The Washington Club (2 page)

‘The committal hearing opens a month from today,' Cy said. ‘The Crown's case is that Claudia hired Van Kep and another man to kill her husband. Van Kep, who's a difficult character to read, says he doesn't know the true identity of the other man and that it was him that did the shooting. Van Kep is being charged with conspiracy to commit murder. That's the deal they gave him. He's their chief witness. He'll plead guilty and it'll go through as smooth as you please. He'll get seven years, serve four at the most.'

Claudia Fleischman watched me as Cy spoke. I looked at her and had trouble concentrating on what was being said. I nodded at what seemed like an appropriate moment.

‘Claudia maintains that Van Kep worked for her husband in some capacity she's not sure of. She had no dealings with him nor with anyone else as alleged. She loved her husband and had no reason to murder him.'

I said, ‘What do you want me to do?' I tried to keep the scepticism out of my voice. You
don't cop a seven-year sentence for no reason. A lot of nasty things can happen in gaol.

Mrs Fleischman smiled slightly and looked out the window. She'd caught the sceptical note. Cy replied quickly, trying to get past the awkward moment. ‘Investigate Van Kep. Find out everything about him. What he did for Julius Fleischman, why he's lying about Claudia and, of course, try to find out who this other man is. It's not credible that an assassin would work with someone he didn't know.'

‘That's true,' I said. ‘Certainly an experienced one wouldn't. Has Van Kep got a criminal record?'

‘Apparently not,' Cy said.

‘Oh.' That was bad—an
inexperienced
assassin could make all sorts of dumb mistakes, especially if he was on cosy terms with a woman like Mrs F.

‘Van Kep is both the strength and weakness of the Crown's case,' Cy said. ‘If he can be sufficiently undermined, he turns into a liability. Juries don't like convicting on the word of self-confessed criminals, but they'll do it if the information holds up.'

‘But Van Kep won't be a self-confessed criminal,' Claudia Fleischman said. ‘His trial or non-trial will take place
after
mine.' Her voice was rather unusual, like the rest of her—deeper than you'd expect, with a suspicion of a lisp.

Cy nodded. ‘That's a little spin they've put on things. It'll be up to me to try to get the
deal with Van Kep out into the open. The other side'll try to stop me.'

‘There must be more to their case than just Van Kep.'

‘Yes,' Cy said. ‘There's . . .'

‘I can fill Mr Hardy in on the rest of it, Cyrus,' Claudia Fleischman said. ‘I've had the training, remember? Perhaps you could drive me home, Mr Hardy?'

‘Claudia was a solicitor before she married,'
 Cy said.

I tried not to stand up too quickly and not to let the fact that my car was a kilometre away bother me. We were all on our feet more or less together and Cy and Claudia were shaking hands. She bent smoothly, picked up a black leather purse with a strap and slung it over her shoulder. Her dress was plain, high-necked, pleated in front. She wore no jewellery. In her medium heels she was at least four inches taller than Cy who describes himself as ‘short average'—call her five foot ten in her stockings. I shook hands with Cy as well.

‘I'll send you a contract, Cyrus.'

Cy winched. ‘Do that, Cliff, and be sure to keep me posted regularly. We haven't got a lot of time.'

I followed Claudia out of the room. We both said our goodbyes to Janine and I pressed the button for the lift.

‘I walked here from the Cross,' I said. ‘My car's back there.'

‘I like walking, Cliff. We can go through
the park. We could sit and talk there for a bit. I'm dying for a cigarette.'

We rode the lift in silence. In the confined space I could smell her perfume. I had no idea what it was but I liked it and hoped I wasn't smelling of sweat. The streets were quieter and the people in the park had thinned out. She walked with a long, easy stride; she had the defined calf muscles you see in dancers and sprinters. And Tina Turner. Good shoulders. She headed for a bench in the shade, sat and reached into her bag. Out came a packet of Salem menthol filters. Back in my smoking days I switched from roll-your-owns to Salems when I had a cold. She shook two cigarettes up and offered me the pack. I took one and she lit us up with a gold lighter. I took a deep draw. The cigarette tasted good.

