Salt and Blood (3 page)

‘How does he feel about that?' I asked.

‘I understand he's reluctant but will comply.'

You understand,
I thought. ‘Have you seen him, Mr Harkness?'

‘Briefly. He has refused to live here with us so I've rented him a flat in Bondi. He used to be a keen surfer. I'm hoping that can be part of his rehabilitation.'

I avoided looking at Glen. ‘If he wants to drink there's no way to stop him.'

‘He doesn't want to,'
Lady Rachel said sharply. ‘Your job will be to help him be strong. To stick to that resolution.'

I thought about it, feeling sceptical but maybe looking reliable. I had the feeling that I'd passed muster with the Harknesses and I could see relief pass over Glen's face and the mother and son exchanged nods. I don't like to be nodded over and I barely listened to what followed. I occupied myself by looking around the room, which was all in good taste but with nothing personal to it. I caught an angry look from Glen and swung my attention back to Harkness. I was to collect Rodney at Rutherford House on Sunday afternoon. Harkness would courier all the relevant documents along with photographs of Lucille née Hammond and the daughter, whose name was Rose, to Glen that evening. And that was about it. Lady Rachel said something complimentary about Glen's reputation and her son nodded. They were big on nodding. I shook Harkness's doughy hand and touched his mother's cold fingers. We said our goodbyes; Harkness escorted us to the door and the woman in black took us out with more leather tapping on wood and rubber squeaking.

We'd been in there for almost an hour and the sun was getting lower in the sky, casting tall tree shadows across the lawn. The day had been warm but a cool breeze had got up. Rodney was going to need his wetsuit.

We walked down the path in silence until we got to the gate. ‘You didn't exactly go out of your way to be charming,' Glen said.

I turned around and looked back at the house. There was something faintly ridiculous about a place that size being occupied by just two people. Or maybe something sinister.

‘It's hard to be charming when a couple of shits are treating you like shit,' I said.

3

The cool air got chillier as Glen marched ahead to her car. I had to lengthen and quicken my stride to catch up with her.

‘What?'

She dug in her bag for her keys and I saw that her hand was trembling when she pulled them out.

‘Glen, I …' I reached to touch her but she pulled back.

‘We have to talk.'

It was a dreaded phrase, one that had been spoken before all our fights. ‘‘What about?' I said. ‘This job is bullshit, Glen. You know what they're about. We …'

‘That's what we have to talk about. Let's go to Bondi. The Gelato Bar. Okay?'

I shrugged. ‘Sure.'

On the drive to Bondi I reviewed my impressions of Glen's clients. One of my failings, reinforced by being in this job for so long, is a habit of thinking the worst of people. I struggle against it and try to find the positive side, but I was having difficulty
with the Harknesses. She seemed to be a patrician clothes horse. Cold and narcissistic. He was a soft mother's boy who looked to have had a very easy ride and their concern about the son and brother certainly had nothing to do with affection for him.

The more I thought about it the more I reckoned I should try to dissuade Glen from taking on the case. Another negative thought—I didn't think she should be a party to letting that pair get the grand-daughter/niece into their clutches. I was cruising Campbell Parade looking for a parking spot before a positive note of any kind entered my thinking—from what I'd heard I had a certain amount of sympathy for Rodney Harkness.

The Gelato Bar has been there ever since I can remember, and without much change of decor or style. If it ain't broke … I was a little surprised Glen hadn't suggested a resolution-confirming pub. It was late enough in the day for me. She was in a booth when I got there and had already fended off a few people who'd contested her right to occupy it as a single.

‘I'm buying,' she said. ‘What'll you have?'

‘Long black.'

The waitress had been hovering and took the order quickly. Flat white for Glen. She began using the wrapped sugar cubes as building blocks. I reached over and dismantled the structure, putting the cubes back in the bowl.

‘What's this about, Glen? What's the matter?'

She lifted her face and the stress showing in it aged her a couple of years. ‘Let's wait till the coffee comes.'

