Peter Corris - The Washington Club

I changed, we tossed for serve. He won. I picked an end and after a brief hit-up we got down to it. I hadn’t played for a while and not on grass for a long time. I was rusty in the hit-up. I’ve got a heavy, fairly accurate first serve; the second I just try to spin in. I hit my forehand flat and slice and chip the backhand. I’m shaky overhead and my backhand volley is suspect; forehand volley’s better. All in all, my game was better suited to the grass than his. Every so often, his heavily top-spun ground strokes tended to sit up and give me time to get set for a good hit. Also he occasionally mishit one. He preferred the back court but he was no slouch at the net.

His weakness was his mean streak. He liked to embarrass an opponent with a dinky little drop shot every now and then. The first time he tried it he caught me flat-footed and I could see the expression of pleasure on his face. Trouble was, he started that expression when he was thinking about playing the next shot, so that the next time I was ready for it and lobbed over him. That left him running backwards, mistiming his shot and me dropping it dead just over the net. Todd didn’t like that. He liked it even less when it happened twice more.

Still, he was younger, faster and a better player than me and I had no chance of beating him unless he broke a leg. The disadvantage to two-handed hitting is that you have to be closer to the ball to hit it and you can get jammed by a straight, fast serve. I had him stretching a few times and jammed him every so often. But once he found the range and adapted to my style, he whipped those two-handers past me if I tried to come in and found sharp angles if I played from the back court. Ordinarily, I’d have enjoyed the game, even if I was losing. I hit some good shots and aced him a few times. But I was pissed-off that he insisted on coaching me.

‘You’re off-balance, Warwick.’

‘You’re dropping the racquet head.’

‘Hit through it, mate.’

A light wind got up and the sunlight began to come in shafts through the clouds, so that one minute the court would be brightly lit and the next in shadow. Tricky. The thunder rumbled closer when he had me 3–5 down. He was serving for the set and I chased everything and hit the two best shots I’d played to date. The score got to my advantage which rattled him. I decided I’d had enough. He probably would have won it anyway, but I lost the next point to a deliberate mishit and we were back to deuce. He went ad-up after a kicking serve that might have missed the line, hard to say. Todd tended to call the lines himself and always his way. He won the set with a down-the-line shot that had me running the wrong way. I was dripping with sweat when I jogged up to the net to shake his hand. The first drops of rain fell.

‘Hope you have better luck against the bloke you’re playing. You lack a bit of speed.’

‘I’ve got guile,’ I panted. ‘Thanks, Todd. Shit, I need a shower. Okay to use the clubhouse?’

‘Sure.’ He went to his bag and took out a plastic tag like the one Mrs Kent had given me. ‘This’ll get you in. I’ll just tidy up here a bit.’

I couldn’t believe the luck. I made a feeble offer to help him but he waved me away. I collected my clothes and walked quickly back to the Nissan. I dumped the suit, the racquet and tennis bag and took out the bag with the casual gear. It also happened to have my. 38 inside it. A study of the brochure had shown that there was a side entrance to the club leading directly to the squash court, swimming pool, gym, sauna and locker room. Less chance of meeting Mrs Kent, but I kept the peak of my cap drawn down over my face as much as possible anyway.

There were a few lap swimmers trawling up and down and I could hear grunts from the weights room. A tough game of squash was in progress. It made me think of Cy. They’d be finished at Rookwood now and the long sit-in at the house would have begun. I pushed open the door to the locker room thinking that Cy would have choked about the WASP pretentiousness of this place. ‘Stained woodwork to convey an air of spurious antiquity,’ he would have said, or something such. I was missing him and I was angry about everything.

The locker room was empty. I inhaled the familiar smell of sweat and liniment, strode to the bank of lockers and dumped my bag down in front of C20. A name tag slipped into the space provided read ‘W. KATZ’. The key was in a zip pocket of the bag. I took it out and tried it. The door, nearly as tall as me, swung smoothly open. The locker was deep and divided into two compartments. On the top shelf was a pair of sneakers, some tennis balls and an unsealed padded jiffy bag. I opened it and a thick quarto sized notebook slid out. I caught it before it hit the tiles and flipped through a few pages. It was a kind of diary-cum-journal. The language looked like German but I was willing to bet it was Yiddish and that the writer was Klaus Rosen. I put the notebook on top of my bag.

In the lower part of the locker were an empty sports bag, two tennis racquets and something wrapped in heavy plastic. I pulled it out and was surprised at its lightness, but not by its size or shape. What I had in my hands was an assault rifle-folded-down, moulded plastic stock, handgrip, trigger guard. Taped to it were two other items also plastic-wrapped- at a guess, a magazine and a telescopic sight.

The door whispered open and I spun around. My gun was only inches away, but tucked deep inside my bag. Wilson Katz had a pistol in his hand, pointed at my chest and all ready to fire. So did Todd Rattray.

Katz said, ‘You killed Henderson. My compliments. That makes you a very dangerous man.’

‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Noel must’ve told you. You’re in tight with him as well as Van Kep.’

‘That’s right.’

Rattray locked the door and moved to Katz’s left, blocking the way to the showers and toilets. The room was about five metres by five with benches along two of the walls and another in front of the bank of lockers. There were wall-mounted mirrors, two hand basins, hair dryers, sockets for electric razors, no windows. The lighting was overhead and concealed-perfect for shooting. Katz was standing about three metres away from me, looking composed and prepared. His gun hand wasn’t all that steady, but it would have been hard for him to miss at the range. I sat down on the bench, still holding the useless rifle.

‘Put it on the floor,’ Katz said.

I did. ‘That’s the gun that killed Fleischman and Cy Sackville,’ I said. ‘Henderson was the shooter. You did the hiring.’

‘Right again. It’s a bit late for you to work all this out, Hardy.’

‘Oh, I worked some of it out a while ago. I just didn’t think Noel would be tied in to you and I hadn’t quite figured a hook-up between Todd here and you and Van Kep. I didn’t think you’d have any hooks into the witness protection program either. Should have. Dumb of me.’

I was lying. I’d intuited Katz’s involvement but hadn’t counted on him being hands-on.

Katz laughed, then shook his head. ‘Right. I’ve got hooks into all sorts of things. You’d be surprised. You did pretty well to get this far. I assume you found the locker key at Henderson’s. How did you connect it with this place?’

‘Just luck.’

Rattray sniggered. ‘You’re not much fucking better at all this shit than you are at tennis.’

‘I tanked the last game.’

‘Bullshit, you…’

‘Shut up!’ Katz said. ‘The question is, have you told anyone else about how far your figuring took you? My guess is you’ve only told Claudia and that hardly matters.’

I didn’t like the sound of that one bit. ‘You can’t be sure of that. But what d’you mean?’