Peter Corris - White Meat

“I think she will.” I hated myself for indulging him in his pompous humbug, but I had no choice.

“Very well then.” He picked up a pencil and scribbled a note.

“Take that to the operations desk outside and you’ll get what you want.”

I stood up and assumed as respectful an attitude as I could without saluting. I don’t think he’d have minded if I had saluted.

“Thank you Major. Great help.” We shook hands. He managed to turn the gesture into a condescension for him and a privilege for me.

I went out to the office where all the work was done and handed in the note. A tired-looking man with red-rimmed eyes lifted a phone and spoke briefly into it. I looked around the room. There must have been ten or more telephones and the walls were covered with maps of Newcastle and Macleay and other towns in the area with red-headed drawing pins sticking in them. I waited five minutes before a young woman in a white blouse and blue skirt came into the room. The weary man nodded at me and she walked across and stuck her hand out.

“I’m Pam Henderson. Mr Hardy is it?”

I shook the hand and said it was. She picked up a notebook from one desk and slid a portable typewriter out from the cupboard. She was all business. Her hair was drawn back and well pinned. She wouldn’t waste a second of a working day fussing with it. She collected a set of keys from a hook by the door and we went out to a car yard behind the office building. She got behind the wheel of a big Valiant station wagon and had the car out of the yard and heading down the street while I was still fastening the safety belt. She parked in a reserved bay outside the hospital and marched up the front steps with me trotting along behind her. She was just what I needed; if I’d had an assistant like her I could have sat in my office and thought up wisecracks. I could just turn up for the denouement and make sure the client had the name right for the cheque.

The hospital reception desk stayed her for maybe five minutes and the ward sister for about three, then we were inside Trixie Baker’s room. I summoned all my courage and spoke to my companion.

“I won’t need you for a few minutes Miss Henderson. Please wait outside close by.”

She spun on her heel and went out. I breathed a sigh of relief and approached the bed. Neither the appearance of the Baker woman when I’d found her at the farm, nor the desiccated voice on the tape had prepared me for the head on the pillow. Flesh had fallen away from her bones and she looked mummified. I couldn’t remember what colour her hair had been when I first saw her, but it was white now, snow white. Her eyes were open but they were filmed over with pain, or perhaps morphine. I hoped it was the latter.

“Mrs Baker,” I said softly. “Mrs Baker, how are you feeling?”

The pale eyes widened a little and the creases beside them deepened.

“Bloody awful, but not for long. Who’re you? Doctor?

“No, I’m a detective. My name’s Hardy. You’ve heard of me.”

“I have, from the darkie. I seem to be able to remember everything just now. Too much really, too much. What do you want detective?”

“Some help, Mrs Baker. Some help for Albie Simmonds in a way.”

The smile that spread across her ravaged face was almost sweet.

“Oh Albie. He was a dear, Albie. How is he?”

“I’m afraid he’s dead Mrs Baker. He was shot. A friend of his is dead too and that’s where I need your help.”

The information didn’t trouble her. Somehow she’d acquired some strength in her last hours. I felt guilty about manipulating her.

“Are you a religious woman Mrs Baker?” I asked.

She let out a short, breathless version of the cackle I’d heard, on the tape.

“No, no, not a bit. Wish I was, then I could think I’d be seein’ Albie soon, couldn’t I?”

“I suppose so.”

“But it’s bullshit. Things are so bad, so rotten, there couldn’t be a God, not a nice one like they say. Why anyway?”

I explained to her. It took some time and I had to repeat myself. She kept slipping away into some state that telescoped the last fifty years of her life. Things I said triggered memories and resentments and she lived through some scenes the meaning and content of which only she could know. It was her way of facing death and I couldn’t deny it her. In the end she agreed to do what I asked. I called Henderson in and she took down the statement in shorthand, typed it up there and then and Trixie signed two copies.

I took the pen from her skeletal fingers and stepped back from the bed. Her hand fluttered on the coverlet and I bent down to hear what she said. Her voice was very faint.

“All gone now, eh? Albie, Joe Berrigan, me soon. What about Noni? What happened to her?”

“She missed out on all the trouble. She’s got problems though, she’s on drugs.”

“She’ll be alright. She’ll die old and rich.”

It sounded like wisdom and I treated it as such, nodding and saying something in assent. A soft sigh came from her and her eyelids came down. I jerked up alarmed and Henderson glided up to the bed. She took the stick-thin wrist in her strong brown hand and laid fingers across it. After a few seconds she put the arm down and raised her fingers to her lips. We went quietly out of the room.

“She’s asleep but it can’t be long,” Henderson said professionally.

“Are you trained?”

“Five years, army nurse.”

“Your typing looks alright, too.”

“Business school. Graduated first-class.”

“You should be doing more with it.”

“Are you making me an offer?”

I backed away physically and verbally. She’d be running things within a week, telling me what jobs to take and how I could increase my fees.

“No, sorry, I’m in a very small way of business.”

She sniffed and drove me to the airport. It wasn’t the worst of my rides out of Macleay but it wasn’t the best either.

I read Ragtime in the waiting lounge and finished it on the plane. I kept it with me to give to Ailsa. On arrival in Sydney I went to Cy Sackville’s office, talked to him for a while and left the papers plus several others I signed myself. Cy wasn’t wearing the suit I’d seen in Macleay, in fact I’d never seen the suit before. Cy probably had more suits than I had fillings. Still, I liked him and promised to pay him before Christmas. He waved the promise aside which was probably wise.

I left, taking note of how to furnish an office with taste and style. There were only two problems: one, I’d never be able to afford it and two, if by some chance I ever could, this decor would be out of fashion. Difficulties… difficulties… On the drive home I considered what I’d done. The papers I left with Sackville were sworn statements by Patricia Baker, widow of Macleay, made in the belief that she did not have long to live, that Aldo Coluzzi was her partner in the marijuana-growing business, supplying capital and arranging distribution. Two other men, Carlo and Adio, surnames unknown, were mentioned as agents.

It wasn’t much. It probably wouldn’t even stick, but the papers would go in to the Drugs Enquiry Commission that was sitting just then and it wouldn’t do Coluzzi any good. He’d get a mention in the press with luck and there’d be some investigation of his business affairs. I calculated that there should be something in there for auditors and tax men to chew on. At the most there might be a deportation order in it. I’d settle for that.

As for fat Sammy Trueman, he was going to lose money and the best fighter he’d ever had.

Prizefighting is in the doldrums, of course. I can remember when the big stadiums in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane did a roaring trade a couple of nights a week and stories on fighters pushed the politicians off the pages of the newspapers. That’s all finished; the big stadiums are closed and pulled down mostly and the big crowds assemble for football and to see androgynous pop stars who are millionaires at eighteen and dead of drugs by twenty-five.