We sat there with a silence building between us that I found impossible to interpret except that there was something serious behind it. The coffee came and Glen grabbed hers, stirred a couple of cubes of sugar into it and gulped at it. She drank half of the cup quickly before wiping her mouth on a napkin. ‘I'm not doing too well with the alcohol thing,' she said.

‘Oh, shit. I'm sorry. What about the ten steps and all that?'

‘It helps but it's still fucking hard. I thought it'd get easier but it doesn't.'

I drank some coffee with the unhelpful thought that I wished it was whisky and didn't say anything. Glen finished her drink and started fiddling with the spoon in the froth. I didn't try to stop her. ‘At first I was doing great. It was terrific not to be thinking about booze all the time. Not to be worried about being more than an hour away from a possible drink. I liked losing the weight, getting back into skirts I hadn't worn, hadn't been able to wear for a couple of years. I'm vain enough to be pleased that I looked better, especially after the break-up with Colin … You know.'

Glen had married a policeman after our affair finished. ‘It's rough.'

‘Mm. But gradually I started to take those things for granted and you know what I began to think?'

‘I can guess,' I said. ‘You started to think you could have all those plusses and maybe have a drink or two as well.'

‘Yes!' she said fiercely. ‘I haven't, I know that's
bullshit from the other times I stopped and started, but Christ it's so hard sometimes.'

‘I know a bit about it,' I said.

‘Yes, I know you do, but you seem to be able to stay in control. I was getting up to a bottle of gin a day, or more. A few times I woke up at home and couldn't remember anything much past noon.'

I hadn't heard about her alcoholism in this kind of detail before but I knew the pattern and how destructive it was and how hard to break. The waitress took Glen's cup and she clenched her fists. I ordered two more coffees although I was only halfway through mine. I drained it and passed a couple of sugar cubes across for her to play with.

She forced a smile. ‘Thanks. The AA meetings helped tremendously at first, but I can't take all that higher power crap and there seems to be more of it creeping in. And I'm getting bored earlier and more easily. I'm having trouble sleeping.'

She took off the sunglasses she'd been wearing and her eyes looked tired and strained. I noticed that her makeup was heavier than usual. Last night in the flattering light of the pub and with a few drinks on board I'd thought she looked fine; here under the fluorescent light, cracks were showing.

I tried to say something comforting but she was in full flight.

‘It's really horrible, Cliff. You wander around in your spare time trying to fill up the spaces. I fiddle with things that don't need doing just to be doing something, anything, to keep my mind off it. Talk about doing it a day at a time. Sometimes an hour feels like a fucking day, and a day feels like …'

She broke off as the coffees arrived. She dipped her head so the waitress couldn't see the pain in her face. We got to work with the sugar and spoons. I expected her to go on but she'd run out of steam.

‘Are you seeing anyone about it, like a psychologist?'

‘I've seen a couple, including a hypnotist. It doesn't do any good. I don't care
why
I'm an alcoholic, whether it's because I'm a repressed bisexual or have low self-esteem or whatever.'

‘They say it's a disease. Could be genetic or …'

‘Bullshit. It's a compulsion, an obsession. You give in to it or you fight it, but the fight's so hard. I'm sorry.'

‘About what?'

‘Dragging you here to lay all this on you. The point is I haven't been doing well with the agency lately. I've mucked a couple of things up because of this. Lost concentration. Cliff, the only way I can get through this is to work! When I'm busy it's not nearly so bad. So I need this job, I need it badly. It's ideal—lots of time-consuming digging and searching. Lots of possibilities and maybe some travel. Something to fill up those fucking empty holes. So I'm asking you to come in on it with me. There's no one else I can talk to like this. No one else to understand.'

I took the contract from my blazer pocket, unfolded it and signed. Glen grabbed a napkin and dabbed at her eyes.

‘Thank you.'

‘Right,' I said, ‘but when you say come in on it
with you, I think you should mean that. You've got to keep me informed as you find things out and I'll do the same. And let me help if I can.'

‘I will.' She signed below my signature. ‘I'll fax you a copy for your files. If there's stuff you should see in the material I'm getting tonight I'll get it to you.'

