The Bat (8 page)

Andrew lit a cigar, peered through narrow slits at the poor junkie on the other side of the table, blew smoke into his face and continued.

“Should we not get what we’re after, however, we might put on our badges when we leave here and perform a couple of arrests, which wouldn’t exactly increase your popularity in the local community. I don’t know if cutting the balls off snitches is used up here—after all, potheads are peaceful folk as a rule. But they know the odd trick or two, and it wouldn’t surprise me if right out of the blue the sheriff didn’t stumble across your whole stock, quite by chance. Potheads aren’t so happy about competition from the hard stuff, you know, at least not from junkie snitches. And I’m sure you know all about the penalties for dealing in large quantities of heroin, don’t you.”

More blue cigar smoke in Kinski’s face. It’s not every day you have the chance to blow smoke into an asshole’s face, Harry thought.

“OK,” Andrew said, after no reply was forthcoming. “Evans White. Tell us where he is, who he is and how we can get hold of him. Now!”

Kinski looked around. His large, hollow-cheeked skull turned on the thin neck, making him look like a vulture hovering over some carcass, checking anxiously to see if the lions were returning.

“That all?” he asked. “Nothing else?”

“Nothing else,” Andrew said.

“And how do I know you won’t be back asking for more?”

“You don’t.”

He nodded as though he had known it was the only answer he would get.

“OK. He’s no big fish yet, but from what I’ve heard he’s on the way up. He’s worked for Madam Rousseau, the grass queen up here, but now he’s trying to set up his own business. Grass, acid and perhaps a bit of morphine. The grass is the same as the rest that’s sold here, local production. But he must have connections in Sydney and delivers grass there in exchange for good, cheap acid. Acid’s what it’s all about now.”

“Where can we get hold of Evans?” Andrew asked.

“He’s in Sydney quite a bit, but I saw him in town a couple of days ago. He’s got a kid with a chick from Brisbane who used to hang out here. I don’t know where she is now, but the kid’s definitely in the block of flats where he lives when he’s in Nimbin.”

He explained where the block was.

“What sort of fella is White?” Andrew pressed.

“What can I say?” He scratched the beard he didn’t have. “A charming arsehole, isn’t that what they’re called?”

Andrew and Harry didn’t know if that was what they were called, but nodded anyway.

“He’s straight enough to deal with, but I wouldn’t want to be his girl, if you know what I mean.”

They shook their heads to say they didn’t know what he meant.

“He’s a playboy, not exactly known for making do with one chick at a time. There are always arguments with his women, they scream and shout, so it’s not unusual for one of them to sport a shiner once in a while.”

“Hm. Do you know anything about a blonde-haired Norwegian girl called Inger Holter? She was found murdered by Watson’s Bay in Sydney last week.”

“Really? Never heard of her.” He clearly wasn’t an avid newspaper reader, either.

Andrew stubbed out his cigar and he and Harry got up.

“Can I rely on you keeping your traps shut?” Kinski asked with a doubtful glare.

“Of course,” Andrew said, striding toward the door.

“What was the meal with our Swedish witness like?” Andrew asked after they had made a courtesy stop at the police station, a building that looked like any other house on the street, except for a little sign on the lawn announcing its purpose.

“Good. Quite spicy, but good,” Harry answered pertly.

“Come on, Harry. What did you talk about?”

“Lots. Norway and Sweden.”

“I see. Who won?”

“She did.”

“What’s Sweden got that Norway hasn’t?” Andrew asked.

“First things first: a couple of good film directors. Bo Widerberg, Ingmar Bergman—”

“Ah, film directors,” Andrew snorted. “We’ve got them, too. Edvard Grieg, on the other hand, is one of yours.”

“Wow,” Harry said. “I didn’t know you were a connoisseur of classical music. In addition.”

“Grieg was a genius. Take, for example, the second movement of the symphony in C minor where—”

“Sorry, Andrew,” Harry said, “I grew up with two-chord punk and the closest I’ve been to a symphony is Yes and King Crimson. I don’t listen to music from previous centuries, OK? Everything before 1980 is Stone Age. We have a band called the Dumdum Boys who—”

“The C minor symphony was first performed in 1981,” Andrew said. “Dumdum Boys? That’s a very pretentious moniker.”

