A jacket of Cyn’s was hanging on a doorknob and I sniffed at it as I went past. Ma Griffe or Rive Gauche, I could never tell the difference. But it was a Cyn smell and I missed her powerfully. What would I tell her if she’d been here? Would I say, ‘I came this close’? I knew I wouldn’t. I’d make a joke about the steepness of the McElhone steps and the exorbitant cost of dry cleaning and throw down as much white wine as I could. I climbed the stairs, stripping off my clothes as I went and fell on the bed and dragged a sheet across me. An hour later I woke up out of a nightmare which faded immediately. I was cold and the room seemed unnaturally dark. I found a blanket and turned on the bedside light and slept fitfully for another couple of hours like a frightened kid.
As it happened, Pascoe’s rules weren’t hard to live by. I wasn’t in any shape to go out walking, there was food and drink in the house and I was too demoralised to want to talk to anybody. The phone rang a couple of times and I ignored it. I didn’t stick to the letter of the law. I opened the front door to collect the paper. A car I’d never seen before was parked across the street and it was still there later when I checked for mail. I read the paper from cover to cover. They were talking about introducing late-night shopping on Thursdays on a trial basis. There was a story about the opening of Sydney’s first sex shop selling ‘fantasy apparel’, ‘erotic literature’ and ‘marital aids’. Probably go well on Thursday nights. The operational phase of Australia’s military presence in Vietnam was drawing to a close. I read that piece several times to see what it meant about the war, apart from the fact that the boys were coming home. Between the armyese and the journalese it was impossible to tell.
The mail consisted of several bills and a postcard from Cyn. The picture was a collage of the attractions of Cairns, which seemed to consist of nightclubbing, fishing, water skiing and playing golf. There didn’t seem to be anything I’d want to do. Cyn had written a few lines in her impeccable private schoolgirl script to the effect that the weather was great and the job was interesting and Queenslanders were funny folk who called bags ‘ports’ and said ‘eh?’ at the end of every sentence. She missed me, she said. She ended with. ‘Why don’t you pack a port and come up, eh?’
I turned the TV on and off, listened to a few news broadcasts on the radio and tried to read Manning Clark’s Short History of Australia to make up for one of my many educational deficiencies. I liked the book but my mind kept wandering to the business I’d been through and wasn’t finished with yet. It was embarrassing to have misread Pascoe and Gallagher so completely and to have been jerked around like a puppet. I resolved to be a lot more cautious-downright mistrustful-if I stayed in the private inquiry game. That was a big question I shied away from. I showered but my face was too badly roughed-up to shave. I put Savlon cream on my lacerations and probed at my bad tooth with my tongue. It felt loose. Another one on its way. The shoulder felt better, though, and I did without the sling.
Pascoe arrived late in the afternoon. He plonked himself down on the sofa. ‘Got any beer?’
I opened some Coopers ale I’d bought for a South Australian friend of Cyn’s who turned out not to drink beer. Pascoe took a big, appreciative gulp. I sat in a saucer chair and rolled a cigarette. Pascoe pulled out his Craven A’s. Man-talk time.
‘Did you do as I told you, Hardy?’
‘You know I did. You had one of your blokes outside all day. And I bet a couple of the phone calls I didn’t take were from you.’
He grunted and drank some more beer. ‘Well, it was a shitty mess you got yourself into. Some big names and some big money there.’
‘I’m sure you can handle it. What’s going to happen to Gallagher?’
‘Nothing. As I said, he was working undercover.’
‘Bullshit. He was right there in the middle of it.’
‘That’s not the way we want it to be. The force can’t afford all that to come out just now. But we’ll keep an eye on him.’
‘Wilton’ll put him in.’
Pascoe drank some more beer and shook his head.
‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘This was a bloody big conspiracy. Lawyers, politicians, a cop, God knows who else. And you’re just going to leave it at two dead hoods?’
‘There’s no evidence against Wilton.’
‘I was there.’
‘So was Ian Gallagher. Forget it, Hardy. Like you say, it’s big. Too big for you. It’s being handled… institutionally, like.’
I looked at him, big, solid, not at all stupid as I’d thought and doing what he thought was best. I wished I’d had some similar conviction. The phone rang. Pascoe held up his hand to stop me moving and reached for it himself.
‘Yeah? This is Pascoe. We’re having a drink and a talk right now.’
He cradled the phone under his ear and picked up his glass. Somehow, he was able to drink from it with his head in that position. He looked at me as if I was asking him a big favour. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Oh, I reckon he’ll be all right. Yeah, I’m sure he will be. Thanks.’
He hung up and held out his glass for more beer. I poured. The room was smoky now, smelling of hops and still warm from the heat of the day, but it was beginning to take on some of the atmospherics of the Campbelltown paddock. Pascoe looked critically at his beer- there was too big a head.
‘I get it,’ I said. ‘I play ball and I’m safe.’
Pascoe drank. ‘That’s right. Don’t worry about it, Hardy. It’s all just part of the very difficult business of law enforcement. All you have to do is nothing.’
That was more than tempting, it was compelling. There were loose threads though, and pride demanded that I pull a few of them. ‘Gallagher told me that a man named Vernon Morris in Alistair Menzies’ office had put him on to the divorce deal. Anything in that?’
‘No. He was lying. You should’ve checked up on that, Hardy. Could have saved you some grief. Mind you, we mightn’t have got this result if you had.’
‘That’s all that matters.’
‘I’ll give you something for free. It was Dick Maxwell put you on to Chalky, right?’
I swallowed the rest of the beer in my glass. ‘Shit. Don’t tell me you had a tail on me when I went to see Maxwell. I’ll give this game away…’
‘No. We’ve been doing some sniffing around. Chalky was a bit of a poof, it seems. Him and Maxwell were friends and then they weren’t.’
Another thread pulled. Pascoe took out another cigarette but put it away. He had only an inch of beer left and was obviously getting ready to go. ‘Well, have you got the picture?’
I nodded and he lifted himself up from the sofa. ‘Thanks for the drink. I wouldn’t say you’re actually in credit with us, Hardy. But it you stay sensible you’ll be all right and I might be able to do you some good one of these days. Who knows?’
‘I’ve got a client. Virginia Shaw. What about her?’
‘Where is she?’
‘Not in Sydney.’
Pascoe laughed. He picked up his glass and emptied it. ‘I think you should tell her to stay where she is and get into another line of work.’
‘What about the divorces?’
‘Watch the papers. There’s not going to be any blackmail, I can tell you that. You really look pretty crook, Hardy.’ He took out his car keys and jiggled them as he looked around the room. I’d left my book and the papers scattered about. My crumpled suit jacket hung on the stair rail and my dirty shoes were in the hallway. ‘Where’s your wife?’
‘In Queensland.’
‘I reckon you should shoot up there yourself for a holiday.’