Peter Corris - Wet Graves

All this had taken me a couple of hours, but I hadn’t spent much of Louise Madden’s money. I hadn’t even got a receipt for the photocopies. So a cab to the Rocks seemed not unreasonable.

We pulled up near enough to the Argyle Centre for me to feel that, with the best will in the world, restorers and preservers have an uphill battle. The old buildings were too clean, too sanitised to be convincing, even though every stone in them was original and genuine. Still, since leaving it alone isn’t an option, cleaning it up is better than tearing it down. Around a couple of corners in Pump Street things changed for the better or the worse, depending on your point of view. The narrow houses seemed to be holding each other up and for decades corroded guttering and downpipes had leaked rusty water across stones and cement, leaving a brown stain that would never wear away. Though none of the buildings was more than two storeys high, they blocked out the late afternoon sunshine so that the street was cold and gloomy. No trees, no front gardens sprouting wattle. This was more like the old Rocks-convict-built, working-class-inhabited, drink-loving and police-hating. A large red brick warehouse or bond store dominated the end of the street.

A man in a heavy overcoat turned out of a lane ahead of me and hurried along the narrow footpath. The street was lined with terrace houses and he disappeared into one of them, maybe number 43A, maybe the house next door, I couldn’t be sure. Number 43A was a skinny sandstone terrace, one of five built so that you stepped directly from the front door onto the footpath. The balcony above had been boxed in with fibro cement and dimpled glass louvres. The door was scarred at the bottom by generations of collisions with solid boots, and its locks had been changed so many times that the area around the present one was composed of as much old, cracked putty and paint as wood. I knocked and then rubbed my hands together. It was cold in Pump Street, really cold. I jammed my hands into my pockets and waited. A few cars cruised by and a man carrying a half-carton of beer weaved across the street and went into the house al the end of the terrace. To gain admittance he kicked at the bottom of the door. I was getting nowhere, and considered trying a kick. I knocked again and heard a shuffling inside.

“Yes?”

I had to look a long way down to see the face of the woman who had opened the door a few inches. Even then it was hard. She was a tiny, bent figure with white hair and her back was so bowed the unbuttoned cardigan she wore hung almost to the floor. She turned her head sideways to look up at me-ancient eyes in a face so lined and wrinkled that it looked like an ill-fitting rubber mask. Her head sat stiffly at an odd angle to her shoulders and she had to swivel the upper part of her body to change her line of vision.

“I’m looking for Stan Livermore,” I said. “Does he live here?”

She poked a yellow arthritic claw out from the greasy, turned-back sleeve of the cardigan. “Five dollars.”

“What?”

“I ask everyone who knocks at my bloody door for five dollars. You’d be surprised how many pay up.”

I paid up in coins. She waited patiently while I collected the amount. She stuffed the money in a pocket of the cardigan and shuffled back. “Just a minute,” I said. “I asked you about Mr Livermore.”

“Old Stan?”

“That’s right.”

“Silly old bugger.”

The idea of this crone emphasising the fact of someone else’s age struck me as funny and I smiled.

“What’re you laughing at?”

Even with her head turned like that, dry, moth-eaten hair hanging in her face and the skin around them warty and puckered like a toad’s, the eyes were still serving her. “Nothing,” I said. “Look, madam, it’s terribly cold out here. Could I come in?”

“You might rape me.”

“I won’t, I assure you.” I showed her my licence as if a piece of paper was some kind of guarantee against rape.

“Hardy,” she said, reading the licence from a distance of a couple of feet. “Knew a woman named Hardy once. Silly bitch.”

“Mrs…?”

“Tracey, Betty Tracey. Have you got live dollars?”

“I already gave you five dollars. They’re in your pocket.”

I was suddenly aware of sounds around and above me. A door had opened in the next house, and a couple of the louvre windows had been operated. I guessed what was going on-old Betty was putting on her show for an always-appreciative audience. It was called ‘Make the stranger look like an idiot’ and it ran for as many acts as he was dopey enough to allow. I didn’t feel like playing. I took out a twenty-dollar note and waved it in front of Betty’s forty-five-degree face. Suddenly she was the bit player and I was the lead. I snapped the note. “If you want this, invite me in.”

She stepped back and let the door open wide enough to let me as well as my money pass through it. But that was as much as she was willing to concede. She let the door sit ajar and moved only a few feet down the hallway. There was almost no light; I had an impression of narrow, steep stairs at the end of the passage and one room off to the right.

“Are you going to give me the money or rape me? Did you see that Lady whatshername got raped? She was older than me.”

She was referring to a wealthy titled north shore woman whose life had ended the way no one’s should-raped, robbed, bashed to death. The recollection made me disinclined to any kind of coercion. Risking the chance that she’d suddenly stand up straight and waltz away up the stairs, I handed her the twenty. “I want to talk to Stan Livermore. I was given this as his address. Does he live here?”

“Old Stan?”

Oh, Christ, not again, I thought. “Yes, old Stan. Is he here?”

“No.”

“Does he live here?”

She folded the note three times and put it in the pocket along with the coins. “Yes.”

“Where is he now?”

She sucked in a deep breath and sniffed. Slowly, she swivelled her head around in a ninety degree turn so that instead of looking up with her head cocked towards her right shoulder, it was cocked towards her left. The manoeuvre seemed to take a full minute. When she was ready she sniffed again and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “What’s the time?”

Here we go, I thought. I looked at my watch. “Nearly half-past four.”

“You’ve got about three-quarters of an hour to catch him, then.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I know where he’ll be till quarter past five, after that it’s anybody’s guess. Might come back here tonight, might not.”

“Right. Understood. Where will he be until five fifteen?”

She paused and I waited for more sniffs, more citations of rape cases or more requests for money. Maybe she considered all three but she settled for a sniff. “He’ll be in the Botanic Gardens, watching the bloody sun go down behind the bloody bridge. Does it every day it isn’t pissing down rain. Silly old bugger.”

“So he’s still the secretary of this Veterans of the Bridge thing?”

“‘Course he is. All he thinks about. Him and a couple others just as mad.”

“Where in the gardens?”

She shrugged, which in her case was more of a horizontal movement than a vertical one. “Anywhere he can get a good view. Could be Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, could be closer to the Opera House. Anywhere. Took me to see it once. Silly old bugger. Sun goin’ down behind the bloody bridge. So what?”

I was moving towards the door, calculating time and distance. “How will I recognise him?”

“Old Stan? Easy, only one of his kind in captivity. White beard down to here.” She bunched her cardigan together at the waist. The coins fell out on the floor. Well, she didn’t have far to go to pick them up. I hit the footpath running.