Peter Corris - The Greenwich Apartments

The building that went by the name of the Greenwich Apartments was a small block of flats, six two-bedroomers on three storeys, in behind a lively section of Bayswater Road, Kings Cross. To get to the flats I’d passed a brasserie and a restaurant and a wine bar. It was 9 p.m. and all three places were full. Someone had told me once which was the most trendy and hardest to get a table at, which was the next most desirable and which finished third, but I couldn’t remember the sequence. Beside the entrances to the building that weren’t places to eat and drink at, there were a couple of medicos’ nameplates, discreet neon signs advertising massage, and even a plaque for a fellow practitioner-Terry Stafford, Private Inquiries. Never heard of him.

The traffic was heavy and the area was parked solid. There were cars in ‘No Standing’ zones and across driveways. It was as if everybody in Sydney wanted to pack into this couple of acres. I walked up a lane into a bricked courtyard in front of the flats. Light-coloured brick with dark trim around the windows; decent-sized balconies on the second and third levels. Ivy or something like it crawled up the front of the building and had got a grip on a couple of the balconies. It snaked up a drainpipe towards the roof. No graffiti, no broken windows. A nice place.

The courtyard was boxed in on all sides; lights showed in the other apartment buildings on two sides. The wall behind me was blank-back of a hotel, possibly. No lights showed in the Greenwich Apartments. I stood in approximately the spot where Carmel Wise had been shot dead ten days before.

Here and there bricks were missing or had crumbled and some weeds had sprouted. There were plane trees for shade and a bench to sit on; there was a drinking fountain and a bicycle rack. There was a low pedestal in the middle of the square where a plastic and glass illuminated sign carrying the name of the place had been mounted. It was taken away after the bullets that hadn’t hit Carmel Wise had smashed it. Maybe some of the bullets had hit the girl and the sign; I hadn’t mastered all the exact details yet because Leo Wise had only hired me a few hours before. Leo Wise was Carmel’s father. He also owned the block of flats.

‘The Greenwich Apartments, it’s called,’ he’d said that afternoon. ‘Not too far from here. Maybe you know it?’

I shook my head. I’ve had my office in St Peter’s Lane for more than twelve years (I’d stopped counting at twelve), a stone’s throw from the Cross, but my work tends to take me out of the area. I could name a few nearby pubs but no blocks of flats. ‘No, afraid not,’ I said ‘is that why you came to me? For my local knowledge? If so, I ‘m sorry, I…’

He leaned forward. A big man, 50 plus with a heavy, forceful face and a manner to match. Expensive clothes, expensive teeth, not much hair and no nonsense. ‘I’m a bereaved man. Hardy. I don’t show it. I don’t go around crying. I go to work and get on with it but I feel just as bad as…’

‘As who?’ I said.

‘As her mother!’ He banged my desk with his fist: my notebook shifted and a little dust lifted and settled. There was nothing else on the desk.

‘I understand what you mean.’

‘You’d have seen the reports in the a paper… of Carmel getting shot.’ His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘Everybody’s seen them. That’s one of the worst things.’

‘I read something. She was twenty-one, I think it said. I don’t remember her job. No motive.’

‘She was a videotape editor and a filmmaker. Serious work. That didn’t stop the crummy headlines. “Video Girl Slain in Cross”. Crap!’

‘I remember now. There were a couple of hundred videos in the flat

…’

‘Not one of them was a dirty movie. Not one!’ The fist came down again. ‘But the papers made it look as if they all were. Her mother’s

… bloody broken.’ He stared through the dirty window. I’ve tried cleaning the windows inside but no-one is ever going to clean them outside-three floors up in Darlinghurst-so what’s the point? He would have seen a bit of guttering hanging from the roof and the top of a church against a grey sky. I know because I’ve sat in the client’s chair myself when business was slow, and pretended to be a client with an interesting case for me to handle. The fantasy has never taken me far; somehow it feels worse in the client’s chair than in my own.

‘The publicity stops,’ I said. ‘The police get on with it quietly.’

‘There’s things the police don’t know,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m here. I’m told you can do a job and keep your mouth shut.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘That’s what I need. There’s a strange angle on this, bloody strange. Anything about it in the papers’d probably send Moira, that’s my wife, right around the bend. I’d end up with no wife as well as no daughter. The police talk to the reporters, everyone knows that. The reporters pay them.’

‘Probably. I know a couple of cops who wouldn’t do that. I could have a word with them if you want.’

He shook his head. ‘Can’t risk it. Look, it could be nothing or it could lead into all sorts of shit. I just don’t know. I’m not worried about myself. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

‘Come on, Mr Wise. You’re a businessman-investment consultant, did you say?’

His face was set grimly; it looked like the sort of face that could smile or cry it necessary, but only if he let it. ‘What I’ve got to hide’s hidden. And I’ve got no connections to any of this. Just… information.’

‘Which you won’t give to the police because you’re worried about publicity.’ I moved the notebook an inch to the right. ‘It’s thin, Mr Wise.’

‘It’s not thin, it’s complicated. I want you to look into it, follow things up if you can, if there’s anything to it…’

‘Why?’

‘To get whoever it was that killed Carmel.’

‘Revenge,’ I said. ‘Trial. Publicity.’

‘Carmel was an innocent bystander. With that clear I don’t mind the publicity. It’s all this “video girl” bullshit I can’t handle. Please, Hardy, I need your help. What’re your fees?’

‘A hundred and twenty a day plus expenses.’

‘Retainer?’

‘Two days pay, up front.’

He got a cheque book from his inside jacket pocket. To get it he had to open the jacket. He was thick-bodied but not fat; he wore a white shirt and plain tie. There were sweat patches under his arms although the day was cool and his suit was lightweight. I sweat under pressure myself so I was sympathetic. He poised a ballpoint over the cheque.

‘I’ll give you a week in advance.’

‘Easy,’ I said. ‘Give me the information you won’t give the cops first. Then we’ll see.’

The Greenwich Apartments, Leo Wise told me, were built in the 1930s when materials were plentiful and work was scarce.

‘They’re well-built, see? The builder could get the right timbers and everything and the workers wanted the job to last so they took care. I bought the place about three years ago. It was run-down of course, and two of the flats’ve been empty for a while. I’m… I was going to do them all up, eventually.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘So, numbers four and five, they’re empty. There’s a couple in number two, been there the whole time. And there’s a young bloke in three. Agent reckons he’s all right, pays on time.’

I wrote ‘agent?’ on a page of my notebook and waited for him to say more. He was looking out the window again. Getting to the hard part, I thought.

‘Flat one’s on the ground, right on ground level. No stairs or anything. You just walk in from the courtyard. Bugger all view, no balcony, smaller than the others if anything.’