Peter Corris - Wet Graves

“Ray knows the boat. He’s seen it quite a few times. Says it’s a flashy number with a good deal of rot in the hull.”

“Does he know where it is now?”

“No, but he can find out for you first thing in the morning.”

I gave him the home and office numbers and got a number for Ray in return. We exchanged a few more pleasantries and I promised again to visit him and Pat in Cammeray. Maybe this time I would.

All things considered, it looked as if I was through for the night. But you can’t be too sure. I hung around outside the gambling joint until Lou Campisi staggered out. He had to root around in his pockets for cab fare and since he was drunk this made a pantomime which would have been amusing if you didn’t know that the man had been a good jockey and a good fly half. I tailed the taxi, partly to check whether Lou might have had pangs of conscience or pocket that might take him to see Jackson, drunk and all as he was. Also it never hurts to stay in practice.

But the petrol was wasted. The taxi dropped Lou in Newtown; there was an argument about the fare, and then Lou reeled through the gate and up the steps of a boarding house. After a struggle he got a key into the lock and went inside. Lou was tucked up safe for the night; Jackson was sporting himself in a floating casino and my head was hurting again. I was glad Ray didn’t have the location of the Pavarotti to hand-I didn’t feel up to a row or a swim.

I slept for six hours, which meant that I was up and making coffee as it started to get light. The house was cold and I turned on heaters and waited for the morning paper to hit the front door. I collected it and tore the front page getting the wrapper off. The tear went right through a report on the bad balance of payments figures, which saved me from having to read it. I picked my way through the rest of the paper without much interest until I spotted a small item on page four. It was headed ‘Body found in harbour’. Apparently the body of a man had been fished out of the water at Dawes Point. As yet unidentified, the body was of a middle-aged man of average build with no distinguishing marks. That gave me something to think about while I ate toast, shaved, drank more coffee and waited for Ray Guthrie’s call.

“Mr Hardy?” It was the voice I remembered-private school overlaid by the accents picked up in a working life as a boat charterer and repairer.

“Call me Cliff, Ray. How are you?”

“Just fine. I located that houseboat for you, the Pavarotti. Good name, lousy boat.”

“Where is it?”

“Darling Point.”

I had the yellow pages open again and ran my finger down the listings. “I can’t see a marina there.”

“It’s not at a marina, more of a private jetty. One of the few left around there.”

“It must be a big jetty.”

“Big house, big garden, big jetty. Can you tell me why you’re interested, Cliff? I hope you’re not planning to buy it.”

I laughed. “You wouldn’t advise it?”

“No way. It looks good from a distance, probably looks its best at night, but it’s got lots of problems.”

“I’m told it moves around the harbour a bit.”

“One of these days it’ll move down.” Ray was smart enough to see that I wasn’t going to answer his question, and secure enough not to be offended. He’d married his childhood sweetheart, had a son and a daughter and a good business, why shouldn’t he be secure? Still, he’d had a wild phase once and wild men never completely calm down. “Do you need any help? Like to approach from the water side, perhaps? I’d be happy to…”

I thanked him but refused. He told me that the houseboat had been at Darling Point for two days, and that it generally stayed for a week at wherever it tied up. More thanks from me and a reluctant “See you”, from him. I had to be careful. How did it go again? “A licensed private enquiry agent shall not employ in any way whatsoever in connection with his business as a sub-agent any person who is not a licensed sub-agent.” Section 19(1), or thereabouts.

The day had started cold and wasn’t going to warm up much. The sky was clear, with some cloud over in the west; the wind seemed to be blowing gently from all quarters; anything could happen. I wore a sweater under my jacket and when I tried to stuff a scarf into a pocket I found the gun still there. I put the gun away in the glovebox of the car, but no matter how hard you try you always end up breaking the rules-I wasn’t keeping my notes on the Madden case up to date. I should have made an entry before I set off: “to morgue to view body found in harbour”.

Proximity to the Arundel Street morgue is not one of the reasons I live in Glebe. I’ve visited the liver-coloured brick building more often than I care to remember, and it doesn’t improve on acquaintance: too clean, too smooth, too final. I filled in a form and showed my threatened licence to an attendant, who noted my name down carefully on a list that carried three other names.

“What’s that for?” I said.

The attendant, a young Asian man in a white coat who had several medical textbooks on his desk looked up at me over the tops of his half moon glasses. “For the police. They want the name of everyone who views the body.”

“Good,” I said.

The would-be doctor passed me on to another attendant, an older, tired-looking individual, who showed me through several sets of heavy perspex doors down artificially lit corridors to the chamber where the bodies are stored. It’s like you see in the movies, except that the refrigerated compartments pull out widthwise rather than lengthwise, like a crisper drawer. The attendant, who wore thick rubber gloves, undid two clasps and slid the drawer out a few inches.

“Hands clear,” he said.

I clasped my hands behind me like the Duke Of Edinburgh and leaned forward to look. The deceased was naked, bloated and blue. The body carried a lot of wounds and what I took to be bruises-dark, pulpy discolourations on the shoulders and thighs and around the wrists and ankles.

“Glass bottom,” the attendant said, “if you want to look at the back.”

“Like on the Barrier Reef,” I said.

He didn’t smile and I didn’t need to look at the back of the corpse-the man had been of shorter, blockier build than Brian Madden and had lacked his thick pepper and salt hair. Bald, anonymous and dead. There’s not much to say about a corpse that’s been in the water a while. It’s as if the sea has wiped away status, career, personality, history, the lot. I shook my head and the drawer slid back with scarcely a sound. The label on the front read DROWNED MALE.

The attendant moved a plastic bucket aside with his foot. He’d had it all ready to bring into use. He looked almost apologetic. “You’ve done this before,’” he said.

“Yes.”

“So had the last copper who was here. Didn’t matter. I still had to use the bucket.”

We held the door open and we went out into the corridor where the air was warmer but still smelled of death. “The police are interested in this one, are they?” I said.

He shrugged. Maybe he only liked to talk about buckets.

Back at the desk I surprised the aspiring medico running a pink marker pen through a paragraph in a physiology text-book. He looked guilty. “Important passage,” he said.

“Good luck to you. Can you give me the name of the policeman who asked you to keep that list?”

He tapped his teeth with the pen. “Sergeant Meredith.”

“Did he leave you his number?”

“I think so.” He searched among the books, pens, papers and used tissues on his desk, examined several slips of paper with writing on them, but shook his head each time. “I can’t find it, but it doesn’t matter. He’s due in now with someone to look at the body. You can talk to him in person.”