The pub was the standard inner-city model that had undergone a bit of renovation some time ago so that the new surfaces were fast fading back towards the old. A few drinkers, singles, minding their own business, like Lola.
‘What’s Lola drinking?’ I said to the barman.
‘Old.’
I bought a schooner of Tooheys black and a middy of light for myself. I sat opposite her at the small table and pushed the beer across. She looked up from the guide, pen held tightly in nicotine-stained fingers with blood-red nails. She gave me a practised smile.
‘Hello, darling.’
I shook my head and moved the drink closer to her. ‘Sorry, love. I’m here for a talk, not for your services.’
The smile disappeared and with it the instinctive professional gestures-the raised eyebrows, tautened neck, straightened upper body. She pulled her drink a little closer.
‘Fuck off.’
I put a fifty down on the ring of moisture the glass had made so that it stuck there. She finished the drink she had on hand but didn’t touch the new one. Not yet, but she was paying attention.
‘My name’s Hardy.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’ For the first time a genuine emotion showed on her eroded face-disappointment, fear, regret… whatever it was. ‘I knew there’d be trouble.’
‘You were right. I have to talk to you about Cleve Harvey.’
‘And you reckon you can do that with a schooner and fifty bucks?’
She’d recovered and was presenting as a genuine hard case. There were two ways to play it-tough or soft. Mistakenly, I went for tough. ‘I could’ve made it a middy and twenty.’
‘You’re a bastard like Cleve said. I hope he nails you from the bloody grave.’
I had to retreat. ‘Why, Lola?’
She was in full outrage mode now, voice raised, standing up, surprisingly tall. ‘Drink your pissy light and your fuckin’ schooner yourself and fuck off.’
She stalked out, skinny legs in high heels, scrawny bum in a tight skirt, hair flying, shoulder bag scooped up and swinging. Most of the eyes-some amused, some antagonistic-in the bar were on me. I sat tight, didn’t fancy the idea of pursuing her up the street.
I drank half of the middy, picked up my damp fifty and left the bar. My car was a hundred metres away around a corner. I made the turn and became aware of someone close behind me. It was broad daylight at midday in Erskineville, which isn’t the rough place it used to be, but you can’t be too careful. I swung around, balanced, and with my hands ready.
‘Easy,’ the man said. ‘Easy.’
He was tall and thin in jeans and a sweater, sneakers. Not young, not old. After years in the job you develop the knack of noticing the people around you and filing the information. This guy had been in the Belmont bar, pouring a can of Guinness-the kind with the loud rattle and the sound of escaping gas-into a glass, a movement that had caught my eye.
‘Might be able to help youse, mate,’ he said.
I relaxed. ‘Yeah? How?’
‘Seen you talking to Lola and seen her take off. I can tell you where she lives. She’s a good root.’
‘You’d know, would you?’
He grinned, which didn’t improve his pinched, defeated look. ‘I should. Her flat’s just next to mine. When I’m flush I-’
‘Okay.’ I’d put the fifty in my jacket pocket and I fished it out. ‘I don’t mean her any harm. Fact is, I’m sort of more interested in the bloke she lived with.’
He nodded. ‘A real bastard, that one.’
‘Exactly.’ I showed him my card and my PEA licence. ‘It’s a private matter. Would fifty dollars get me to her door?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘Would it make you piss off and keep your mouth shut?’
‘Another twenty would.’
‘You’re on. You seem to know a lot about her. Where’s she likely to be now?’
‘In another pub, playing the horses for the rest of the afternoon. Then she goes out on the street.’
I took a twenty from my wallet and balled the notes in my fist. ‘Lead on,’ I said.
The block of flats had seen better days, much better days. It was square, squat, red brick and faded, but the remnants of some sense of style were there in the balconies and the garden out front and along the side, now dying of neglect. My escort said he and Lola were on the third floor. No security door, no lift. We went up the stained concrete steps in a dim light until we reached the top landing, which would have given a view of some sort if the window hadn’t been coated with grime.
I knocked at the door he indicated and got no answer. He took out his key and held out his hand for the money.
‘Put the key away,’ I said. ‘You piss off down the stairs and don’t show your face within a hundred metres for the next hour, minimum.’
He looked hurt, but he put the key back. I gave him the money and he started down the stairs.
‘Let me hear the entrance door slam.’
I did. He could’ve been faking but I didn’t think so. To someone with a set of picklocks attached to his always-present Swiss army knife, the old Yale lock was a piece of cake.
I’ve been in prostitutes’ flats before and Lola’s didn’t surprise me. It was a tiny, one-bedroom job and it was neat as a new pin. It also smelled of cigarette smoke, perfume, room freshener and basic, underlying dirt. The double bed was precisely made with a black bedspread and a white sheet folded down at the end of the bed the way the working girls do. The decks were cleared for action. The bedside light held a red bulb; the table featured a packet of ribbed condoms, lubricant, dildos in three sizes. There was a strategically placed mirror along one wall, a small TV with a VCR and a stack of videos. The handcuffs were probably in a drawer, the lingerie in the closet.
Lola was in that grey area of the sex business-not flush enough to be in the phone book, but a notch above the streetwalker with the arrangement at a motel. The bathroom was quintessentially feminine except for a few traces of shaved whiskers in the basin.
I slid open the closet doors, probed drawers and shelves. The only thing out of place professionally was a heavy suitcase at the back of a broom cupboard. I pulled it out and released the clasps-no locks. It contained all of Cleve that had remained in the world-some clothes, some shoes, shaving gear, some papers and some photographs in a big manilla envelope. The envelope was old and sealed with old, crisp sellotape until I slit it. I took the envelope and left the flat.
One question occupied my mind as I went down the stairs. Why hadn’t the police examined Cleve Harvey’s effects?
In the office I dealt with a few phone and email messages, keeping business afloat. I emptied Cleve Harvey’s envelope out onto the desk and sifted through the contents: several papers relating to his release after prison sentences; a decree nisi divorce from a marriage to one Rachel Fremantle; a shooter’s licence long expired; a collection of parking fine notices apparently unpaid; and a faded membership ticket for the Painters and Dockers Union.
The bulk of the material consisted of newspaper clippings. Between prison stretches Cleve had been quite a star in his day-a wood-chopping champion, a circus strongman, a long-distance swimmer, a movie and television stuntman, a Commonwealth Games trap-shooting medallist. He’d attracted notice for a one-round knockout of a Rugby League heavy in an off-season exhibition fight to raise money for Police amp; Community Youth Clubs in NSW.
One reason for his savage denunciation of me presented itself-fury that a man older and smaller than himself could beat him in a physical contest not just once but twice. It was hardly enough. I went through the documents again. Something there niggled at me but I couldn’t pin it down. I knew I had enemies, but a dying enemy trying to screw me was a new and unsettling experience.
I trod on eggshells for the next month or so but the police didn’t approach me again and nothing out of the ordinary happened. I got on with the usual run of things-serving notices, a bit of bodyguarding, the tracing of a missing husband. Eventually the Harvey killing surfaced in the papers. Cleve Harvey, it emerged, was a small-time police informer, and he was shot by one of the men he’d dobbed in on a minor matter that eventually led to a conviction on serious drug charges. There was another informer, DNA and a weapon, and the shooter went down for a long stretch. A small-time player who had struck it unlucky hadn’t concerned the police enough for them to probe closely into his life. That explained their lack of interest, but it didn’t explain why Cleve had fingered me. I thought I was within my rights to contact Detective Sergeant Wilson.