Salt and Blood (12 page)

He levered himself up against the wall behind him and stood unsteadily. He took a couple of limping steps forward and grabbed at the edge of the table.

‘Those stairs are going to be a problem.'

‘I can do it, man.'

I nodded. ‘You saw the bloke who left with the woman yesterday.'

He touched his upper lip. ‘Yeah, big bloke with the Elvis T-shirt.'

‘That's him. He owns the computer. If it's buggered I don't think you'd want to meet him. He might be back any minute so I think you'd better piss off.'

He limped towards the door and stopped in the door frame, still rubbing at the skin under his jaw.

‘Something?' I said.

‘You're full of it if you reckon that bloke's goin' be back soon.'

‘How's that?'

‘They bought petrol at the station down the street. Looked like a full tank. I was watching. Took a while. They're long gone.'

I jerked my head at him to leave and then had a thought. ‘Who was driving?'

‘Him.'

Craig limped away leaving me very worried. Somebody knew where Rodney Harkness had been holing up and, depending on what he might've found in the flat, who with. As for Rod and Glen with their full tank in the Pajero and the surfboard on top, Glen didn't as a rule let anyone drive her precious car, and the man driving it didn't have a licence and hadn't driven for seven years.

15

I replaced the computer, plugged it in and switched it on. The smiling Macintosh face came up and the desktop screen appeared and it seemed to have survived the fall. I checked my email in the hope that Glen had responded to my message but she hadn't. I checked my phone messages again with the same result. I made some coffee, considered spiking it with the remainder of the whisky and decided against. I prowled around the flat to see if anything was missing. My gun was where it should be. A relief.

Junkies these days mostly steal money because you can't get anything much for second-hand electronic equipment and the hock shops are more tightly regulated than they used to be. Maybe Craig was hoping to acquire some new skills by pinching the iMac. The TV and VCR and the microwave and the transistor radio were all present and correct. There hadn't been any money lying around that I recalled. I went into each room a couple of times with the vague feeling that something was missing, but I couldn't pin down what it was.

The clothes Rod had left and the few in my room would've told the intruder that Harkness had a minder, but if he was the same one who'd fired the shots he'd have known that already. I couldn't see that there was any sign of Glen's presence—no stockings in the bathroom, no lipstick stains on a cup or a glass. Then it came to me. I'd put the Post-it Rod had left on the bedside table in my room and it had gone.

So he had a name and if he really was a cop as Craig had suspected he'd have ways and means. Glen could be a man's name but there was no comfort in that thought. This guy, I suspected, knew Harkness well, knew he was straight and that he was off in the wild blue yonder with a woman named Glen. Put like that it didn't sound like much of a lead. I realised that the intruder and I were in much the same boat—urgently looking for two people on the basis of very slender information.

I swore and kicked at the skateboard lying on the living room floor. It skidded across the carpet and crashed into the wall and made me feel foolish. I picked it up and went through the broken door with it in my hand intending to put it back where I'd found it. I was standing there, with the child's toy dangling from my hand, when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs and Warren St John Harkness in all his pinstriped glory came into view.

He stopped a metre away, removed his sunglasses and stared at me and the splintered door. ‘What in the name of God are you doing?'

Good question,
I thought. I bent, skidded the skateboard along the concrete walkway, and had the satisfaction of seeing it stop near enough to where I'd found it. “You'd better come in, Mr Harkness. We've got a few things to talk about.'

There was no point in holding anything back so I gave it to him, chapter and verse. It was a lot to take in all at once but lawyers are used to processing information and he stayed quiet until I'd finished, mentally filing everything I said. I put the best spin on it I could, letting him know that his holding back information on his brother's difficulties and character hadn't helped. From the way he took it he seemed to be registering it as valid, at least in part. But he wasn't going on the back foot.

‘I don't think I've ever heard of such incompetence.'

I let that pass. ‘What brought you here today, Mr Harkness?'

‘I'd heard nothing from Ms Withers for two days. She was supposed to make daily reports.'

