Peter Corris - Appeal Denied

A slightly cold morning. Coffee and the paper. No breakfast. To the gym for a forty-five minute light workout scoffed at by the gymaholics-the women with real bicep definition, the men with six-pack abs. We exchange insults in between grunts. The steam and the smell of chlorine drew me to the spa and I soaked there for a whole fifteen minute cycle, showered and got dressed feeling fit, moral and bored shitless. I was retired and very far from self-funded. Was there a support group? Did I need counselling? Any point in ringing Lawsie and complaining about a system that required private enquiry agents to wear kid gloves? I was sure I’d get a hearing.

It went on like that for a couple of days. A long overdue cheque came in and eased the pain a bit. There was still a couple of grand outstanding. Some people seem to think that being de-licensed equals no need to pay. To fend off a wave of anger and self-pity, I rang Frank Parker, retired from the New South Wales Police with the rank of deputy commissioner. Sitting pretty on his pension.

‘Cliff. How’s it going?’

‘Ratshit, thanks, Frank. How d’you fill in the time?’

‘Oh, you know. Tennis, reading, bit of volunteer work here and there.’

‘Is that satisfying?’

‘I spent the last years in the job in an office shuffling paper, mate. It’s better than that. Time hanging heavy?’

‘Yeah, and the wolf’s slinking towards the door.’

‘I’ve had you in mind. Did some web research. You can work as a PEA in the ACT without a licence. At least for now. How would you feel about Canberra?’

‘Much the same as I’d feel about Hobart.’

‘You know the solution. Sell the crumbling Glebe fortress to some IT couple with money coming out their arseholes. Buy a townhouse in Coogee. Learn to surf.’

‘I was surfing when I was ten years old.’

‘How often since then?’

‘Not often.’

‘There you go, learn to surf again. Or how about bush-walking? You could meet up with Bob Carr.’

‘Yesterday’s man. What does the new bloke do when he takes off his suit?’

‘No idea. But you have to find something that you want to do, that you’re good at and will bring in a buck.’

‘I know. Thanks, Frank. I’ll think about it.’

But I didn’t have to think about it because two days later Lily was murdered.

The sequence of events went like this: at 10.30 am I got a telephone call.

‘Mr Cliff Hardy?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is Detective Constable Farrow of the Northern Crimes Unit. Ms Lillian Truscott had your name in her passport as the person to contact in the event of an accident.’

That was news to me. ‘She’s had an accident?’

‘I’m sorry to tell you, sir, that Ms Truscott is dead.’

I felt the room spin and I had to lean against the wall. I gripped the phone so hard my knuckles cracked. Lily had always been a wild driver and inclined to take risks with the breathalyser. ‘A car accident?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What then? When?’

Constable Farrow didn’t answer and I could hear muted mutterings as she shielded the phone. Then her voice came through, shakily but clear. ‘Ms Truscott’s body has been taken to the mortuary in Glebe. We’d be obliged if you could identify her.’ Police-person Farrow sounded about twenty.

‘How did she die?’

‘Would you like a police car to pick you up, sir?’

‘Listen, Constable, I was in the army and I’ve been a private investigator for longer than you’ve been alive. I’ve been around death. How did she fucking die?’

Maybe Farrow was twenty-five. Her tone hardened. ‘Detective Colin Williams will meet you at the mortuary in half an hour. Thank you, Mr Hardy.’

It was just down the road. I didn’t know the morgue was in Glebe when I moved there. It’s an odd fact, but not many Sydney people know where it is-probably don’t want to know. I was there in fifteen minutes with grief and anger raging. I parked in a no-standing zone and walked across to where a man in a suit stood near the entrance to the building. He was youngish and fit-looking with a face arranged for compassion. Maybe. He put out his hand.

‘Mr Hardy?’

I ignored the hand. ‘You Williams?’

He was young but he’d been in the job long enough not to take any shit. The hand dropped and the body straightened. ‘DS Williams, yes.’

‘How was she killed?’

I was older, greyer, unshaven, dressed sloppily, driving a beat-up car, but he was bright or experienced enough to know an angry and potentially violent man when he saw one. And he wasn’t going to give any more ground than he had to. He turned away and took a step towards the entrance.

Almost over his shoulder he said, ‘She was murdered. Come with me, please.’

I followed him through the heavy street doors, past a desk where he flashed his credentials and down corridors with vinyl flooring and fluorescent lights. Lets go artificial when we’re dealing with the essential reality of death. I’d been here before and knew it wasn’t anything like on TV, where they slot the dead into freezers and people stand around in green scrubs and white hats waiting to perform autopsies and mutter into microphones in hushed, concerned tones. Sydney doesn’t have enough suspicious deaths to justify the dramatics.

Williams led me to a small, plain, antiseptic room of the sort you might go to for a blood test. A body, covered by a sheet, lay on a trolley.

‘Show me,’ I said.

An attendant in white overalls was standing nearby and Williams gave him a nod. He went to the trolley and pulled back the plastic sheet.

It was Lily and it wasn’t Lily. The same features, hair, throat, lines and the asymmetries that make up a face. But no living face is that still, showing that the life current has been turned off. I’d seen corpses embalmed and made ready for the ground or the flames, and she didn’t have that frozen, painted look. In a strange way that difference helped to give me some distance at a moment when I needed it. I nodded at Williams and stepped back.

We retraced our steps until we were outside the building again. I hadn’t noticed the cold when I left my house in a shirt and jeans but I did now. I shivered as the wind hit me. Williams turned his back to the wind and lit a cigarette. He held out the packet to me and I was tempted but refused.

He took a few deep draws, exhaled and the wind carried the smoke away. ‘We have to talk,’ he said. ‘This is your turf, Hardy. Where?’

I told him to follow me and I drove to the coffee place in Glebe Point Road next to where the Valhalla Cinema used to be. A lot of places in Glebe used to be where they aren’t anymore. Too many. I found a parking spot in Hereford Street, went inside and ordered a long black. Williams must have parked well away because he took ten minutes to arrive and looked pissed off. Maybe because I hadn’t ordered him a coffee. The place was thinly populated and I picked a corner furthest from the other patrons. Williams ordered at the counter and sat down. We didn’t speak until the coffees arrived, mine only thirty seconds before his. Service can be slow but cops have a way of speeding it up and a savvy Glebe coffee bar worker can usually spot a cop.

Williams flipped open his notebook. ‘Ms Truscott was found in her home at eight am this morning by a woman who’d come to clean. She was in her bed in an upstairs room. She’d been shot in the temple at close range.’

Lily’s bedroom: upstairs like mine, sparsely furnished and untidy like mine-books by the bed, clothes on chairs, coffee mugs, baby oil, tissues… I put two spoonfuls of sugar into my coffee, stirred it and didn’t say anything. I couldn’t speak; the picture in my head was too stark, too wrong.