Peter Corris - Casino

She steered me through to another dim room and helped me to lower myself onto a couch. She dropped her bag and my jacket beside me. ‘Fear not,’ she said. ‘I’m cooking a curry. I’m a curry freak. I like to come back all sweaty from a run and eat curry and sweat some more. Kooky, huh?’

I closed my eyes. I didn’t have the energy to reply, but I was glad curry smelled like curry.

‘Take it easy. I’ll just get your shoes off here and get a cushion under your head. Let’s see your eyes.’

I opened up and found myself looking at a slightly wrinkled, narrow brow, a beaky nose and intense, dark eyes. I blinked. ‘You win the staring contest.’

‘Big deal. Any bleeding from your ears? No? Not a skull fracture. I don’t think you have concussion. A bit of shock, maybe. Rest up. I’ll feed Dylan and be back pronto.’

Shock? I thought. From a couple of taps like that? In my book, if I wasn’t concussed I was OK. I struggled up into a sitting position and looked around the room-minimal furniture, books galore, lots of music on vinyl and cassette. A piece of cloth-covered pasteboard with a massive montage of photographs, paper clippings, postcards and stickers occupied most of one wall. I guessed I could get a pretty good reading of Vita Drewe’s life from it if I had the strength to get up and take a look. I made it to my feet and snuffled across the room. I leaned against the wall and looked at the mass of images. Somehow, I’d expected Vita herself to appear in many of them but she was in very few. About some things she hadn’t been lying-there were river scenes and desert scenes and other rugged outdoor stuff. The whole kaleidoscope was difficult to take in quickly but, at a guess, there were as many pictures of men as of women. It looked as if I was wrong about the significance of the portrait of V. Woolf.

‘What are you doing?’

She came into the room silently, having taken off her squeaky sneakers. She’d let her hair out and it fell thick and slightly crinkly to her shoulders. She had a can of mineral water in one hand and a packet of Panadol in the other-a modern Flo Nightingale.

‘Snooping.’

‘Hey, that’s cool. I wouldn’t have it all up there like that if I didn’t want people to look, right? But you shouldn’t be moving around till we’re sure you’re OK.’

I liked that ‘we’. I liked this strange woman with her skinny limbs and crinkly hair and face-transforming smile. My head had stopped aching, but that might have been in anticipation of the pain-killers. My face felt tight and puffy but my knee felt all right; only the shoulder bothered me-not a bad outcome.

‘The Panadol’s a great idea,’ I said. ‘But have you got anything else to wash ‘em down with?’

‘I’ve got a bottle of Jack Daniels left over from my thirtieth birthday party. Somebody must’ve thought I drank that stuff.’

‘You don’t?’

She grinned. ‘I do. Sometimes.’

I staggered back to the couch and faked a collapse, hurting my shoulder. ‘I reckon that’s what I need.’

She threw the packet to me and I fumbled the catch but held it. She spun around and went out, the dark hair swishing around her shoulders. I tapped out three tablets and let them sit in the palm of my left hand. I noticed then that I’d grazed the hand at some time in the proceedings. Both hands bloodied. Two-fisted Hardy. All the more reason for the pain-killers.

‘I don’t run to serving trays. This is the bread board.’

She had a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels on the board along with two glasses, a bowl of ice and the mineral water. There was also a plate with a couple of slices of some kind of pie on it. She put the board on the floor and selected a cassette. Soft rock with a touch of soul. Unobjectionable. She sat next to me on the couch.

‘If you could see yourself, Cliff, you’d understand why the food. You look like an old grey wolf, starving to death. When did you last eat?’

‘I had lunch. I forget what.’

She shoved the plate at me. ‘Eat. Then you get to drink’

‘I need the pills.’

She poured out a measure of mineral water and I swallowed the tablets. The spinach pie was good and I managed to get down a few mouthfuls before my throat seized up and I fell back into my picking and crumbling routine. I realised then that I’d been doing this for days. I forced some more of the food down and then pushed the plate away.

‘A drink,’ I said. ‘Please.’

She made a solid one for me and a weaker one for herself. I took a swig and watched her eat a piece of pie with obvious enjoyment. I felt sour and old and damaged in the presence of someone sounder and younger and healthier. Not a good feeling. I felt a little better after some more of the whisky went down.

‘So,’ she said. ‘Somebody stole your files?’

‘Yes, Roberts and… ‘

‘Cornwall. Does that make any sense?’

I shrugged and felt the dull pain in the shoulder. Not as bad, but still there. ‘Not to me. I’ll have to follow up on it though. It might mean something.’

I finished my drink and let her make me another. Then I described my two assailants.

She said, ‘Eat some more pie while I think. Otherwise you’re going to get drunk and you won’t be any good in bed.’

‘I’m not sure that’s going to happen.’ But I was interested.

‘We’ll see.’ She stared at the montage while I ate. The pills were starting to work and nothing was hurting as much. What with the whisky and the music I was feeling relaxed.

‘Not the bald one,’ she said. ‘The other guy maybe, but like I said, I’d have to see him to be sure.’

I’d almost forgotten what she was supposed to be thinking about-whether either of the men who’d broken into my car resembled the man she’d seen with Scott. I hadn’t expected a matchup, I was just going through the motions. I sipped my drink and tried to sort things out in a professional way. How had I been targeted? Presumably by someone watching Scott’s office. The who and the why that went with that would just have to hang in the air.

She peeled off her socks and wriggled her toes. ‘So what are you thinking about now?’

‘Somebody must be keeping an eye on Scott’s office. My going there set off some kind of signal. Did we have your door closed when we were talking?’

She squinted, remembering. ‘I think it was sorta ajar. That’s the way it hangs. Anyhow, the walls in that place are so thin you could hear from the next room, either side.’

‘I’d better ring Gina. Make sure she’s all right. You could be drawn into this, too, Vita, whatever the hell it is.’

She pointed. ‘The phone’s in the bedroom, through there. Don’t worry about Vita, she can take care of herself She reached into her bag and came up with a snub-nosed pistol. ‘Beretta Puma, and I know how to use it.’

The way she handled it suggested she did. ‘You’re full of surprises.’

‘It’s licensed. I told you, I’m the caretaker here. Those poor fucked-up junkies think a pathology lab’s a place to keep drugs. Go use the phone. Check on your client, Mr Detective.’

Her tone was hard to interpret but my concern about Gina overrode that. I took the rest of my second drink with me and went into the bedroom. It was dim and large with a low double bed jammed against the wall making space for an exercise bike, more bookshelves and a desk with a computer. The phone was on the floor beside the bed. I sat down gingerly and was pleased to realise that I could remember Scott’s home number. My left arm was giving me trouble and I had to juggle the phone awkwardly.

A man answered the phone and I asked to speak to Gina.

‘Who’s calling?’ Fair enough question, under the circumstances, but I didn’t see the need for the hostile tone.