Harry gave up and learned about Grieg all the way to the White residence.

Evans White regarded them through half-open eyes. Strands of hair hung over his face. He scratched his groin and belched deliberately. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see them. Not because he was expecting them, but probably because he didn’t think visits were anything special. After all, he was sitting on the region’s best acid, and Nimbin was a small place where rumors traveled fast. Harry imagined that a man like White did not bother with tiny amounts and certainly not from his home, but that was hardly likely to deter people from showing up for the odd wholesale purchase.

“You’ve come to the wrong place. Try in town,” he said, closing the screen door.

“We’re from the police, Mr. White.” Andrew held up his badge. “We’d like to talk to you.”

Evans turned his back on them. “Not today. I don’t like cops. Come another time with an arrest warrant, a search warrant or whatever, then we’ll see what we can do for you. Until then goodbye.”

He slammed the inner door as well.

Harry leaned against the doorframe and shouted: “Evans White! Can you hear me? We are wondering whether this
is you in the photo, sir. And if so, whether you knew the blonde woman sitting beside you. Her name’s Inger Holter. She’s dead now.”

Silence for a while. Then the door hinges creaked. Evans peered out.

Harry placed the photo against the netting.

“She didn’t look so good when Sydney police found her, Mr. White.”

In the kitchen newspapers were scattered across the worktop, the sink was overflowing with plates and glasses, and the floor had not seen soapy water for a few months. Nevertheless, Harry could see at a glance that the place did not show any signs of real decay, and that it wasn’t the home of a junkie on his uppers. There were no week-old leftovers, there was no mold, there was no stink of piss and the curtains weren’t drawn. Furthermore, there was a kind of basic order in the room which made Harry realize Evans White still had a grip on things.

They found themselves chairs, and Evans fetched a stubby from the fridge which he put straight to his mouth. The belch resounded round the kitchen and was followed by a contented chuckle from Evans.

“Tell us about your relationship with Inger Holter, Mr. White,” Harry said, waving away the smell of the belch.

“Inger was a nice, attractive and very stupid girl with some notion that she and I could be happy together.” Evans studied the ceiling. Then he sniggered contentedly again. “I think, in fact, that sums it up very neatly.”

“Have you any idea how she could have been killed or who could have done it?”

“Yes, we have newspapers up in Nimbin, too, so I know she was strangled. But who did it? A strangler, I suppose.” He threw his head back and grinned. A curl fell over his brow, his white teeth glistened in the tanned face and the
laughter lines around his brown eyes stretched back toward ears hung with pirate rings.

Andrew cleared his throat. “Mr. White, a woman whom you knew well and with whom you had an intimate relationship has just been murdered. What you might or might not feel about that is not our business. However, as you are no doubt aware, we are looking for a murderer, and unless you try to help us this very minute we will be forced to have you taken to the police station in Sydney.”

“I’m going to Sydney anyway so if that means you’ll pay for my plane ticket, fine by me.”

Harry didn’t know what to think. Was Evans White as tough as he was trying to make out, or was he suffering from deficient mental faculties? Or an inadequately developed soul, a typically Norwegian concept? Harry wondered. Did courts anywhere else in the world judge the quality of a soul?

“As you wish, Mr. White,” Andrew said. “Plane ticket, free board and lodging, free solicitor and free PR as a murder suspect.”

“Big deal. I’ll be out again within forty-eight hours.”

“And then we’ll offer you a round-the-clock tail, a free wake-up service, maybe even the odd free raid thrown in as well. And who knows what else we can cook up.”

Evans knocked back the rest of the beer and sat fiddling with the label on the bottle. “What do you gentlemen want?” he said. “All I know is that one day she was suddenly gone. I was going to Sydney, so I tried to ring her, but she wasn’t at work or at home. The day I arrive in Sydney I read in the newspaper she’s been found murdered. I walk around like a zombie for two days. I mean to say, m-u-r-d-e-r-e-d? What are the statistical chances of ending your life being throttled to death, eh?”

“Not high. But have you got an alibi for the time of the murder? It’d be good …” Andrew said, taking notes.

Evans started with horror. “Alibi? What do you mean?
Surely you can’t suspect me, for Christ’s sake. Or are you telling me the cops have been on the case for a week and still don’t have any real leads?”

