Peter Corris - Appeal Denied

I worked my way through the scotch in my glass and eyed the bottle when I finished.

‘I’ve got a spare room,’ Townsend said. ‘You can stay the night if you’re worried about driving over the limit.’

I poured another solid one. ‘Thanks. About all I need right now is for the cops to pick me up driving pissed. What d’you make of it all?’

‘How much do you remember of Arthur’s translation of Lily’s codes and initials?’

‘Good point. Got a pen and paper? That fucker took my notebook, not that there was anything in it.’

Townsend went into an adjacent room and came out with a pen and a lined pad. I printed out POW, BW, SB and VER with their equivalents, but not many of the scrambled initials came back to me. I put down IRS, IAD and HON but without any confidence-they could’ve just been echoes of familiar initials. I tore off the sheet and passed it to Townsend, telling him the initials could all be wrong.

‘Not a hell of a lot of help,’ he said. ‘The upside is that it wouldn’t be much help to the opposition either.’

‘No. There was enough detail in the stories, as I’ve outlined them to you, to tell anyone involved what line she was following. He, she, they have the advantage now.’

‘She?’

I shrugged. ‘Avoiding sexism.’

‘Cute. Sorry. This has thrown me a bit. I thought we were on the right lines with Gregory, but you have your doubts. I don’t know anything about this Kristos. From what you said, the line on him is a bit ragged.’

‘Yeah. Frank didn’t know anything about him either, and the identification of him as the one haring away with my computer is very iffy. I’ve been told he was big and that was a strong arm that went round my neck, but…’

I shrugged again and the stiff neck hurt. Townsend noticed, left the room and came back with a foil of paracetamol capsules. ‘You’re done for the day, Hardy. Have a couple of these and get your head down. We’ll look at it all tomorrow.’

I popped a couple of the capsules from the foil. ‘How secure’s this place?’

‘Solid. Alarm system A1 and connected to a private security mob. Why?’

‘I must’ve been followed through the late part of the day. Getting here I didn’t notice anything, but my skills are obviously down.’

‘I’ll give the guys a ring and tell them to keep an eye out.’

‘You’re not worried on your own account?’

‘You kidding? Think I haven’t had death threats?’

‘That’s what Tim Arthur mentioned.’

‘Right. Well, you can talk to him about old stories he and Lily covered, but I doubt that’s the source of the trouble. Possible, I suppose. Arthur’s a prick but he’s not dumb.’

I swallowed the capsules with the last dregs of the drink. Townsend showed me where the toilet and the spare room were. After I’d had a piss I went back to the kitchen to see him doodling on the lined pad.

‘Last thoughts?’

He looked up, still alert, still energetic. ‘Constable Farrow,’ he said.

I slept soundly in a comfortable three-quarter bed, woke a bit stiff and sore, showered and used one of Townsend’s stack of warmed fluffy towels. He was in the kitchen with coffee brewed and the Australian, Sydney Morning Herald and Financial Review all on the table. I’ve never known a journalist who wasn’t addicted to newsprint.

He barely looked up from one of the papers as I came in. ‘Sleep all right? Coffee’s made. Croissants in the bag there.’

‘Coffee’ll do fine.’ He was wearing a tracksuit and sneakers. ‘Jogging?’

‘Walking,’ he said, still reading. ‘Jogging’s bad for the joints. How do you stay trim?’

‘Trimmish. Gym, walking, diet, worry.’

‘That’ll do it. How’re the head and the knees?’

‘Okay. I might take a couple more of your bombs with the coffee just for insurance.’

I sat and drank coffee, took two more capsules and watched him rapidly process the newspapers while he sipped coffee. He was a picture of concentration; I almost expected him to take notes. Didn’t have the nerve to interrupt him. Eventually he pushed the last paper away.

‘Sorry. Ingrained habit.’

I nodded. ‘Lily was the same. Let’s get down to it. Have you got an opinion on which of the two stories is most likely to be the one that got her killed? That’s if it wasn’t something else altogether.’

‘Like what?’

‘Dunno. That’s one of the things I’ll be taking up with your bete noire, Arthur.’

‘I’m over that, Hardy. Well over it. Yes, I’d go for the media person laundering money. Dodgy politicians will usually only go so far, at least in this country. They stop short of killing people. In the US and the Philippines, some parts of Europe, there’s so much more at stake. I’m going to dig around and see if I can get a whiff of what she was on to.’

‘And a possible connection to Gregory.’

‘Right. One thing though-can you remember which story VER, meaning a minister of religion, cropped up in?’

I tried. I poured more coffee. After the break-in at the house and the attack on me, the quiet sifting through Lily’s work seemed to have happened a long time ago. I tried to recollect my jottings about the codes, their organisation on the page.

‘The money laundering story, I think. Can’t be positive.’

‘Good. It’s a hook. And I do so like to see a God-botherer with his nuts in the blender.’

I was starting to like Townsend.

Townsend said he’d work on finding out more about the media money launderer, if he could. He had an arrangement to meet Constable Farrow at a wine bar in Chatswood at 6 pm and thought it’d be a good idea if I came along.

‘What’s her grievance exactly?’ I said. ‘She’s taking a risk talking to you, even if she does fancy you, and an even bigger one talking to me.’

Townsend smiled. ‘You underestimating my charisma, Hardy?’

‘I reckon charismas overrated in general.’

‘What? Invented by some sawn-off?’

‘Your sensitivity’s showing.’

He laughed. ‘You’re a prick, Hardy, but you’re right. I don’t know what her game is. There’s something wrong in that Northern Crimes Unit. It’s the line to follow though, you agree?’

‘Yeah. But it’s all a bit weird-Gregory, Williams, Kristos, Farrow. Who else? What’s the big picture? What’s the overall structure of the unit?’

‘I thought your friend Parker’d fill you in.’

‘Not really. Things’ve changed a bit since his day, as he admits. There’s units within units, outsourcing of functions even…’

Townsend shook his head as I moved to rinse my mug at the sink. ‘Cleaner does it all,’ he said. ‘But you’re right again. It’s hard to get a handle on anything these days. The word responsibility has dropped out of everyone’s vocabulary since this federal government took over. It’s all spin, spin, spin, spin.’

On the drive home, I thought over what Townsend had said. It was all true and words were changing their meaning almost daily, as with ‘rendition’, mutilated by the US military. ‘Media’ was a loose term anyway. It could mean almost anything to do with communications-satellite services, internet facilitators, software corporations, as well as the good oldies like radio, print, television and film. What this meant was that anyone or any group seriously involved and seriously threatened had a hell of a lot to lose.

I bundled up Lily’s clothes and took them to the St Vincent de Paul shop as I’d intended. I threw out two pairs of tights and panties and put her few books on the shelves with mine. Getting rid of the clothes made me feel lousy; keeping the books made me feel just a little bit better. Over the couple of years we’d been semi-together, Lily had given me books as Christmas and birthday presents and written in them. I checked a few of the inscriptions and smiled-Lily’s irreverence always made me smile.