Helen likes musicals, I thought. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘You can sing, can you?’
‘And dance. And tell you what, I took the AIDS test. I’m clear.’
‘Great. Now you just have to find somebody the same.’
‘I’ve found him,’ Greenway said.
Cloudburst
Old habits are hard to kill, like old memories. I was sitting in my car waiting for a city light to change so the traffic could trickle ahead. The city fathers were experimenting with traffic arrangements to cope with the construction of the Pitt Street mall. I’m looking forward to the mall but I wasn’t enjoying the stop-start motoring. It started to rain and I instinctively reached for a rag I keep as a stopper for the window where the rubber seal has rotted away. But there was no need; I was in my new Falcon that doesn’t leak. That was better but not everything was better. Back when I had a leaky car I had Helen, more hopes and the traffic moved. I sat and waited, warm and dry, and remembered.
The rain had started at 6 pm on Saturday September 10 and it hadn’t stopped by the following weekend. Everyone could remember the moment of the cloudburst the way you can remember what you were doing when Kerr sacked Gough. I was taking a walk to get a cup of coffee at the Bar Napoli in Leichhardt. I was halfway between home and the coffee and I decided to go on for the coffee. The rain fell as if it had been stored up there for ten years. The floor of the coffee bar was awash when I arrived and the place was crowded with people seeking shelter from the storm. We stood around and drank our coffee and looked out at the sheeting rain and agreed we’d never seen anything like it.
People kept saying it.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ A week later that’s what the NRMA guy who came after a three hour wait to help me start my Falcon said.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Helen Broadway said that night. Helen was with me for six months, on leave from her husband as per her arrangement with him and me. ‘Have you?’
I kissed the back of her neck. ‘That’s what I like about you,’ I said. ‘You’re different. Everybody’s saying they’ve never seen anything like it-you’re the first one to say “have you?” ‘
She turned away from the omelette she was making and looked at me. ‘Well, have you?’
‘Not in Sydney. I’ve seen it as heavy in Malaya but there it lasts for half an hour, this has been going on for what-eight days?’
‘Mm. It’s a funny thing, you know. I was reading that this is common in Sydney, happens every year. You all just forget about it from one year to the next.’
‘Could be. We’re a feckless lot.’
She put the pan under the grill and waved at me to set the table. ‘This is the last of the eggs. We’re going to have to go out again for provisions. You reckon the car’ll start?’
‘Worse than that. I’m going to have to go to the office. I need work.’
‘Nobody’ll want anything done in this weather.’
‘They might. There might be a job for a Senior Swimming Certificate holding detective who rode the waves at Maroubra on a surfboard made of fence palings.’
‘You didn’t, did you?’
‘So legend has it.’
‘You can’t go out, you haven’t got any dry shoes.’
‘I’ll dry some tonight, wrap them in plastic, go out barefoot and put the shoes on when I’m inside. That way anyone coming to see me will know I’m smart because I’ve got dry shoes.’
‘No one will come. You’ll sit there in your dry shoes all alone when you could be in bed with me.’
Helen was wrong. I did have a client. She arrived within two minutes of me sitting down behind my desk and struggling into the sneakers I’d dried on top of the heater. They were stiff and cracked and didn’t look good with the rest of my clothes. I was still wiggling my toes when she walked into the office. Into means into: she came through the door after a quick knock and that took her straight up to my desk. No anterooms, secretary’s nooks, conversation pits for Cliff Hardy, the low rent detective with integrity and cracked sneakers.
‘Come in and sit down,’ I said. ‘I’m glad of the company.’ I peered at her through the gloom which had settled over the city and seeped into all rooms not floodlit.
‘The building did seem very quiet,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure it was inhabited.’
‘It is and it isn’t,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you?’
Adjusting to the murk, I could see that she was in early middle age, middle sized and middle class. She wore a wide brimmed hat and a coat of the same shiny black material that shed water. She had on a long dark skirt and black boots-a trifle funereal but functional. She took off the hat and shook out a head of blonde-streaked, mid-brown hair.
‘Roberta Landy-Drake gave me your name, Mr Hardy. She said you could handle… celebrities.’
‘Did you know she was joking?’
She frowned. Her handsome face creased up and I got the idea that she’d been doing a good deal of frowning lately. ‘I don’t follow you.’
‘I’ve been the chucker-out at some of her parties. I’ve handled celebrities, literally.’
‘Oh, I see. It doesn’t matter. The point is, Roberta says you don’t go off selling gossip to the papers or blackmail people.’
I nodded. ‘You’ll have to forgive me. If you’re a celebrity I’m afraid I don’t know you. Maybe it’s a bore but you’ll have to tell me your name.’
‘My name is Barbara Winslow. I’m not a celebrity but my husband is.’
‘Oh, god,’ I said.
Ian Winslow was the flavour of the month politician. He’d been to the right schools, had the right degree and looked good on television. What he thought was anybody’s guess, what he said reflected his deep concern. He was deeply concerned about everything, particularly about ethnic affairs which was his current portfolio, but also about health and police and any other headline worthy subject you chose. To me, he seemed to care deeply for his teeth and brushing his hair boyishly.
‘You don’t approve of him?’ Barbara Winslow said. ‘I’d be surprised if you supported the other side.’
She was looking at my sneakers. Fair enough; politics is class-based or should be. My credentials were all around me-on my feet, on the pitted surface of my desk, on the windows which looked dirtier inside now that the outside had been washed and rinsed by God.
‘It’s not that. I just don’t like having anything to do with politics… ‘
‘This is a man in trouble.’
‘Politicians aren’t men, they’re networks of obligations and enmities.’
‘They have families.’
So do axe murderers, I thought. I said nothing; she stood and walked over to the window. There was so much water pounding the glass and moving on its surface that the window itself looked liquid and insubstantial. When she turned around her eyes were wet.
‘You have to help me. Roberta said you would.’
I nodded, took a note pad from my desk and offered her a cigarette from the office packet. She refused which was wise because they were stale. But she was comforted by the gesture; she left the window and sat down again. She was eager to talk, eager to see me write, eager to pay me money.
‘Ian Winslow,’ I said and wrote the name in block capitals. ‘By this time next year he’ll probably be in charge of the department that licenses me. Self interest suggests I should help you.’
‘The year after that and he could be in charge of the state.’
‘Well…?’
‘He’s behaving strangely, going out at odd times, not accounting for his movements. He’s nervy and…’
‘Off his food?’
‘Roberta said you’d joke and not to mind. But this isn’t a joke.’
‘Okay. Politicians have a million worries; people ring them up at all hours; they have to breathe other people’s air a lot.’
‘I know. This is different. I want you to follow him when he goes out at night and find out what he does.’