‘That's news to me. Why didn't you tell us about Rodney's belief that he killed his wife and child?'

‘It was a delusion.'

‘That doesn't answer the question.'

‘And I don't intend to.'

‘Why did you hire a female investigator when you knew about Rodney's capacity to charm women?'

‘Don't be ridiculous. He's almost forty, he …'

‘He can still do it.'

‘I'm sorry to hear it. It was one of the sources of his trouble.'

We were standing a metre apart in the living room, which was littered with things I'd knocked down with the skateboard as I launched my attack—books, a broken chair, coffee mugs. There was a dark patch on the carpet where Craig had bled.

‘What happened here?' Harkness said.

‘It doesn't matter. Why don't you sit down. Something's just struck me and I want to try it out on you.'

He glanced at his gold watch. ‘I haven't got much time.'

‘Won't take long.'

He pulled a chair out from the living room table and sat as if it had a nail sticking up. I perched on the edge of the table.

‘I've got a feeling that you hired a female investigator and an attractive one because you knew your brother would … form an attachment, shall we say?'

‘Why would we do that?'

I registered the ‘we' but didn't let it distract me. ‘I think you also knew that Glen Withers has a drinking problem. Rodney has a reputation for violence. That's a volatile mix. I suspect you hoped to find out whether Rodney really did kill his wife and child and Glen would act as … what's it called—the Judas goat.'

‘That's fanciful.'

‘I was insurance that things wouldn't go too far.'

He stroked his clean-shaven jowls. ‘A long bow, Hardy.'

‘It makes sense. If you got solid indications that Rodney did kill them you've removed an inheritance complication. Rodney's controllable, you've demonstrated that; his daughter's a very loose end. I'd be interested in the provisions of your father's will.'

That reminded me of Frank's remark about there being something dodgy about old Harkness's death, but I thought I'd said enough for the moment.

Harkness looked at me as if I was an alien creature. My hair was a mess, I had blood on my shirt and my pants were through at the knees from when I'd straddled Craig. He wasn't used to dealing with roughnecks and it worried him.

‘Pure speculation,' he said, but without much conviction.

I shook my head. ‘Only partly. The question is, where do we go from here? We've got two very vulnerable people on the loose and a very dangerous person out after one of them who probably doesn't give a shit what happens to the other one. So tell me—have you got any idea who might want to kill Rodney? I'm assuming for the moment it isn't you or your mother.'

‘That's offensive.'

‘So is a lot of your behaviour. Glen Withers is my friend. I don't want to see her come to harm on account of your shitty manipulations.'

There was a long pause while he worked his way past outrage through calculation to compromise. ‘I have no idea who this person might be. No idea at all. Hardy, I think we'd better call a truce.' 

It took a while to get there. We thrashed it out a bit, both trying to gain the advantage. He claimed that he could sack Glen for incompetence and I countered with my accusations about his motives. He agreed that the important thing was to find Glen and Rodney and then decide what to do next. Privately, I thought he exhibited some unconcern about his brother's safety, not to mention Glen's, but I didn't raise it. If I was going to find the pair I'd need funds and he was the source. I still had a few questions for him though.

‘They took the surfboard you bought him,' I said. ‘Did Rodney have any favourite surfing spots?'

He shrugged and got off the chair. ‘Don't ask me. I never took any interest in Rodney's absurd sporting pursuits. The only games I ever played with him were cards—five hundred, poker and the like—and he cheated.'

‘Glen's a red-hot card player. If he tries that on her she'll roast him alive.'

He moved towards the door, uninterested, ‘Really?'

‘One more thing. I suppose you provided Glen with a list of his friends. Maybe there's someone he'd go to at a time like this.'

He turned back to me. ‘I did no such thing. As far as I know, Rodney had no friends. I have to go.'

He went. If he'd stayed I'd have been tempted to ask him if
he
had any friends. I doubted it. What a family.

