guy who broke into the flat again. I didn't tell him to do any more than that.'

‘You gave him money. You know what they're like. Give them a smell …'

‘Okay. He saw him again. Got too close and was spotted. Easy after that for the killer, especially if he's a policeman.'

‘Got any more on that?'

That was the question. What was the answer? I had Sherrin on the job but possibly too emotionally involved to be reliable. Jerry urging me to turn the whole matter over to the police and now only tenuously available as a protective client. And Matthiesson offside, potentially hostile, no doubt looking for a result himself. The cards were stacked against the course Sherrin and I had set ourselves.

‘No,' I said. ‘Nothing.' I looked at my watch. ‘I have to be somewhere. It's tough about the kid, but he didn't have a bright future anyway.'

Matthiesson turned away. ‘You're a bastard, Hardy.'

‘I've heard that before.'

He stalked off in his nice suit towards his air-conditioned car and I didn't feel quite as much like a bastard as he thought I should. What I was feeling was something else altogether. Suppose Craig didn't have a place to lay his head and was wearing all the clothes he owned? Suppose the killer of Rodney Harkness had taken him out?
Suppose all that—where was my card, the one I'd given Craig before I set off for the Central Coast at what now seemed like a long time ago? The one he'd buttoned so carefully into his shirt pocket. Did the killer have it? Maybe. Did Craig lose it or throw it away? Maybe.

I'd skipped breakfast, not sure what Matthiesson would have in store for me. Now, I was hungry the minute I was out of the morgue. I wandered down to the first of the coffee shops in Glebe Point Road and ordered coffee and raisin toast. The day had dawned grey and was getting greyer around the edges. It was still warm for so early and there was a threat or promise of rain, depending on whether you were playing golf or growing roses. Personally, I didn't care one way or the other. As I ate I realised that I was watching everyone who came into the place and the people who were eating out on the street. The passers-by. Normally, I'd have eaten outside myself, but not today. It was getting to me.

A kid with a batch of newspapers came in and I bought the morning paper, ran my eye over the headlines, flicked to the editorial page and read the leader and a couple of letters and then settled into the sports section. Kostya Tszyu was scheduled to meet someone I'd never heard of to defend his unified super-lightweight title. I remembered seeing him fight at the Parramatta football stadium a few years back and hearing the fans yelling, ‘Zoo, Zoo, Zoo' and thinking Australia isn't such a bad place when it can take a
little Russian with a pigtail to its heart. But that was before the
Tampa
and the World Trade Center and all the other political horrors. I read through the news where everything in the sports I was interested in—boxing, tennis, athletics—was normal. But nothing felt normal about what I was doing and the people I was doing it with and for.

A call to the hospital told me that I could collect Ms Withers at 10.30 a.m., and that Superintendent Sherrin had arranged for me to park in the staff car park near the entrance. I was in a state of high confusion. If Rod's killer was a cop he could've ID'd me from the car registration when I'd collected Rod but deemed me to be just a hireling. That'd change if the card I'd given Craig had come into his hands. If he had me tagged and was interested, was it wise for me to be transporting Glen? Did the killer have any reason to feel insecure? If he'd killed Craig because of his association with me, he must have some qualms. If he knew Glen was investigating Harkness—easy enough for a cop to find out because she'd worked through Missing Persons—he could conclude that she'd put things together, like the lovers of Juliet Harkness and Lucille Hammond. Too many assumptions, I decided. I drove to Randwick and parked inside the hospital grounds, glad I didn't have to contend with patients, visitors and students from the University of New South Wales whose cars were filling the available spaces outside.

I went to the administration block and presented my ID. Despite deciding to behave as if we had a clear run I found myself examining other people in the waiting room. I shook my head and told myself I was paranoid. Clock a well-built man in suit with a groomed moustache and there's something to think about. Otherwise, forget it.

Glen came through a perspex door into the reception area. She was wearing a dark dress and medium heels. She had makeup on and her hair had been washed and brushed into shape. She had a gold chain around her neck and wore earrings, something I'd never seen her do before. She gave me a smile and a small wave and I approached the clerk, a young Asian guy, handling the exiting patients with her.