Peter Corris - Man In The Shadows

His shrug said it all: another dead junkie, who cares? Just as long as she doesn’t have a famous name-as long as she doesn’t sing or dance or act and isn’t somebody important’s wife or daughter. Annie was none of those things. Simmonds didn’t give me a hard time.

But it’s one thing to walk into a strange house and find a dead junkie and look for the quickest way to file and forget it and another to try to read the signs of what really happened. There were damp patches down the hallway to the front door but none beside the spare bed upstairs where Annie had dumped her clothes. The belt that had bit into her upper arm was hers. Annie had gone to the door after having her shower but she hadn’t taken the belt from her pants unless she’d done it before she went to the door. Why would she? She didn’t have any smack.

So someone had given her the smack and fetched the belt for her. A friend? Some friend. I wasn’t well up on the price of heroin and it really didn’t matter because from the quick look I’d got at the money the police had bagged it seemed that Annie’s twelve bucks were intact. I was sifting this through when there was a loud knock on the door. Feeling ridiculous, I got the. 38 from its hiding place and went to the door. The outline through the misted glass panel was long and slope-shouldered.

‘Greenway?’

‘Yes.’

I opened the door. ‘I thought I told you to piss off.’

‘I did.’ He shouldered past me. He was wearing a light cotton jacket over his striped shirt and I could see a bulge in the pocket. The Nomad, no doubt. I waved him on and we went through to the living and eating space at the back of the house.

‘I saw them take her out,’ he said.

‘Yeah? Then what did you do?’

‘I caught a cab home. He called. I’ve got his voice on tape.’

Greenway brandished the tape and looked around. He noted the phone, with its receiver replaced but obviously not in its usual place on the bench. He put the tape in his pocket.

‘Where was she?’ he said.

I pointed.

‘The word in the street was accidental overdose. Is that right?’

‘No. At least not without some help.’

We went through to the kitchen which was dim now that the afternoon sun was low in the west. Greenway leaned against the sink while I made coffee. ‘Was Annie… what happened to her, connected to this other business?’

‘Your case, you mean?’

He nodded.

‘I don’t know. Do you? I see you’re carrying your gun. Does that mean you’ve got some ideas?’

He shook his head.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Guns usually mean no ideas. Have some coffee and let’s hear the tape.’

The voice was slow and deep; the background noise was an intermittent hum: When I can talk to you in person I’ll give you instructions for the delivery of the photographs.

We played it through five times. I drank two cups of coffee. Greenway kept glancing at the place where Annie had died as if he wanted to see her there and bring her back to life. ‘I thought of changing my message,’ he said, ‘leaving something specifically for him. But I decided that was being too clever.’

‘Good. You were right. Same voice, no difference?’

‘The same. Can you make anything of the background noise?’

‘That’s for the movies. I haven’t got voice-printing apparatus either and I can’t tell a southern Hungarian accent from a Romanian.’

‘I’m sorry. I know it’s a mess. I didn’t know what I was doing.’

I felt guilty for the sarcasm. ‘All right. It happens. We have to work out what to do. Where to look for him.’ I got a bottle of brandy which Helen had left behind. It was from her husband’s tiny vineyard, Chateau Helene, and it wasn’t bad. I put a shot in my third and Greenway’s second cup of coffee. It was after four o’clock; that’s late enough when there’s been a death or a birth or a marriage or a horse has won or lost. I felt like working on the bottle itself, Greenway sipped moodily; booze wasn’t one of his problems.

‘Have you ever had a phone call from someone who seems to know you but you’ve never heard of them?’ I said. ‘Just a quick call that leaves you puzzled about how the caller got on to you or even got your number?’

‘Mm, I suppose.’

‘This is a bit like that. You have to sit down and build up a story that hangs together. Like-well, he must’ve known so-and-so and got my number that way.’

Greenway grunted, unimpressed. I finished my coffee and poured some more brandy into the cup. I added the few drops of coffee that were left. ‘That’s what we have to do,’ I said. ‘If we assume whoever hired you got to Annie somehow and killed her, or helped, how could that be? What circumstances make that possible?’

We both stared at the walls for a while. Greenway sighed; I drank my spiked coffee.

Greenway shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. Nothing comes.’

‘Try this: Mr X was watching you from the minute he made the approach. He saw you come to me, saw us go to the hospital and followed me back here. Then he saw Annie come here. He’d seen you and Annie in company before and figured she must… ‘

‘Must what?’

‘It gets harder here. Must… know something, or have seen something. So he waited until I left and made a move. He used the smack to talk his way in.’

‘Well, it fits,’ Greenway said slowly. ‘But where does it get us?’

‘If we knew what he wanted from Annie we’d be on our way. Assuming it’s about the hospital, did she tell you a lot about the place?’

‘Not much. She didn’t like talking about it. I just checked on the routines a bit, you know. That was all I wanted.’ Suddenly he straightened up from the slump he’d been sitting in. The look of tiredness and semi-shock left him.

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘Annie kept a diary! She said she could look in her diary when I asked her about something, some little thing. I said it didn’t matter.’

‘It matters now,’ I said.

Annie had arrived without bag or baggage and she certainly hadn’t had a diary on her. So she’d left it, presumably with what she’d called her ‘stuff with ‘those creeps’. All I knew was that she’d tried to score in ‘the flats’ and some hoods in a red Mazda had given her a bad time. I told this to Greenway who nodded. ‘There’s a source in those flats down by the water. What’s her name?’ He snapped his fingers in the first theatrical gesture I’d seen from him since our first meeting when he was doing nothing else but. ‘Barbara-Ann. She’s got a straight front as a caterer but she deals in a pretty big way.’

‘I wonder if she’s got a red Mazda,’ I said.

‘I wouldn’t know.’ Greenway adjusted his jacket. ‘Why don’t we go and find out?’

I had a vision of Greenway breaking in a door and waving his Nomad with the one shell in the chamber and the safety catch on. ‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘You’ve got other things to do.’

‘Like what?’

‘You’re going home to wait for the phone call. You’re also going to keep a very close watch on your own back. If you’re still being observed you might be able to observe the observer. That’d be a help.’

One part of him didn’t like it, wanted to be in on the gung-ho stuff; the other part wanted to play it safe. I helped him out by saying that I didn’t expect any excitement, just a quiet talk. He knew which part of the big complex Barbara-Ann lived in but not the precise number of her apartment. I told him I could manage and sent him back to Bondi with a promise to call when I knew anything. I wanted to take the Nomad from him but I didn’t; he was confused and green, but he had some pride.

I went out into the street, collected the keys from the glove box of my car and locked it. I strolled around the neighbourhood; I got some looks from people who’d seen the ambulance and one enquiry. I didn’t tell the enquirer anything she didn’t know already. It was after five, the air was cooling and the TV sets were being switched on and the drinks were being poured. I walked to the open section before the road dips down into the blocks of flats and stood looking across the water towards Pyrmont. The water was still; the light faded. I moved quickly into the shelter of the trees that fringe the walkway around the water and scanned the landscape behind and above me. I saw no flashes of spectacles, no quick movements. I waited; no car engines started, no birds broke cover and wheeled about in the evening sky.