‘You're not a smoker,' she said.

‘I gave up ten years ago.'

She reached out, took the cigarette from me, dropped it on the ground and put her foot on it. ‘Don't be an idiot. After ten years you've got your virginity back.'

I laughed. ‘You're right, Claudia. Tell me about the other bits and pieces of the case against you.'

She looked out at the trees and grass and flowers and the few people sharing the space with us. The breeze was warm and I could smell the harbour. She puffed on the cigarette until it was half gone and then dealt with it the way she had before. I realised that we
were sitting close together. Our shoulders were almost touching and I could see the fine dark down that ran below her hairline towards the corner of her jaw. I wanted to touch it and rubbed both sweaty hands together instead.

‘Sackville thinks a lot of you.'

‘We get along. He rescues me from my follies and that makes him feel adventurous.'

‘It's more than that.'

‘Yeah. I guess we trust each other.'

She drew a deep breath and expelled it slowly. ‘
I didn't love Julius, but I had nothing to do with killing him.'

She told me that the prosecution had a couple of notes she'd written to her husband that were reproachful, even hostile. They accused him of being autocratic and unsympathetic to her needs. There was a witness, Judith Daniels, Fleischman's daughter from his first marriage, who allegedly saw her at a motel with Van Kep. She also said that not long before he died, Fleischman had said he was afraid of his wife.

‘Cyrus says he isn't too worried about the notes and whatever Judith might say. She's vindictive and neurotic.'

‘What does Van Kep say about it?'

She shook her head and the frizzy hair seemed to spring out and settle back. ‘We don't know. They're not obliged to tell us more than the general outline of his evidence. We have to assume that he'll confirm it. He's lying about everything else, why not this?'

A fat pigeon waddled over, took a peck at one of the cigarette butts and retreated in disgust. I watched it join the other birds and
throw its weight around, shoving forward to get a grip on a crust.

‘Tell me about Van Kep.'

‘I know almost nothing about him. He's tall and blond. I assume he's of Dutch extraction, although he speaks standard Australian. I suppose he's about thirty. I don't know what he did for Julius. I wouldn't have exchanged more than a few remarks with him.'

‘That's all?'

She shrugged. ‘I could say that I
suspect him to be capable
of doing unpleasant things, but that might be just hindsight.'

I wanted to believe her but I didn't know whether I did. I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter either way. I'd been hired to do a job and I'd get paid however it turned out, whether it helped Cy's case or not. Those were the rules. But rules didn't seem to matter too much at the moment. I felt a kind of sadistic need to crack through her hard shell of composure.

‘You shouldn't have told Cy you loved your husband. If it's not true it makes him vulnerable every time he asserts it.'

She'd been staring at the ground in front of her shoes. Now she lifted her head and looked straight at me. Those dark, slanted eyes seemed to weigh and assess me according to a finely graduated and completely accurate system. ‘The broken nose and the careless shave and the cheap haircut don't inspire confidence, but you're not stupid, are you?'

‘Only sometimes,' I said, meaning it.

‘I didn't tell Sackville I loved Julius. He assumed it. Does he have a young, handsome wife?'

‘Yes.'

She shrugged. ‘There you go. Transference.'

‘Why didn't you love him?'

She was staring at the ground again. ‘That sounds like one of your stupid questions. Love, not love, in love, out of love, what does it all mean really? You can love someone one day and not the next; you can love two people at once and then no one at all. It's a cheap word and it's been debased.'

I couldn't argue with that. She lit another cigarette and smoked even less of it than the previous one before grinding it out.

‘Your husband must have had some knowledge of Van Kep when he took him on. References or something such. Where are his business records?'

‘I don't know. I knew almost nothing about his business.'

‘Did he have an assistant, a 2IC?'

She gave me that look again. ‘I thought you'd be poking around in the underworld, using your sleazy contacts to investigate Van Kep.'

