Peter Corris - Deal Me Out

The picture showed a large city square at night. The roads were busy and the pavement cafes were thronged. On a building more or less centred in the picture, the words ‘Hotel des Anges’ were mounted in neon. The card was undated and addressed to Erica Fong. It read:

Dearest Fong,

I am here to check a few people out, including myself. I haven’t had a drink for more than a week and the world’s not as I thought it was — much worse.

A bientot, my dear little sloppy, B.

The ‘B’ was written in the large sloping hand of the notes, but the message on the card was typewritten. I took the photocopied page across to a lamp and studied it under light. There was a slight line around the text that didn’t seem to be part of the card. Conclusion: the message had been typed on a piece of paper which had been stuck onto the card. I didn’t have the faintest idea what this piece of deduction meant, but I was pleased to have worked something out. I was also glad that Erica Fong wasn’t hanging around Sydney somewhere to be visited by people with hammers looking for tapes and films.

I sipped the Jameson’s and tried to recall what I knew about Nice. Not much. Gary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief; Graham Greene wrote about a corrupt mayor; nice beach, they say, and someone named a biscuit after the place. I hadn’t eaten for some hours and I was feeling the effects of the Jameson’s just a little; that was alright with me. I opened the other bottle to feel the effects some more; there’s more in those titchy bottles than you think. What else did I have to do? I was sitting in my ransacked house waiting for a Chinese girl to tell me what she’d found out in Nice. Bizarre, Hardy, I thought. Bizarre. Then the phone rang.

‘Cliff Jameson,’ I said.

‘Oh, God, Cliff. It’s Helen. Are you drunk?’

‘No.’

‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘What do you mean, nowhere? I’ve been phoning for a day.’

‘I mean nowhere-I went to Melbourne.’

‘Oh, sorry. Are you alright? I’ve been missing you.’

‘Me too. You, I mean. D’you like polygamy?’

There was a pause and then her voice contained a note of caution. ‘It’s all right, it’s better than celibacy. You’re not being celibate, are you?’

I grunted. ‘It’s been a funny day. I’ve won a fight and now I have to clean up my house.’

‘I’m glad you won the fight. Well, I just wanted to hear your voice. I’m fine of course, thanks for asking.’

‘I’m sorry, love. I’m in the middle of a shitty case. I can’t see the tunnel, let alone the bloody light. Have you ever been to Nice?’

‘Yes.’

‘Nice?’

‘Don’t. That joke is prehistoric. Yes, it’s great-good beach, you’d love it. Are we going?’

‘Maybe. You know a big square there, lots of traffic?’

‘Place Massena it sounds like. What’s all this about?’

‘I wish I knew. How’s the farm and the radio station and the winery and the daughter?’

‘Don’t be bitchy, Cliff. I can’t help it if your life’s an empty shell without me.’

‘I miss you, that’s all. First month’s the worst. By the fifth month Helen’ll be just something to go with Troy.’

‘Huh. What’ve you been reading?’

‘The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People.’

‘I’ve read that. Who d’you like best?’

‘Bertrand Russell.’

‘Why?’

‘I like him best at everything. Who’s yours?’

‘Guess.’

I guessed and didn’t get it right and we laughed. It went on like that for a while until she was so real to me again that I felt I could reach out and touch her. It was a good feeling. I had nothing but good feelings about Helen Broadway. I wondered how good old Mike and the kid would feel about a three month rotation.

I spent the rest of the afternoon re-stocking the fridge with fluids and solids. I bought some glasses and coffee mugs to replace the broken ones. I scotch-taped some books together and tidied up papers. The cat came home, got fed and went off again. I was moping and I knew it. I sat down with a pen and pad and some wine and tried to do some constructive thinking.

The results didn’t justify the amount of wine consumed. My brain felt slow and tired as if something connected with the Bill Mountain affair impeded its proper engagement. My thoughts kept drifting off onto other subjects, like Nice, the Melbourne gymnasium, Helen Broadway’s nose. In the end, after writing down the names of all the people so far involved and connecting some of them with arrows and covering a lot of paper with question marks, I gave it up. I decided to sleep on it, which sometimes brings results.

In the morning I had my results. Three thoughts had taken form: one, I could locate Mountain’s psychiatrist, Dr Holmes, and pump him; two, I could ask around about the men who’d attacked me in the car park and try to find out who they worked for; three, I needed to find a spa and sauna in Sydney-beating two men in unarmed combat had made me a convert.

Dr John Holmes’ rooms in Woollahra were in a road that seemed to be shooting for the ‘most leafy stretch in Sydney’ award. It was all high brick fences with overhanging trees; trees along the footpath, trees on a central strip dividing the wide road, trees waving up around the tops of the lofty houses. It cost big money to get a lot of leaves to rake in this neighbourhood, and Holmes had to be coining it-his brick fence was one of the highest and his trees were among the leafiest.

I parked outside Holmes’ place under a plane tree and reflected on how very differently people go about their business. I was here two days after I’d had the idea to come. Me, you can just ring up, and like as not you can come over and see me or I’ll come to you. Or, if you happen to be in St Peter’s Lane, you can walk through the tattoo parlour, romp up the stairs and knock on the door. Not so with Dr Holmes. I’d been given fifteen minutes. There were no free evenings, no lunches, no half-hour before the busy day began. It sounded obsessive to me. I imagined a pale, pudgy creature, eyes luminously intelligent with legs ready to drop off from disuse.

I pushed open the iron gate in the high fence and walked up the leaf-strewn path to the front door. The house was a wide, towering affair, built of sandstone blocks one size down from those used in the pyramids at Giza. It had gracious lines-bay windows, and a wide, bull-nosed verandah over an ornately tiled surface that swept away around both sides of the house.

The doorbell was answered by a tall, slim woman wearing a white silk shirt and jodhpurs. She had a mane of blonde hair and high, expensive-looking cheekbones. Her blue eyes were elaborately made up with long dark lashes that fluttered like car yard bunting.

‘Mr…?’ she said.

‘Hardy.’

‘Oh good-I think he’s ready to see you. I’m going riding.’

‘Not yachting?’

‘A joke. I don’t like jokes. D’you think I look right?’

She backed off; I stepped after her into an entrance hall big enough to canter horses in. She rotated slowly in front of a three metre square mirror.

‘Umm,’ she said. She seemed to have forgotten who I was, in the ecstasy of self-admiration.

‘Hardy. To see Dr Holmes.’

Oh, yes. You go up the stairs and it’s the first door on I he right or left. I can never remember which but you’ll be all right because there aren’t any doors on the side it’s not on. ‘kay?’

‘’kay,’ I said.’

I went up a few stairs and turned back to look at her. She was standing by the door peering out through the peep hole.

The stairs were covered in deep blue carpet and the banister rail was polished, old and grooved and a pleasure to lay your hand on. Like all the best staircases it had two flights with a flat central section at the turn-on these it was about the size of a boxing ring. The door was on the right if you were going up but on the left if you were going down-perhaps that was what had confused the lady in the jodhpurs. I knocked on the door and went inside when a deep, pulsating voice told me to.