‘But they're still shits.'

She smiled and some of the tension slipped away. ‘They are, aren't they? Did you notice how her accent slipped when she got angry?'

‘Yep. They're hoping he can be shunted straight back inside. By the way, what did Rodney do before he got put away?'

‘He was an actor—a bit of theatre, TV, commercials.'

‘They must've loved that. I bet there's something about the family money involved here. Tell you now I won't come at that if I've got any say, not unless he's really off the rails.'

We finished the coffee and Glen put the contract in her bag, patted at her hair and put her sunglasses back although she wouldn't need them outside now. I stood and stretched discreetly the way I have to after sitting down for a spell these days. ‘You can call me any time if you need to talk or want company.'

‘Still on your own?'

‘Mostly.'

I caught a glimpse of us in a mirror as we left the place. We looked like a couple but everyone knows mirrors lie.

I drove to the office and, now that I was committed to the Harkness job, I tidied up a few loose ends and replied to two faxes and an email, refusing offered jobs with regrets. Then I went to the gym for a late workout because I wasn't sure when I'd next get the chance. A quick one in the Toxteth and then it was home to cook, eat, read a few chapters of David Hickie's book about Chow Hayes, the gunman. Hayes had done his dash by the time I was rubbing shoulders with those types in Sydney and I wasn't sorry. A hard man. The book held my interest but I kept breaking off, half expecting a call from Glen. She didn't ring and I decided that it was a good sign—she'd found the strength to get through another night. I hoped I was right.

In the morning a courier brought a package containing a photograph, a set of keys and a credit card. The keys were labelled with the address of a flat in Bondi.
Christ,
I thought,
they're not even going to show him the place.
The photograph showed a dark-haired man and a fair-haired woman with a child of, to me, uncertain age. Just toddling perhaps. The man was thin and handsome in a Tony Perkins sort of way. The woman was willowy with an angry look to her. I hoped Glen had a better and later photograph of the daughter because it was impossible to even guess from this one what she might look like seven years later. The slip containing the PIN was enclosed with the card and I wondered how much money they'd put at Rodney's disposal. Easy enough to find out.

With the day to kill I paid two visits, one to my doctor in Glebe, Ian Sangster, and one to Frank Parker, an old friend who retired as a Deputy Commissioner of Police. I asked Ian, who'd dealt with quite a few mentally damaged people in his time, some of them well-heeled, if he knew anything about Rutherford House. He didn't. Said he'd ask.

Frank and Hilde Parker live in Tamarama, giving me a chance to kill two birds with one stone. On the way to their place I called in at the flat in a street off Curlewis Street, Bondi, a few blocks back from the beach, to see what his loving family had assigned to Rodney. Pretty nice—adequately furnished, two bedrooms, well fitted out kitchen and living room, decent balcony. A big Malibu surfboard took up space in one of the bedrooms and if Rodney wanted to go surfing he didn't have far to trot. Likewise if he wanted to go drinking. There was an envelope taped to the board and I took a look at it. A receipt from a city surfshop carrying the brand of the board, the name of the shaper and the identification number. No note saying, ‘Love, Mum.'

Frank was swimming laps in his pool when I arrived. He climbed out, looking glad to stop. He told me that Hilde was off playing tennis. I asked about their son, Cliff, whose anti-godfather I am.

‘Backpacking,' Frank said.

‘Where?'

‘Europe.'

‘You'd have given him a telecard so he can call home like Peter Reith did for his kid.'

Frank rubbed his hair dry. ‘He reverses the charges when he bothers to call. Fancy a beer?'

We had a drink in the shade by the pool and I asked Frank if he knew anything about a case involving Rodney Harkness and assault on a police officer.

‘Vaguely. Tell me more.'

I filled in what I knew and Frank nodded several time as he worked on his can. When I finished he gave me one of the wintry, enigmatic smiles that used to make offenders very uncomfortable. “The name was familiar, especially the St John bit, and a little of what you're saying comes back to me. I can't add much to that. What I do remember is about the father, Ralph Harkness, Sir Ralph.'