Peter Corris - Heroin Annie

You’re cold, Cliff!’ Cyn banged her fist on my desk. ‘That’s your bloody trouble, you’re cold!’ She was close to tears the way she always got when we argued. They weren’t tactical tears, but they were part of the reason that I nearly always lost the arguments.

‘I’m not cold’, I said. ‘I’m warm-hearted, a loving man. I’ll take you out tonight.’

‘I don’t want to go out.’

‘Okay, we’ll stay home. I’ll cook.’ The telephone rang. We were in my office where I answer the telephone, open the door and type the letters myself, because there’s no-one else to do it.

‘Hardy Investigations. Warm-hearted Hardy speaking.’

‘Your heart’s as warm as Bob Askin’s. Cut out the bullshit, Cliff, I’ve got a job for you.’ It was Athol Groom, who works in advertising and agenting; he sometimes drinks where I sometimes drink.

‘Terrific, Athol’, I said. Athol deals in people with soft jobs; Cyn calls him a pimp, and she made a face when I said his name. ‘What sort of job?’

‘Come down here and I’ll tell you.’ He gave me his address.

‘How long do you reckon this’ll take?’

‘How the hell do I know? All day, all night, all week. The longer the better as far as you’re concerned, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, I guess so. But I’ve gone up to seventy-five a day and expenses.’

‘Shit. All right. Just hurry, she’ll be here soon.’

‘She?’

‘Selina Hope. Hurry.’

I put down the phone and stood up; Cyn moved away from me as if we were in a slow ballet.

‘A job’, I said.

‘It’s always a job, what we need is a talk- tonight.’

‘I don’t know, love,’

‘A minute ago you were going to cook some slop for me, drink two-thirds of the wine and that.’

She was looking very nice that morning, my wife. Nearly as tall as me, she was straight and slim with honey-blonde hair. She must have come directly from the architect’s office where she worked because she still had draughtsman’s ink on her fingers. She saw me looking, and her fine-boned, handsome face went hard.

‘Cold’, she said. ‘Selfish and cold.’

I patted her arm, there were no tears which was good. I went out.

Athol’s pimping shop was in Double Bay on a steep hill. I ran the back wheels of my old Falcon into the kerb and let it sit there in a way which says to the world, ‘this car has a faulty handbrake’; but what can you do? Athol’s decor was dominated by photographs, mirrors and magazines. The pictures were blow-ups of models with impossible cheek bones doing mysterious things amid shadows. The magazines were glossy, and the mirrors are fine if you’re a five foot nine clothes horse with the right angles and planes. When you’re a thin, six foot, thirtyish man with untidy dark hair and Grace Bros, clothes, they’re not so good. A lacquered, Sassooned brunette pressed a buzzer when I told her who I was, and Athol hurried out.

Athol Groom is one of those men in the fifties who plays squash and eats nothing so as to keep his waist down; he likes a drink though, and that slight thickening won’t be denied. He has a glossy moustache, and hair and teeth to match, but he’s not a phoney.

‘Good to see you, Cliff, how’s Cyn?’ I took Athol home once, and after one look at Cyn he tried to persuade her to take up photo modelling. She laughed at him.

‘All right. What’s going on?’

The brunette looked at her appointment book and spoke up crisply. ‘Mr Blake is due any minute, Mr Groom.’

‘Right, right. Come on, Cliff, you’re a bodyguard; come and meet the body.’

We went down a corridor past more photographs and into Groom’s office. A woman was leaning back against the big desk combing her hair. It was worth combing, a great blue-black mane that rippled and flowed under the comb strokes. Its owner had the standard tall, thin, flat body; but with a face to haunt your dreams forever. Her skin was darkish, almost olive; she had jet black eyebrows, dark eyes and a wide, wonderful mouth. Her nose was nothing much, just exactly as straight and thin as it needed to be.

‘Selina’, Athol said, ‘this is Cliff Hardy. Selina Hope, Cliff.’ We nodded at each other, but I was listening to Groom’s voice; this was his handle-with-care, this-side-up voice. I gathered Miss Hope was a hot property.

‘We’ve got a little problem here, Cliff. There seems to be some creep hanging around Selina’s flat, following her and such. Was he there this morning, love?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ I expected an exotic accent of some kind to accompany the face but there was none, just good, clear, educated Australian.

‘You think’, Athol said sharply. Maybe he was thinking about my fee.

‘Easy’, I said. ‘Miss Hope’s said the right thing. When someone’s watching you it’s a feeling you get more than anything else. Sort of corner of the eye thing. Is that right?’

‘Yes, exactly.’ It’s not often I say just the right thing for a beautiful woman-I’m usually considered somewhat blunt-but I did it this time. She smiled at me as if I’d won the pools. But there was some relief in that smile too-she’d been scared.

‘Okay’, Athol said. ‘Well, we all know about the weirdos in this game. It’s probably some freak who’s seen Selina in a bra advert and can’t sleep. A few strong, silent looks from Cliff and he’ll give it away. It’s a pity the London job fell through though, that would’ve been the best cure. Next best thing is to keep busy. I’ve lined Selina up for two jobs today, Cliff, and I want you to stick close, and see her home. Okay?’

‘Sure.’

‘Off you go.’

I followed Selina to the back exit; she was wearing a black jumpsuit, caught tight at the ankles and loose pretty well everywhere else. Her walk was a spectacular strut that made the hair bounce on her straight shoulders. We walked across to a bright blue Mercedes sports car and she tossed me a set of keys. I threw them back.

‘I’m a column gears man’, I said.

She laughed and unlocked the car; I couldn’t find the seat belt, couldn’t fasten it and couldn’t push the seat back. She helped me with one hand and put in a cassette with the other-we took off to a roaring of guitars and electric piano.

Over the music and traffic noise I asked her about the London job. She told me that she’d been booked to be snapped outside the Houses of Parliament with a peer of the realm for a Scotch whisky advertisement, but the peer had died.

‘Tough luck.’

‘Would have been a good trip.’ She dipped a shoulder and flicked the Merc around a bend, changed down and surged up a hill.

‘Have you worked in London before?’

‘London, Paris, New York.’ There was pride in her voice but no conceit. I decided I liked her.

‘Have you been getting any other harassment- phone calls, letters?’

‘Not a thing. Just as you said, a glimpse of someone, a feeling..’

‘You don’t know what it’s about?’

‘Not a clue.’

I didn’t like the sound of it; a good tail, one who just leaves that feeling, is a professional, not a sex-starved creep. Professionals work for money and the people who pay them have reasons. We drove down to Woolloomooloo near the docks; there was a fair bit of traffic and activity and she glanced around nervously as she locked the car.

‘Do you have the feeling now?’ I asked.

‘Not sure.’

‘What are you doing here, an ad for overalls?”

She laughed and we walked towards a dinghy-looking warehouse. ‘You’ll see’

We went up some steps and in through a mouldy door. If the place was a nightmare outside, it was a dream within. The carpet was deep, the walls were white and the lighting was costing someone a fortune. The huge floor area was partitioned off into dressing rooms and elaborate, stylised sets. There were cameras and light fittings everywhere.