Peter Corris - Wet Graves

“Ice hockey, in Canada.”

“Oh. Yeah. I’m with you.” I’d seen North American hockey games on TV. I remembered watching one with Helen Broadway. She called it an abattoir on ice, which was about right.

Frank turned into Glebe Point Road. Tired as I was, I still instinctively helped him to drive the car, checked the oncoming traffic and mentally changed down. Even crazier in this instance, because Frank’s car was an automatic. Parker glanced at me as I twitched in the passenger seat. “Meredith’s a bright man. Did a postgraduate degree in criminology at McGill University. He’s a bit of a hothead but he had… he’s got a bright future.”

I nodded and wished I hadn’t. Inside my head little popping noises were getting louder and louder. I could hardly hear what Frank was saying, and my own voice sounded thin and far off. “He saved my arse back there on the houseboat. That’s for sure.”

“Care to tell me how he came to be there?”

“Missing persons case,” I said. “We’re working on parallel lines. I mean our lines of inquiry intersected… Shit, Frank, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

Parker pulled up outside my house.

“It’s all right. I’ll have Meredith’s number two give you a ring. Bloke named Wren, Ralph Wren. He’s OK.”

“Make it the day after tomorrow,” I said. “I’m knackered.”

“Right. Need a hand?”

I opened the car door and almost fell out onto the pavement. Parker moved as if to get out of his seat, but I shook my fist at him. “I’m OK, Frank. Thanks for every-thing. Go home to Hilde. I’m OK. I’ll try to see Meredith tomorrow.”

Parker reached over and closed the door. The window had been open because I’d wanted the cold air on my flushed face. “Get some sleep, Cliff,” he said, “and don’t do anything on your case until you talk to Wren.”

I saluted and lurched towards the front gate. I didn’t have my gun or my oilskin any more. I’d lost some brain cells and several inches of skin from various parts of my anatomy. But I had my key. I scratched and scraped until I got it in the lock and turned it. I was thinking of a hot bath. Maybe a hot drink as well. Rum and hot water. It’d probably knock me out and I’d drown in the bath. But the bath leaked and if I had one I’d have to mop up the water in the morning. I couldn’t face that. Not a wet mop! Not ever again! I went into the musty, closed-all-day, no-fun-being-had-here-smelling house, turning on lights and trying to feel human.

The daybed in the sitting room beckoned me, but I made it to the kitchen and a tap. I washed my face at the sink and dried it on a dishcloth which smelled of cat food. Where was the cat? I looked around and called out to him in a voice I hardly recognised. If I’d been a cat I wouldn’t have come to that voice. The cat didn’t. I drank two cups of water, staggered through to the day bed and lay down. I jerked up like a marionette to pull off my jacket and thought about turning off the lights. Thought about it, didn’t do it. I passed out into a black and grey zone of sonar booms, drifting smoke and bright flashing lights that made sounds like the little, ten-for-a-penny Tom Thumb firecrackers I used to let off when I was a kid.

When I woke up, somewhere around eight a.m., I knew I should have had the bath, plus a massage and a long sleep in a soft, warm bed. The daybed is a hard, unyielding structure that Helen accused me of installing to deter casual, stopover visitors. Maybe she was right; she often was. I levered myself off the thing and moved towards the shower, bent over like a bell-ringer, hoping the hot water would help me to straighten up. In the kitchen the cat confronted me and demanded that I straighten up sooner, preferably with a can opener in my hand. I told it to get lost and went through to the cold, draughty bathroom to get myself some steam.

It took about an hour-steam, coffee with rum toast with honey and a feeding of the cat-but eventually I felt better. Well enough, anyway, to sit down by the telephone and think about what to do next. It would have been nice to just sit there with my second rum-laced coffee and drift for a while. Let things sort themselves out in my mind, wait for connections. Instead, I rang Louise Madden in Leura and asked when I could see her.

“Why?” she said.

“To talk. I might be onto something, but I need to talk to you.”

“Why can’t we talk now? We are talking now.”

“I think my phone might be tapped. Nothing to do with this matter, but…”

“My, my. You are the man of mystery, aren’t you? I’m working on a garden in Castlecrag today. That any good to you?”

It was; it was even a connection of a kind. I arranged to meet her at the address in Castlecrag in mid afternoon. My next call was to Paul Guthrie at Northbridge. Castlecrag and Northbridge, not bad. It could just have easily been Northbridge and Chipping Norton. I told Guthrie that the information Ray had given me had been very helpful, and that I needed Ray’s help again.

“You sound a bit shaky,” Guthrie said.

“I’m fine. I’d like to see Ray. Where would I find him, say, later this after-noon?”

“Right here if you want. You just have to ask, Cliff.”

I didn’t feel good about it. Old fathers have no right to command the movements of their young sons, but the Guthries were a close-knit family, almost sharing the same mind. So perhaps it wasn’t too bad. I said I’d be at the Northbridge house around six, and Paul Guthrie assured me his son would be there. That left me with about six hours to fill and two things to do-recover my car and visit, if that was possible, Detective Sergeant Meredith in St Vincents Hospital.

I had the car keys in my jacket pocket. I walked up Glebe Point Road past the cafes and bookshops and caught a cab just this side of Parramatta Road. In Darling Point I found the Falcon just as I’d left it except that there was a flyer under the wiper. “Protect your Independence,” it read. “Your Independent local member is under threat from the conservative government’s plan to change the com-position of the Parliament. Write to me. Write to the Premier.” I crumpled up the paper and was about to drop it into one of the big plastic garbage bins that help to keep Darling Point clean when I took a good look at the neighbourhood. I thought the ‘local Independent member’ had a right to be concerned-the big, white houses with their gardens and driveways and high walls smacked of conformity rather than independence. I unfolded the notice and tucked it into a wrought iron gate, just above the security lock.

Hospital visits might be some people’s idea of a kick, but not mine. For me, there’s always too much waiting about, too many starched white uniforms and too much of a feeling that the walls are saying, “You’re on your feet now, but you could be on a trolley tomorrow.”

I gave my name at the desk and after seeing two nurses and a policeman-it’s standard procedure to have a cop on duty after a cop has been shot, why I’m not sure-I was allowed to see Meredith.

“He’s out of intensive care,” the ward sister who was escorting me to Meredith’s room said. “He’s such a strong man! He responded to everything the doctors did.”

“You sound surprised, sister. Do most intensive care patients die?”

She looked as if she had things to say on the subject but thought better of it. “Yes, eventually, Mr Hardy. We all do. Even doctors. He’s in here.” She pushed open a door. “Five minutes.”

“And no arm wrestling,” I said. I can’t help it-hospitals and nurses affect me that way.

I went into the room, which was no bigger than it needed to be for the bed and a lot of medical equipment. It smelled of sterile plastic and glass and detergent. I could barely recognise Meredith for tubes and wires running in and out of his face and body. The tubes and wires were hooked up to drips and monitoring devices; lights were blinking on the equipment and blips were dancing across green screens.