Peter Corris - Man In The Shadows

I went home, fed the cat and myself and waited until dark. I wore sneakers, pants that were a bit big so that I needed a belt to keep them up, and a loose sweater. The. 38 went inside the waist of the trousers, under the belt. I walked down to the flats where lights were burning in most of the windows. I moved through the parking areas on to the concrete path that wound between the different blocks. Some of the windows on to the balconies were open; rock music and television made a confusing mixture of conflicting sound.

The phone book had supplied the lacking information. In the sections for caterers there was a small ad: ‘Barbara-Ann, Home Catering, small functions, Apartment 5, Block 3, Harbourside, Ludwig Street, Glebe.’ The place was in one of the better locations, high enough to command a good look at the water and with its fair share of waving trees to shut out the less salubrious views. The parking bay allotted to Apartment 5 held a red Mazda coupe.

There was no point in being subtle about it. No reason to throw pebbles at windows or climb up the ivy on to the balcony. There was no ivy anyway, and the balcony to Apartment 5 was ten metres up. I went through the glass door into the lobby and climbed the stairs. I knocked at Number 2. A middle-aged man in a cummerbund and dress shirt came to the door and said his name wasn’t Williams and that he didn’t know any Williamses in the block.

I thanked him after getting a good look at the security chain: not much good-a heavy shoulder, properly delivered, would tear it from the frame. I hoped my stiff neck wouldn’t hold me back. Up another flight to Number 5; I listened at the door-music and talk. I smelled marijuana smoke. Hardy, with all senses on the alert.

I took out the gun and held it low and out of sight. I knocked and pressed my ear to the door. The occupants didn’t fall silent or start cocking machine guns. The door opened ten centimetres and I saw a small woman with a mass of curling, red-gold hair.

‘Barbara-Ann?’ I said.

Her pupils were dilated and her eyes were red the way some pot smokers’ get. ‘Mmm,’ she said.

I hit the door with everything I had. The chain tore out and the door flew open whacking her in the knee and hip. She staggered back and I bullocked through the opening. I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her down the short passage to a living room with a white carpet, white leather and chrome fittings and air like at a NORML smoke-in. There were two men in the room, stoned and slow-reacting. One wore his shirt collar turned up. He was the pale-faced driver of the Mazda.

‘Hey, what’s this?’ he said.

I shoved the woman into one of the white chairs and stood behind her. She swivelled around to look at me. That made three pairs of eyes focussing on the. 38. Paleface was half out of his seat; I waved him back down. The other, a flabby-faced kid, dropped the fat, smoking joint on the carpet.

‘You’d better pick that up or you’ll have a nasty burn there,’ I said. He bent slowly and recovered the cigarette.

‘We don’t want any trouble,’ the woman said.

‘Neither do I.’ I moved around and stood to one side from where I could have shot any one of them except that none was moving a muscle.

‘I know you,’ Paleface said.

‘You’ve seen me. I wouldn’t call it a relationship.’

‘Who is he?’ The woman was recovering fast; she was slim and lean, like a gymnast, about thirty and with small, hard eyes behind which a lot of fast thinking was going on.

‘My name’s Hardy, Barbara-Ann. I was a friend of Annie Parker. I’m here to invite you all to her funeral.’

‘We don’t know anything about that,’ Paleface said.

‘Shut up, Vic,’ Barbara-Ann said.

‘No, I want to hear about it. I want to hear about how you took her some smack and she OD’d on it. I want to know why.’

‘We didn’t… we didn’t!’ The kid’s voice was shrill. ‘You saw us drive off. We didn’t come back. We just

‘That’ll do then,’ I said. ‘You just what?’

‘Watched your joint.’

‘And what did you see?’

Barbara-Ann and Paleface Vic both looked at the kid. He found some courage among the fear somewhere and clamped his jaw. Barbara-Ann stirred in her chair.

‘You can just fuck off, whoever you are,’ she said. ‘You’ve got no business here.’

‘I’m a Federal policeman, Barbara-Ann. I’ve got business everywhere.’

‘See!’ The kid yelped as the burning joint singed his fingers. He dropped it on the glass-topped table. ‘She was with the narcs. We told you!’

Barbara-Ann and Paleface looked at me trying to make up their minds. I didn’t want them to do too much thinking. ‘It’s the girl I’m interested in,’ I said. ‘Not you lot. I’ll settle for two things-what she left behind her here and what you saw when you were watching my house.’

Barbara-Ann drew in a deep breath and tossed back her cascade of phony-coloured hair. ‘Then you’ll go?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What the fuck do I care? Lyle, get the bag she left.’

The kid got up and scurried out of the room. He came back quickly with a canvas bag. I kept my eyes on Paleface and gestured with the gun for Lyle to open the bag. ‘Let’s see what’s in it.’

Barbara-Ann reached for the bag of grass on the table. ‘We haven’t touched it.’

Lyle pulled out a shirt and some underpants. He stuffed them back and produced two paperbacks and a thick exercise book. Paleface was bracing himself. I told Lyle to put the books back and do up the straps. He did it and I reached for the bag, looped it over my shoulder. I was getting tired of standing up and watching people who didn’t like me. Barbara-Ann rolled a joint.

‘Okay, make it quick,’ I said. ‘What did you see? Hold off on lighting that, Babs, until we’re finished.’ I lifted the gun a fraction, aware that its effect was wearing off.

Lyle was the only one still scared. ‘We saw a guy arrive and go to the door. She let him in.’

‘What sort of a guy?’

‘Just a guy. You know.’

‘I don’t know. Young, old, tall, short, thin, fat? What sort of car did he drive?’

Paleface didn’t like being left out of things. He took the joint from Barbara-Ann, lit it and expelled smoke slowly. ‘A white Volvo. Middle-aged man, like you. Medium everything except for his hair.’ He ran his hand through his own lank, straggly locks, took another drag and handed the joint to the woman. ‘A baldy, with a thick moustache instead. The way baldies do.’

‘Okay.’ The bag was slipping from my shoulder and I shrugged it back up. Paleface must’ve thought this was the time to move. He came up from his chair bent low and ready to club my gun hand down. He was much too slow; I had time to step back and watch him lose balance as his move misfired. I hit him with the back of my hand along the side of his narrow, bony jaw. I felt the shock around the grip of the gun but he felt it more. He groaned and crumpled. A spurt of blood from his nose sprayed and smeared over the white carpet.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ I said. ‘That’ll cost a lot to clean.’

Paleface rolled over on to his back. His eyes were fierce but wet; he sniffed back a nose full of blood. I stepped around him and stood beside Barbara-Ann.

‘Just for that,’ I said, ‘I get another question. Annie was here to score. Did she say anything interesting? Share any thoughts with you?’

‘She was hanging out.’ Barbara-Ann drew on the joint. ‘She had no bread and she tried to con us. That’s it.’

‘You’re a lovely person.’ I put the gun in my belt and walked out. I could smell the marijuana smoke all the way down the stairs and I heard two high-pitched yells and a slap before I was out in the fresh air.