Peter Corris - Heroin Annie

‘Nothing doing’, I said. ‘Your skull might be cracked, you could die in an hour. Lie back and wait.’

‘I won’t.’ Something in the way he said it, something petulant, almost childish and yet determined, made me listen to him. ‘If you go off I’ll get in that car and drive it.’

‘You wouldn’t get out of the car park.’

He lifted his head, groaned and let it fall back. His voice was weaker. ‘Hardy, if you ring my wife she’ll have a doctor waiting for us at home. If he says so, I’ll go to hospital; but I don’t want to if I don’t have to. This is political.’

The last word was spoken so softly I had to bend down to hear it.

‘This bashing, it’s political?’

‘Yes’, he whispered.

It sounded like everything I usually like to avoid. But he meant what he said enough to take a risk and incur some pain saying it. That was worth something, also I admired his taste in novels.

‘I’ll bring my car around, it’s bigger. Take it easy.’ I jogged back to the road and drove around behind the lecture halls to the car park. Dempsey clenched his teeth as I lifted him into the back seat but he didn’t make a sound. Moving him I noticed more blood, down one side of his chest and on his back. I got him more or less stretched out with something soft under his head. He closed his eyes and I lifted the unbloodied lid with a finger; it looked all right.

‘Bag’, he said.

I got his case from the VW and took the keys out of the lock. There was a crook-lock lying on the floor and I put it on and secured it, then I locked the car. I looked back at him before starting; he opened his eyes and tried to give me a wink. I thought about the strong Scotch I’d left on Rosemary Dempsey’s table, and hoped it would still be there. I drove out of the quiet campus and through the almost empty streets as smoothly as you can in a fifteen-year-old Falcon.

Dempsey’s house was unnaturally bright, the way houses are when there’s a crisis on. Rosemary Dempsey had a neighbour, a woman as well-turned-out as herself, with her and they were drinking coffee and smoking when I walked in. When I got into the light I saw that some of Dempsey’s blood had got on my shirt. Rosemary went white when she saw me.

‘Oh, Christ.’ She jumped up and knocked her coffee over, the dark liquid soaked the cloth and dripped on the floor. ‘What happened? Where is he?’

‘Calm down’, I said. ‘He’s in the car and he’s alive.’

We got him into the house and on to a divan on the sun porch. The neighbour turned out to be a nurse and she got busy cleaning Dempsey up and checking him over. He was conscious, but in a lot of pain and not making much sense.

‘He said there was a doctor you could contact’, I said.

Rosemary looked at the other woman. ‘Zelda?’

‘The cut needs stitching’, Zelda said.

‘I’ll call Archie.’ She went out quickly and I followed her through to the sitting room. My Scotch was sitting where I’d left it and I took a good slug of it. Rosemary was holding the phone, waiting for an answer; she pointed to the Scotch bottle on the coffee table and gave me a full candlepower smile. She was a very attractive woman in a slightly sculptured way. I re-made the drink and went back to the sun porch. Dempsey’s colour wasn’t too bad, and Zelda was holding his head up to a glass of water.

‘Who’s Archie?’ I said.

She grinned at me. ‘Archie Pappas,’ she said.

‘He’s the local communist doctor. You knew the Dempseys were commos, of course?’

The wood under my feet was polished pine, the whisky in my glass was Black Label. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

‘Sure’, she said. ‘Raving reds.’

The doctor arrived just as I was finishing the drink. He was dark and squat with a spread waist. He butted a cigarette and bustled across to the divan. After looking at the cut which was clean now and gaping open, he got a medical torch out of his bag and looked into Dempsey’s eyes.

‘He’s bleeding from his side and at the back, doctor’, I said.

‘Who’s he?’ Pappas grunted.

Rosemary glanced at me blankly as if she didn’t know the answer, then she remembered-I was the one who’d brought her husband home and stopped her tearing her hair out. ‘This is Mr Hardy’, she said. ‘He’s a sociologist.’

Pappas kept on doctoring. ‘Oh, really, what’s your field, Mr Hardy?’

‘Criminology’, I said.

Zelda gave an amused snort but the doctor didn’t seem to notice; he prepared a syringe and I got the idea that I wasn’t going to get much information out of Dempsey that night. The needle went in and the doctor cleaned up. ‘He’ll be okay’, he said. ‘I’ve stitched the cut on his head and put a dressing on the ribs. There’s no fracture; concussion, but not too bad.’

‘No hospital’, I said.

He glanced at Rosemary. ‘No, not necessary.’

I stood aside and let Rosemary escort him out. He gave me a nod and went quickly, I heard Rosemary say something to him near the door but not loudly enough to catch it.

Zelda came over and stood closer to me than she needed to. I didn’t mind, she was tall and slim and she had nice eyes. She looked as if she’d have a sense of humour.

‘Funny doctor’, I said. ‘A criminal assault and no questions asked. Are politics really so hot around here?’

‘Sometimes’, she said. ‘Bill Dempsey’s in the middle of something very hot just now. I thought that was why you’re here.’

‘No,’

‘Well, I’m curious; why are you here, Mr Hardy?’

‘Cliff. I’m sorry I can’t tell you, a family matter.’

‘You tell me and I’ll tell you why Bill got bashed.’

‘Sorry, perhaps Mrs Dempsey…’

‘Mrs Dempsey what?’ Rosemary came back into the room and leaned against the door. She looked drawn and tired and her hair definitely needed a comb.

‘I’m prying, Rosemary. I want to know all about this mystery man. Tell him to talk to me.’

‘This is Zelda Robson, Mr Hardy’, Rosemary said wearily. ‘She’s my best friend and you can talk to her. She’ll tell me everything you say anyway. I’m sorry, I don’t think we can do much about your enquiry tonight. Perhaps tomorrow.’

‘Right. I’ll check with you. Just quickly, I take it you don’t know anything about your husband’s brother?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Okay, thank you.’

‘Don’t think me rude, please. I’m washed out, but thank you very much for what you’ve done.’

‘Come on, Cliff.’ Zelda had me by the arm and moved me across to the back door. Rosemary watched us go with an expression that was hard to interpret-it might have been approving, or maybe she’d just seen the film before.

We went across some grass, a paved courtyard and through a gate in a brushwood fence. Zelda’s house seemed to be a slightly smaller version of the Dempsey’s; it boasted a lot of timber and glass and was straining a bit too hard to be natural. She held on to my arm while she gathered up a bottle of Scotch and some ice cubes in the kitchen, and ushered me through to her living room. It was carpeted, with a sofa and a couple of big chairs; these were covered with skins and furs and you could have copulated in comfort almost anywhere in the room. She made us big drinks and we sat down opposite each other, about four ion-charged feet apart.

‘Well.’ Her voice was deep, almost mannish and the bones of her face and jaw cried out for fingers to run along them.

‘Cheers.’ I took a long sip of the Scotch.

She laughed. ‘I think this is called fencing.’ She tucked one bare foot up under her; she was wearing tight black slacks and a white silk blouse. ‘Bill’s trying to save a mine and a railway line and stop a road.’