“We’re looking at all the evidence, Mr. White. Can you tell me where you were for the two days before you arrived in Sydney?”

“I was here, of course.”

“Alone?”

“Not completely.” Evans grinned and chucked the empty stubby. It flew through the air in an elegant parabola before landing noiselessly in the rubbish bin by the worktop. Harry nodded acknowledgment.

“May I ask who was with you?”

“You already have. But fine, I’ve nothing to hide. It was a woman called Angelina Hutchinson. She lives in the town here.”

Harry noted that down.

“Lover?” Andrew asked.

“Sort of,” Evans answered.

“What can you tell us about Inger Holter? Who was she?”

“Agh, we hadn’t known each other for that bloody long. I met her on Fraser Island. She said she was headed down to Byron Bay. It’s not far from here, so I gave her my phone number in Nimbin. A few days later she rang me and asked if she could stop over one night. She was here for more than a week. After that we met in Sydney when I was there. That must have been two or three times. As you know, we didn’t exactly become an old married couple. And besides she was already beginning to be a drag.”

“A drag?”

“Yes, she had a soft spot for my son, Tom-Tom, and let her imagination run away about a family and a house in the country. That didn’t suit me, but I let her jabber on.”

“Jabber on about what?”

Evans squirmed. “She was the kind that’s hard-faced when you meet her, but she’s as soft as butter if you tickle her under the chin and tell her you love her. Then she can’t do enough for you.”

“So she was a considerate young lady?”

Evans clearly didn’t like the path this conversation was following. “Maybe she was. I didn’t know her that well, as I said. She hadn’t seen her family in Norway for a while, had she, so maybe she was starved for … affection, someone being there for her, know what I mean? Who bloody knows? As I said, she was a stupid, romantic chick, there was no evil in her …”

Evans’s voice faltered. The kitchen fell silent. Either he’s a good actor or he does have human emotions after all, Harry thought.

“If you didn’t see any future in the relationship, why didn’t you split up with her?”

“I was already on my way. Standing in the doorway about to say bye, sort of. But she was gone before I could do anything. Just like that …” He snapped his fingers.

Yes, his voice has thickened, no doubt about it, Harry thought.

Evans gazed down at his hands. “Quite a way to depart, wasn’t it.”

They drove up steep mountain roads. A signpost indicated the way to the Crystal Castle.

“The question is: is Evans White telling the truth?” Harry said.

Andrew avoided an oncoming tractor.

“Let me share a crumb of my experience with you, Harry. For over twenty years I’ve been talking to people with a variety of reasons for lying or telling the truth. Guilty and innocent, murderers and pickpockets, bundles of nerves and cold fish, blue-eyed baby faces, scarred villain faces, sociopaths, psychopaths, philanthropists …” He searched for more examples.

“Point taken, Andrew.”

“… Aboriginals and whites. They’ve all told their stories with one objective: to be believed. And do you know what I’ve learned?”

“That it’s impossible to say who’s lying and who isn’t?”

“Exactly, Harry!” Andrew began to warm to the topic. “In traditional crime fiction every detective with any self-respect has an unfailing nose for when people are lying. It’s bullshit! Human nature is a vast impenetrable forest which no one can know in its entirety. Not even a mother knows her child’s deepest secrets.”

They turned into a car park in front of a large green garden with a narrow gravel path winding between a fountain, flower beds and exotic species of tree. A huge house presided over the garden and was obviously the Crystal Castle that the Nimbin sheriff had pointed out to them on a map.

A bell above the door announced their arrival. This was clearly a popular place, for the shop was packed with tourists. An energetic woman greeted them with a radiant smile and welcomed them with such enthusiasm it was as if they were the first people she had seen here in months.

“Is this your first time here?” she asked, as though her crystal shop were a habit-forming affair people flocked to regularly once they had been hooked. And for all they knew that is exactly how it might have been.

“I envy you,” she said after they confirmed it was. “You’re about to experience the Crystal Castle for the first time! Take that corridor there. On the right is our wonderful vegetarian cafe with the most exquisite meals. After you’ve been there, go left, into the crystal and mineral room. That’s where the real action is! Now, go, go, go!”