Peter Corris - Man In The Shadows

I had a white Volvo, a bald man with a thick moustache and an exercise book diary. Not a bad night’s work. All I needed was a drink and a feeling that I could make some sense of Greenway’s crazy, mixed-up case.

I went home and took the drink out on to the balcony for a while. I sat and watched the street. No red Mazda, no skulking figures or firebombers. I wasn’t surprised; they’d probably moved up to something heavier than the grass and were on the way to feeling that they were clever and brave and everything was all right.

I cleared a space on the bench beside the phone, switched on the reading lamp and opened Annie Parker’s diary. Someone said that historians are people who read other people’s letters. I’ve never done any historical research but I’ve read a few private letters and I understand the attraction. A sort of fly-on-the-wall feeling with a touch of taboo. Reading a private diary was much the same. Annie made half page entries, never missing a day. The diary began in the early part of the previous year and stopped two days before she died.

I flicked over the pages, just getting impressions at first. Adults who write a lot or take notes acquire bad habits-personal shorthands and squiggles that mean zero to anyone else. Or they take to typewriters and word processors and almost forget how to write by hand. Annie’s writing was neat and clear, a regular script without quirks, like that of a mature child. I remembered that she’d had a good school record before she went wild.

She kept a simple record of what she’d done, who she’d seen and how she felt. The entries were brief with the identities of people concealed: Saw C.A. and scored. Went to Bondi. Heavily hassled by L. who’s splitting (he says) for Bali. Wanted me to go with him. No thanks. Feeling better about F. She was concerned about her weight: 48 k. Not bad. And her health: Saw Dr Charley and got a prescription for antibiotic. No drinking for three days.

Greenway was ‘G.’. The entries confirmed what she’d told me-that they’d met at a drug clinic and clicked. She knew he was bisexual. For the time they were together the entries were brief and mostly positive: G. is a fantastic fucker and talker and I’m. not real bad myself when I get going. Trouble started between them over the AIDS test. She couldn’t understand ‘G.’s reluctance to have it. Then he disappeared. The entries after the breakup were black: Slept all day. Hanging out. Methadone is murder.

I turned back to her record of her period in Southwood Hospital. Have to hide this, she wrote. No diary keeping allowed Fuck them! Things didn’t improve. She had nothing good to say for the staff or the treatment but she liked some of her fellow patients: M. Mc. is a sweetie and he’s brilliant! Nothing wrong with him. What about A.P.? The writing became crabbed and hasty: Long, creepy interview with DrS. today. No programme. No way! One entry was tear-stained: M. Mc. was done today. He’s finished. No-one home. A few days later the letters ‘E.F.’, ‘J. O’B.’ and ‘R.R.’ were encircled. Then, the day before she left the hospital she recorded: M. Mc, E.F., J. O’B. amp; R.R. have been transferred (they say).

The process by which Annie got out of the hospital was a little hard to follow through the maze of initials and other abbreviations. It happened a few weeks after ‘J. O’B.’ and the others were ‘transferred’. It seemed that a new member of the staff, a ‘Dr K.’t had helped her to secure a certificate of detoxification. A solicitor had done the rest. While in the hospital Annie had read a lot: The Brothers K., W amp; P., The I. of Dreams. She had come out resolved to find ‘M. Mc’ but there was no sign that she’d done anything about it. She was ‘maintaining’ and working at the clinic when she met ‘G.’.

It wasn’t hard to make a certain amount of sense out of it. Something was happening at the hospital that Annie was afraid of, wanted no part of. There appeared to be victims. It half-fitted with Greenway’s story of being hired by someone who was concerned about one of the patients. But that story had been an invention; he now said that he had knowledge of the motives of his hirer who was taking his time in collecting what he’d paid so much money for. It all got back to that-who hired Greenway and why?

I phoned him and got the answering machine. I read some more of the diary without gaining further enlightenment except into the character of Annie. She had lived day to day, without plans until she’d met Greenway. They’d discussed the future, something Annie had refused to do for years. That made it all the harder for her when, suddenly, there was no future anymore. She went back to recording and living her life in small, safe units. Except they weren’t safe. Police and pushers cropped up through the entries and they were sometimes one and the same.

She’d started the diary the day after her mother died as some sort of comfort for the loss. She talked to her sister and brother at the funeral and spoke lovingly of them. I didn’t recall the siblings but I had a clear recollection of the mother-a stout, strong-minded Cockney who’d never understood why Annie had got on to drugs but had never stopped caring about her, even though she’d suffered the usual thefts and let-downs.

In the pages that covered the time with Greenway Annie had made small sketches, post stamp size. There was a reasonable likeness of Greenway, some flowers, a few other faces. The sketches were happy. Her spelling wasn’t perfect but neither is mine. I felt I was getting closer to her and I felt a mounting anger at her death and the manner of it. There were more than a hundred pages blank in the exercise book. She was someone who’d taken bad knocks and had tried not to go under. She should have had those days and a hell of a lot more besides.

I phoned Greenway again and this time he answered in a harsh, broken whisper.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ I said.

‘Can you get over to my place, Hardy?’ he rasped. ‘He was here. He drugged me and he’s taken the fucking photographs.’

I’d had enough for one day. I got Greenway calmed down, established that he wasn’t injured and told him that we had some other leads.

‘What leads?’

‘I’ve got the diary.’

‘Jesus, that’s great! Bring it over.’

‘Forget it. I’ve got fifteen years on you and I need some sleep.’

‘Sleep! I couldn’t sleep.’

‘Yes, you can. Take a long walk. Take a pill. I’ll be over in the morning.’

‘No, Hardy, you can’t…”

‘I can. Listen, if your brain needs something to work on try this.’ I read him off my list of initials. ‘Chew on them. See if they mean anything to you.’

I finally got him off the line. I checked the doors and windows, wedged a chair in against the back door that won’t lock properly, and went to bed. My neck was still sore from the rabbit punch and my hand ached from the blow I’d given Paleface. They were the physical sufferings; I was still feeling bad about Annie. A lot of people had let her down and maybe I was one of them. Maybe I should have stayed with her. Bad thoughts. I had her diary under my pillow along with the. 38 but it didn’t give me any bad dreams. I slept heavily, no dreams at all.

Greenway answered the door looking like a man who hadn’t slept for a week. His hair was tousled, his stubble was long and his eyes were red. He smelt bad too.

‘Go and have a shower,’ I said. ‘I’ll make some coffee. I can’t talk to anyone who looks that bad, you remind me of myself when I was twenty-five.’

Greenway grinned. ‘Well, you made it to fifty.’

‘I’m not… You stink, and change your shirt.’