What did Gough Whitlam call Billy McMahon? ‘Tiberius with a telephone'? I always liked that. I spent the next few hours phoning everyone I could think of who had any substantial connection with Glen, but I came up empty. I had to hope that she wouldn't want to miss her AA meetings but I didn't know where or when they were held. The only contact I had for Rod was his last agent, Barney Nugent.

He sounded wary. ‘Rod? Yes, I was his agent.'

‘I don't suppose he's been in touch with you recently?'

‘You don't suppose right. What's this about? If Rod owes you money forget it, he's in the loony bin.'

‘He's out, Mr Nugent, and he doesn't owe me money. In fact, I was wondering if you owed him any.'

His laugh was genuine and angry. ‘Get off! What gave you that idea?'

I filled him in a bit then, enough to convince him that I was concerned about Rod and was looking for him. I mentioned the residuals payments and got the harsh, barking laugh again.

‘Those residuals ran out years ago and they were on a reducing scale.'

‘Still, there was money …'

‘Listen, I gave Rod so many advances he'd have to be like Russell Crowe to pay it back. He's well in the red with me.'

‘What did he spend the money on?'

‘What they all spend it on—coke, booze, women.'

My next phone call was to Dr Jerry Weir.

16

‘Dr Weir, this is Cliff Hardy. I've learned something about Rodney Harkness I want you to confirm, if you will.'

‘Not something to discuss on the telephone. You'd better come over here.'

She suggested a time a good deal earlier than previously. That and her willingness to see me surprised me, but I put it down to her interest in Rodney. I cleaned myself up and changed my clothes. The shirt would need dry cleaning; the drill pants were a write-off. Jeans now and a cream linen shirt. Shouldn't be any blood about in Mosman. I had a swelling and an abrasion where Craig had kicked me, which would make the spot tender for a couple of days and make shaving difficult. I heated the rest of the coffee in the microwave and ate some biscuits with tinned tuna and bread and butter cucumbers. Classy, except that I ate standing up at the sink, worrying.

I tidied up the living room but left the blood patch alone. Salt on red wine, I knew that, but I could never remember whether it was good or bad on blood. Salt and blood—it sounded right
but I wasn't sure.
What the hell,
I thought,
Warren's up for the bond on the flat.
The same went for the damaged door. I pulled it closed and tapped some of the splintered wood back into place and it didn't look too bad. I doubted that Craig would make another try for the iMac. This time, though, I took the .38 with me.

The traffic was sluggish and I wasn't feeling super sharp myself. I wondered if the cop look-alike who'd broken into the flat had kept a watching brief on it and was on my tail. I almost wished he was and I flicked my eyes to all three rear-vision mirrors as I went but there was no sign of a red Camry or any other interested vehicle. It was a little after five o'clock when I got to Dr Weir's house, well before my self-imposed, often violated, drinking hour, but I badly needed one. Maybe Dr Weir was feeling the same.

The street was quiet with no sign of a client's car as on my previous visit. I went up to the house in the better light more able to take in its features. What they added up to was good taste and a lot of money. I toyed with the idea of going to the client's entrance but resisted. I realised that I was in a strange mood. The Harkness case had turned out to have bends and curves in it that were hard to negotiate. Finding Glen and Rod were the priorities now, but doing that wouldn't put us a centimetre closer to the original terms of the investigation. At least in talking to Jerry Weir I was dealing with the up-front and the underlying problems. I was rehearsing what I had to say in
my head as I pressed the buzzer. I was a minute or two early again.

This time the door opened almost immediately. She'd been waiting. She wore a red silk shirt tucked into loose white trousers with low-heeled sandals. Her blue-black hair gleamed and her dark eyes looked huge against her pearly complexion. I'm sure I stared and maybe just fell short of gaping.

‘Come in, Mr Hardy. God, what happened to your face?'

‘A kick,' I said. ‘It doesn't feel as bad as it looks.'

She tilted her head to one side and I went in. ‘I wouldn't say it looks bad.'