I laughed. ‘I spend as little time in sleazy company as I can. The people have b.o. and bad breath and try to borrow money all the time. The real underworld lives better.'

‘You think Julius was a high-class crook?'

‘I assume that of all millionaires until I learn different.'

She smiled. Her head tilted a bit as she did so. The slightly bucked teeth were perfectly shaped and near-white. An ambitious dentist would go mad with indecision. ‘There's a man named Wilson Katz. He worked for Julius in some very senior capacity. He might be able to help you.'

We walked back to St Peters Lane. I unlocked the Falcon and she got in without comment or reaction. To a discerning person, the car bears the signs of having had some money spent on it where it matters. To the undiscerning it just looks old. The interior was hot and I started to sweat as soon as I got in. Claudia didn't sweat, or if she did it didn't show. The engine started immediately and ran smoothly but there was no air-conditioning and I'd have to rely on a breeze through the window to cool me down.

‘Vaucluse?'

‘No. I hardly spent any time there and I haven't been back since Julius died. There's a flat in Kirribilli. Julius liked to spend some time on the other side of the harbour. He said it made him feel like a true resident of the city.

I released the brake, engaged first gear and drove quietly towards Forbes Street. ‘Good thinking. If you had a spot at Dover Heights and somewhere on Pittwater and down south
you'd have the place covered. What other properties are there?'

She wound down her window and the breeze wafted through. ‘What you really mean is, did he leave everything to me? Why don't you ask straight out?'

I drove up Forbes Street, stopped at the lights. ‘Did he leave everything to you?'

‘Just about. Solid provision for wife number one and daughter Judith. Enough not to make it worth their while to challenge. Quite a few donations here and there—the fund to build a new synagogue at Bondi, the Fred Hollows Foundation—that sort of thing. The rest to me. Want to know how much?'

‘No,' I said.

The flat in Kirribilli turned out to be the top floor of a three-storey block housing three flats on each of the other two levels. So the Fleischmans had three times the space of anyone else as well as a roof garden and a view that might not have been as good as the Prime Minister's or Governor-General's but would do. Directly across from the Opera House with plenty of the Bridge in sight on the right and a good sweep down the harbour to the left. All this was unveiled for me after I refused the offer of a parking place under the building and left the car in the street. Claudia explained that she didn't drive and didn't know what had happened to Julius' Merc.

‘Maybe Wilson Katz has it,' I said.

She inserted a security card in the device in the high wall that surrounded the apartment block and the gate slid silently open. ‘Maybe. I couldn't care less.'

As we climbed the stairs I wondered whether her attitude indicated that she'd always had money or just that she acquired so much of it that it ceased to matter. I had no idea.

‘Julius bought this block a few years ago. From a failed bookmaker, I gather. That pleased him. He had good people work on it and it turned out pretty well. He refused to put in a lift. Said the stairs were good for his heart and my legs.'

She laughed, I laughed and I just managed to stop myself from looking at the limbs in question.

‘He amused you then, Julius? You liked him?'

She didn't answer. We crossed a broad expanse of carpet to a door where she used the card again. We went into several air-conditioned rooms that contained furniture, paintings, vases and other things that looked like money. I suppose I gawked a bit and when Claudia excused herself I wandered out onto the terrace and up the outside staircase to the roof garden where I experienced the view. Suddenly, among trellises trailing tropical plants and a fountain and oiled teak benches, I felt shabby in my off-the-rack clothes and cheap haircut. And I felt angry for feeling that
way.
Fuck it,
I thought.
She probably offed her husband for the dough.
It was probably just another dirty bit of business and all the money and the house in Vaucluse and the flat in Kirribilli and the yacht couldn't make it any cleaner.

‘Why are you looking like that?'

She was standing below me on the terrace looking up. She'd combed her hair, maybe freshened her make-up, and she had a cigarette lit. Every line of her body was graceful, every plane of her face was enticing. Once again I didn't want to think any of the things I was thinking or believe what I was halfway to believing. I forced a grin that probably came off as pretty ghastly.

‘Like what?'

‘You've got a face like thunder.'