Peter Corris - Appeal Denied

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll be straight when the camera rolls.’

A smile now, almost foolish. He wagged a finger at me. ‘Know how I twigged that you and Kristos were acting?’

‘No idea.’

‘I went to NIDA for a year. Didn’t make the cut. They said I wasn’t any good. Maybe I wasn’t. I thought I was. Anyway, I can tell bad acting when I see it.’

‘You should’ve stuck with it. I believe Mel Gibson didn’t graduate either.’

But he wasn’t listening to me, only to himself. ‘I know how they work, those Internal Affairs cunts. They target you and play their fuckin’ funny games long range. Frank Parker, Frankie the Clean, and Cliff Hardy, the disgraceful private eye. Both out of the action. Bullshit.

‘Soon as your sheila got hit they saw their chance and moved in on us. Got to Kristos. Save the wog and fuck the rest of us. Fuck, I should’ve seen it coming. It was all too good to last. Mind you, I was only in on the drugs and that, not the big bucks, not the killings or the cover-ups. You have to believe me, Hardy.’

‘It doesn’t matter whether I believe you or not. Your proposition’s interesting. I’ll put it to Townsend and… other parties. It’d take a while to set up…’

He shook his head and sniffed hard. His eyes were bright from the coke and his hands had steadied. ‘Has to be tomorrow night. Sunday. Things are quiet. That’s all the time I can allow. Soon as it’s done, I’m out of here.’

‘How do I contact you?’

He laughed. ‘You’re fuckin’ joking. I’ll contact you at intervals. That phone of yours better be to hand. I’m lying low, very low.’

‘What if it can’t be worked out? What d’you do then if this plan of yours falls through? Where d’you go?’

‘Think I’d tell you? You’d be after me with the bolt cutters.’

‘What’s to stop me using them on you now to get this name?’

‘I thought about that. You wouldn’t kill me because that’d close the book. You might try to beat it out of me. Might succeed, but how would you know I wasn’t lying?’

‘How would we know that anyway, if we play along with you?’

‘You’d know.’

I nodded. He was far gone in what I guessed was a mixture of fantasy and reality and there was no point in heavying him. As doped up as he was, he’d be close to oblivious to pain. Playing along was the only way ahead, although as a strategy it was as full of holes as his story.

I picked up the mobile. ‘Want to hear me talk to people?’

‘Fuck no. I’m going off to get some sleep. Haven’t had any since

… I dunno.’

‘You’re too wired to sleep.’

‘I’ve got some downers.’

He heaved himself up, suddenly looking older and heavier and slower in the body, although his head was still buzzing.

‘Are you going to drive like that?’ I said.

‘Why not? Been doing it for years. Get on the dog and bone, Hardy, if you want to find out what’s really been going on.’ He gave an uncharacteristically high-pitched laugh. ‘That’s as one thoroughly fucked-up detective to another.’

I let him out-watched him gather himself for the step, the path, the gate, the crossing of the street, the location of the keys, the remote, the car door, the ignition. He drove off, apparently in control, but I hoped for his sake, and other road-users, that his bolthole wasn’t too far away.

I made coffee and turned to my notebook diagram, but there was no point in adding anything, or revising it. It hadn’t been of any particular use anyway, and now the whole game had changed. I could believe that Gregory was in the grip of a fear that he was to be made the patsy by Kristos, with the cooperation of me and others. Why not? It had happened before. His offer to dump on everyone and skip away also seemed feasible. If he’d been in on drug dealing for some time, the chances were that he’d feathered his nest. His own drug use was a factor, too. Bound to have an effect on his paranoia.

But what had kicked him off? What had brought him to the point of suspecting Kristos and feeling that their whole operation was sliding out of control?

It could have been the murder of Williams. Killing journalists is one thing, risky enough in its way, but killing a police officer ups the ante. I thought of the Neddy Smith, Chris Flannery, Michael Drury quagmire that had cops and crims turning against each other like ravening wolves. But what if the trigger was something else? I didn’t know enough about Gregory, but there was that little bit of his recent past I did know about. What if this break-out had something to do with Jane Farrow?

I rang Townsend and told him what had happened. Only thing to do.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘This is getting sticky. Jane’s changed her mind, wants to move now on her plan. Says she can’t take the strain any longer.’

‘And you told her how much?’

‘Nothing, as agreed.’

‘Well, let’s make it all one big show-Jane, Gregory, Kristos, Perkins, the whole cast, all singing their heads off.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘No. You have to stall Jane. Do Gregory first. If he’s got what he says he has, the whole Jane/Morello thing might not be needed.’

‘You believe that, Cliff?’

‘No, not really. Gregorys a close-to-the-edge cokehead, but we can’t afford to pass up on what he has to say. Surely you can hold Jane off for forty-eight hours? You with your charm.’

‘Fuck you again. I can. But you know what you have to do, don’t you? Good luck.’

He meant I had to convince Frank Parker to play along with the scenario Gregory had devised in his disturbed mind. Not easy, with Frank still clinging to correct police procedure, despite some of his recent experiences and all the shit that he knew was going down with the Northern Crimes Unit. It wasn’t something to negotiate over the phone. A face-to-face job.

I’d charged the mobile as soon as I’d got home from the lunch meeting with Townsend, so it had plenty of juice to be available for Gregory’s call. I went on trusting Hank’s assurance that my landline was clear and rang Frank. I told him that I needed to see him urgently and that I needed a big favour.

There was a pause at the end of the line and I could imagine Frank’s mixed reactions. He hated being retired and out of the swim. He loved his wife and his son and his grandchildren, twin girls, now somewhere in the Third World. We were close friends who’d helped each other in the past and caused each other problems. It had to be lineball when it came to the important moves.

As always, Frank tried for a light touch. ‘Cliff, how close are you sailing now to what might be called the waters of significant criminality?’

‘Not that close, and not into the deepest waters.’

‘The shallow waters are the most dangerous. Didn’t you know that?’

‘Frank…’

I must have struck the right note. He agreed to meet me at six thirty after he’d played squash in Edgecliff.

‘Squash?’ I said. ‘What’s wrong with tennis at White City?’

‘Looks like rain.’

I got to the squash courts in time to watch Frank polish off the opposition in the last few points of the final game. Frank was a good tennis player. He always beat me when his mind was on the job and sometimes when it wasn’t. He had a killer backhand, the stroke that was my greatest weakness, and Frank could hit to it off either wing till it broke down. I hadn’t seen him play squash before-a game I hated-but he was just as good.

He farewelled his friend, mopped his face on a towel, and came over to where I sat.

‘Hasn’t rained,’ I said. ‘You’d have been better off playing a real game outside under lights.’