Peter Corris - The Washington Club

Frank was standing by the window in his office in the Darlinghurst Police Centre, looking towards the city. There were a surprising number of trees to be seen in that direction. He swung around as soon as I entered and stuck out his hand.

‘Gidday, Cliff. You look pretty good, considering.’

We shook and I joined him by the window.

‘Considering what?’

‘Oh, years on the clock, bottles and glasses, blast grenades, things like that.’

I grunted. ‘You heard about Cy?’

‘Of course. I’m sorry, mate. He was a good bloke-great bloke in fact, for a fucking lawyer.’

He sat on the edge of his desk which was untidy, covered with papers and reports and all the other snowstorm of bumf that descends on bureaucrats. Essentially that was what Frank now was. He was about my height and weight, a few years older but he didn’t look it. He and Hilde were passionate tennis players and they exercised so as not to lose their suppleness. Me, I exercise hard when I’ve got the time and so far I’m holding up reasonably well. Although Frank paid his dues as a beat policeman and detective, he didn’t get his nose broken in the boxing ring, cop malaria in Malay when fighting the Chinese communists and stop a lot of fists and several bullets. That’s my explanation for my treadmarked face.

‘What can I do for you, Cliff?’

‘You know I was working for Cy on Claudia Fleischman’s defence?’

Frank nodded.

‘She didn’t do it, Frank.’

‘You sure that’s not your dick talking?’

There were never any punches pulled between Frank and me. That’s how we both played it and oddly it worked. We both thought that pussyfooting causes more misunderstandings and resentments than directness. Frank would have learned things from Bolton when he knew I wanted to see him, and he wouldn’t hold back from drawing obvious conclusions.

‘Let me rephrase that,’ I said. ‘I believe she didn’t do it. I also believe that Cy’s murder has something to do with the Fleischman case.’

‘Evidence?’

‘Scrappy.’ I sucked in a breath and gave him as good as he’d given me. ‘I know the police are under pressure to settle the Fleischman thing and that you’ve got a neat package with Van Kep and all. I say it’s bullshit.’

‘Okay. What d’you want?’

‘How’re Hilde and the boy?’

Frank shook his head. ‘Cliff, that’s not worthy of you.’

‘Humour me. I’ve lost one of my best friends and, as you say, my dick’s involved.’

He opened his hands. ‘Ask.’

‘I want to have a talk with Van Kep.’

‘Jesus, Cliff. I can’t do it. He’s a protected witness.’

‘He’s a lying turd. Claudia hired him to protect her from Fleischman. Someone turned him around and he killed Fleischman and lumbered her.’

Frank shook his head. ‘You’re way off. Van Kep couldn’t kill anyone. They’ve done extensive psychological tests on him. The muscles and balls are all for show-he’s a physical coward, doesn’t know whether he’s AC or DC sexually and is as dumb as shit with just enough brains to act bright.’

I could have told Frank about Haitch Henderson then, suggested him as the trigger-man, captured his interest. I didn’t. I wanted Henderson for myself, and something else, something unexpected, was building inside me. I was noting Frank’s shirt, white with a thin grey line in the weave; his tennis club tie and the double-breasted blazer on a hanger on a low clothes stand in the corner of the office. In the old days Frank used to drop his single-breasted Grace Bros suit coat over the back of his chair and feel in the pockets for pens and failed lottery tickets to scribble on. I was aware of the difference between a career and a living, between a marriage and what was probably going to be just another ‘relationship’, with all the trouble that can involve. I bubbled over.

‘Fuck you, Frank. You’ve got it soft. You can coast to a pension or a fucking payout that’ll keep you in Slazenger Topspins for life. I’m still out there trying to make shit fit.’

Frank stared at me for what seemed like a long time; his long, lean face was set in hard lines with all the friendship gone out of it. I knew that desk jockeying wasn’t to his taste and that he’d taken the position because it was his due and because, with a wife and child, it didn’t make sense for him to be sitting in cars with shotguns or walking up to houses with shuttered windows. I’d scored a bullseye and I was ashamed of it.

‘Frank, I’m sorry. I…’

‘Don’t worry about it. There’s a lot in what you say and you don’t know the half of it. This fucking job’s mostly paper shuffling and what isn’t is just politics.’

I eased up out of my chair. ‘I know. I shouldn’t have asked you.’

‘Sit down! Let me think. You made the appointment with Abigail, did you talk to anyone else?’

‘No.’

‘Sign the book downstairs?’

‘Come on, Frank. I wrote David Ritchie of Burnt Ridge, Kempsey.’

Parker nodded. It was a favourite false name of mine. David Ritchie was the real name of the Aboriginal boxer, Dave Sands, who was killed in a truck accident in 1952. It was one of the regrets of my life that I was too young to have seen him fight. People whose judgment I respected said he was the best ever. Frank had seen him at Rushcutters Bay and was one of the praise-singers.

‘Okay,’ Frank said. ‘Abigail’s reliable, but I’m still putting my arse on the line here. If you fuck up… Hilde’s told me how women can turn your brains to shit.’

‘Don’t do it if you don’t want to.’

‘Fuck you. On the way out you’d better be the invisible man.’

I nodded. He was still working himself up to do something dangerous and I gave him the time. Again, I felt guilty about putting him in the position, but an image of Claudia-frizzy hair and dark red parted lips-came into my mind and I held my ground.

‘D’you think the same guy did the hits on Fleischman and Sackville?’

I wanted to say, Yes! Yes! But I couldn’t do that to him and he was leaning forward slightly in his chair, watching me intently. I rubbed my closely shaven jaw where the bristles were just starting to break through. The Claudia image had gone and I was left out there where the only signposts are the ones you write yourself.

‘I honestly don’t know, Frank. I haven’t got any details on how Fleischman got it yet. I read about it at the time but the details didn’t stick. If it was a handgun at close range, no way.’

‘Rifle. Two shots through the pump from about a hundred yards or so.’

‘It could be the same shooter.’

Frank sighed, swung away, gazed out the window and swung back again. ‘Have you got your notebook handy?’ he said.

It didn’t surprise me that I saw no-one I knew on the way out of the building. For one reason or another, many of the cops I used to know have left the force and the new breed seems more interested in computer spreadsheets and printouts than in clocking faces. There seemed to be more women on the premises than I remembered from my last visit and several Asian faces. Some of the better old hardheads like Grant Evans, who’d stretched the rules for me a few times when I first got into the PEA game, would have struggled to accommodate these developments and made the adjustment more or less. But Grant had gone down to a force nine coronary a few years back, and I didn’t like to think how close we were together in age.

The needle on the parking meter swung into the expired zone just as I reached the Camry. I gave it the finger, deactivated the alarm, opened the door and the mobile phone buzzed.

‘Hardy,’ I said, crouching into the car.