Peter Corris - Comeback

I thought of Ray Frost’s offer and wondered how much he’d really be willing to cough up. ‘I’d have to be sure that your information was valuable before I could offer you any money.’

‘I know who killed him. I know the name.’

‘You know the killer?’

‘Not exactly. I know someone who does know him, that is how I know.’

It was getting woolly but there was something authentic-sounding in the voice. ‘Perhaps we could meet and discuss it.’

‘Yes, if you can bring some money.’

‘I guess I could bring five thousand dollars.’

A sigh. Disappointment?

‘That is not much.’

‘There could be more if I’m convinced by what you say, and I could possibly help you with your problem.’

‘Are you an honourable man, Mr Hardy?’

More honourable than a relative who’d kill you for being a prostitute , I thought. ‘I hope I am.’

‘Very well. I will meet you.’

‘Where? And what’s your name?’

She made that ambiguous sound again. ‘Names. You could call me Miranda.’

‘Are you Mary Oberon?’

‘No, but I know her. Enough. Come to my place, 12A Little Seldon Street in Paddington. When can you come?’

‘Give me three hours-say, four o’clock?’

‘Yes.’

She hung up. I checked my bank balance. With Frost’s deposit there was enough to draw out five grand and still continue to eat for a few days and meet the next mortgage payment. I wouldn’t need three hours to draw the money and get to Paddington, but I’d need plenty of time to look the place over thoroughly and watch for comings and goings. The police had checked the.38 after I’d reported Bobby’s death and returned it to me reluctantly. I took it with me but left it in the car-you don’t walk into a bank carrying a gun.

No problem with the bank. You can draw out, deposit or transfer any amount up to ten thousand without questions being asked. But it left me with an uncomfortable feeling. Peanuts to some people, not to me. In hundreds, five grand is a fair-sized wad. Carrying it justified the pistol, even if going to meet an unnamed prostitute with multiple and complex problems didn’t.

The mid-afternoon traffic was manageable. I was in Paddington with the better part of two hours to spare. I parked in a side street two blocks from Little Seldon and worked my way back. The only approach was along Oxford Street and then a few twists and turns down narrow streets. The area featured a mixture of big and medium-size houses, some terraces, some freestanding, mostly old, some new. There were several blocks of mid-size flats and the precinct was honeycombed with lanes.

Little Seldon Street was short and so narrow the footpaths were only wide enough for one person. No trees. From a lane on the opposite side of the street I had a clear view of the house. It was an old workman’s cottage, one of a pair, and couldn’t have been more than three metres wide. At a guess, two up and two down. The balcony overhung the street. The door had been recently painted; the rest of it could have done with a new coat. It was a ‘residents’ only’ parking set-up and most of the residents must have been off earning the mortgage repayments. Although all the houses were small they wouldn’t have come cheap. The handful of cars in the street were unremarkable.

I scouted the block. A lane ran beside number 12A and down behind the houses. Hard place to keep watch on. At four o’clock I used the door knocker-no response. I tried again with the same result. A curtain fluttered at the open full-length glass door leading to the balcony. I knocked again, stepped out onto the street and called. Nothing.

I went down the lane to the back fence of 12A. It had a gate that was standing open. The door at the back of the house was also open. I unshipped the.38, crossed a tiny bricked courtyard and went into the house. The kitchen wasn’t much more than a couple of cupboards and shelves and a sink. There was a toaster and a microwave. Then there was a small dining room and sitting room combined. The room was a shambles. The furniture, table, coffee table, TV and DVD set-up were almost miniature in size but they’d been smashed and the pieces distributed around the room. An aluminium rack that had held a set of pornographic magazines had been crushed underfoot and the magazines ripped to shreds. The DVDs were pornographic-huge-breasted women and men with giant penises on the covers. A lot of the discs were lying about, scratched and broken.

A photograph had been torn from its frame and torn to pieces so that it was impossible to tell what it had been. Someone had urinated on the pieces. Along with the smell of piss I could detect cigarette smoke, perfume and something else. I knew what it was.

The staircase was virtually a ladder-very narrow, very steep. I went up. The back room held a moveable clothes rack and a chest of drawers. Clothes were hanging out of the drawers and askew on the rack. A large suitcase lay open on the floor with clothes and shoes spilling from it.

She was in the front room on the queen-size bed that took up most of the space. She was naked under a white silk dressing gown, untied. Her skin was a deep brown and her tightly braided hair was black. The kind of scarf Muslim women wear was ripped and lying beside her. A dark stain spread from under her head across the white satin cover on the bed. Her head was turned and her dark eyes stared blindly at me.

I couldn’t afford to be the discoverer of a murdered person a second time in a matter of days. The police would tie me up in knots and the publicity would be disastrous. I gave myself five minutes to search the house for the identity of the dead woman. No sign of a handbag or a purse. I opened drawers using a tissue and probed using a ballpoint pen. No letters, no cards, no post-its, no mobile phone. Some of the clothes on the rack were professional-silk, satin and lace items-but the ones she’d been packing were practical.

I noticed something sticking a millimetre or so out of a pocket of the suitcase cover. I teased out a postcard-sized photograph. It showed three young women standing together in a linked, provocative pose wearing the appropriate clothing. One of them was the dead woman wearing a head scarf; one I didn’t recognise and the other was Mary Oberon. I took the photograph.

I left the way I’d come in except that I stayed in the network of back lanes until I emerged a few blocks from Little Seldon Street. I walked to my car and sat there for a couple of minutes. The dead woman looked to be in her twenties; she was beautiful with a fine body. From her hair and features I guessed she was African. From her voice she was educated, and she’d sounded rational and intelligent. I felt her loss, not just because of the information I’d never get from her, but because she was much too young to die and she’d died a long way from home.

I drove until I found a public phone. I rang the police number and said where to find a dead woman.

‘Sir, please give me your name and address.’

That ‘Sir’ at the start of the sentence. They pick it up from American television. It annoys me. I hung up.

Driving around with five thousand dollars in your pocket isn’t the most comfortable feeling, particularly when you’re heading where I was. The House of Ruby is a massage parlour and relaxation centre in Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross. While being a hard-headed businesswoman, Ruby, the proprietor, is also something of a mother figure and mentor to Sydney sex workers. I’d done some work for her in the past, bodyguarding a couple of her employees and getting a threatening rival off her back. We’re friends.

Marcia, her well-constructed and immaculately groomed receptionist, raised an eyebrow as she buzzed me in.