Peter Corris: Saving Billie

'Out!'

They left. He replaced Thomas by the Ferry Road door and Thomas advanced towards me. I moved to put a table between myself and him.

'You made me look foolish in front of my employer, Hardy,' Thomas said.

I mimed being hard of hearing. 'What was that?'

It threw him for a second and gave me a chance to snap the cue under my foot, making it a more dangerous weapon.

'I said you made me look foolish in front of my employer.'

'I heard you,' I said. 'It wasn't hard.'

He advanced and I poked the jagged end of the cue at him. 'Back off. I could take out an eye.'

He retreated but the other man didn't. Anticipating my move, he got close enough to try a karate kick to my leg. I just managed to swing the cue back and down. I don't know anything about karate, but in the movies they always hit the right spot. He didn't. The cue got him squarely on the shin. He yelped and swore and bent double. Points to me, but it gave Thomas his chance. He closed in and swung a punch into my groin. End of story. The pain shot through me upwards, downwards and sideways. I dropped the cue and went into a protective crouch. He brought his knee up, caught me on the forehead and I felt my brain swim and my vision slide away.

'Jesus, man,' I heard one of the suits say. 'That was sweet.'

I was still conscious and, dimly, thought it wasn't nearly enough if Thomas was fair dinkum. Then I realised that my blurred vision was due to blood flowing down into my eyes. Not trickling, flowing.

'I think he's got the message, Rhys. Let's go before you get blood all over yourself.'

I propped myself up against the leg of the table and drew in several deep breaths. The pain in my groin was bad but I'd had worse from low blows in the ring and a rifle butt in army training. The trick is to suck in air and think of higher things. I wasn't too worried about the blood because I knew what had happened. Thomas's hard, bony knee had split the scar tissue I have over my right eye, a memento of my amateur boxing career. We didn't always wear protective headgear then. I have sharp eyebrow ridges, like Jimmy Carruthers, and, as he did, I bleed there like a stuck pig. It'd look worse than it was. Cautiously, I raised my right arm and wiped at the spot.

'Christ, mate. Are you all right?'

One of the drinkers had drifted in from the bar. I must've been quite a sight.

'This is like the old days,' he said. 'Here.'

He closed my hand around the drink I'd abandoned. I gave my forehead and eyes another wipe and my vision cleared. Massive dry-cleaning bill but not much more damage. I drank the scotch.

'Thanks. Little misunderstanding.'

He was half drunk, fat and good-natured. 'Coppers come around this time of night. Better get yourself cleaned up.'

Most of the blood had soaked into my jacket; my shirt was dark so the blood on it didn't show. I pulled myself up, took off the jacket after finding some tissues in a pocket. I pressed them against the eyebrow cut and went through to the toilet without attracting any attention. The face in the mirror looked like mine but it had aged a bit more than it should have in the last half-hour. I ran the water, used most of the paper towels available to clean up as best I could. I'd need ice for the swelling, a warm bath for the sore balls and a caustic stick for the cut. All available at home a few hundred metres away. Over the years, I'd spent so much money in the Toxteth I didn't feel I had to compensate them for the broken cue.

It took me three times longer than usual to get home from the pub and I was glad none of my neighbours saw me in such a mess. The cut had opened wide again and I was bloody from my head to my feet. I stripped off, had a shower and sat for a while in a shallow bath. I used the caustic stick to stop the bleeding. The skin above the eyebrow had been cut and stitched several times. These days they use some kind of clip that doesn't promote scar tissue, but not in my time. Eventually the blood stopped seeping, but it'd be a while before the swelling went down and the scab came away. Till then, I was going to look like someone who'd been in a fight and I hadn't even landed a punch.

I made a pot of coffee and spiked a big mug of it with brandy. I had three painkillers and by the time I was halfway through the second spiked coffee I was feeling solid enough to do some thinking. I ran my mind back over the encounter in the pub and a few things about it struck me as strange. Rhys Thomas could obviously handle himself, so why would he need two heavies in support? I'd got him to repeat his grievance because there seemed to be something almost rehearsed about it as it came out the first time, and even more so the second. I was searching for a lead on the guy with the money and it came to me. He bore a strong resemblance to Jonas Clement. A son? And, although it's hard to tell from one word, and one phrase, the way he pronounced 'Out!' and his use of 'man' had a South African touch to them.

If I was right in my guesses, all that put the pub incident in a very different light. Clement's son wouldn't have gone along to support Thomas on a personal affront. More likely he was doing what his dad wanted him to do, which was put the frighteners on me. That meant he knew about my connection with Louise Kramer and was sufficiently worried about it to take some pretty crude action. I called Lou's home and mobile numbers and got the voice-mail. I left a message sketching in a few of my suspicions and suggesting that we get together urgently. Nothing more to be done tonight.

I went to bed with my coffee and brandy and paracetamol buzz with one comforting thought. There hadn't been time for Bob Armstrong to alert anyone to my interest in Clement and activate the Thomas heavy brigade. That still left the question of how, when and why Clement came to think me worthy of his plutocratic attention.

Lou Kramer rang me before eight the next morning. She said she was using some flexi-time she'd racked up before she went on to a part-time contract to work at home and was too busy to meet me anywhere. She asked me to come to her flat. No harm in sussing out the client's residence. I got a taxi to Balmain and picked up the car. Untouched. I parked with dubious legality, walked a block, and buzzed at the door of the newly and expensively renovated old building in Surry Hills. It stood across from Ward Park, named after Eddie Ward, 'the firebrand of East Sydney', a hero of my father's. Fewer of Eddie's kind of voters around here now.

'The Surrey Apartments'- six floors and from the top there'd be a great view of the city whichever way you looked.

'Push, Cliff. Fifth floor.' I pushed and the door released. The lift was smooth and quick and she was standing with the door open when I got there.

'Jesus Christ, you just said you'd been knocked about a bit.'

'It's not as bad as it looks.'

She beckoned me in and kept staring at my battered face. 'That reminds me of that joke about Wagner-his music's not as bad as it sounds. Can you see out of that eye?'

'Sure. So this's what you pay the big mortgage on? Pretty nice.'

'Location, location, location.'

The apartment had a short, wide hallway giving on to a big, light, airy living room with several rooms leading off it. The windows ran from waist high almost to the ceiling and the outlook was to the east. I'm always amazed to see how many trees there really are in Sydney. The sky was cloudy and visibility wasn't good but I suspected there'd be a view of water on a clear day. The room had a good lived-in feel, with books, magazines, CDs and DVDs not put away where they belonged. What looked like the day's broadsheets lay around, haphazardly folded open.

At her invitation I sat near a low table on a comfortable chair and she brought in coffee. She glanced at her watch as she set the tray down.